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Get 100$ credit for your own Linux and gaming server: https://www.linode.com/linuxexperiment Get your Linux desktop or laptop here: https://slimbook.es/en/ 👏 SUPPORT THE CHANNEL: Get access to an exclusive weekly podcast, vote on the next topics I cover, and get your name in the credits: YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5UAwBUum7CPN5buc-_N1Fw/join Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thelinuxexperiment Or, you can donate whatever you want: https://paypal.me/thelinuxexp?locale.x=fr_FR You can also protect your privacy by using this extension from Startpage, each install helps the channel with a small commission: https://add.startpage.com/en/protection/?campaign=4&source=aff 🏆 FOLLOW ME ELSEWHERE: Linux news in Youtube Shorts format: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtZp0mK9IBrpS2-jNzMZmoA Join us on our Discord server: https://discord.gg/xK7ukavWmQ Twitter : http://twitter.com/thelinuxEXP My Gaming on Linux Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaw_Lz7oifDb-PZCAcZ07kw 📷 GEAR I USE: Sony Alpha A6600 Mirrorless Camera: https://amzn.to/30zKyn7 Sigma 56mm Fixed Prime Lens: https://amzn.to/3aRvK5l Logitech MX Master 3 Mouse: https://amzn.to/3BVI0Od Bluetooth Space Grey Mac Keyboard: https://amzn.to/3jcJETZ Logitech Brio 4K Webcam: https://amzn.to/3jgeTh9 LG Curved Ultrawide Monitor: https://amzn.to/3pcTVDH Logitech White Speakers: https://amzn.to/3n6wSb0 Xbox Controller: https://amzn.to/3BWmIA3 Amazon Links are affiliate codes and generate small commissions to support the channel 00:00 Intro 00:47 Sponsor: 100$ free credit off your Linux or Gaming server 01:37 The decline of Firefox 05:20 Why that's a problem 08:13 Why is Firefox important? 11:43 How can we solve this? 13:23 Sponsor: Get your Linux laptop or desktop with Slimbook 14:23 Support the channel There is no denying that Firefox has been progressively losing ground in the web browser race. It's highest peak was at the end of 2009, at almost 32% market share, when Internet Explorer has about 55%, and Chrome was barely edging out the 5% market share. Fast forward to 11 years later, and Chrome now has 62.7% of the market, where Firefox only has 4.2%. How did that happen? Why did the browser that basically started the work to take IE down, that introduced tabs to the masses, and that made sure web standards were respected, why did THAT browser fall so low? First, Mozilla completely missed the mobile market. There's also the fact that Google pushed CHROME very aggressively. Firefox also kinda rested on their laurels for a while, while Chrome worked tirelessly on their engine. Now you might think: that's a free market. People use what's best, and if Firefox gets better, people will flock back. And while that's a possibility, as it stands, it still creates an issue. The web relies on being open and on evolution. These evolutions, to be beneficial to everyone, need to be decided collectively, by independent organisms, supported by all browsers, and implemented freely. What I mean is that the browser engine shouldn't control how the web runs, looks, or what it can do. The browser engine is just there to ensure that websites and webapps just run like they should. The rise of Chrome and chromium based browsers, just like any other monopoly, turns that on its head. Developers, you see, can only implement features, if they know that their users will be able to make use of them. If everyone uses the same engine, and that engine decides to NOT implement a feature, then it's just not going to be used at all, because why make something that no user will ever be able to take advantage of? This is a problem. Not right now, but it might become one in the future. See, Chromium is open source, as is Blink, the rendering engine used in Chromium and every browser using it. It's open source, but decisions are made by Google. In 2019, 92% of commits to the code base were made by Google employees. So let's not kid ourselves: Google has total control over what goes in and what they don't want to see in Chromium. You might say, someone would fork chromium or Blink and start their own browser, and that would solve it. Except no one would move to that browser. What's important isn't Firefox specifically, it's having rendering engine diversity. Having 2 or 3 engines that have almost equal market share is crucial to avoid that situation, because in that case, the one that doesn't implement a new technology doesn't hold back the whole web. So how can we solve this? How can we make sure that Chromium doesn't start deciding how the web should run? Well, as users, apart from not using chromium based browsers, and supporting other engines financially, there isn't much we can do. The other option would be to try and take governance of Chromium away from Google, but I don't see that happening any time soon.
