4 ms·

At one point IE was just as dominant as Chrome is today, and it got displaced. A lot of people seem unable to imagine how Chrome could be displaced today, but t

At one point IE was just as dominant as Chrome is today, and it got displaced. A lot of people seem unable to imagine how Chrome could be displaced today, but that can happen pretty rapidly. For example, Google restricting ad blockers on Chrome will almost certainly drive Firefox market share up. However, the only reason this is possible is because we have web standards that are independent of a single browser and vendor. If we end up abandoning the standards entirely in favor of just using Chromium, then it’s game over for open web. Throwing in the towel and making everything Chromium based would be the worst possible scenario because it gives Google an insane amount of control over the future of the web. And the fact that Chromium is open source doesn’t really make a bit of difference here. The reality is that it takes a huge amount of effort to maintain it. It would require an organization like Mozilla to fork it from Google and take it in a new direction. Since we already have Mozilla and Firefox now, it’s much better to make sure they continue to exist.

ken 7y ago
Microsoft was ruthless and technically competent, but in many ways they were also strategically stupid. - IE was a Windows-only product (after Microsoft dropped Mac support), so as Windows lost its dominance (thanks to the internet, and mobile devices, and Linux, and Apple's rebirth, and...), so did IE. It helped sow the seeds of its own destruction. - Chrome has an open-source core, so they're going after the embedding market much more than IE ever did. That means that a lot of "Chrome" use is in places where users feel the consequences, but have no control over being able to switch engines (e.g., Electron apps). Google's web browser group feels like the classic "big, smart" quadrant competitor that nobody will engage. If your only goal were "take over the world usage share of browser engines", it's hard to imagine doing a better job than they're doing now. The client-side web was not traditionally Microsoft's home. They were a little late to the game, they didn't quite understand it, and they needed a good browser on their platform but it wasn't fatal if it wasn't theirs. (They're doing quite well in services and games and many other areas.) Google was always web-first, and they will never cede that. Crazy tech prediction: Chrome will be the last dominant web browser engine. What defeats it will be the successor to the web, not another "web browser". Its successor will probably even embed Chrome for backwards compatibility, like Edge embeds IE, or Chrome embeds FTP. We'll look at legacy Chrome-compat internet sites the way we look at Electron apps, or non-TLS websites.
- heavenlyblue 7y ago
  Second point is not exactly strong: loads of apps used IE integration internally. It was one of the stronger points by MS during antitrust investigation.
gridlockd 7y ago
People don't remember how awful IE was. Netscape wasn't significantly better. Both were considered "bloated". Then, along came Firebird, and it was light and fresh. Unfortunately, a lot of sites didn't work with it. But users demanded that it should work, and eventually it did. Eventually Firefox itself became bloated and Chrome was the faster alternative. It's the guys at Mozilla that dropped the ball this time. Fast forward to now: Chrome is bloated, everything is bloated, everything is terrible, but we now rely on a tech stack that has grown exponentially just to get really basic stuff working. The difference is, this time we can't reasonably start fresh anymore without breaking backward compatibility. Perhaps that's what needs to happen though: Break everything. Delete HTML, CSS, Javascript and all that crap. Admit that most non-trivial web sites are not documents, they're applications. Applications can display documents and do all kinds of other things. Figure out the minimal API that can efficiently output graphics, sound and video. Add in some accessibility hooks. Provide some optional interfaces to geolocation, storage, camera/mic etc. Done. Fuck the semantic web. Just let us write applications.
rayiner 7y ago
> However, the only reason this is possible is because we have web standards that are independent of a single browser and vendor. This is an important point. One thing that led to IE's downfall was its lack of standard compatibility. At the time, there were real web standards. Today, the "standard" seems to be whatever Chrome does. (Indeed, despite good standard compatibility, the pre-Chrome version of Edge suffered in terms of real-world compatibility, and that was an animating reason for the switch to Chromium: https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2018/12/06/microsoft-edge-making-the-web-better-through-more-open-source-collaboration/#fxt23I6ToTp8RoeI.97. https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2018/12/06/micro...) So we are very differently positioned than we were when Firefox/Chrome overtook IE.
- derf_ 7y ago
  > So we are very differently positioned than we were when Firefox/Chrome overtook IE. I would agree, but not for the reason you state. IE was the standard back then, too. The difference is that once it was "good enough", Microsoft reduced investment in it and allowed it to stagnate. Others caught up in terms of compatibility and passed it in terms of usability. Google, on the other hand, invests so much that no on else can keep up, and knows that this is the means by which they maintain control over the web (and web standards).
elagost 7y ago
At that point, IE was so technically far behind that you could easily point to reasons why Firefox was better: Add-ons, usable tabbed browsing, incredible speed increases, more customization, and websites actually working. Nowadays, we're asking people to choose, for all appearances, a slower browser that's not as technically advanced in some ways, with no clear merits and a lot of changes to workflow. The choice today is between freedom and convenience. The reason people flocked to Firefox in the first place was that it was both freedom and convenience.
- feanaro 7y ago
  The are definitely merits: fingerprinting protection, containers, less memory usage, soon a state-of-the-art parallel rendering engine (Webrender), soon-to-be better adblockers, etc. More novel things will trickle down from Servo in the future. It's unclear to me Chromium is still significantly faster in any meaningful way. They certainly feel roughly the same.
  - elagost 7y ago
    If I asked my dad what the technical merits of Chrome or Firefox were or why he used what he used, he wouldn't have an answer for me. He'd say "I use Chrome because you told me a few years ago to use it and it still works." The reason we switched from IE was because IE just straight up did not work. Sites were broken. Now it doesn't really matter but for these invisible things that normal people don't see or care about. Most people are like my dad.
    - feanaro 7y ago
      Well, simply correct your mistake and tell him to switch. Or even better, configure it for him. I've done so for all of my "like your dad" people. Perhaps sites aren't as broken in Chrome now as they were with IE, but you can bet the web itself will change in ways you and I would consider broken if Google is left to become the sole, unchecked steward and helmsman of the web.
  - MikusR 7y ago
sp332 7y ago
IE development was totally stagnant. IE 5.0/5.01 came out in 1999 and IE 5.5 came out in 2005! Chrome rolls out new versions every six weeks. That's why Chrome will not be displaced as easily. They can put serious pressure on the standards bodies to follow whatever changes they want to make to their browser. Anyway the adblocking thing isn't really related. Extension APIs are not industry standards, Chrome already doesn't allow adblocking on mobile, and maybe at some point they'll just write off the users who care and focus on monetizing the users who will put up with ads.
melenaboija 7y ago
I agree with what you are saying but I would also add that it will become harder to change as times goes by as more private interests are involved with it. Chrome is business for google and obviously will not want to change the situation, but also people with business on the Internet what want is a friendly and easy environtment which is what google is offering.

