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The endless browser wars

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Re: The endless browser wars

#41

Post by wombatmobile »

The original browser "war" between Microsoft and Netscape was over the definition of HTML. Microsoft wanted to control it, and was prepared to damage Netscape's business to quash the competition illegally to impose an arbitrary monopoly.

HTML5 has long been an open standard, maintained by the W3C. Google's role as a W3C member was to end the original browser war by supporting W3C processes with implementations and evangelism that lead to Chrome becoming the most popular browser.

The article's news, about Chromium losing access to app features such as syncing, is a different battle. It is not about arbitrary syntax being controlled by a corporation vs a standards body. It is about the cost of making useful software that serves the public and is given away for free to enable the commons.

Everybody has the right and the technical opportunity to make a browser and ancillary services such as sync. However, a couple of people in a garage don't live long enough to make a browser. Only well funded and well organised groups have the resources to do so.

Even Mozilla relies upon funding from Google to implement Firefox, so really, Google is funding the whole browser ecosystem. That's an entirely different problem to the one Microsoft got busted for in 1996.

It's a problem alright, and one that needs air and sunlight.

To really give this problem the prominence it deserves and requires, we shouldn't be calling it "the endless browser war". We should be calling it something else. Until we do, the status quo is just going to get stronger and more entrenched, because it isn't anything illegal, proprietary, or closed.

The fact that most consumers like Google and don't see the problem makes it all the more urgent to give this problem a name.

Re: The endless browser wars

#42

Post by turminal »

mozey wrote: post #27

Maybe Linux distribution specific builds of Chromium isn't a good idea, instead there should just be Chromium distributions, e.g. https://brave.com ?

Distro packaging doesn't work like that. Distros enable or disable certain features of the software at compile time, they also attempt to make sure the software plays well with the rest of the distro and abides to its stated goals and guidelines. Distro packagers also make sure whatever the software developers make up isn't blindly accepted and followed. Chromium in particular is particularly hard to package in a meaningful way (there was a recent controversy concerning that in the Mint distro). But that doesn't mean it is not worth trying.

Re: The endless browser wars

#43

Post by MaxBarraclough »

Yaggo wrote: post #16
approxim8ion wrote: post #2

Holding strong to Firefox as long as I have to. What really strikes me is why more people aren't pushing for open-source browsers. One would think that it is important to have an element of trust for something that makes up the bulk of your computer's uptime, but perhaps open source is no longer a good indicator of trust for projects as large and complex as modern browsers, or people are willing to trust them anyway.…

Apple's webkit is open source as well. All major browsers are based on open source engines. The situation could be much worse.

That's true, but Safari uses a closed source JavaScript engine.

Seems to me it doesn't count for much unless the whole browser is Free and Open Source. A single non-Free component is enough for them to sneak in functionality that you don't want.

See also: the VSCodium editor/IDE. Official builds of Visual Studio Code do not correspond to the published Visual Studio Code source-code, as they ship with additional telemetry code. The VSCodium project releases binaries more faithfully based on the Open Source code.

Re: The endless browser wars

#44

Post by turminal »

izacus wrote: post #26
cccc4all wrote: post #20

Google has become too big as company and has to be broken up by anti-trust rules, along with many other FAANG companies that ballooned up in recent years. It's laughable that Microsoft was under anti-trust scrutiny when they were much smaller company. The Microsoft anti-trust situation created enough lanes for smaller companies at the time, like Google, Apple, etc. to gain traction. The situation is the same now, ant…

Except that you're talking about a completely different situation - Microsoft was attacked for defaulting their browser in their operating system, which had majority market share. This isn't really the case with Chrome though - on Windows, I keep having my browser reset back to Edge with fullscreen ads, on macOS the default browser is Safari (and it keeps spamming me with notification advertisements to use it), on An…

Google was attacked for bundling chrome in android as well.

