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Google's Chrome Becomes Web 'Gatekeeper' and Rivals Complain (bloomberg.com) 207

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Few home-grown Google products have been as successful as Chrome. Launched in 2008, it has more than 63% of the market and about 70% on desktop computers, according to StatCounter data. Mozilla's Firefox is far behind, while Apple's Safari is the default browser for iPhones. Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Edge browsers are punchlines. From a report: Google won by offering consumers a fast, customizable browser for free, while embracing open web standards. Now that Chrome is the clear leader, it controls how the standards are set. That's sparking concern Google is using the browser and its Chromium open-source underpinnings to elbow out online competitors and tilt entire industries in its favor. Most major browsers are now built on the Chromium software code base that Google maintains. Opera, an indie browser that's been used by techies for years, swapped its code base for Chromium in 2013. Even Microsoft is making the switch this year. That creates a snowball effect, where fewer web developers build for niche browsers, leading those browsers to switch over to Chromium to avoid getting left behind.

This leaves Chrome's competitors relying on Google employees who do most of the work to keep Chromium software code up to date. Chromium is open source, so anyone can suggest changes to it, but the majority of programmers who approve contributions are Google employees, and any major disagreements get settled by a small circle of senior Google employees. Chrome is so ascendant these days that web developers often don't bother to test their sites on competing browsers. Google services including YouTube, Docs and Gmail sometimes don't work as well on rival browsers, sending frustrated users to Chrome. Instead of just another ship slicing through the sea of the web, Chrome is becoming the ocean.
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Google's Chrome Becomes Web 'Gatekeeper' and Rivals Complain More

Google's Chrome Becomes Web 'Gatekeeper' and Rivals Complain

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  • Firefox is far behind.... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    ...because people don't actually care about their privacy.

    Oh, they care enough to complain, but not enough to switch to a browser that gives them means of actually protecting it.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      And yet Firefox has ceased to care about what its users asked for, for almost a decade now.

      • Re:Firefox is far behind.... (Score:5, Informative)

        by dicobalt ( 1536225 ) on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @02:17PM (#58667976)
        Once upon a time that was true, but now Firefox is fast again.

    • Please read Firefox's privacy policy. (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Before you claim that Firefox respects user privacy, please read Firefox's privacy policy [mozilla.org].

      Firefox collects lots of user data and can send it various places.

      Being able to possibly disable some of it doesn't make it acceptable. Nor does disclosing it in the privacy policy.

      Any web browser that respects the privacy of its users would not collect and send any user data at all, for any reason.

  • Yes, but keep in mind... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    That creates a snowball effect, where fewer web developers build for niche browsers...

    All hand-wringing aside, that part is a good thing, as anyone in this business in the 90's and early 2000's will attest....

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by laffer1 ( 701823 )

      It's not because it causes stagnation. You only get what Google chooses to give you.

    • Re:Yes, but keep in mind... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Voyager529 ( 1363959 ) <voyager529@@@yahoo...com> on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @02:10PM (#58667934)

      That creates a snowball effect, where fewer web developers build for niche browsers...

      All hand-wringing aside, that part is a good thing, as anyone in this business in the 90's and early 2000's will attest....

      No, it's not. If the point was to have one browser to target, then the days of IE6 would be nostalgic-good, not PTSD-inducing for web developers.

      Chrome is the new IE6. "but Chrome is standards compliant while IE6 wasn't!!" Well, yes...for now. The problem is that Microsoft controlled the browser, but wasn't very good at controlling the server-side components at the same time. They tried to use it to push IIS but forgot to have a free, web-server-only version to compete with Apache, so they didn't get very far. Firefox then came on the scene on the client side, and on the server side we got Wordpress and Joomla and other CMSes that does a good amount of the heavy lifting for cross-browser compliance.

