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Chrome basically is abusing its market position, 69.65% globally, and becomes the new IE. Implementing its own HTML/JS standard. The sad truth is, some compani

Chrome basically is abusing its market position, 69.65% globally, and becomes the new IE. Implementing its own HTML/JS standard. The sad truth is, some companies will look at Statcounter[0] and say because Firefox does not reach 5% global population and decided not supporting it, actively or passively. [0]: https://gs.statcounter.com/ https://gs.statcounter.com/

zdragnar 3mo ago
This is literally how the standards are meant to work, at least on the JS side. The tc39 process requires at least two live implementations to exist before a spec can move to finished. In this case, there's also people from Mozilla onboard, so there's no guarantee that it'll remain chrome only or that chrome will keep it if the spec doesn't go anywhere. In fact, much of the web as we know it evolved this way. We have IE to thank for AJAX, after all.
- shimman 3mo ago
  Standards are democratic controls for democratic institutions, not "organizations" that are entirely captured by corporate interests. Absolutely despise how private entities have ruined software engineering by pursuing things that favor themselves rather than people in general.
  - darig 3mo ago
    [dead]
  - oaiey 3mo ago
    That is not how standards work. Some for sure, but the majority are established by groups of companies / a guild establishing rules. The law pressures them often into it (e.g. the EU did not say USB-C port, they said: one standard, you industry figure it out). There are surely exceptions (maybe the IEEE; which are professionals union).
    - shimman 3mo ago
      No, this is how good standards bodies works. It require collaboration across nations, sorry but this is like small d democracy stuff here. What isn't good are corporate interests rat fucking engineering practices to pursue greater profits.
      - oaiey 3mo ago
        I agree all about company creed and also in many cases the standard is the lowest common denominator of their implementations. I am also a fan of putting national sovereignity over profit, but that does not change that in most cases only companies have the interest, the need and the insights to standardize stuff.
sheept 3mo ago
Another reason why this is problematic is that their proposed standards follow Google's priorities for its own products, particularly Google Meet.[0][1] [0]: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/web-platform/element-capture https://developer.chrome.com/docs/web-platform/element-captu... [1]: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/web-platform/document-picture-in-picture#video_conferencing https://developer.chrome.com/docs/web-platform/document-pict...
- austin-cheney 3mo ago
  Another example is QUIC. What is the benefit of QUIC? On one hand Google boasts it greatly increases page load speed, which is contextually arguable. On the other hand, Google’s design priorities were to introduce UDP to the browser because UDP supports multicast, which lowers CPU utilization in data centers.
  - chrisweekly 3mo ago
    IIRC, QUIC was also the precursor to HTTP/3. I don't like Google's motivations for wanting a faster web, but many of the things they've encouraged and/or provided have made things faster and more efficient. I'm not a google apologist, there's so much wrong and so much harm done... just saying it's maybe worth separating the tech from the motives.
    - doodlesdev 3mo ago
      HTTP/3 uses QUIC as the transport layer, which in turn relies on UDP. QUIC replaces TCP while allowing a reduction of handshake exchanges in HTTP/3 first requests. Finally, even though UDP supports multicast, I believe QUIC doesn't. GP saying Google has developed it to use multicast thus is nonsense. Furthermore, QUIC takes much more CPU than TCP right now, due to running in userland. In my opinion, QUIC and HTTP/3 are technical marvels, but are perhaps way too complicated and don't really serve the interest of most internet users. There will be a point in the development of web browsers and associated technologies where we should just stop a bit to get things stable instead of churning protocol version after protocol version after new API. Will it ever stop? Eventually, it all becomes so complicated no company can manage it all. Honestly, we might already be past this point, with Chromium at almost 40mi LOC, more than the Linux kernel itself, including all its drivers. When will the madness stop? Do we really need such complicated software to see Instagram posts, comment on a few Hacker News threads and mess around with Google Sheets? The biggest reason I worry so much about this is that in the web, adding new features, APIs and protocols is easy. Removing and deprecating is basically impossible.
gorgoiler 3mo ago
Interesting to see that on Desktop, Firefox (5.8%) just overtook Safari (5.0%) for third place. It doesn’t feel statistically significant but it’s a bit of data at least. (I’m a big Firefox fan and idealist.)
gfody 3mo ago
This has been happening for a while now, basically anywhere there’s room for a potential compatibility issue there will be one. As if any time some observable behavior is an implementation choice the Chrome team policy is “not what Firefox does”. The result is that if you develop on Chrome and don’t test on Firefox your stuff is very likely broken on Firefox.
vaylian 3mo ago
TIL that Firefox has less than 5% market share. When and why did people stop using Firefox? -- Submitted from Firefox
- selectnull 3mo ago
  > When and why did people stop using Firefox? Approximately at the time when majority of the Mozilla resources started going into non-browser projects. And pretty much for the same reason.
  - tweetle_beetle 3mo ago
    So when would that be exactly? Firefox was first released in 2004 and Mozilla Corporation was founded in 2005. According to https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share#yearly-2014-2026 https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share#yearly-2014-... the high point for adoption was 2010 and it has been falling since then. (However, they only have data from 2010 onwards, so the high point could have been even earlier.) This coincidentally [sic] aligns to the launch of Chrome with a massive marketing push in 2008, promising speed, ease of use and security. I find it hard to believe that there are enough people who closely follow the drama around the internal financial management and politics of Mozilla Corporation that they can be measured in the tens of percentage points of total internet market share.
- jampekka 3mo ago
  The use started to decline when Google started the extreme marketing campaign of Chrome around 2010 or so. All Google services had huge banners and included all sorts of dark patterns to get people to install it. TBF, Chrome probably also had some better features and performance over FF, but I don't think most people think much about their browser quality.
reaperducer 3mo ago
Chrome basically is abusing its market position, 69.65% globally, and becomes the new IE. Implementing its own HTML/JS standard. Embrace. Extend. Extinguish. We went to this rodeo a generation ago. Nothing was learned.
Klonoar 3mo ago
IE was bad because Microsoft let it stagnate, not because they were creating new things. Stop getting history twisted.
- danaris 3mo ago
  It was both. If you wanted to do dynamic stuff in IE, you had to use ActiveX. Which was IE-only. So many sites only used ActiveX, because IE was the 900lb gorilla, so why support anything else?

