21–30 of 128 posts
This is probably silly, but I've been wondering if IE 11 tracks me the least while providing clickable internet text. It just needs uBlock Origin and a Linux port... maybe?
I hadn't given it much of a thought since edge/ie are such a non starter usually. Would be interesting to look into!
This might be just me being pedantic, but I thought it might be worth mentioning...
Chromium is basically the same thing as Chrome, except that it's missing a few proprietary blobs that Google is not legally allowed to put into Chromium: some DRM stuff, a licensed H.264 codec, a Flash plugin, etc. But if you're worried about privacy, Chromium still has all the Googley stuff. You can still log into Chromium with your Google account, and it'll sync your bookmarks and history and passwords just like Chrome. Chrome extensions are 100% compatible with Chromium, and you can install them into Chromium via the Chrome Web Store.
Some people might be familiar with "Blink", which is the browser engine (and is a fork of WebKit). There's also V8, which is the JavaScript VM. These two components aren't enough to form a usable browser though. So the Chromium Project develops what is called the "Content module" (see https://www.chromium.org/developers/content-module) which combines Blink and V8, and some other pieces, to form a basic web browser. This is what other browsers (like Opera, and I presume Edge as well) are built on top of, and does not contain all the Google integrations that Chrome/Chromium have.
While Content is missing a lot of the Chrome features that make privacy advocates nervous, it's still a problem because most Chromium/Content developers are Googlers, and will probably not implement things like WebKit's ITP or canvas fingerprinting prevention.
This is a good take. Standards were a weapon to fight Microsoft's closed source IE— emphasis on closed source. Why? Competing browsers needed to be IE-compatible to matter, and without standards spec-ing out what IE's doing, it's hard for other vendors to know if they were 100% compliant. Now that the major browser everyone's coding against is open source, and competitors can freely borrow their engine, I'd say we do…
I used to feel the same way but I think there should be competing implementation of standards to make faster progress. GCC vs Clang is what comes to mind. The competition from clang improved the overall quality and performance of c / c++ compilers in general
Some major problems with the "let's all use Chromium" approach: Google controls Chromium because they do the heavy lifting. All the companies that use Chromium are using it because they want Google to do the heavy lifting, so that isn't going to change, even if Google decides to put an open governance face on it, and there's no sign they're going to do even that. Should Google really be ceded complete power over the…
• Office Suites
• Search engines
• link sharing sites
• internet runtimes
that all do roughly the same thing?
Maybe we do. Maybe Google should be broken up into a bunch of smaller Google's and be forced to interoperate with smaller search companies like DuckDuckGo, Qwant and TinEye. Like MVNOs but for search engine infrastructure.
> Ideally, this codebase would not be controlled by any single company. I'd love to see a common browser engine controlled by an independent nonprofit foundation
I had a bit of a facepalm moment. This is exactly how Google started out: Chrome(ium) was built based on webkit, so basically there was a mini consortium where Google and Apple would work together. But that wasn't moving fast enough for Google's taste so they forked off blink so they could immediately do whatever they pleased.
We need concise well-engineered and precisely-defined web standards a small team can implement in reasonable time. Many people would build competing browsers if there were yet we have what we have and no choice but to stick with the Google engine.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> controlled by people with no ulterior motives. Everyone used to think that was Google. Anyway, if by some miracle you do find anyone that matches that description but knows where the lever is to kick everything over to a new paradigm, don't tell anyone about them, because as soon as you do they'll have more ulterior motives then you can count.
> Everyone used to think that was Google. When was that? Around the time they decided to liberate the web from the evil clutches of Microsoft/IE and ... Mozilla/FF (20%+ and growing at that time)?
> we're talking Chromium, the underlying browser engine. As it stands, Chromium is the basis for a variety of browsers, not just Google's flagship. From what I can tell (as a non-expert on Chromium's source, so please correct me), the Googley stuff that makes privacy advocates nervous is independent from the core Chromium browser engine This might be just me being pedantic, but I thought it might be worth mentioning.…
The problem with browsers is they are so complex people can't build alternative implementations and keep them perfectly compatible. We need concise well-engineered and precisely-defined web standards a small team can implement in reasonable time. Many people would build competing browsers if there were yet we have what we have and no choice but to stick with the Google engine.
Some major problems with the "let's all use Chromium" approach: Google controls Chromium because they do the heavy lifting. All the companies that use Chromium are using it because they want Google to do the heavy lifting, so that isn't going to change, even if Google decides to put an open governance face on it, and there's no sign they're going to do even that. Should Google really be ceded complete power over the…
As bad as this all is, it seems like an unavoidable consequence to the nature of our economy. Do we really need separate competing: • Office Suites • Search engines • link sharing sites • internet runtimes that all do roughly the same thing? Maybe we do. Maybe Google should be broken up into a bunch of smaller Google's and be forced to interoperate with smaller search companies like DuckDuckGo, Qwant and TinEye. Like…