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The real hegemony is the Blink hegemony. Google (an advertising company) can pretty much unilaterally dictate web standards. A terrible state of affairs for the

The real hegemony is the Blink hegemony. Google (an advertising company) can pretty much unilaterally dictate web standards. A terrible state of affairs for the web. That's the real issue and using another Chrome reskin is never going to fix it.

DavideNL 5mo ago
For those wondering...: "Blink is a browser engine developed as part of the free and open-source Chromium project. Blink is by far the most-used browser engine, due to the market share dominance of Google Chrome and the fact that many other browsers are based on the Chromium code." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink_(browser_engine) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink_(browser_engine)
_verandaguy 5mo ago
This is the main reason I stay away from Vivaldi; using Firefox is, for all of Mozilla's borderline comical mismanagement, a protest vote against Blink (and previously, Chromium).
- swed420 5mo ago
  Firefox is controlled opposition practically owned by Google. Follow the money. Ladybird seems to be the only hope, once available.
  - buran77 5mo ago
    > Firefox is controlled opposition practically owned by Google And how does that "ownership" look like in practice? Has Google ever decided how things should be done "or else"? What Google does is pay a protection tax. Without Firefox around and independent, the EU is almost sure to break Chrome away from Google, especially with the warm EU-US relations now. So Google pays and is going to pay as much as it takes to keep Firefox alive, kicking, and doing whatever it wants. Google Chrome needs Firefox to be moderately successful more than Firefox needs that money. Or else it might become someone else's Chrome. > Follow the money Everyone has this revelation once. If it was that easy then customers would practically own the company providing them the services. Do you and your fellow paying customers feel like you own any company, especially big-tech? Do you all control Netflix? Amazon? Apple?
    - dylan604 5mo ago
      > Everyone has this revelation once. If it was that easy then customers would practically own the company providing them the services. Do you and your fellow paying customers feel like you own any company, especially big-tech? Do you all control Netflix? Amazon? Apple? A million individual voices are just noise which is what your "fellow paying customers" line equates. A single monetary contributor is not that. It is the sugar daddy of Firefox. Conflating the two seems to be a bad faith comparison.
      - buran77 5mo ago
        > It is the sugar daddy of Firefox. Talking about bad faith, with Google's single, enormously powerful voice surely you can hear what it says. So why not answer to literally the first thing I asked in my comment instead of skipping straight to the end to claim bad faith? You should have laundry list of examples to show how Google flashes the cash and the orders, and Firefox executes. That's a sugar daddy. You understand that if Firefox ever just becomes a puppet on Google hand the whole setup crumbles? It's barely at the edge of plausible deniability even today. Why kill the golden goose when Firefox is anyway in no position to become a real threat on the browser market any time soon. Plenty of companies lived and died by their customers' "noise", or at least got a bloody nose, so that's a shallow dismissal.
        dylan604 5mo ago
        My point was in support of that if not clearly stated. Expecting FF to listen to a million individual users is not a good expectation. Expecting FF to be prone to listening to a single powerful voice would be a better expectation. However, FF has not assimilated into yet another Chrome, so there's some evidence they are not giving in to the whims of that powerful voice.