zdragnar 3mo ago

This is literally how the standards are meant to work, at least on the JS side. The tc39 process requires at least two live implementations to exist before a spec can move to finished. In this case, there's also people from Mozilla onboard, so there's no guarantee that it'll remain chrome only or that chrome will keep it if the spec doesn't go anywhere. In fact, much of the web as we know it evolved this way. We have IE to thank for AJAX, after all.

shimman 3mo ago
Standards are democratic controls for democratic institutions, not "organizations" that are entirely captured by corporate interests. Absolutely despise how private entities have ruined software engineering by pursuing things that favor themselves rather than people in general.
- darig 3mo ago
  [dead]
- oaiey 3mo ago
  That is not how standards work. Some for sure, but the majority are established by groups of companies / a guild establishing rules. The law pressures them often into it (e.g. the EU did not say USB-C port, they said: one standard, you industry figure it out). There are surely exceptions (maybe the IEEE; which are professionals union).
  - shimman 3mo ago
    No, this is how good standards bodies works. It require collaboration across nations, sorry but this is like small d democracy stuff here. What isn't good are corporate interests rat fucking engineering practices to pursue greater profits.
    - oaiey 3mo ago
      I agree all about company creed and also in many cases the standard is the lowest common denominator of their implementations. I am also a fan of putting national sovereignity over profit, but that does not change that in most cases only companies have the interest, the need and the insights to standardize stuff.

sheept 3mo ago

Another reason why this is problematic is that their proposed standards follow Google's priorities for its own products, particularly Google Meet.[0][1] [0]: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/web-platform/element-capture https://developer.chrome.com/docs/web-platform/element-captu... [1]: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/web-platform/document-picture-in-picture#video_conferencing https://developer.chrome.com/docs/web-platform/document-pict...

