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Comment by marshray | Hacker News Reader

Chrome owns the internet because web standards have become so complex that not even Microsoft can afford to maintain their own browser engine.

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>not even Microsoft can afford to maintain their own browser engine

We don't know that. Maybe Microsoft could maintain their own browser engine if Google hadn't provided one on permissive open-source licensing terms that met their needs.

>not even Microsoft can afford to maintain their own browser engine

MS can afford it financially. The desire to put in the effort to is not there.

...that's what they're saying. Microsoft has no reason to build their own browser when they can fork Chrome and preinstall it on their computers.

Microsoft tried with Edge V1, and gave up when Google online services started sabotaging it.

They gave up way too easily though. I don't think they ever had an interest in actually making a good browser engine. They've never managed one in their entire history. Microsoft love mediocrity, the "just good enough" mindset. Nobody takes their products on because they really excel at what they do. Just because they have a huge installed base, they're not so bad there's really a problem to use them and they integrate with everything else (e.g. Windows) nicely. For example Slack is so much better than that turd called Teams but nobody wants to pay the extra because Teams is free with O365 and user frustration doesn't cost anything on the bottom line.

This is why Apple really came out of the blue with Steve Jobs' razor focus on quality above all. Microsoft's goal is never to be 'best in class'. Because they don't need to be. People will buy it anyway.

It’s simpler than this, imo. Most users rely on Google Search and Google will Constantly nag the user to try Chrome.

Users, trusting the ad company that provides them free email, search, video, photos etc. will action on the suggestion and install Chrome.

More users gives google the market power to dictate web standards

So what's the solution? I hate this status quo as much as you do, and standing here in a Mexican Standoff is not viable forever. You're right. "The web" as a platform has been twisted and perverted beyond real usability at this point. There is no path forward where we undo Google's damage and preserve the qualities of the web we enjoy today. So, how do we fix this?

The solution (to me) is simple - fix native app distribution. Make platform targets operate the same as they used to, and give people control over their computer again. The only ones preventing us from a platform-agnostic utopia is Apple and Google, both of whom profit off the artificial difficulty of distributing applications.

So, here we are. Google is poisoning the web while Apple refuses to swallow their pride. Everyone is hurting, and nobody stands to gain anything but the shareholders. A hopeless situation, but let's not pretend like everything here is morally grey.

The solution is already impossible. When Mozilla had browser domination they had a chance to dictate something. The moment Chrome became popular, now another company, just as MS and IE did before, could just do the feature creep of "add feature, subtly break/slow down opposition, get more users that just want browser that works"

For starters, if a company makes a web browser with market share exceeding 50%, and also produces web sites and web apps, if those web sites and web apps to do any sort of user agent testing or require non-standard features of the aforementioned browser, it should be treated as ipso facto monopoly abuse.

Microsoft edge non chromium was fine, but no one used it. So they went chromium based.

> Microsoft edge non chromium was fine, but no one used it. So they went chromium based.

Are people now using Edge because of this change?

Edge has made substantial gains in market share in the past few years. But it's hard to definitively ascribe it to any specific change.

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