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Cloudflare supporting Ladybird makes sense for the same reasons that Valve invests in Proton. Cloudflare's job is easier if everyone standardizes on a few appro

Cloudflare supporting Ladybird makes sense for the same reasons that Valve invests in Proton. Cloudflare's job is easier if everyone standardizes on a few approved browsers, but right now the three major browser engines are controlled by Google (IIRC most of Mozilla's funding comes from Google) and Apple, just as Valve's Steam is heavily dependent on Microsoft's Windows. Both companies are basically hedging against future incentive misalignment with other (larger) companies, and reducing their dependencies on platforms they have ~zero influence over.

cosmic_cheese 1y ago
To add to this, Apple’s share of the control is minimal and precarious. A timeline where Google is the sole web engine authority could easily become reality and is even likely. Hedging on a promising upstart makes a lot of sense.
- bigyabai 1y ago
  Apple isn't the only one standing in the way of a Google hegemony. If they are, then the web is already fucked since neither corporation has a benevolent track record pertaining to Open Source. Apple just can't compete without steering privileges that are equally harmful to the open web.
  - scared_together 1y ago
    > Apple isn't the only one standing in the way of a Google hegemony. Who else would you consider? Chromium-based browsers from companies other than Google are still contributing to Google’s hegemony. And Mozilla is funded by Google.
    - bigyabai 1y ago
      KHTML, Gecko, most Blink forks.
      - StopDisinfo910 1y ago
        KHTML development stopped nearly ten years ago and I don’t know any significant Blink forks.
  - cosmic_cheese 1y ago
    If web devs get permission to start ignoring Safari (which currently sits at ~20% marketshare), there’s no way they’re going to care about Firefox which doesn’t have even a fifth as much. If Safari falls so does Firefox.
    - ohdeargodno 1y ago
      [dead]
  - overfeed 1y ago
    > If they are, then the web is already fucked since neither corporation has a benevolent track record pertaining to Open Source. Interesting take, since Google has both authored and supported hundreds of FLOSS projects over many years. They even sponsored summer "internships" for students to contribute to Open Source software as long as a maintainer bothered to register and promise to mentor the student via "Summer of Code"
    - chucky_z 1y ago
      As someone who's lived in the bay for a bit over 10 years now, when I first moved here Google was very much that company that you think they were. Now, they are not. Every single friend (and it was >50% when I moved here!) has since left Google in the bay area. There is one left at Google entirely, and they're only remaining due to physical location (near family outside the US). I have watched my friends get brutally and relentlessly pipped over the tiniest bullshit reasons. This is all entirely 2nd hand so my perspective is very skewed, but even my friends from Facebook/Netflix/Apple weren't treated that way.
      - kindacurious 1y ago
        Hi, can you provide a few examples of 'tiniest bullshit reasons'? Kinda curious as what is considered bullshit there, I'm from the EU with zero experience of anything like S.F.
        chucky_z 1y ago
        One was pipped because they were placed on a moonshot, told how amazing their work was, gave internal talks on it, then the moonshot was defunded... so they got pipped over their lack of business impact. Instead of, y'know, being placed on a normal team, like where they came from only a year or so before.
      - overfeed 1y ago
        I'm aware of the many changes; including the cancellation of Google SoC. However, gp claimed neither Google nor Apple have a benevolent track record towards open source, and that doesn't ring true to me. The old Google was very benevolent, perhaps only rivalled by Red Hat and (old) IBM.
- skybrian 1y ago
  I haven’t seen any signs that Apple will abandon Safari, have you? Also, a browser that uses Chromium could put a halt to Google’s plans if they wanted. The easiest way would be to stop upgrading and just port over security patches. (Sure, it brings progress to a halt, but this is unlikely to matter to web developers in the short run and it would get people’s attention.) They aren’t going to do this, though, so long as new releases of Chromium are reasonable.
  - cosmic_cheese 1y ago
    If/when Apple is forced to start allowing Blink on iOS globally, all it takes is a hearty marketing push from Google and devs putting “best viewed in Chrome” badges on their sites for Safari’s marketshare (and with it, Apple’s influence) to plummet.
    - skybrian 1y ago
      Given how AMP eventually died, it seems unlikely that web developers would go along with it. What’s in it for them? Also, I don’t see any sign that Google even wants to do it? This is not really evidence-based reasoning, it’s just “I can imagine something evil that Google might do.”
      - cosmic_cheese 1y ago
