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Comment by hfktnrjek | Hacker News Reader

4 companies, yet only two browsers* between them, with one holding 85%+ of the market.

* yes, I know they only share the engine

WebKit and Chromium split so long ago, i don’t really think you can call them the same engine anymore.

Look at the bright side, Google at least discusses some stuff with other companies rather than doing ActiveX or other crap like Microsoft when they had 80%+ of the market.

It's pageantry. Google forced Manifest V3 on the world without consulting the other browsers or the existing WebExtension stakeholders. They did it under a false flag of security and performance, objectives that could have been achieved with MV2 if they wanted. But that wouldn't allow them to neuter ad-blockers.

Their member in this group, Simeon Vincent, won't acknowledge this because his paycheck requires him to not understand it. You could read the last year of the chrome extension google group for countless examples of developers raising issues with MV3 architecture only to be corporate-spoken away by the 800-lb browser gorilla. They aren't listening, but they want you to think they are.

Google does whatever it wants, whenever it wants, as poorly documented as it wants. MV3 still does not have buy-in from extension developers but Google has started the clock on MV2 deprecation. This new group is nothing more than an attempt to get Google to document loudly what they're already doing.

> Google forced Manifest V3 on the world without consulting the other browsers or the existing WebExtension stakeholders.

WebExtensions is still Google's browser API. Mozilla implemented it so they could support Chrome extensions, but they didn't inherit partial ownership as a result of that.

I also think it's premature to say it was "forced on the world" when Manifest V3 isn't even released yet.

The WebExtensions API (promise-based) was created by Mozilla. Whereas “Chrome Extensions” (callback-based) was created by Google.

These are not compatible with each other despite being very similar. The former uses the browser.* namespace and the latter uses the chrome.* namespace

There are implementation differences, but it's not as if they were independent inventions. Mozilla's API is based directly on Chromium's. That itself is fine (because Chromium is open-source), but I don't think a difference like callbacks vs promises makes it a unique product. If that's what you were implying, anyway.

Manifest V3 was released three Chrome versions ago. It doesn't fully work, but Google considers it released. They've also started the clock to MV2 deprecation. Have you? You won't be able to deploy MV2 come April 2022. This working group will still be putting its pants on.

Where did you find the April 2022 date? I couldn’t find a depreciation timeline for MV2 anywhere.

I was going from memory, and I was sadly too optimistic!

The soonest it could happen is _January_ 2022. [1]

Google intentionally won't set a timeline here because they're more interested in finishing and getting promotions than what's best for users and developers on their platform. So they want to make the period as small as they can get away with. The fact that Google has ignored so many requests for a timeline here should tell you that they are happy letting MV2 die on the earliest stated date. Otherwise they'd communicate a later date when asked!

[1] https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/chromium-extensio...

If anyone wants proof Google considers it launched, read the warning on MV2 docs.

>>> The page you're viewing describes extensions using Manifest V2. Now that Manifest V3 has launched, we strongly recommend that you use it for any new extensions that you create.

https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/mv2/

to be fair, the way plugins/addons are handled in a browser is a part where browser differs completely despite having the same engine

At least two of them (Edge/Chrome) have extensions that are interchangable.

Also, the engine has little-to-nothing to do with the plugin system.

And of which, one which 100%-ish of its revenues are coming from the other.

Wait,

Safari == webkit

FF == Gecko

Google == Chromium

Microsoft == Chromium

Right?

So 3 Engines?

Chromium is forked from Webkit so the two share a lot of code

But they have diverged so long ago, they are for all practical purposes different rendering engines. It’s not the same deal as, say, Chrome and Edge.

Right, Blink and WebKit are no longer reliably similar, which is why when devs don’t test on WebKit (to say nothing of Gecko), rendering stuff can reliably break.

They share a ton of history but the split happened eight years ago and A LOT of code has changed. In fairness, WebKit (and thus, Safari) has later adopted some of the same changes, but they really aren’t synonymous anymore.

Blink and Webkit have become separate enough that you can't call them the same in good faith: layout engine is completely different, style engine is different and many other parts have been rewritten in both Blink and Webkit independently of each other.

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