7 ms·

I don't think anyone will try. It's 'impossible' in the sense that both Microsoft and Opera threw in the towel and turned their browsers into Chromium skins. If

I don't think anyone will try. It's 'impossible' in the sense that both Microsoft and Opera threw in the towel and turned their browsers into Chromium skins. If even Microsoft can't pull it off, it seems unlikely anyone else is going to seriously try starting afresh. Mozilla have been successful in swapping out large chunks of their browser for superior replacements (for instance replacing the JIT, several times iirc), but that's not quite the same thing. Another point: why would a company bother? Amazon's 'Silk' is just another Chromium-based browser, but I imagine that works just fine for Amazon. What's the downside of taking Google's hard work and putting your branding on it?

shadowgovt 7y ago
Exactly. It's much like asking "Why would a company bother writing a new OS from scratch when they could instead become a new Linux distro?"
- afoxley 7y ago
  Like Google's Fuchsia, oh wait...
  - shadowgovt 7y ago
    Fuchsia seems to be an exception that proves the rule. And it doesn't find the rule wanting. Three years since it stealth-launched, and forward momentum on Fuchsia seems... Questionable?
    - lioeters 7y ago
      Fuchsia looks pretty active as far as commits go: https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/fuchsia/+log https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/fuchsia/+log It also seems I regularly see new posts about it on HN, with a generally positive reception and optimism among its users. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=fuchsia&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
      - skyfaller 7y ago
        The only piece of Fuchsia that's excited me so far is the Xi Editor, which seems to be developing rather slowly if not stalled out completely. https://github.com/xi-editor/xi-editor https://github.com/xi-editor/xi-editor (Yes, it's not part of Fuchsia anymore, but so far I haven't heard anything about the remaining parts of Fuchsia that makes me inclined to care about it until Google forces me to care.)
        MaxBarraclough 7y ago
        Looks ambitious, and happily there's some recent GitHub activity, but I already have Vim and Notepad++. What does Xi have that those two don't?
        skyfaller 7y ago
        It's just intended to be way faster than existing editors: "Incredibly high performance. All editing operations should commit and paint in under 16ms. The editor should never make you wait for anything." If it succeeded in that, I think it would pave the way for faster, less-bloated software in general, so I'm rooting for the project to succeed.
        MaxBarraclough 7y ago
        I like lightweight software, but performance isn't a problem in any modern text editor. Notepad++ and Vim are already light enough. Vim is 'real-time' responsive even over SSH. I don't see much room for improvement.
  - tjalfi 7y ago
    Google has their search, ads, and pending browser monopoly to fund their endeavors. Most companies don't.
cjsthompson 7y ago
"Google's hard work" is a dangerous lie. First Webkit is forked from KDE's KHTML, the bulk of the work has been done by them. And then as a free software project it's far from being worked on only by Google wage slaves.

shadowgovt 7y ago

Exactly. It's much like asking "Why would a company bother writing a new OS from scratch when they could instead become a new Linux distro?"

afoxley 7y ago
Like Google's Fuchsia, oh wait...
- shadowgovt 7y ago
  Fuchsia seems to be an exception that proves the rule. And it doesn't find the rule wanting. Three years since it stealth-launched, and forward momentum on Fuchsia seems... Questionable?
  - lioeters 7y ago
    Fuchsia looks pretty active as far as commits go: https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/fuchsia/+log https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/fuchsia/+log It also seems I regularly see new posts about it on HN, with a generally positive reception and optimism among its users. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=fuchsia&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
    - skyfaller 7y ago
      The only piece of Fuchsia that's excited me so far is the Xi Editor, which seems to be developing rather slowly if not stalled out completely. https://github.com/xi-editor/xi-editor https://github.com/xi-editor/xi-editor (Yes, it's not part of Fuchsia anymore, but so far I haven't heard anything about the remaining parts of Fuchsia that makes me inclined to care about it until Google forces me to care.)
      - MaxBarraclough 7y ago
        Looks ambitious, and happily there's some recent GitHub activity, but I already have Vim and Notepad++. What does Xi have that those two don't?
        skyfaller 7y ago
        It's just intended to be way faster than existing editors: "Incredibly high performance. All editing operations should commit and paint in under 16ms. The editor should never make you wait for anything." If it succeeded in that, I think it would pave the way for faster, less-bloated software in general, so I'm rooting for the project to succeed.
        MaxBarraclough 7y ago
        I like lightweight software, but performance isn't a problem in any modern text editor. Notepad++ and Vim are already light enough. Vim is 'real-time' responsive even over SSH. I don't see much room for improvement.
- tjalfi 7y ago
  Google has their search, ads, and pending browser monopoly to fund their endeavors. Most companies don't.

cjsthompson 7y ago

"Google's hard work" is a dangerous lie. First Webkit is forked from KDE's KHTML, the bulk of the work has been done by them. And then as a free software project it's far from being worked on only by Google wage slaves.