I know this sounds bad, but maybe this is a blessing in disguise. Necessity is the mother of invention and maybe browser technology should be funded by governments instead of privately owned advertising megacorps?
Eh, 80% of what this Dan fellow provides can’t be all that much…
I may be a layman with regards to this, can someone explain to me the thinking behind the DoJ’s proposal and why they think it’s for the common good.
Monopolies are bad enough by themselves. But with google they own such a large part of the day to day web browsing experience it’s amazing it’s not worse than it already is.
- YouTube has documented cases of effectively throttling non-chrome browsers.
- There is a lot of juicy user behaviour data that can be gathered directly from chrome to support Google’s AD network.
- Google bank roll a lot of the web technologies that run websites, giving chrome an edge to implement new tech earlier and better than the competition.
- They also own Android, and unlike windows, they don’t even give you a pop up in what browser you want to use.
- They also don’t only control Chrome, but they are giving out the chromium (the web engine under the hood). So now they effectively control Brave, Edge, Opera, and any other browser that runs on chromium. And wouldn’t you know it, they heavily nerfed ad blockers capabilities in chromium to increase Googles ad revenue.
This is great in my opinion. Web browsers are infernally complicated and need to be simplified. CSS is a bloated mess. Javascript is a bloated mess. I would love to see large swathes of both of them eliminated from existence, and maybe the maintenance burden leaves a very small chance that we could start to see some of these technologies starting to get dropped. I personally would love to see web components disappear most of all.
Regardless, Google really fucked over the web when they decided to add all these unnecessary technologies to Chrome. No doubt a EEE strategy to take over all browser development on the web. Something should have been done much earlier about it, but now we’ll have to see how this mess gets sorted out.
Nobody can make a successful browser that is simpler. The moment a user hits a website that no longer works, they are going back to their old browser.
All these new features exist because websites replaced every single program most people used. Web browser now have to be capable of doing anything pretty well. It’s not some grand conspiracy to take over the internet, it’s providing the features devs want so they can deliver the things they want in the modern multiplatform no-install world.
All these new features exist because websites replaced every single program most people used. Web browser now have to be capable of doing anything pretty well.
Which means that simple cross-platform scripting languages with graphical abilities should have been more popularized.
I discovered tcl/tk for myself recently and it’s just wonderful. A 12 years old me would be capable to learn it, if I knew about it.
What the web browser does well is a sandbox to protect you from all the tits and dicks and “pay us 42 bitcoins” messages. People are afraid of running programs from random sources, but not of visiting random webpages.
So the products they need are a simplified web browser and a sandboxed environment for running things downloaded from it. What we have. Just separated, cause the former is too important to be affected by customer requirements of the latter.
Of course developers wanted this. They wanted to push all the complexity into the browser so they didn’t have to worry about it themselves. Google was happy to provide this because it meant that they could be the only ones that could write a browser. That was the “conspiracy” you’re talking about - but it wasn’t a conspiracy, it was more of a strategy on behalf of Google, who knew that they were the only ones that could provide this level of support, and so if they did it, nobody else would be able to compete with them. Even Microsoft gave up on their own engine.
But the only reason Google could do this is because they were deriving revenue from their advertising monopoly. If their web browser was honestly funded, many, many of the features that we see in Chrome today would have never existed.
Google was happy to provide this because it meant that they could be the only ones that could write a browser.
Word. That, and so many other things.
Also, I’m not going to argue that things aren’t better for developers today than they were before. Sure, web development is much easier these days. But at the same time, I think web applications are way too overengineered. There are lots of things that could be done in simpler ways - for example, why is it necessary to restyle scrollbars, or reimplement standard components like drop-down menus with reimplementations written entirely in Javascript? Things like this are just stupid and having to drop support for trivial things like this in the name of making browsers simpler is well worth it in my opinion.
Dropping support for that stuff means breaking 95% of the websites people currently use. It’s a non-starter, it cannot ever happen, even if you think it would be for the best.
I remember a lot of similar arguments about how ubiquitous Flash was when mobile devices were first taking off. Not saying it will be easy or even likely not saying it will never happen is a bit of an assumption.
It’s a different situation, as a dev I’d happily bet my life on this assumption.
Just compile everything to webassembly and ship that,using your preferred language and libraries.
Which means that we will get blobs to interact with, instead of JavaScript code that can be “reviewed” or monkey patched away.
Fun times. Thanks, monopolistic assholes like Goggle, Microsoft and Apple.
Don’t give them ideas!
