What will a Chromium-only Web look like? • Hacker News Board

Re: What will a Chromium-only Web look like?

#281

Post by dredmorbius » Wed, Jun 22, 2022, 3:48 PM UTC

megaman821 wrote: post #232

dredmorbius wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open source without the option for an alternate development organisation to drive or steer development direction means vey little. Costs matter, and Web development costs are high. Google benefits from coordination, funding, and one migh presume, cost advantages, which would be exceedingly difficult for any comparable US or EU effort to match. Development in lower-cost-of-living regions, perhaps most viably China, mi…

Why don't these criticisms apply to Linux? The relationship between Linux Core and the Flavors of Linux seems to work well. Edge, Brave, Opera and more are all using the Chromium engine. If Google went off the deep-end, they would easily have enough resources to maintain a fork.

They do.

Linux itself is at least not a proprietary and commercial entity, though quite arguably its development has largely been captured by a set of proprietary and commercial entities. There's enough multilaterality in that group that fixed loci of control don't seem overwhelmingly apparent, but I'd definitely watch for those.

I've been concerned over numerous elements of Linux development (including viewpoints expressed by senior developers) for a decade or so. I think you'll find some level of concern expressed by others, including some very senior former Linux devs. (I'm not positive A.C. has said as much, though that's a vibe I get.)

Re: What will a Chromium-only Web look like?

#282

Post by fooey » Wed, Jun 22, 2022, 3:54 PM UTC

jakelazaroff wrote: post #78

Joeri wrote: post #36

The chromium-only web is not google’s fault. It is a symptom of a body of web standards that has grown wild to the point of being all but unimplementable. Building a browser for the modern standards-based web is effectively impossible, because it costs too much, takes too long, and requires a standing army to keep up with. We are at an impasse. The standards cannot be deprecated because they are used all over the web…

Who do you think has been pushing features into web standards at a breakneck pace? From where I sit, it’s mostly Google.

Unfortunately, their priority lately has been pushing "features" like FLoC and Manifest v3

Re: What will a Chromium-only Web look like?

#283

Post by giantrobot » Wed, Jun 22, 2022, 4:03 PM UTC

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #231

dredmorbius wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You write here "And I didn't claim that it was", but you'd claimed initially "That's a completely different situation". ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31834544 ) I'm not seeing your more recent statement as consistent with the first, given my own response: "Open source without the option for an alternate development organisation to drive or steer development direction means vey little." Again: Microsoft's loc…

>You write here "And I didn't claim that it was", but you'd claimed initially "That's a completely different situation". Yes, and I stand by that. Chromium being open source changes the situation completely. It makes no sense to compare the IE era to any Chromium monopoly without even mentioning that Chromium is open source. >I'm not seeing your more recent statement as consistent with the first, given my own respons…

> Yes, and I stand by that. Chromium being open source changes the situation completely.

This is just a ridiculous assertion. Blink being Open Source does not change what Google does with the engine. If the web was Blink with a handful of irrelevant Blink forks then the web is Blink. That means whatever stupid specs Google puts forward like WebBluetooth or WebFacialTrackingAttentionMonitor become de facto web technologies.

No one outside of Google will affect the direction of Blink. Even if Microsoft tried, Google still has an overwhelming number of deployments and overwhelming influence with search and advertising.

Part of the problem of IE dominating the web was Microsoft using that domination to push their ecosystem and nudge out competitors. If things like ActiveX and VBScript had been more popular there would have been no room for Firefox to make inroads against IE.

Google's Web* specs they push are their equivalent of Microsoft's proprietary extensions of the web. No browser written from scratch can hope to catch up to Blink without billions of dollars of investment. A Blink fork disabling the most privacy invading Web* specs can't meaningfully compete with Google's install base and promotion.

What you're missing is the fact a project is Open Source doesn't mean it's governance is in any way open. The governance of Blink is not meaningfully open. Nothing a non-Google contributor says means anything to Google. They already add in half-baked and poorly thought out Web* specs to Blink with little concern for standards processes and there's at least some competition from Firefox and Safari. If Google doesn't care now it's ridiculous to assume they would care if Blink completely dominated in the browser space.

Re: What will a Chromium-only Web look like?

#284

Post by CHY872 » Wed, Jun 22, 2022, 4:09 PM UTC

pmoriarty wrote: post #163

threeseed wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why don't they do this? Because the idea that all you need to do to ensure software is secure is hire an expensive consultant is ridiculous. Especially with a web browser which are highly complex pieces of software.

"the idea that all you need to do to ensure software is secure is hire an expensive consultant is ridiculous" Taking Apple's word for their browser being secure and other browsers not is just as if not even more ridiculous. What fair, independent way of determining browser security would you suggest be used instead of an audit?

This isn't a competition for 'most secure' necessarily. Rather, simply reducing the surface area for attack is positive from a security perspective. If there's some vulnerability in iOS that come from being able to make pages executable, if you only have Safari JIT-ing you have to find a bug in Safari, or the app store review process (and get the user to download your app). If iOS runs Chrome as well, you can find a bug in _either_ Safari _or_ Chrome.

While that's just Safari and Chrome, that's probably ok. But what happens when it's Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Brave, etc, etc?

For the security test, there are various ways that an org builds software with integrity, and it's the sort of thing that requires a huge amount of effort to get right. Standards like FedRAMP, SOC2, ISO9001, etc etc are the sorts of standardized things that exist (containing things like 'all code must be reviewed'). I think for a browser, if you were Apple and were looking to accept other browser partners, you'd likely do something like this; regular audits of quality, requirements that must be met to maintain access, pentests, basically a continuous process that's to be met by the supplier (similar to how hardware suppliers must meet many requirements).

Re: What will a Chromium-only Web look like?