      Google learned from that. Chrome is "standards compliant", but that's because Google controls lots and lots of website content. It doesn't *have* to, sure, but some obscene amount of websites use Google Fonts and Google Analytics and Google AMP; Chrome will always work with these but I give it five years before there's some sort of "best with Chrome" sort of deal, or that Google will use search rankings as the carrot-and-stick to use Google Fonts over an alternative; they already do this with AMP no matter how fast and optimized your website genuinely is.

      Moreover, the Chrome numbers get disturbingly high if you add in all the webkit-based browsers. Chrome + Chromium + Opera + Safari + Edge is basically IE6 numbers, with Firefox the sole holdout. Developers - especially the ones who were developing in the IE6 days, seem to be super-happy with getting back to a browser monoculture. "Webkit is Open Source!!" only counts if the Webkit project can deny a Google-provided commit and win; if not, it's Google just making it easier for there to gently direct everyone else's competing browsers to ensure they're all compliant with the scripts and other technologies they actually-care about while using OSS as a sleight-of-hand to avoid antitrust litigation.

      I'm not saying there should be a dozen competing browsers, each with 15% market share - websites would never get done correctly in that case. I am, however, saying that leaving Mozilla to be the sole counterbalance to Chrome and Chrome-as-reskinned-by-Apple-and-Microsoft is a bad thing to root for.

      • Chrome is the new IE6. "but Chrome is standards compliant while IE6 wasn't!!" Well, yes...for now.

        Google controls the W3C standards committee.

        I'm not saying there should be a dozen competing browsers, each with 15% market share

        Three main browsers with 30% marketshare each would balance it out nicely.

      • Chrome isn't really webkit though. Blink is a fork and at this point quite different. Still, adding up all of the Blink based browsers is just as sobering. Just drop Safari from your list and specify the new not yet widely available chromium based Edge and there you go.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dryeo ( 100693 )

          My understanding is that the QT folks have been busy porting Blink to webkit so you basically get a QT Chromium now with webkit.

      • They tried to use it to push IIS but forgot to have a free, web-server-only version to compete with Apache, so they didn't get very far.

        Minor nitpick: Win2k and XP Pro *did* have a "free" (included) IIS. Its major flaw was a connection limit... I think it only allowed 20 simultaneous connections, which even back then could get saturated by multiple connections from the same client. So, it was useful enough for people to learn to develop on it, but not run production loads. The idea was people would buy Windows Server and get appropriate licensing for IIS to run a website. This arrangement probably would have worked well for them if Apac

        • You raise a solid point, so I hope you don't mind a bit more nitpicking =). IIS in Pro versions of Windows continues; even Windows 10 has that same option.

          If I'm being pedantic though, there's no way to run IIS and pay $0 for it; Apache on Linux has been a thing for decades, but IIS requires at least a Pro desktop license. Also, I think MS at least tried to bridge the gap with Windows 2003 Web Server; it was like $300 and didn't require CALs so in MS land, it was pretty cheap. I wonder if the fact that this

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Turn over chromium.. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Bert64 ( 520050 ) <bert@NOSpaM.slashdot.firenzee.com> on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @01:51PM (#58667814) Homepage

    Turn over chromium to the W3c, where it can be maintained as the reference implementation of any published HTML standards.

    Anyone else can build on top of the open source code, or create a compatible clone. So long as a neutral body controls the reference implementation.

    • That's not gonna work (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The W3C is a bunch of incompetent idiots. How do you think did they manage to become WHATWG (and therefore google's) sockpuppets without noticing themselves?

      What I'd like to know is how firefox managed to drop the ball so badly. Probably too busy with the rust circlejerk to notice being left behind in the dust. Welp, I never was too impressed with their competence either.

      (How redmond lost so badly? They never got their erstwhile popularity fairly in the first place. And they couldn't repeat that trick anoth

      • IIRC Firefox was doing OK but Google came along with Chrome back in the days when everyone thought they were the good guys, and so switched. I know network admins who will install Chrome by default because they still think Google is fighting the good fight against Microsoft.

