WebM is a royalty free HTML 5 video file format sponsored by Google and distributed under an open source license. People have been calling on Microsoft to support this format for quite some time. As of Sept 1, Microsoft has stated that they are now actively working on adding this format to their Edge browser.
There have been complaints about Microsoft not supporting this standard on Edge’s feedback website, so hopefully this move by Microsoft should satisfy those. Microsoft has committed to improving Edge and bringing it more in line with modern web standards. Just recently they added a new attribute to the image tag to improve image responsiveness. They have made it clear that Edge is an ongoing project that will continue to improve. This strategy is very different to the one they had with IE, which only saw incremental updates.
Microsoft aims to take on Chrome with Edge, but it is off to a modest start after a recent usage share chart showed it is being used by 2 percent of PC desktop users. That’s a far cry from Windows 10 usage which is the only Operating System Edge ships on; showing that many people are still sticking to alternative browsers. However, Edge has only been out in the wild for a month, and it’s still a new browser with many missing features. In 6 months, Microsoft should have a better idea how their IE successor is doing.
