[rektide]

Honestly why would anyone do anything other than Blink at this point?

For one, there's so many examples to crib from about how to do it.

But more generally, I just feel like every other player in the space has adopted an adversarial stance. For sure, sometimes Safari or less typically Firefox do lead, but it's rarely by much & usually the set of capabilities overall is far far less.

I don't want a monoculture either, but until we get a other pro-web player who can web-forward their shit, who is aggressive about making the web better, there's just zero hope for this conversation. Blink plus two boat anchors isn't good.

The IE comparison is so woefully out of touch & distasteful. Hard pass. Chrome tries. There wasn't the ecosystem of standards bodies back when IE was inventing stuff whenever they felt like, but today there are tons of expectations & reviews happening at multiple levels to try to refine & figure out what makes sense. In some ways it works great & a lot of review happens, but Moz + Apple hate any real power for the web & kick & scream & don't actually review what should be done if we did want to do the capability & reject on principle making a bigger web platform. There's no real debate because 2/3 players actively believe & push for a small web. It's a miserable rock & hard place situation, trying to figure out what to do when there's only one ayer who believes in a web platform at all.

I love the new entrants, but I really worry they'll also be into their own jam & not excited or interested in making a broader better web platform, and just turn the 2 Vs 1 anti/pro web into a 3 Vs 1 battle.

[linuxandrew]

Google/Blink consistently pushes for bad things like EME, FLoC and Topics API.

They have a very different vision of the web where users live in a corporate playground and complex browser engines which only a few large corps can manage.

At this point what is making the web a better platform? The web has feature overload, even with features like Server Push which are seldom used. FWIW I think there are some exciting possibilities and new features for the web, especially around the P2P space, but I don't think it's in Google's interests to push for that at all.

[rektide]

It's a huge company of hundreds of competing ideas.

I think most no one has any respect or appreciation for the circumstance flocs & topic Api was raised in. The dogfucker skanks at Internet Advertising Bureau were actively pushing government regulators to replace cookies with some gobshit anti user trash, far worse. I genuinely feel for Google. No one sees or knows any of the other context going down at the time, but all eyes are on the team of like 40 trying to find some way to preserve some privacy, in an org & task that is the hugest fucking lightning rod for attention & negativity, being the most visible & one of the most hated companies on the planet.

I agree that Google seems to have kind of lost the will to fight for a lot of good shit. There's still tons of great Google initiatives, but if someone can't tick it off their OKR within 8 months & call it a raring success, the effort & the team has seemingly no backing, no one with real principle intelligence or spine to keep the really really smart good shit going. That's just not a reasonable time frame for adoption. The web's early adopters take 3 years, minimum, for most interesting capabilities, and there's seemingly no one anywhere with that kind of patience for rolling out. Fuck this industry. This is why we can't have nice things.

[kelnos]

Google is a huge company, yes, but the number of people who drive Blink development is relatively small (of course it is; if most of Google was focused on or even had significant input into Blink, they'd both fail).

I think you have it backwards. It's not that Google has lost the will to fight for good, it's just that Google is a corporation, and their "don't be evil" mantra was only a thing when they were small and it was convenient and profitable for them.

Google has not given a damn about doing "good shit" or about privacy for well over a decade now. Their entire business model is predicated on surveillance capitalism. If they ever truly were the "good guys", they have not been that for most of the evolution of the modern web.

Google is not our friend. They suck, for entirely predictable capitalistic reasons, and their stranglehold overv web standards needs to stop.

[quantumwoke]

While I think your viewpoint is interesting, the language prevented me from appreciating it fully. Would you mind expanding on your opinion on privacy and Mozilla/Apple’s role in the standards process a little more?

[rektide]

It feels shallow to me to let oneself be rebuffed by such petty small barbs. I try to follow the "Highest Form of Disagreement," to find the best interpretations of things first. Rather than let small fry shit cause roadblocks in my mind.

Your ask about Moz/Safari I've said quite a few words on elsewhere in this post & on others. I think the far more interesting topic is what a bunch of jackal villains the IAB is. I cannot stress enough how hard a time Google has had trying to preserve any privacy on the net when there is a huge lobbyist group close to regulators pushing so hard to end user privacy. These people have the worst most anti-user outlook imaginable, are up to absolutely no good. My strong language is a just a start on describing how awful the IAB is & what sinister monsters Google has to go to the mat & wrestle to try to preserve user privacy in a post 3rd party cookie world.

Personally I don't think it's right that I get flagged for my previous reply, but I'm glad to have made a better go at my reply this time. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35565707

[charcircuit]

>pushes for bad things like EME, FLoC and Topics API

EME is better than browsers having to implement their own proprietary APIs for DRM. If EME didn't exist DRM would still be used by sites like Netflix.

>FLoC and Topics API

These are better for privacy than learning interests by tracking via third party cookies. These are moves to retain the positive uses of the web while increasing people's privacy.

>At this point what is making the web a better platform?

WebGPU released recently and provided big speedups to GPU intensive use cases.

>but I don't think it's in Google's interests to push for that at all.