This is so wild. I really don’t miss Flash, but since Steve killed it with the iPhone, Web development has spent more than 10 years to reinvent the ActionScript3 environment and make the entire web depend on it. And who solely prevented AS3 as a web standard from happening? Chris Wilson, Web Standards Tech Lead at Google, in his former role at browser monopolist Microsoft.
Today, every single piece of the web is designed by Google to further their business. And all these fucking Electron applications…
I wasn’t aware of that, but it’s crazy. Thanks for sharing it. The sad truth is that there are probably lots of other standards that didn’t make it into browsers either because Google refused to adopt them in Chrome (JPEG2000 for example, but that’s a complicated ). Google had way too much influence over web standards because they had total control of the web browser.
I really don’t miss Flash,
Standardized “Flash”, well-sandboxed and separated from the browser itself as it was, would be a good idea though.
to reinvent the ActionScript3 environment and make the entire web depend on it.
Unfortunately the separation part they “solved”.
It’s about 100 billion times either to create GUI using Godot than HTML + Javascript + CSS.
Try Tk. It’ll be faster or as fast as that, I guarantee that.
What is Tk?
Lol
Yeah it is because you don’t have to worry about responsive, cross browser compatibility, limiting asset use, accessibility, SEO…
It’s mainly because making GUIs primarily in code is cumbersome and outdated.
CSS is a bloated mess. Javascript is a bloated mess.
Why would less money make people do more work to fix this?
Their point is to make them dissapear, not fix.
CSS and JavaScript is going to disappear? Get real.
Cutting out swaths of code and features - without breaking other code and features - is not a small task.
It’s probably more time consuming and complex than just continuing to update at a slower pace.
While true, some things we want to simplify are sometimes as simple as they can be.
But saying that, I’m thinking of Java, not of the Web. Java is really a wonderful creation.
Just - sometimes when learning new things I understand that yes, I was right and some thing is too complex and it’s just that, but sometimes that it’s optimal and the “simple” way is even more complex.
IMHO the Web solves two goals, which should be separated. Global hypertext services and serving applications executed on client in a sandbox. The latter is far more complex and demanding for security and efficiency and features, but the former is far more important socially.
Maybe the former should rely upon a simpler and easier technology, like Gemini, and the latter be a kind of applications like an address book or a 2FA application. Where you see a list of imported connections, press “run”, and then over a standard protocol fetch the actual executable application to run in a sandbox. What the Web in practice already is for most people, untied from a global hypertext system. So that we’d have both.
I mean, it’s pretty normal to open magnet links in a different application, or download an RDP connection file and open it in an RDP client.
OK, my brain is asleep.
Oh no, where will Apple and MS find the money to continue development!
Yeah but what about the other one?
The only one with a different web browser engine? The only one that is actural competition?
One browser tab holding a few YouTube visits consumes about 350 MO of memory. I think we have added enough functionality to the browser
This is a result of Google most likely losing the anti-monopoly trial that’s been underway for a while now, which in my book is a Good Thing.
Focusing on one aspect of it being not so good feels counterproductive to me.Anyhow, let’s see how this plays out first. First of all I want to see the upcoming separations/selling off of Google’s tentacles actually happening, and actually resulting in significantly less monopoly for Google/Alphabet.
The skeptic in me says that it won’t be quite as glorious as I hope, and funding will just flow differently. Who knows, maybe some other power hungry corp will step up.OP:
maybe browser technology should be funded by government
Yes, but never directly!
maybe browser technology should be funded by governments
Yeah let’s make it even easier for them to implement backdoors
I mean, before DOGE ostensibly took over USDS I was aware of it funding open source projects through normal processes just because their continued improvement helped the government function. Making software good for government agencies was one of their mandates.
If I had full faith in the current Mozilla project like I used to, I’d say they could just accept funding through the nonprofit in a similar setup and just do good things.
My point is there are ways to make it work where there is funding without influence. Just corruption and capitalism are fighting against it.
If it’s free software (which it should be), then we’d be able to see any backdoors they add.
Oh sweet summer child.
governments
Be careful what you ask for :(.
South Korea mandated internet explorer for all purchase checkout until relatively recently maybe the last 5 years. They had all these pieces built around it so checking out at a website you would have to prove your identity using national ID and then only IE would work.
Be very careful what you ask for.
Also: be careful who you vote into office.
Too late
That sounds like Microsoft bribed the shit out of SK 20 years ago.
But, yeah… Elect monkeys, get circus.
In countries like SK or even Japan I’d consider the opportunity that it’s not bribes, just culture. Where average Western European person thinks pluralism is good because of living and letting live, average Middle-Eastern person thinks pluralism is good because it makes their enemies complacent, and average SE Asian person thinks it’s bad because we need order. One can add average Central-Eastern Europeans thinking monopoly can be deserved and it’s practically better if morally worse.
