Microsoft Has First Major Impact on Chrome

Thanks to the open-source nature of Chromium, Microsoft has had its first major and positive impact on Chrome, Google’s web browser. Thanks to a feature request from Microsoft, Google will issue a change to Chromium, the open-source project by which Google makes Chrome, that significantly improves battery life.

“Today, media content is cached to disk during acquisition and playback,” Microsoft’s Shawn Pickett explains in his change suggestion for Chromium. “Keeping the disk active during this process increases power consumption in general, and [it] can also prevent certain lower-power modes from being engaged in the operating system. Since media consumption is a high-usage scenario, this extra power usage has a negative impact on battery life. This change will prevent the caching of certain media content to disk for the purpose of improving device battery life for users.”

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And Microsoft knows battery life. Aside from being the makers of the most popular desktop operating system on which Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers are run, it also spent several years optimizing battery life in its previous versions of Microsoft Edge. And then it would publicize the results, in which classic Edge routinely outperformed the battery life in Chrome and other browsers.

And Google’s on board. For now, the change is being tested as an experimental feature in Chrome Canary—the nightly builds of Chrome 78—which needs to be enabled by default: Just open chrome://flags and search for “Turn off caching of streaming media to disk.” (This works in Chrome for Windows, Mac, Linux, Chrome OS, and Android.)

And if all goes as well as expected, it will be implemented and enabled by default in the browser.

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  • RonV42

    Premium Member
    17 August, 2019 - 9:28 am

    <p>The sad thing is once it comes to Chrome the all the bloggers outside of this site will give Google credit for it.</p>

  • skane2600

    17 August, 2019 - 9:41 am

    <p>This appears to be a feature agreement between the two companies. It doesn't really have anything to do with open source since Google is the one making the change.</p>

    • Paul Thurrott

      Premium Member
      17 August, 2019 - 10:50 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#450034">In reply to skane2600:</a></em></blockquote><p>It has everything to do with open source. Microsoft never would have adopted Chromium or recommended this change otherwise. </p>

      • skane2600

        17 August, 2019 - 11:18 am

        <blockquote><em><a href="#450037">In reply to paul-thurrott:</a></em></blockquote><p>There's really little difference between MS agreeing to make Chrome as their default browser vs making a new browser based on Chrome code. The conventional wisdom would be that Microsoft would never do either one, but here we are.</p>

    • jrickel96

      17 August, 2019 - 11:09 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#450034">In reply to skane2600:</a></em></blockquote><p>It does because Microsoft added it to Chromium. Google does not have to take all changes made to Chromium and apply them to their Chrome browser. Microsoft could execute this and add it to Chromium without Google choosing to add it to their browser.</p><p><br></p><p>Ultimately it really is just Google recognizing that a change Microsoft made is a good one. Reality is they likely realized it would look bad for them if the Chromium Edge did much better for batteries than Chrome. Because of Chromium powering Edge, things like that strengthen Edge's use case in the future when it is the default browser because it will work anywhere Chrome does. </p><p><br></p><p>Microsoft's move to Chromium can pay huge dividends for users whether they adopt Edge or it forces Google to pay attention to issues with Chrome that Edge fixes – such as memory usage. I've run Chrome and new Edge alongside each other and there is a noticeable difference in memory usage between the two, but not in functionality. New Edge has become my daily driver on my PCs and on my Mac. Very impressed with the rendering, memory usage, and just overall goodness of where it is right now. </p>

      • skane2600

        17 August, 2019 - 11:20 am

        <blockquote><em><a href="#450039">In reply to jrickel96:</a></em></blockquote><p>Nothing in the story here indicates that MIcrosoft made the change. </p>

        • datameister

          17 August, 2019 - 1:26 pm

          <blockquote><a href="#450043"><em>In reply to skane2600:</em></a><em> </em>Nothing in the story here indicates that MIcrosoft made the change.</blockquote><p><br></p><p>Go gack and read the story then. You missed some critical parts. In fact the first two paragraphs should be enough to find a few places in "the story here" where it indicates Microsoft made code changes and submitted them to the open sourced Chromium project.</p><p><br></p>

