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This reeks of "oops we're sorry" described by Johnathan Nightingale (former General Manager and Vice President of the Firefox group) in his thread on how Google

This reeks of "oops we're sorry" described by Johnathan Nightingale (former General Manager and Vice President of the Firefox group) in his thread on how Google was sabotaging Mozilla: https://archive.vn/tgIH9 https://archive.vn/tgIH9 (or direct link, https://twitter.com/johnath/status/1116871237240852480 https://twitter.com/johnath/status/1116871237240852480) - "I'm sorry for the misrepresentation of Safari Tech Preview's compatibility score". This was intentional. Show these numbers at a large dev summit. Post an apology on a personal blog a week later. Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29228083 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29228083 (the mistake was noted before the summit, but wasn't even mentioned) - "it stated that Safari had jumped from a score of 64 => 85, when in fact what we should have had on the slide is is 64 => 92." Yup. It still shows 86 - "I hadn't seen any negative press or negative developer sentiment to this slide, but it clearly irked the Safari team." Any negative news presented by Chrome team is uncritically taken at face value and accepted as truth. This is very well known to the Chrome team and they are very happy to exploit this. - "Compatibility is a shared ecosystem problem. It makes no sense to me that we try and score 1-up points on Compatibility. Just because one browser might be on spec, it also means that same browser might also not be interoperable with other browsers and this means that developers have to deal with the difference irrespective if a browser is "technically correct"" Chrome should stop pretending they are good guys. They are not. They keep implementing increasingly Chrome-only APIs and ignoring any and all concerns about those APIs from Firefox and Safari. They couldn't care less if Chrome wasn't interoperable with other browsers because in their minds Chrome has already won. - "Longer term, I'm going to be directing my teams to focus more on broad browser support in our work and less on newer Chrome-first (/only?) features and I think our wider story should all be based on what users have today, and less on what they might support at some point in the future." This will never happen. "You have to run twice as fast just to keep up with Chrome" is an insanely successful strategy for Chrome. If anything, Chrome-only work will only accelerate.

pjmlp 5y ago
In a couple of years I expect FE requirements to list "ChromeOS development in X years" instead of plain Web skills.
wbobeirne 5y ago
This seems overly cynical. Did you read the post? The anxiety there seems genuine to me. If it really was intentional, then either the author is a sociopath, or I'm an easy mark. But I'd prefer to believe neither of those are the case.
- dmitriid 5y ago
  > This seems overly cynical. Did you read the post? I did. I've also read and seen a lot of what Google and Chrome have been doing for the past few years. And, to quote John Nightingale (do read his thread): --- start quote --- The question is not whether individual sidewalk labs people have pure motives. I know some of them, just like I know plenty on the Chrome team. They’re great people. But focus on the behaviour of the organism as a whole. At the macro level, google/alphabet is very intentional --- end quote ---
  - wbobeirne 5y ago
    Totally agree with that sentiment for group decisions (e.g. decisions on which APIs to support) but this is a blog post from an individual talking about their mistakes as an individual. They get my benefit of the doubt.
kinlan 5y ago
I think the number of API's we add to the platform will always keep increasing. We certainly see a big part of the web as enabling Apps to come to the web, and we do make sure (now) to have developers committing to using those APIs. I know that also frustrates a lot of people too. It's sad that it's got the point where the teams don't trust each other and it's clear that the perception is wider. I'm still hoping to change that around. I wrote the post to as clearly as possible document what happened for the avoidance of doubt because it was me who made the mistake. I'll accept your point of view, but I'm also comfortable with my side of this.
- eitland 5y ago
  I've nothing against Chrome developers, but if you think honestly about the web and Google, would it not be true that: - after Chrome was introduced, the web has gone from a healthy and steadily improving ecosystem to a monoculture? - cross browser compatibility has gone from steadily increasing as IE was replaced by other browsers to declining as people are testing only in Chrome - if Chrome "wins" it will it not be a matter of months before Google "unfortunately" have to cripple the extensions API? - do you really think that the development of new features in Chrome will continue at its current speed if Chrome "wins" or do you think it will be put on hold like IE6? (Remember, Google unlike Microsoft is famous for killing projects people love.) You don't have to answer me, but think about it. You are probably good people with good intentions, but isn't it a fair chance that you are getting used by management to do something you'd rather not have on your resume: killing the free and open web?
  - magicalist 5y ago
    > - cross browser compatibility has gone from steadily increasing as IE was replaced by other browsers to declining as people are testing only in Chrome The irony of highlighting this is that the subject for this story is a cross-browser test suite and the issue was that Chrome, Firefox, and Safari were more compatible than the published numbers suggested. There will always be cross browser bugs and so developers will always need to test everywhere, but the more mainstream features have compatibility rates like this in the first place the less often "works only in browser x" happens by accident.

pjmlp 5y ago

In a couple of years I expect FE requirements to list "ChromeOS development in X years" instead of plain Web skills.

wbobeirne 5y ago

This seems overly cynical. Did you read the post? The anxiety there seems genuine to me. If it really was intentional, then either the author is a sociopath, or I'm an easy mark. But I'd prefer to believe neither of those are the case.

dmitriid 5y ago
> This seems overly cynical. Did you read the post? I did. I've also read and seen a lot of what Google and Chrome have been doing for the past few years. And, to quote John Nightingale (do read his thread): --- start quote --- The question is not whether individual sidewalk labs people have pure motives. I know some of them, just like I know plenty on the Chrome team. They’re great people. But focus on the behaviour of the organism as a whole. At the macro level, google/alphabet is very intentional --- end quote ---
- wbobeirne 5y ago
  Totally agree with that sentiment for group decisions (e.g. decisions on which APIs to support) but this is a blog post from an individual talking about their mistakes as an individual. They get my benefit of the doubt.

kinlan 5y ago

I think the number of API's we add to the platform will always keep increasing. We certainly see a big part of the web as enabling Apps to come to the web, and we do make sure (now) to have developers committing to using those APIs. I know that also frustrates a lot of people too. It's sad that it's got the point where the teams don't trust each other and it's clear that the perception is wider. I'm still hoping to change that around. I wrote the post to as clearly as possible document what happened for the avoidance of doubt because it was me who made the mistake. I'll accept your point of view, but I'm also comfortable with my side of this.

eitland 5y ago
I've nothing against Chrome developers, but if you think honestly about the web and Google, would it not be true that: - after Chrome was introduced, the web has gone from a healthy and steadily improving ecosystem to a monoculture? - cross browser compatibility has gone from steadily increasing as IE was replaced by other browsers to declining as people are testing only in Chrome - if Chrome "wins" it will it not be a matter of months before Google "unfortunately" have to cripple the extensions API? - do you really think that the development of new features in Chrome will continue at its current speed if Chrome "wins" or do you think it will be put on hold like IE6? (Remember, Google unlike Microsoft is famous for killing projects people love.) You don't have to answer me, but think about it. You are probably good people with good intentions, but isn't it a fair chance that you are getting used by management to do something you'd rather not have on your resume: killing the free and open web?
- magicalist 5y ago
  > - cross browser compatibility has gone from steadily increasing as IE was replaced by other browsers to declining as people are testing only in Chrome The irony of highlighting this is that the subject for this story is a cross-browser test suite and the issue was that Chrome, Firefox, and Safari were more compatible than the published numbers suggested. There will always be cross browser bugs and so developers will always need to test everywhere, but the more mainstream features have compatibility rates like this in the first place the less often "works only in browser x" happens by accident.