        • No, everyone switched because Firefox turned into the thing it replaced, a memory hogging, cripplingly slow browser that became actively hostile to it's users (seriously, the devs did so much stupid crap they deserve all they got)

    • While Google does have a lot of control they still have to largely listen to and follow the community if not then things may change. Let's not forget that at one time MS had a huge share with IE and they lost it all by not listening to the community and doing whatever they wanted regardless. Since Chrome is open source it is even easier for Google to lose it since, if there is enough discontent, someone can fork the codebase. So there is a check on their power to decide - they can annoy some people but they

      • Let's not forget that at one time MS had a huge share with IE and they lost it all by not listening to the community and doing whatever they wanted regardless.

        I don't get it: you're not the only person saying this. The thing seems to be "it's OK because IE was a monopoly and it was eventually displaced".

        What I don't understand is the "it's OK" part. Microsoft held back the web for YEARS, caused nightmares for developers and we've only managed to unpick the utter mess in the last few years. The IE years we

      • Re:Limited Control (Score:5, Interesting)

        by slack_justyb ( 862874 ) on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @03:42PM (#58668488)

        they still have to largely listen to and follow the community

        I think you are missing the point here. The vast amount of the community is Chrome. Look at the community's stance on DRM [slashdot.org] within the HTML5 spec versus what Google's stance was [arstechnica.com]

        The principal groups favoring the development of EME have been streaming media companies such as Netflix and Microsoft, Google, and Apple, companies that both develop browsers and operate streaming media services.

        My point here being, that the developers of the implementations are largely driving the standard. When there are fewer implementations there are fewer voices dictating opposing views to how the standard should exist and who the standard should benefit. I mean look at Opera who went from Google's messing with us to meh we're using Chromium as a base so screw it, not my hill to die on.

        Since Chrome is open source it is even easier for Google to lose it since, if there is enough discontent, someone can fork the codebase

        First, what the heck do you think Opera, Edge, etc are? Those are forks and they've all indicated that they're more than happy to let Google do most of the driving for development.

        Second, a fork is only useful if it is a useful client. The vast majority of traffic on the net is now from a few key players and one of them being Google. If Google decides to implement their popular video sharing site using an API that was never actually ever accepted by the W3C but implemented in their browser [tubefilter.com], then yeah, they can have a lot of sway in if Firefox or whoever else will need to implement that API. Shadow DOM v0, is v0 because it's the theoretical API that was just on paper before submitting it to W3C where everyone could comment on it, add/remove/etc to it, and then vote on a final version of it to become v1. Google decided to take v0 draft that they wrote up, actually build an implementation of it in client, and then have it in wide use on a site that's used by millions per second.

        So that leaves others a tough choice there. Either implement v0 which is completely and wholly Google's baby or implement v1 and tell users who visit GooTube that the site will just run slow because it's using a non-standard API. Implement v0 and what is to stop Goolge from pushing out Shadow DOM v0.67.12.666_november_patch+google_is_god.14.151_patch? You think telling everyone on GooTube, "Hey every time you visit this site, you're supporting a non-standard implementation of HTML" is going to work? I mean, literally, how many people here on Slashdot can point out the non-standard things within the ol' GoogleTube? Run any YouTube page through a validator, you'll get volumes of errors since a lot of GoogleTube is just made up fairy dust that came out the arse end of Google engineers.

        So yeah fork it if you'd like and do whatever you want with it, but if you have a client that can't render sites then you have a useless client that no one will use.

        Let's not forget that at one time MS had a huge share with IE and they lost it all by not listening to the community and doing whatever they wanted regardless

        That's super simplifying what actually happened and it took a massive legal challenge and a concerted effort from a variety of vendors to eventually topple IE. A good recall of history you can find here [quora.com] from Phillip Remaker's comment.

        • I don't see this as a bad thing as it comes back to the people wanting a faster horse instead of a car. Having an entire standards body driven purely by the community results precisely in what we had with IE6: vendors wanting to do things that standards didn't allow and doing it anyway breaking compatibility.

