3 ms·

> controlled by people with no ulterior motives. Everyone used to think that was Google. Anyway, if by some miracle you do find anyone that matches that descr

by saulrh 7y ago

> controlled by people with no ulterior motives. Everyone used to think that was Google. Anyway, if by some miracle you do find anyone that matches that description but knows where the lever is to kick everything over to a new paradigm, don't tell anyone about them, because as soon as you do they'll have more ulterior motives then you can count.

lazyjones 7y ago
> Everyone used to think that was Google. When was that? Around the time they decided to liberate the web from the evil clutches of Microsoft/IE and ... Mozilla/FF (20%+ and growing at that time)?
- mcny 7y ago
  I may be remembering things incorrectly but I think Mozilla almost got in trouble with the IRS because too much of funding came from a single source: Google. What I'm trying to say is Mozilla might have died a long time ago if not for Google.
  - DanielBMarkham 7y ago
    And Apple might have died if not for Microsoft investment. We very well may be assuming different actors and motivations where there are none: there's just messaging and market differentiation.
- Fnoord 7y ago
  > When was that? When people still believed in the slogan 'Don't be evil' [1]. Google even removed the slogan. I guess they don't believe in it themselves anymore. The replacement 'Do the right thing' seems like a variation of Nike's. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_be_evil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_be_evil
  - Smithalicious 7y ago
    Hah, I love that slogan change. "Yes, we do things that are evil, but we also do things that aren't evil sometimes"
  - petecox 7y ago
    Fun fact: Pine64's dev-kit for their forthcoming PinePhone offering is codenamed "Don't be evil". https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/Project_Don%27t_be_evil https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/Project_Don%27t_be_evil
- mda 7y ago
  Compared to both of them Chrome was technically miles better as well. And no, Firefox was stagnant. It actually saved web from IE.
- collyw 7y ago
  When MS still held the monopoly position and mobile phones weren't mainstream. Google had a mission of "don't be evil" or something similar, they quietly got rid of that and started being evil.
leoc 7y ago
Indeed you won't solve the problem by finding people with no ulterior motives. Instead, the least-bad chance you have of solving it is to make the base platform small enough that the Too Big To Fork problem https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6807380#6810259 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6807380#6810259 is kept under control, so that competing implementations (and the threat of competing implementations) will help to keep the implementers honest, or at least more honest than they would otherwise be. Instead the Web started as an overly large platform, and fell increasingly under the control of its small group of large implementers (partly) as a result; then those implementers, for a variety of reasons, predictably made the platform even larger and more unforkable, which in turn squeezed out some more of those implementers. The strange thing is how many observers were cheering this process until pretty recently.
- mgreenleaf 7y ago
  It would be nice if someone came up with a "network VM" that could run sandboxed code that was more like traditional native applications, but seamlessly networked to a server (like Erlang or Phoenix LiveView on multiple nodes but simplified for server-client). Then it would be possible to write more standard apps on a well designed, purpose-built system which would simplify a lot of Dev work. Then you could have a well designed markup language for easier building of documents too. But start fresh in a VM system with all the hindsight of what purposes the web is used for, and the layout systems that are most flexible/popular. You could have some low level thing like web assembly (or even just we assembly itself and get all of the current optimization and standardization work for free) that other languages compile too. And a low level GUI library like Vulkan that you can build libraries on top of.
  - leoc 7y ago
    Basically: see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2119057 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2119057 (including the grandchild comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2131870 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2131870 ). Not that most of this was new in 2011 either: similar "modular-browswer" ideas were kicking around in the late '90s iirc.

by saulrh 7y ago

lazyjones 7y ago

> Everyone used to think that was Google. When was that? Around the time they decided to liberate the web from the evil clutches of Microsoft/IE and ... Mozilla/FF (20%+ and growing at that time)?

mcny 7y ago
I may be remembering things incorrectly but I think Mozilla almost got in trouble with the IRS because too much of funding came from a single source: Google. What I'm trying to say is Mozilla might have died a long time ago if not for Google.
- DanielBMarkham 7y ago
  And Apple might have died if not for Microsoft investment. We very well may be assuming different actors and motivations where there are none: there's just messaging and market differentiation.
Fnoord 7y ago
> When was that? When people still believed in the slogan 'Don't be evil' [1]. Google even removed the slogan. I guess they don't believe in it themselves anymore. The replacement 'Do the right thing' seems like a variation of Nike's. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_be_evil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_be_evil
- Smithalicious 7y ago
  Hah, I love that slogan change. "Yes, we do things that are evil, but we also do things that aren't evil sometimes"
- petecox 7y ago
  Fun fact: Pine64's dev-kit for their forthcoming PinePhone offering is codenamed "Don't be evil". https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/Project_Don%27t_be_evil https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/Project_Don%27t_be_evil
mda 7y ago
Compared to both of them Chrome was technically miles better as well. And no, Firefox was stagnant. It actually saved web from IE.
collyw 7y ago
When MS still held the monopoly position and mobile phones weren't mainstream. Google had a mission of "don't be evil" or something similar, they quietly got rid of that and started being evil.

leoc 7y ago

Indeed you won't solve the problem by finding people with no ulterior motives. Instead, the least-bad chance you have of solving it is to make the base platform small enough that the Too Big To Fork problem https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6807380#6810259 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6807380#6810259 is kept under control, so that competing implementations (and the threat of competing implementations) will help to keep the implementers honest, or at least more honest than they would otherwise be. Instead the Web started as an overly large platform, and fell increasingly under the control of its small group of large implementers (partly) as a result; then those implementers, for a variety of reasons, predictably made the platform even larger and more unforkable, which in turn squeezed out some more of those implementers. The strange thing is how many observers were cheering this process until pretty recently.

mgreenleaf 7y ago
It would be nice if someone came up with a "network VM" that could run sandboxed code that was more like traditional native applications, but seamlessly networked to a server (like Erlang or Phoenix LiveView on multiple nodes but simplified for server-client). Then it would be possible to write more standard apps on a well designed, purpose-built system which would simplify a lot of Dev work. Then you could have a well designed markup language for easier building of documents too. But start fresh in a VM system with all the hindsight of what purposes the web is used for, and the layout systems that are most flexible/popular. You could have some low level thing like web assembly (or even just we assembly itself and get all of the current optimization and standardization work for free) that other languages compile too. And a low level GUI library like Vulkan that you can build libraries on top of.
- leoc 7y ago
  Basically: see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2119057 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2119057 (including the grandchild comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2131870 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2131870 ). Not that most of this was new in 2011 either: similar "modular-browswer" ideas were kicking around in the late '90s iirc.