4 ms·

I really think the alarm about Edge adopting Chromium is silly. Microsoft is more than capable of forking the project, so using it does not give Google more con

I really think the alarm about Edge adopting Chromium is silly. Microsoft is more than capable of forking the project, so using it does not give Google more control over the web. What exactly do people think is going to happen? If Google starts doing strange things thinking they can because "everyone uses Chromium", then downstream just won't adopt those changes, and then there will be two Chromiums. All the panic about a Google "monopoly" of the web is absurd. Google lost the ability to do anything like that the moment they open sourced the project.

codezero 8y ago
I think the gist is that Mozilla and Firefox are in peril. This worsens that peril at a time when MS could become a patron of Mozilla and Firefox and have a chance at launching a shot across Google’s bow. All that said, I’m surprised nobody is talking about Apple in all of this as they have a huge portion of the mobile browser share.
- tree_of_item 8y ago
  In peril how? Google is the one giving Mozilla money. What is perilous about more people adopting an open source Google project? I really do not get it, Edge moving to Chromium changes absolutely nothing wrt Mozilla's "peril".
  - leeoniya 8y ago
    > Google is the one giving Mozilla money. because they want Mozilla's users to use google search / services, not out of the goodness of their hearts. what if mozilla had 5000 users left tomorrow? think big G would still write that check?
  - Ygg2 8y ago
    Right now Mozilla is in a deal with Google. If Firefox numbers drop below a threshold, we can only pray, Google doesn't alter the deal any further. Not to mention Google gets carte blanche to basically control Web Standards as they see fit, since they are the only implementer (that counts). - Don't want PNaCl? Too bad. - Dart on the Web? You can't remove it even if you want it. Oh and you better support it, cause if your browser doesn't have feature parity with Chrome, you are doomed. - Rust in browser? You can only dream. - Browsers that use more GPU and SIMD? Too much of a hassle.
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      > Not to mention Google gets carte blanche to basically control Web Standards as they see fit, since they are the only implementer. Even if Firefox disappeared, Apple is still around.
      - Ygg2 8y ago
        > Even if Firefox disappeared, Apple is still around. Apple cares about web in the same way Windows cared about web. They want to move you to their native silo apps (for windows it was Windows application). I.e. Apple wants to rename your Web Browser to App Store. It's already in some regards, the new IE.
        codezero 8y ago
        Conflating the App Store to how Apple has developed WebKit is a huge distraction. If I were better at arguing on the Internet I’d cite some logical fallacy.
    - tree_of_item 8y ago
      > Not to mention Google gets carte blanche to basically control Web Standards as they see fit People keep repeating this, but it is not true. I addressed this in my OP and yet here you are repeating it again. They do not get a free license to do whatever, because other people have the code. This is just so strange, I didn't expect the developer community to succumb to FUD and hysteria like this.
  - nirvdrum 8y ago
    As there are increasingly fewer non-Chromium based Web browsers, it becomes increasingly likely that Web sites & apps overfit to Chromium. At that point, you no longer have Web technologies. You have Chromium technologies that happen to be served over HTTP. Since these apps & sites will invariably not work with Firefox, users leave Firefox for a Chromium-based browser, making things even harder for Mozilla. So, the issue isn't just that MS adopted a Google open source project, but that in the process they've abandoned an alternative rendering engine. Web developers perpetrated this cycle once before with IE6. It's easy to look back at how bad IE6 was because MS became complacent. In its day, however, IE6 was easily the best browser out there. And MS decided waiting on a standards body hindered the speed of progress, so they forged ahead with their own features and hoped the standards bodies would later incorporate them. If not... oh well. And since 90+% of the Web used IE6, developers developed their sites for IE6, rarely ever testing in anything else. It's likely Chromium won't stagnate the same way that IE6 did. But in a way, that makes it even harder for Firefox to regain market share. As a Firefox user, it's a bit embarrassing how many sites & apps I encounter that are Chrome-only. Or, if I report an issue to a developer they tell me to just switch browsers.
- jillesvangurp 8y ago
  Mozilla is going to be around as long as there are people using and developing it. It's OSS, you can marginalize it but not kill it. The way to keep it thriving (because it is, 9% market share is tens to hundreds of millions of users) is to empower developers to keep it relevant and users to escape the Google ad Imperium and universal tracking. The day Mozilla announces chromium support, there will likely be a hard fork. It will also be the day where they fire/lose most of their team. That would be after users walk away from it. It would be suicidal. It would kill Mozilla the organization but you can bet somebody will keep the browser going. Worst case, Google pulls their funding at some point. They are under no obligation to keep on funding it. Mozilla might need to diversify their income at some point or scale down their operations. Apple and Mozilla being around will force Google + MS to play nice. Also the latter two are frenemies so the most natural place for them to cooperate is through open source and standard bodies. MS has had a big impact on web standards historically and they are unlikely to leave all that to Google. So, it's going to continue to be a four way discussion in the standards bodies. Chrome as a reference implementation will become even more important than it is today of course. The real question is whether Apple will continue to keep Safari alive. With shrinking sales and many mac users option for Chrome/Firefox anyway, they have a problem there. They might decide to join MS and retire webkit. Right now it's usage is inflated because Apple bans competing browsers from their app store.
leeoniya 8y ago
it would be better if MS instead chose Firefox to contribute back to. This way there would be better useage share distribution in implementations. They made the obvious choice (for them) based on market share
- tree_of_item 8y ago
  Microsoft has already adopted Chromium for e.g. VS Code. They made the obvious choice based on what software they've already been writing.
dictum 8y ago
...until you open a website in Firefox [0] and you're greeted by the message "This website requires Chrome" or some such. Except if the website doesn't even warn visitors, and just breaks silently. [0] Or Safari and minor Webkit browsers. I hate Apple's stubbornness sometimes, but here's where their focus on resource usage puts an obstacle to browser monopoly, for now.

