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Re: Browsers

#291

Post by shevegen »

cramforce wrote: post #217
JoshuaJB wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"For example, they may start integrating technologies for which they have exclusive, or at least 'special' access. Can you imagine if all of a sudden Google apps start performing better than anyone else's?" This is already happening. I very recently worked on the Edge team, and one of the reasons we decided to end EdgeHTML was because Google kept making changes to its sites that broke other browsers, and we couldn't…

Counter anecdote: As a Google engineer it always seemed like Edge implemented the sparsest possible version of the web platform to make major Google products work–and literally nothing else. That works to launch the browser, but then basically any product change runs a chance to no longer fall into that sparse subset and break in a browser. If Edge had implemented a more robust set of features, it would have massivel…

Please don't spread Google propaganda here.

Re: Browsers

#292

Post by vidarr »

JoshuaJB wrote: post #124
sonnyblarney wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The concern is not 'now' it's 'later'. Google is a business like any other - and when they have the power to lever a monopolized situation - they will. For example, they may start integrating technologies for which they have exclusive, or at least 'special' access. Can you imagine if all of a sudden Google apps start performing better than anyone else's? Or what if they integrate technology that de-facto collects usa…

"For example, they may start integrating technologies for which they have exclusive, or at least 'special' access. Can you imagine if all of a sudden Google apps start performing better than anyone else's?" This is already happening. I very recently worked on the Edge team, and one of the reasons we decided to end EdgeHTML was because Google kept making changes to its sites that broke other browsers, and we couldn't…

Self-defense I would call this move of Google: Some weeks ago I stumbled upon a win 10 laptop I should set up for family. As soon as I installed Firefox, windows started bugging me with popups like "We encountered you use an third party browser. This might pose a serious security thread - do you want to switch to Edge?" and stuff about this browser slowing down the system along with urging me to switch to Edge. You guys at Microsoft just still exploit your market share - so why shouldn't Google do the same to counter?

Re: Browsers

#293

Post by ineedasername »

joepie91_ wrote: post #290
ineedasername wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a little skeptical... when an intern claims a single empty div tanks performance from hardware acceleration that is presumably robust enough to handle much weirder stuff, this comment starts to look a bit more like a conspiracy theory account if the demise of Edge.

It sounds plausible to me. Overlaying something onto a hardware-accelerated thing suddenly adds a compositing step to your rendering pipeline, which - usually - requires moving the compositing to your GPU as well, AFAIK.

I just don't buy that any halfway decent hardware acceleration isn't robust enough to handle it. In fact they managed to fix whatever the issue was in a later release, which bolsters the argument that their process wasn't robust enough to begin with. With no other evidence here I'm invoking Hanlon's Razor.

Re: Browsers

#294

Post by elven_lord »

rst wrote: post #188
JoshuaJB wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"For example, they may start integrating technologies for which they have exclusive, or at least 'special' access. Can you imagine if all of a sudden Google apps start performing better than anyone else's?" This is already happening. I very recently worked on the Edge team, and one of the reasons we decided to end EdgeHTML was because Google kept making changes to its sites that broke other browsers, and we couldn't…

Another example: on Android, look up scores of an ongoing sports event on mobile Chrome, and mobile Firefox. Mobile chrome gets you a box saying what the score actually is; mobile firefox just shows you the links to sports-league and news sites that you see under the score in mobile Chrome. Click the "show desktop view" page on mobile firefox, reload, and suddenly the score is there. They're not discriminating that a…

I'm surprised by how much less attention this gets. I couldn't use firefox or any other browser because google searches in chrome brings up results like if you were within the google app. But use any other browser and you'll just get the legacy layout and links to pages.

Re: Browsers

#295

Post by mastrsushi »

Firefox and Gecko are going to die because the vast majority of people do not care about layout engine monopolies. Corporations rely on the vast majority of people. What will probably happen is as Mozilla goes bankrupt, they will spin off Firefox's development structure to a more community driven approach. Then, Firefox and all of its derivatives will continue to live in Linux/Unix Open Source world. Let's face it, political software issues are developer centric. From there, Firefox will end up like Galeon and Gnome Web, slowly losing relevance, lacking modern browser features, and lose development support over the years because a layout engine is very complex and MUST have a corporate backing. Microsoft proved this themselves with their decision.

All of these articles love to fear their listeners by warning them of another IE monopoly situation. None of them seem to mention why monopolistic browsers are an issue, or even how history will repeat in this crazy modern internet world. The only point anyone's made is that security vulnerabilities will span across all browsers. With that logic we might as well write all programs in different languages, and use 20 different operating systems. Obviously that isn't efficient and neither is wasting development money on yet another layout engine. But hey, it's fun to worry about petty issues, so I'll keep reading these blogs.

