6 ms·

Something is different in the arms race this time. Browser development is almost exclusively funded by advertising. Chrome, in the obvious way. Mozilla is fund

by ori_b 7y ago

Something is different in the arms race this time. Browser development is almost exclusively funded by advertising. Chrome, in the obvious way. Mozilla is funded entirely by Google. Safari is the only surviving exception.

tempodox 7y ago
There is also “Brave” but that seems to be a Crome clone.
- Wowfunhappy 7y ago
  Any "browser" without its own engine isn't really relevant here, as 95% of their product is being maintained by a third party. This includes Brave, Opera, Gnome Web, and now even Edge. (I'm admittedly not sure how I'd classify stuff like Pale Moon, which is primarily based off someone else's engine but now backports its own patches.)
  - kreetx 7y ago
    But isn't it? Google Chrome is trying to reduce ad blocking by changing webRequest API, but others that use the same engine can simply undo that change.
    - ksangeelee 7y ago
      I think there's more involved than simply undoing a change. Apart from the obvious tedium of chasing upstream code changes, the extensions themselves have to be installed from a willing (and trusted) repository. The chrome web store can omit extensions that use an API in an unsupported way. Brave already integrates ad-blocking at a lower level than the webRequest API, so this is less of an issue, but you sacrifice your choice in blocker. https://brave.com/improved-ad-blocker-performance/ https://brave.com/improved-ad-blocker-performance/ The recent Chromium’s Manifest v3 controversy around the overheads of the various extensions using the WebRequest API to inspect and potentially block undesired requests did not affect Brave as requests are processed natively, deep within the browser’s network stack.
    - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
      If we're thinking of traditional ad blockers, I can see where you're coming from. But really, I don't think that's in danger. There will always be forks, or binary patches, not to mention router/DNS level solutions. What I find much more scary is the prospect of the entire web stack becoming much more locked down as a consequence of both (1) ad blocker prevention and (2) the consolidated browser market. Think Encrypted Media Extensions, but for everything. If there were ten browsers in active use today, getting them all to agree to something like this would be almost impossible. Unfortunately, there's only 2–3 browsers, and if Firefox loses any more marketshare...
yborg 7y ago
And ironically Safari has the worst adblocking capability of the 3. Open source is the only effective weapon against corporate control of software.
- hombre_fatal 7y ago
  Safari's (Webkit's) declarative adblocker is really good while optimizing for performance and battery life. Have you tried 1Blocker X? Though, for fun, I've rolled my own Safari extension for content blocking. You get 90%+ of the way just concatenating lists of ad domains and feeding them into the blocker. But, for example, you can encode all of Easylist as content-blocker rules.
  - shawnz 7y ago
    Chrome is now moving to a declarative model and it is widely considered to be a downgrade purposely meant to stifle ad-blocking technology. I think the ideal system would support declarative and non-declarative modes (since a fully declarative system could never account for every possible use case).
    - hombre_fatal 7y ago
      I can see that given the choice between declarative rules vs. a "onRequest(req)" handler, almost every developer would just opt for the latter because it's more general and open-ended. And there's no pressure from users to choose the more restrictive but performant option because people basically have zero insight into what's killing their battery, much less which competitor is better in that regard. Given the gulf between Safari vs Chrome battery performance, I'm not all that convinced that the declarative api is pure downside like HN cynicism and Twitter outrage might suggest. I can agree that it would be nice to have competing implementations, but that's just the result of browsers being so complex that once your hobby horse feature is removed from one, you basically have nowhere to turn.
      - bangonkeyboard 7y ago
tyingq 7y ago
Chrome deprecating the most useful adblocking apis is a pretty strong shot across the bow signal. (manifest V3 if you haven't heard)
cblum 7y ago
> Mozilla is funded entirely by Google. Do you have a source for that?
- chacha2 7y ago
  https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2016/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2016/ > Mozilla Foundation philanthropic programs and activities are funded by public support from individual donors and foundations ($13.8M), as well as from royalties earned that are paid by the Mozilla Corporation ($8.3M). Total revenue and income support to the Mozilla Foundation in CY 2016 was $23.4M. > The majority of Mozilla Corporation’s revenue is from royalties earned through Firefox web browser search partnerships and distribution deals around the world. Mozilla Corporation’s revenue and income support for CY 2016 was $506M https://www.computerworld.com/article/2500712/google-to-pay-mozilla--300m-yearly-in-new-search-deal--says-report.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2500712/google-to-pay-... > Google to pay Mozilla $300M yearly in new search deal, says report
- jedberg 7y ago
  There isn't a source, because Mozilla doesn't break it down. They just say that they get almost all their revenue from "search royalty payments", and their two biggest deals are with Google and Baidu. You just have to guess how much comes from Google (90% market share worldwide) vs Baidu (the biggest search engine in China, which is also the largest single internet market but not as well funded as the US market).
- rifung 7y ago
  Only goes up to 2011 but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#Google https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#Google
nico_h 7y ago
It could be a good feature for Mozilla to be the best privacy protector. Firefox used to be the fastest, if they can be fast and the most private, they might be able to regain some mindshare and maybe market share. There’s just the problem of most of the funding coming from Google.
ori_b 7y ago
(Too late to edit: The bit about Firefox revenue should read 'almost entirely' -- they have some negligible revenue streams, but the vast majority of income is dependent on Google)
ilaksh 7y ago
Right and also encrypted media extensions are a new development. I think the solution is a new web protocol that does not require an OS in a box (browser). It will be supported by decentralized (mostly p2p) protocols. It probably will not have any JavaScript.
- ilaksh 7y ago
  Just another few thoughts on this: this new browser could support a much more limited and high performance default protocol. For example, markdown. Media and applications could be attached to links, but carefully controlled -- for example only displaying or loading media and applications when the user switches to that tab and launches them. Attached applications could be web assembly with I/O abilities such as a simple canvas-like UI. If you can find or create a suitable and high performance p2p system (or group of systems) for enabling people to load and publish these lightweight links, you could provide a useful and viable alternative to the traditional web that would be approachable by small development teams. Built in p2p search could be a killer feature for such a system. EDIT: made a github for it and submitted to HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20544892 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20544892

