5 ms·

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 m

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.

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.