Comment by foob
2 years ago
As I said, the decisions are locally reasonable. However, if not supporting Firefox potentially exposed my company to scrutiny over anti-competitive behavior, then, yes, I would absolutely invest in testing procedures to mitigate that.
It's also worth emphasizing that it isn't difficult to support Firefox. I'm pretty sure that many of the sites that I visit do so largely by accident. I do a fair bit of web development, and Firefox/Chrome compatibility has never been an issue in the slightest for me. You almost have to go out of your way to choose Chrome-specific APIs in order to break compatibility. How does virtually every other website on the internet manage it—from my bank to scrappy startups with junior developers coming straight out of bootcamps—while Google with all of their engineering talent and $100+ billion cash on hand just can't seem to make it work?
Serious question - does anti-competitive behavior even apply to open source? Also, it's the open source chromium, not necessarily the browser Chrome, that dominates the browser market. The largest players in the industry, except for Apple, have lined-up to support chromium. Firefox is going against the grain. Is it Google's job to help them with their mission? Loosely speaking, in anti-competitive scenarios you have to show how a significant faction of the consumers are being harmed. You're going to have a tough time with that one.
you have to show how a significant faction of the consumers are being harmed. You're going to have a tough time with that one.
I'm not a lawyer and can't speak to what qualifies as anti-competitive behavior in a legal sense. Qualitatively, Web Extensions Manifest v3 and Web Environment Integrity are clearly harmful to consumers in my opinion. The first significantly hinders ad blockers, and the second kicks down the ladder on building search engines and hinders competition in that space. Other browsers using Chromium as a base doesn't change the fact that Google almost unilaterally controls it, and Google has made it extraordinarily clear that they're interested in making decisions that prioritize their own best interests over those of their users. I don't see why Chromium being open source would absolve any responsibility here, especially when the open source project in question primarily exists to serve the interests of the profit center of a mega-corp. I deeply support open source software, and I'm glad that Chromium is open source, but being open source doesn't excuse behavior that is against the interests of users whether it qualifies as illegal or not.
I think you're going to have a tough time with Chromium seeing as how the likes of Microsoft and Canonical are contributing to the project. You're also going to have a tough time showing anti-trust when Google is working with Apple. I'm old enough to remember some famous anti-trust lawsuits where the plaintiffs had a much more solid case and still lost. In this case Google is literally working with the industry's largest companies. You're going to have a really hard time with that.
The thing is that Firefox is the biggest project for an independent fully open source browser not tied to a big commercial company. Google having almost a monopoly is not good for the users, because Google therefore has a lot of leverage to push certain browser technologies that mostly benefit them and not necessarily the users. It's important to have an independent browser that is not optimized for 1 particular company's technology and needs. So we can view the web from a somewhat more neutral view. And yes, I think it's Google's responsibility to adhere to the webstandards and at least test their stuff in Firefox so they adhere to this neutrality. Otherwise they are only providing their websites for the Chromium-web, and not the Open Web.