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Comment by MBCook | Hacker News Reader

I’m not going to say I think Apple should be able to lock out competing browsers, I know this is going to happen.

But God I don’t want this. The iPhone is basically the only thing stopping a total Chrome/Chromium hegemony from ruling the web the way IE did.

I don’t think Google will practically abandon things the way Microsoft did. But they will absolutely have the kind of power Microsoft did to force any feature.

I don’t want to be forced to use Chrome because it’s the only browser that works on most sites. It’s already bad enough with some sites.

But Apple‘s stubbornness and completely different reasons are the only things accidentally holding back the tide.

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I can't wait until regulators do their job and take away Apple's dictatorial control, in all areas, and all these doom-and-gloom predictions on all these tangential issues end up proving ludicrous.

What kind of control would Chrome have over the web? Adding APIs doesn't force the billions of websites to adopt them. So what if a website adds WebBluetooth? You don't want the web to have that anyway, and if you keep using Safari, you still won't have it. Happy you!

If scrappy Firefox on open platforms could save the web from 95% IE, then why are we all dependent on Apple, alone, to save us from ~60% Chrome? It's learned helplessness and Stockholm syndrome. I wonder how our species survived before the trillion-dollar company started taking such good care of us!

That was almost 20 years ago though. Things are really different now and it's hard to imagine Firefox saving anything these days. Sadly, the only entities powerful enough to control FANGs are FANGs (although fingers crossed the EU holds it's nerve and EU nations belatedly act on the realisation that being beholden to US tech giants is a massive strategic blunder, akin to relying so heavily on US military satellite data for Ukraine).

Yes, new problems will require new solutions. I'm calling out the logic of paternalism and dependency, an impotent hope pinned on a "benevolent" corporation retaining absolute control forever.

I don't have much faith in Firefox saving us, given its organizational turnover and cultural issues.

I have much more faith in a new entrant, like Ladybird. I should be able to use Ladybird on iOS. Why not?

The problem with "new entrant" is that only revolutionary features convince users to switch en mass.

Tabs/stability (Firefox vs IE). V8 (Chrome vs Firefox).

Anything else is a battle of attrition, where the deepest pocketed competitor in terms of advertising spend wins. Or Google, because it flood all its own advertising channels.

And Chrome still barely only won.

Ladybird has too much pride.

They are more concerned with making something from scratch than something that actually works.

Also they’re switching over to Swift which can only be worse for performance.

So what do you want another chromium based browser? The whole point of Ladybird is to kinda prove that a completely independent browser engine is feasible. Also, they are not doing everything from scratch for example it will use the same graphics library that chromium uses (Skia) and also now firefox. You should probably read the FAQ on their homepage:

https://ladybird.org/#:~:text=What%20does%20%22No%20code%20f...

> So what do you want another chromium based browser?

I want something free of Google code, which sounds like they aren’t doing if Skia is anyway involved.

Instead they’re wasting resources where it’s less needed. Like building a JS engine instead of starting off with something like SpiderMonkey, JSCore, or QuickJS.

Let them spend resources however they want. It's not like they are subsidized or anything

>It's not like they are subsidized or anything

View sponsors https://ladybird.org/

Am I missing any govt org there?

Subsidize doesn’t only mean government funded.

Not even a day ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46454115:

> I want my browser to protect me from ALL those things. Ublock origin did precisely that, then Google went in to kill ublock origin. Ublock lite is nowhere near as good.

> I consider this betrayal - naturally by Google, but also by random web designers such as on the python homepage who consider it morally just to pester visitors when they do not want to be pestered. I don't accept ads; I don't accept pop-ups or slide-in effects (in 99.999% of the cases; notifications for some things can be ok, but this does not extend in my book to donation Robin Hood waylanders)."

Why did you link me to a random comment?

edit: I see now. Firefox still has uBlock Origin. You missed the point. If Chrome wants to make itself less attractive, you should celebrate.

If you read it, it shows the impact Google has on browser quality for end users.

Firefox onpy works because iOS means site owners have to support multiple engines

I wonder how many chrome fanboys remember the ie6 days.

