[The_rationalist]

Well electron already allow you to use arbitrary language and acesss almost any native OS api. So electron is the salvation for hybrid_native desktop development. Your question would better be: Is there a salvation for native and cross platform GUI frameworks other than chromium ? The answer is probably no as chromium beat everything both feature wise, library wise and (yes) performance wise.

Really why native development isn't totally dead yet is because of inertia to learn new technologies and because of shared misconceptions about chromium performance and GUIs framework performance.

This growing gap could have been deduced so many years ago because of a simple fact: The number of full time employees working at improving chromium vs the number of full time employees working at improving QT, or GTK, etc. They are order of magnitudes more. And it has deeply increased since microsoft has joined chromium (they have moved a number of employee to chromium probably comparable as if all Gtk + QT devs moved to working on chromium. Btw, as they both know they can't keep up, they progressively webify (QTwebengine, both use CSS for styling, etc)

[xg15]

We're uneasy enough with Google effectively turning the WWW into a platform under their control with them running Search, Chrome and Android - but this sounds as if the platform might actually extend to "any application with a GUI". (With Apple being the one competitor)

I can't see how this is good.

[armitron]

I can’t take this answer seriously. Assuming half of what you claim were true, it would still be terrible for us to cede control of the future to Google. Of course the grim reality is that none of your claims are even remotely true.

This is a classic case of worse is better amplified by Google being in a position of unprecedented power and abusing it to full effect.

Those of us who were old before Google even existed, can see very clearly where this road is leading. On the other hand this is a battle that has to be fought mainly by the younger generation. Alas, it does not seem that we are winning.

[The_rationalist]

Your only point seems to be: Chromium == Google Google == evil Therefore chromium == evil Firstly chromium implementations détails decisions are just good engeener decisions Features they intent to implement are just features devs want and or that solve a real limitation. I defy you to name a few chromium features that made the web worse. But more than anything, chromium is open source that you like it or not and Google is no longer the only major player I. Chromium since microsoft joined it. Nothing stop mozilla and Apple to join chromium too. If there's something you don't like about chromium (and indeed I can sociologicaly infer that it would be something privacy related and not something engeenering related (which is what we should mostly talk but that's not something hackernews understand much). For such thing nothing stop you from using one of the many privacy focused chromium forks.

[armitron]

I really don't understand this line of reasoning unless you're shilling for Google.

"Nothing stop you from using..."

"Chromium is open source..."

"Nothing stop Mozilla and Apple.."

There is a behemoth in the room that makes all these arguments NULL and VOID. It's called Google and it's ruling its domain with an iron fist. We saw what these sort of arguments lead to in practice, the recent ad-blocking debacle being the icing on the cake. Open source means nothing if you have a colossal gate keeper that is not only in full control but has the power to _dictate future evolution_. All Open Source provides in this case, is an easy excuse, a shield to deflect criticism and this is exactly what you're doing here.

Did we really learn nothing from Microsoft's past that we are willing to overlook an entity that's orders of magnitude more powerful?