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The difference being that Chrome is open source (ok fine, Chrome is closed source but the important parts like the rendering engine are open source as Chromium)

The difference being that Chrome is open source (ok fine, Chrome is closed source but the important parts like the rendering engine are open source as Chromium). So they can't lock anyone into anything. If they try that they'll just get forked. Indeed we already have Edge as a well-maintained fork. Which isn't to say that Safari and especially Firefox aren't important drivers of competition. But the situation is nothing like the situation with IE.

mrtksn 4y ago
Of course they can, it's about the marketshare and not the code. They can make some part of the browser running in their cloud services and no matter how much you look into the Chromium code the websites which support this will run in Chrome only. Why would websites support this? Well, it can provide good rankings in search or some other goodie like speeding up the loading times through Google CDN or something and works for %90 of the people(because they use Chrome). Once enough websites integrate this, it's over.
sbuk 4y ago
Chrome uses the blink engine, which is a fork of Webkit, which is open source.
- kimixa 4y ago
  Which in turn was a fork of khtml
  - sbuk 4y ago
    I don't see what relevance this has to the discussion.
    - dcow 4y ago
      You don't see how adding another parent node to browser engine code lineage is relevant in a subthread about browser engine code lineage?
      - sbuk 4y ago
        I'm the OP. I'm questioning the relevance, which is in response to the assertion that "The difference being that Chrome is open source (ok fine, Chrome is closed source but the important parts like the rendering engine are open source as Chromium)". My aim is to point out that WebKit is also open source, and that the engine being touted by the GP is actually a fork of Webkit. Its provenance in this case irrelevant.
    - kimixa 4y ago
      Just pointing out there's a whole family of HTML engines, and Webkit wasn't the origin. It's also likely that it's the reason why Webkit is GPL, and we're able to have this discussion. In my experience, Apple haven't exactly been very open-source friendly - I know working with them there's a rejection of any GPL dependencies, even if well separated and unmodified, or even just tools used in the build process if they're GPL3+. I don't doubt if Apple developed a html engine from scratch it would use a different license, and the entire landscape of browsers would look very different today.
    - MayeulC 4y ago
      About as relevant as the parent... Not very relevant, but since the parent gives a short overview of browser engine history, we might as well point out that it started with the then-excellent khtml from the KDE project, that powers konqueror. That's little known, and a very interesting history tidbit.
  - babypuncher 4y ago
    I always knew Konquerer would eventually take over the browser market.
- kajecounterhack 4y ago
  Up until forking, Google was the largest contributor to Webkit. Google made Blink open source as well.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    WebKit is just as open source as Blink.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
ssss11 4y ago
There is lock in it’s just more subtle than the IE situation. Have you seen the chromium codebase? It may be open source but no individuals or small teams would be able to manage a competing product, you’d need huge investment to compete. There’s a barrier to entry all the same. Plus keeping up with the constant updates while trying to build a competitor…
- shkkmo 4y ago
  This point doesn't make any sense. The standards and functionality that are required in a modern browser are already far beyond what "an individual or small team" could build from scratch. The existence of Chromium absolutely makes it much, much more feasible to launch a Chrome competitor than if Chrome was entirely closed source.
  - kitsunesoba 4y ago
    Anything forked from Chromium can’t be significantly different from Chromium, because any change of that nature increases divergence from Chromium and makes it more difficult to keep pace with the firehose of changes being pumped out daily by Google’s massive Chrome/Blink team. It means that forks can never be anything but mostly-cosmetic reskins unless the party forking sinks resources equally large as Google’s into the fork, which gives Google power to shape the web as they please unopposed.
    - cassianoleal 4y ago
      > unless the party forking sinks resources equally large as Google’s into the fork, which gives Google power to shape the web as they please unopposed. I imagine even this already very unlikely outcome would also depend on said fork having a big slice of market share before they even try to drift away from Chromium, otherwise it won't have any effect and will likely die exactly because of said differences.
      - kitsunesoba 4y ago
        That's true. No matter the situation, the fact that Chromium/Blink is open source changes little due to the sheer amount of power Google wields.
WorldMaker 4y ago
Have you ever seen a serious "fork war"? Open Source may be possible to fork, but that isn't a guarantee that everything will be hunky dory after a hard fork. The drama and chaos of "we need a trustworthy fork" after a bad actor does something unsociable can be awful (especially if that bad actor remains in play). Security/safety/IP audits of past code pre-fork after a major fork has become necessary isn't free or cheap and takes resources. Drama can draw weird boundaries between project attempts and create a lot of internecine fighting among the "survivors" of the "upstream crash". There's so much sociopolitics that may be involved. Open source projects still involve a lot of people, at the end of the day, not just code. Open source applications have died in a fork war. The situation is different from IE, but there's still a lot of similarities and open source isn't necessarily the balm it appears to be. They code may still "be there", but code still needs people to believe in it/trust it/work on it.
cptskippy 4y ago
> But the situation is nothing like the situation with IE. Google isn't trying to kill the web and grow desktop App development, so yes it's different. And also people weren't complaining about Internet Explorer while it was innovative and competing against Netscape Navigator with annual releases. It was after 5 years of stagnation, not supporting new W3C standards, and unfixed bugs. Google learned from Microsoft's mistakes. They participated in standards, they update often, and resolve bugs quickly. Everything Microsoft didn't do. They also implement new features outside of standards but just as temporary experiments mind you. If developers happen to adopt them and implement them on their sites, well Google's hands are tied and y'all might as well make them standards (e.g. SPDY, QUIC). Or, because the control the standards process they can propose a change to a private list, push it to WHATWG and get representatives from Apple and Firefox to pull it into the "living" standard without any public discourse or feedback (e.g. removing alert();). This isn't to say everything they're doing is bad, but that doesn't mean they aren't working in their own self interest.
dmitriid 4y ago
> If they try that they'll just get forked. "just" Will they also "just" fork search monopoly, and web's most visited properties like youtube? > Indeed we already have Edge as a well-maintained fork. Indeed we have a Chrome re-skin with very few differences because even Microsoft couldn't maintain a browser.