> If Chrome wants to make itself less attractive, you should celebrate.

I appreciate that Chrome reducing user autonomy in order to further Google's own business goals _should_ be a reduction in their competitiveness in a perfect market.

But the web browser market does not have perfect competition today, and I cannot recall a time when it had.

Regulators preventing Apple from controlling iOS browser engines but allowing Google to have de facto ownership of the web would be an example of governments picking winners and losers.

Public policy needs to move the market towards real competition.

> If scrappy Firefox

Because ie at the time was dogshit. FF was such an indisputable improvement that people just had to switch.

Chrome great. There is nothing a newcomer can do to compete.

There are plenty of things to compete on: efficiency (startup time, memory use), security (from ad blocking on sites to extensions to the app itself), customization (both in looks and behavior)

There is plenty a browser could do to compete, from blocking modern popups (which now occur within the window, putting a gradient over the content forcing you to interact with their "subscribe to our mailing list" or "join our site to socialize" prompt that you would have to waste time clicking past, auto-pausing looping videos in unfocused tabs, throttling crypto mining tabs, providing uBlock Origin, handling WiFi Terms of Service click through, etc.

Think of the plethora of instances where you wish your browser made minor changes to make browsing easier

Additionally, the predatory UI in Windows that pushes Edge, and on Google.com that push Chrome, simply did not exist at the time.

> What kind of control would Chrome have over the web?

Do you remember Manifest Version 3? They did away with ad block extensions.

If we all end up using Chromium, there’s no longer a web standard. It’s whatever conforms to Google’s standard because all sites will have to support Chromium. That means there will be an undocumented spec. It’s much too difficult for browser engine developers to compete with them, they don’t have nearly the resources.

Do you think the web should be an open standard? How can company catch up if Google is the one pushing the envelope?

Just want to be super clear here… the other party in this question being Apple who is currently the worlds richest company who makes the worlds buggiest browser as seen here https://wpt.fyi/results/?label=master&label=experimental&ali...

The idea that you’re pushing is a hole that Apple themselves have dug on purpose, this is not an oversight but a very intentional decision of theirs to protect their profit margins that their main user retention strategy is that many courts in the world especially the US are never going to force them to compete freely in an open marketplace with consumer choice is a factor.

I never once said anything in favor of Safari, that’s not something I’m “pushing”. I’m in favor more than just Chromium.

So according to you, a company that has about 25% of the global smartphone market, should be _legally forbidden_ from creating a tightly integrated software/hardware bundle.

Whereas, a company that has 70% of the global browser market somehow would have no way to take advantage if they had an even larger share.

I wonder how our species would survive without the unique market analysis from one-of-a-kind minds like yours.

Web and Apple ecosystem is not comparable. IE had quite large market share and was brought down by Chrome in quite short time. Firefox challenged IE quite effectively before that. But Windows (desktop) still enjoys quite large market share even though Google, Linux and Apple (macOS) are trying hard.

The OS lock-in is much more difficult to break than Web where the standards are openly built and made available. One aspect in favor of Google is the complexity of implementing all those standards. But that is not lock-in, rather an issue of having enough resources to implement a compliant browser.

> The OS lock-in is much more difficult to break than Web where the standards are openly built and made available.

Where have you been in the past 10 years or so? Chrome views the web as their own fiefdom, and web devs happily oblige. There are now dozens of Chrome-only non-standards that are presented as "openly built standards" and devs deride other browsers for not implementing them.

It is the decision of the other vendors to not implement the standards (for good reasons, like for e.g. privacy - but it is still the vendor's decisionand not an inherent limitation). The documentations and specifications are available for free.

In case of Windows, there is no spec. There is no possibility of implementing another Windows clone (patents limit such clones). Wine exists, but was reverse engineered with great difficulty.

> It is the decision of the other vendors to not implement the standards

A scribble on a napkin does not a standard make.

A feature released in a single browser engine without support, consent, and against objections of other browser vendors does not a standard make.

Just because Chrome ships something does not make whatever they ship a standard.