        Both are already happening. Google markets Chrome relentlessly, with popups in search and YouTube if you're using other browsers, browser choice dialogs in Google iOS apps (despite iOS having a default browser setting for 5 years now), Chrome getting bundled into random Windows software installers, etc. Many devs actively desire single-engine development and testing and many aren't shy about using Chrome only features already. If they had the capability to tell users to go install Chrome instead of targeting broadly supported features, they would do so in a heartbeat.
        chillfox 1y ago
        I have hit a few sites over the last year that threw up full page "This site only works in chrome" blocks, even though they usually work perfectly fine in Firefox if you set the user agent to chrome.
- jorvi 1y ago
  Google doesn't have control of Chromium though. The source is available and it is permissively licensed. If they did something truly onerous, Microsoft would fork it within hours and everyone would switch their upstream to Edgium. The only reason Google calls the shots is because they pour billions of dollars into maintaining Chromium. The fact that they can do that (and even fund Firefox at the same time) is because of their ad monopoly. Same with search, Gmail, Translate, Maps. None of those things can exist without the ad monopoly funding it all. Complaining about Chrome is barking up the wrong tree.
  - cosmic_cheese 1y ago
    Even if that’s true, are we going to see Google’s dominance in the ad space meaningfully curbed? It seems highly unlikely at best, and it doesn’t matter how loud any of us are barking (at least until there’s a massive shift in political headwinds). Until that’s addressed, Chrome being dominant is a problem, because Google has created an “open moat” with their resource expenditure. Microsoft sure as hell isn’t going to be able to justify that kind of spend on their Chromium fork, and so their influence will never be of note.
    - jorvi 1y ago
      > Even if that’s true, are we going to see Google’s dominance in the ad space meaningfully curbed? > (at least until there’s a massive shift in political headwinds) It did look like it for a while with the US its antitrust action and the EU also taking aggressive action. But then Google kissed the ring and the DoJ pulled back it's recommendation of Google divesting DoubleClick, and the EU lost the staredown with Trump and made their measures toothless too. Who knows what will happen in the 2030s though. If the Democrats get into power again, I'm sure they'll remember how big tech switched up on them and there will be a serious reckoning.
  - ammar2 1y ago
    > Microsoft would fork it within hours I haven't trudged through Chromium's commit statistics but has Microsoft been upstreaming many contributions? I'm skeptical that they are ready to take on the full brunt of Chromium maintenance on a whim, it would take a decent while to build up the teams and expertise for it.
account42 1y ago
That response ignores the fact that Valve isn't in the business of preventing you from playing your games on niche operating systems but Cloudflare is in the business of blocking non-standard browsers. If Cloudflare truly wants to prevent a Google/Apple web duopoly the most effective thing they can do is to stop blocking alternatives or even just browser-configurations that are Google-hostile.
- xmprt 1y ago
  > Valve isn't in the business of preventing you from playing your games on niche operating systems Getting your Steam library to work on Linux before it got Valve's blessing with Proton wasn't a great experience. If they wanted to, they could have easily decided to block games from running on Linux and gave some statement about preventing piracy and protecting users from malware. I'm optimistic that this investment means we'll see more open standards and large browser makers being forced to collaborate and create simpler standards without compromising security.
  - thewebguyd 1y ago
    They at least still put out a native Linux client, even if there weren't that many native Linux games. That at least demonstrated, to some extant, that Valve doesn't care where you run your games, as long as you buy them on Steam.
  - account42 1y ago
    > Getting your Steam library to work on Linux before it got Valve's blessing with Proton wasn't a great experience. There weren't any real roadblocks for that caused by Valve. And it definitely wasn't as hard as you're implying. > If they wanted to, they could have easily decided to block games from running on Linux and gave some statement about preventing piracy and protecting users from malware. They could have just like any software developer could but they didn't. They also didn't block the Steam for Linux client from running on unapproved distributions or even FreeBSD.
- zaphar 1y ago
  I have never seen credible evidence that this is what Cloudflare sees as their business. They fundamentally don't care what browser the user is using. What they care about are the traffic patterns of users and preventing their customers from getting hit by bots, spam, and other malicious traffic. The fact that some browsers that look like malicious traffic is not something they can control or reasonably be held responsible for.
catlover76 1y ago
> Cloudflare supporting Ladybird makes sense for the same reasons that Valve invests in Proton. Which Proton are you referring to?