  - andai 5mo ago
    I heard Mozilla described as "Google's antitrust lawsuit insurance." That doesn't really seem relevant these days though. Although I guess duopolies are totally fine.
    - realusername 5mo ago
      In the US for sure but in the EU, that insurance is still relevant.
  - Petersipoi 5mo ago
    What is the advantage of building a browser engine from scratch? As opposed to just forking Blink and maintaining it as a separate project? Seems like the former just adds an ungodly amount of work and still doesn't solve the problem of Google using its weight to control web standards. If Firefox and Apple can't rein in Google with their competing engines, what exactly does Ladybird change?
    - kermatt 5mo ago
      > What is the advantage of building a browser engine from scratch? Same reason some of us choose Linux over Windows.
      - Petersipoi 5mo ago
        Linux and Windows do not have a goal of perfectly emulating the other one, to the degree of sharing the same spec and tests. Not sure how this example applies, especially since Blink is open source, while Windows is not. In fact your example betrays you, because it would be like rewriting Linux from scratch while still attempting to maintain perfect compatibly with Linux. And then arguing that you've somehow weakened Linux in the process. Why not just fork it and maintain your own fork?
    - swed420 5mo ago
      > What is the advantage of building a browser engine from scratch? Straight from the source: https://ladybird.org/posts/why-ladybird/ https://ladybird.org/posts/why-ladybird/
    - nwienert 5mo ago
      Apple does rein them in heavily, they push back on specs all the time, somewhat effectively.
  - erxam 5mo ago
    [flagged]
    - dzjkb 5mo ago
      shady and slimy? what are you talking about?
      - youngtaff 5mo ago
        I’ve heard enough about their past behaviour from separate independent sources to know I’d never use Ladybird
        dzjkb 4mo ago
        care to provide any info instead of ominously refusing to do so?
    - tomhow 5mo ago
      Please don't post attacks on people's character like this on HN. It's fine to share information about people that are relevant to the discussion, but please keep it to dispassionate sharing of material facts rather than venomous slurs like this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- NoGravitas 5mo ago
  Vivaldi is almost certainly the best Blink browser, and I'd certainly use it if only Blink browsers were viable. As long as that's not the case, I am, like you, using something based on Firefox; in my case, Zen.
- arikrahman 5mo ago
  This is why I use Zen. All the benefits of Vivaldi, with the peace of mind supporting a Mozilla stack.
  - tapoxi 5mo ago
    I love Zen but it doesn't support TouchID passkey auth on macOS. I'm someone who needs to Okta with multiple times a day, and this drove me to use Vivaldi instead.
    - arikrahman 5mo ago
      Ah that seems like a use case where Zen falls short. I hope there comes a solution to this someday but the proprietary nature of it seems prohibitive. If Asahi Linux can figure out TouchID then maybe there might be a way.
- tapoxi 5mo ago
  This has been a lost cause for the past decade or so. Web developers don't target Firefox anymore because a 5% share isn't enough to matter. Both projects (Chromium and Firefox) are open, so it's like Linux vs FreeBSD, but at least FreeBSD has a clear licensing advantage.
  - Barbing 5mo ago
    We need some billionaire class people to take their business from a site that won’t support Firefox, and say why. or whatever that’s less pie in sky No defeatism though please, some of us will advocate till the end (pen & paper)
calvinmorrison 5mo ago
Blink is a virtual machine. It's like complaining about the Hegemony of Perl

