Hacker News Reader

> using yet another Chromium based browser doesn't really improve the current situation with Google's browser monopoly

It's not a monopoly if you can build your own with it. This is like saying glibc is a monopoly.

I think the issue is that Google has too much power to push features via Chromium. This would allow them to create new de-facto standards, which is what we had with IE back in the day.

Sure, the forks could choose not to implement whatever Google might come up with, but that's unlikely, I think.

Understood, but that's entirely opted into by everyone else. I don't see what else Google could possibly do to encourage competition. They already fund Firefox, and allow anyone to build - and change - based on Chromium. At what point do we wonder why competition isn't arising given all of that? It's not as though Microsoft couldn't do the R&D themselves if they wanted to. They've chosen to build on Chromium because there's not much value in the "power" you're citing. Certainly not compared to the cost of building Chromium.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com