[krapp]

>Drew Devault makes a very valid point: that the web today is at the mercy of Google, because it depends on browser technology that has become so complex that only Google (and maybe a foundation entirely dependent on Google) can deliver it.

Except all of that browser technology is open source. So none of it is actually at the mercy of Google.

It's weird how a forum full of technologists, free software believers and millionaire entrepreneurs have decided that browser technology is so hard and complex that it would literally be more feasible to rebuild the entire web from scratch on completely different protocols, yet we'll have warp drives, self-driving cars and VR beamed directly into our brains by the end of the decade, and come hell or high water we'll put a blockchain on everything.

It's not that hard because it's actually that hard, it's that hard because we want an excuse to abandon the web and browsers as a lost cause, because we're tired of it and its normality, and would rather look for still-green pastures elsewhere.

[foxfluff]

> It's weird how a forum full of technologists, free software believers and millionaire entrepreneurs have decided that browser technology is so hard and complex that it would literally be more feasible to rebuild the entire web

Have you built a web browser? I have. It quickly became useless as the web moved on. I've also been involved in other web browser projects (including a small webkit based browser as well as Firefox).

My experience is that the web is 1) broken beyond repair 2) building a new browser is virtually impossible 3) for all the effort, building a good browser [such as one that pleases Gemini users] is literally impossible because the web standards themselves require you to implement hostile functionality without which your browser is broken and not actually a web browser, and with which you lose control and enable all kinds of malicious and user-hostile behavior.

Ostensibly open standards and open source technology does not help you when said technology enables the other end to run a bunch of code on your client, and decline service because it doesn't approve of your client.

Building a gemini client is actually very easy.

[krapp]

>My experience is that the web is 1) broken beyond repair 2) building a new browser is virtually impossible 3) for all the effort, building a good browser [such as one that pleases Gemini users] is literally impossible because the web standards themselves require you to implement hostile functionality without which your browser is broken and not actually a web browser, and with which you lose control and enable all kinds of malicious and user-hostile behavior.

Your first item has nothing to do with browsers, it's a purely subjective opinion (albeit one so strongly held by so many here I'm not going to bother trying to disabuse anyone of it anymore.)

Your second item implies that it's too difficult for a hobbyist to build a modern browser in their free time, but the unstated assumption that any new browser must be simple enough to be built by a single person, entirely from scratch, is an arbitrary technical limit based on political ideals. Obviously it isn't actually impossible and, given the number of Firefox forks in the wild, doesn't even require billions of dollars in resources.

And your final item dismisses the entire premise of modern browsers as user-hostile and "not actually web browsers." Which again, has nothing at all to do with the actual technical difficulty of browser implementation but is essentially a declaration that "it sucks any way so why bother?"

You're proving my point, as are the other commenters. This is obviously an argument driven primarily by emotion (disgust with the modern web and complexity) and politics (anti-capitalist and anti-corporatist sentiment) rather than fundamental technical limitations.

[foxfluff]

My first item has everything to do with the web technology, which browsers are intimately related to. Outdated and insecure firefox forks and their bitter users who complain about the web being broken when they browse it on their Firefox fork serve to prove the point more than to disprove it. And yes, the third point doesn't stop at merely claiming that the web is complex and hard; it just claims that even if you somehow manage to implement it all, you're still at the mercy of corporations because the very technology you implemented has built-in support for discrimination; Google, Cloudflare, et al can decide that they don't want your browser. It is broken technology and it should be thrown away.

[throw10920]

> Outdated and insecure firefox forks and their bitter users who complain about the web being broken when they browse it on their Firefox fork serve to prove the point more than to disprove it.

Wait, most Firefox forks that I've seen (such as Pale Moon) were forked because the XUL addon model was deprecated in mainline, and they want to keep it - it had nothing to do with the complexity of the web.

Unless you're saying that "the web" is "too large and complex" (because that's the cause of those forks becoming insecure and outdated) - in which case yes, I think that you can make a case for that.

However, that doesn't have anything to do with the infeasibility of building a new web browser, so it's irrelevant.

> you're still at the mercy of corporations because the very technology you implemented has built-in support for discrimination; Google, Cloudflare, et al can decide that they don't want your browser

If by "Built-in support" you mean user agents - those are trivially spoofable. If you mean browser fingerprinting - that's not built-in, that's an attack against the technology. If you mean checking for the presence of features - that is a feature, not a bug.

> It is broken technology and it should be thrown away.

The technology isn't broken - everything else is. The reason why Google has so much control over the web is because so many people use (1) Chrome and (2) Google services. If neither of those were the case, the web could be technologically identical and yet there wouldn't be a constant feature churn. The problem is not technical, it's a market and social problem.