What's the benefits to users or server hosters? Will it improve the user experience? Reduce latency? Save costs? If peer to peer features provide value I don't see why they wouldn't be interested. Peer to peel has its own set of drawbacks so there are many uses where it isn't a good option.

[sanitycheck]

> If EME didn't exist DRM would still be used by sites like Netflix.

(Playing devil's advocate just a little here...)

...and maybe it'd be cumbersome/difficult/annoying for users, opening the door for big changes in the landscape.

Spotify-like streaming services for music (basically the same stuff everywhere, just choose where you get it from) only exist because they had to compete with the ease of getting DRM-free music free from P2P services.

The acceptance of easy standardised DRM for video has led to movie streaming services being the modern equivalent of the old cable networks. You want to watch X? You must subscribe to Netflix. But Y? Y is only available on Disney. Z? Amazon.

Personally I don't care. I've implemented EME and proprietary DRM playback numerous times, and I don't subscribe to any streaming services because I find 99% of TV/movies to be not worth my time. For people who do care though, EME is probably net negative.

[pjmlp]

> WebGPU released recently and provided big speedups to GPU intensive use cases.

On the contrary.

WebGL was going to get OpenGL ES compute shaders, contributed by Intel three years ago. Google blocked the effort with the reasoning WebGPU compute was around the corner. Again three years ago!

Due to politics between browser vendors, we have now yet another shading language to learn, and because Rust is fashionable, naturally it moves away from classical shading languages into a more Rust like syntax.

It arrived six years too late, so it represents Vulkan, Metal, DirectX when they were released in their version 1.0.

Still it doesn't fix the issue that after 10 years of WebGL, there is no reasonable debugging story and no Web games that can match PlayStation 3 graphics.

[rektide]

What an echo chamber. People are so desperate to hate, want to hate. Any outside view is just blasted away on this complex situations.

I do personally think p2p is absolutely key to unlocking a future where users are not so beholden. It creates a much more connected web, versus the ultra-federalized model. Yes there are drawbacks but simply turning our backs on connecting people, deciding the web is just going to stay hosted forever and ever, is a huge denial of galaxies of potential. We won't know how far we can go until we try, until we begin.

[jpk]

> There's no real debate because 2/3 players actively believe & push for a small web. It's a miserable rock & hard place situation, trying to figure out what to do when there's only one ayer who believes in a web platform at all.

Not to say I don't believe you, I'm just curious. In what way(s) does Google uniquely believe in the web as a platform where Apple/Mozilla don't? Can you provide some examples of this?

[rektide]

Like 18 months ago Safari launched a "look at us we are so great, we don't support these long list of web apis; isn't chrome evil" and Moz joined in like two days latter repeating the exact same claims in an obviously coordinated negativity-campaign. Web USB, web Bluetooth, web midi, ambient light sensor, bunch of other sensors.

I'm sorry I really want to find the links & show this off more. It was the most boldfaced & honest admission that basic useful interesting things were not welcome, profiteering off suspicion & hostility while telling users that the anti-feature was undecidedly the only acceptable way.

One can also review moz's standards positions. It's a great effort & I applaud Moz for their transparency & don't want to hurt the effort. There's aot of good too. But there's such a long sordid history of Moz saying no absolutely not this is awful, then eventually having to circle back around & at least make some effort to not be a huge stick in the mud, to at least help figure out at some degree what would fit if this was a goal. And often deciding yeah, we will do it https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/

They just don't seem to have any ability to differentiate between what a privileged/permission-ed site should be granted versus what the baseline security model should be. Any potential information leak anywhere seems like cause to terminate effort.

[illiarian]

That's a lot of demagoguery mascarading as fact.

What really happens is that Mozilla brings multiple well-argued objections (Safari, too) that span both technical and non-technical reasons, but Chrome just releases its half-baked non-standards and calls it a day.

[rektide]

I see the demagoguery going the other way.

Fear Uncertainty & Doubt are being used again and again to obstruct basic sensible user asks like being able to use Arduino Web Editor or work with their midi keyboard. Fear is the worst demagoguery of all.

Put it behind a permission! Only turn it on if the user installs a PWA! The idea that Moz/Safari know better than to give users what they want, to deny the web basic possibilities: that is demagoguery. It was never based in sound perspective.

[pjmlp]

Basically the ultimate goal is that Chrome turns into a kernel agnostic version of ChromeOS.

[zarzavat]

I completely agree. The amount of FUD Mozilla spread about Web MIDI was truly distasteful. People say that Google is the enemy, and perhaps they are. But at least Google does not write off entire groups of users (like musicians) because of a swivel-eyed security paranoia.

If I wanted a paternalistic entity telling me what I can and can’t do with my device, I’d use an iPad.

[illiarian]

> The amount of FUD Mozilla spread about Web MIDI was truly distasteful.

As in: everything they said is true, and the moment they launched it they found it's used for fingerprinting (and Google doesn't even hide it behind a permission prompt)

[zarzavat]

Anything can be used for fingerprinting. Your GPU can be used for fingerprinting. Your fonts can be used for fingerprinting. MIDI is so far down the list of fingerprinting threats.

If Mozilla are really serious about fingerprinting then they need to remove <canvas> right now and make every website render in Times New Roman.

