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My understanding is that they'll be using the Chromium engine underneath, but still their own Edge "browser" and UI on top. IMHO, I personally think it's a goo

My understanding is that they'll be using the Chromium engine underneath, but still their own Edge "browser" and UI on top. IMHO, I personally think it's a good thing to consolidate on one engine to render HTML cross-platform for these two reasons: 1. Web developers no longer need to worry about supporting CSS and other edge-cases across various browser engines. 2. The Chromium engine itself is open source. There are other browsers (Vivaldi, Opera, etc) that run on top of it. 3. While I think it's great the engine underneath is the same, I think it's equally great that there is a variety of UIs and browsers built on top of the same engine - the innovation happens in the browser space, not the engine, anymore.

kibwen 8y ago
> The Chromium engine itself is open source Being open source is a red herring in this instance. Say that Chrome implements a web feature you don't like. You fork the browser and remove that feature. But websites expect Chrome, and they use that feature, so your fork doesn't work with those websites. Say that Chrome refuses to add a feature you want. You fork the browser and add the feature. But websites expect Chrome, so they don't use your feature so as to not break for their Chrome users, and your fork is no better off. The insidious part of a web monoculture is allowing Google to dictate the standards of the web platform. Being able to fork the codebase only gives one the power to change things that are strictly client-side.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- joesb 8y ago
  Your examples have nothing to do with whether you use Chrominum engine, though. Say that Chrome implements a web feature you don't like. MS use their own MSengine for their Edge browser that doesn't have that feature. But websites expect Chrome, and they use that feature, so MS Edge doesn't work with those websites. Say that Chrome refuses to add a feature you want. MS use their own MSengine for their Edge browser that has that feature. But websites expect Chrome, so they don't use MS Edge feature so as to not break for their Chrome users, and MS Edge browser is no better off.
  - kibwen 8y ago
    Not sure what this is attempting to refute. Your comment is about why monocultures are bad for competition, which I happen to agree with. My comment is about why Chromium being open-source doesn't alleviate any concerns about monoculture.
    - cortesoft 8y ago
      How is the situation better if there are two browsers with 50% market share? You still can’t add a new feature the other side doesn’t want, because 50% of users won’t be able to use it. Any feature that requires a site owner to do something to support it isn’t going to be added.
      - viraptor 8y ago
        > You still can’t add a new feature the other side doesn’t want That's not quite true. This happens all the time with things not standardised (yet). With time those either get wide adoption because people want them, or get dropped, or get standardised in a different widely agreed form.
      - kibwen 8y ago
        You've just illustrated the advantage of a polyculture: changes to the platform are not unilateral decisions, and therefore require discussion, communication, and documentation. Furthermore, if one actor tries to do something out of blatant self-interest that would be a detriment to the platform as a whole, that action can be blocked. With a Google monoculture, at the end of the day, the web will be whatever the CEO of Google allows it to be. Imagine how little control users have over the Android platform; envision a future where that's the web's model as well.
        Karunamon 8y ago
        The difference being now that we're in no danger of IE6-ification. If Google annoys enough people, people can take Webkit and do whatever they want. It happened to Microsoft, arguably to Mozilla, it can happen to Google. So long as the players are well behaved, having a single dominant browser is beneficial. How much time, energy, productivity, and money has been lost on cross-browser (in)compatibility wrangling?
- jayd16 8y ago
  Microsoft using Chrome only somewhat reduces Microsoft's power in this regard. In no way does that change your ability to project your will on the internet through Chrome forks. Small devs have little power now and that will stay unchanged if Edge goes Chrome. Web devs will have to build for the lowest common denominator so this change improves that slightly. An actual downsides is it increases the power of the Chromium team to make defacto changes. It might also reduces innovation but I can't really see Microsoft deciding to drop a feature because it would take them further from the chrome trunk.
nl 8y ago
Web developers no longer need to worry about supporting CSS and other edge-cases across various browser engines. So, as the OP said - back to the bad old days of IE6 dominance.
- taf2 8y ago
  Not even close. IE6 was a browser that was set in stone. It only ran on Windows. It's legacy that we live with today is the ActiveX controls that are basically parts of Windows. MS stopped innovating on the browser part of IE6 and focused on ActiveX e.g. native Windows components that you could use in the browser. You can't talk about IE6 and not mention how embedded it was with Windows. That is what made IE6 bad. You could not use your Mac or Linux environments to browser the internet. Lots of great ideas came out of IE6 XMLHTTPRequest. Access to the native desktop devices. Storage APIs, realtime communication anything you can do on the desktop you should be able to do through the Web. That is what we see happening today with Chromium and Mozilla. These two teams and now with MS being more involved as well. There is a huge amount of collaboration it's nothing at all like IE6 days.
  - nl 8y ago