Re: The endless browser wars

#45

Post by phendrenad2 »

stiray wrote: post #39
doublerabbit wrote: post #38

Until someone creates a new browser with a new render/scripting engine. Which everyone always jumps on saying "it's impossible", the war is over. Chrome has won. Chrome is currently giving life support to Mozilla and when they decide to axe that, well it's game over for Mozilla. The depressing part is the freedom, the new that the internet once provided is over. It's been turned in to a commercial breeding ground and…

The issue is that Firefox HAS created a new rendering engine, but people don't switch. It has nothing to do with technology, people wont even try to switch. Some for fanboyism, some because they would have to adapt, some don't even know what browser is. What I do consider staggering is how many technically capable people are not prepared to make a switch. Google is slowly closing down the lock-down trap they have nur…

> Google is slowly closing down the lockdown trap they have nurtured for so many years

I think that forks of Chromium which have their own sync are easily thwarting this effort. If nothing else, you can always use Edge.

Re: The endless browser wars

#46

Post by phendrenad2 »

wombatmobile wrote: post #41

The original browser "war" between Microsoft and Netscape was over the definition of HTML. Microsoft wanted to control it, and was prepared to damage Netscape's business to quash the competition illegally to impose an arbitrary monopoly. HTML5 has long been an open standard, maintained by the W3C. Google's role as a W3C member was to end the original browser war by supporting W3C processes with implementations and ev…

> Even Mozilla relies upon funding from Google to implement Firefox, so really, Google is funding the whole browser ecosystem

Don't forget that Microsoft forked Chromium also, and that Chromium has been forked by several open-source groups.

Re: The endless browser wars

#47

Post by phendrenad2 »

mkl95 wrote: post #29

Every Chromium user needs to understand that Chromium is a Google project, and Google like to sacrifice a random project once in a while (don't be evil huh?). I'm completely unaware of how Google handle these decisions internally, but from the point of view of an outsider they are trying to optimize their resources and output as much as possible. If some service is not extremely successful and profitable, and it's be…

How do you sacrifice an open-source project that people can just fork?

Re: The endless browser wars

#48

Post by kungito »

doublerabbit wrote: post #38

Until someone creates a new browser with a new render/scripting engine. Which everyone always jumps on saying "it's impossible", the war is over. Chrome has won. Chrome is currently giving life support to Mozilla and when they decide to axe that, well it's game over for Mozilla. The depressing part is the freedom, the new that the internet once provided is over. It's been turned in to a commercial breeding ground and…

There is too much money in milking average non technical people in any way possible. I guess whichever "new internet" pops up will be awesome and used by just a small number of power users. Great and flexible tools will never be used by the average person. I've had 2 close family members in a span of 2 weeks get lost in the whole "log into your chrome account" vs "log into your google account within your chrome account" thing. Any remotely complex feature beyond "2 clicks to all of the 4 things I use the internet for" is just confusing people. And it's OK because that seems to be the reality.

Ads for the general public are here to stay

Re: The endless browser wars

#49

Post by dgb23 »

mkl95 wrote: post #29

Every Chromium user needs to understand that Chromium is a Google project, and Google like to sacrifice a random project once in a while (don't be evil huh?). I'm completely unaware of how Google handle these decisions internally, but from the point of view of an outsider they are trying to optimize their resources and output as much as possible. If some service is not extremely successful and profitable, and it's be…

Chrome and Chromium are not some niche products. Same with ads, search and GCP. These things are here to stay for a very long time.

There are other problems with Chrome and Chromium.

Google is a brilliant company and I want to like them. Out of the biggest tech companies they seem to apply the least bullying tactics, worker exploitation and so on.

But the fact that they are an ad company that profiles my behavior leaves a bitter taste. They often gather data in a way that is completely opaque to most people, which I think is problematic.

Re: The endless browser wars

#50

Post by dzdt »

Not mentioned is the password situation. That is the bigger lock-in than bookmarks. I don't know what is the tech stack underneath or even what chromium does. But as a normal-ish chrome user I know behind the scenes google is managing my passwords and it would be a nightmare to switch. Too many sites I wouldn't know how to access without their password management. That is true lock-in.
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