No. Google wants an open internet because search (and hence ads) needs a lot of input. Google gets that input from the open internet (and, notably, shares that input with other search engines). Facebook gets input from 1.8Bn people, and owns access to it all.
(This is a generalization; Goog certainly owns access to plenty of input: email, docs, and hosting. But it is not, I think, on the scale of FB, because frequent, casual input requires a social context.)
Google's nightmare scenario is that everyone starts to use FB Pages for content, FB ads for that content, and something FB payments to pay for services, etc. In this way FB manages to build a private (but very large) vertically integrated internet. Like Alibaba. There are only three ways to disrupt this trend: the browser, the operating system, and the hardware. Each of these mediates between FB and the user, and each one is Google's opportunity to capture attention. (And this, I think, is why engineering talent is so valuable, just as much to deny FB from making things as to make things yourself.)
The nightmare scenario for the open internet is a Facebook Phone running Facebook OS.
Because no private company should have that much control, we've been down that path and it was bad enough I thought it should be obvious.
Then there's things like adding DRM, a user hostile "feature" google shoved down our throats. Visit netflix on a linux box and you'll discover that "works with chrome" is the new "works with IE".
It works in Ubuntu. Maybe I'm missing your point. It didn't used to work on Linux at all, without jumping through a ton of hoops pretending to not be Linux.
That is exactly the attitude web developers had toward the IE/Netscape situation around the year 2000.
I think that as web developers we have the responsibility to consider the health of the entire ecosystem, as well as long term consequences. If not us, then who?
I understand your point and I actually make sure that my websites target IE10 and up, but it usually happens after I'm done in Chrome.
Have you worked with Edge/IE? The pain starts with, as a Mac user, having to boot up a VM and ends with the, in my opinion, horrible development tools compared to Chrome or even Firefox. In this state Edge will never be more than an afterthought.
For users. Yet I happen to be a developer on a Mac like many others. As mentioned before I'll make sure that it works in IE/Edge, but having to jump through hoops to do so will never make me treat the process as more than a checklist item close to finishing the project. Of course I don't expect Windows developers to see it any other way with Safari.
>I think that as web developers we have the responsibility [...]
I'm all for being idealistic, but you can't expect developers to use a software that lacks in performance, features and security. I'm talking about Firefox by the way, because if you really
>consider the health of the entire ecosystem, as well as long term consequences
These things are somewhat self-reinforcing. Many sites feel slower with Firefox because they've been developed on Chrome and avoid the slower sides of Chrome, yet won't take advantage of the paths in Firefox that are faster than Chrome.
This has been especially evident on some Google properties like Google Docs, or the incident where Inbox couldn't support Firefox because it implemented a function correctly where Chrome didn't.
That said, I hardly notice any performance difference on most sites, and IMHO Firefox behaves much better with a large amount of tabs. Security is the main issue, but Firefox sandboxing is starting to roll out.
The rendering performance difference is noticable on almost every site and it doesn't matter at all how they've been developed. Even sites developed in FF with no regard for Chrome features render more smoothly in Chrome.
Then there's the developer tools that slow everything down even more in FF, to almost a halt/crash on some sites, while on the same sites they have no impact on performance in Chrome at all.
It hardly matters; the Edge teams said that any differences in behaviour compared to Webkit are bugs[1], so they've given up their position as an alternative.
Vivaldi is an Electron-based wrapper for Chromium - thus it's Blink, not Presto. Since Opera moved to Blink a while back as well, I'm fairly certain no extant browser uses that rendering engine, and I believe its development has ceased entirely.
Sure. But until someone comes up with the magic wand to fix this I'd prefer one set of bugs to deal with rather than 4. I don't believe the open web is hurt by this, which was the whole point of the original comment.
For good reason. Microsoft left their browser dev abandoned for 5 years after they "won" their bitter war against Netscape. And only the Firefox (nee Phoenix) browser rising from the ashes of Netscape fought on.
Edge is a decent browser, but Microsoft was not kind nor to be trusted back then. They have to earn their new trust.
On the open-source front we now have several great browsers - Safari/Webkit (which is very strong on mobile), Chrome/Blink (was Webkit) which dominates, and Firefox/Gecko which is a solid reliable browser thats crossplatform.
(This is a generalization; Goog certainly owns access to plenty of input: email, docs, and hosting. But it is not, I think, on the scale of FB, because frequent, casual input requires a social context.)
Google's nightmare scenario is that everyone starts to use FB Pages for content, FB ads for that content, and something FB payments to pay for services, etc. In this way FB manages to build a private (but very large) vertically integrated internet. Like Alibaba. There are only three ways to disrupt this trend: the browser, the operating system, and the hardware. Each of these mediates between FB and the user, and each one is Google's opportunity to capture attention. (And this, I think, is why engineering talent is so valuable, just as much to deny FB from making things as to make things yourself.)
The nightmare scenario for the open internet is a Facebook Phone running Facebook OS.