ken 7y ago

Microsoft was ruthless and technically competent, but in many ways they were also strategically stupid. - IE was a Windows-only product (after Microsoft dropped Mac support), so as Windows lost its dominance (thanks to the internet, and mobile devices, and Linux, and Apple's rebirth, and...), so did IE. It helped sow the seeds of its own destruction. - Chrome has an open-source core, so they're going after the embedding market much more than IE ever did. That means that a lot of "Chrome" use is in places where users feel the consequences, but have no control over being able to switch engines (e.g., Electron apps). Google's web browser group feels like the classic "big, smart" quadrant competitor that nobody will engage. If your only goal were "take over the world usage share of browser engines", it's hard to imagine doing a better job than they're doing now. The client-side web was not traditionally Microsoft's home. They were a little late to the game, they didn't quite understand it, and they needed a good browser on their platform but it wasn't fatal if it wasn't theirs. (They're doing quite well in services and games and many other areas.) Google was always web-first, and they will never cede that. Crazy tech prediction: Chrome will be the last dominant web browser engine. What defeats it will be the successor to the web, not another "web browser". Its successor will probably even embed Chrome for backwards compatibility, like Edge embeds IE, or Chrome embeds FTP. We'll look at legacy Chrome-compat internet sites the way we look at Electron apps, or non-TLS websites.

heavenlyblue 7y ago
Second point is not exactly strong: loads of apps used IE integration internally. It was one of the stronger points by MS during antitrust investigation.