OK, a bunch of stereotypes, sorry.
This doesn’t sound bad at all. This sounds like someone other than Google will be able to have a meaningful affect on web development.
unless, say, OpenAI, or Perplexity, or Microsoft buy it, and then cut Mozilla funding.
Nice. Maybe Mozilla will learn to walk by themselves (spoiler: they won’t).
That would require us, the users, to donate more.
We happily would if we knew it was going to devs
Or them to charge for it, or take more money from, say, Alphabet, for services rendered.
Any of those options will get its users on the barricades. FF will always be in the hot chair.
In the end you’re right, sufficient donations would be the best way.
(And yeah, they made some really dumb decisions. What about Google, Apple and Microsoft? Do they not pay the wrong people?)
No it wouldn’t.
Stop being a useful idiot.
I don’t consider that as “walking by themselves”. Plus, maybe you aren’t aware that FF is managed by Mozilla Corp (not the foundation), which can’t legally take donations. Thus. The money you donate doesn’t find FF development. Last, I’m not an user and I’m not going to donate. I couldn’t care less. Mozilla did this to themselves. They can disappear tomorrow, as far as I am concerned.
What DO you use? There’s literally three usable browsers out there, one mismanages its finances, one is Apple and one is responsible for the entire web browsing experience turning to shit because they run the browser that everyone uses so they can just ignore the W3 specs and other browsers get the blame when they don’t adopt Google’s tracking-riddled APIs.
If only this could lead to scaling down the scope of web technologies so it’s sustainable to develop a browser without that 80% funding.
Wouldn’t be the first time we dropped an ultra complex technology for something much more simple, e.g. DCOM/CORBA for JSON-based RPC.
As long as Google doesn’t sell Chrome to OpenAI.
this is my most controversial take in computing in general:
i’ve always hated the browser. the reason there are only a few working browser engines is that HTTP and the HTML/CSS/JS tech stack is a gigantic pile of tech debt, and even using Chromium and Firefox you run into edge cases where, for certain edge cases, they don’t always follow the specs as defined in these ancient RFCs. and these specs: why tf are they treated as gospel? which software product specs drafted 50 years ago get this kind of reverence? why is it that other GUIs have had tons of iteration, not just of their spec but their full stack implementation (Wayland, .NET, Kotlin Compose, SwiftUI, etc), but we’re all just fine with this mess of janky boomer protocols cuz it lets startups get to market faster? why is downloading an entire app (less some caching) every time you want to use it feel less cumbersome than installing something native to the runtime environment where the protocols can be tightly controlled by the developer and not subject to whatever security and storage protocols whatever browser implementation decides is good for you? cookies? really? the browser should be reimagined with a tighter set of protocols that allow you to look at brochure sites and download content, ie apps. even the best web apps are a janky mess and have never worked better than properly developed desktop GUI. /rant
Well, I do think you’re wrong about quite a lot of that. So yeah that is in fact controversial. Upvoted.
But I agree websites are a bloated mess that shouldn’t be made on a giant javascript stack of unreadable unmaintainable garbage. It’d be cool if we got something more like applets. But then we’d have to design a framework that operates in a sandbox and is limited to only functions that are safe to perform on your computer without trusting the author and make it easy to write so developers can build it and… we’re back at html+css+javascript.
I think the big thing we need to do is fully replace javascript.
Have a look at Gemini and the Gemini capsules. Seems more like what a browser should be, in my opinion.
Yep, try writing a Gemini client, I just did, it feels well.
i know i’m in the minority here so i’m not going to bury myself in this hole, but i do think those are addressable problems. many of them have been addressed. replacing Javascript is exactly what i’m talking about.
Isn’t that what wasm kinda is?
not really. using WASM as your full stack for your front end is just adding to the complexity and jank. WASM is there for compute heavy stuff. you can use it that way if you want.
there may be a little angst from reading and rereading the “Max-Age” portion of the cookie RFC that caused this trauma
I think browsers are unique because it’s how laypeople interact with their computer the most.
There are four of them?
Firefox, safari, chrome, edge. Depending on your perspective that’s either 3 or 4.
Edge is Chrome, so three then.
Yep that’s what I meant by the “depending on your perspective” bit
Chrome used to be Safari, so it’s really more like two and a half.
Safari used to be khtml/Konqueror so … I’m not sure how we’re dividing actually.
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This is another bullet point on the list of MAGA stopping or confusing the flow and accessibility of information.
We are to know nothing about what they are doing in the world, ideally.
No. This is a thinly veiled pr price supporting Google as a monopoly