> The documentations and specifications are available for free.

That's how Chrome abuses its position and relies on gullible devs to assume that just because something is documented it becomes a standard the moment it's shipped in Chrome.

That's not how standards work.

> a company that has about 25% of the global smartphone market, should be _legally forbidden_ from creating a tightly integrated software/hardware bundle.

Absolutely not. Most of us are perfectly happy with Apple tightly integrating Safari with their hardware.

However, we're going to legally forbid them to prevent users from breaking that tight integration, because it's their device. Apple doesnt "own" the smartphone market: it provides hardware and services, and it shuts the fuck up.

> What kind of control would Chrome have over the web? Adding APIs doesn't force the billions of websites to adopt them.

You are assuming adding APIs is a net positive, and the debacle that was Chrome’s privacy sandbox initiative suggests that’s not the case

> why are we all dependent on Apple, alone, to save us from ~60% Chrome?

How’s Firefox doing now? They’re literally dependent upon Chrome to exist. Without Google they have no money to fund development.

The only viable non-Chromium browser engine today that is not funded by Google is WebKit.

100% agreed, and I've been explaining this to people for the past year.

I have an iPhone now and miss Firefox for Android (with Ublock, sponsorblock, etc). But this painful restriction is the only thing stopping Chrome from becoming the new IE6.

At a few startups I've worked for, the devs all use chrome exclusively, and only test in chrome during development.

The only reason they consider other browsers, is because of Safari on iOS. Sometimes it's driven by support calls / complains from iOS users after a release. If Chrome's engine is allowed on iOS, that means support can just tell the users to install Chrome (like they do now if anyone has issues on Windows in other browsers). This means Firefox will usually work as well.

Many years ago, I was able to swap banks when my bank's website stopped working in Opera 12. If all the major banks / websites target Chrome-only, we'll have no choice but to use it. And then we'll have no control as Google push new restrictions into Chrome.

I don’t see that as a threat honestly. safari being the default app pretty much guarantees its place unless google comes up with a killer feature for iOS chrome. And they are unlikely to make that push considering apple demands the app to be distributed only in Japan.

Besides, the mobile web is becoming more and more of a niche platform, since the web is becoming centralised as time passes and most main sites redirect to their own apps.

And that’s without considering direct web search being replaced by AI search,which google seems convinced is the way forward.

It was the default on the Mac and it’s nowhere near the most popular there.

Google pushes Chrome HARD.

Yep. I've even been seeing Chrome TV ads lately (on Amazon Prime Video). They're marketing it pretty hard despite being dominant.

Also, it's wise to not underestimate the power of developers ceasing to test against non-Blink browsers and taking a page from their IE-era past selves with "Best Viewed in Chrome" and "Browser outdated! Download Chrome" badges. There are few user motivators stronger than things not working.

Similarly, Edge is the default on Windows. Chrome has 75% of the market share.

Yeah it's fun how Google displays a full-page ad for Chrome every few times I do a Google search on iOS Safari that I have to dismiss before seeing the results.

Yeah but the solution to that is to be good at breaking monopolies, not allowing one to stop another.

That’s what should have happened long ago.

As far as I can see there are only two possibilities on any kind of near term:

Apple can lock Google and everyone else out, or Google can take over the web fully.

Those appear to be our only choices right now. I don’t like either one. But I know which one I don’t like more.

Always had. From blocking features by UA to ads worth billions of dollars (only little of which they had to actually pay).

Google has no actual content left to find. It’s AI spam website after AI spam website.

And if you find any content, it’s on a website riddled with ads.

AI search has none of these issues. Google from 15 years ago was wildly superior to today.

>AI search has none of these issues

Yet. AI feeds from the content it substitutes. I’m skeptical to the long term feasibility for this reason, how is it going to bring me news when publishing those news is no longer profitable, for example?

The last working site in google search is reddit. Adding keyword reddit enables it. But it's disappointing.

Agreed. This is the only context in which I still use Google.

