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by CharlesColeman 2566 days ago
> It would be weird for a mustache-twirling villain to give most of their source code to their competitors, hence allowing them to start out compatible with nearly every website on the Internet.

No it wouldn't, if the mustache-twirling villain's indent was control. Those competitors are following most if not all of Chrome's implementation decisions, and economically they're highly incentivized follow whatever Google does.
1 comments
skybrian 2566 days ago
Google didn't follow all of Safari's decisions, and eventually they forked WebKit. Why shouldn't Microsoft do something similar when they have different goals?

They'd likely remain mostly compatible because all browser vendors do try to follow web standards nowadays. But maybe not more than Safari and Chrome are compatible. And it helps maintain Microsoft's veto on web standards (like Firefox has vetoed previous Chrome proposals).

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pcwalton 2566 days ago
> Why shouldn't Microsoft do something similar when they have different goals?

They explicitly said they wouldn't fork Chromium.

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skybrian 2566 days ago
Sure, for now, and maybe for years. Chrome upstreamed patches to WebKit for a while.

But the point is, they can fork, so that means Chrome doesn't have full control.

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anoncake 2565 days ago
Microsoft couldn't maintain a Trident-based browser compatible with the Google-controlled web. They won't be able to maintain one based on Blink either.
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CharlesColeman 2566 days ago
> Google didn't follow all of Safari's decisions, and eventually they forked WebKit. Why shouldn't Microsoft do something similar when they have different goals?

Didn't Microsoft recently throw in the towel with Edge, and switch to Chromium, because they thought it was too much trouble to maintain their own engine?

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skybrian 2566 days ago
Yes, it's a smart move that frees up the engineering effort that was previously devoted to catching up to Chrome, rather than improving on it. How they redeploy them isn't something we can tell from the outside.

There are occasional debates on Hacker News about when you should rewrite your codebase. Similar arguments apply here: when should you rewrite someone else's codebase?

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