    This reaction is pretty interesting. I was doing some webdev back then, and whilst everything you said was true it was the lack of cross browser CSS and Javascript testing which led to the real frustration. Back in 2002/03 IE6 had over 90% marketshare, and justifying testing in anything else was a constant battle.
    - taf2 8y ago
      As developer back then I had the same experience but with some reflection ie 6 was the better browser in 2002 - Firefox css got better but that was more like 2005 after many years of zero development on IE6. Reflecting back to that time period the most lasting damages were active x. There are still governments and corporations that can’t migrate from IE 11 because of this legacy.
      - 8y ago
SllX 8y ago
If open web standards are to matter at all, it is more important for there to be multiple viable implementations of the same standards than it is for the lives of web developers to become easier. Using the same engine across multiple browsers, open source or not, just doesn’t cut it.
- err4nt 8y ago
  People in web standards community kind of anticipate browsers (there are 4 main browsers now) eventually kind of consolidating down to 2 engines. This seems like a step in that direction. Who knows, Safari might be next :D
  - xg15 8y ago
    Interesting. What is the other engine?
    - connicpu 8y ago
      At least Firefox has no intentions of throwing in the towel and adopting webkit/blink yet
  - SllX 8y ago
    Anticipate or hope?
pcwalton 8y ago
OK, how do I get the Chromium team to integrate parallel layout written in Rust? Sometimes innovation is at odds with whatever Google's Chrome team feels like doing. That is why engine diversity is a good thing.
- jhasse 8y ago
  Suggest it to them?? If it's really faster, why wouldn't they merge it?
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - nordsieck 8y ago
    >> OK, how do I get the Chromium team to integrate parallel layout written in Rust? > Suggest it to them?? If it's really faster, why wouldn't they merge it? How many major software projects do you know of that will casually add a programming language?
    - jhasse 8y ago
      It wouldn't be casually if the parallel renderer brought in some real benefits.
      - pcwalton 8y ago
        Every time I've suggested something along those lines to the Chromium folks I've gotten "we're doing it in C++ ;)" I mean, it makes sense—Google has an enormous team on Chromium and they don't want to have another language to support. But that is precisely why it's important to not have the entire Web under Alphabet's reporting structure.
damnyou 8y ago
3 is just completely untrue. Firefox Quantum came out just a year ago.
- jhasse 8y ago
  Which just caught up with Chromium. And hardware acceleration on Linux is still disabled by default.
hkai 8y ago
Your argument is similar to saying that one party rule in politics is good for the country (because the party is nice, has competent people at the top, and helps people a lot).
- ako 8y ago
  Well, it's better than two parties that are putting all their energy into fighting each other, instead of governing a country in hot best way possible for its citizens...
  - hkai 8y ago
    It definitely is not.
  - welly 8y ago
    North Korea, Soviet Union, China, Syria, East Germany. Take your pick.
    - ako 8y ago
      That doesn't mean that every single party government is worse than 2 parties...
      - welly 8y ago
        Then perhaps you can suggest a single single-party government that is better than a two (or more) party government? I look forward to this...
Despegar 8y ago
The web works best when there's a European-style balance of power with actual balance [1]. Microsoft, Apple and Google are like France, UK and Germany. Each of them have their own interests. Microsoft had their own interests when they actually had a native developer ecosystem that was thriving, but now that it's gone they have deprioritized Windows as a business [2], made Windows 10 a data sucking "OS as a service" (that doesn't even have QA people anymore other than beta testers), and is now all in on PWAs for their app story. They are in fact more like Google than ever before. That just leaves Apple as the only opposing source of power. Mozilla is Poland and is destined to get f*cked as their market share drops and any negotiating leverage they have to get Google TAC money disappears (they're more like Saudi Arabia is to the US, a vassal state, rather than a Great Power). These are dire times for the web. Only Vestager can save us now. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_balance_of_power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_balance_of_power [2] https://stratechery.com/2018/the-end-of-windows/ https://stratechery.com/2018/the-end-of-windows/
- deleted 8y ago
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  - deleted 8y ago
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happymellon 8y ago
Which is a shame, because it is the interface that is one of the worst aspects of Edge. Not that I know that well, my work that forces my Windows usage still makes me use IE.
Sylos 8y ago
Mozilla is by the way also of the opinion that a monoculture would be horrible for the web. Arguments that I've heard from Mozilla employees: - Without competitors, innovation is dead. If there was only one web-engine, why bother improving it further? Given that it's open-source, it could theoretically be forked, but in that moment you again have two different web engines or more. Also, Mozilla would have to fork Blink from day one, because many things in it, they do not consider acceptable. - A monoculture means one security problem makes everyone vulnerable. - Multiple implementations challenge standards. You still would want a definition of a standard, or an API if you will, to point web developers to. But those are only going to point problems out after you've already implemented it, and likely also after other websites are already using the feature productively. They also can't point out stupid specifications that aren't going to allow you to update your browser engine in the future. So, you'd be much more likely to have to break compatibility, which doesn't play well with the web.