> safari being the default app

but this can change. At least in the EU Apple already prompts a user which browser they want [1]. While at the moment every browser is WebKit under the hood, this will probably change as the EU is also pushing Apple to allow other engines [2] - and with users knowing Chrome from Ads, their work or from a previous Android phone, I can imagine a lot of them selecting Chrome as a default.

1: https://www.heise.de/en/news/Apple-alters-selection-screen-f... 2: https://developer.apple.com/support/alternative-browser-engi...

Until websites block you from logging in, completing transactions, ordering items until you open it with Chrome

Or just get buggy. I have absolutely run into sites that work on mobile Safari but not on desktop Safari. Because they don’t test it and don’t care.

You HAVE to use Chrome or possibly Firefox. We’ve always seen what Firefox is doing, they’re not going to be our saviors again.

There’s a meaningful amount of blame here that sits squarely at the feet of Apple.

1. They produce the world’s buggiest browser by far. Look at this chart that shows the number of bugs that ONLY OCCUR IN A SINGLE BROWSER. https://wpt.fyi/results/?label=master&label=experimental&ali...

2. They don’t support any modern testing protocols like WebdriverBiDi

3. They don’t make their software available to anyone who isn’t using Apple’s hardware.

The core root of the problem is very clearly Apple who’ve done nothing other than make the world’s buggiest and least accessible browser and then tried to hold everyone hostage who was previously forced to use it until courts had to stop them and they had no choice.

> They don’t make their software available to anyone who isn’t using Apple’s hardware.

Why should they? When did this become a rule? If Atari survived would they be required to make Windows software? Be? Commodore?

Where/why does/should the law require everyone to make Windows apps?

Really?

Why should people buy special, extra expensive hardware to test with a bad web browser?

It's logical to skip that step.

That ship has already sailed. And Apple is part of the problem. Recently I used Microsoft Edge because Facetime doesn't support Firefox. I couldn't get audio working so switched to Google Meet (which does work in Firefox.)

I'm sure if Apple keeps innovating and adopting some of the Web standards they'll outcompete other engines. But let's be realistic, they 100% are blocking other engines and not adopting standards in their own because they want that sweet sweet 30% cut when developers can't publish PWAs and are forced into the "app" model.

WebKit's progress has been significant in recent years, it's just been more focused on things like improving CSS instead of things like an API that tells the developer how many beers the user has in their fridge.

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It depends on how you look at it.

From my perspective, Google tends to focus on somewhat niche features that will benefit a small slice of web apps. In contrast, the things Apple works on are those that benefit everything from static blog sites to huge commercial web apps.

I wish Google were more like Apple in this regard, because the primitives from which everything web is built are still overwhelmingly crude, which results in the half-ton-truck-built-on-a-golf-cart frameworks and apps the web has become famous for. Making the web reasonable to develop for without a dependency tree that looks like a spiral fractal would do way more to make it flourish as a platform than things like access to the GPU and USB devices.

People didn't mind when IE was muscling in and adding useful new features. They abandoned Netscape because the features made the web better. It wasn't until they stopped adding features to the browser itself that it really started to become a problem. They would still add features, but too much relied on ActiveX -- which wasn't necessarily evil, there's a grand vision there of component re-use across the OS and varied applications, the same was done with Java Applets and even Shockwave/Flash, but it sucked more and they were all plagued with security problems. Then MS stopped innovating pretty much entirely, and wouldn't even play catch up for a long time, whether with their out-of-browser plugins (oh Silverlight...) or the browser itself. No support for tabs for a long time, or popup blocking (later ad blocking), they had terrible performance... And as various "web standards" advanced to make things nicer for the users and developers, and add capabilities that didn't require an external plugin, they drug their heels on that too.