Fingerprinting cannot be solved by disabling browser features in a standard browser. It can be mitigated by using content blockers such that the fingerprinting code never runs, or by using a specialist browser like the Tor browser.

[ta8903]

Pretty sure canvas is blocked by setting resistFingerprinting to true.

[illiarian]

> Anything can be used for fingerprinting.

Yes and that's a major issue

> If Mozilla are really serious about fingerprinting then they need to remove <canvas> right now

Ad absurdum is not as great an argument as you think it is

> Fingerprinting cannot be solved by disabling browser features in a standard browser.

It also shouldn't be facilitated by just blindly turning them on without propert mitigation. And proper mitigation is complex

> It can be mitigated by using content blockers

So now you're shifting the responsibility onto the user. Even though it's been shown time and again that users can't really understand all the complexities of modern systems, their capabilities and the far-reaching results of what these systems can and do.

[rektide]

But putting capabilities behind permission isn't what Apple or Moz considered.

> Finally, if we find that features and web APIs increase fingerprintability and offer no safe way to protect our users, we will not implement them

https://webkit.org/tracking-prevention/ https://www.infoq.com/news/2020/07/apple-fingerprinting-priv...

Strangling the web platform to keep users safe, forcing them onto much less secure much more invasive apps is not justified nor reasonable. Watching Mozilla adopt the same condescending paternalistic platform murdering "protect the children" absolutist authoritarianism with no possible consideration or affordances was a sad sad sad week. It's extremely reckless & hostile behavior, at deep deep deep injury to making so many great futures possible.

[waboremo]

Prior to app store creation, Apple and Google were the same regarding the web as a legitimate platform. After it was released, only really Google was pushing for it. Hence the creation of Progressive Web Apps, thanks to Alex Russell et al at Google.

[kelnos]

PWAs failed in the marketplace and are essentially dead. Google pushed them because they were already on track for web dominance, and the shift toward native apps was a threat to that. These days Google still wants to control the web (and more or less does), but they also have a healthy app ecosystem, albeit only for Android.

I'm sure it still bugs them to no end that they have zero control over the app experience on iOS, which they possibly could have had more input on had webapps ended up being the dominant way of doing things on mobile.

[Rexogamer]

"PWAs are essentially dead"?!? They haven't replaced native apps for sure but I think it's a pretty major stretch to call them done and dusted

[di4na]

From a engineer mind share pov they are. Users don't use them. Engineers do not build them.

They are stillborn and i don't see a way out.

[rektide]

I think the expectation that tech wins & is everywhere in 5 years is murdering useful progress. It's not the climate we are in any more. Success is slow boiling, especially for web standards.

The lack of empathy for how long change takes keeps letting doom & gloomers send good things to the graveyard.

[pjmlp]

Engineers build them for big corps and ecommerce sites.

The respective users, specially the corporate ones, have no alternative other than using them.

[pjmlp]

On the contrary, for forms over data they are more than alive.

At work we only target mobile devices via the Web.

[BoorishBears]

WebUSB: You can argue their resistance was justified in that specific instance, but it's a prototypical example of their general stance

[illiarian]

So the prototypical example of their stance is: their resistance was justified.

[BoorishBears]

No, the prototypical example of their stance is: you can argue their resistance was justified.

If you believe in a big web it was not justified, otherwise it was, as the original comment was asking for an example of.

[illiarian]

Their stance has nothing to do with a "belief in a big web", whatever "big web" is.

[BoorishBears]

You don't even understand the term but you're being so dismissive. Maybe read the full thread and then comment.

By definition their stance is 100% about "a big web". It's an ideology that the browser shouldn't become another OS competing vs one that it should.

And while one side of the conversation tends to see their approach as 100% correct, the history was people downloading random exes with 0 sandboxing to do 99% of what SPAs offer today, so there's merit to both trains of thought.

[flohofwoe]

Just one point, but an embedded Chromium instance is around 10x bigger than an embedded WebKit instance.

[xcdzvyn]

I wouldn't say this is an uncommon philosophy. I for one am very aware that Firefox is, for the most part, an objectively worse browser than Chrome; SpiderMonkey is worse than V8, Gecko is worse than Blink. I still use it in a futile attempt to avoid Google's monopoly on the web (and for tree-style tab), but I'm perpetually disappointed by Mozilla's mismanagement of Firefox. It's as if Mozilla is trying to morph Firefox in to a discount Chrome clone by stripping it of its only appeal, killing it's viability to both markets simultaneously.

[kelnos]

I agree with you that Mozilla's mismanagement of... everything... had been a disappointment, but Firefox is... fine. I've used it for years and have few complaints. I expect it's strictly worse than Chrome on several axes, but I doubt in ways that most people would notice or care about.

[lelanthran]

> I wouldn't say this is an uncommon philosophy. I for one am very aware that Firefox is, for the most part, an objectively worse browser than Chrome;

Maybe it is objectively inferior to chrome, but not enought to make me switch.

IOW, I'm not missing anything by staying with FF because all the sites I use work with FF.

In fact, a site that only works on one browser is probably not a site that anyone goes to anyway, objective metrics be damned.