gridlockd 7y ago

People don't remember how awful IE was. Netscape wasn't significantly better. Both were considered "bloated". Then, along came Firebird, and it was light and fresh. Unfortunately, a lot of sites didn't work with it. But users demanded that it should work, and eventually it did. Eventually Firefox itself became bloated and Chrome was the faster alternative. It's the guys at Mozilla that dropped the ball this time. Fast forward to now: Chrome is bloated, everything is bloated, everything is terrible, but we now rely on a tech stack that has grown exponentially just to get really basic stuff working. The difference is, this time we can't reasonably start fresh anymore without breaking backward compatibility. Perhaps that's what needs to happen though: Break everything. Delete HTML, CSS, Javascript and all that crap. Admit that most non-trivial web sites are not documents, they're applications. Applications can display documents and do all kinds of other things. Figure out the minimal API that can efficiently output graphics, sound and video. Add in some accessibility hooks. Provide some optional interfaces to geolocation, storage, camera/mic etc. Done. Fuck the semantic web. Just let us write applications.

rayiner 7y ago

> However, the only reason this is possible is because we have web standards that are independent of a single browser and vendor. This is an important point. One thing that led to IE's downfall was its lack of standard compatibility. At the time, there were real web standards. Today, the "standard" seems to be whatever Chrome does. (Indeed, despite good standard compatibility, the pre-Chrome version of Edge suffered in terms of real-world compatibility, and that was an animating reason for the switch to Chromium: https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2018/12/06/microsoft-edge-making-the-web-better-through-more-open-source-collaboration/#fxt23I6ToTp8RoeI.97. https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2018/12/06/micro...) So we are very differently positioned than we were when Firefox/Chrome overtook IE.

derf_ 7y ago
> So we are very differently positioned than we were when Firefox/Chrome overtook IE. I would agree, but not for the reason you state. IE was the standard back then, too. The difference is that once it was "good enough", Microsoft reduced investment in it and allowed it to stagnate. Others caught up in terms of compatibility and passed it in terms of usability. Google, on the other hand, invests so much that no on else can keep up, and knows that this is the means by which they maintain control over the web (and web standards).

elagost 7y ago

At that point, IE was so technically far behind that you could easily point to reasons why Firefox was better: Add-ons, usable tabbed browsing, incredible speed increases, more customization, and websites actually working. Nowadays, we're asking people to choose, for all appearances, a slower browser that's not as technically advanced in some ways, with no clear merits and a lot of changes to workflow. The choice today is between freedom and convenience. The reason people flocked to Firefox in the first place was that it was both freedom and convenience.

feanaro 7y ago
The are definitely merits: fingerprinting protection, containers, less memory usage, soon a state-of-the-art parallel rendering engine (Webrender), soon-to-be better adblockers, etc. More novel things will trickle down from Servo in the future. It's unclear to me Chromium is still significantly faster in any meaningful way. They certainly feel roughly the same.
- elagost 7y ago
  If I asked my dad what the technical merits of Chrome or Firefox were or why he used what he used, he wouldn't have an answer for me. He'd say "I use Chrome because you told me a few years ago to use it and it still works." The reason we switched from IE was because IE just straight up did not work. Sites were broken. Now it doesn't really matter but for these invisible things that normal people don't see or care about. Most people are like my dad.
  - feanaro 7y ago
    Well, simply correct your mistake and tell him to switch. Or even better, configure it for him. I've done so for all of my "like your dad" people. Perhaps sites aren't as broken in Chrome now as they were with IE, but you can bet the web itself will change in ways you and I would consider broken if Google is left to become the sole, unchecked steward and helmsman of the web.
- MikusR 7y ago

sp332 7y ago

IE development was totally stagnant. IE 5.0/5.01 came out in 1999 and IE 5.5 came out in 2005! Chrome rolls out new versions every six weeks. That's why Chrome will not be displaced as easily. They can put serious pressure on the standards bodies to follow whatever changes they want to make to their browser. Anyway the adblocking thing isn't really related. Extension APIs are not industry standards, Chrome already doesn't allow adblocking on mobile, and maybe at some point they'll just write off the users who care and focus on monetizing the users who will put up with ads.

melenaboija 7y ago

I agree with what you are saying but I would also add that it will become harder to change as times goes by as more private interests are involved with it. Chrome is business for google and obviously will not want to change the situation, but also people with business on the Internet what want is a friendly and easy environtment which is what google is offering.