It's not solvable on a technological level, because (1) even if you convinced everyone to switch to Gemini, if everyone started using the Microsoft Gemini Browser (or whatever), the exact same problem would arise (embrace, extend, extinguish!) and (2) you are never going to be able to convince anything more than a tiny sliver of the population to use Gemini.

The only viable solutions are social (convince people to use Firefox/Safari/Opera and complain when it doesn't work, convince webdevs to support/prefer non-Chromium engines) and political (antitrust action against Google, more regulation).

Gemini is not a solution to this problem.

(you also conveniently didn't answer the rebuttal to your second point, so, to quote krapp: "the unstated assumption that any new browser must be simple enough to be built by a single person, entirely from scratch, is an arbitrary technical limit based on political ideals")

(also, I don't know why you're saying "should" - why "should" I throw it away? You have no authority on this matter, as far as I can tell)

[s5806533]

> convince people to use Firefox/Safari/Opera

What would that change? These browsers implement the same standards Chrome does, and on top they probably implement the non-standards that Chrome imposes, because people will still want to use Google Meet and stuff. So this at least means to convince people not to use Google Meet and stuff. This goes to show that indeed the web is broken.

> convince webdevs to support/prefer non-Chromium engines

I guess the people who need convincing are not the devs, but their superiors. See https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2021/software-crisis-2/

> the unstated assumption that any new browser must be simple enough to be built by a single person, entirely from scratch, is an arbitrary technical limit based on political ideals

First of all, I'm not sure if anyone really said that it had to be achieved "by a single person". Second of all, I don't understand why its political nature should devalue the argument. At any rate, it has been argued that the web is at fault, the standards are problematic, etc., so let's not argue about minor details.

[foxfluff]

> Unless you're saying that "the web" is "too large and complex" (because that's the cause of those forks becoming insecure and outdated) - in which case yes, I think that you can make a case for that.

That is precisely what I'm saying.

> However, that doesn't have anything to do with the infeasibility of building a new web browser, so it's irrelevant.

I agree; it was krapp who said "Obviously it isn't actually impossible and, given the number of Firefox forks in the wild, doesn't even require billions of dollars in resources", as if those outdated forks somehow were relevant.

> If by "Built-in support" you mean user agents - those are trivially spoofable. If you mean browser fingerprinting - that's not built-in, that's an attack against the technology. If you mean checking for the presence of features - that is a feature, not a bug.

User agents are indeed trivially spoofable, that's not the issue. Fingerprinting is a bug, and one that is impossible to fix because web technology is fundamentally broken and was never designed to resist such an attack. Feature checking and finger printing kinda go hand in hand. I can't consider it a feature, I consider it an antifeature.

> The technology isn't broken - everything else is. The reason why Google has so much control over the web is because so many people use (1) Chrome and (2) Google services

I think that's another "goes hand in hand" thing. Yes, you can consider it a social problem, but it is also technological problem, because it is the technology that is used against us and it is the technology that enables it to be used that way. It's very difficult to use Gemini against you without first changing the technology to support it; if that happened, then yes, I would say that Gemini has become broken too, just like the web now is.

And whether there's a social problem and abuse of technology going on or not, one can totally consider the massive complexity and resulting bloat and loss of practical freedom to be a problem with the technology. I could not make a browser I like, and nobody else will make it for me. It goes beyond what Google does; the web on whole is today architected for a server agent, not a user agent. Even without actively hostile & malicious parties abusing technology to discriminate you / invade your privacy / sell your eyeballs, it will still have features that do not respect the user and only punish the user for trying not to play the play according to the server's script.

> The only viable solutions are social (convince people to use Firefox/Safari/Opera and complain when it doesn't work, convince webdevs to support/prefer non-Chromium engines) and political (antitrust action against Google, more regulation).

I believe that social and political solutions are as lacklustre, limited and prone to subversion as technical solutions. You do what you can in that space, but I believe we will never have enough (or the right kind of) legislation.

However, as a practical matter, it takes time for technology to be turned against you (and there was a time when the web was despite its flaws relatively fine). This will be especially true for any new technology that flies under the radar. Therefore technical solutions are not without merit.

> Gemini is not a solution to this problem.

It does not solve all the web's technical problems, nor will it solve all its social or political problems, and nobody is claiming it does.

But creating new technology (including Gemini) and encouraging individuals to use it is an actionable way to make a difference today. By contrast, my use and support for Firefox (for nearly two decades now) hasn't prevented the web from turning into a disaster. There's not much political or social action going around trying to fix these problems. There are a few who toot the horn and shout into the void, the rest don't give a fuck.