austin-cheney 3mo ago
Another example is QUIC. What is the benefit of QUIC? On one hand Google boasts it greatly increases page load speed, which is contextually arguable. On the other hand, Google’s design priorities were to introduce UDP to the browser because UDP supports multicast, which lowers CPU utilization in data centers.
- chrisweekly 3mo ago
  IIRC, QUIC was also the precursor to HTTP/3. I don't like Google's motivations for wanting a faster web, but many of the things they've encouraged and/or provided have made things faster and more efficient. I'm not a google apologist, there's so much wrong and so much harm done... just saying it's maybe worth separating the tech from the motives.
  - doodlesdev 3mo ago
    HTTP/3 uses QUIC as the transport layer, which in turn relies on UDP. QUIC replaces TCP while allowing a reduction of handshake exchanges in HTTP/3 first requests. Finally, even though UDP supports multicast, I believe QUIC doesn't. GP saying Google has developed it to use multicast thus is nonsense. Furthermore, QUIC takes much more CPU than TCP right now, due to running in userland. In my opinion, QUIC and HTTP/3 are technical marvels, but are perhaps way too complicated and don't really serve the interest of most internet users. There will be a point in the development of web browsers and associated technologies where we should just stop a bit to get things stable instead of churning protocol version after protocol version after new API. Will it ever stop? Eventually, it all becomes so complicated no company can manage it all. Honestly, we might already be past this point, with Chromium at almost 40mi LOC, more than the Linux kernel itself, including all its drivers. When will the madness stop? Do we really need such complicated software to see Instagram posts, comment on a few Hacker News threads and mess around with Google Sheets? The biggest reason I worry so much about this is that in the web, adding new features, APIs and protocols is easy. Removing and deprecating is basically impossible.

gorgoiler 3mo ago

Interesting to see that on Desktop, Firefox (5.8%) just overtook Safari (5.0%) for third place. It doesn’t feel statistically significant but it’s a bit of data at least. (I’m a big Firefox fan and idealist.)

gfody 3mo ago

This has been happening for a while now, basically anywhere there’s room for a potential compatibility issue there will be one. As if any time some observable behavior is an implementation choice the Chrome team policy is “not what Firefox does”. The result is that if you develop on Chrome and don’t test on Firefox your stuff is very likely broken on Firefox.

vaylian 3mo ago

TIL that Firefox has less than 5% market share. When and why did people stop using Firefox? -- Submitted from Firefox

selectnull 3mo ago
> When and why did people stop using Firefox? Approximately at the time when majority of the Mozilla resources started going into non-browser projects. And pretty much for the same reason.
- tweetle_beetle 3mo ago
  So when would that be exactly? Firefox was first released in 2004 and Mozilla Corporation was founded in 2005. According to https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share#yearly-2014-2026 https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share#yearly-2014-... the high point for adoption was 2010 and it has been falling since then. (However, they only have data from 2010 onwards, so the high point could have been even earlier.) This coincidentally [sic] aligns to the launch of Chrome with a massive marketing push in 2008, promising speed, ease of use and security. I find it hard to believe that there are enough people who closely follow the drama around the internal financial management and politics of Mozilla Corporation that they can be measured in the tens of percentage points of total internet market share.
jampekka 3mo ago
The use started to decline when Google started the extreme marketing campaign of Chrome around 2010 or so. All Google services had huge banners and included all sorts of dark patterns to get people to install it. TBF, Chrome probably also had some better features and performance over FF, but I don't think most people think much about their browser quality.

reaperducer 3mo ago

Chrome basically is abusing its market position, 69.65% globally, and becomes the new IE. Implementing its own HTML/JS standard. Embrace. Extend. Extinguish. We went to this rodeo a generation ago. Nothing was learned.

Klonoar 3mo ago

IE was bad because Microsoft let it stagnate, not because they were creating new things. Stop getting history twisted.

danaris 3mo ago
It was both. If you wanted to do dynamic stuff in IE, you had to use ActiveX. Which was IE-only. So many sites only used ActiveX, because IE was the 900lb gorilla, so why support anything else?