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I think it's problematic to frame the question as whether or not someone can "compete" with Google. I think the entire browser ecosystem could change for the b

I think it's problematic to frame the question as whether or not someone can "compete" with Google. I think the entire browser ecosystem could change for the better if we built a "Meta browser". So the developer of the web page chooses which engine they prefer for rendering their site. The user only installs a single meta-browser, and if they don't currently have the preferred engine (as noted by developer in HTTP Headers) the user is notified and has the option to download and install that engine. Here is a short blog post I wrote about this: https://medium.com/@datashovel/why-isn-t-there-a-meta-browser-204997473c61#.85citda0j https://medium.com/@datashovel/why-isn-t-there-a-meta-browse... With a meta-browser developers don't have to worry about building a site for all major browsers. They could write for a relatively unknown engine and as long as the user has that engine installed it will work seamlessly when the user navigates to that web page.

jdc 11y ago
What if the web page's developer specifies an engine not available on your platform (OS/hardware)?
- datashovel 11y ago
  It would definitely need to be more elaborate than how I described it in my original comment. But I imagine, for example, that could be solved with a list of "preferred engines", which of course would probably fallback to a default "user or system preferred" engine if none were available. It's true it would become a small problem of its own (to try to figure out how to build for just enough engines to make it possible to render correctly on all computers) but I think that makes it possible for the entire ecosystem to have many more browsers and for a lot more experimentation to take place. Because the browser developer no longer has to worry about "Well, if I can't get enough market share to matter to developers, then there's no real point for me to build a rendering engine, since it will probably never be used". Instead if there is even a small number of people interested in their work, there can be a small community of developers who build for that engine, and it will be used (or at least recommended) when a user visits their websites.

jdc 11y ago

What if the web page's developer specifies an engine not available on your platform (OS/hardware)?

datashovel 11y ago
It would definitely need to be more elaborate than how I described it in my original comment. But I imagine, for example, that could be solved with a list of "preferred engines", which of course would probably fallback to a default "user or system preferred" engine if none were available. It's true it would become a small problem of its own (to try to figure out how to build for just enough engines to make it possible to render correctly on all computers) but I think that makes it possible for the entire ecosystem to have many more browsers and for a lot more experimentation to take place. Because the browser developer no longer has to worry about "Well, if I can't get enough market share to matter to developers, then there's no real point for me to build a rendering engine, since it will probably never be used". Instead if there is even a small number of people interested in their work, there can be a small community of developers who build for that engine, and it will be used (or at least recommended) when a user visits their websites.