If we get there maybe it'll lead to a culture of something beyond "people on iOS don't truly use Chrome so I guess it's not really a problem worth doing anything about yet".
Ideally, the next step is for the US FTC to break up Google. This will probably have to wait until 2028, but it could happen earlier — it doesn't seem to be hard to get on this administration's bad side.
if chrome ever ends up with a majority browser share on ios/ipados, apple won't have any way to keep up. at this point, google already almost 100% controls web standards, and they can push new features (no matter how privacy-hostile or overreaching) without even allowing apple the chance to keep up.
at that point, the incentives for apple to keep developing safari would slowly dwindle away.
(oh, and gecko is a joke, especially on mobile - no need to even bring it up)
ugh... so much pain and time trying to get pages to look nice on that decaying pile of bits. I was overjoyed when those sneaky veternan engineers at YouTube put up their banner: https://blog.chriszacharias.com/a-conspiracy-to-kill-ie6
It's the only reason you don't see a lot more broken websites on Firefox, which would drive its market share even lower.
Lots and lots of Web development projects target Chrome, then make sure it works on Safari. In that second step, they accidentally fix a lot of bugs that'd show up on Firefox, too.
Not a lot of them are bothering to check Firefox directly these days. Hell, a decade ago it wasn't making the test list in tons of cases.
Apple is the only thing keeping web standards in place. Many vendors we work with only support Chrome, including Chrome... on iOS. Which means because on iOS that's just Safari, the website has to meet web standards. So we know thanks to Apple, it'll work on Firefox!
Soon as this happens, Chrome is the web. The OWA knows this, it's their goal, it's an astroturf outfit.
Can you please elaborate on what your point is here? Previously you've made comments in support of opening up the Apple ecosystem, but now it seems that you're no longer in support of the idea after a sudden realization that opening up the platform to everyone means that it's also opened up to Google?
Very specifically: Safari is a critical lynchpin for Google's control of the web and we need to be extremely careful how we address it. A more open Apple ecosystem would be wonderful, I'm strongly in favor of sideloading and third party app stores. Both companies need to be heavily regulated, but the "Open Web Advocacy" idiots are just trying to push a Chrome monoculture, and it's important we do not accidentally make one monopoly worse while addressing another.
Ideally, Google will be broken up and forced to divest Chrome (this is in progress, but at the speed of the US federal government, so could be a decade if it succeeds), and then we can require Apple to remove their browser ban. Doing this out of order will destroy the web as we know it.
Chrome is the IE of today: It's the single platform developers are developing for instead of web standards. The fact developers have to support Safari, a least common denominator, is the only thing protecting the web.
I disagree. Safari is safer to use than Chrome, because Chrome implements antifeatures at a breakneck pace which introduce tracking and security vulnerabilities. Choosing not to implement a feature is as important or more than implementing one.
I'm not a Mac user, but I wish I had Safari on desktop as an option today.
Normally, I'd agree with you -- defaults are a very, _very_ powerful thing.
But if you're using Google's web tools, they make it (too) easy to download their apps and push you in that direction in a million little ways. For example, GMail's native iOS app will either open a link in a WKWebView or Chrome (if it's not installed, it'll prompt you to install it), but you have to jump through some hoops if you want to open a link in the system's default browser. Similarly, if you're searching for something via google.com, they'll put up a prompt to download their search app, with the default "Continue" option taking you to the store rather than continuing with your current task (and then click-jack the back button).
But what's for-sure is that Apple is hugely profitable. And that browser control is a relatively important part of that profitability. Plain old greed will give Apple ample motive to keep Safari going.
Personifying corporations of thousands (or nations of millions) as if they had driving emotions such as a single person would have is almost always a grave logical error.
Brave is also contributing to the Chrome monoculture, same as how the Android forks are contributing to the Android culture. The base projects are so large that no team will do a proper job updating it if, or when, the source project stops being open source. They are entirely beholden to the original developers, and they will also merge whatever change the original developers do, as the cost of maintaining a fork is big enough as it is, without breaking changes.
I do appreciate these being open-source. But there must not be an illusion that these large projects being open source means that "just forking" works. A culture is much more than a repository.
The way Google handles the Chromium source (one big Git monorepo that's undergoing near-constant refactoring) means anything that doesn't want to hard fork is limited to bolting on a new UI and features around the core rendering engine -- but anything inside that core rendering engine won't be long-lasting.
So Brave, Arc, Dia, Edge, et al., all add their own sauce on top of Chromium, but none of them can make changes like back-porting Manifest V2 back into their Chromium.
The main issue with Chromium is not that it's not that it benefits Google.
The main issue is that it's so mainstream, it strongarms standardization bodies making them ineffective.
Chromium is so mainstream that developers think developing for other browsers is irrelevant, even putting notices of deprecation for Safari and Firefox.
W3C is on the brink of irrelevancy, because if it works on Chromium, why bother with the others? if W3C cannot enforce the standard.
> Chromium is so mainstream that developers think developing for other browsers is irrelevant, even putting notices of deprecation for Safari and Firefox.
Hugging Face's spaces does this, throwing banners saying it only supports Chrome. Makes me throw up a little bit every time I have to switch over.
i kind of agree - although all of this does end up indirectly benefitting google. while the project is open source, they're the ones maintaining the project, and believing that they won't do anything they think they can get away with to grow their power and influence is extremely naive.
if safari dies, firefox won't be far behind, and by then there's no way a fork of chromium will be able to "keep up" when google starts pushing chrome-only features, killing ad-blockers etc etc etc
(not sure if any of this matters, though. will there even be any real people left on the web in a 5 years?)
How has chrome abused there'd position? Generally from what I've seen most of their standards are sane and improve the web.
I was told they were breaking adblockers, using ublock lite which complies with the changes I don't notice a difference. And even this change I could have switched browsers it didn't break the web.
There's some pwa features only they support, and that's a feature I think could actually benefit me.
Chromium is in such position that their implementation of new elements and APIs set the de-facto standard for the Web and Safari and Firefox have to follow suit.
This overpowers the governing body (W3C), where they have to accept it and pretend they remain relevant.
A bit of history: When Internet Explorer was the dominant browser of the Internet, other browsers existed and their usage was in healthy proportion, among each other. People could choose whatever browser they wanted and be sure its browser engine was independent.
When Chromium/Chrome came in 2008, it changed the game to what we have today: 85% Chromium-based browsers, 8%-10% Safari/WebKit and 2%-3% Gecko-based browsers (Firefox)
Whatever Chromium does, others have to follow suit. The bulk of the userbase is there (unfortunately). No real choice exists for a governing body to effectively apply standards.
The ability to contribute and the rights granted by the license are two separate issues. Google isn't obligated to accept and is more than likely to reject patches that don't align with its incentives (reversal of recent anti-adblock changes, removal of telemetry/spyware, etc.)