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It is nuts, when you think about how much a browser does, it is a crazy feat. Just building a good html/css renderer and a JS engine is crazy, but now you are

It is nuts, when you think about how much a browser does, it is a crazy feat. Just building a good html/css renderer and a JS engine is crazy, but now you are hooked into the ecosystem and at the mercy of whatever comes next. Chrome can push back against proposals but little browsers either use chromium or are basically in a riptide trying to make sure they keep up.

echelon 1y ago
The government(s) need to force Google to obey web standards that are set by an industry consortium. One that also has small player participation as a requirement. If Google is strong arming or pushing ahead their own agenda, the standards body should have plenty enough votes to veto. And for teeth, compliance should be a requirement for Google to even be allowed to have its own browser. If they break it, no more browser for Google.
- supportengineer 1y ago
  The government and most voters don't even know what a file is. They can't even vote in favor of their own basic needs like health care. Do you really think this band of incompetents should be empowered to strangle innovation?
  - echelon 1y ago
    There are plenty of experts in our industry willing to help the government pen regulations. I'd gladly volunteer. Google isn't your friend. If you're a consumer, they're limiting choice. If you're a startup or midcap, they're in your way. I expect startups to out-innovate once the giants get a regulatory buzz cut.
    - throw10920 1y ago
      > There are plenty of experts in our industry willing to help the government pen regulations. I'd gladly volunteer. And there's no way, in general, to differentiate you (who I'm assuming to be a good-intentioned actual-expert) from someone who is either (a) not an expert or (b) not good-intentioned (i.e. a lobbyist) - so this offer is effectively useless, and the more general point of "there are experts that can help" is invalid. I've been thinking about this problem a lot, because it is one that needs to be solved. But it's more complicated than just saying that "experts from the community can offer to help draft regulations" because the problem of how lawmakers can trust those offering help is very difficult. ...and that's assuming that the lawmakers are operating in good faith and accurately representing their constitutents' interests, which there is scientific research[1] that indicates is not true. [1] https://www.scholars.northwestern.edu/en/publications/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and- https://www.scholars.northwestern.edu/en/publications/testin...
  - fkyoureadthedoc 1y ago
    We have to let Google do whatever they want, lest we strangle innovation. The people we trust to literally run the country, to build, operate, and maintain nuclear weapons and submarines - they can't be trusted with things like files.
- bakkoting 1y ago
  Google mostly does obey web standards that are set by an industry consortium (WHATWG, W3C, or in the case of JavaScript EMCA). Chrome has the best compliance with standards of any of the big three (see wpt.fyi) - which is not surprising, because they also have the most engineering time dedicated to their browser, and the most people working on standards. These bodies require buy in from multiple vendors, but generally not unanimity. That said, browsers can and do ship things which haven't been standardized (e.g. WebUSB, which is still only a draft because only Chrome wants to ship it). In a lot of cases this pretty much has to happen pre-standardization, because it is difficult to come up with a good standard from the ivory tower with no contact with actual use. Chrome is unusually good about working in public to develop specifications for such features even when other browsers aren't currently interested in shipping them. I don't know what problem you think this proposal would solve.
  - troupo 1y ago
    > Chrome is unusually good about working in public to develop specifications for such features even when other browsers aren't currently interested in shipping them. That is, if there's a promotion, or a company bet, or a need to establish/secure market dominance for one property or another, Chrome dumps a scribble on a napkin, barely engages in any conversation, and ships to production within a few weeks after dumping said scribbles. Once it's out there, it couldn't care less what other browsers vendors will say. Dominant market share and an army of developers who never bothered to learn about standards processes will make sure that this is now a standard.
troupo 1y ago
> Chrome can push back against proposals The problem isn't Chrome pushing back proposals. The problem is Chrome pushing ahead with its own proposals regardless of anyone: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45371575 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45371575
- jppittma 1y ago
  OTOH, are all of the browsers supposed to move in lock step? Is chrome supposed to wait for everyone else's approval before launching any kind of feature?
  - troupo 1y ago
    That is literally how a standard supposed to work: arrive at consensus and have two independent implementations before it can be claimed to be a standard. Or at the very least arrive at an API shape and hammer out obvious problems before shipping. Otherwise you get Internet Explorer, in reverse: https://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2021/08/breaking_the_we.html https://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2021/08/breaking_th... Chrome literally doesn't even bother pretending that many of their proposals are more than some scribbles in spec-adjacent format. E.g. a spec for WebHID that other browsers could implement was just dumped into the repo after Chrome shipped it. Constructable Stylesheets had both a badly named API and a trivially triggered race condition. Shipped in Chrome in the middle of discussion because Google-developed lit "needed" it. And so on and so forth.
    - jppittma 1y ago
      But is every feature in a browser supposed to be standardized? Like, it's against the rules somehow to develop features without asking permission from Apple and Mozilla?
      - asadotzler 1y ago
        It's not against the rules, but it is hostile to the web. Forking the web because a company is big enough to do so may sound just dandy to you, but to the rest of us who have spent decades working on interoperability it's a big middle finger.
ksec 1y ago
>It is nuts, when you think about how much a browser does, it is a crazy feat At this point a modern browser is basically an operating system.

