Comment by bad_user
7 months ago
IMO, Chrome does not move fast enough.
The fact of the matter is that the web has been dying because people have moved to mobile devices, where they prefer native apps.
If you're advocating for slower development of browsers, you're also advocating for the death of the open web.
A significant number of my "native apps" on mobile are just webview wrappers. Some are really fancy and slick, but still. I think the mobile OS handling web apps in a more integrated way would help here more than making browsers more complex.
Almost nothing Google ships at neck-breaking speed makes the web better, or faster, or a better open web.
All the features that Google ships are necessary for web apps. E.g., open this webpage in different browsers: https://howfuguismybrowser.dev/ — Note that Firefox was once on top of this development, during the days when they also had an interest in developing FirefoxOS. Those days are long gone.
As for what Google has done historically with Chrome, it's trivially easy to point to developments that have improved the web.
You can start with the fact that it's the most secure browser, see for instance: https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.ht...
You can also read their original marketing material, in which they describe the isolation of plugins, extensions, or tabs, i.e., a crashing Flash movie or a crashing website no longer crashed the browser — then count the years it took for their competition to catch up: https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/
On “speed”, not sure what you mean, but Chrome has been demonstrably the fastest browser. It always was, with V8 being the fastest JS engine since launch, but also in benchmarks testing more “real” experiences, like Speedometer 3. The only area where it needs improvement is battery efficiency on macOS machines, where Safari has the lead, but even there it made great strides.
Speaking of PWAs, Chrome was also the first to deliver a good PWA experience on mobile devices and on the desktop. For mobile devices, the first one was Apple's Safari, but then Apple crippled the experience by not implementing much needed functionality, such as notifications. Firefox, BTW, still has unfixed bugs on Android and provides no SSB support for the desktop.
> E.g., open this webpage in different browsers: https://howfuguismybrowser.dev/
... and see a bunch of Chrome-only non-standards
> On “speed”, not sure what you mean, but Chrome has been demonstrably the fastest browser.
Re-read what I wrote. I was talking about the speed of releasing new features and APIs. They ship ~1000 new APIs a year
> Speaking of PWAs, Chrome was also the first to deliver a good PWA experience on mobile devices and on the desktop.
There's no such thing as PWA. It's a marketing term used extremely loosely to prove anything, and nothing. It's a random collection of 20 or so standards, and everyone choses their own favorite subset to say ah yes, this is crucial for PWA support".
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On the other hand we have documented cases of Google sabotaging competitors (https://archive.is/tgIH9), forcing their tech decisions on competitors under the threat of retaliation (https://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=...), selling user data to advertisers (from FLOC to current plans to sell first-party cookie data: https://bsky.app/profile/thezedwards.bsky.social/post/3las7o...) and so on
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JS has been moving at excellent speeds and Google has moved the web to evergreen. If anything I’d argue that without the specter of regulation then we might’ve had Dart or something new in the browser by now.
The biggest existential risk to the web is that it’s not good enough. It’s being threatened by sharp innovation in other spaces - may the Vision Pro never come down in price or improve in UX.
What do regulations have to do with Dart? You got WASM in the browser which is a much better outcome than a language even Google doesn't know what to do with.
The biggest existential risk to the web is Google themselves: it's the world's biggest advertising and user tracking company having outsized influence on where the web is headed, and moulding the web for its own profit.
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I, for one, do not prefer native mobile apps, I'd be happy to use web, but companies actively degrade my experience there, and shove their apps in my face because this way they can track me and serve ads.