4 ms·

to anyone who believes this is good news: enjoy your chrome monoculture in a few years when apple stops developing safari

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
pjmlp 1y ago
Apparently the IE lesson was lost on newer generations.
- samgranieri 1y ago
  ugh... so much pain and time trying to get pages to look nice on that decaying pile of bits. I was overjoyed when those sneaky veternan engineers at YouTube put up their banner: https://blog.chriszacharias.com/a-conspiracy-to-kill-ie6 https://blog.chriszacharias.com/a-conspiracy-to-kill-ie6
zamadatix 1y ago
If we get there maybe it'll lead to a culture of something beyond "people on iOS don't truly use Chrome so I guess it's not really a problem worth doing anything about yet".
ImHereToVote 1y ago
I use Brave. Just fork it.
- uamgeoalsk 1y ago
  good for you. you're still supporting google by using a chromium-based browser
  - charcircuit 1y ago
    Anyone can contribute to chromium. It's an open source project so improvements and popularity benefits everyone, not just Google.
    - mzajc 1y ago
      The ability to contribute and the rights granted by the license are two separate issues. Google isn't obligated to accept and is more than likely to reject patches that don't align with its incentives (reversal of recent anti-adblock changes, removal of telemetry/spyware, etc.)
    - ivanmontillam 1y ago
      The main issue with Chromium is not that it's not that it benefits Google. The main issue is that it's so mainstream, it strongarms standardization bodies making them ineffective. Chromium is so mainstream that developers think developing for other browsers is irrelevant, even putting notices of deprecation for Safari and Firefox. W3C is on the brink of irrelevancy, because if it works on Chromium, why bother with the others? if W3C cannot enforce the standard. EDIT: Typo
      - kjfaejgoaeijhei 1y ago
        i kind of agree - although all of this does end up indirectly benefitting google. while the project is open source, they're the ones maintaining the project, and believing that they won't do anything they think they can get away with to grow their power and influence is extremely naive. if safari dies, firefox won't be far behind, and by then there's no way a fork of chromium will be able to "keep up" when google starts pushing chrome-only features, killing ad-blockers etc etc etc (not sure if any of this matters, though. will there even be any real people left on the web in a 5 years?)
      - ApolloFortyNine 1y ago
        How has chrome abused there'd position? Generally from what I've seen most of their standards are sane and improve the web. I was told they were breaking adblockers, using ublock lite which complies with the changes I don't notice a difference. And even this change I could have switched browsers it didn't break the web. There's some pwa features only they support, and that's a feature I think could actually benefit me.
- npteljes 1y ago
  Brave is also contributing to the Chrome monoculture, same as how the Android forks are contributing to the Android culture. The base projects are so large that no team will do a proper job updating it if, or when, the source project stops being open source. They are entirely beholden to the original developers, and they will also merge whatever change the original developers do, as the cost of maintaining a fork is big enough as it is, without breaking changes. I do appreciate these being open-source. But there must not be an illusion that these large projects being open source means that "just forking" works. A culture is much more than a repository.
- ascagnel_ 1y ago
  The way Google handles the Chromium source (one big Git monorepo that's undergoing near-constant refactoring) means anything that doesn't want to hard fork is limited to bolting on a new UI and features around the core rendering engine -- but anything inside that core rendering engine won't be long-lasting. So Brave, Arc, Dia, Edge, et al., all add their own sauce on top of Chromium, but none of them can make changes like back-porting Manifest V2 back into their Chromium.
- Dah00n 1y ago
  Hope they don't do suspicious stuff again again again then.
npteljes 1y ago
Apple's Safari is unfortunately not keeping away the Web from being a Chrome monoculture.
- ocdtrekkie 1y ago
  Apple is the only thing keeping web standards in place. Many vendors we work with only support Chrome, including Chrome... on iOS. Which means because on iOS that's just Safari, the website has to meet web standards. So we know thanks to Apple, it'll work on Firefox! Soon as this happens, Chrome is the web. The OWA knows this, it's their goal, it's an astroturf outfit.
  - Dah00n 1y ago
    What? Safari is the IE of today. It is the browser that holds the web back the most.
    - ocdtrekkie 1y ago
      Chrome is the IE of today: It's the single platform developers are developing for instead of web standards. The fact developers have to support Safari, a least common denominator, is the only thing protecting the web.
      - arvinsim 1y ago
        Safari being the least common denominator is promoting the monoculture of Chrome. If Safari were more competitive, more people would use it.
        ocdtrekkie 1y ago
        I disagree. Safari is safer to use than Chrome, because Chrome implements antifeatures at a breakneck pace which introduce tracking and security vulnerabilities. Choosing not to implement a feature is as important or more than implementing one. I'm not a Mac user, but I wish I had Safari on desktop as an option today.
ginko 1y ago
The only real chrome alternative is Gecko.
- kjfaejgoaeijhei 1y ago
  if you hate privacy, want more ai in your browser asap and don't care about battery life and performance, yeah, sure!
  - ginko 1y ago
    This doesn't make sense. How is firefox bad for privacy? It's the only browser that supports proper adblock. No idea what you mean by more ai. Less battery life is something I'm willing to live with if it means I can run a browser that does what I want.
amadeuspagel 1y ago
If I was worried about a chrome monoculture I would want Safari to face competition. Apple has more then enough resources to invest in it.
- kjfaejgoaeijhei 1y ago
  if chrome ever ends up with a majority browser share on ios/ipados, apple won't have any way to keep up. at this point, google already almost 100% controls web standards, and they can push new features (no matter how privacy-hostile or overreaching) without even allowing apple the chance to keep up. at that point, the incentives for apple to keep developing safari would slowly dwindle away. (oh, and gecko is a joke, especially on mobile - no need to even bring it up)
  - prmoustache 1y ago
    > (oh, and gecko is a joke, especially on mobile - no need to even bring it up) What is the issue with gecko? I am using it every day on my smartphone.
  - Dah00n 1y ago
    Gecko works just fine.
leoapagano 1y ago
You underestimate the power of the default setting
- kjfaejgoaeijhei 1y ago
  the default windows browser has somewhere between a 5% and 13% market share. i think you're the one overestimating the power of defaults here.
- ascagnel_ 1y ago
  Normally, I'd agree with you -- defaults are a very, _very_ powerful thing. But if you're using Google's web tools, they make it (too) easy to download their apps and push you in that direction in a million little ways. For example, GMail's native iOS app will either open a link in a WKWebView or Chrome (if it's not installed, it'll prompt you to install it), but you have to jump through some hoops if you want to open a link in the system's default browser. Similarly, if you're searching for something via google.com, they'll put up a prompt to download their search app, with the default "Continue" option taking you to the store rather than continuing with your current task (and then click-jack the back button).
scythe 1y ago
Ideally, the next step is for the US FTC to break up Google. This will probably have to wait until 2028, but it could happen earlier — it doesn't seem to be hard to get on this administration's bad side.
devinprater 1y ago
Lol Apple is too prideful to do that.
- bell-cot 1y ago
  Prideful? Possibly. But what's for-sure is that Apple is hugely profitable. And that browser control is a relatively important part of that profitability. Plain old greed will give Apple ample motive to keep Safari going.
- sneak 1y ago
  Personifying corporations of thousands (or nations of millions) as if they had driving emotions such as a single person would have is almost always a grave logical error.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

