If only there could be no traces of Google inside Chromium... I'll stick with Firefox.
Chromium and the Browser Monoculture Problem
41–50 of 128 posts
Re: Chromium and the Browser Monoculture Problem
#42> 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.…
Edge basically takes the entire chromium product including the //chrome layer, but we have removed or disabled most/all of the Google service integrations
Which is needed anyway, because you are not allowed (even as Microsoft) to use Google APIs keys.
If you don't remove these services, Chromium doesn't build or will be rejected by Google Play.
So it's nothing special.
Re: Chromium and the Browser Monoculture Problem
#43This is why Microsoft should have used Firefox/Servo as a base for new Edge. Using Rust to write your web engine will remove a lot of problems.
Re: Chromium and the Browser Monoculture Problem
#44Some 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…
> A single browser codebase hurts the maintainability of the Web platform. To the extent Chromium has a monopoly, Chromium bugs are the standard and sites will depend on them. It's not the single browser codebase that hurts the web, any browser with noticeable (maybe 3-5%) market share causes these problems. The main issue is that today, the web as a platform is garbage. It's full of cruft, mostly useless features th…
> any browser with noticeable (maybe 3-5%) market share causes these problems.
No. When Web devs test in multiple browsers and find that something doesn't work in one of them, they will usually pick an alternative solution that does work in all of them, avoiding the bug in the buggy browser, thus avoiding a situation where their site depends on that bug continuing to exist. It doesn't always work out as well as that, but it often does.
You can wish for something better than the Web platform, but it's a tall order. You want a platform that's not controlled by a single vendor, that has multiple open-source non-patent-encumbered implementations with significant market share, that is available across just about every device, that has a vibrant content/application ecosystem and developer community, that supports everything from simple static content to extremely complex applications like office suites and 3D games. Good luck with that.
Re: Chromium and the Browser Monoculture Problem
#45Some 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…
> Google controls Chromium because they do the heavy lifting Google already controls the web standardization process with its manpower. So standardizing on chromium would not change that issue, it would just move it to another level. I am not saying that this is great. I just think the argument is invalid.
Google has a lot of power in the Web platform but it's definitely not complete. If it was just a matter of manpower then they would have forced (P)NaCl/Pepper and Dart down everyone's throats and we would have been stuck with Web Components v0.
Sentiments such as "Google controls everything, there is nothing we can do" are inaccurate and also counterproductive.
Re: Chromium and the Browser Monoculture Problem
#46The thing is if we follow this idea, why don't we all use the same browser, that is open source and "not controlled by any single company"?
Re: Chromium and the Browser Monoculture Problem
#47Earlier 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.
Indeed you won't solve the problem by finding people with no ulterior motives. Instead, the least-bad chance you have of solving it is to make the base platform small enough that the Too Big To Fork problem https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6807380#6810259 is kept under control, so that competing implementations (and the threat of competing implementations) will help to keep the implementers honest, or at least mo…
It would be nice if someone came up with a "network VM" that could run sandboxed code that was more like traditional native applications, but seamlessly networked to a server (like Erlang or Phoenix LiveView on multiple nodes but simplified for server-client). Then it would be possible to write more standard apps on a well designed, purpose-built system which would simplify a lot of Dev work. Then you could have a well designed markup language for easier building of documents too. But start fresh in a VM system with all the hindsight of what purposes the web is used for, and the layout systems that are most flexible/popular.
You could have some low level thing like web assembly (or even just we assembly itself and get all of the current optimization and standardization work for free) that other languages compile too. And a low level GUI library like Vulkan that you can build libraries on top of.
Re: Chromium and the Browser Monoculture Problem
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indeed you won't solve the problem by finding people with no ulterior motives. Instead, the least-bad chance you have of solving it is to make the base platform small enough that the Too Big To Fork problem https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6807380#6810259 is kept under control, so that competing implementations (and the threat of competing implementations) will help to keep the implementers honest, or at least mo…
It would be nice if someone came up with a "network VM" that could run sandboxed code that was more like traditional native applications, but seamlessly networked to a server (like Erlang or Phoenix LiveView on multiple nodes but simplified for server-client). Then it would be possible to write more standard apps on a well designed, purpose-built system which would simplify a lot of Dev work. Then you could have a we…
Basically: see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2119057 (including the grandchild comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2131870 ). Not that most of this was new in 2011 either: similar "modular-browswer" ideas were kicking around in the late '90s iirc.
Re: Chromium and the Browser Monoculture Problem
#49Monopolies are just a different term for stalinism. The question is for how long such a big moloch can control the internet in all domains. Ok they just buy startups in competing subdomains, but i doubt that really anything can be contolled by a single entity. Google is a company and thus a hierarchical system. The distributed innovation on the internet is still possible, see e.g. bitcoin mostl likely started by one person?
Re: Chromium and the Browser Monoculture Problem
#50Most of the post resonates well with me, but at that point > 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. B…
This is also the facepalm moment for me. Yeah, let's just ask Google to make it an independent nonprofit foundation, because they are 100% certain to say yes. If this is the point of the whole article, I'd have to concede that I fully disagree with the article's idea.