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> even if Google takes Chromium in a direction that Microsoft disagrees with or opposes, Microsoft will have little option but to follow along regardless. I ke

> even if Google takes Chromium in a direction that Microsoft disagrees with or opposes, Microsoft will have little option but to follow along regardless. I keep seeing arguments like this and it doesn't make sense to me. Help me understand. My impression is that since Chromium is open-source Google cannot have a monopolistic wield over it. And now the fact that a bunch of Microsoft engineers will be contributing to Chromium seems to imply that Google and Microsoft will have the same amount of muscle mass to struggle for control. For example if Google tries to make a change in Chromium that will break Microsoft's products Microsoft can quickly respond to this. So why is the argument that Microsoft is ceding the web to Google, rather than trying to wrest back? To me it seems like the latter is at least as plausible as the former.

jcranmer 8y ago
Google effectively has the right to veto patches into Chromium. In the worst case, Google could fork Chromium, and since Google controls the build artifacts, in a dispute between Google and Microsoft, it's Google who wields the power.
- Micoloth 8y ago
  But, isn't it reasonable to assume that microsoft will get hold of the Whole codebase if they embrace this as their new default browser? I mean its Microsoft we're talking about..
  - tracker1 8y ago
    Well, it's likely they'll only use the core rendering engine (Blink, formerly Webkit) and wrap their own application around it. Hell, with all the applications they've released or are working on with electron (Teams, VS Code, SQL Operations Studio), I'm far less surprised. I've been hoping they'd come up with for a more shared model for applications in the node/npm ecosystem similar to Adobe's Air. If MS did a good job of such a platform from open-source with tooling to build applications that run everywhere, more power to them.
- vbezhenar 8y ago
  How is it Google? Anyone could just fork Chromium and do anything about it, it's open source after all. Microsoft could buy people from Google if they wanted to, they probably could buy an entire Chrome team. Google has some control over Chromium engine right now, but this control is fragile. It's the same control that Oracle has over MySQL. Abuse it and you'll have MariaDB instantly. Abuse Java control and you'll have plenty of companies forked Java and ready to provide real LTS for Java 8. It'll be the same for Chromium. The best outcome would be to have some Non-commercial organization funded by Google, Microsoft, Yandex and other big players who benefit from Chromium which would have some kind of independence. But current situation is not that bad. There are other things than just source code license. May be Google has patents for Chromium sources and could use them to forbid fork? Then it's a bad situation but I didn't heard about that point of view yet.
  - Wowfunhappy 8y ago
    > How is it Google? Because a majority of users are using Google Chrome. You're right, if Microsoft could convince chrome users to switch to Edge, they would have more power. Things can change, but I don't see how this would happen.
  - jacques_chester 8y ago
    Your examples of successful forks are due to branding amongst technologists, who understand the concept of a fork and who were following the most-trusted of the descendents (another example being Hudson and Jenkins). Consumer brands are not as easy to fork. If Coca-Cola opensourced their recipe and then faced a fork by Examplesucre, I don't think anyone will really be betting against Coke. Similarly, the longevity of mainline integrity for Linux relies heavily on the fact that it is a trademark and that the trademark holder (Linus) is trusted with it. Fork Linux as much as you please, basically nobody will care. Google's power over Chromium comes from its power over Chrome. If you don't think that's true, fork it yourself and prove us all wrong.
    - microtherion 8y ago
      > Fork Linux as much as you please, basically nobody will care. Last I heard, Android was doing OK… Similarly, I should think that Microsoft still has considerable clout in what browser Windows users will use by default (although I'm not sure what exact legal restrictions they currently have to observe re: bundling of browsers).
ridiculous_fish 8y ago
Microsoft can make pull requests to Chromium, but the committers are Google employees.
- Micoloth 8y ago
  Couldn't they (Microsoft) fork it if requests got rejected?
  - PhilWright 8y ago
    Yes, but then they have to integrate all future changes to the original to keep their fork in line with new features, bug fixes etc.
    - jeromebaek 8y ago
      Maybe I'm naive but it seems that if a fork happens, a team or two of good Microsoft engineers could keep the fork up to date with features from the original branch.
      - 43920 8y ago
        Chromium is an incredibly complex codebase, and they change their internal API's quite rapidly, so upgrading is a lot more difficult than you would guess. For example, this is what it took for Electron to upgrade from Chromium 69 to 70: https://github.com/electron/electron/pull/15405/commits https://github.com/electron/electron/pull/15405/commits, and Electron doesn't even make that many modifications to Chromium. If Microsoft were to make a decent number of changes, they would need a whole team of people just to import Google's changes, and if they start adding major new features I doubt they'd be able to keep the two in sync at all.
        pvorb 8y ago
        Additionally, this is nothing good engineers really want to spend their time on.
btilly 8y ago
The problem is this, who is seen as controlling the standard? Perception is reality here. Right now people get updates to Chrome and ChromeOS from Google. Microsoft is free to fork it. But if Microsoft goes one way and Google another, Google's version is what gets used. And everyone knows it. So anyone who wants to influence the direction of Chromium will talk to Google. Anyone who wants an idea of what is coming, will ask Google. Microsoft is a distinctly second class citizen. Doubly so since Microsoft's last two attempts at a browser (IE and Edge) are now failed also-rans. If it attempts to fork Chromium, nobody is going to believe that their third try will win. In its younger days, Microsoft fought hard to avoid being in such positions. For a flavor, read http://gunkies.org/wiki/Gordon_Letwin_OS/2_usenet_post http://gunkies.org/wiki/Gordon_Letwin_OS/2_usenet_post to see how they thought about ownership of standards. But Microsoft has decided to cede this particular battle. At least for now.
- jeromebaek 8y ago
  Interesting bit of history. Thanks for this article. I'm curious, though, how the fact that Chromium is open-source will change this dynamic, because the ethos of open source seems directly against the idea of Google abusing their control over Chromium.
  - walterbell 8y ago
    How about removing URLs in favor of legal names for website publishers (demo given by Google earlier this year)? Where can users go if they still want YouTube to work well?
  - btilly 8y ago
    What is abuse? Do you mean rolling a new protocol in Chrome without warning that magically makes Google faster because they rolled it out on their end as well? This already happened with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPDY https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPDY. As long as what they do is technically good and not too heavy-handed, developers won't resist. In fact it is likely to be welcomed. But the effect will constantly leave Google a half-step ahead of everyone else on the upgrade train. After all it isn't hurting developers, it is just leaving Google with a slightly better competitive edge.

