Comment by troupo
7 months ago
Almost nothing Google ships at neck-breaking speed makes the web better, or faster, or a better open web.
7 months ago
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
> ... and see a bunch of Chrome-only non-standards
That's one way of putting it. The other perspective is that those are necessary features and that Safari and Firefox are now holding the web back. When IExplorer 6 was the most popular browser, with Firefox being the underdog, I don't remember people complaining that Firefox was implementing non-standard features.
Let's also remember that by standards, we mean W3C standards, that organization that was once deemed so slow and irrelevant that Mozilla, Apple, and Opera decided to just initiate WHATWG (back when Opera still existed and Apple still wanted a better web).
The irony of the backlash against Chrome's Privacy Sandbox is that Firefox has started shipping similar features, too: https://blog.mozilla.org/netpolicy/2024/08/22/ppa-update/
And it's understandable why because the alternative is a web centralized in closed gardens (Facebook), locked behind paywalls, or a dead web.
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I mean no disrespect, but the people advocating for a slower web progress sound just like the people advocating for degrowth, all being a bunch of nonsense that only a tiny elite minority actually wants.
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.
I don't disagree that Google is a risk; however, note that all browser engines are right now funded by Google's Ads, yes, Firefox and Safari included. If that search deal is undone, at least Firefox is as good as dead.
And while they are "moulding the web for their own profit", at least they are interested in keeping the web alive, and I don't think anyone interested in the health of the web will like the alternatives, which are actually winning right now (closed app stores delivering native apps with spyware and unblockable ads).
By doing this, the DOJ may invalidate one business model that keeps certain FOSS projects alive — commoditized complements to proprietary products and services. You can hate Google, and still see why this will be a huge problem, especially for projects as complex as browsers are.