6 ms·

It makes me wonder if at any point in the process Microsoft approached Firefox over integrating their rendering engine vs. Chromium and if so, what the factors

It makes me wonder if at any point in the process Microsoft approached Firefox over integrating their rendering engine vs. Chromium and if so, what the factors were in making their final decision. I also wonder if instead of "ceding" control to Google, Microsoft intends to start being a major contributor to Chromium, so much so that it almost becomes a joint effort vs. Google dominance.

derefr 8y ago
I'm wondering the same, and naively, it seems likely. But on the other hand, Google forked Blink away from Webkit specifically so it wouldn't have to share control of the codebase with Apple. Do you think Google is willing to share control over Blink with Microsoft?
- jhall1468 8y ago
  Google forked Blink because how Apple and Google saw the future of browsers drastically differed. I'm going to venture a guess that Microsoft selected Chromium because their vision is closer to Google's than either Firefox or Webkit.
  - pcwalton 8y ago
    > Google forked Blink because how Apple and Google saw the future of browsers drastically differed. That's not accurate. Google forked Blink for many reasons (WebKit2, dev tools policies, etc.) that collectively added up to a dysfunctional relationship.
    - jhall1468 8y ago
      How is that any different than what I suggested? They both wanted to go in very different directions.
_wmd 8y ago
As I understand things, the Mozilla codebase is a much older, vastly more complex and significantly less embedding-friendly environment than WebKit and derivatives. At least from here, it is easy to see why the choice may have in part been technically driven. (I'm a diehard Firefox user but not gonna lie, side-by-side, I'd prefer surfing through WebKit's repos by a long shot!)
- bluGill 8y ago
  Which is odd when you realize that WebKit is older than the firefox engine. (WebKit is a direct descendant of khtml, Firefox was busing re-writing their Gecko engine when WebKit forked)
  - belltaco 8y ago
    How much of a rewrite was it? IIRC they fixed a lot of bloat issues and called it a rewrite, but it wasn't a full rewrite.
    - classichasclass 8y ago
      It wasn't much of a rewrite (at least of the underpinnings) and embedding was always fragile even when it worked. A lot of this is XPCOM overhead which can't be completely eliminated. I think the lack of embedding has hurt Gecko showing up in more projects. Their solution was XULRunner which inverts the model by embedding your app in Gecko instead of the other way around, and they don't even support that anymore. I'm hoping GeckoView takes off on Android and makes its way back to desktop, but I'm afraid that will happen too late for people to care about it anymore.
      - efreak 8y ago
        I believe Firefox focus is already using geckoview instead of webview
  - DonHopkins 8y ago
    I don't buy that argument. Getting a facelift doesn't change the year you were born. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/03/dutch-court-rejects-emile-ratelband-request-20-years-younger https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/03/dutch-court-re...
cududa 8y ago
Everyone seems to be missing that this is Microsoft’s tacit recognition that Electron is the future of apps. Electron has abysmal performance and doesn’t work on ARM. This is them fixing fundamental chromium issues, to improve Electron performance and give themselves a further wedge beyond TypeScript
- untog 8y ago
  Look at VS Code: Electron doesn't have abysmal performance. It's just what people do with it that causes problems.
  - WorldMaker 8y ago
    VS Code is a possible sign for why Microsoft leading Electron on all fronts (from taking over GitHub, to collaborating much more directly on Chromium) might be good for computers. If the average Electron app starts to act more like VS Code, that's good for everybody.
    - setquk 8y ago
      Wonder if office will go in that direction too.
      - berbec 8y ago
        https://react-etc.net/entry/microsoft-office-rewrite-to-react-js-nears-completion https://react-etc.net/entry/microsoft-office-rewrite-to-reac...
        setquk 8y ago
        Damn that’s amazing. Thanks for the link. I can’t wait never to touch VSTO again.
  - saghm 8y ago
    Not sure if this is related to Electron or not, but in VS Code I have issues with using the high key repeat that I have set on all my machines. If I try to hold down a key that navigates the cursor (arrow keys, delete, hjkl in Vim mode, etc.), the editor isn't able to move the cursor fast enough to keep up with the key input events, so it keeps moving after I've lifted the key for a bit. This is especially annoying when I'm trying to delete some text and end up deleting more than I meant to. Obviously this is a super niche thing, and you could make the argument that there are more efficient ways to edit text than this. My main point is that I never have this issue with native apps, only Electron-based ones, so it seems likely to me that there is some performance issue with this sort of input to Electron.
stefs 8y ago