          Communities have a very conservative view on development and creativity which ultimately results in progress being held back. Conversely where we are here is actually a pretty good place. Developers who

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Those are forks and they've all indicated that they're more than happy to let Google do most of the driving for development.

          That's the fundamental problem here. Everything else is just a symptom.

          Google is the one doing all the hard work. If other developers were willing to put the effort in we wouldn't be in this situation, but they aren't. That's hardly Google's fault, it's just how things are.

          Firefox does have some influence and power still, because it is actively developed and big enough that sites need to support it. For example, changes to the way Firefox handled cookies have forced most sites to conform and enhance user pr

    • Turn over chromium to the W3c,

      Google has the most power in the W3C.

    • Re:Turn over chromium.. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @03:41PM (#58668480)
      The W3C is the standards body which took 12 years to move from HTML 4.1 to HTML 5.0. The reason the leading web browser (used to be IE, now it's Chrome) effectively sets the standard for the web is because the W3C is so slow to respond to changing technology and user/developer demand for features. The browser developers implement requested features a lot quicker than W3C standardizes them, resulting in developers flocking to use whatever new feature the leading web browser has implemented. That's how we ended up with the Flash plugin as the multimedia standard for the web. A bunch of W3C members with sticks up their asses didn't think multimedia belonged on the web, so refused to update HTML 4.1 to incorporate sound, video, and dynamically scripted elements.

      If the W3C doesn't change and begin responding more quickly to user and developer demand, the only thing giving them Chromium would accomplish would be the death of Chromium. A different browser would implement new technologies and requirements quicker, and become the new de facto web standard.

      A good standards body needs to be proactive. Looking into the future, guessing what will be needed, and implementing those in a standard before you ever know you needed it. e.g. The memory manufacturers were working on DDR4 and DDR5 while we were still buying DDR2 memory. The W3C is the exact opposite. They're almost completely reactive, putting them years (sometimes a decade) behind what web users and developers want.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by mfearby ( 1653 )

        I wish Slashdot had some kind of "like" button or "upvote" thingy... I'd be madly clicking it on your post right now

      • The W3C is the standards body which took 12 years to move from HTML 4.1 to HTML 5.0. ... because the W3C is so slow to respond to changing technology

        There they go!
        I must hurry after them,
        for I am their leader.

        Alexandre Ledru-Rollin, 1848 (as best I could find)

    • If the reference implementation immediately drifts from the real-world implementation (as it inevitable would), then it has little value over a permissively licensed vendor controlled implementation.

  • Eff Microsoft (Score:5, Interesting)

    by lrichardson ( 220639 ) on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @01:51PM (#58667816) Homepage

    As a one-time web developer, the joke was we used to test for five platforms: Opera/Chrome/Firefox, IE4, IE5, IE6, IE7

    That degree of frustration has pushed devs away from anything Microsoft.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by lgw ( 121541 )

      Chrome will inevitably become the new IE6. Sad, really, but Google will do whatever it wants with Chrome.

      • In a way it already has. The jokes used to be about IE being insecure. Now we have jokes about Chrome eating all of your resources.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by lgw ( 121541 )

          People forget that at the start of IE6, it was both the dominant browser, and the best user experience. MS didn't care about standards, because everyone used IE6 and IE6 was better. By the end of IE6, none of that was remotely true, and hadn't been for years, but we were all stuck with it.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            Microsoft cared about standards, specifically about creating its own new ones that didn't work with Netscape so that IE6 was the better browser.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by lgw ( 121541 )

              No, really they didn't - I know people who worked at MS at the time. There was no deliberate attempt to break standards to harm competing browsers (well, there was: ActiveX was that value add, but not the base browser), they simply didn't care about other browsers at all. They worked with W3C briefly, but stopped because they just didn't care about any external standard. When IE lost its market dominance, suddenly they cared a whole lot about standards.