pjmlp 1y ago

Apparently the IE lesson was lost on newer generations.

samgranieri 1y ago
ugh... so much pain and time trying to get pages to look nice on that decaying pile of bits. I was overjoyed when those sneaky veternan engineers at YouTube put up their banner: https://blog.chriszacharias.com/a-conspiracy-to-kill-ie6 https://blog.chriszacharias.com/a-conspiracy-to-kill-ie6

zamadatix 1y ago

If we get there maybe it'll lead to a culture of something beyond "people on iOS don't truly use Chrome so I guess it's not really a problem worth doing anything about yet".

ImHereToVote 1y ago

I use Brave. Just fork it.

uamgeoalsk 1y ago
good for you. you're still supporting google by using a chromium-based browser
- charcircuit 1y ago
  Anyone can contribute to chromium. It's an open source project so improvements and popularity benefits everyone, not just Google.
  - mzajc 1y ago
    The ability to contribute and the rights granted by the license are two separate issues. Google isn't obligated to accept and is more than likely to reject patches that don't align with its incentives (reversal of recent anti-adblock changes, removal of telemetry/spyware, etc.)
  - ivanmontillam 1y ago
    The main issue with Chromium is not that it's not that it benefits Google. The main issue is that it's so mainstream, it strongarms standardization bodies making them ineffective. Chromium is so mainstream that developers think developing for other browsers is irrelevant, even putting notices of deprecation for Safari and Firefox. W3C is on the brink of irrelevancy, because if it works on Chromium, why bother with the others? if W3C cannot enforce the standard. EDIT: Typo
    - kjfaejgoaeijhei 1y ago
      i kind of agree - although all of this does end up indirectly benefitting google. while the project is open source, they're the ones maintaining the project, and believing that they won't do anything they think they can get away with to grow their power and influence is extremely naive. if safari dies, firefox won't be far behind, and by then there's no way a fork of chromium will be able to "keep up" when google starts pushing chrome-only features, killing ad-blockers etc etc etc (not sure if any of this matters, though. will there even be any real people left on the web in a 5 years?)
    - ApolloFortyNine 1y ago
      How has chrome abused there'd position? Generally from what I've seen most of their standards are sane and improve the web. I was told they were breaking adblockers, using ublock lite which complies with the changes I don't notice a difference. And even this change I could have switched browsers it didn't break the web. There's some pwa features only they support, and that's a feature I think could actually benefit me.
npteljes 1y ago
Brave is also contributing to the Chrome monoculture, same as how the Android forks are contributing to the Android culture. The base projects are so large that no team will do a proper job updating it if, or when, the source project stops being open source. They are entirely beholden to the original developers, and they will also merge whatever change the original developers do, as the cost of maintaining a fork is big enough as it is, without breaking changes. I do appreciate these being open-source. But there must not be an illusion that these large projects being open source means that "just forking" works. A culture is much more than a repository.
ascagnel_ 1y ago
The way Google handles the Chromium source (one big Git monorepo that's undergoing near-constant refactoring) means anything that doesn't want to hard fork is limited to bolting on a new UI and features around the core rendering engine -- but anything inside that core rendering engine won't be long-lasting. So Brave, Arc, Dia, Edge, et al., all add their own sauce on top of Chromium, but none of them can make changes like back-porting Manifest V2 back into their Chromium.
Dah00n 1y ago
Hope they don't do suspicious stuff again again again then.