Eventually, the hell that was IE was a combination of hostile user experience, security problems, performance problems, and developer pain in finding workarounds or other support because it was so far behind on everything. It had nothing to do with their power to dictate or experiment with new features. The extent of the hostile user experience that leaked outside the browser itself was the "only works on IE" problem that forced people to use IE for that site, on the whole it was comparable to the "only works with Flash or Java applets" problems and not as bad as the experience of the browser itself. For the most part these days, the two parts of that hell that remain relevant are the hostile user experience and the developer pains parts, and Mobile Safari is the successor to both for over a decade now. No one supports IE11 anymore (let alone older IEs) but they still have to support Mobile Safari. I have fonder memories of dealing with IE11 (and earlier) support/workarounds over Mobile Safari's crap. My view is more power to actual Chromium-based browsers on mobile even if I personally use Firefox on PC and android despite their user experience shortcomings (at least they're not very hostile). The only part of hell I'd be worried about is that of a hostile user experience, which can be worked around by individual users if they are allowed choices.

It wasn't until they stopped adding features to the browser itself that it really started to become a problem.

Only for those misguided "push the web forward" idiots who just wanted the latest shiny shit, aided by Google's plans to control the Internet itself. Plain HTML worked well enough for everything else.

Google's weapon is change. They have the resources to outcompete everyone else by churning the "standards" as much as they want. The less people think that constant change is necessary, the better the web will be.

This is silly IMO.

Technologies like HTTP and Wasm are truly excellent tools for cross platform software delivery and browsers are an ideal sandboxed execution environment.

This idea that the web should only be for straight up HTML documents is a broken mental model.

Apple have a multi-billion dollar income stream that is firmly premised on the fact that nobody could deliver software on their platform unless they could steal 30% of the companies profits and as such spent a huge amount of time and effort undermining the idea that the web could ever be an app platform but you’re not compelled to cheerlead for Apple’s profit margins and anti-consumer bullshit.

The problem isn't web apps; it's web apps where simple HTML would be sufficient.

> The problem isn't web apps

Then the problem isn't adding features to make web apps more capable, either.

Web apps replacing unsandboxed applications is a net win. We could argue about whether web apps replacing sandboxed applications is a net win as well, but most local applications on PCs are not sandboxed, and even mobile applications aren't sandboxed as strongly as web apps. (I would love to see an "allow network access" permission on a per-mobile-app basis.)

Safari is so bad, I want a real chrome experience on iOS

Can you explain how? Poor standards implementation? Performance? UX?

I’d like the extension ecosystem from chrome or Firefox. I miss having real Firefox with real Ublock like on Android.

I find the “use reader automatically “ setting helps a lot

The extension ecosystem that Google has been locking down? You can get the same UBlock extension on Safari and Chrome now (on Safari desktop and iOS).

Good thing I mentioned Firefox. Ublock on safari and iOS is not the same.

Yes, it's not the same as the one available still on Firefox. But you said "I’d like the extension ecosystem from chrome or Firefox". I'm pointing out that the Chrome one has been limited and now runs the same UBlock version that Safari runs.

Good thing I mentioned Firefox

No full screen API so impossible to make lots of types of game experiences.

No orientation API so impossible to make games and other experiences that require a certain orientation

No WebXR (though Apple will allow it on Vision Pro)

No support for ResizeObvserver devicePixelContentBoxSize so impossible to get correct rendering reguardless of user's zoom level.

No simple PWA installation. Requires an obscure incantation that only expert users know.

That's just a few off the top of my head.

Yes, I know all the comments will be about how they don't want those features. That's really irrelevant. Allow them to be turned off. Require permissions. Those features have been shipping on other OSes, Desktop and Mobile for > 5 years and the world hasn't ended.

The world hasn’t ended but it arguably got worse with most of those features. Good enough reason to not implement them.

I hear this a lot, but have used Safari as my since it was launch in 2003.Performance has always been great. UI has always been minimalist, out of the way, and has never upsold me on anything. There are times where it lags and times where it leads standards. There may be a a site every now and then that doesn’t work, but iOS makes that less likely. The only thing I can ever think of is that it’s not <insert favorite browser> or doesn’t have <some favorite esoteric feature>.

That said, the only plugins I use are ad blockers, so maybe I’m missing something.

It might look ok from user's point of view, but lot of the problems fall on web developers who have to work around a bunch of these issues to make their pages work in Safari

I was doing web dev or related from 2000 to 2016. IE6 was far worse than anything Safari has done.