jcranmer 8y ago

Google effectively has the right to veto patches into Chromium. In the worst case, Google could fork Chromium, and since Google controls the build artifacts, in a dispute between Google and Microsoft, it's Google who wields the power.

Micoloth 8y ago
But, isn't it reasonable to assume that microsoft will get hold of the Whole codebase if they embrace this as their new default browser? I mean its Microsoft we're talking about..
- tracker1 8y ago
  Well, it's likely they'll only use the core rendering engine (Blink, formerly Webkit) and wrap their own application around it. Hell, with all the applications they've released or are working on with electron (Teams, VS Code, SQL Operations Studio), I'm far less surprised. I've been hoping they'd come up with for a more shared model for applications in the node/npm ecosystem similar to Adobe's Air. If MS did a good job of such a platform from open-source with tooling to build applications that run everywhere, more power to them.
vbezhenar 8y ago
How is it Google? Anyone could just fork Chromium and do anything about it, it's open source after all. Microsoft could buy people from Google if they wanted to, they probably could buy an entire Chrome team. Google has some control over Chromium engine right now, but this control is fragile. It's the same control that Oracle has over MySQL. Abuse it and you'll have MariaDB instantly. Abuse Java control and you'll have plenty of companies forked Java and ready to provide real LTS for Java 8. It'll be the same for Chromium. The best outcome would be to have some Non-commercial organization funded by Google, Microsoft, Yandex and other big players who benefit from Chromium which would have some kind of independence. But current situation is not that bad. There are other things than just source code license. May be Google has patents for Chromium sources and could use them to forbid fork? Then it's a bad situation but I didn't heard about that point of view yet.
- Wowfunhappy 8y ago
  > How is it Google? Because a majority of users are using Google Chrome. You're right, if Microsoft could convince chrome users to switch to Edge, they would have more power. Things can change, but I don't see how this would happen.
- jacques_chester 8y ago
  Your examples of successful forks are due to branding amongst technologists, who understand the concept of a fork and who were following the most-trusted of the descendents (another example being Hudson and Jenkins). Consumer brands are not as easy to fork. If Coca-Cola opensourced their recipe and then faced a fork by Examplesucre, I don't think anyone will really be betting against Coke. Similarly, the longevity of mainline integrity for Linux relies heavily on the fact that it is a trademark and that the trademark holder (Linus) is trusted with it. Fork Linux as much as you please, basically nobody will care. Google's power over Chromium comes from its power over Chrome. If you don't think that's true, fork it yourself and prove us all wrong.
  - microtherion 8y ago
    > Fork Linux as much as you please, basically nobody will care. Last I heard, Android was doing OK… Similarly, I should think that Microsoft still has considerable clout in what browser Windows users will use by default (although I'm not sure what exact legal restrictions they currently have to observe re: bundling of browsers).

