The sad thing is that we've lived through all of this with Internet Explorer. I'd be willing to be that we will once more when Chrome stagnates and something bigger and better comes along...
I'd be willing to be that we will once more when Chrome stagnates and something bigger and better comes along...
IE was overtaken by FF at a time when there was less complexity in browsers and MS wasn't really into the sort of feature-racing that's happening today; Google has already achieved an effective monopoly-by-complexity with its control over web standards and constant churn and feature addition under that "push the web forward" excuse. It has used its resources to make a moving target and keep it moving, making it impossible for others to even try to catch up. MS tried with Edge and gave up.
I really don't like this, because unless the population manages to change its viewpoint completely and think "better" is not "bigger", I highly doubt Chrome will ever "stagnate".
> MS wasn't really into the sort of feature-racing that's happening today;
I agree with your post except for the bit quoted above. At that time Microsoft had already won the browser war and was then using that to lock people into Windows via ActiveX controls and such like. So there was feature-racing -- of sorts. It's just those features all lived outside of the web browser engine
And that is truly disturbing, because it is not an implausible future where even Mozilla is finally compelled to rebase Firefox upon yet another Chromium fork, just to stay relevant with the fast-moving, extremely complex web ecosystem. Of course if their market share improves then they'll still be able to exercise relatively significant influence upon the Web's direction, but the big challenge in front of them is expanding their user base. They're in a kind of catch-22 situation I feel... it is going to be difficult to reclaim the slipping ground.
IE was overtaken by FF at a time when there was less complexity in browsers and MS wasn't really into the sort of feature-racing that's happening today; Google has already achieved an effective monopoly-by-complexity with its control over web standards and constant churn and feature addition under that "push the web forward" excuse. It has used its resources to make a moving target and keep it moving, making it impossible for others to even try to catch up. MS tried with Edge and gave up.
I really don't like this, because unless the population manages to change its viewpoint completely and think "better" is not "bigger", I highly doubt Chrome will ever "stagnate".