i, too, was wondering about that. pretty sure MS could have a bigger (and probably more positive) impact - and thus control - by adding manpower to the development of firefox/quantum than chromium/blink. i feel the biggest players now have all carved out their public niche - they're afraid to directly challenge the leader with big words and marketing millions. ms doesn't have to "beat" google or mozilla anymore. they're competing on a secondary, less visible level - at least for the retail consumer - like cloud computing and AI; the public fights are less heated than they were a couple of years ago. still, i feel like a company like microsoft wouldn't give up the chance to influence that easily. so why choose blink over quantum? mozilla might be "morally superior" to google, and thus less likely to be influenced by anticompetitive behaviour. but google wont tolerate anything from MS that could hurt their own efforts.
forapurpose 8y ago
Microsoft would have to consider the long term: What will Chromium and Gecko/Firefox look like in 5 and 10 years? Which is more likely to provide the technology that Microsoft expects to need? Microsoft can't just switch engines every couple of years. Some back-of-the-napkin analysis: * Vendor stability is one issue: While I doubt Mozilla will go out of business, Google clearly is a very safe bet. * Which vendor will invest more in keeping the technology up to date? Google, due to its vast resources, seems like a safe bet to invest more money and engineer hours. Mozilla, however, will certainly make the web browser the center of its attention and top priority; Google has a lot on its plate (and Microsoft knows how browser tech can drift for years without top management attention). * Which browser is most likely to maintain compatibility with websites and web apps, including corporate ones? Google is the obvious choice. * Which vendor's engineering priorities most align with Microsoft's? I'm not sure. Google has their own priorities - a front end for Google's services, which compete directly with many of Microsoft's - but Google seems more focused on the corporate market. On the other hand, Mozilla's focus on privacy and end user control could easily conflict with Microsoft's priorities. * And of course, which browser fits best in Microsoft's immediate browser plans and has the cleanest upgrade path from Edge/IE? I have no idea. I'm a dedicated user and supporter of Firefox and Mozilla, but I can see reasons Microsoft might choose Chromium.
basch 8y ago
I'll bet you it has everything to do with Microsoft realizing its a featureset to layer on top of other peoples operating systems now, ala Adobe and Facebook. If Microsoft wants to make a cross platform product that runs on Windows, Android and iOS, and they know some of that product has a web rendering engine or js, they want to target/accomodate as few embeddable libraries as possible. Electron may be one of those products, but plenty of other things need embeddable html/js. Maybe Outlook will switch to blink someday? It also means that in theory, Chrome could STOP shipping Blink with Chrome, and ship Chrome more like they do for iOS, where the rendering engine is part of the OS not browser app.
belltaco 8y ago
Why would they have considered Firefox over just improving Edge? The problem is that Chrome is extremely dominant, especially on mobile and tablet. And everyone tests against Chrome but not everyone tests on Firefox or Edge(especially web devs on MacOS). If things don't work or look broken, it causes more people to switch to Chrome over Edge/Firefox, turning this into a vicious cycle. The only way to break the cycle is to act like Chrome, so either chase Chrome's behavior with Edge or Firefox. Both of which entail a lot of effort and money with less than stellar results. Adopting Firefox will get them some development help but the fundamental problem of chasing a speeding train still remains.
- unethical_ban 8y ago
  In political terms: Web browsing dominance is a single member district. Firefox and Chrome are the two major parties, and IE/Opera/Safari are third parties. IE could have gone to Firefox to promote open standards and "back the opposition" so to speak. They chose, instead, the corporate behemoth behind the mobile OS they want a foothold on (presumably).
  - belltaco 8y ago
    And if big web properties like Youtube, GMaps and Gmail etc. don't work properly, are slow or missing features on Gecko then the dominance of Chrome will increase further anyway. The market of web browsers has become "who gets to set the default search engine makes the moolah". Bing marketshare and revenue is driven by how well Edge works and how it can stop the bleeding to Chrome. Changing the engine to Quantum does not solve the problem they were having in the first place very well.
  - alwillis 8y ago
    Firefox and Chrome are the two major parties, and IE/Opera/Safari are third parties. There’s no way this can be true. Apple owns various platforms that ship Safari/WebKit and it’s the only option on iOS and watchOS. They’ve shipped more than 2 billion (and growing) iOS devices. And hundreds of thousands native iOS apps use WebKit views. So there’s no way Safari is a fringe 3rd party browser and has a better privacy story regarding fingerprinting and tracking than any of the other major browsers, including Firefox. Unless you’re on the W3C mailing lists and GitHub repos, you wouldn’t know how active the WebKit team is on the development and implementation of web standards.
paxy 8y ago
I doubt it. This move has a lot to do with Electron, which runs on Chromium.
tflinton 8y ago
Firefox is also undergoing a large rewrite with the quantum stuff with more of an emphasis on rust. Chromium is c++ and already has decent tooling for embedding. Honestly, Firefox is trying to be where the puck is going. Chromium is great but stagnating.
- baroffoos 8y ago
  What do you mean by chromium is stagnating?

