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A list of recent hostile moves by Google's Chrome team

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Re: A list of recent hostile moves by Google's Chrome team

#71

Post by detuur »

yankput wrote: post #31

How is jpeg xl “hostile”, it’s just a new format. Does Chrome really need to support every new image format?

It was/is a very well thought-out format that had a lot of industry signalling they were willing or even enthusiastic about supporting it, which happens virtually never for new image formats. All the major browsers were working on support, many image processing pipelines were being updated.

Everyone agreed that it was not just a major improvement, but actually the best option out of all the contenders out there. Even the Chrome team. The only ones who didn't agree were the AVIF team at Google, who had developed a competing standard. Well, whoever was on that team had some pull, because not long after Chrome landed JXL support in stable and everything was about to pick up some serious pace, they suddenly landed a commit that reverted everything to do with JXL support in Chrome, and that was that.

An immense, cross-industry effort undone by internal Google politics. That's what's hostile about this situation. JXL is still limping along, but Google's unilateral reversal hurt everyone's confidence in the project but also the entire process. Apparently it doesn't matter what everyone in the world thinks is the most appropriate format. What matters is Lord Google's favour.

Re: A list of recent hostile moves by Google's Chrome team

#72

Post by Semaphor »

tommiegannert wrote: post #64
mrtksn wrote: post #57

Remember the "Safari is the new IE" narrative? Just because Safari doesn't support some API doesn't make it IE, IE wasn't an inferior browser at the beginning either. What made IE the IE everyone hates was its departure from standards(?) and enforcing its own vision of the web thanks to its enormous market share. On IE's case, MS probably stagnated it to prevent competition against its desktop Apps business and on Go…

IE was absolutely hated for not evolving. I'm curious what "its own vision" was, other than "do as little as possible, while Mozilla and Opera keeps pushing forward." Now, this is from the perspective of the web developer. I don't think IE was ever hated the same way from the end-user perspective. Chrome is still innovating, but now end-users hate it, because it's trying to be too much. The "new IE" hat still belongs…

Later, IE was also hated for being tied to the OS (which was related but different to the "not evolving"). Another thing Safari has. So yeah, I also fully agree. Safari is still the new IE.

Re: A list of recent hostile moves by Google's Chrome team

#73

Post by mrtksn »

tommiegannert wrote: post #64
mrtksn wrote: post #57

Remember the "Safari is the new IE" narrative? Just because Safari doesn't support some API doesn't make it IE, IE wasn't an inferior browser at the beginning either. What made IE the IE everyone hates was its departure from standards(?) and enforcing its own vision of the web thanks to its enormous market share. On IE's case, MS probably stagnated it to prevent competition against its desktop Apps business and on Go…

IE was absolutely hated for not evolving. I'm curious what "its own vision" was, other than "do as little as possible, while Mozilla and Opera keeps pushing forward." Now, this is from the perspective of the web developer. I don't think IE was ever hated the same way from the end-user perspective. Chrome is still innovating, but now end-users hate it, because it's trying to be too much. The "new IE" hat still belongs…

> I'm curious what "its own vision" was

The JS and CSS and HTML box model worked differently, the websites were displayed correctly only on IE or only on other browsers. People put text that says "best viewed in Internet Explorer 6" at the bottom of the page or straight out blocked users from displaying the page in other browsers and encouraged them to download IE - just the same thing we have with Chrome today when anything that's using some advanced API.

IE was hated after the fact of cornering the whole marketshare and making the web developers build all the websites to work on IE only.

Initially, IE was very innovative browser too and they were the inventor of technologies like Ajax, introduced in IE5. Back in the pre-hate days, the web developers loved IE and it's innovative ways that let them to cool stuff.

Chrome being still innovative doesn't mean much. Once they make sure that websites are built to work in Chrome only, they can relax and stop spending money on it and increase profits and stock prices by rent seeking.

