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Comment by enos_feedler | Hacker News Reader

I agree with this theory somewhat. I also think the browser had the runway to become the ultimate open mobile super app, but dropped the ball. For reasons we may never figure out, the browser never evolved beyond its initial incarnation. A mobile browser today is mostly just tabs that view shrunk down web pages. I am still waiting for a true mobile first web experience. This might even require a new kind of web page format.

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> For reasons we may never figure out, the browser never evolved beyond its initial incarnation.

The reason is simple, the 30% app store profits. Very low incentives for either of the 2 major players to improve things, and tens of billions of reasons yearly to slow things down.

You can't blame the app stores or the mobile platforms. The truth is that _anyone_ could re-imagine a web browser and build something brand new and become successful distributing through the store for free.

Apple already foresaw that possibility and banned it . iOS users are forced to use Safari.

Exactly.

Still, what happened to FirefoxOS?

It was forked into KaiOS, targeting feature phones and allowing devs to use web technologies for building apps.

I'm waiting for a web first mobile experience. I don't think web pages are the problem, mobile operating systems are. They should, fundamentally, just be browsers. The desktop has space enough for two layers of operating systems - "the" operating system, and the browser. But on mobile that's too confusing.

Agreed. Data privacy and security is so important, especially on mobile since it's our wallet, camera, etc that we need the system to help with permissions, data management etc. It is redundant to have a browser layer AND an operating system layer manage these separately.

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