derefr 8y ago

I'm wondering the same, and naively, it seems likely. But on the other hand, Google forked Blink away from Webkit specifically so it wouldn't have to share control of the codebase with Apple. Do you think Google is willing to share control over Blink with Microsoft?

jhall1468 8y ago
Google forked Blink because how Apple and Google saw the future of browsers drastically differed. I'm going to venture a guess that Microsoft selected Chromium because their vision is closer to Google's than either Firefox or Webkit.
- pcwalton 8y ago
  > Google forked Blink because how Apple and Google saw the future of browsers drastically differed. That's not accurate. Google forked Blink for many reasons (WebKit2, dev tools policies, etc.) that collectively added up to a dysfunctional relationship.
  - jhall1468 8y ago
    How is that any different than what I suggested? They both wanted to go in very different directions.

_wmd 8y ago

As I understand things, the Mozilla codebase is a much older, vastly more complex and significantly less embedding-friendly environment than WebKit and derivatives. At least from here, it is easy to see why the choice may have in part been technically driven. (I'm a diehard Firefox user but not gonna lie, side-by-side, I'd prefer surfing through WebKit's repos by a long shot!)

bluGill 8y ago
Which is odd when you realize that WebKit is older than the firefox engine. (WebKit is a direct descendant of khtml, Firefox was busing re-writing their Gecko engine when WebKit forked)
- belltaco 8y ago
  How much of a rewrite was it? IIRC they fixed a lot of bloat issues and called it a rewrite, but it wasn't a full rewrite.
  - classichasclass 8y ago
    It wasn't much of a rewrite (at least of the underpinnings) and embedding was always fragile even when it worked. A lot of this is XPCOM overhead which can't be completely eliminated. I think the lack of embedding has hurt Gecko showing up in more projects. Their solution was XULRunner which inverts the model by embedding your app in Gecko instead of the other way around, and they don't even support that anymore. I'm hoping GeckoView takes off on Android and makes its way back to desktop, but I'm afraid that will happen too late for people to care about it anymore.
    - efreak 8y ago
      I believe Firefox focus is already using geckoview instead of webview
- DonHopkins 8y ago
  I don't buy that argument. Getting a facelift doesn't change the year you were born. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/03/dutch-court-rejects-emile-ratelband-request-20-years-younger https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/03/dutch-court-re...

cududa 8y ago

Everyone seems to be missing that this is Microsoft’s tacit recognition that Electron is the future of apps. Electron has abysmal performance and doesn’t work on ARM. This is them fixing fundamental chromium issues, to improve Electron performance and give themselves a further wedge beyond TypeScript

untog 8y ago
Look at VS Code: Electron doesn't have abysmal performance. It's just what people do with it that causes problems.
- WorldMaker 8y ago
  VS Code is a possible sign for why Microsoft leading Electron on all fronts (from taking over GitHub, to collaborating much more directly on Chromium) might be good for computers. If the average Electron app starts to act more like VS Code, that's good for everybody.
  - setquk 8y ago
    Wonder if office will go in that direction too.
    - berbec 8y ago
      https://react-etc.net/entry/microsoft-office-rewrite-to-react-js-nears-completion https://react-etc.net/entry/microsoft-office-rewrite-to-reac...
      - setquk 8y ago
        Damn that’s amazing. Thanks for the link. I can’t wait never to touch VSTO again.
- saghm 8y ago
  Not sure if this is related to Electron or not, but in VS Code I have issues with using the high key repeat that I have set on all my machines. If I try to hold down a key that navigates the cursor (arrow keys, delete, hjkl in Vim mode, etc.), the editor isn't able to move the cursor fast enough to keep up with the key input events, so it keeps moving after I've lifted the key for a bit. This is especially annoying when I'm trying to delete some text and end up deleting more than I meant to. Obviously this is a super niche thing, and you could make the argument that there are more efficient ways to edit text than this. My main point is that I never have this issue with native apps, only Electron-based ones, so it seems likely to me that there is some performance issue with this sort of input to Electron.

stefs 8y ago

i, too, was wondering about that. pretty sure MS could have a bigger (and probably more positive) impact - and thus control - by adding manpower to the development of firefox/quantum than chromium/blink. i feel the biggest players now have all carved out their public niche - they're afraid to directly challenge the leader with big words and marketing millions. ms doesn't have to "beat" google or mozilla anymore. they're competing on a secondary, less visible level - at least for the retail consumer - like cloud computing and AI; the public fights are less heated than they were a couple of years ago. still, i feel like a company like microsoft wouldn't give up the chance to influence that easily. so why choose blink over quantum? mozilla might be "morally superior" to google, and thus less likely to be influenced by anticompetitive behaviour. but google wont tolerate anything from MS that could hurt their own efforts.