mrtksn 4y ago

Of course they can, it's about the marketshare and not the code. They can make some part of the browser running in their cloud services and no matter how much you look into the Chromium code the websites which support this will run in Chrome only. Why would websites support this? Well, it can provide good rankings in search or some other goodie like speeding up the loading times through Google CDN or something and works for %90 of the people(because they use Chrome). Once enough websites integrate this, it's over.

sbuk 4y ago

Chrome uses the blink engine, which is a fork of Webkit, which is open source.

kimixa 4y ago
Which in turn was a fork of khtml
- sbuk 4y ago
  I don't see what relevance this has to the discussion.
  - dcow 4y ago
    You don't see how adding another parent node to browser engine code lineage is relevant in a subthread about browser engine code lineage?
    - sbuk 4y ago
      I'm the OP. I'm questioning the relevance, which is in response to the assertion that "The difference being that Chrome is open source (ok fine, Chrome is closed source but the important parts like the rendering engine are open source as Chromium)". My aim is to point out that WebKit is also open source, and that the engine being touted by the GP is actually a fork of Webkit. Its provenance in this case irrelevant.
  - kimixa 4y ago
    Just pointing out there's a whole family of HTML engines, and Webkit wasn't the origin. It's also likely that it's the reason why Webkit is GPL, and we're able to have this discussion. In my experience, Apple haven't exactly been very open-source friendly - I know working with them there's a rejection of any GPL dependencies, even if well separated and unmodified, or even just tools used in the build process if they're GPL3+. I don't doubt if Apple developed a html engine from scratch it would use a different license, and the entire landscape of browsers would look very different today.
  - MayeulC 4y ago
    About as relevant as the parent... Not very relevant, but since the parent gives a short overview of browser engine history, we might as well point out that it started with the then-excellent khtml from the KDE project, that powers konqueror. That's little known, and a very interesting history tidbit.
- babypuncher 4y ago
  I always knew Konquerer would eventually take over the browser market.
kajecounterhack 4y ago
Up until forking, Google was the largest contributor to Webkit. Google made Blink open source as well.
- scarface74 4y ago
  WebKit is just as open source as Blink.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]

