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I respect your opinion but honestly fragmentation sucks. I wish there was even more consolidation - ever use a power drill? 7 different battery types non compat

I respect your opinion but honestly fragmentation sucks. I wish there was even more consolidation - ever use a power drill? 7 different battery types non compatible with each other. On a related note I’m happy usb seems to be the general connector winner (though it’s certainly not without fault). What would the average consumer gain if there were say, 10 different browser engines equally popular? Chromium is open source and you can easily disable features you disagree with. Don’t see the downside. Fork it and add functionality you’d like, like Brave.

marricks 4y ago
A lot of if there was an independent web consortium which agreed on standards. Which, hey, we do have and the more power chromium gets the more Google can just ignore that.
mike_hock 4y ago
The same the average user gains from having 10 manufacturers to choose from when buying standardized USB connectors.
- endisneigh 4y ago
  More browser engines does not imply standardization. Would you prefer the 2000s when you had your choice of dozens of power connectors for cell phones? There’s a reason the EU is mandating USB-C. Corporations have no reason and historically will not standardize amongst themselves for most things unless there’s a single winner.
  - cowtools 4y ago
    Completely backwards reasoning here. The protocols (standards) and implementations are to be considered separate.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - fsckboy 4y ago
    More browser engines does not imply standardization. There’s a reason the EU is mandating USB-C when you can plug your USB-C internet into either chrome or firefox without thinking about it, you have standardized.
xypage 4y ago
I'm finding it hard to give you the benefit of the doubt because it really sounds like you're advocating for a Google monopoly, which doesn't help anyone. Sure having a bunch of different battery types is annoying but in that case either you should find a brand you trust and stick with them, or brands have fragmentation within themselves which is a different issue altogether. The "fragmentation" you're talking about here is competition though, there isn't really any downside to having a bunch of different popular browsers and the upside is that none of them get to do anything crazy knowing there's no serious alternative so you can't leave. Google is already invasive of privacy, I can only imagine it'd be even worse if they didn't feel like there was significant risk of people switching browsers because nothing else was popular.
- endisneigh 4y ago
  Google is not really the point. The point is that there’s a single standard. Doesn’t matter who’s it is to me. > The "fragmentation" you're talking about here is competition though, there isn't really any downside to having a bunch of different popular browsers and the upside is that none of them get to do anything crazy knowing there's no serious alternative so you can't leave. If this is your opinion then what difference does it make if there’s a monopoly? You can use Firefox or Safari no? Not to mention chromium is open source. Anyone can fork it, like Brave in FTA. I don’t see any downsides, given that you can disable and features you object to.
  - garblegarble 4y ago
    >The point is that there’s a single standard An implementation isn't a standard, though... and the concern is that Google are using their dominance here to push more half-baked ideas (some of which they then discard, see HTTP2 Push)
    - untitaker_ 4y ago
      An implementation isn't a standard, yet reference implementations exist, and yet the WHATWG standards are written in pseudocode.
bombcar 4y ago
I'm glad there are multiple different power-tool manufacturers, and I'm not entirely sure there'd be as much competition if they were all forced to use one battery connector. (You can buy adapters if you want, but it's generally not worth it).
- endisneigh 4y ago
  Why are you glad that there are multiple battery connectors? Makes no sense to me. It’s like disagreeing with AA batteries. It’s like electric cars having different chargers and no standard.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Because the companies can develop different toolsets that do different things (the weight/power tradeoff for one, some battery connectors allow more than just voltage to cross, but also information and the tool can work with the charger/battery to produce better power), and for me the actual downsides have been minor or none. Even construction guys often have a huge mix of various tool brand and battery types and it's sometimes a minor annoyance. And you'll notice that AA batteries are almost universally ... gone; replaced with built-in batteries or custom-wrapped lithium batteries. Standards are great when things are calmed down, but when there's rapid advance they can cause their own issues (we saw this in the wireless world). Even the electric charger for cars thing runs into the limits of the standard (the fastest charging is almost always non-standardized). Having a "baseline" standard for those could be nice, something like we have with USB, but even that has its annoying problems.