          • skane2600

            17 August, 2019 - 2:02 pm

            <blockquote><em><a href="#450062">In reply to DataMeister:</a></em></blockquote><p>"Thanks to a <em>feature request</em> from Microsoft, <em>Google </em>will issue a change to Chromium"</p><p><br></p><p>Please quote the part of the story that says Microsoft made code changes. Submitting code to an open source project isn't a feature request. </p>

            • tboggs13

              17 August, 2019 - 3:05 pm

              <blockquote><em><a href="#450065">In reply to skane2600:</a></em></blockquote><p>I do believe a feature request can be accompanied by code. From the logs on the feature request linked in the article, it does appear that Shawn is submitting code and members of the Chromium project are reviewing and accepting it.</p>

              • Paul Thurrott

                Premium Member
                17 August, 2019 - 3:28 pm

                <blockquote><em><a href="#450089">In reply to tboggs13:</a></em></blockquote><p>It's almost like it's an open source project. :)</p>

              • dmjb

                17 August, 2019 - 6:35 pm

                <blockquote><em><a href="#450089">In reply to tboggs13:</a></em></blockquote><p><br></p><p>What you are describing is called a _pull_ or _change_ request. A _feature_ request is where you ask someone else to implemenent a feature for you.</p><p><br></p><p>It does indeed look like they submitted a patch to the Chromium project, so the use of "feature request" in the article is misleading.</p>

    • JoePaulson

      19 August, 2019 - 11:56 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#450034">In reply to skane2600:</a></em></blockquote><p>So the Linux kernel isn't open source because the maintainers don't accept every commit from other people….lol</p>

  • Pbike908

    17 August, 2019 - 10:07 am

    <p>I am anxiously awaiting the global switch that stops HTML 5 video from playing. I downloaded the edge chromium the other day and if I could stop videos from autoplaying I would make it my daily driver. </p>

    • Stokkolm

      17 August, 2019 - 1:39 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#450035">In reply to Pbike908:</a></em></blockquote><p>You can install an extension to do that from the Chrome extension store. </p>

      • k

        17 August, 2019 - 5:02 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#450063">In reply to Stokkolm:</a></em></blockquote><p>or you could switch to Mozilla Firefox which does this by default </p>

      • Dan

        17 August, 2019 - 5:40 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#450063">In reply to Stokkolm:</a></em></blockquote><p>None of them work over 90% of the time and frequently f'up sites. I would love to have a option to disable autoplay 100% of the time.</p><p><br></p><p>People say the Brave browser does this but I used it, it was worse then Chrome add ons like Turn-off-the-lights.</p>

      • sgodsell

        17 August, 2019 - 8:19 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#450063">In reply to Stokkolm:</a></em></blockquote><p>With Chrome you can just change the settings.</p><p><br></p><ol><li>Go to Settings &gt; Site Settings &gt; Media &gt; Autoplay.</li></ol><p><br></p>

    • sgodsell

      17 August, 2019 - 8:17 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#450035">In reply to Pbike908:</a></em></blockquote><p>You can easily change chrome site settings and disable the media autoplay. You don't need to load any extension.</p><p><br></p><ol><li>Go to Settings &gt; Site Settings &gt; Media &gt; Autoplay.</li></ol><p><br></p>

    • chocolate starfish

      18 August, 2019 - 1:26 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#450035">In reply to Pbike908:</a></em></blockquote><p>The Chrome extension AutoplayStopper will do the job for now.</p>

  • pepesilvia

    17 August, 2019 - 10:08 am

    <p>*<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">in its previous versions of Microsoft Edge</span></p>

    • Paul Thurrott

      Premium Member
      17 August, 2019 - 10:50 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#450036">In reply to pepesilvia:</a></em></blockquote><p>Thanks.</p>

  • MacLiam

    Premium Member
    17 August, 2019 - 11:52 am

    <p>I get the battery life advantage, which is less important to me than it probably is to others, but under this change isn't there now the disadvantage of possible stuttering or even paused playback?</p><p><br></p><p>Somebody please explain if I missed something. I may be one espresso shy of getting all my neurons up and running.</p>