ridiculous_fish 8y ago

Microsoft can make pull requests to Chromium, but the committers are Google employees.

Micoloth 8y ago
Couldn't they (Microsoft) fork it if requests got rejected?
- PhilWright 8y ago
  Yes, but then they have to integrate all future changes to the original to keep their fork in line with new features, bug fixes etc.
  - jeromebaek 8y ago
    Maybe I'm naive but it seems that if a fork happens, a team or two of good Microsoft engineers could keep the fork up to date with features from the original branch.
    - 43920 8y ago
      Chromium is an incredibly complex codebase, and they change their internal API's quite rapidly, so upgrading is a lot more difficult than you would guess. For example, this is what it took for Electron to upgrade from Chromium 69 to 70: https://github.com/electron/electron/pull/15405/commits https://github.com/electron/electron/pull/15405/commits, and Electron doesn't even make that many modifications to Chromium. If Microsoft were to make a decent number of changes, they would need a whole team of people just to import Google's changes, and if they start adding major new features I doubt they'd be able to keep the two in sync at all.
      - pvorb 8y ago
        Additionally, this is nothing good engineers really want to spend their time on.

btilly 8y ago

The problem is this, who is seen as controlling the standard? Perception is reality here. Right now people get updates to Chrome and ChromeOS from Google. Microsoft is free to fork it. But if Microsoft goes one way and Google another, Google's version is what gets used. And everyone knows it. So anyone who wants to influence the direction of Chromium will talk to Google. Anyone who wants an idea of what is coming, will ask Google. Microsoft is a distinctly second class citizen. Doubly so since Microsoft's last two attempts at a browser (IE and Edge) are now failed also-rans. If it attempts to fork Chromium, nobody is going to believe that their third try will win. In its younger days, Microsoft fought hard to avoid being in such positions. For a flavor, read http://gunkies.org/wiki/Gordon_Letwin_OS/2_usenet_post http://gunkies.org/wiki/Gordon_Letwin_OS/2_usenet_post to see how they thought about ownership of standards. But Microsoft has decided to cede this particular battle. At least for now.

jeromebaek 8y ago
Interesting bit of history. Thanks for this article. I'm curious, though, how the fact that Chromium is open-source will change this dynamic, because the ethos of open source seems directly against the idea of Google abusing their control over Chromium.
- walterbell 8y ago
  How about removing URLs in favor of legal names for website publishers (demo given by Google earlier this year)? Where can users go if they still want YouTube to work well?
- btilly 8y ago
  What is abuse? Do you mean rolling a new protocol in Chrome without warning that magically makes Google faster because they rolled it out on their end as well? This already happened with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPDY https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPDY. As long as what they do is technically good and not too heavy-handed, developers won't resist. In fact it is likely to be welcomed. But the effect will constantly leave Google a half-step ahead of everyone else on the upgrade train. After all it isn't hurting developers, it is just leaving Google with a slightly better competitive edge.