Been working with web related tech since the early 00’s. Safari has just never been a problem except for invasive ads, like back in the Flash days.

This is such nonsense and everyone who’s a web developer knows you’re not being honest here but just to make it ever clearer for anyone else here’s a chart showing the number of bugs that only occur in a single browser.

https://wpt.fyi/results/?label=master&label=experimental&ali...

It’s undeniable that Apple makes a dogshit browser.

> This is such nonsense and everyone who’s a web developer knows you’re not being honest

And in your opinion "being honest" is speaking for every web dev out there?

I've been a web dev for 25 years (god I'm old) and Safari has not been a major pain for me.

You keep bandying wpt.fyi results around not even understanding what they mean. E.g. Safari only passes 8 out of 150 accelerometer tests. So? Does it affect every web dev? Lol no. But it does pass 57 out 57 accessibility tests which is significantly more important.

Edit: don't forget that there's also Interop 2025 which paints a very different picture: https://wpt.fyi/interop-2025?stable

I cannot go through a day without "this tab has been reloaded due to a problem" on Safari iOS and any other browser. It's been happening for years, across phones. It's dogshit. Safari Mac is fine.

Even if that's an edge case, it's why having only one engine is pathological. Maybe Safari iOS works fine for you. Not for me. I don't want rationalization on why it's not Apple's fault, or somehow not Safari's fault, or "they'll fix it one day", or "I'm doing it wrong", or all the fanboy-talk that sounds like the enabling relative of an alcoholic. Don't care. I should be able to switch for even the most frivolous reason. Maybe I don't like that it doesn't render every website in pink.

It's like having only one type of chocolate in existence. This was never normal.

I did not know that was even a thing that can happen.

Do you see any pattern to which pages it happens to?

It’s INCREDIBLY rare I see that. Phone or desktop, lots of surfing, all day long, for two decades.

Late on a lot of standards, quirky in many ways and just a lot of bugs, especially around images and videos. Also positioning issues. They recently broke even position fixed, which broke a ton of web pages on iOS, including apple.com

Although I partially agree with you, Firefox on Android is a wonderful mobile browser (with some weird stuff though). I would love to have the same Firefox on my iOS but it's currently just impossible.

While this excuse works today, we should not forget that this policy also meant disinviting Mozilla from the mobile browser party about a decade ago. I'd argue a good chunk of Mozilla's downfall was them chasing the pipe dream of Boot2Gecko, and that was specifically because they couldn't ship Gecko on iOS.

The reason why we have a Chrome/Safari hegemony is because Apple insisted on everything being Safari on their device platforms. This combined with Android shipping WebKit for years meant that the only mobile browser engine that mattered was WebKit. Chrome is a different engine now, but it was forked from WebKit, and it used to have a lot of the same quirks. Hell, Microsoft switched to Blink specifically because Electron - their own web app shell - couldn't run on EdgeHTML.

The fact that this change practically means Chrome displacing Safari is... not really all that meaningful. They're both forks of the same code. The single-engine dystopia you worry about is already here. I daily-drive Firefox, and the amount of shit Google deliberately breaks on Gecko is obvious. Like, YouTube tabs freeze up every few hours because they get stuck in garbage collection, and I have to manually kill whatever processes are running YouTube before I can watch another video. That sort of thing.

I would argue that the root of the problem is that Google was not broken up.

I don’t think one company should own all the stuff that Google does. It gives them way too many perverse incentives over the web.

I’m not saying it’s smart we got here. I’m not saying it’s good we got here. I’m not saying we should be here.

All I’m saying is we ARE here. And given that (effective screw up) I fear this will make things drastically worse.

> I don’t think one company should own all the stuff that Google does. It gives them way too many perverse incentives over the web.

Does it? It might give them perverse incentives in some cases, but in others it perfectly aligns their incentives by letting them internalize their externalities. The whole selling point of Chrome to executives, and the reason it's introduced so many nice features, is that consolidating means they have an incentive to invest in things that make their websites work better (a better Chrome means a better Google/Gmail/YouTube/Drive).