by ori_b 7y ago

tempodox 7y ago

There is also “Brave” but that seems to be a Crome clone.

Wowfunhappy 7y ago
Any "browser" without its own engine isn't really relevant here, as 95% of their product is being maintained by a third party. This includes Brave, Opera, Gnome Web, and now even Edge. (I'm admittedly not sure how I'd classify stuff like Pale Moon, which is primarily based off someone else's engine but now backports its own patches.)
- kreetx 7y ago
  But isn't it? Google Chrome is trying to reduce ad blocking by changing webRequest API, but others that use the same engine can simply undo that change.
  - ksangeelee 7y ago
    I think there's more involved than simply undoing a change. Apart from the obvious tedium of chasing upstream code changes, the extensions themselves have to be installed from a willing (and trusted) repository. The chrome web store can omit extensions that use an API in an unsupported way. Brave already integrates ad-blocking at a lower level than the webRequest API, so this is less of an issue, but you sacrifice your choice in blocker. https://brave.com/improved-ad-blocker-performance/ https://brave.com/improved-ad-blocker-performance/ The recent Chromium’s Manifest v3 controversy around the overheads of the various extensions using the WebRequest API to inspect and potentially block undesired requests did not affect Brave as requests are processed natively, deep within the browser’s network stack.
  - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
    If we're thinking of traditional ad blockers, I can see where you're coming from. But really, I don't think that's in danger. There will always be forks, or binary patches, not to mention router/DNS level solutions. What I find much more scary is the prospect of the entire web stack becoming much more locked down as a consequence of both (1) ad blocker prevention and (2) the consolidated browser market. Think Encrypted Media Extensions, but for everything. If there were ten browsers in active use today, getting them all to agree to something like this would be almost impossible. Unfortunately, there's only 2–3 browsers, and if Firefox loses any more marketshare...