              And don't think that was all MS's fault: the standar

        • Now we have jokes about Chrome eating all of your resources

          That's not to also say that it's eating all your information as well.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Rob Y. ( 110975 )

        Except that Chrome is cross-platform. IE6 got you Windows and MacOS, but that wasn't enough - especially once iOS came along. Then there were at least 2 major browsers you needed to test for. And I guess the popularity of Firefox made that 3. But once Chrome made Webkit browsers cross-platform everywhere, there was less reason to test for IE. And Firefox had to do their best to maintain compatibility, since they weren't going to get tested for either. But at least Webkit and Firefox were both attempti

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by lgw ( 121541 )

          In any case, my point is that Chrome may be/become dominant, but it'll never be IE6 - for which incompatibility was the whole point.

          IE6 wasn't incompatible in the early days, it was what other things were compatible with. It was during the lifetime of IE6 that other browsers got any traction at all, and standards became relevant. MS had already won the browser war with IE3-5. They weren't being incompatible for some nefarious reason, they were just adding features to make a better product (well, "better" in their minds, as it turned out, not so much). Much like Google is doing right now with Chrome.

  • Once upon a time 80% of people used Internet Explorer. Many sites had a "best viewed with Internet Explorer" button.

    Fortunately, that's no longer the case:

    https://www.reddit.com/r/Spuri... [reddit.com]

    I wonder what we'll be using 20 years from now.

  • Is someone stopping other companies from making popular browsers? I'm old enough to remember when IE was this "unstoppable force".

    • Re:So? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by serviscope_minor ( 664417 ) on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @02:03PM (#58667906) Journal

      Is someone stopping other companies from making popular browsers?

      Yes, google is.

      I remember for ages when I visited google with firefox, it relentlessly advertised to me that I should try Chrome instead. And not only advertised, but did it on the front page, a position not available to anyone except for google. And now they "unintentionally" break their very popular websites every so often for competing browsers.

      Google has a sufficiently powerful monopoly that they can use it to hamstring other browsers to the point where they cannot be popular.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by J053 ( 673094 )

        OMG! You were advertised to! Hint: Just change your User-Agent string.

        • OMG! You were advertised to! Hint: Just change your User-Agent string.

          Are you trying to be obtuse or are you naturally stupid?

          Google is currently the 4th largest company in the world and gets close most of its money from advertising. Facebook at number 6 is similar. If you think advertising doesn't work then you are beyond foolish. The worlds largest advertiser relentlessly advertising their product over a competitor is going to make it very hard for that competitor.

      • Google is a free service. They can advertise however they like, I am also free to not utilize their service. On a side note google searches are getting worse and worse. They gave up bothering with keywords long ago and bring you popular results. So if you need something out of the ordinary you have to put quotes around every fucking word or that word gets ignored.

        • Google is a free service

          Yes.

          They can advertise however they like,

          What misunderstand of both the law and ethics leads you to that bizarro conclusion. There are (a) plenty of limits on what advertisers can do and (b) even stronger limits on what monopolies can do.

      • I remember for ages when I visited google with firefox, it relentlessly advertised to me that I should try Chrome instead.

        Oh so Mozilla stopped making Firefox because you saw an advert?

        And now they "unintentionally" break their very popular websites every so often for competing browsers.

        And yet every analysed case of that (including the one on the front page at the moment) has said precisely the opposite, that Google maintains quite a good backwards compatibility program to ensure that competitors who aren't able to do feature x are still served the product in a usable way.

        There's a reason they haven't been hauled in front of the EU for this practice yet, because it's not actually real.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        The EU is introducing a browser choice screen for Android because of this. Well, not the web adverts for Chrome, but the fact that it is default on Android.

  • Seems like just yesterday that everyone was telling me to continue using IE because Netscape Navigator and later, Chrome, would never be adopted.

    I don't really use Chrome anymore as much, having moved on to Duck Duck Go for most things, but always loved how easy and smooth Chrome was, even on Linux as Chromium.