ssss11 4y ago

There is lock in it’s just more subtle than the IE situation. Have you seen the chromium codebase? It may be open source but no individuals or small teams would be able to manage a competing product, you’d need huge investment to compete. There’s a barrier to entry all the same. Plus keeping up with the constant updates while trying to build a competitor…

shkkmo 4y ago
This point doesn't make any sense. The standards and functionality that are required in a modern browser are already far beyond what "an individual or small team" could build from scratch. The existence of Chromium absolutely makes it much, much more feasible to launch a Chrome competitor than if Chrome was entirely closed source.
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  Anything forked from Chromium can’t be significantly different from Chromium, because any change of that nature increases divergence from Chromium and makes it more difficult to keep pace with the firehose of changes being pumped out daily by Google’s massive Chrome/Blink team. It means that forks can never be anything but mostly-cosmetic reskins unless the party forking sinks resources equally large as Google’s into the fork, which gives Google power to shape the web as they please unopposed.
  - cassianoleal 4y ago
    > unless the party forking sinks resources equally large as Google’s into the fork, which gives Google power to shape the web as they please unopposed. I imagine even this already very unlikely outcome would also depend on said fork having a big slice of market share before they even try to drift away from Chromium, otherwise it won't have any effect and will likely die exactly because of said differences.
    - kitsunesoba 4y ago
      That's true. No matter the situation, the fact that Chromium/Blink is open source changes little due to the sheer amount of power Google wields.

WorldMaker 4y ago

Have you ever seen a serious "fork war"? Open Source may be possible to fork, but that isn't a guarantee that everything will be hunky dory after a hard fork. The drama and chaos of "we need a trustworthy fork" after a bad actor does something unsociable can be awful (especially if that bad actor remains in play). Security/safety/IP audits of past code pre-fork after a major fork has become necessary isn't free or cheap and takes resources. Drama can draw weird boundaries between project attempts and create a lot of internecine fighting among the "survivors" of the "upstream crash". There's so much sociopolitics that may be involved. Open source projects still involve a lot of people, at the end of the day, not just code. Open source applications have died in a fork war. The situation is different from IE, but there's still a lot of similarities and open source isn't necessarily the balm it appears to be. They code may still "be there", but code still needs people to believe in it/trust it/work on it.

cptskippy 4y ago

> But the situation is nothing like the situation with IE. Google isn't trying to kill the web and grow desktop App development, so yes it's different. And also people weren't complaining about Internet Explorer while it was innovative and competing against Netscape Navigator with annual releases. It was after 5 years of stagnation, not supporting new W3C standards, and unfixed bugs. Google learned from Microsoft's mistakes. They participated in standards, they update often, and resolve bugs quickly. Everything Microsoft didn't do. They also implement new features outside of standards but just as temporary experiments mind you. If developers happen to adopt them and implement them on their sites, well Google's hands are tied and y'all might as well make them standards (e.g. SPDY, QUIC). Or, because the control the standards process they can propose a change to a private list, push it to WHATWG and get representatives from Apple and Firefox to pull it into the "living" standard without any public discourse or feedback (e.g. removing alert();). This isn't to say everything they're doing is bad, but that doesn't mean they aren't working in their own self interest.

dmitriid 4y ago

> If they try that they'll just get forked. "just" Will they also "just" fork search monopoly, and web's most visited properties like youtube? > Indeed we already have Edge as a well-maintained fork. Indeed we have a Chrome re-skin with very few differences because even Microsoft couldn't maintain a browser.