DavideNL 5mo ago

For those wondering...: "Blink is a browser engine developed as part of the free and open-source Chromium project. Blink is by far the most-used browser engine, due to the market share dominance of Google Chrome and the fact that many other browsers are based on the Chromium code." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink_(browser_engine) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink_(browser_engine)

_verandaguy 5mo ago

This is the main reason I stay away from Vivaldi; using Firefox is, for all of Mozilla's borderline comical mismanagement, a protest vote against Blink (and previously, Chromium).

swed420 5mo ago
Firefox is controlled opposition practically owned by Google. Follow the money. Ladybird seems to be the only hope, once available.
- buran77 5mo ago
  > Firefox is controlled opposition practically owned by Google And how does that "ownership" look like in practice? Has Google ever decided how things should be done "or else"? What Google does is pay a protection tax. Without Firefox around and independent, the EU is almost sure to break Chrome away from Google, especially with the warm EU-US relations now. So Google pays and is going to pay as much as it takes to keep Firefox alive, kicking, and doing whatever it wants. Google Chrome needs Firefox to be moderately successful more than Firefox needs that money. Or else it might become someone else's Chrome. > Follow the money Everyone has this revelation once. If it was that easy then customers would practically own the company providing them the services. Do you and your fellow paying customers feel like you own any company, especially big-tech? Do you all control Netflix? Amazon? Apple?
  - dylan604 5mo ago
    > Everyone has this revelation once. If it was that easy then customers would practically own the company providing them the services. Do you and your fellow paying customers feel like you own any company, especially big-tech? Do you all control Netflix? Amazon? Apple? A million individual voices are just noise which is what your "fellow paying customers" line equates. A single monetary contributor is not that. It is the sugar daddy of Firefox. Conflating the two seems to be a bad faith comparison.
    - buran77 5mo ago
      > It is the sugar daddy of Firefox. Talking about bad faith, with Google's single, enormously powerful voice surely you can hear what it says. So why not answer to literally the first thing I asked in my comment instead of skipping straight to the end to claim bad faith? You should have laundry list of examples to show how Google flashes the cash and the orders, and Firefox executes. That's a sugar daddy. You understand that if Firefox ever just becomes a puppet on Google hand the whole setup crumbles? It's barely at the edge of plausible deniability even today. Why kill the golden goose when Firefox is anyway in no position to become a real threat on the browser market any time soon. Plenty of companies lived and died by their customers' "noise", or at least got a bloody nose, so that's a shallow dismissal.
      - dylan604 5mo ago
        My point was in support of that if not clearly stated. Expecting FF to listen to a million individual users is not a good expectation. Expecting FF to be prone to listening to a single powerful voice would be a better expectation. However, FF has not assimilated into yet another Chrome, so there's some evidence they are not giving in to the whims of that powerful voice.
- andai 5mo ago
  I heard Mozilla described as "Google's antitrust lawsuit insurance." That doesn't really seem relevant these days though. Although I guess duopolies are totally fine.
  - realusername 5mo ago
    In the US for sure but in the EU, that insurance is still relevant.
- Petersipoi 5mo ago
  What is the advantage of building a browser engine from scratch? As opposed to just forking Blink and maintaining it as a separate project? Seems like the former just adds an ungodly amount of work and still doesn't solve the problem of Google using its weight to control web standards. If Firefox and Apple can't rein in Google with their competing engines, what exactly does Ladybird change?
  - kermatt 5mo ago
    > What is the advantage of building a browser engine from scratch? Same reason some of us choose Linux over Windows.
    - Petersipoi 5mo ago
      Linux and Windows do not have a goal of perfectly emulating the other one, to the degree of sharing the same spec and tests. Not sure how this example applies, especially since Blink is open source, while Windows is not. In fact your example betrays you, because it would be like rewriting Linux from scratch while still attempting to maintain perfect compatibly with Linux. And then arguing that you've somehow weakened Linux in the process. Why not just fork it and maintain your own fork?
  - swed420 5mo ago
    > What is the advantage of building a browser engine from scratch? Straight from the source: https://ladybird.org/posts/why-ladybird/ https://ladybird.org/posts/why-ladybird/
  - nwienert 5mo ago
    Apple does rein them in heavily, they push back on specs all the time, somewhat effectively.
- erxam 5mo ago
  [flagged]
  - dzjkb 5mo ago
    shady and slimy? what are you talking about?
    - youngtaff 5mo ago
      I’ve heard enough about their past behaviour from separate independent sources to know I’d never use Ladybird
      - dzjkb 4mo ago
        care to provide any info instead of ominously refusing to do so?
  - tomhow 5mo ago
    Please don't post attacks on people's character like this on HN. It's fine to share information about people that are relevant to the discussion, but please keep it to dispassionate sharing of material facts rather than venomous slurs like this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
NoGravitas 5mo ago
Vivaldi is almost certainly the best Blink browser, and I'd certainly use it if only Blink browsers were viable. As long as that's not the case, I am, like you, using something based on Firefox; in my case, Zen.
arikrahman 5mo ago
This is why I use Zen. All the benefits of Vivaldi, with the peace of mind supporting a Mozilla stack.
- tapoxi 5mo ago
  I love Zen but it doesn't support TouchID passkey auth on macOS. I'm someone who needs to Okta with multiple times a day, and this drove me to use Vivaldi instead.
  - arikrahman 5mo ago
    Ah that seems like a use case where Zen falls short. I hope there comes a solution to this someday but the proprietary nature of it seems prohibitive. If Asahi Linux can figure out TouchID then maybe there might be a way.
tapoxi 5mo ago
This has been a lost cause for the past decade or so. Web developers don't target Firefox anymore because a 5% share isn't enough to matter. Both projects (Chromium and Firefox) are open, so it's like Linux vs FreeBSD, but at least FreeBSD has a clear licensing advantage.
- Barbing 5mo ago
  We need some billionaire class people to take their business from a site that won’t support Firefox, and say why. or whatever that’s less pie in sky No defeatism though please, some of us will advocate till the end (pen & paper)

calvinmorrison 5mo ago

Blink is a virtual machine. It's like complaining about the Hegemony of Perl