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> One part of why Microsoft's ideas didn't really catched on was that we developers just didn't get it. Most of us were amateurs and had no computer degree. Pe

> One part of why Microsoft's ideas didn't really catched on was that we developers just didn't get it. Most of us were amateurs and had no computer degree. Personally, I'd say it was mainly because we were tech geeks who, back then, actually believed in a web that should be accessible to as many different platforms as possible using as many different browsers as possible, not just Windows and IE users. In a sense, that notion prevailed: the web is ubiquitous, browser lock-in is considered a douche move and you can still access some really worthwhile sites even with rather simple means. In another sense, we all failed, lending our hands to help create the current privacy-invading, dark-patterned UX nightmare we're still trying to pass off as a reasonable way of making the world a better place. I never thought I'd lament the day Microsoft stopped making their own browser core. As a web developer, one less rendering engine to GAF about is nice. As a netizen, the Google dominance is going from unsettling to scary.

wayneftw 7y ago
Just because a common open source engine has been decided upon doesn’t mean there’s no competition or that no innovation can happen.
- arexxbifs 7y ago
  No, it doesn't. But with Microsoft, Google and Amazon all relying on Chromium, there's going to be massive pull in that direction no matter what. Together, these three companies will now, basically, control the desktop OS market, the browser market and the cloud market. I'm not exactly giddy with excitement about that.
  - wayneftw 7y ago
    No, this is incorrect. It’s open source. It’s like saying that because Microsoft Amazon and Google all use Linux - that we’ll have no innovation.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
jackcosgrove 7y ago
If the web's reliance on the Chromium code proves to be a hindrance, it will take a monumental effort to correct. Brendan Eich, speaking of Brave, said something to the effect that it would take hundreds of engineers years to build a new browser equivalent to Chromium in capability. For a free piece of software. I think it's more likely that a new communication paradigm will supplant the web than that a Chromium competitor will replace Chromium, just as the new smartphone/cloud computing platforms finally broke the Windows stranglehold. PCs are still dominated by Windows.
- stilisstuk 7y ago
  I don't get it. Firefox works great, maybe better
  - 1123581321 7y ago
    Firefox is built on a similar level of effort. Brendan Eich is talking about the effort required for a company to develop a new, full-featured browser engine to complete with Firefox and Chromium.
    - MaxBarraclough 7y ago
      It may be true that starting from scratch would be impractical, but it might be practical to take Firefox/Chromium and make deep changes, to the point that it's effectively another browser. Mozilla themselves have been doing this with Firefox. They've been replacing C++ by Rust (with the Servo rendering-engine project). They've replaced the JavaScript JIT more than once, if I recall correctly. We've already seen WebKit give rise to two divergent major browsers: Chrome and Safari.
      - acdha 7y ago
        The problem is keeping pace with the upstream: it's not that it's impossible but that it's very expensive — when Google forked WebKit they dedicated a large and very talented (i.e. expensive) engineering team to the project. The same could be done again but you're looking at companies like Microsoft, not startups.
_pmf_ 7y ago
> we're still trying to pass off as a reasonable way of making the world a better place. Outside of the SV bubble, this is seen as the creepy grandstanding that it is.
Spooky23 7y ago
I think the article missed the part where Microsoft basically went to sleep and stopped doing anything with the browser. Just like the 1st edition of Bill Gates book, Microsoft decided the internet thing wasn’t as interesting as whatever they had cooked up. To their credit, they figured out they were wrong.
- untog 7y ago
  It’s in there: > The final nail in the coffin was that after the release of Internet Explorer 6, Microsoft decided to tightly couple new Internet Explorer releases to Windows releases. So they dismantled the Internet Explorer team and integrated it into the Windows product team.
  - brnt 7y ago
    I recall obtaining a new version of IE was a happy occasion, from IE4 to 5 was such an improvement! Then 5.5! And then 6 came with XP and it was... the last release anybody really was eager for. I recall switching to Firefox not long after and I've not switched since.
- mixmastamyk 7y ago
  Even if they had they missed mobile as well, so IE likely would have suffered a similar fate.
- kingo55 7y ago
  IE6 was so dominant at the time there would have been little incentive to continue innovating rapidly. I also wonder if they realised they were just building infrastructure that competitors would use to supplant them. Already by 2001 and 2002, Google was starting to dominate search.
  - Spooky23 7y ago
    I’m sure that someone did, but My guess is that it was more about some internal political warfare than anything. Besides, enterprise customer adoption of browser based tech sold lots of SQL Server.
bluedino 7y ago
It just goes to show how tone-deaf most of Microsoft is, and always has been. They have a handful of products that dominate the market and everything else is a joke. And it seems like every good idea/invention they have, gets turned into a mess by marketing/management.
- arcticfox 7y ago
  Most tech companies have 1-5 successful products and the rest are all "jokes"
cptskippy 7y ago
> As a web developer, one less rendering engine to GAF about is nice I started out using Mozilla Communicator Suite, Phoenix, and now Firefox as my primary browser. I never defaulted to IE and never to Chrome but I have always strived to make everything I wrote work across as many browsers as possible. Something funny happened around IE 10, the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript all started running correctly on the first try on all browsers, even mobile. It was glorious for about a year or two then everything started to diverge again and with Mobile versions of browsers we're starting to head back towards the hell that was developing for the Web around 2004. There are certainly more platforms to juggle today but they're more similar than different at this point.
jcampbell1 7y ago
For me, it was Firebug not some noble agenda. Microsoft actually had some quite good debugging tools, but getting the tool chain setup was damn near impossible.
- uncle_j 7y ago
  I've been doing .NET dev for the last decade. I have no idea how to get the whole browser part of the toolchain working with Visual Studio. I just don't bother. The client side debugging is done with a browser that is basically Chrome (Brave these days). You can set up everything to go through VS but there I don't see any benefit in doing so.