echelon 1y ago

The government(s) need to force Google to obey web standards that are set by an industry consortium. One that also has small player participation as a requirement. If Google is strong arming or pushing ahead their own agenda, the standards body should have plenty enough votes to veto. And for teeth, compliance should be a requirement for Google to even be allowed to have its own browser. If they break it, no more browser for Google.

supportengineer 1y ago
The government and most voters don't even know what a file is. They can't even vote in favor of their own basic needs like health care. Do you really think this band of incompetents should be empowered to strangle innovation?
- echelon 1y ago
  There are plenty of experts in our industry willing to help the government pen regulations. I'd gladly volunteer. Google isn't your friend. If you're a consumer, they're limiting choice. If you're a startup or midcap, they're in your way. I expect startups to out-innovate once the giants get a regulatory buzz cut.
  - throw10920 1y ago
    > There are plenty of experts in our industry willing to help the government pen regulations. I'd gladly volunteer. And there's no way, in general, to differentiate you (who I'm assuming to be a good-intentioned actual-expert) from someone who is either (a) not an expert or (b) not good-intentioned (i.e. a lobbyist) - so this offer is effectively useless, and the more general point of "there are experts that can help" is invalid. I've been thinking about this problem a lot, because it is one that needs to be solved. But it's more complicated than just saying that "experts from the community can offer to help draft regulations" because the problem of how lawmakers can trust those offering help is very difficult. ...and that's assuming that the lawmakers are operating in good faith and accurately representing their constitutents' interests, which there is scientific research[1] that indicates is not true. [1] https://www.scholars.northwestern.edu/en/publications/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and- https://www.scholars.northwestern.edu/en/publications/testin...
- fkyoureadthedoc 1y ago
  We have to let Google do whatever they want, lest we strangle innovation. The people we trust to literally run the country, to build, operate, and maintain nuclear weapons and submarines - they can't be trusted with things like files.
bakkoting 1y ago
Google mostly does obey web standards that are set by an industry consortium (WHATWG, W3C, or in the case of JavaScript EMCA). Chrome has the best compliance with standards of any of the big three (see wpt.fyi) - which is not surprising, because they also have the most engineering time dedicated to their browser, and the most people working on standards. These bodies require buy in from multiple vendors, but generally not unanimity. That said, browsers can and do ship things which haven't been standardized (e.g. WebUSB, which is still only a draft because only Chrome wants to ship it). In a lot of cases this pretty much has to happen pre-standardization, because it is difficult to come up with a good standard from the ivory tower with no contact with actual use. Chrome is unusually good about working in public to develop specifications for such features even when other browsers aren't currently interested in shipping them. I don't know what problem you think this proposal would solve.
- troupo 1y ago
  > Chrome is unusually good about working in public to develop specifications for such features even when other browsers aren't currently interested in shipping them. That is, if there's a promotion, or a company bet, or a need to establish/secure market dominance for one property or another, Chrome dumps a scribble on a napkin, barely engages in any conversation, and ships to production within a few weeks after dumping said scribbles. Once it's out there, it couldn't care less what other browsers vendors will say. Dominant market share and an army of developers who never bothered to learn about standards processes will make sure that this is now a standard.

troupo 1y ago

> Chrome can push back against proposals The problem isn't Chrome pushing back proposals. The problem is Chrome pushing ahead with its own proposals regardless of anyone: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45371575 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45371575

jppittma 1y ago
OTOH, are all of the browsers supposed to move in lock step? Is chrome supposed to wait for everyone else's approval before launching any kind of feature?
- troupo 1y ago
  That is literally how a standard supposed to work: arrive at consensus and have two independent implementations before it can be claimed to be a standard. Or at the very least arrive at an API shape and hammer out obvious problems before shipping. Otherwise you get Internet Explorer, in reverse: https://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2021/08/breaking_the_we.html https://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2021/08/breaking_th... Chrome literally doesn't even bother pretending that many of their proposals are more than some scribbles in spec-adjacent format. E.g. a spec for WebHID that other browsers could implement was just dumped into the repo after Chrome shipped it. Constructable Stylesheets had both a badly named API and a trivially triggered race condition. Shipped in Chrome in the middle of discussion because Google-developed lit "needed" it. And so on and so forth.
  - jppittma 1y ago
    But is every feature in a browser supposed to be standardized? Like, it's against the rules somehow to develop features without asking permission from Apple and Mozilla?
    - asadotzler 1y ago
      It's not against the rules, but it is hostile to the web. Forking the web because a company is big enough to do so may sound just dandy to you, but to the rest of us who have spent decades working on interoperability it's a big middle finger.

ksec 1y ago

>It is nuts, when you think about how much a browser does, it is a crazy feat At this point a modern browser is basically an operating system.