kibwen 8y ago

> The Chromium engine itself is open source Being open source is a red herring in this instance. Say that Chrome implements a web feature you don't like. You fork the browser and remove that feature. But websites expect Chrome, and they use that feature, so your fork doesn't work with those websites. Say that Chrome refuses to add a feature you want. You fork the browser and add the feature. But websites expect Chrome, so they don't use your feature so as to not break for their Chrome users, and your fork is no better off. The insidious part of a web monoculture is allowing Google to dictate the standards of the web platform. Being able to fork the codebase only gives one the power to change things that are strictly client-side.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
joesb 8y ago
Your examples have nothing to do with whether you use Chrominum engine, though. Say that Chrome implements a web feature you don't like. MS use their own MSengine for their Edge browser that doesn't have that feature. But websites expect Chrome, and they use that feature, so MS Edge doesn't work with those websites. Say that Chrome refuses to add a feature you want. MS use their own MSengine for their Edge browser that has that feature. But websites expect Chrome, so they don't use MS Edge feature so as to not break for their Chrome users, and MS Edge browser is no better off.
- kibwen 8y ago
  Not sure what this is attempting to refute. Your comment is about why monocultures are bad for competition, which I happen to agree with. My comment is about why Chromium being open-source doesn't alleviate any concerns about monoculture.
  - cortesoft 8y ago
    How is the situation better if there are two browsers with 50% market share? You still can’t add a new feature the other side doesn’t want, because 50% of users won’t be able to use it. Any feature that requires a site owner to do something to support it isn’t going to be added.
    - viraptor 8y ago
      > You still can’t add a new feature the other side doesn’t want That's not quite true. This happens all the time with things not standardised (yet). With time those either get wide adoption because people want them, or get dropped, or get standardised in a different widely agreed form.
    - kibwen 8y ago
      You've just illustrated the advantage of a polyculture: changes to the platform are not unilateral decisions, and therefore require discussion, communication, and documentation. Furthermore, if one actor tries to do something out of blatant self-interest that would be a detriment to the platform as a whole, that action can be blocked. With a Google monoculture, at the end of the day, the web will be whatever the CEO of Google allows it to be. Imagine how little control users have over the Android platform; envision a future where that's the web's model as well.
      - Karunamon 8y ago
        The difference being now that we're in no danger of IE6-ification. If Google annoys enough people, people can take Webkit and do whatever they want. It happened to Microsoft, arguably to Mozilla, it can happen to Google. So long as the players are well behaved, having a single dominant browser is beneficial. How much time, energy, productivity, and money has been lost on cross-browser (in)compatibility wrangling?
jayd16 8y ago
Microsoft using Chrome only somewhat reduces Microsoft's power in this regard. In no way does that change your ability to project your will on the internet through Chrome forks. Small devs have little power now and that will stay unchanged if Edge goes Chrome. Web devs will have to build for the lowest common denominator so this change improves that slightly. An actual downsides is it increases the power of the Chromium team to make defacto changes. It might also reduces innovation but I can't really see Microsoft deciding to drop a feature because it would take them further from the chrome trunk.

nl 8y ago

Web developers no longer need to worry about supporting CSS and other edge-cases across various browser engines. So, as the OP said - back to the bad old days of IE6 dominance.

taf2 8y ago
Not even close. IE6 was a browser that was set in stone. It only ran on Windows. It's legacy that we live with today is the ActiveX controls that are basically parts of Windows. MS stopped innovating on the browser part of IE6 and focused on ActiveX e.g. native Windows components that you could use in the browser. You can't talk about IE6 and not mention how embedded it was with Windows. That is what made IE6 bad. You could not use your Mac or Linux environments to browser the internet. Lots of great ideas came out of IE6 XMLHTTPRequest. Access to the native desktop devices. Storage APIs, realtime communication anything you can do on the desktop you should be able to do through the Web. That is what we see happening today with Chromium and Mozilla. These two teams and now with MS being more involved as well. There is a huge amount of collaboration it's nothing at all like IE6 days.
- nl 8y ago
  This reaction is pretty interesting. I was doing some webdev back then, and whilst everything you said was true it was the lack of cross browser CSS and Javascript testing which led to the real frustration. Back in 2002/03 IE6 had over 90% marketshare, and justifying testing in anything else was a constant battle.
  - taf2 8y ago
    As developer back then I had the same experience but with some reflection ie 6 was the better browser in 2002 - Firefox css got better but that was more like 2005 after many years of zero development on IE6. Reflecting back to that time period the most lasting damages were active x. There are still governments and corporations that can’t migrate from IE 11 because of this legacy.
    - 8y ago