npteljes 1y ago

Apple's Safari is unfortunately not keeping away the Web from being a Chrome monoculture.

ocdtrekkie 1y ago
Apple is the only thing keeping web standards in place. Many vendors we work with only support Chrome, including Chrome... on iOS. Which means because on iOS that's just Safari, the website has to meet web standards. So we know thanks to Apple, it'll work on Firefox! Soon as this happens, Chrome is the web. The OWA knows this, it's their goal, it's an astroturf outfit.
- Dah00n 1y ago
  What? Safari is the IE of today. It is the browser that holds the web back the most.
  - ocdtrekkie 1y ago
    Chrome is the IE of today: It's the single platform developers are developing for instead of web standards. The fact developers have to support Safari, a least common denominator, is the only thing protecting the web.
    - arvinsim 1y ago
      Safari being the least common denominator is promoting the monoculture of Chrome. If Safari were more competitive, more people would use it.
      - ocdtrekkie 1y ago
        I disagree. Safari is safer to use than Chrome, because Chrome implements antifeatures at a breakneck pace which introduce tracking and security vulnerabilities. Choosing not to implement a feature is as important or more than implementing one. I'm not a Mac user, but I wish I had Safari on desktop as an option today.

ginko 1y ago

The only real chrome alternative is Gecko.

kjfaejgoaeijhei 1y ago
if you hate privacy, want more ai in your browser asap and don't care about battery life and performance, yeah, sure!
- ginko 1y ago
  This doesn't make sense. How is firefox bad for privacy? It's the only browser that supports proper adblock. No idea what you mean by more ai. Less battery life is something I'm willing to live with if it means I can run a browser that does what I want.

amadeuspagel 1y ago

If I was worried about a chrome monoculture I would want Safari to face competition. Apple has more then enough resources to invest in it.

kjfaejgoaeijhei 1y ago
if chrome ever ends up with a majority browser share on ios/ipados, apple won't have any way to keep up. at this point, google already almost 100% controls web standards, and they can push new features (no matter how privacy-hostile or overreaching) without even allowing apple the chance to keep up. at that point, the incentives for apple to keep developing safari would slowly dwindle away. (oh, and gecko is a joke, especially on mobile - no need to even bring it up)
- prmoustache 1y ago
  > (oh, and gecko is a joke, especially on mobile - no need to even bring it up) What is the issue with gecko? I am using it every day on my smartphone.
- Dah00n 1y ago
  Gecko works just fine.

leoapagano 1y ago

You underestimate the power of the default setting

kjfaejgoaeijhei 1y ago
the default windows browser has somewhere between a 5% and 13% market share. i think you're the one overestimating the power of defaults here.
ascagnel_ 1y ago
Normally, I'd agree with you -- defaults are a very, _very_ powerful thing. But if you're using Google's web tools, they make it (too) easy to download their apps and push you in that direction in a million little ways. For example, GMail's native iOS app will either open a link in a WKWebView or Chrome (if it's not installed, it'll prompt you to install it), but you have to jump through some hoops if you want to open a link in the system's default browser. Similarly, if you're searching for something via google.com, they'll put up a prompt to download their search app, with the default "Continue" option taking you to the store rather than continuing with your current task (and then click-jack the back button).

scythe 1y ago

Ideally, the next step is for the US FTC to break up Google. This will probably have to wait until 2028, but it could happen earlier — it doesn't seem to be hard to get on this administration's bad side.

devinprater 1y ago

Lol Apple is too prideful to do that.

bell-cot 1y ago
Prideful? Possibly. But what's for-sure is that Apple is hugely profitable. And that browser control is a relatively important part of that profitability. Plain old greed will give Apple ample motive to keep Safari going.
sneak 1y ago
Personifying corporations of thousands (or nations of millions) as if they had driving emotions such as a single person would have is almost always a grave logical error.