yborg 7y ago

And ironically Safari has the worst adblocking capability of the 3. Open source is the only effective weapon against corporate control of software.

hombre_fatal 7y ago
Safari's (Webkit's) declarative adblocker is really good while optimizing for performance and battery life. Have you tried 1Blocker X? Though, for fun, I've rolled my own Safari extension for content blocking. You get 90%+ of the way just concatenating lists of ad domains and feeding them into the blocker. But, for example, you can encode all of Easylist as content-blocker rules.
- shawnz 7y ago
  Chrome is now moving to a declarative model and it is widely considered to be a downgrade purposely meant to stifle ad-blocking technology. I think the ideal system would support declarative and non-declarative modes (since a fully declarative system could never account for every possible use case).
  - hombre_fatal 7y ago
    I can see that given the choice between declarative rules vs. a "onRequest(req)" handler, almost every developer would just opt for the latter because it's more general and open-ended. And there's no pressure from users to choose the more restrictive but performant option because people basically have zero insight into what's killing their battery, much less which competitor is better in that regard. Given the gulf between Safari vs Chrome battery performance, I'm not all that convinced that the declarative api is pure downside like HN cynicism and Twitter outrage might suggest. I can agree that it would be nice to have competing implementations, but that's just the result of browsers being so complex that once your hobby horse feature is removed from one, you basically have nowhere to turn.
    - bangonkeyboard 7y ago

tyingq 7y ago

Chrome deprecating the most useful adblocking apis is a pretty strong shot across the bow signal. (manifest V3 if you haven't heard)

cblum 7y ago

> Mozilla is funded entirely by Google. Do you have a source for that?

chacha2 7y ago
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2016/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2016/ > Mozilla Foundation philanthropic programs and activities are funded by public support from individual donors and foundations ($13.8M), as well as from royalties earned that are paid by the Mozilla Corporation ($8.3M). Total revenue and income support to the Mozilla Foundation in CY 2016 was $23.4M. > The majority of Mozilla Corporation’s revenue is from royalties earned through Firefox web browser search partnerships and distribution deals around the world. Mozilla Corporation’s revenue and income support for CY 2016 was $506M https://www.computerworld.com/article/2500712/google-to-pay-mozilla--300m-yearly-in-new-search-deal--says-report.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2500712/google-to-pay-... > Google to pay Mozilla $300M yearly in new search deal, says report
jedberg 7y ago
There isn't a source, because Mozilla doesn't break it down. They just say that they get almost all their revenue from "search royalty payments", and their two biggest deals are with Google and Baidu. You just have to guess how much comes from Google (90% market share worldwide) vs Baidu (the biggest search engine in China, which is also the largest single internet market but not as well funded as the US market).
rifung 7y ago
Only goes up to 2011 but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#Google https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#Google

nico_h 7y ago

It could be a good feature for Mozilla to be the best privacy protector. Firefox used to be the fastest, if they can be fast and the most private, they might be able to regain some mindshare and maybe market share. There’s just the problem of most of the funding coming from Google.

ori_b 7y ago

(Too late to edit: The bit about Firefox revenue should read 'almost entirely' -- they have some negligible revenue streams, but the vast majority of income is dependent on Google)

ilaksh 7y ago

Right and also encrypted media extensions are a new development. I think the solution is a new web protocol that does not require an OS in a box (browser). It will be supported by decentralized (mostly p2p) protocols. It probably will not have any JavaScript.

ilaksh 7y ago
Just another few thoughts on this: this new browser could support a much more limited and high performance default protocol. For example, markdown. Media and applications could be attached to links, but carefully controlled -- for example only displaying or loading media and applications when the user switches to that tab and launches them. Attached applications could be web assembly with I/O abilities such as a simple canvas-like UI. If you can find or create a suitable and high performance p2p system (or group of systems) for enabling people to load and publish these lightweight links, you could provide a useful and viable alternative to the traditional web that would be approachable by small development teams. Built in p2p search could be a killer feature for such a system. EDIT: made a github for it and submitted to HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20544892 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20544892