Nonsense video, underlying problem is monopolies and private companies who develop the standards, not what browser you use.
If the standards are fully open, transparent and not concerning then it would make no difference if you use chrome and firefox because everyone would use same basis.
Also chromium team is not purchased or owned by Google, most volunteers are normal people, developers or security researchers that code on it in their free time. You can fork, modify the source as you please but that does not change the argumentation about web standards and how build or control them.
The reality of the situation is that developing a browser takes a huge amount of resources. Google effectively owns Chromium development, and gets to make all the decisions regarding how the engine works of what features are there. Recent controversy over Chromium trying to remove APIs using adblockers is a perfect example of this.
Furthermore, as Chromium becomes the dominant engine, website only care that they work properly with this engine. When the engine breaks the standards, what the engine is doing becomes the implicit standard. AMP is a great example of that.
The fact that you can theoretically fork and modify the source is completely meaningless in practice. If the web is designed around how Chromium works, then it doesn’t matter what some tiny fork with a dozen users is doing.
Google is fundamentally an ads company, and the internet is far too important for Google to become the sole gatekeeper for accessing it.
Very well said.
Furthermore, despite being open source, Chromium still has Google’s stuff baked in. Projects like Ungoogled Chromium and Bromite aim at removing them, but due to the extremely complex nature of a browser, it is hard to be sure you have gotten them all.
These guys are doing a good job, and dont have “google resources”… https://twitter.com/awesomekling/status/1508953394836353024
Getting CSS to render properly is certainly impressive, let’s see where that goes.
It is a problem, but I don’t think it’s as big as you or the video lets on. If Google does make particularly problematic changes, it’s not going to be some random users forking it, it’s going to be Microsoft. Microsoft is perfectly capable of maintaining an alternate version, after all they made edgeHTML almost from scratch and it worked fine. True, edge only has ~6% market share but it’s growing and whatever bad decision Google makes is likely to drive users away from chrome. Other chromium browsers would also likely switch to Microsoft’s fork.
And of course, Google also has to worry about pushback from other corporations or even governments, like they did with FLoc.
Google knows this, and so doesn’t do anything too out of line.
Manifest v3, which you gave as an example was delayed and google backtracked on like half the changes, just because some extension devs and a vocal minority of nerds protested. And in that situation, Google’s power over chromium was only half the reason, because google also has the chrome webstore, which they do truly have full control over and is not open source, but that’s a separate issue.
Another megacorp forking Chromium doesn’t really help solve thee problem. We need a browser that’s an actual community driven open source project. Microsoft is unlikely to have problems with features harmful to users such as tracking or disabling adblocker APIs because that sort of thing is perfectly compatible with their business model.
The entity maintaining the browser has to be fundamentally non-commerical. Mozilla is not perfect, but it’s the closest we have at the moment.
The reason Google backtracked is precisely because there is a viable alternative available, and if they made this change then we’d see droves of people moving to FF. In a world where Chromium is the only game in town they can push these kinds of changes through much easier.
Gecko is no more “community driven” than chromium. Mozilla has just as much control over it. You could argue that Mozilla is better company, but that’s a separate argument.
Mozilla is fundamentally a non profit foundation. It’s not perfect, but it’s not remotely comparable to commercial companies like Google and Microsoft that have a clear conflict of interest. I would personally prefer if Firefox was a true community effort, but having it as imperfect as it may be is still vastly better than not.
But that’s assuming that the changes will also be problematic for Microsoft, while their interest may align with Google’s in a lot of situations
That is true, we cannot always assume Microsoft will will be opposed to it.
