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I was there too. People always say this, but just because a thing changed once does not mean it will happen again. In this case, the population scale alone has

by mavrc 3y ago

I was there too. People always say this, but just because a thing changed once does not mean it will happen again. In this case, the population scale alone has changed by over an order of magnitude. Just doing some quick searching - the first numbers that come up when you search for "how many people used the internet in the year 2000" are on the order of 350 million or so. Comparatively, now, in 2023, Reddit alone has some 450 million users. It would seem right now that Tiktok has about three times the number of active users than there were total Internet users 23 years ago. Additionally, there are literally hundreds of billions of dollars now resting on Chrome remaining the dominant browser. Short of government intervention (or absolutely monumental fuckup on Google's part somehow), Chrome is here to stay.

smoppi 3y ago
>I was there too. People always say this, but just because a thing changed once does not mean it will happen again. The problem is that the web standards have now grown so much that it is impossible to write a complete new web browser from scratch. Firefox is not coming back, because Mozilla seems to prioritize other things than code quality and the actual usability of their software. And yes, I know that the SerenityOS developers are trying to do it, but while some very advanced things work "good enough" in their browser so that Twitter and Discord's web client works to some extent, the more basic things are so broken that their browser cannot even render basic HTML 3.2 sites properly. Google's end goal is probably to "deprecate" HTTP 1.x and force everyone into using their own replacement for the protocol. Their protocol is going to be like the thing they call "HTTP2", an insanely complex protocol that is impossible to implement by a small developer team. In the end their own protocol becomes a "rolling release" protocol that only works with Google's own app, at which point they can completely stop releasing RFCs for it.
pmlnr 3y ago
No, I get it. I can't see a blackout day happening (the one stopped SOPA/PIPA) again either. But it still happened, against M$, who was the behemoth of the time, so things are never impossible.
ploum 3y ago
Yes. The solution is very simple: uninstall Chrome and Chromium. We are the people with the most influence on the tech. We are prescriptors. We are legion. – Yes but Chrome is a tad faster and I have my bookmarks and my favorites extension and blablablabla… — Then you are the root cause of the problem. If you are not ready to sacrifice an ounce of comfort to save the web, then you are the one killing the web. Simple: install Firefox. Now. (oh, and, by the way, also removes google analytics and all google trackers from the websites under your control. That’s surprizingly easy to do and a huge blow in Google monopoly. There are plenty of alternatives)
- pmlnr 3y ago
  > There are plenty of alternatives Yeah, not for long. Go back and read the proposed changes.
  - Buttons840 3y ago
    Please explain what you mean. It sounds like you have an important point that can only be found if people sit and carefully read several pages. Important points deserve to be stated more plainly.
    - saurik 3y ago
      The entire point of this spec is that your alternative browser wouldn't be able to attest to its "integrity" unless it was exactly as locked down as the other ones. If you have some kind of rebuttal to the shared context we all otherwise have, maybe you should be the one forced to state it more plainly.
      - Buttons840 3y ago
        Okay, so you're not saying that we're going to lose the ability to use another browser, just that the other browsers might not be good for much. I think the comment you originally replied to is trying to say "use the other browsers, even if they are not good for much".

by mavrc 3y ago

smoppi 3y ago

>I was there too. People always say this, but just because a thing changed once does not mean it will happen again. The problem is that the web standards have now grown so much that it is impossible to write a complete new web browser from scratch. Firefox is not coming back, because Mozilla seems to prioritize other things than code quality and the actual usability of their software. And yes, I know that the SerenityOS developers are trying to do it, but while some very advanced things work "good enough" in their browser so that Twitter and Discord's web client works to some extent, the more basic things are so broken that their browser cannot even render basic HTML 3.2 sites properly. Google's end goal is probably to "deprecate" HTTP 1.x and force everyone into using their own replacement for the protocol. Their protocol is going to be like the thing they call "HTTP2", an insanely complex protocol that is impossible to implement by a small developer team. In the end their own protocol becomes a "rolling release" protocol that only works with Google's own app, at which point they can completely stop releasing RFCs for it.

pmlnr 3y ago

No, I get it. I can't see a blackout day happening (the one stopped SOPA/PIPA) again either. But it still happened, against M$, who was the behemoth of the time, so things are never impossible.

ploum 3y ago

Yes. The solution is very simple: uninstall Chrome and Chromium. We are the people with the most influence on the tech. We are prescriptors. We are legion. – Yes but Chrome is a tad faster and I have my bookmarks and my favorites extension and blablablabla… — Then you are the root cause of the problem. If you are not ready to sacrifice an ounce of comfort to save the web, then you are the one killing the web. Simple: install Firefox. Now. (oh, and, by the way, also removes google analytics and all google trackers from the websites under your control. That’s surprizingly easy to do and a huge blow in Google monopoly. There are plenty of alternatives)

pmlnr 3y ago
> There are plenty of alternatives Yeah, not for long. Go back and read the proposed changes.
- Buttons840 3y ago
  Please explain what you mean. It sounds like you have an important point that can only be found if people sit and carefully read several pages. Important points deserve to be stated more plainly.
  - saurik 3y ago
    The entire point of this spec is that your alternative browser wouldn't be able to attest to its "integrity" unless it was exactly as locked down as the other ones. If you have some kind of rebuttal to the shared context we all otherwise have, maybe you should be the one forced to state it more plainly.
    - Buttons840 3y ago
      Okay, so you're not saying that we're going to lose the ability to use another browser, just that the other browsers might not be good for much. I think the comment you originally replied to is trying to say "use the other browsers, even if they are not good for much".