wayneftw 7y ago

Just because a common open source engine has been decided upon doesn’t mean there’s no competition or that no innovation can happen.

arexxbifs 7y ago
No, it doesn't. But with Microsoft, Google and Amazon all relying on Chromium, there's going to be massive pull in that direction no matter what. Together, these three companies will now, basically, control the desktop OS market, the browser market and the cloud market. I'm not exactly giddy with excitement about that.
- wayneftw 7y ago
  No, this is incorrect. It’s open source. It’s like saying that because Microsoft Amazon and Google all use Linux - that we’ll have no innovation.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]

jackcosgrove 7y ago

If the web's reliance on the Chromium code proves to be a hindrance, it will take a monumental effort to correct. Brendan Eich, speaking of Brave, said something to the effect that it would take hundreds of engineers years to build a new browser equivalent to Chromium in capability. For a free piece of software. I think it's more likely that a new communication paradigm will supplant the web than that a Chromium competitor will replace Chromium, just as the new smartphone/cloud computing platforms finally broke the Windows stranglehold. PCs are still dominated by Windows.

stilisstuk 7y ago
I don't get it. Firefox works great, maybe better
- 1123581321 7y ago
  Firefox is built on a similar level of effort. Brendan Eich is talking about the effort required for a company to develop a new, full-featured browser engine to complete with Firefox and Chromium.
  - MaxBarraclough 7y ago
    It may be true that starting from scratch would be impractical, but it might be practical to take Firefox/Chromium and make deep changes, to the point that it's effectively another browser. Mozilla themselves have been doing this with Firefox. They've been replacing C++ by Rust (with the Servo rendering-engine project). They've replaced the JavaScript JIT more than once, if I recall correctly. We've already seen WebKit give rise to two divergent major browsers: Chrome and Safari.
    - acdha 7y ago
      The problem is keeping pace with the upstream: it's not that it's impossible but that it's very expensive — when Google forked WebKit they dedicated a large and very talented (i.e. expensive) engineering team to the project. The same could be done again but you're looking at companies like Microsoft, not startups.

_pmf_ 7y ago

> we're still trying to pass off as a reasonable way of making the world a better place. Outside of the SV bubble, this is seen as the creepy grandstanding that it is.

Spooky23 7y ago

I think the article missed the part where Microsoft basically went to sleep and stopped doing anything with the browser. Just like the 1st edition of Bill Gates book, Microsoft decided the internet thing wasn’t as interesting as whatever they had cooked up. To their credit, they figured out they were wrong.

untog 7y ago
It’s in there: > The final nail in the coffin was that after the release of Internet Explorer 6, Microsoft decided to tightly couple new Internet Explorer releases to Windows releases. So they dismantled the Internet Explorer team and integrated it into the Windows product team.
- brnt 7y ago
  I recall obtaining a new version of IE was a happy occasion, from IE4 to 5 was such an improvement! Then 5.5! And then 6 came with XP and it was... the last release anybody really was eager for. I recall switching to Firefox not long after and I've not switched since.
mixmastamyk 7y ago
Even if they had they missed mobile as well, so IE likely would have suffered a similar fate.
kingo55 7y ago
IE6 was so dominant at the time there would have been little incentive to continue innovating rapidly. I also wonder if they realised they were just building infrastructure that competitors would use to supplant them. Already by 2001 and 2002, Google was starting to dominate search.
- Spooky23 7y ago
  I’m sure that someone did, but My guess is that it was more about some internal political warfare than anything. Besides, enterprise customer adoption of browser based tech sold lots of SQL Server.

bluedino 7y ago

It just goes to show how tone-deaf most of Microsoft is, and always has been. They have a handful of products that dominate the market and everything else is a joke. And it seems like every good idea/invention they have, gets turned into a mess by marketing/management.

arcticfox 7y ago
Most tech companies have 1-5 successful products and the rest are all "jokes"

cptskippy 7y ago

> As a web developer, one less rendering engine to GAF about is nice I started out using Mozilla Communicator Suite, Phoenix, and now Firefox as my primary browser. I never defaulted to IE and never to Chrome but I have always strived to make everything I wrote work across as many browsers as possible. Something funny happened around IE 10, the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript all started running correctly on the first try on all browsers, even mobile. It was glorious for about a year or two then everything started to diverge again and with Mobile versions of browsers we're starting to head back towards the hell that was developing for the Web around 2004. There are certainly more platforms to juggle today but they're more similar than different at this point.

jcampbell1 7y ago

For me, it was Firebug not some noble agenda. Microsoft actually had some quite good debugging tools, but getting the tool chain setup was damn near impossible.

uncle_j 7y ago
I've been doing .NET dev for the last decade. I have no idea how to get the whole browser part of the toolchain working with Visual Studio. I just don't bother. The client side debugging is done with a browser that is basically Chrome (Brave these days). You can set up everything to go through VS but there I don't see any benefit in doing so.