    • Scott8846

      Premium Member
      17 August, 2019 - 10:07 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#450044">In reply to MacLiam:</a></em></blockquote><p>From what I understand here, there is a distinction between caching and buffering and what you are referring to is buffering, the act of keeping, say, the next minute of the video in memory to avoid problem if the connection can’t keep up for a little while.</p><p><br></p><p>I think what Chrome's caching do is more akin to download the video to disk so you can, say, go back in the video without needing to get the same content again over the network.</p><p><br></p><p>I don’t know if it’s the plan, but I would suggest keeping an in-memory cache of the previous minute and a buffering of the next minute to meet almost every scenarios, except of course the one where the user go back more than a minute.</p><p><br></p><p>I hope I provided an appropriate perspective on what *could* be going on.</p>

      • MacLiam

        Premium Member
        18 August, 2019 - 11:34 am

        <blockquote><em><a href="#450165">In reply to Scott8846:</a></em></blockquote><p>Clear and credible. Thanks.</p>

  • truerock2

    17 August, 2019 - 4:01 pm

    <p>BONUS!!</p><p>Not caching content provides Copy Protection, provides additional ways to track users, increases network bandwidth requirements and decreases playback performance!!!</p><p><br></p><p>YEA!!</p><p><br></p><p>Oh – and my PC doesn't use a battery :-(</p><p><br></p>

    • antrenorul

      17 August, 2019 - 5:40 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#450093">In reply to truerock2:</a></em></blockquote><p>If only there was a flag that you could use to toggle the feature off… Oh, wait…</p>

      • truerock2

        17 August, 2019 - 9:18 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#450121">In reply to antrenorul:</a></em></blockquote><p>Quoting the article:</p><p>"it will be implemented and enabled by default in the browser"</p>

    • fishtacos

      17 August, 2019 - 6:34 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#450093">In reply to truerock2:</a></em></blockquote><p>"Not caching content"</p><p>This article is about adding the ability to cache content, not the opposite.</p><p><br></p><p>"provides Copy Protection"</p><p>Neither caching nor not-caching provides any additional Copy Protection as all DRM media is already encrypted and can be accessed the same way in RAM and disk.</p><p><br></p><p>"provides additional ways to track users"</p><p>Neither caching nor not-caching provides any additional way to track users. It's simply a performance difference, which ultimately leads to greater battery life (as RAM cached data doesn't access the disk as much).</p><p><br></p><p>"increases network bandwidth requirements"</p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Neither caching nor not-caching increases network bandwidth usage or lowers it. It's simply a method of storage of the same downloaded data.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">"</span>decreases playback performance!!!"</p><p>No it doesn't. Perhaps in 1995 with 400MB 5400 RPM IDEs, but not in 2019.</p><p><br></p><p>"Oh – and my PC doesn't use a battery :-("</p><p>Cool, so this doesn't apply to you. Go away with your BS and fud.</p>

      • truerock2

        17 August, 2019 - 9:15 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#450125">In reply to fishtacos:</a></em></blockquote><p>Quoting the article:</p><p>"This change will prevent the caching of certain media content to disk for the purpose of improving device battery life for users."</p><p><br></p><p>My degree is in computer science. I have decades of experience in building and evaluating information technology. I stand by my evaluation.</p>

        • JoePaulson

          19 August, 2019 - 11:54 am

          <blockquote><em><a href="#450160">In reply to truerock2:</a></em></blockquote><p>congrats, you just admitted you wasted your money getting a degree in CS.</p>

    • acemod13

      18 August, 2019 - 12:17 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#450093">In reply to truerock2:</a></em></blockquote><p>Boy, you don't understand how caching works at all. As the change implies, it won't save temporally on the storage device. This won't wreck the life of the SSD and won't drain the battery. Most likely, it will use RAM for caching. RAM is heck of a lot faster than even the SSD, so playback in low-end system will actually improve. It won't affect the Tra king nor the copy protection (HDCP says hello). </p>

  • jac38

    17 August, 2019 - 4:09 pm

    <p>So, where is cached media going to be recorded? This seems like an obvious change to conserve battery life. What specifically changed?</p>

    • Jonas Barkå

      17 August, 2019 - 5:06 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#450094">In reply to jac38:</a></em></blockquote><p>RAM, I assume. </p>

      • sevenacids

        17 August, 2019 - 9:38 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#450116">In reply to Havoc:</a></em></blockquote><p>If this is the case, I wonder why they didn't do it like that in the first place. I mean, this possibly dates back when RAM was rare, but in 2019 it should be no issue for an average PC to cache media content to RAM, and only fallback to disk when the amount of memory is limited or consumption gets too high. But I don't see the innovation in here, this is nothing but a quite simple optimization.</p>