    - smegsicle 4y ago
      long live 18650
    - bb88 4y ago
      > And you'll notice that AA batteries are almost universally ... gone; replaced with built-in batteries or custom-wrapped lithium batteries. Ever open up a Dewalt battery pack? It's a circuit board and a whole bunch of 18650's. All of them are 3.7 V. What's different is the amount of power they supply and the energy they hold, how fast they can recharged, etc. But we have that with the AA/A/C/D standard as well. Some batteries can hold more energy, some can deliver more current for a longer time, etc. NiCad, Alkaline, NiMh... etc.
pawelk 4y ago
> ever use a power drill? 7 different battery types non compatible with each other. Battery is the proprietary part. The engine (battery + motor) makes it spin, but for the purpose of making a hole or driving a screw one can use a wide array of standardized bits from various manufacturers. You may need an SDS adapter (one way or the other) and that's it. Same bits will even work with a hand cranked drill press built 100 years ago.
michaelmrose 4y ago
There is some consolidation among power tools https://toolguyd.com/tool-brands-corporate-affiliations/ https://toolguyd.com/tool-brands-corporate-affiliations/ They still screw you on batteries and indeed would do so harder if there were fewer companies. Instead of incompatible batteries per brand it would be per year. Sorry sir that's a 2022 tool it can't use 2021 batteries. You can either ask congress to establish a standard, start a power tool company that supports more brands with adapters, or basically suck it up because selling batteries way over cost is extremely profitable and nobody wants actual competition in that space. The one thing you don't want is consolidation. Likewise you think you want consolidation among browser engines but you really don't because it gives the vendor future leverage to fuck you.
nocman 4y ago
The point you seem to be missing is that Chromium isn't a standard. If you want to reduce fragmentation while avoiding having one entity with too much control, the solution is fair setting of web standards and multiple browser implementations from different entities. Requiring everyone to "just fork Chromium" would leave far too much power in the hands of Google (as if they didn't have far too much power already).
jrochkind1 4y ago
> ever use a power drill? 7 different battery types non compatible with each other. OK, but do you think you would be well-served if this problem were solved by there being only ONE manufacturer of power drills, take what they give you at the price they charge or nothing? It would be one way of solving the problem of lack of standardization of power drill batteries. It is the analogy of what you are speaking in favor of by analogy. The better solution might be multiple drill manufacturers agreeing on a battery standard to all use together, so their batteries can be interchangeable, but you still have your choice of different competing drill and battery manufacturers. What would be the analogy with browsers, do you think?
- eropple 4y ago
  > What would be the analogy with browsers, do you think? It wouldn't be "use a single browser engine codebase owned by a single company", and that does seem to be the point advocated for here.
- bb88 4y ago
  > OK, but do you think you would be well-served if this problem were solved by there being only ONE manufacturer of power drills, take what they give you at the price they charge or nothing? Imagine having 20 different gas guzzling cars with 20 different proprietary fuel inlets. If you buy an Audi say, you'd have to go to the Audi refilling station. > What would be the analogy with browsers, do you think? There's no need for analogy -- we've experienced this in the past, e.g., MS ActiveX and other Internet Explorer bugs (or features). There's also the proprietary web, e.g. SilverLight and Flash, before HTML5 Canvas came along. And then HTML5 was a branding effort. Browsers needed to support it to be marketable to the general public. Things just started working again without needing to install plugins or to keep plugins up to date (Flash) -- it was a better web. The W3C could do this if the web gets too fragmented again.
  - godelski 4y ago
    What a strange argument. The diversity in cars helped set the universality in the gas port. The same thing is happening with electric vehicles. Yeah, there are some proprietary ones like Tesla, but as more manufacturers have gotten into the space there have become standards as companies realize that a standard charging port helps them beat Tesla (being a united force). Network effects are real.
brnt 4y ago
Fragmentation sucks, but code monopoly even more. A healthy ecosystem needs a plurality of implementations, or Chromium needs to come under committee control. (W3C? Something like the C++ standards committee.)

