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I have a different opinion. I think this monoculture is great. There are many browsers all based on Chromium: Chrome, Opera, etc. While they offer different vie

I have a different opinion. I think this monoculture is great. There are many browsers all based on Chromium: Chrome, Opera, etc. While they offer different views, their core rendering engine and api's are shared with chromium. It makes life much easier as a developer. While having many implementations is great, it is a pain in the ass. For example, I have an app that uses service worker and indexeddb. It has cases where it fails to work on Safari. The author compares to Chromium monoculture to IE. That is a very unfair comparison. I would compare it to Linux. Both have open code bases that you can fork at any time and contribute to if you want. It works well on all platforms/hardware respectively. Both have corporate goodwill to pay for it. Its wasteful to re-implement things multiple times over.

falcolas 9y ago
What is good for a developer is rarely good for the end user. CLIs are great for developers - they're fast and easy to use. They are also remarkably unfriendly for non-developers to try and use. Dev tools? Useless for a majority of end users. Web Standards? Useful only in getting them the content they want. JavaScript execution speed? Again, only in support of the content. We as developers forget about the end users too much.
ocdtrekkie 9y ago
The biggest problem is, they're all still based on Chromium, who's development priorities are determined by a single profit-driven corporation. (Bear in mind, Chrome was simply the natural evolution of Sundar Pichai's work on the Google Toolbar, a way to ensure everyone is using Google Search all the time. Google was increasingly concerned Microsoft would disable or block their toolbar, hence they created their own browser.) This monoculture not only means all browsers would be vulnerable to the same flaws, but that you are okay with Google controlling the entire Internet platform. (Which is already an increasing problem in many other aspects.)

falcolas 9y ago

What is good for a developer is rarely good for the end user. CLIs are great for developers - they're fast and easy to use. They are also remarkably unfriendly for non-developers to try and use. Dev tools? Useless for a majority of end users. Web Standards? Useful only in getting them the content they want. JavaScript execution speed? Again, only in support of the content. We as developers forget about the end users too much.

ocdtrekkie 9y ago

The biggest problem is, they're all still based on Chromium, who's development priorities are determined by a single profit-driven corporation. (Bear in mind, Chrome was simply the natural evolution of Sundar Pichai's work on the Google Toolbar, a way to ensure everyone is using Google Search all the time. Google was increasingly concerned Microsoft would disable or block their toolbar, hence they created their own browser.) This monoculture not only means all browsers would be vulnerable to the same flaws, but that you are okay with Google controlling the entire Internet platform. (Which is already an increasing problem in many other aspects.)