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> The problem with that argument is that browsers don't compete on engines but on features, UX and integration Not always. Firefox lost much of its userbase no

> The problem with that argument is that browsers don't compete on engines but on features, UX and integration Not always. Firefox lost much of its userbase not because it had less features or integration or was failing to render pages. In fact it was the preferred browser for most sites, with devs targeting it and testing on it. It lost because the engine was just inferior, which made it slower than the competition.

concinds 4y ago
Yeah, you can extend my argument beyond webcompat to speed, security, etc. An engine that is better on these metrics is a better engine. My point (which I somewhat misstated) was that having the best engine is the bare minimum; it just brings you to the starting line. And if you don't have the best engine you'll always lose. (Sidenote: Evernote learned that lesson the hard way. Focus on core product, not marketing. Chrome's dominant, not just because of its marketing, but because it was a fundamentally superior product from the start; you can dominate a market with an inferior product based purely on marketing, as Evernote showed, but never durably). Hence why trying to compete on engines makes little sense to me. Since so many top corporations are contibuting to Chromium (Samsung, Intel, Microsoft, more), it's difficult to call it "Google's browser engine" anymore. The "engine competition" model makes sense if all engines are proprietary. Then, competition is the only way to push for improvements. But with every major browser engine open-source, it's better to concentrate efforts onto one engine. Imagine if every Gecko dev was contributing to Chromium instead of (somewhat) reinventing the wheel? Would Chrome not get faster/safer? It's a bit like if there were "multiple Linuxes", developed independently, that all rigidly had to be compatible with the same APIs/userland (/implement web standards). No, there's just one Linux. Google still wouldn't control the web (actually, they'd control it less if Mozilla's a stakeholder in Blink than with Mozilla doing their own thing and becoming increasingly irrelevant), since each browser dev can patch things into and out of Blink for their own browser (like Brave does); while still sharing all common contributions back with all other Chromium browsers. Win-win.

concinds 4y ago

Yeah, you can extend my argument beyond webcompat to speed, security, etc. An engine that is better on these metrics is a better engine. My point (which I somewhat misstated) was that having the best engine is the bare minimum; it just brings you to the starting line. And if you don't have the best engine you'll always lose. (Sidenote: Evernote learned that lesson the hard way. Focus on core product, not marketing. Chrome's dominant, not just because of its marketing, but because it was a fundamentally superior product from the start; you can dominate a market with an inferior product based purely on marketing, as Evernote showed, but never durably). Hence why trying to compete on engines makes little sense to me. Since so many top corporations are contibuting to Chromium (Samsung, Intel, Microsoft, more), it's difficult to call it "Google's browser engine" anymore. The "engine competition" model makes sense if all engines are proprietary. Then, competition is the only way to push for improvements. But with every major browser engine open-source, it's better to concentrate efforts onto one engine. Imagine if every Gecko dev was contributing to Chromium instead of (somewhat) reinventing the wheel? Would Chrome not get faster/safer? It's a bit like if there were "multiple Linuxes", developed independently, that all rigidly had to be compatible with the same APIs/userland (/implement web standards). No, there's just one Linux. Google still wouldn't control the web (actually, they'd control it less if Mozilla's a stakeholder in Blink than with Mozilla doing their own thing and becoming increasingly irrelevant), since each browser dev can patch things into and out of Blink for their own browser (like Brave does); while still sharing all common contributions back with all other Chromium browsers. Win-win.