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At this point I'm struggling to see much difference between the Microsoft of 20 years ago and the Google of today.

giancarlostoro 4y ago
I've said it before, Google Chrome is the modern IE in terms of pushing proprietary web solutions that block out the competition, I can't remember which services it was but a few times I've seen here on HN people complaining that new Google Products work only in Chrome, but if you fake the browser agent in Firefox, it works just the same, they are just blocking out other browsers, which is really bad, I wonder where that lands a company in ADA compliance if you cannot even access something in your browser due to some developer somewhere not thinking about other browsers.
- asdajksah2123 4y ago
  There are differences though. Anyone can take the Chromium web engine and build their own browser on top, with tremendous amounts of control. Heck, this is such an attractive proposition that even Microsoft has done this. While the mono culture of a Chromium driven web is a huge problem, it's not the same as the IE problem. The biggest mistake IMO was the Firefox open source project focusing on building a browser as opposed to a web engine. Even nodejs was created on Chromium (and the difficulty of building node on Gecko was the primary reason why MS chose Chromium over Gecko). I suspect if we want to avoid a Chromium monoculture, we will need a similar split like the Netscape > Firefox one, where someone pulls out the Gecko rendering engine and builds an open source product/business on top of it.
  - dmitriid 4y ago
    > Anyone can take the Chromium web engine and build their own browser on top, with tremendous amounts of control. No. There's no "tremendous amount of control". You're still ~100% reliant on Chrome to produce all the features. > where someone pulls out the Gecko rendering engine and builds an open source product/business on top of it. What would be that business? Browsers are free. On top of that: you've ripped out the rendering engine. Now what? You still have to update it, and develop it, and keep up with the rest of the industry.

I've said it before, Google Chrome is the modern IE in terms of pushing proprietary web solutions that block out the competition, I can't remember which services it was but a few times I've seen here on HN people complaining that new Google Products work only in Chrome, but if you fake the browser agent in Firefox, it works just the same, they are just blocking out other browsers, which is really bad, I wonder where that lands a company in ADA compliance if you cannot even access something in your browser due to some developer somewhere not thinking about other browsers.

asdajksah2123 4y ago
There are differences though. Anyone can take the Chromium web engine and build their own browser on top, with tremendous amounts of control. Heck, this is such an attractive proposition that even Microsoft has done this. While the mono culture of a Chromium driven web is a huge problem, it's not the same as the IE problem. The biggest mistake IMO was the Firefox open source project focusing on building a browser as opposed to a web engine. Even nodejs was created on Chromium (and the difficulty of building node on Gecko was the primary reason why MS chose Chromium over Gecko). I suspect if we want to avoid a Chromium monoculture, we will need a similar split like the Netscape > Firefox one, where someone pulls out the Gecko rendering engine and builds an open source product/business on top of it.
- dmitriid 4y ago
  > Anyone can take the Chromium web engine and build their own browser on top, with tremendous amounts of control. No. There's no "tremendous amount of control". You're still ~100% reliant on Chrome to produce all the features. > where someone pulls out the Gecko rendering engine and builds an open source product/business on top of it. What would be that business? Browsers are free. On top of that: you've ripped out the rendering engine. Now what? You still have to update it, and develop it, and keep up with the rest of the industry.