marricks 4y ago

A lot of if there was an independent web consortium which agreed on standards. Which, hey, we do have and the more power chromium gets the more Google can just ignore that.

mike_hock 4y ago

The same the average user gains from having 10 manufacturers to choose from when buying standardized USB connectors.

endisneigh 4y ago
More browser engines does not imply standardization. Would you prefer the 2000s when you had your choice of dozens of power connectors for cell phones? There’s a reason the EU is mandating USB-C. Corporations have no reason and historically will not standardize amongst themselves for most things unless there’s a single winner.
- cowtools 4y ago
  Completely backwards reasoning here. The protocols (standards) and implementations are to be considered separate.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- fsckboy 4y ago
  More browser engines does not imply standardization. There’s a reason the EU is mandating USB-C when you can plug your USB-C internet into either chrome or firefox without thinking about it, you have standardized.

xypage 4y ago

I'm finding it hard to give you the benefit of the doubt because it really sounds like you're advocating for a Google monopoly, which doesn't help anyone. Sure having a bunch of different battery types is annoying but in that case either you should find a brand you trust and stick with them, or brands have fragmentation within themselves which is a different issue altogether. The "fragmentation" you're talking about here is competition though, there isn't really any downside to having a bunch of different popular browsers and the upside is that none of them get to do anything crazy knowing there's no serious alternative so you can't leave. Google is already invasive of privacy, I can only imagine it'd be even worse if they didn't feel like there was significant risk of people switching browsers because nothing else was popular.

endisneigh 4y ago
Google is not really the point. The point is that there’s a single standard. Doesn’t matter who’s it is to me. > The "fragmentation" you're talking about here is competition though, there isn't really any downside to having a bunch of different popular browsers and the upside is that none of them get to do anything crazy knowing there's no serious alternative so you can't leave. If this is your opinion then what difference does it make if there’s a monopoly? You can use Firefox or Safari no? Not to mention chromium is open source. Anyone can fork it, like Brave in FTA. I don’t see any downsides, given that you can disable and features you object to.
- garblegarble 4y ago
  >The point is that there’s a single standard An implementation isn't a standard, though... and the concern is that Google are using their dominance here to push more half-baked ideas (some of which they then discard, see HTTP2 Push)
  - untitaker_ 4y ago
    An implementation isn't a standard, yet reference implementations exist, and yet the WHATWG standards are written in pseudocode.

bombcar 4y ago

I'm glad there are multiple different power-tool manufacturers, and I'm not entirely sure there'd be as much competition if they were all forced to use one battery connector. (You can buy adapters if you want, but it's generally not worth it).

endisneigh 4y ago
Why are you glad that there are multiple battery connectors? Makes no sense to me. It’s like disagreeing with AA batteries. It’s like electric cars having different chargers and no standard.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Because the companies can develop different toolsets that do different things (the weight/power tradeoff for one, some battery connectors allow more than just voltage to cross, but also information and the tool can work with the charger/battery to produce better power), and for me the actual downsides have been minor or none. Even construction guys often have a huge mix of various tool brand and battery types and it's sometimes a minor annoyance. And you'll notice that AA batteries are almost universally ... gone; replaced with built-in batteries or custom-wrapped lithium batteries. Standards are great when things are calmed down, but when there's rapid advance they can cause their own issues (we saw this in the wireless world). Even the electric charger for cars thing runs into the limits of the standard (the fastest charging is almost always non-standardized). Having a "baseline" standard for those could be nice, something like we have with USB, but even that has its annoying problems.
  - smegsicle 4y ago
    long live 18650
  - bb88 4y ago
    > And you'll notice that AA batteries are almost universally ... gone; replaced with built-in batteries or custom-wrapped lithium batteries. Ever open up a Dewalt battery pack? It's a circuit board and a whole bunch of 18650's. All of them are 3.7 V. What's different is the amount of power they supply and the energy they hold, how fast they can recharged, etc. But we have that with the AA/A/C/D standard as well. Some batteries can hold more energy, some can deliver more current for a longer time, etc. NiCad, Alkaline, NiMh... etc.