    Now, even IE is using Chromium as will be Opera.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by laffer1 ( 701823 )

      Opera has been for years. Opera 12 was the last real release of presto. There are at least 5 browsers with chromium cores now.

    • Seems like just yesterday that everyone was telling me to continue using IE because Netscape Navigator... would never be adopted.

      "Everyone" that you were listening to were complete idiots (or alternatively, you are). Netscape Navigator was the dominant web browser before Internet Explorer was even released. Anyone that said "continue using IE because Netscape Navigator would never be adopted" clearly had no idea what was happening in the real world.

  • This is not a new phenomenon in the slightest. For over a decade, Internet Explorer had WAY over 80% of the browser marketplace, and set the defacto standard for the entire internet. The entire web was beholden to Microsoft. We were beholden to Microsoft MUCH more than we are beholden to Google. This was a time before the ascension of the iPhone and after the death rattle of Netscape. The field is much more diverse than it has been in many years.
    • When Microsoft was in charge, they made irrational design decisions in HTML. Now that Google is in charge, they are making irrational design decisions (ie, design decisions based on criteria like "what is best for advertisers", not what is best for users). There was a time in-between when good decisions were made.

      • When Mosaic started out, HTML was simple, it was easy for Microsoft to clone, and WebKit to be written.

        Today, HTML 5 is monstrously complex. I doubt if any one person really knows all of it. It would be a HUGE effort to build a competitor to Chrome.

        And it is no just the standard, modern web sites involve vast oceans of JavaScript which needs to run using really sophisticated optimizers. Massively complex.

        And don't talk about Web Assembly etc.

        So the world has changed. And HTML 6 will be unrecognizable in

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Can you give us some examples of these decisions that favour advertisers? Because lately they have been screwing advertisers quite a lot with changes to Chrome, not least being the introduction of a built in ad blocker.

  • Fast? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RatBastard ( 949 ) on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @02:13PM (#58667952) Homepage

    Chrome is fast? During the weekend without Firefox extensions fiasco a few weeks ago I moved to Chrome so I could keep my sanity in a world overrun by intrusive advertisements. Holy crap, was Chrome slow! As soon as Mozilla fixed the issue I went back to Firefox.

    • Re:Fast? (Score:5, Informative)

      by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @02:24PM (#58668006) Journal
      Firefox has been doing a lot of good work for the past few years. Not just in speed improvements, but also in security.
      • Depends on what you care about. The UI/UX has been made to copy Chrome to an annoyingly large extent. Nearly all of the UI features that set Firefox apart have been unceremoniously dropped. They pull in hundreds of millions of dollars every year in revenue, but for some reason can't be bothered to fund webextension forks of popular legacy extensions, instead they just break compatibility and expecting us all to follow obediently, apparently for no reason other than it's Not Google[TM].

        I don't care about

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Matheus ( 586080 )

        FF definitely has stepped up their game recently!

        Specifically when FF came out with their 64bit version I immediately saw a complete loss of stability. Speed of rendering was fairly even between the 2 but Firefox was in a seeming fast race to eat up all of my system memory and eventually crash. It was a LONG time until FF got their heads out of their asses and started working on what matters (Hey I don't give a rats ass how many features you've added if my machine is swapping because of your memory usage a

    • Chrome is fast? During the weekend without Firefox extensions fiasco a few weeks ago I moved to Chrome so I could keep my sanity in a world overrun by intrusive advertisements. Holy crap, was Chrome slow! As soon as Mozilla fixed the issue I went back to Firefox.

      Yea, that has been my experience as well.
      I only use Chrome if I have to...

      Chrome is an ad loader masquerading as a web browser.

    • So what you said is that browsing without adblocking is slower than browsing with adblocking and you somehow blamed that on Chrome vs Firefox?

      This may be the first time I legitimately (although still facetiously) use the phrase: Your post gave me cancer.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Chrome is very fast if you have enough RAM. Particularly when it comes to network and rendering optimization.

      If you don't have enough RAM, Firefox is usually better.

