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> Either way, if every few months Chrome can genuinely churn out hundreds of APIs that developers genuinely want and use (a big caveat!) and Firefox/Safari can'

> Either way, if every few months Chrome can genuinely churn out hundreds of APIs that developers genuinely want and use (a big caveat!) and Firefox/Safari can't keep up, then that's game over. It very much is, and has been for a while: Google completely dominates all of web-related standards bodies. And the specs that are rushed to completion in Chrome are more likely than not to be fully authored by Googlers only (sometimes with egregious disregard for standards work, see WebHID [1]). [1] Issue https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/459#issuecomment-753864467 https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/459#is... and timeline https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27512354 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27512354

pimterry 5y ago
Ok, if we take this as given then non-Chromium is dead. Yikes. I'm not convinced it's a lost cause yet, but yes it looks like a very plausible future imo. Assuming that then, if we want healthy web standards then it sounds like the only option is to shut down Firefox et al ASAP (or make it another chromium wrapper) and spend that engineer time & money instead getting involved in these specs and Chromium development to try and provide non-Google input and ideas, and somehow transform Chromium itself into a community endeavour. If there's an inevitable chromium monopoly then that seems like the only choice. Unless something else blocks the chromium monopoly, e.g. Google antitrust of some sort, but that doesn't seem imminent (for Chrome specifically). A somewhat bleak future, but if this becomes inevitable then that seems like the best option unfortunately.
- dmitriid 5y ago
  I think that this may as well be a pendulum: many browsers, IE6 monopoly, many browsers, Chrome monopoly. We may yet swing back to many browsers at some point in the future :)

pimterry 5y ago

Ok, if we take this as given then non-Chromium is dead. Yikes. I'm not convinced it's a lost cause yet, but yes it looks like a very plausible future imo. Assuming that then, if we want healthy web standards then it sounds like the only option is to shut down Firefox et al ASAP (or make it another chromium wrapper) and spend that engineer time & money instead getting involved in these specs and Chromium development to try and provide non-Google input and ideas, and somehow transform Chromium itself into a community endeavour. If there's an inevitable chromium monopoly then that seems like the only choice. Unless something else blocks the chromium monopoly, e.g. Google antitrust of some sort, but that doesn't seem imminent (for Chrome specifically). A somewhat bleak future, but if this becomes inevitable then that seems like the best option unfortunately.

dmitriid 5y ago
I think that this may as well be a pendulum: many browsers, IE6 monopoly, many browsers, Chrome monopoly. We may yet swing back to many browsers at some point in the future :)