4 ms·

I think any big company who does not like Google's dominance on the web would want to do that. The reason they all switch to a chromium engine is not that they

by DJHenk 6y ago

I think any big company who does not like Google's dominance on the web would want to do that. The reason they all switch to a chromium engine is not that they don't care, it's because it was too hard/expensive to develop their own engine. If Servo has any potential in that sense, I don't see why a company like Microsoft would not want to contribute to that.

brianush1 6y ago
Microsoft has made two working browser engines: Trident and EdgeHTML. They've killed both in favor of Chromium; I don't see how it would cost them less to develop Servo than to have kept working on EdgeHTML.
- Ericson2314 6y ago
  I said at the time that Microsoft should have stepped into to sponsor Firefox, and make a firefox-based IE. Surely between the two of them Chrome could get some better competition.
- gsnedders 6y ago
  EdgeHTML was a fork of Trident, as much as they liked to trumpet it as a new chapter. A fair bit did change, but it was far from a new browser engine. (Much longer ago, they were also responsible for Tasman.)
lovelearning 6y ago
I think MS thinks very differently. Some months ago, one of their PMs said: "It's time for @mozilla to get down from their philosophical ivory tower. The web is dominated by Chromium, if they really 'cared' about the web, they would be contributing instead of building a parallel universe that's used by less than five percent?" [1] [1] : https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-guy-mozilla-should-give-up-on-firefox-and-go-with-chromium-too/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-guy-mozilla-should-g...
- xyzzy_plugh 6y ago
  Wow, what a shitty attitude. Standards bodies are powerless if there's only one implementation.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - Ygg2 6y ago
    Beyond shitty. As if hiding behind Chromium will help them. I'm sure GOOG can't think of https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=62rAjp5Nr9g https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=62rAjp5Nr9g https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2020/02/21/google-warns-millions-of-microsoft-edge-users-to-switch-to-chrome/#235fd62d3549 https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2020/02/21/google-wa... Ways to mess with Chromium Edge. It's not like it's a company full of smart, engineers, capable of skirting around the law.
  - gridlockd 6y ago
    Ask yourself, why are "web standards" or "standards bodies" good? Why should they have "power"? The W3C held back the web platforms for years. What's the point of having an extremely complex standard that nobody else will ever implement anyway? Remember, it would take billions of dollars to implement a competitive browser and then you have to give it away for free. If even a trillion dollar company like Microsoft thinks it's better to team up with a competitor rather than implement HTML all by themselves, it really should make you think. Consider, there's only one Linux kernel, there's no "Linux standard", just one kernel - and the world runs on it. I don't see people running around complaining about how that's a threat, even though it's much harder to switch operating systems than browsers. Sure, there's POSIX, but that's a tiny subset of Linux features.
    - smabie 6y ago
      I wouldn't call POSIX a tiny subset of Linux features. POSIX makes up the vast majority of the kernel interfaces that applications actually use. Stuff like epoll and io_uring are the exception, not the rule.

by DJHenk 6y ago

brianush1 6y ago

Microsoft has made two working browser engines: Trident and EdgeHTML. They've killed both in favor of Chromium; I don't see how it would cost them less to develop Servo than to have kept working on EdgeHTML.

Ericson2314 6y ago
I said at the time that Microsoft should have stepped into to sponsor Firefox, and make a firefox-based IE. Surely between the two of them Chrome could get some better competition.
gsnedders 6y ago
EdgeHTML was a fork of Trident, as much as they liked to trumpet it as a new chapter. A fair bit did change, but it was far from a new browser engine. (Much longer ago, they were also responsible for Tasman.)

lovelearning 6y ago

I think MS thinks very differently. Some months ago, one of their PMs said: "It's time for @mozilla to get down from their philosophical ivory tower. The web is dominated by Chromium, if they really 'cared' about the web, they would be contributing instead of building a parallel universe that's used by less than five percent?" [1] [1] : https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-guy-mozilla-should-give-up-on-firefox-and-go-with-chromium-too/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-guy-mozilla-should-g...

xyzzy_plugh 6y ago
Wow, what a shitty attitude. Standards bodies are powerless if there's only one implementation.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Ygg2 6y ago
  Beyond shitty. As if hiding behind Chromium will help them. I'm sure GOOG can't think of https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=62rAjp5Nr9g https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=62rAjp5Nr9g https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2020/02/21/google-warns-millions-of-microsoft-edge-users-to-switch-to-chrome/#235fd62d3549 https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2020/02/21/google-wa... Ways to mess with Chromium Edge. It's not like it's a company full of smart, engineers, capable of skirting around the law.
- gridlockd 6y ago
  Ask yourself, why are "web standards" or "standards bodies" good? Why should they have "power"? The W3C held back the web platforms for years. What's the point of having an extremely complex standard that nobody else will ever implement anyway? Remember, it would take billions of dollars to implement a competitive browser and then you have to give it away for free. If even a trillion dollar company like Microsoft thinks it's better to team up with a competitor rather than implement HTML all by themselves, it really should make you think. Consider, there's only one Linux kernel, there's no "Linux standard", just one kernel - and the world runs on it. I don't see people running around complaining about how that's a threat, even though it's much harder to switch operating systems than browsers. Sure, there's POSIX, but that's a tiny subset of Linux features.
  - smabie 6y ago
    I wouldn't call POSIX a tiny subset of Linux features. POSIX makes up the vast majority of the kernel interfaces that applications actually use. Stuff like epoll and io_uring are the exception, not the rule.