• huskypenguin@sh.itjust.works
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    1 month ago

    I’m curious what would happen if chrome is split from googles core business. That won’t happen of course, because we live in hell, but it would be great.

    • sunstoned@lemmus.org
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      1 month ago

      Unbelievable. What would we do? Hand it over to a non-profit akin to the Linux Foundation so we can have a flourishing ecosystem of technologies sharing momentum while branching out into their own flavors and augmentations? All of that, for what! To serve a public good via most common piece of software used on a day to day basis? Madness!

  • GHiLA@sh.itjust.works
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    1 month ago

    Zero loyalties.

    If Firefox did something similar, they’d be off my drive before I finished the article.

    • tO0l@lemmy.ml
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      1 month ago

      Chrome is a web browser created and maintained by an advertising company. This whole situation was never going to go any other way.

      Firefox is equally doomed since so much of their current revenue comes from Google.

      • GHiLA@sh.itjust.works
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        1 month ago

        We have a foundation dedicated to the development of an entire kernel, but a web browser is a stretch.

        (It indeed may be a stretch)

        • wvstolzing@lemmy.ml
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          1 month ago

          Who’s “we”, though? Here’s the list of Linux Foundation members: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/members It’s a foundation by, and for, commercial interests; not the users. If the same interests made up a foundation to develop a browser, it wouldn’t be different from Chrome; because in the realm where browsers are supposed to work, those ‘commercial interests’ would demand doing what Chrome does.

          It’s a ‘happy accident’ that with respect to a unix-like OS kernel, the interests of the industry ended up being compatible with the interests of the user.

  • Shareni@programming.dev
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    1 month ago

    I mean the title should be “… time to move to the other browser”.

    Safari is the new IE with extra iCrap on top.

    Random browsers usually use one of the 3 web engines, but without browser polish, or functionalities like a working adblock. Those that don’t are just someone’s toys.

    So the only real option is Firefox, and the Mozilla foundation lost 80+% of their funding because they can’t get the Google money anymore. Maybe they’ll start actually funding FF instead of some BS humanitarian work that I can bet was primarily lining their pockets…

    • magguzu@lemmy.ml
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      1 month ago

      I wish Apple would open source Safari, or at least make some “Safarium” others can build on. Would be an instant third player without all the growing pains.

      • lengau@midwest.social
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        1 month ago

        The core of Safari (WebKit) is open source. If it weren’t they’d be violating the GPL license of KHTML.

        • magguzu@lemmy.ml
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          1 month ago

          Ah, admittedly I don’t know much. Could another browser build on it like Chromium or Firefox?

          • wvstolzing@lemmy.ml
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            1 month ago

            Smaller browsers built on webkit do exist; see ‘Epiphany’, ‘surf’, ‘luakit’, and ‘Nyxt’. Qt’s web component used to be based on webkit as well, though they’ve switched to Blink (Chromium).

            Unfortunately, none of the browsers listed above are 100% sufficient to replace Firefox. They all rely on GTK bindings on webkit, which has its own quirks; and none have support for webextensions.

          • lengau@midwest.social
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            1 month ago

            Yes! In fact, Chromium was originally a fork of WebKit, as WebKit was a fork of KHTML. In both cases the codebases have diverged quite significantly though.

      • Shareni@programming.dev
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        1 month ago

        I said they’re the new IE for a reason.

        The w3c standard: ok so we all agreed that this feature will be placed in the body tag

        Blink: ofc, that’s what I’ve been telling you

        Gecko: sure, idc

        WebKit: yeah nah, put it in the html

        So many little senseless gotchas like that that exist for no reason that to be iSpecial

  • Evilschnuff@feddit.org
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    1 month ago

    Stupid question, but do they prevent google from recreating their own browser? Chromium is mostly open source. They could just fork the project, rename it and support it much better than the open source community. This would place them again as the most used browser due to conveniences of ecosystem integration etc.

    • coffee_tacos@mander.xyz
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      1 month ago

      No, part of the antitrust requirements would likely be them having to stay out of the browser market for a set number of years.