What does Microsoft hope to accomplish with Edge? Two competing ideas:

1. Edge means giving up: Edge is rebranded Chrome, MS merely hopes to reap seigniorage from Bing as the default homepage

2. Edge means doubling down: MS wants to focus its efforts on differentiating features like privacy or Windows integration, where Google is at a disadvantage

They are pushing Edge hard so #1 doesn't seem plausible, but #2 would be a coup, and inevitably lead to a fork, like WebKit/Blink.