codezero 8y ago

I think the gist is that Mozilla and Firefox are in peril. This worsens that peril at a time when MS could become a patron of Mozilla and Firefox and have a chance at launching a shot across Google’s bow. All that said, I’m surprised nobody is talking about Apple in all of this as they have a huge portion of the mobile browser share.

tree_of_item 8y ago
In peril how? Google is the one giving Mozilla money. What is perilous about more people adopting an open source Google project? I really do not get it, Edge moving to Chromium changes absolutely nothing wrt Mozilla's "peril".
- leeoniya 8y ago
  > Google is the one giving Mozilla money. because they want Mozilla's users to use google search / services, not out of the goodness of their hearts. what if mozilla had 5000 users left tomorrow? think big G would still write that check?
- Ygg2 8y ago
  Right now Mozilla is in a deal with Google. If Firefox numbers drop below a threshold, we can only pray, Google doesn't alter the deal any further. Not to mention Google gets carte blanche to basically control Web Standards as they see fit, since they are the only implementer (that counts). - Don't want PNaCl? Too bad. - Dart on the Web? You can't remove it even if you want it. Oh and you better support it, cause if your browser doesn't have feature parity with Chrome, you are doomed. - Rust in browser? You can only dream. - Browsers that use more GPU and SIMD? Too much of a hassle.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > Not to mention Google gets carte blanche to basically control Web Standards as they see fit, since they are the only implementer. Even if Firefox disappeared, Apple is still around.
    - Ygg2 8y ago
      > Even if Firefox disappeared, Apple is still around. Apple cares about web in the same way Windows cared about web. They want to move you to their native silo apps (for windows it was Windows application). I.e. Apple wants to rename your Web Browser to App Store. It's already in some regards, the new IE.
      - codezero 8y ago
        Conflating the App Store to how Apple has developed WebKit is a huge distraction. If I were better at arguing on the Internet I’d cite some logical fallacy.
  - tree_of_item 8y ago
    > Not to mention Google gets carte blanche to basically control Web Standards as they see fit People keep repeating this, but it is not true. I addressed this in my OP and yet here you are repeating it again. They do not get a free license to do whatever, because other people have the code. This is just so strange, I didn't expect the developer community to succumb to FUD and hysteria like this.
- nirvdrum 8y ago
  As there are increasingly fewer non-Chromium based Web browsers, it becomes increasingly likely that Web sites & apps overfit to Chromium. At that point, you no longer have Web technologies. You have Chromium technologies that happen to be served over HTTP. Since these apps & sites will invariably not work with Firefox, users leave Firefox for a Chromium-based browser, making things even harder for Mozilla. So, the issue isn't just that MS adopted a Google open source project, but that in the process they've abandoned an alternative rendering engine. Web developers perpetrated this cycle once before with IE6. It's easy to look back at how bad IE6 was because MS became complacent. In its day, however, IE6 was easily the best browser out there. And MS decided waiting on a standards body hindered the speed of progress, so they forged ahead with their own features and hoped the standards bodies would later incorporate them. If not... oh well. And since 90+% of the Web used IE6, developers developed their sites for IE6, rarely ever testing in anything else. It's likely Chromium won't stagnate the same way that IE6 did. But in a way, that makes it even harder for Firefox to regain market share. As a Firefox user, it's a bit embarrassing how many sites & apps I encounter that are Chrome-only. Or, if I report an issue to a developer they tell me to just switch browsers.
jillesvangurp 8y ago
Mozilla is going to be around as long as there are people using and developing it. It's OSS, you can marginalize it but not kill it. The way to keep it thriving (because it is, 9% market share is tens to hundreds of millions of users) is to empower developers to keep it relevant and users to escape the Google ad Imperium and universal tracking. The day Mozilla announces chromium support, there will likely be a hard fork. It will also be the day where they fire/lose most of their team. That would be after users walk away from it. It would be suicidal. It would kill Mozilla the organization but you can bet somebody will keep the browser going. Worst case, Google pulls their funding at some point. They are under no obligation to keep on funding it. Mozilla might need to diversify their income at some point or scale down their operations. Apple and Mozilla being around will force Google + MS to play nice. Also the latter two are frenemies so the most natural place for them to cooperate is through open source and standard bodies. MS has had a big impact on web standards historically and they are unlikely to leave all that to Google. So, it's going to continue to be a four way discussion in the standards bodies. Chrome as a reference implementation will become even more important than it is today of course. The real question is whether Apple will continue to keep Safari alive. With shrinking sales and many mac users option for Chrome/Firefox anyway, they have a problem there. They might decide to join MS and retire webkit. Right now it's usage is inflated because Apple bans competing browsers from their app store.

leeoniya 8y ago

it would be better if MS instead chose Firefox to contribute back to. This way there would be better useage share distribution in implementations. They made the obvious choice (for them) based on market share

tree_of_item 8y ago
Microsoft has already adopted Chromium for e.g. VS Code. They made the obvious choice based on what software they've already been writing.

dictum 8y ago

...until you open a website in Firefox [0] and you're greeted by the message "This website requires Chrome" or some such. Except if the website doesn't even warn visitors, and just breaks silently. [0] Or Safari and minor Webkit browsers. I hate Apple's stubbornness sometimes, but here's where their focus on resource usage puts an obstacle to browser monopoly, for now.