cosmic_cheese 1y ago

To add to this, Apple’s share of the control is minimal and precarious. A timeline where Google is the sole web engine authority could easily become reality and is even likely. Hedging on a promising upstart makes a lot of sense.

bigyabai 1y ago
Apple isn't the only one standing in the way of a Google hegemony. If they are, then the web is already fucked since neither corporation has a benevolent track record pertaining to Open Source. Apple just can't compete without steering privileges that are equally harmful to the open web.
- scared_together 1y ago
  > Apple isn't the only one standing in the way of a Google hegemony. Who else would you consider? Chromium-based browsers from companies other than Google are still contributing to Google’s hegemony. And Mozilla is funded by Google.
  - bigyabai 1y ago
    KHTML, Gecko, most Blink forks.
    - StopDisinfo910 1y ago
      KHTML development stopped nearly ten years ago and I don’t know any significant Blink forks.
- cosmic_cheese 1y ago
  If web devs get permission to start ignoring Safari (which currently sits at ~20% marketshare), there’s no way they’re going to care about Firefox which doesn’t have even a fifth as much. If Safari falls so does Firefox.
  - ohdeargodno 1y ago
    [dead]
- overfeed 1y ago
  > If they are, then the web is already fucked since neither corporation has a benevolent track record pertaining to Open Source. Interesting take, since Google has both authored and supported hundreds of FLOSS projects over many years. They even sponsored summer "internships" for students to contribute to Open Source software as long as a maintainer bothered to register and promise to mentor the student via "Summer of Code"
  - chucky_z 1y ago
    As someone who's lived in the bay for a bit over 10 years now, when I first moved here Google was very much that company that you think they were. Now, they are not. Every single friend (and it was >50% when I moved here!) has since left Google in the bay area. There is one left at Google entirely, and they're only remaining due to physical location (near family outside the US). I have watched my friends get brutally and relentlessly pipped over the tiniest bullshit reasons. This is all entirely 2nd hand so my perspective is very skewed, but even my friends from Facebook/Netflix/Apple weren't treated that way.
    - kindacurious 1y ago
      Hi, can you provide a few examples of 'tiniest bullshit reasons'? Kinda curious as what is considered bullshit there, I'm from the EU with zero experience of anything like S.F.
      - chucky_z 1y ago
        One was pipped because they were placed on a moonshot, told how amazing their work was, gave internal talks on it, then the moonshot was defunded... so they got pipped over their lack of business impact. Instead of, y'know, being placed on a normal team, like where they came from only a year or so before.
    - overfeed 1y ago
      I'm aware of the many changes; including the cancellation of Google SoC. However, gp claimed neither Google nor Apple have a benevolent track record towards open source, and that doesn't ring true to me. The old Google was very benevolent, perhaps only rivalled by Red Hat and (old) IBM.
skybrian 1y ago
I haven’t seen any signs that Apple will abandon Safari, have you? Also, a browser that uses Chromium could put a halt to Google’s plans if they wanted. The easiest way would be to stop upgrading and just port over security patches. (Sure, it brings progress to a halt, but this is unlikely to matter to web developers in the short run and it would get people’s attention.) They aren’t going to do this, though, so long as new releases of Chromium are reasonable.
- cosmic_cheese 1y ago
  If/when Apple is forced to start allowing Blink on iOS globally, all it takes is a hearty marketing push from Google and devs putting “best viewed in Chrome” badges on their sites for Safari’s marketshare (and with it, Apple’s influence) to plummet.
  - skybrian 1y ago
    Given how AMP eventually died, it seems unlikely that web developers would go along with it. What’s in it for them? Also, I don’t see any sign that Google even wants to do it? This is not really evidence-based reasoning, it’s just “I can imagine something evil that Google might do.”
    - cosmic_cheese 1y ago
      Both are already happening. Google markets Chrome relentlessly, with popups in search and YouTube if you're using other browsers, browser choice dialogs in Google iOS apps (despite iOS having a default browser setting for 5 years now), Chrome getting bundled into random Windows software installers, etc. Many devs actively desire single-engine development and testing and many aren't shy about using Chrome only features already. If they had the capability to tell users to go install Chrome instead of targeting broadly supported features, they would do so in a heartbeat.
      - chillfox 1y ago
        I have hit a few sites over the last year that threw up full page "This site only works in chrome" blocks, even though they usually work perfectly fine in Firefox if you set the user agent to chrome.
jorvi 1y ago
Google doesn't have control of Chromium though. The source is available and it is permissively licensed. If they did something truly onerous, Microsoft would fork it within hours and everyone would switch their upstream to Edgium. The only reason Google calls the shots is because they pour billions of dollars into maintaining Chromium. The fact that they can do that (and even fund Firefox at the same time) is because of their ad monopoly. Same with search, Gmail, Translate, Maps. None of those things can exist without the ad monopoly funding it all. Complaining about Chrome is barking up the wrong tree.
- cosmic_cheese 1y ago
  Even if that’s true, are we going to see Google’s dominance in the ad space meaningfully curbed? It seems highly unlikely at best, and it doesn’t matter how loud any of us are barking (at least until there’s a massive shift in political headwinds). Until that’s addressed, Chrome being dominant is a problem, because Google has created an “open moat” with their resource expenditure. Microsoft sure as hell isn’t going to be able to justify that kind of spend on their Chromium fork, and so their influence will never be of note.
  - jorvi 1y ago
    > Even if that’s true, are we going to see Google’s dominance in the ad space meaningfully curbed? > (at least until there’s a massive shift in political headwinds) It did look like it for a while with the US its antitrust action and the EU also taking aggressive action. But then Google kissed the ring and the DoJ pulled back it's recommendation of Google divesting DoubleClick, and the EU lost the staredown with Trump and made their measures toothless too. Who knows what will happen in the 2030s though. If the Democrats get into power again, I'm sure they'll remember how big tech switched up on them and there will be a serious reckoning.
- ammar2 1y ago
  > Microsoft would fork it within hours I haven't trudged through Chromium's commit statistics but has Microsoft been upstreaming many contributions? I'm skeptical that they are ready to take on the full brunt of Chromium maintenance on a whim, it would take a decent while to build up the teams and expertise for it.

