[Yizahi]

The natural consequence of chromewashing. If people pretend that Chrome clones are a "competitors" or viable "alternatives" it's no wonder that the only real alternative (on Windows) loses marketshare and is slowly deprecated because not many people speak out. It would be a "fun" time if FF ever dies, new IE6.0 situation but worse.

[KingOfCoders]

The natural consequences of Mozilla spending money on everything except on creating a the best browser in the world and working on marketshare (written in Firefox).

[Yizahi]

I'm still mad at Mozilla for all their dumb decisions and arrogant behavior (case in point - actual FF devs responses on Reddit to the backlash against "uglybar", when they have radically chopped down functionality and UX of the old address bar, saying stuff that people who want sane UI are using it wrong and shifting blame in general).

[yoasif_]

Can you link to this?

[freefaler]

Yeah, they've been doing strange things over there for sure. Still for Android their mobile version is way better than Chrome.

However, even if they did have the best browser how many installs would they get based on the quality of the browser? Most people don't care and those who care aren't significant slice of the pie.

Platforms dictate browser distribution because the average person is happy with what he god pre-installed or what google has shown as promo on their page.

[KingOfCoders]

What I like - not sure about Chrome - on mobile is the nav bar at the bottom.

They had >$6billion so I'm sure they could have put in some marketing and distribution partners.

Ladybird will show what one/very small team of devs can do developing a browser and what amount of $ could have been used for marketing and market share.

[sofixa]

> It would be a "fun" time if FF ever dies, new IE6.0 situation but worse

How would it be worse? Chromium is Open Source, and anyone can fork it if Google go too far.

IE6.0 was entirely proprietary, and nobody could do absolutely anything if Microsoft went too far.

[markx2]

> Chromium is Open Source, and anyone can fork it if Google go too far.

'anyone'.

The resources required to fork and then maintain would be huge, and that completely disregards the publicity needed to say just why the fork was needed and is in the consumer's best interest to use instead.

Google have already gone too far. I can only hope the EU breaks them.

[bravetraveler]

Let's not ignore the institutional change they drive; attestation and the like is not what it appears.

They can become the next Microsoft with secure boot signing keys for the next Widget, but implemented even less kindly. Yes, one can enroll their own signing keys. Who does?

The frog may say the water is warm, I say they are being boiled

[wilsonnb3]

> The resources required to fork and then maintain would be huge

Yes but browser companies have those resources and the expertise.

Microsoft is one of the most able companies to maintain a real Chromium fork, so a Chromium based Edge with actual marketshare puts them in a much better negotiating position than EdgeHTML based Edge that no one uses.

I think a Chromium based Firefox might be better long term than the current Firefox since Mozilla is going to get less and less of a seat at the table until they can get some real marketshare again.

[Yizahi]

Sure it can be forked. I can probably fork it, just go to github or wherever it is hosted and press "fork" button. The problem is maintaining velocity and features with Chrome. Google can add new protocols and mandatory new features daily and nobody can keep with them or propose alternatives. Today you fork Chrome to some new branch Nickel. Tomorrow Google releases some new QUIC v100500 without which half of the internet doesn't work and forces to adopt this new feature as a standard. What do Nickel devs do then? Clone Chrome again? This will be a mirror of the current situation, where every Chrome clone has exact same browser inside. Reimplement this QUIC v100500? Push alternative? Won't happen.

[bachmeier]

> Chromium is Open Source, and anyone can fork it if Google go too far.

Forking Chromium won't help unless developers are supporting Chromium rather than Chrome. There's no reason to expect Chromium to work with websites in the future.

[Tommy430]

> How would it be worse?

well Google is constantly moving too fast and they're mainly an internet company, whereas Microsoft was just the software company.

derp