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by MattDemers 1286 days ago
I remember how exciting it was to be in my college dorm and having people be like "Man, this new browser is amazing!"

It's kind of surreal because I'm not sure desktop software really does that anymore; maybe apps, but they seem to fizzle out really weirdly. It's very crazy to consider Chrome's influence on the Internet, and how most browsers are just skinned Chromium now.
5 comments
jonas21 1286 days ago
While the shift toward mobile means a lot of things are released as apps these days, I'd argue that desktop continues to be exciting. Two things that come to mind from this year are:

- Stable Diffusion

- Unreal Engine 5 (in particular, the Matrix demo).

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tibbar 1286 days ago
Heck, many desktop applications are just skinned Chromium now…
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phendrenad2 1285 days ago
That's a testament to how bad browsers were/are compared to Chrome.

Chrome was a ground-up project, written by highly-paid Googlers, while other browsers were sitting on old codebases built up by many average employees and unpaid volunteers over a decade+.

Chrome was also, at that time, allowed to be a pure browser for browsing the web while other browsers were trying to get you to sign up for toolbars (essentially more ad real estate for them) or use their homepage (more ad spots) and were pushing out updates constantly (an excuse to show you more ads in the updater progress window!)

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darkmuck 1285 days ago
Chrome was based on Webkit which was based on KHTML. It wasn't quite a ground-up project.
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weberer 1286 days ago
I remember the launch of Firefox 2.0 being an internet-shattering event. People were having launch parties and everything.
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aliqot 1286 days ago
I felt that way when Rockmelt came out, and the original Opera. I sometimes wonder if these alternative browser projects were too early, or were only able to exist due to the lack of Chrome's dominance on the space yet.
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peanutz454 1286 days ago
Chrome gets free marketing, and tons of google money. Opera could not have competed with that. Opera only went free after they did the same deal with Google that firefox had. Otherwise, it's quite an achievement that it was able to exist in a world where it was a paid browser for such a long time.
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