forapurpose 8y ago

Microsoft would have to consider the long term: What will Chromium and Gecko/Firefox look like in 5 and 10 years? Which is more likely to provide the technology that Microsoft expects to need? Microsoft can't just switch engines every couple of years. Some back-of-the-napkin analysis: * Vendor stability is one issue: While I doubt Mozilla will go out of business, Google clearly is a very safe bet. * Which vendor will invest more in keeping the technology up to date? Google, due to its vast resources, seems like a safe bet to invest more money and engineer hours. Mozilla, however, will certainly make the web browser the center of its attention and top priority; Google has a lot on its plate (and Microsoft knows how browser tech can drift for years without top management attention). * Which browser is most likely to maintain compatibility with websites and web apps, including corporate ones? Google is the obvious choice. * Which vendor's engineering priorities most align with Microsoft's? I'm not sure. Google has their own priorities - a front end for Google's services, which compete directly with many of Microsoft's - but Google seems more focused on the corporate market. On the other hand, Mozilla's focus on privacy and end user control could easily conflict with Microsoft's priorities. * And of course, which browser fits best in Microsoft's immediate browser plans and has the cleanest upgrade path from Edge/IE? I have no idea. I'm a dedicated user and supporter of Firefox and Mozilla, but I can see reasons Microsoft might choose Chromium.

basch 8y ago

I'll bet you it has everything to do with Microsoft realizing its a featureset to layer on top of other peoples operating systems now, ala Adobe and Facebook. If Microsoft wants to make a cross platform product that runs on Windows, Android and iOS, and they know some of that product has a web rendering engine or js, they want to target/accomodate as few embeddable libraries as possible. Electron may be one of those products, but plenty of other things need embeddable html/js. Maybe Outlook will switch to blink someday? It also means that in theory, Chrome could STOP shipping Blink with Chrome, and ship Chrome more like they do for iOS, where the rendering engine is part of the OS not browser app.

belltaco 8y ago

Why would they have considered Firefox over just improving Edge? The problem is that Chrome is extremely dominant, especially on mobile and tablet. And everyone tests against Chrome but not everyone tests on Firefox or Edge(especially web devs on MacOS). If things don't work or look broken, it causes more people to switch to Chrome over Edge/Firefox, turning this into a vicious cycle. The only way to break the cycle is to act like Chrome, so either chase Chrome's behavior with Edge or Firefox. Both of which entail a lot of effort and money with less than stellar results. Adopting Firefox will get them some development help but the fundamental problem of chasing a speeding train still remains.

unethical_ban 8y ago
In political terms: Web browsing dominance is a single member district. Firefox and Chrome are the two major parties, and IE/Opera/Safari are third parties. IE could have gone to Firefox to promote open standards and "back the opposition" so to speak. They chose, instead, the corporate behemoth behind the mobile OS they want a foothold on (presumably).
- belltaco 8y ago
  And if big web properties like Youtube, GMaps and Gmail etc. don't work properly, are slow or missing features on Gecko then the dominance of Chrome will increase further anyway. The market of web browsers has become "who gets to set the default search engine makes the moolah". Bing marketshare and revenue is driven by how well Edge works and how it can stop the bleeding to Chrome. Changing the engine to Quantum does not solve the problem they were having in the first place very well.
- alwillis 8y ago
  Firefox and Chrome are the two major parties, and IE/Opera/Safari are third parties. There’s no way this can be true. Apple owns various platforms that ship Safari/WebKit and it’s the only option on iOS and watchOS. They’ve shipped more than 2 billion (and growing) iOS devices. And hundreds of thousands native iOS apps use WebKit views. So there’s no way Safari is a fringe 3rd party browser and has a better privacy story regarding fingerprinting and tracking than any of the other major browsers, including Firefox. Unless you’re on the W3C mailing lists and GitHub repos, you wouldn’t know how active the WebKit team is on the development and implementation of web standards.

paxy 8y ago

I doubt it. This move has a lot to do with Electron, which runs on Chromium.

tflinton 8y ago

Firefox is also undergoing a large rewrite with the quantum stuff with more of an emphasis on rust. Chromium is c++ and already has decent tooling for embedding. Honestly, Firefox is trying to be where the puck is going. Chromium is great but stagnating.

baroffoos 8y ago
What do you mean by chromium is stagnating?