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Right in that FAQ is the phrase "You may think of Gemini as "the web, stripped right back to its essence"". To a technical person, "foo, stripped right down to

Right in that FAQ is the phrase "You may think of Gemini as "the web, stripped right back to its essence"". To a technical person, "foo, stripped right down to its essence" means that this thing is directly competing with foo - or, at the very least, that it exists in the same realm as foo. Gemini does not exist in the same realm as the web, nor is it at all similar to "the web, stripped right back to its essence". The fact that occasionally fans might disclaim that it's only meant to replace "part of" the web is materially irrelevant - Gemini isn't capable of replacing any nontrivial fraction of it. (its fans claim it is, though - "I want to discard the parts of the web that Gemini does better, and explore other solutions for anything that’s left of the web which is worth keeping (hint: much of it is not).")[1] [1] https://drewdevault.com/2020/11/01/What-is-Gemini-anyway.html https://drewdevault.com/2020/11/01/What-is-Gemini-anyway.htm...

s5806533 5y ago
I will concede that Gemini folk sometimes have a rather narrow definition of what the "essence" of the web is, namely, that the web is basically just a medium for hypertext. In the early days of Tim Berners-Lee this was true, though. And I still think that hypertext (as opposed to "web applications") represents a nontrivial fraction of the web (see Wikipedia and, to a lesser degree, blogs). Drew Devault makes a very valid point: that the web today is at the mercy of Google, because it depends on browser technology that has become so complex that only Google (and maybe a foundation entirely dependent on Google) can deliver it. An ad company! So we (as humanity) have to find ways to replace the web, step by step. And Drew says it right there: "Gemini [...] addresses a subset of its use-cases better than the web does." And for the other use-cases (i.e., besides hypertext), other replacements have to be found. So I still think that the marketing is way more nuanced than you are saying.
- krapp 5y ago
  >Drew Devault makes a very valid point: that the web today is at the mercy of Google, because it depends on browser technology that has become so complex that only Google (and maybe a foundation entirely dependent on Google) can deliver it. Except all of that browser technology is open source. So none of it is actually at the mercy of Google. It's weird how a forum full of technologists, free software believers and millionaire entrepreneurs have decided that browser technology is so hard and complex that it would literally be more feasible to rebuild the entire web from scratch on completely different protocols, yet we'll have warp drives, self-driving cars and VR beamed directly into our brains by the end of the decade, and come hell or high water we'll put a blockchain on everything. It's not that hard because it's actually that hard, it's that hard because we want an excuse to abandon the web and browsers as a lost cause, because we're tired of it and its normality, and would rather look for still-green pastures elsewhere.
  - zepto 5y ago
    Are you seriously making the claim that web browsers are not hard and complex to build? Given that the source code is available, you might want to take a look. It may inform your answer.
    - krapp 5y ago
      > Are you seriously making the claim that web browsers are not hard and complex to build? No, I'm making the claim that web browsers are hard and complex, but not impossible and that it's weird how the tech community seems to have decided that it's impossible because it isn't simple.
      - s5806533 5y ago
        I don't get your polemics here. Where's the line between hard and impossible? It's no less impossible to build a web browser than it is to build pyramids, because both these things have been done before. But what does this mean? Why should we accept something that -- while theoretically not impossible -- is way harder and requires way more resources than necessary, and that is guided by the most pathological incentives (ad revenue)?
      - foxfluff 5y ago
        What is the point though? Yes, in theory it is possible to make yet another broken implementation of broken technology. Going all pedantic on Devault and armchairing "no but acshually" isn't really contributing to the discussion at all, nor does it undermine their argument.
  - lmm 5y ago
    Microsoft have literally abandoned maintaining their own browser engine. If staying independent of Google isn't affordable and worthwhile for them, who could it be affordable and worthwhile for?
    - krapp 5y ago
      Why do we have more than one fork of Linux? Why don't we all just admit that Ubuntu won and call it a day?

s5806533 5y ago

I will concede that Gemini folk sometimes have a rather narrow definition of what the "essence" of the web is, namely, that the web is basically just a medium for hypertext. In the early days of Tim Berners-Lee this was true, though. And I still think that hypertext (as opposed to "web applications") represents a nontrivial fraction of the web (see Wikipedia and, to a lesser degree, blogs). Drew Devault makes a very valid point: that the web today is at the mercy of Google, because it depends on browser technology that has become so complex that only Google (and maybe a foundation entirely dependent on Google) can deliver it. An ad company! So we (as humanity) have to find ways to replace the web, step by step. And Drew says it right there: "Gemini [...] addresses a subset of its use-cases better than the web does." And for the other use-cases (i.e., besides hypertext), other replacements have to be found. So I still think that the marketing is way more nuanced than you are saying.

krapp 5y ago
>Drew Devault makes a very valid point: that the web today is at the mercy of Google, because it depends on browser technology that has become so complex that only Google (and maybe a foundation entirely dependent on Google) can deliver it. Except all of that browser technology is open source. So none of it is actually at the mercy of Google. It's weird how a forum full of technologists, free software believers and millionaire entrepreneurs have decided that browser technology is so hard and complex that it would literally be more feasible to rebuild the entire web from scratch on completely different protocols, yet we'll have warp drives, self-driving cars and VR beamed directly into our brains by the end of the decade, and come hell or high water we'll put a blockchain on everything. It's not that hard because it's actually that hard, it's that hard because we want an excuse to abandon the web and browsers as a lost cause, because we're tired of it and its normality, and would rather look for still-green pastures elsewhere.
- zepto 5y ago
  Are you seriously making the claim that web browsers are not hard and complex to build? Given that the source code is available, you might want to take a look. It may inform your answer.
  - krapp 5y ago
    > Are you seriously making the claim that web browsers are not hard and complex to build? No, I'm making the claim that web browsers are hard and complex, but not impossible and that it's weird how the tech community seems to have decided that it's impossible because it isn't simple.
    - s5806533 5y ago
      I don't get your polemics here. Where's the line between hard and impossible? It's no less impossible to build a web browser than it is to build pyramids, because both these things have been done before. But what does this mean? Why should we accept something that -- while theoretically not impossible -- is way harder and requires way more resources than necessary, and that is guided by the most pathological incentives (ad revenue)?
    - foxfluff 5y ago
      What is the point though? Yes, in theory it is possible to make yet another broken implementation of broken technology. Going all pedantic on Devault and armchairing "no but acshually" isn't really contributing to the discussion at all, nor does it undermine their argument.
- lmm 5y ago
  Microsoft have literally abandoned maintaining their own browser engine. If staying independent of Google isn't affordable and worthwhile for them, who could it be affordable and worthwhile for?
  - krapp 5y ago
    Why do we have more than one fork of Linux? Why don't we all just admit that Ubuntu won and call it a day?