pawelk 4y ago

> ever use a power drill? 7 different battery types non compatible with each other. Battery is the proprietary part. The engine (battery + motor) makes it spin, but for the purpose of making a hole or driving a screw one can use a wide array of standardized bits from various manufacturers. You may need an SDS adapter (one way or the other) and that's it. Same bits will even work with a hand cranked drill press built 100 years ago.

michaelmrose 4y ago

There is some consolidation among power tools https://toolguyd.com/tool-brands-corporate-affiliations/ https://toolguyd.com/tool-brands-corporate-affiliations/ They still screw you on batteries and indeed would do so harder if there were fewer companies. Instead of incompatible batteries per brand it would be per year. Sorry sir that's a 2022 tool it can't use 2021 batteries. You can either ask congress to establish a standard, start a power tool company that supports more brands with adapters, or basically suck it up because selling batteries way over cost is extremely profitable and nobody wants actual competition in that space. The one thing you don't want is consolidation. Likewise you think you want consolidation among browser engines but you really don't because it gives the vendor future leverage to fuck you.

nocman 4y ago

The point you seem to be missing is that Chromium isn't a standard. If you want to reduce fragmentation while avoiding having one entity with too much control, the solution is fair setting of web standards and multiple browser implementations from different entities. Requiring everyone to "just fork Chromium" would leave far too much power in the hands of Google (as if they didn't have far too much power already).

jrochkind1 4y ago

> ever use a power drill? 7 different battery types non compatible with each other. OK, but do you think you would be well-served if this problem were solved by there being only ONE manufacturer of power drills, take what they give you at the price they charge or nothing? It would be one way of solving the problem of lack of standardization of power drill batteries. It is the analogy of what you are speaking in favor of by analogy. The better solution might be multiple drill manufacturers agreeing on a battery standard to all use together, so their batteries can be interchangeable, but you still have your choice of different competing drill and battery manufacturers. What would be the analogy with browsers, do you think?

eropple 4y ago
> What would be the analogy with browsers, do you think? It wouldn't be "use a single browser engine codebase owned by a single company", and that does seem to be the point advocated for here.
bb88 4y ago
> OK, but do you think you would be well-served if this problem were solved by there being only ONE manufacturer of power drills, take what they give you at the price they charge or nothing? Imagine having 20 different gas guzzling cars with 20 different proprietary fuel inlets. If you buy an Audi say, you'd have to go to the Audi refilling station. > What would be the analogy with browsers, do you think? There's no need for analogy -- we've experienced this in the past, e.g., MS ActiveX and other Internet Explorer bugs (or features). There's also the proprietary web, e.g. SilverLight and Flash, before HTML5 Canvas came along. And then HTML5 was a branding effort. Browsers needed to support it to be marketable to the general public. Things just started working again without needing to install plugins or to keep plugins up to date (Flash) -- it was a better web. The W3C could do this if the web gets too fragmented again.
- godelski 4y ago
  What a strange argument. The diversity in cars helped set the universality in the gas port. The same thing is happening with electric vehicles. Yeah, there are some proprietary ones like Tesla, but as more manufacturers have gotten into the space there have become standards as companies realize that a standard charging port helps them beat Tesla (being a united force). Network effects are real.

brnt 4y ago

Fragmentation sucks, but code monopoly even more. A healthy ecosystem needs a plurality of implementations, or Chromium needs to come under committee control. (W3C? Something like the C++ standards committee.)