account42 1y ago

That response ignores the fact that Valve isn't in the business of preventing you from playing your games on niche operating systems but Cloudflare is in the business of blocking non-standard browsers. If Cloudflare truly wants to prevent a Google/Apple web duopoly the most effective thing they can do is to stop blocking alternatives or even just browser-configurations that are Google-hostile.

xmprt 1y ago
> Valve isn't in the business of preventing you from playing your games on niche operating systems Getting your Steam library to work on Linux before it got Valve's blessing with Proton wasn't a great experience. If they wanted to, they could have easily decided to block games from running on Linux and gave some statement about preventing piracy and protecting users from malware. I'm optimistic that this investment means we'll see more open standards and large browser makers being forced to collaborate and create simpler standards without compromising security.
- thewebguyd 1y ago
  They at least still put out a native Linux client, even if there weren't that many native Linux games. That at least demonstrated, to some extant, that Valve doesn't care where you run your games, as long as you buy them on Steam.
- account42 1y ago
  > Getting your Steam library to work on Linux before it got Valve's blessing with Proton wasn't a great experience. There weren't any real roadblocks for that caused by Valve. And it definitely wasn't as hard as you're implying. > If they wanted to, they could have easily decided to block games from running on Linux and gave some statement about preventing piracy and protecting users from malware. They could have just like any software developer could but they didn't. They also didn't block the Steam for Linux client from running on unapproved distributions or even FreeBSD.
zaphar 1y ago
I have never seen credible evidence that this is what Cloudflare sees as their business. They fundamentally don't care what browser the user is using. What they care about are the traffic patterns of users and preventing their customers from getting hit by bots, spam, and other malicious traffic. The fact that some browsers that look like malicious traffic is not something they can control or reasonably be held responsible for.

catlover76 1y ago

> Cloudflare supporting Ladybird makes sense for the same reasons that Valve invests in Proton. Which Proton are you referring to?