        • skane2600

          17 August, 2019 - 11:32 pm

          <blockquote><em><a href="#450164">In reply to sevenacids:</a></em></blockquote><p>It's always going to be a tradeoff. When RAM was rare, media content was a lot smaller. They both grew.</p>

  • CajunMoses

    17 August, 2019 - 4:48 pm

    <p>If there's anything that history tells us, it's that a good, healthy, deep-seated, intense suspicion of anything that Microsoft brings to the table is always more than warranted. Distrust aside though, this contribution isn't necessarily a trojan horse. Could I possibly be more fair-minded?</p>

    • Paul Thurrott

      Premium Member
      17 August, 2019 - 5:59 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#450113">In reply to CajunMoses:</a></em></blockquote><p>Yeah. You could only be more fair-minded, actually. </p>

    • truerock2

      17 August, 2019 - 9:35 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#450113">In reply to CajunMoses:</a></em></blockquote><p>It's not that Microsoft is evil – it's that they have a culture of winning at all costs.</p><p>They do not do things because it creates the best possible product from the users perspective. Microsoft does not think that way.</p><p>Steve Jobs based his thinking and efforts on building the very best products – it was deeply imbeded in his DNA.</p>

      • skane2600

        17 August, 2019 - 11:29 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#450163">In reply to truerock2:</a></em></blockquote><p>Microsoft's biggest blunders are based on paranoia (e.g. Java will replace Windows, Netscape will replace Windows etc.)</p>

      • ArvindV

        17 August, 2019 - 11:45 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#450163">In reply to truerock2:</a></em></blockquote><p>Winning at all cost is the definition of evil</p>

        • chocolate starfish

          18 August, 2019 - 1:20 am

          <blockquote><em><a href="#450172">In reply to ArvindV:</a></em></blockquote><p>Nope, it's the definition of Capitalism.</p>

      • Paul Thurrott

        Premium Member
        18 August, 2019 - 9:33 am

        <blockquote><em><a href="#450163">In reply to truerock2:</a></em></blockquote><p>I think we're mixing up ancient history with the present. </p>

        • dontbeevil

          19 August, 2019 - 1:40 pm

          <blockquote><em><a href="#450219">In reply to paul-thurrott:</a></em></blockquote><p>first time I agree with Paul, since ages … have an upvote, unfortunately many people still stuck in 90s</p>

      • dontbeevil

        19 August, 2019 - 1:39 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#450163">In reply to truerock2:</a></em></blockquote><p>It's not that Microsoft is evil – it's that they have a culture of winning at all costs.</p><p>They do not do things because it creates the best possible product from the users perspective. Microsoft does not think that way.</p><p><br></p><p>bhauahuahuauahauaauha…tell me about google and apple</p><p><br></p><p>Steve Jobs based his thinking and efforts on building the very best products – it was deeply imbeded in his DNA.</p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p>bhuahauhauahua…. this is the best joke of the year</p>

    • Daekar

      18 August, 2019 - 7:45 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#450113">In reply to CajunMoses:</a></em></blockquote><p>I think you're looking for the old cut-throat Microsoft, which died in the gutter next to Windows Phone and Windows 8. It's a different company now, and will remain so for at least a little while.</p><p><br></p><p>I think this level of distrust is more properly leveled at Google, although this seems bit extreme even for them.</p>

  • Dan

    17 August, 2019 - 5:39 pm

    <p>Wow, innovation here. </p>

  • ipaulmagu

    17 August, 2019 - 8:24 pm

    <p>Oh wait! </p><p>Has anyone determined how much additional/reduction of drainage you get ?</p>

  • oddgentleman

    19 August, 2019 - 2:41 am

    <p>So, does it cache to ram? Or simply no cache? </p>

  • dontbeevil

    19 August, 2019 - 1:38 pm

    <p>LOL they needed to wait for MS help, after many years they couldn't fix their s**t</p>

  • shmuelie

    Premium Member
    19 August, 2019 - 5:32 pm

    <p>Sadly not in Edgium 78.0.249.0 (Latest canary as I write this)</p>

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