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Comment by pjmlp | Hacker News Reader

That is why there is a company selling laptops where the OS is the browser, and another one doing the same for smart TVs.

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There's however the important detail that this company has been doggedly working for achieving that end by first co-opting the browser of a competitor (Safari WebKit), then forking it, then taking over the web standards process, and putting in every API possible on the web, including access to USB devices and so on, so they can make an OS around it.

Because if it's the web, Google sees it. And if everything is the web, then Google sees everything.

And Apple had in turn had cop-opted KDE’s KHTML and KJS project to start WebKit. An illustrious linage.

(I remember several awesome hobby OS projects ported KHTML to get a really good browser back in those days. It was a really solid and portable codebase and much tidier than Firefox.)

Google doesn't see anything just because it uses web technology. For instance, the payroll system I use is a web app, but Google doesn't see my company's payroll data. What Google sees is a marketing blurb about the payroll system.

Google sees everything that is public and everything that uses their ad network, including data from apps that don't use the web at all.

Wish Windows would take a cue from that other operating system and stop shipping with so much cruft.

Can't remember the last time I used Windows for anything more than launching Chrome and Steam...

Actually Windows was one of the first to follow upon this idea with Active Desktop and packaged Web applications.

I guess you would be better off with SteamOS then.

We still have that in the form of PWAs. I don't mean the web "runtime"/webview, but all the cruft that Windows ships with... the endless ads, multiple UI and config layers, Office trial, the stupid games, OneDrive, Skype/Teams, the endless notifications, Bing everywhere... it's an over-monetized in your face nightmare on every fresh boot.

If not for DirectX and Windows-only games, I'd totally ditch it. Maybe when Proton gets there.

I only use Windows for games.

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