Re: A list of recent hostile moves by Google's Chrome team

#74

Post by lol768 »

mrtksn wrote: post #57

Remember the "Safari is the new IE" narrative? Just because Safari doesn't support some API doesn't make it IE, IE wasn't an inferior browser at the beginning either. What made IE the IE everyone hates was its departure from standards(?) and enforcing its own vision of the web thanks to its enormous market share. On IE's case, MS probably stagnated it to prevent competition against its desktop Apps business and on Go…

Safari caused me by far the most issues, back when I was doing frontend in ~2017/2018, in terms of how it complied with web standards (I wasn't as fussed at the standards it didn't support - at least I knew!) and rendered the web application I was working on across desktop, iPad and iPhone.

I spent more time chasing Safari bugs and rendering idiosyncrasies than I did dealing with IE11, frankly.

Re: A list of recent hostile moves by Google's Chrome team

#75

Post by lordnacho »

tgv wrote: post #55
dbish wrote: post #3

The problem is there are almost 0 alternatives beyond Firefox so if you don’t like their UX you’re stuck. All the “new” browsers are just chromium skins (edge, arc, etc.) Are there any real competitors building a new browser?

What would you think the problem with Firefox' UX that keeps so many people from switching is? I think it's not UX, but pure marketing.

For a while FF on Mac was using a huge amount of CPU. For me it's fixed but YMMV.

Re: A list of recent hostile moves by Google's Chrome team

#76

Post by mrtksn »

Semaphor wrote: post #72
tommiegannert wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IE was absolutely hated for not evolving. I'm curious what "its own vision" was, other than "do as little as possible, while Mozilla and Opera keeps pushing forward." Now, this is from the perspective of the web developer. I don't think IE was ever hated the same way from the end-user perspective. Chrome is still innovating, but now end-users hate it, because it's trying to be too much. The "new IE" hat still belongs…

Later, IE was also hated for being tied to the OS (which was related but different to the "not evolving"). Another thing Safari has. So yeah, I also fully agree. Safari is still the new IE.

The reason IE was hated for being tied in the OS was because the OS was crashing due to the IE bugs. That's not the case with macOS or iOS at all, just because the OS provides a JS engine out of the box doesn't make it Windows Me grade.

Re: A list of recent hostile moves by Google's Chrome team

#77

Post by ehnto »

lodovic wrote: post #27
amelius wrote: post #16

Webmasters should really fight back and show annoying popups when the user agent equals Chrome. These popups could nudge the user towards e g. Firefox. Perhaps EFF.org could provide a reference implementation of such popups.

Serious question: does the concept of a webmaster still exist in 2023? Sites are developed and built in dtap, deployed by gated processes, and in many instances nobody but the deployment agents have access to the actual production servers.

Web development is still wildly varied in execution. I think we can end up with blinders based on our work, but websites still get deployed in ways that would make a webmaster role relevant. Not sure you would call them a webmaster these days, but the role is there.

Re: A list of recent hostile moves by Google's Chrome team

#78

Post by misnome »

hutzlibu wrote: post #67
viscousviolin wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you not trust firefox? I don't remember hearing about them acting in bad faith, but I'd love to hear if they did. What features do you need that only Chromium can give you?

Ads and tracking(called studies) enabled by default from the browser - and marketing itself as privacy orientated. "What features do you need that only Chromium can give you?" WebGPU and sone features with webworkers.

This. The first thing I have to do on firefox is turn off a load of advertising.

That, crypto, and the Mr.Robot extension fiasco burned a _lot_ of goodwill.

Re: A list of recent hostile moves by Google's Chrome team

#79

Post by viscousviolin »

hutzlibu wrote: post #67
viscousviolin wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you not trust firefox? I don't remember hearing about them acting in bad faith, but I'd love to hear if they did. What features do you need that only Chromium can give you?

Ads and tracking(called studies) enabled by default from the browser - and marketing itself as privacy orientated. "What features do you need that only Chromium can give you?" WebGPU and sone features with webworkers.

Oh interesting! Seems like a pretty specific requirement to have. Do you mind if I ask what you use those for?

As for the tracking - I'm pretty sure Firefox blocks a lot of those by default, last time I checked it was plastered all across their homepage. It's not 100% effective, but if them making an effort to do the right thing pushes you away, you might be asking too much unfortunately. Building an entire browser takes a lot of energy and time, and Firefox seems like the kind of browser that's worth it in the long term.

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