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Right. What would be lost if they used Chromium as well? Sure, there would be a lack of competition but at this point the browser is the fuel of the internet. W

Right. What would be lost if they used Chromium as well? Sure, there would be a lack of competition but at this point the browser is the fuel of the internet. We don't have multiple different type of gasoline, or home heating oil. The browser - sans Google Chrome's "spyware" - is a commodity. I'd rather see Mozilla focus on privacy, etc. My dream is for them to add a privacy-centric email product, a robust enough office suit (e.g., Google Docs) and then a bundle with those and Relay and their VPN.

charcircuit 3y ago
There would still be competition among high level features for the browsers which I feel is more important for users. Reduced competiton on things like performance I don't think will be so bad as either someone will optimized it benefiting everyone, or things that are not hyper optimized will become insignificant as computers get more powerful.
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> We don't have multiple different type of gasoline, or home heating oil We do? Actually, this is a great analogy. We have grades of gasoline because there is a trade-off between anti-knocking and cost. Monoculturing the grade approximates the diversity of requirements worse than honing in on a few points on the curve. As with browser engines, there is a limit to this diversity since each additional grade imposes novel fixed costs in production, distribution and combustion. But I’d be surprised if something as varied as browser engines optimally solves for a single solution.
- charcircuit 3y ago
  >We have grades of gasoline because there is a trade-off between anti-knocking and cost. Similarly Chromium can be configured in many different way, see chrome://flags. It's open source and has a modular design so even further customization is possible. Different configurations can make different trade offs to appeal more to certain user's needs.
johannes1234321 3y ago
> We don't have multiple different type of gasoline We have diesel and gasoline at least. However the key difference ethere is somewhat different: We have independent supply lines, starting at different oil fields, going through different refineries, into different distribution networks, which ensures that there is some competition (even oligopolic is better than plain monopoly) and supply chain attacks on one vendor don't havoc the complete supply chain. For a practical example: Countries were able to massively reduce the dependance on Russian gas and oil recently. If Google however decides to havoc chromium development all dependants have trouble.
- chiefalchemist 3y ago
  Perhaps, but Firefox is an independent and it has trouble. Now. Right?

charcircuit 3y ago

There would still be competition among high level features for the browsers which I feel is more important for users. Reduced competiton on things like performance I don't think will be so bad as either someone will optimized it benefiting everyone, or things that are not hyper optimized will become insignificant as computers get more powerful.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

> We don't have multiple different type of gasoline, or home heating oil We do? Actually, this is a great analogy. We have grades of gasoline because there is a trade-off between anti-knocking and cost. Monoculturing the grade approximates the diversity of requirements worse than honing in on a few points on the curve. As with browser engines, there is a limit to this diversity since each additional grade imposes novel fixed costs in production, distribution and combustion. But I’d be surprised if something as varied as browser engines optimally solves for a single solution.

charcircuit 3y ago
>We have grades of gasoline because there is a trade-off between anti-knocking and cost. Similarly Chromium can be configured in many different way, see chrome://flags. It's open source and has a modular design so even further customization is possible. Different configurations can make different trade offs to appeal more to certain user's needs.

johannes1234321 3y ago

> We don't have multiple different type of gasoline We have diesel and gasoline at least. However the key difference ethere is somewhat different: We have independent supply lines, starting at different oil fields, going through different refineries, into different distribution networks, which ensures that there is some competition (even oligopolic is better than plain monopoly) and supply chain attacks on one vendor don't havoc the complete supply chain. For a practical example: Countries were able to massively reduce the dependance on Russian gas and oil recently. If Google however decides to havoc chromium development all dependants have trouble.

chiefalchemist 3y ago
Perhaps, but Firefox is an independent and it has trouble. Now. Right?