[rstuart4133]

Maybe browsers are nearing "peak maintainable complexity" for a single computer program. An early indication of this was the Linux distro's giving up on maintaining them. That was the universe informing mankind it had created a lump of so code so complex, it exceeded the ability of a single man to pick it up and run with it from a standing start. Now it seems it's getting beyond the ability of a moderately well funded organisation like Mozilla to maintain a competitor to Chrome.

Why is that important? Clearly maintaining Chrome isn't beyond the kind of software engineering expertise Google can bring to the task. Creating a ecosystem around a browser with so many features everyone uses it, but so complex only a few organisations do the same thing has rewarded Google handsomely. It's one of the ways they control the internet.

That control has also created a huge risk - people wielding antitrust laws want to break it. But if Google doesn't develop it what are we left with - Firefox? Or maybe its a whole pile in incompatible browsers, controlled Microsoft and Perplexity. Ah how we all pine for the IE6 days when Microsoft tried to use it to mold the internet in the direction it wanted it to go (which was nowhere much at all). Not.

Or we perhaps we abandon the entire platform. I suspect they hit the "release with the lowest bug count" a long time ago. With that ability to add features slows, they become less reliable, and eventually they collapse under their own weight. Does that deliver us a X to Wayland monument in Web Standards? Perhaps its starts with "HTML Small", a tiny version of HTML + CSS without the legacy that's small, simple and fast to render on a watch. Maybe the Chinese already have such a thing in WeChat.