#285

Post by AshleysBrain » Wed, Jun 22, 2022, 4:13 PM UTC

solardev wrote: post #243

izacus wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anything, I'd expect Safari share to grow since competition might kick Apple to improve their browser to be a true equivalent or better competitior to Chrome.

The opposite seems true right now, with Apple deciding to improve its proprietary ecosystems (app store, swift, etc.) and letting WebKit stagnate. There's a lot that Gecko and Blink can handle but Safari struggles with, seemingly by design. Apple doesn't want a strong web-based ecosystem because that means their competitors can use it too, vs the iOS/macOS only stuff. If they wanted to, they could switch Safari to Bl…

Apple do appear to be trying a bit harder with Safari - since the regulatory heat has turned up, they've started releasing Safari more regularly since v15, and adding more new web platform features. Safari still does have its problems but I don't think it's fair to say Apple are letting WebKit stagnate.

Re: What will a Chromium-only Web look like?

#286

Post by corrral » Wed, Jun 22, 2022, 4:16 PM UTC

withinboredom wrote: post #277

corrral wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please. I've been using the Web since '95, and working on the Web nearly as long. Safari's where I do almost all my browsing, work and personal. It's a fine browser. If I could use it on Windows and Linux, I wouldn't hesitate to choose it over Firefox and Chrome and their derivatives.

That doesn't change their incentives. They might make a nice browser, for you. On every other OS, Apple's software is so slow as to be borderline useless. Watching iTunes struggle to download album art is almost as entertaining as listening to the music. I do use a MBP daily, and the software there is amazing. But seeing that their software barely works outside of their platform, it's a miracle they have any customer…

> But seeing that their software barely works outside of their platform, it's a miracle they have any customers at all.

I don't think very many of their customers run any of their software anywhere other than on Macs and iDevices, so I expect that doesn't have much effect. Aside from the apple TV app on Roku and various TV operating systems and such. And still, none of this makes Safari not an "actual browser".

Re: What will a Chromium-only Web look like?

#287

Post by native_samples » Wed, Jun 22, 2022, 4:24 PM UTC

kmeisthax wrote: post #274

native_samples wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because there's nothing magical about HTML that makes it more battery efficient than Flash was. Quite the opposite really - Flash is a compact binary format designed specifically for high graphics performance in an era when HTML4 thought floating menus was cutting edge. The Jobs Flash memo was crystal clear about why Flash was being booted off his platform. It was to avoid "a third party layer of software coming…

SWF is a compact format, but that doesn't get you an efficient Flash Player. Apple put in a lot of work to make HTML battery efficient and usable on a phone, and Adobe didn't[0] do the same with Flash. In fact, Apple more or less begged Adobe like four times to make Flash work well on phones! Adobe wanted to push that work onto their customers instead of putting work into making every Flash movie ever authored work g…

Adobe expecting Flash authors to make versions optimized for mobile wasn't particularly crazy though, was it? That's exactly what browser makers expect mobile site developers to do. A non-mobile optimized site mobile is an awful experience.

W.R.T. compositing, browsers took a long time to move to even just GPU based compositing, and full GPU based rendering took longer still. Certainly, if Flash hadn't been killed off so prematurely it seems reasonable that either they'd have done the work to keep up, or users would have organically abandoned the platform.

Indeed, you make a good point that it was really a fight over forcing devs to use Objective C and nothing else. Flash was just roadkill in that fight.

Re: What will a Chromium-only Web look like?

#288

Post by charcircuit » Wed, Jun 22, 2022, 4:38 PM UTC

kevincox wrote: post #51

charcircuit wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's open source. Anyone can fork it.

But the websites aren't. If chrome is the only browser websites will target chrome. Do if you fork it and remove features that you find harmful you now have a useless lump of software.

Chrome already has a large market share and a browser changing their browser engine doesn't necessarily change Chrome's market share.

Re: What will a Chromium-only Web look like?

#289

Post by charcircuit » Wed, Jun 22, 2022, 4:39 PM UTC

bobajeff wrote: post #69

charcircuit wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's open source. Anyone can fork it.

Sadly, even if you don't fork Chromium and simply embed It via Electron or Chromium Embedded Framework you still won't be able to login in to some Google sites.

If Firefox turned into a Chromium fork Google would work with them to make it work.

Re: What will a Chromium-only Web look like?

#290

Post by gernb » Wed, Jun 22, 2022, 4:43 PM UTC

andrekandre wrote: post #186

Joeri wrote: post #36

The chromium-only web is not google’s fault. It is a symptom of a body of web standards that has grown wild to the point of being all but unimplementable. Building a browser for the modern standards-based web is effectively impossible, because it costs too much, takes too long, and requires a standing army to keep up with. We are at an impasse. The standards cannot be deprecated because they are used all over the web…

> Building a browser for the modern standards-based web is effectively impossible, because it costs too much, takes too long, and requires a standing army to keep up with. > We are at an impasse. The standards cannot be deprecated because they are used all over the web, and because they are used all over the web a new browser maker has little choice except forking chromium or firefox. could web assembly be a way out?…

IMO No,

The web works because of HTML. HTML is scanable, searchable. It's what allows search engine to exist at all. HTML enables extensions. HTML is also generally responsive. HTML allows uses to be in control (see extensions). HTML allows uses to copy and paste and even for sites that try to prevent it users can go into devtools to get the text. HTML supports all of unicode and so is inclusive across all languages.

A world in which the browser is just an executable environment and people make random UIs means pretty much all of the above disappears. No more searching for content, no more extensions to block ads or block distrdacting feature. No more extensions for language translation, braille, accesabiltiliy. No more all language support, only whatever each framework decides to support, every page with different limits at different versions of the frameworks.