We all think of them as Google but let’s face it, they’re DoubleClick.

Google feeds DoubleClick. Gmail does too. YouTube is a pure ad play.

Drive/Docs/etc. I’d say drives Chrome and undercuts competitors.

And Chrome? It drives Google. And Google also helps drive YouTube.

They all end in ads.

If Chrome wasn’t owned by an ad company that owned all that other stuff I wouldn’t be as worried. I still don’t like the idea of a Chrome monoculture. But if it was independent I’d be less alarmed.

problem is apple also handicaps safari so web apps cannot compete with its apps ecosystem like deleting storage if you dont use it for a week or so in the name of security. It makes sense if there is storage pressure but if app is used rarely than you cannot have first class local experience you are forced to rely on server.

Pretty damning evaluation of apple's capabilities to be sure that they won't be able to compete on merit! I don't believe that. So much apple software is absolutely loved.

I love Safari. I’ve used it since the day I bought a Mac not long after it was released. Back when they still bundled IE 5.5.

I don’t think they can compete. Apple doesn’t release Safari on Windows (any more, god it was bad) and that basically kills their chance at desktop relevance.

But even if they did my point is Google has way WAY WAY too much leverage and is already in an effective near monopoly position due to making Chromium. iOS is the only reasonably sized bastion left.

And that’s entirely due to Apple’s policy, whether one thinks it’s right or wrong.

The stakes are way too tilted. The market can’t function.

And we’re about to see it “freed”, which is basically handing it to Google for a total monopoly.

And I don’t like that future. Whatever I think of all the other issues with both Apple and Google right now and what has happened in the past.

I don’t see any reason why Google wouldn’t abandon web features left and right, given how they do that with everything else.

Because they themselves use them?

Also because they know what happened to Microsoft when they did that with IE.

Microsoft didn’t control the number one search engine, the number one email client, the number one video site, probably the number one online office suite, the number one smartphone platform…

It was possible to rip people away from Microsoft. That may not be something we can do this time with Chrome.

Try telling someone that moving off of Chrome may mean moving off of every single Google property because Chrome is the only browser they work on by then.

See how easy an argument that is. It’s right up with there with “stop helping capitalism and move to the woods“.

Then it’d be time for round two of antitrust, and I doubt the judge and regulators would feel so understanding about Google keeping Chrome if that is the landscape.

I think they might be, but only as long as it stays open-source (assuming we mean it works on Chromium and not Chrome). Honestly, I fundamentally don't have a problem with an open-source browser having a monopoly, because the open-source nature means that if things get bad you can always just fork it and make something better.

I think that would’ve good. But…

1. The US isn’t doing this. They have a case but aren’t calling for breakup

2. We all know howling anti-trust and appeals take

If Google gets handed the web (let’s say) this year by Apple being forced to allow them, it could be a decade+ before the Google side gets tackled.

And I’m afraid of how much damage they can do in that timeframe.

I think fixing Google’s ownership over Chrome before forcing other browsers on iOS would be less harmless than forcing iOS to allow other browsers than doing Google.

I’m totally good with doing both. I worried about the effects of the order they’re done in.

And I am only saying this about browser engines. This should not be taken to say Apple should be able to do some of the other nonsense they’ve been doing for 10+ years abusing their position.

Firefox exists.

And its userbase is essentially just HN users unfortunately

And it’s trying to get them to run away as fast as possible.

Firefox is not going to save us again. It’s arguably part of the problem in a different way.

It's amazing how you can literally start a nonprofit to code a billion-dollar browser, give it away for free, and let people modify it however they want and then HN users will still find a way to act like this is being evil and exploitative. It's as if they care more about whining than they do about their supposed open-source principles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence

HN users are almost entirely Google users

Can't the same entities compelling Apple to do this also compel Google to do or not do things?

Do you see them doing that on a short term?

The best I saw was the case against Google in the US and they decided not to call for breakup.

I don’t see the EU trying to unbundle everything they do.

so you support a hegemony because you are opposed to hegemonies?

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