      I have a laptop with 4GB of RAM. If I'm just running Chrome it's fast, if I'm running any other app as well Firefox is significantly quicker.

      Actually one other caveat. If you have an older Intel graphics chipset then Chrome can get slow, because the hardware acceleration on those things is shite. I'm talking 5+ years old.

  • Seriously, I'm getting quite sick of coding the same thing 5 different ways to accommodate all the different ways browser builders decided to fuck things up.

  • Forks (Score:5, Interesting)

    by darkain ( 749283 ) on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @02:22PM (#58667992) Homepage

    I know I'm missing a few... but...

    KHTML forked by Apple to make Webkit (and thus Safari)
    Webkit forked by Google to make Chromium, which Chrome is based on.
    Webkit forked by Google to make Blink, which is what Chromium is now based on, and then Chrome based on that.
    Opera forked Chromium to make new Opera Browser.
    Chromium forked by Microsoft to make new Edge Browser.

    So really, if any of these players (or others for that matter) don't like the Google gatekeeping, they can take the code and maintain it themselves. That's how Google got into this position, because they didn't like the way Apple was managing Webkit, so they made it their own. Microsoft is already modifying quite a bit to customize it to their style, just as Opera already has as well.

  • Stop Making Up History (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Google won by offering consumers a fast, customizable browser for free, while embracing open web standard

    Ha ha ha ha. Nope. Google won by spamming everyone with "Switch to Chrome" spam and scare tactics.

    Compared to previous versions of Firefox, Chrome didn't make the cut for high customization either. Now they both suck, but that happened after it gained the most market share through deceptive practices. Firefox letting its success get to its head also helped Chrome, but the largest thing was all the Google forced Chrome spam. Accidentally click on a Chrome pop-up and the next time you open your browser i

  • This is the same model that US uses for dominating the world. US provides a useful service - global cop- for free as long as you decide to trade on the US platform - USD. If you try to move away from the platform your own users will carry out Color Revolutions.
    This is a different form of domination than IE. IE was more like the British empire. You either in the empire or outside the empire and paid tariffs and rents accordingly.
    Niche browser makers are now in the Browser world equivalent position of Iran.

    • Re:Talk softly and carry a big stick (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Sir_Eptishous ( 873977 ) on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @03:07PM (#58668260)

      This is the same model that US uses for dominating the world. US provides a useful service - global cop- for free as long as you decide to trade on the US platform - USD. If you try to move away from the platform your own users will carry out Color Revolutions. This is a different form of domination than IE. IE was more like the British empire. You either in the empire or outside the empire and paid tariffs and rents accordingly. Niche browser makers are now in the Browser world equivalent position of Iran.

      Interesting analogy, but a little overboard.
      It's more like using FF is akin to being one of the "non-aligned" states during the cold war.
      But now the Cold War is over and Google won.

  • Surely it's just a matter of forking it.

  • Malware tends to work that way (Score:5, Interesting)

    by smooth wombat ( 796938 ) on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @03:52PM (#58668546) Journal

    Once it gets its hook in a few systems it continues to infect others. And the snowball keeps rolling.

    • Once it gets its hook in a few systems it continues to infect others. And the snowball keeps rolling.

      Was KHTML always malware? If not, at what point did it become malware? When it became Webkit? Chromium? Blink? Somewhere in between?

  • That lets you block all ads.
    When the ads can't be blocked change to a better browser.

  • Nonsense. Virtually every feature is in Chromium, which is licensed under the BSD license. Literally anyone can grab the code for any of Google's improvements and add it to their own browser. None of the features are obfuscated or proprietary; vast majority are submitted as WHAT-WG standards.

    This idea that Google is gatekeeping the web is nonsense. Google is just outcompeting everyone because they actually put the resources into developing their browser.

  • Prior to 67, Firefox was noticeably slower than Chrome. Now it seems about on par. I switched so I could add extensions like Ghostery on my phone (supported on desktop Chrome, but not mobile.). So far, very pleased with the switch.

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