But they are a competitor and considering how they’ve been pushing edge lately, I don’t think it would take too much for MS to split if they thought they could get an advantage that way.
It’s the other way around. Which browser you use is what directly determines whether monopoly and private companies develop the standard you use.
You could write a standard independently of those companies, but then if everyone chooses to use browser engines from companies that don’t follow it, what’s the point?
If everyone uses a particular browser then whatever that browser implements becomes the standard. It’s all about what browser you use.
If what you want is everyone using the same basis, then what you need is to get everyone to use the same browser engine (which is what is happening already).
However, focusing on that is likely to not result in it being “fully open” as long as the popular browsers are not interested in openness (in particular with a MIT-licensed basis that is allowed to be privately altered, extended and corrupted in proprietary forks by those popular browsers who don’t have to be “transparent” on what exactly they changed).
If what you want is for it to be “fully open”, then you’d want people to be more careful and choose a browser with a “fully open” basis, instead of using whatever is more popular. It’s still all about what browser you use.
No it is not, this is a myth. As you also can use free software on closed OS, which happens to be the standard. Keyword Microsoft and Windows. You also can choose to not support this, it is you and not the monopoly. If there is no alternative that is usable, people continue to use what they got. It is the underlying problem, Firefox is so bad and so unusable by default, so people switch or use something else. Nothing to do with Monopoly. The standards itself are created and dictated by monopolies, so it plays no role what you use if it anyway ends up that you must support such standards.
The point is that user generated or govt establish frameworks can b used as basis.Its useless if you build a browser surrounded by standards created by Microsoft, IBM etc alone.
This is already the case, you can choose not to use FLoC. Nothing changes here.
Please learn the difference between Browser engine and web standards, nonsense you talk here. Your Browser engine can adopt, implement or reject standards. Irrelevant in dyding discussion anyway since you provide absolute no solutions yourself in the discussion here, like everyone else people feeding off my ideas, practical in every thread. That you cannot continue is clear, web gives a shit about Mozilla, clearly the case. Some people hold together by hopes and delusions do not represent the web. Never did.
The discussion here is not about Browser you use, as people use whatever works best for them, and not what implements xyz, this is clearly shown in practical every thread. So enforcing your ideas will not work for the mass, better way around is to create open frameworks, documents that are actually usable and directly easily reviewable because at the end of the day your Browser runs pretty much on Android and iOS and not a open system. There exist open alternatives but they are not well funded, future unclear and the web - the main user - does not use it, they trust big corpos, they rely on their eco-system. Like Mozilla relies on money from yahoo, google etc in the past. Corpos you shit-talk.
Why does it “happen to be the standard”?
Because people use it. At the end of the day, usage is what determines what’s standard.
Whether a particular person can opt to go for something non-standard (eg. Linux) doesn’t make what I said any less true.
And the problem is that the non-standard person can’t expect the same level of support (eg. Linux drivers for obscure hardware)… because devs and companies won’t care so much for any deviations from what’s standard.
That would be useless if people (both end users and web developers) don’t use it.
The Mozilla Foundation created their own browser. Yet they are dying since they are getting abandoned by both web devs and end users. Creating your own does not solve the problem.
If web devs design for Chrome and Chrome adds Chrome-specific deviations from the standard, it’s gonna be extremelly hard to keep up, which is what is happening with Firefox… they can’t keep up, they keep receiving reports of problems because websites are developed for Chrome.
Yes, In there I was just describing how things work. As I see it.
Web standards are just a set of rules that hipothetically Browser engines follow.
In practice, however, no browser engine actually follows the standard 100%, since they all have their very own extensions or try different optimizations that result in differences of implementation… Google keeps adding their own spin on things at a pace that is hard to keep up for any other browser.
If it were possible for web standards to be really, truly, and fully respected, then indeed it wouldn’t matter what browser you use. But that’s not what the reality is. There are websites that work and look different in Chrome than in Firefox.
Thank you for the time and effort you put into patiently explaining what is basically an embrace/extend/extinguish strategy by Google.
