[stephenr]

> I think it would be a major shock to the browser ecosystem.

To repeat the question from above, where is the downside?

Microsoft only abandoned EdgeHTML and adopted Blink because Google owned sites like YouTube were deliberately breaking in Edge.

At this stage I don't imagine they'd go back (to EdgeHTML as their engine) specifically, but it's not hard to imagine a world where MSFT maintains its own fork of Blink for use in Edge, Opera potentially the same.

As for Firefox: they get money for being the default search engine - if Google is broken up, the search engine company that emerges will have even more reason to want to be the default search engine on as many browsers as possible (and thus incentive to pay money to other browsers).

[agent281]

I was replying the GP:

> So if Google dies then we'll have more diverse browser and mobile ecosystem

Initially, this won't be true. A lot of the browser ecosystem relies on Google right now. Eventually it would be replaced. I just don't think that it would be immediately true.

[tick_tock_tick]

> Microsoft only abandoned EdgeHTML and adopted Blink because Google owned sites like YouTube were deliberately breaking in Edge.

No they abandoned EdgeHTML because it was shit. Seriously there are plenty of posts right here on hacker news about the internals of that decision. The team and product failed to deliver so badly that it got the axe.

[stephenr]

> there are plenty of posts right here on hacker news about the internals of that decision

There sure are:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18697824

> This is already happening. I very recently worked on the Edge team, and one of the reasons we decided to end EdgeHTML was because Google kept making changes to its sites that broke other browsers, and we couldn't keep up.

> Now while I'm not sure I'm convinced that YouTube was changed intentionally to slow Edge, many of my co-workers are quite convinced - and they're the ones who looked into it personally.