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It's never been easier to build web pages. Never been easier to build a browser. Where problems arise is when people expect to challenge behemoths right from l

It's never been easier to build web pages. Never been easier to build a browser. Where problems arise is when people expect to challenge behemoths right from launch. Like demanding your burgers be adopted by all mcdonalds consumers when you haven't done anything to actually compete with them.

gtirloni 3y ago
> It's never been easier to build web pages. Never been easier to build a browser. And yet, Microsoft ditched its own engine and went with Chrome's. So did Brave and others. > Where problems arise is when people expect to challenge behemoths right from launch. Like demanding your burgers be adopted by all mcdonalds consumers when you haven't done anything to actually compete with them. So they should start small and slowly build up the artificial complexity that accumulated over decades in incubent browsers until it reaches feature parity? By then, the other browsers will have another 10+ years of more complexity than you. I don't quite get what's your point here. Could you give examples?
- waboremo 3y ago
  Yes they did. Because they do not care about a good browser engine product. They care about selling services on top of that. So whether it's Chromium or something else entirely, they don't care. They went with what had the most external developers working on it because again, they do not care about the engine. >So they should start small and slowly build up the artificial complexity that accumulated over decades in incubent browsers until it reaches feature parity? No, they should find a new angle. What are they building a browser engine for? To go back to the burger example, you cannot compete with McDonalds by trying to do everything they do. Everyone understands this about general products, you can't compete with Apple by making an iPhone clone. You can't compete with Marvel by making funny light hearted hero movies. Yet, when it comes to browser engines people short circuit. Do you know about Steam? The video game launcher/store. This store is so successful that it's spawned many competitors who struggle to compete. Why is this? Because they do not want to change the status quo too much, they just want their company to be where Steam is. So they spend so much time and money trying to add features Steam has had for years now, all while people refuse to budge because "why use a steam clone that's worse?" Sound familiar? This is the current problem with browser engines. Everyone just wants to be Chrome, to have Chrome's userbase, but they don't want to actually think about a product. They don't want to find a niche, or make people rethink what a browser should be/do. Therefore, it's not a problem that people keep failing to be Chrome. I say good riddance. We don't need a Chrome alternative; we need something else entirely.
  - gtirloni 3y ago
    The only issue I see is that people don't want something else entirely, they want their web pages. CSS/HTML features are deprecated but browsers continue to support them forever and make their engines more complex because... people won't adapt (for good and bad reasons). What you're proposing is basically telling someone willing to build a better web browser to compete with Chrome that they should actually build, say, a music player instead and change the game completely. Even a less extreme example: a browser with a completely different UI still would need to support HTML/CSS and have a super complex engine so we're back to square one. I don't see how that makes sense. We need more energy and money to be spent into moving this distributed codebase to use newer features so engines can drop support for old stuff and be less complex. Who's going to drop features from their browser only to see people say "use browser X, that one still works with all your existing pages" and then lose their userbase. If this was easy as ever, as you say, people would have done it already. In reality, it's a multi-billion dollar problem and the incentives don't align.

gtirloni 3y ago

> It's never been easier to build web pages. Never been easier to build a browser. And yet, Microsoft ditched its own engine and went with Chrome's. So did Brave and others. > Where problems arise is when people expect to challenge behemoths right from launch. Like demanding your burgers be adopted by all mcdonalds consumers when you haven't done anything to actually compete with them. So they should start small and slowly build up the artificial complexity that accumulated over decades in incubent browsers until it reaches feature parity? By then, the other browsers will have another 10+ years of more complexity than you. I don't quite get what's your point here. Could you give examples?

waboremo 3y ago
Yes they did. Because they do not care about a good browser engine product. They care about selling services on top of that. So whether it's Chromium or something else entirely, they don't care. They went with what had the most external developers working on it because again, they do not care about the engine. >So they should start small and slowly build up the artificial complexity that accumulated over decades in incubent browsers until it reaches feature parity? No, they should find a new angle. What are they building a browser engine for? To go back to the burger example, you cannot compete with McDonalds by trying to do everything they do. Everyone understands this about general products, you can't compete with Apple by making an iPhone clone. You can't compete with Marvel by making funny light hearted hero movies. Yet, when it comes to browser engines people short circuit. Do you know about Steam? The video game launcher/store. This store is so successful that it's spawned many competitors who struggle to compete. Why is this? Because they do not want to change the status quo too much, they just want their company to be where Steam is. So they spend so much time and money trying to add features Steam has had for years now, all while people refuse to budge because "why use a steam clone that's worse?" Sound familiar? This is the current problem with browser engines. Everyone just wants to be Chrome, to have Chrome's userbase, but they don't want to actually think about a product. They don't want to find a niche, or make people rethink what a browser should be/do. Therefore, it's not a problem that people keep failing to be Chrome. I say good riddance. We don't need a Chrome alternative; we need something else entirely.
- gtirloni 3y ago
  The only issue I see is that people don't want something else entirely, they want their web pages. CSS/HTML features are deprecated but browsers continue to support them forever and make their engines more complex because... people won't adapt (for good and bad reasons). What you're proposing is basically telling someone willing to build a better web browser to compete with Chrome that they should actually build, say, a music player instead and change the game completely. Even a less extreme example: a browser with a completely different UI still would need to support HTML/CSS and have a super complex engine so we're back to square one. I don't see how that makes sense. We need more energy and money to be spent into moving this distributed codebase to use newer features so engines can drop support for old stuff and be less complex. Who's going to drop features from their browser only to see people say "use browser X, that one still works with all your existing pages" and then lose their userbase. If this was easy as ever, as you say, people would have done it already. In reality, it's a multi-billion dollar problem and the incentives don't align.