I cannot solve the web's problems, I cannot change the world. It is a lost cause as far as I'm concerned.

But as long as there are enough people interested in alternative technology, it's a way we as a community can help ourselves today. It will not "fix the web" but it gives us some of what we want and it won't be turned against us tomorrow. Either it never gets too popular, or it gets popular and one day the cycle starts afresh. Until then, there's something for us. Nothing is eternal, nothing is perfect.

> (you also conveniently didn't answer the rebuttal to your second point, so, to quote krapp: "the unstated assumption that any new browser must be simple enough to be built by a single person, entirely from scratch, is an arbitrary technical limit based on political ideals")

I didn't really want to, because it's putting words in my mouth and also IMHO a pointless tangent.

It's very hard to consider any technology purely objectively and without influence from "political ideals" or personal beliefs. For example, the claim that bitcoin is broken could be "rebutted" by saying that it's only broken if you have the political ideal that it's not ok to destroy the environment with excessive energy use.

The claim that DES is broken could be "rebutted" if you consider it a political ideal that you should have freedom to communicate without being spied on by corporations and nation-states with enough money to bruteforce your encryption keys.

Any opinion on technology comes with an implicit personal bias. It's not an argument nor is it a rebuttal to point it out. It's too reductionist and can be used to shut down any discussion without addressing it. If someone wants to have that discussion [whether internet technology that individuals rely on should be implementable by individual experts working in the field], then they should start that discussion and not merely shoot down a discussion about technology by saying that doo hoo not everyone agrees with your goals. What's the point? I could come up with equally reductionist "rebuttals" but it's "no u" at that point.

> (also, I don't know why you're saying "should" - why "should" I throw it away? You have no authority on this matter, as far as I can tell)

Pardon my phrasing. Of course I mean to write that I think it is broken technology and it should be thrown away (for the few people who can't otherwise discern personal opinion). You, of course, are free to do whatever the fuck you like.

[s5806533]

Thank you so much! I couldn't agree more.

Also, Gemini works for me, and it works for many other people. If the web is not to our liking, and we can't change the web, we can at least try something else (so far I'm just lurking in Gemini, I don't have a capsule of my own). I don't understand the problem with that.

As someone already said, Gemini is already in the "they fight you" phase (First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you). It's like with veganism (no, I am not a vegan, though I sympathize).

[lmm]

Microsoft have literally abandoned maintaining their own browser engine. If staying independent of Google isn't affordable and worthwhile for them, who could it be affordable and worthwhile for?

[throw10920]

Microsoft abandoned their own browser engine for business reasons. I feel like it should be obvious that what's "worthwhile" for a for-profit organization is very, very different than what's "worthwhile" for a non-profit, individual, or group of open-source developers; "affordable" isn't even in the picture.

This line of reasoning is entirely invalid.

[lmm]

KDE have also abandoned writing their own browser engine. Mozilla continues to produce one but they continue to attract very few outside contributors and rely largely on Google for funding. If no-one's actually doing something we should be wary of blithely assuming that it would be esay or even possible.

[krapp]

Why do we have more than one fork of Linux? Why don't we all just admit that Ubuntu won and call it a day?

[lmm]

The fact that operating systems maintained by small organisations are more viable than web browsers maintained by small organisations should tell you something about the complexity of the web stack.

[s5806533]

Reading this whole thread again, I want to add the following: this whole matter of whether web browsers have become too complex or not is just a tangent. The main debate revolves around the question of whether the web is broken, whatever this means, and this question is not a technical one, but a matter of taste and political attitude. Which is to be expected, because the internet is a social thing. So let's agree to disagree, maybe, but let's stop arguing about tangents the way little internet trolls do.

[zepto]

Are you seriously making the claim that web browsers are not hard and complex to build?

Given that the source code is available, you might want to take a look. It may inform your answer.

[krapp]

> Are you seriously making the claim that web browsers are not hard and complex to build?

No, I'm making the claim that web browsers are hard and complex, but not impossible and that it's weird how the tech community seems to have decided that it's impossible because it isn't simple.

[foxfluff]

What is the point though? Yes, in theory it is possible to make yet another broken implementation of broken technology. Going all pedantic on Devault and armchairing "no but acshually" isn't really contributing to the discussion at all, nor does it undermine their argument.

[s5806533]

I don't get your polemics here. Where's the line between hard and impossible? It's no less impossible to build a web browser than it is to build pyramids, because both these things have been done before. But what does this mean? Why should we accept something that -- while theoretically not impossible -- is way harder and requires way more resources than necessary, and that is guided by the most pathological incentives (ad revenue)?