These kinds of convos are frustrating, because a one-browser monopoly over the web should be so obviously bad that you don’t need to explain it. But, the golden rule of the internet is that you will always find someone who wants to die on the most ridiculous hill, for no coherent reason.
Your points are adressed in the video though
The problem with Chromium-based browser making up such a big market share is that it is more important for the developers that their websites be compatible with Chrome than with the open standards.
Yes but in the end, Google can decide what it keeps in or out of the main branch.
No, the problem is that Mozilla provides no alternatives, or for that matter the government fails to provide any competition that are open. As the govt also uses the same dirt, Windows, Google etc. If there are no alternatives for developers they go with what the mainstream use. Can you point to Mozillas solution to Google analytics … oh snap … wait … There is in this case not even a proposal for a transparent solution, therefore people go with reliable and trusted systems that are proven to be effective. I like to add that some governments even make it worse as they advocate organisations instead of providing their own open alternatives which can corrupt. Better approach is to give people a basis and then they can adjust it if needed but we all should get a standard basis as common ground that defines the web and not the other way around that google, mozilla dictate what you should use - according to them. This is a huge difference.
For ads only reliable solution is bitcoin, something that Mozilla used to gain donation with, until recent controversy but provided nothing to support developers, only Brave created a system, of course it is not perfect but they try at least to break the circle.
No, because the video refers to Chromium in my example, that is independent project, which specifically exclude some controversial things. Chromium is controlled and mainly used by free volunteers based on Chrome from mostly normal people. Besides it does not matter as you can fork and modify everything as you want which is not the case with chrome as parts are not even fully open, the best example was the RILID, which Mozilla now copied years later and call it dltoken, difference here only is that Chromes collection was closed source while Mozillas implementation is open source, still does not change the outcome.
At the end they do the same BS google does. Makes it not better if closed or open. As the end user also do not get the last saying on such delicate topics and implementations.
What I meant, and that’s also in the video, is that if Chromium decides to not implement a feature, but other browsers do, website devs are just going to ignore it beause most users won’t be able to use that feature.
What do you mean? Mozilla-owned alternative to Google analytics? What does it have to do with the visitor’s browser?
Volunteers can contribute, yet in 2019 more than 90% of commits were done by Google employees. More than 80% of contributors work for Google. So yes, it is controlled by Google
Nope because for some removed things there are practical no alternatives available that you could use. Awareness and reliability is a huge factor.
Removing everything without providing alternatives is a key point why people leaving because promises alone are worth nothing if you do not act up on it. People just do not care if there is a logo with google or mozilla, as long as they have something in their hand they can use for their websites. Instead you see paypal and others doing something which they overlook, deliberately or not, plays no role.
No, since employees from Google are not direct representatives for the Corpo. The main Browser is still based on Chrome. It does not change anything that free volunteers maintaining issue tickets, reviewing things etc. your statistic does not include bounty hunters and such people, because no one put them into statistics because they usually do not do this on a regular basis. The external libaries included are also very often not coming from Chrome, there are also libs included coded by others. Also not in any statistic. So no Google does not control the outcome. It is up to you what you implement, and up to Chromium people decide what they accept as trustworthy or not because they only release the open parts, and everyone can inspect them, this is not in Googles control. What they can control directly is only Chrome but what has this to do with Mozilla or Firefox or the overall web, right nothing. Sometimes Google also create their own stuff because they simply invent it or there is no practical alternative that they could implement. I just say this for the reference, QUIC for example.
The web uses that what is reliable, usually open source and gets maintained. If there are no frameworks available no one can code alternatives tools, so that is the underlying problem. There is simply no competition as the govt also only depend on organisations instead of coming with their own stuff, because it is cheaper to let other people do the work than providing your own frameworks and solutions.
I know people that worked on golang and chromium outside of google and then tell me how difficult it is working on it because Google has final decision making power on those projects even though they’re open source.
