Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by mgkimsal 4838 days ago
You'd actually need to build the software that gets used, not just protocols.

The majority of the browser usage is with three pieces of software: IE (Microsoft), Chrome (Google), Safari (Apple). None of these players really have a huge stake in 'openness'. We're computing at their mercy right now, and if/when they decide to adopt some new protocols (or drop support for others) we all just have to suck it up. Move to Firefox is a good option right now, but might not be in a few years.
2 comments
Locke1689 4838 days ago
No, it's more like IE, Chrome, Firefox.
link
mgkimsal 4838 days ago
depending on what target you're looking at, yes, for now. firefox has nothing on mobile right now - it's chrome/safari on mobile by a longshot, and mobile is the hot growth area. But yeah, point taken.
link
Gormo 4838 days ago
> The majority of the browser usage is with three pieces of software: IE (Microsoft), Chrome (Google), Safari (Apple). None of these players really have a huge stake in 'openness'.

Sure they do; all of the browsers support the same standards in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc. The few remaining points of contention between browsers, like HTML5 video formats, are relatively trivial and not significant with respect to the services that are starting to act like walled gardens.

The problems come from the applications and services that use the web itself as a platform, and attempt to "embrace, extend, and exterminate" open protocols, like RSS and OpenID, in order to lock users into relying on proprietary APIs instead of open standards.

As the previous commenter pointed out, the threats today come from Google, Facebook, and Twitter, not from the traditional desktop software vendors. (Only Chrome is really concerning here, since they're attempting to use Chrome as a way of shoehorning users into Google services, much in the same way that Microsoft leveraged their OS dominance in the '90s to boost their desktop applications, especially IE.)

link