SllX 8y ago

If open web standards are to matter at all, it is more important for there to be multiple viable implementations of the same standards than it is for the lives of web developers to become easier. Using the same engine across multiple browsers, open source or not, just doesn’t cut it.

err4nt 8y ago
People in web standards community kind of anticipate browsers (there are 4 main browsers now) eventually kind of consolidating down to 2 engines. This seems like a step in that direction. Who knows, Safari might be next :D
- xg15 8y ago
  Interesting. What is the other engine?
  - connicpu 8y ago
    At least Firefox has no intentions of throwing in the towel and adopting webkit/blink yet
- SllX 8y ago
  Anticipate or hope?

pcwalton 8y ago

OK, how do I get the Chromium team to integrate parallel layout written in Rust? Sometimes innovation is at odds with whatever Google's Chrome team feels like doing. That is why engine diversity is a good thing.

jhasse 8y ago
Suggest it to them?? If it's really faster, why wouldn't they merge it?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- nordsieck 8y ago
  >> OK, how do I get the Chromium team to integrate parallel layout written in Rust? > Suggest it to them?? If it's really faster, why wouldn't they merge it? How many major software projects do you know of that will casually add a programming language?
  - jhasse 8y ago
    It wouldn't be casually if the parallel renderer brought in some real benefits.
    - pcwalton 8y ago
      Every time I've suggested something along those lines to the Chromium folks I've gotten "we're doing it in C++ ;)" I mean, it makes sense—Google has an enormous team on Chromium and they don't want to have another language to support. But that is precisely why it's important to not have the entire Web under Alphabet's reporting structure.

damnyou 8y ago

3 is just completely untrue. Firefox Quantum came out just a year ago.

jhasse 8y ago
Which just caught up with Chromium. And hardware acceleration on Linux is still disabled by default.

hkai 8y ago

Your argument is similar to saying that one party rule in politics is good for the country (because the party is nice, has competent people at the top, and helps people a lot).

ako 8y ago
Well, it's better than two parties that are putting all their energy into fighting each other, instead of governing a country in hot best way possible for its citizens...
- hkai 8y ago
  It definitely is not.
- welly 8y ago
  North Korea, Soviet Union, China, Syria, East Germany. Take your pick.
  - ako 8y ago
    That doesn't mean that every single party government is worse than 2 parties...
    - welly 8y ago
      Then perhaps you can suggest a single single-party government that is better than a two (or more) party government? I look forward to this...

Despegar 8y ago

The web works best when there's a European-style balance of power with actual balance [1]. Microsoft, Apple and Google are like France, UK and Germany. Each of them have their own interests. Microsoft had their own interests when they actually had a native developer ecosystem that was thriving, but now that it's gone they have deprioritized Windows as a business [2], made Windows 10 a data sucking "OS as a service" (that doesn't even have QA people anymore other than beta testers), and is now all in on PWAs for their app story. They are in fact more like Google than ever before. That just leaves Apple as the only opposing source of power. Mozilla is Poland and is destined to get f*cked as their market share drops and any negotiating leverage they have to get Google TAC money disappears (they're more like Saudi Arabia is to the US, a vassal state, rather than a Great Power). These are dire times for the web. Only Vestager can save us now. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_balance_of_power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_balance_of_power [2] https://stratechery.com/2018/the-end-of-windows/ https://stratechery.com/2018/the-end-of-windows/

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 8y ago
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happymellon 8y ago

Which is a shame, because it is the interface that is one of the worst aspects of Edge. Not that I know that well, my work that forces my Windows usage still makes me use IE.

Sylos 8y ago

Mozilla is by the way also of the opinion that a monoculture would be horrible for the web. Arguments that I've heard from Mozilla employees: - Without competitors, innovation is dead. If there was only one web-engine, why bother improving it further? Given that it's open-source, it could theoretically be forked, but in that moment you again have two different web engines or more. Also, Mozilla would have to fork Blink from day one, because many things in it, they do not consider acceptable. - A monoculture means one security problem makes everyone vulnerable. - Multiple implementations challenge standards. You still would want a definition of a standard, or an API if you will, to point web developers to. But those are only going to point problems out after you've already implemented it, and likely also after other websites are already using the feature productively. They also can't point out stupid specifications that aren't going to allow you to update your browser engine in the future. So, you'd be much more likely to have to break compatibility, which doesn't play well with the web.