They have a higher voice but you, if you want to still can reject their decision. The drama about manifestv3 was also more echo chamber, vivaldi, brave and others ditched it so adblockers still work. Yet no one has, as of a today a solution. People only come up with, remove ads … end. This is not what developers or content creators want, they want practical solution without compromising something and ads is simply reliable system. There are also other things that play a role for such decisions, malware etc. Points that some people just ignore. Most people see it from their own perspective and not from developer or content creator perspective. I do not need it or want it … okay f# it its bloatware or shit … this is basically how every discussion is about it.
If you pay for development you of course should automatically get a higher voice in your own project and Chrome is simply - theirs. This does not change the underlying truth that you can fork Chromium, adjust it and are finished. If you check the fork history of what people made of Mozilla, there is practical no one from impact, not even Pale Moon as they limit several things drastically. The rest are clown forks with 2 changes … calling it hardened and independent even if its not because you rely on Mozilla and that is it, not even mention Mozillas failed attempt on Mobile OS and their crippled mobile browser…
Again if govt would provide alternatives as base or fund independent projects by independent people and not rely on others the situation would be better. Then monopolies had a much harder time to compete.
Nobody is saying that using Mozilla’s engine in particular (or Apple Safari, for that matter) gives you more independence from Mozilla (or Apple). We are talking about the power inbalance that would result if every single popular browser relies on the same basis managed predominantly by one player (which happens to be Google).
Like you yourself said, Google does “pay for development” so “of course should automatically get a higher voice in [their] own project and Chrome is simply - theirs”.
Given that “their own project” is used by everyone (to the point that competition that doesn’t use it is “DYING”), this means their engine is the de-facto standard, and thus “Google automatically gets a higher voice” when it comes to the development of web standards. That’s the problem.
Nobody is saying that Google shouldn’t have a higher voice over its own project. What we are saying is that Google shouldn’t have a higher voice over web standards. We are saying that we need competition to not die.
There doesn’t need to be a replacement for ad revenue. The web functions just fine when it’s just a bunch of passion projects without ways to monetize other than some scattered donations. If anything, it’s much better and healthier.
The best browser is one that does not bend to the needs of the rent-seeking parasites who have ruined the modern web.
Rember when reddit still relied on donations?
I wonder if any of those donators got anythingbackk after they killed Aaron Schwartz and monetized the platform.
I am afraid this is incorrect open source has massive funding issue. The reality vs what you theoretically could do are different things, usually only bigger projects getting lots of funding and donations.
The web is also basically just one big ad. Yt, lemmy, everyone practical only advocates and advertise a website, link, info whatever. So yes you need actual solutions, getting rid of ads and replace it with donations never works. Starts here with the fact that people copy and paste entire paywalled content on the website because they refuse to support websites just because they want money for the content. People want everything free and not help, always was the case and always will be the case because its too easy to bypass systems.
I agree with you that if we don’t like their decision then we can fork but we don’t have time or money to maintain the fork.
That is why funding and help is essential, this must come from above to at least provide people with opportunities and a guidance beyond … oh better use x than y.
I’m sorry but your first two points have nothing to do with what I said. I was talking about the fact that site devs work in function of their users’ browser. Since such a crushing majority uses Chrome and cousins, the web is being shaped after Chrome and cousins’ capabilities.
If the commit are counted for employees, that means they committed with their professionnal adress, hence in the context of their work, hence directly representing the corpo.
No, the statistics was based on a list of commits that includes one-time contributors.
Irrelevant, external lib’s devs don’t decide anything, the coders still decide how their import and use the lib.
Who are the Chromium people? The Chromium projects is an entity that was created by Google, is their any sign that it is run by people who don’t work for Google?
Because there is no competition. I already explained, people use what they can use and you cannot expect that people code their own frameworks.
Commits do not reflect the entire work, as a committer can commit work based on someone else, which means they can include in their commit the zlib code to provide support into the Browser. You cannot give a random user commit rights.
Again commits include also work from third-party projects. It says nothing about the influence also again no bug bountry work that only getting merged by official approved committer. Apparently you do not understand how Chrome development works.