Re: Browsers

#296

Post by beatgammit »

ErneX wrote: post #139
sonnyblarney wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The concern is not 'now' it's 'later'. Google is a business like any other - and when they have the power to lever a monopolized situation - they will. For example, they may start integrating technologies for which they have exclusive, or at least 'special' access. Can you imagine if all of a sudden Google apps start performing better than anyone else's? Or what if they integrate technology that de-facto collects usa…

The new GMail UI is considerably more snappier and responsive on Chrome than the latest Firefox, so I think it's already happening.

On more than one occasion, changing the user agent in Firefox leads to a faster Google product. It's most definitely happening, but Google hides behind the excuse that it's using "cutting edge" technology and they have compatibility layers for browsers that don't support the new features.

This would be solved if they did feature detection instead of browser sniffing, but given that the user agent hack works, they're very likely doing browser sniffing.

Better yet, they should probably wait to adopt new standards until things are actually standardized, instead of doing things as soon as they hit "experimental" status.

Re: Browsers

#297

Post by bjornstar »

JoshuaJB wrote: post #124
sonnyblarney wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The concern is not 'now' it's 'later'. Google is a business like any other - and when they have the power to lever a monopolized situation - they will. For example, they may start integrating technologies for which they have exclusive, or at least 'special' access. Can you imagine if all of a sudden Google apps start performing better than anyone else's? Or what if they integrate technology that de-facto collects usa…

"For example, they may start integrating technologies for which they have exclusive, or at least 'special' access. Can you imagine if all of a sudden Google apps start performing better than anyone else's?" This is already happening. I very recently worked on the Edge team, and one of the reasons we decided to end EdgeHTML was because Google kept making changes to its sites that broke other browsers, and we couldn't…

This is the feature where you can scroll down during full-screen videos that they rolled out a few weeks ago. Sure, advertising that their new feature performed better on their own browser is kinda shitty, but I really don't care about supporting Microsoft's garbage web platform that I have to run in a VM. If they had Edge on Linux and MacOS I might feel sorry for them, but nah.

Nothing is going to make me feel bad for Microsoft losing market share. This is the company that silently disabled microphone access for Chrome because it wasn't installed via the Microsoft store. I spent a month trying to figure out why my microphone suddenly wasn't working in any of my web apps. As much as I dislike what Google is doing, Microsoft has been doing far worse for much longer.

Re: Browsers

#298

Post by vidarr »

JoshuaJB wrote: post #124
sonnyblarney wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The concern is not 'now' it's 'later'. Google is a business like any other - and when they have the power to lever a monopolized situation - they will. For example, they may start integrating technologies for which they have exclusive, or at least 'special' access. Can you imagine if all of a sudden Google apps start performing better than anyone else's? Or what if they integrate technology that de-facto collects usa…

"For example, they may start integrating technologies for which they have exclusive, or at least 'special' access. Can you imagine if all of a sudden Google apps start performing better than anyone else's?" This is already happening. I very recently worked on the Edge team, and one of the reasons we decided to end EdgeHTML was because Google kept making changes to its sites that broke other browsers, and we couldn't…

Self-defense I would call this move of Google: Some weeks ago I stumbled upon a win 10 laptop I should set up for family. As soon as I installed Firefox, windows started bugging me with popups like "We encountered you use an third party browser. This might pose a serious security thread - do you want to switch to Edge?" and stuff about this browser slowing down the system along with urging me to switch to Edge. Microsoft just still exploits its market share - so why shouldn't Google do the same to counter?

Re: Browsers

#299

Post by Ascarius »

JoshuaJB wrote: post #124
sonnyblarney wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The concern is not 'now' it's 'later'. Google is a business like any other - and when they have the power to lever a monopolized situation - they will. For example, they may start integrating technologies for which they have exclusive, or at least 'special' access. Can you imagine if all of a sudden Google apps start performing better than anyone else's? Or what if they integrate technology that de-facto collects usa…

"For example, they may start integrating technologies for which they have exclusive, or at least 'special' access. Can you imagine if all of a sudden Google apps start performing better than anyone else's?" This is already happening. I very recently worked on the Edge team, and one of the reasons we decided to end EdgeHTML was because Google kept making changes to its sites that broke other browsers, and we couldn't…

The developer which added that invisible div responded: https://medium.com/@jeremy.noring/did-google-cripple-edges-y...

Re: Browsers

#300

Post by thatawesomeguy »

Ascarius wrote: post #299
JoshuaJB wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"For example, they may start integrating technologies for which they have exclusive, or at least 'special' access. Can you imagine if all of a sudden Google apps start performing better than anyone else's?" This is already happening. I very recently worked on the Edge team, and one of the reasons we decided to end EdgeHTML was because Google kept making changes to its sites that broke other browsers, and we couldn't…

The developer which added that invisible div responded: https://medium.com/@jeremy.noring/did-google-cripple-edges-y...

That's not the dev that added it, the article is from someone who has done something similar, not someone who works at Google.

It doesn't confirm Google's reasoning for the div

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