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Comment by diminoten | Hacker News Reader

> After this change, there will be no way for a web app to communicate directly with a locally installed daemon.

Well, you could just not use Chrome.

That's the same argument as "You could just not use IE4," and the same situation: "let's just break the web, we know best what's best for you." Ironic that it's Chrome this time, the browser that started out as the champion of NOT breaking the web.

Yeah, that's my point. We're beyond the place in time where a single browser gets to dictate behavior like this.

I'm noticing a large uptick in "good engineering but terrible design and implementation choices in the name of security", and I wonder what's driving that.

> Ironic that it's Chrome this time, the browser that started out as the champion of NOT breaking the web.

I don't think that was ever the message. Chrome has always been "the fastest browser" rather than anything else, and it has lead to (much-needed IMO) substantial performance improvements from the other camps.

I think you're retroactively spinning it, to fit what Chrome has become today. Let me just find the comics v1 rolled out with.

Ahem: "There are a lot of limitations to the kinds of applications that you can build today with web browsers. And the subset of things you can do is different for each browser. If one browser has a cool feature, that doesn't help -- it has to exist across all browsers in order for developers to use it." (Emphasis original)

But yeah, Google says they're not evil, so that makes anything they do non-evil...riiiiight. I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore.

I'm not trying to be retroactive - I genuinely don't remember any comics - just the videos with the lasers and whatnot to show how fast it was.

Well, it's still out there. The main selling points were:

- it's safe

- it's fast

- it's stable

- doesn't break the web

All of that in contrast with IE of that time, which failed all four of the above. Currently it's trying to stay somewhat safe, and ditched the other three in the process.

https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/

Yes, but if you're developing a cross-browser web app you can't expect your users to just not use Chrome.

Wow how things have changed

If Google keeps breaking web apps, users will move from Chrome anyway.

This argument has been shown to be wrong on many, many occasions.

Many users do not have a choice which browser they use, do not know they even have a choice or do not know how to exercise that choice i.e. download and install a competing browser. Finally you're then left with the massive problem of sites only working on certain browsers.

The situation where the user doesn't know about and/or is incapable of installing another browser is pretty common with default browsers like IE and Safari, but not nearly as common with Chrome.

Google have been bundling Chrome with widely-used software like Adobe Flash for years now, there's probably many people who've installed it and set it as their default browser without intending to.

Might. It only took ... what - five years? Ten years? for people to start ditching IE after it turned Evil (IE5+). The years between "Browser X is the best thing since sliced bread" and "Browser X Considered Harmful" became known as the Browser Dark Ages. Not looking forward to a repetition thereof.

From 0 to 1 is a lot different than from 1 to 2, or from 1 to n.

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