It is relevant, if there are no alternatives you can include you code your own, which is what you accuse Google off with sabotaging the web. No alternatives, you are forced to provide your own. It is that simple. Was the case with QUIC.
Not every employee represents the Corp. You can work for Google but you are not dictated by them, so your - every employee must kneel thing - never happen. Typically new standards are in depth in discussion with the community as well as the proposals are clearly visible. People as well as chromium users can decide and act up on the information. There is no secret meeting, of we want to destroy the web or what you accuse google off. They implement of course third-party projects from others if its reliable and usable. Most what I refer too are average people, ex employee, bug hunters, free volunteers, etc. Its also mentioned in the Chromium blog.
Mozilla is so irrelevant that no one talks here about them, instead we talk about your misinterpretation on who gets commit rights, and who does the actual work.
I am not even going into some details that a Browser is not the only application, yet this point is also not mentioned in the Video, Spotify etc they all are based on frameworks, there was at that time not much alternatives to those frameworks. Alternatives are often created only afterwords to address shortcomings.
The question discussed in the video is not WHY firefox is dying, it is the consequence of that. Other engines exist, maybe Blink is better, the fact is anyway that it has a huge market share, so they have a lot of power on how the web evolves.
Hence, Google has that power. Because Google is the main entity behind Chromium. You can play with word, saying the 80% of contributors is not 100%, that it doesn’t give explicit instructions to its employees, that maybe the commit count should be slightly different as to include bounty hunter, libs,… It remains that, as you admit yourself in other thread, Google has the biggest voice in Chromium development.
The video is also not about engines and what engine someone should use, if you argue on this you do not understand the underlying problem. The engine is to render the content, based on APIs and other things. This has nothing to do with monopolies. As everyone could theoretically create their own standards but you need funding, money and that typically only comes from those who have the money. So this is the underlying point.
Your math and numbers are just incorrect as you refuse to accept that the Browser is not one big project, it is more a multi media all-in-one project and there are others involved, this you do not understand, as you clearly displayed.
I admit nothing I say how things are and if you pump 1 billion into it you should get the voice, this is just normal and Mozilla does the same, as they have also the last word on what pull request they integrate. This is normal and not something essential that has something to do with control, you cannot just give random people commit rights, there must always be a review process. If you want a sit on the table you need to pay you way into it, this is just how this works, and with only words, hopes and dreams you will simply get a lower voice. It is like saying oh I know better than elon musk, but he actually spend 3 billions to sit on the twitter table, so of course he calls more shots than you, this is why the government needs to fund projects and not advertise organisations.
Your refusal to accept that there is no Mozilla fork while there is in mass successfully forks such as Brave, Vivaldi and so many others… is just cringe. Mozilla has only clown forks that make no impact on the web as they are mainly run by sentimental people and not actually people who develop standards, pump their money into it and this is when your logic miserably fails.
There is nothing and people care only about what you can take… This is how web works … not with hopes, dreams and blah… funding, proposal, review, frameworks, alternatives and documentation… You simply INVEST into something and then you can spread it for the mass. Google did that with success, provided free services, advertised it and gained control. Things Mozilla missed, instead they run in Googles shadow, behind, too late, slow … incompetent. I blame the CEO actually he is as incompetent as Microsofts CEO but they are in a much better positions that allows more mistakes.
Try implementing the web standards from scratch in a new browser today. 'Nuff said.
Getting there with the browser in SerenityOS!
🎉 🎉 🎉
Give me 50 million Euros and 4 years and I’ll get it done :)
Precisely my point. :-)
It’s not that much money in the grand scheme of things. A major corp or government can easily fund it.
You continue to argue for my point. “A major corp or government” being necessary to fund development of such a crucial piece of software is already a bad sign of how unsustainably complex web has become.
Plus, Microsoft tried, Edge is now themed Chromium. Apple’s Safari is kinda sorta working, but is the IE of the 2020’s. 🤷♀️