> but if the alternates are not better and not worth integrating with a browser
This is the problem. There is a MASSIVE sunk cost to get a modern browser off the ground compared to a static target.
Even if you could do it, Chrome is going to keep moving forward. And they have enough power to change things in incompatible ways that everyone will follow because they have the vast majority of the market.
Microsoft made a new modern browser engine. They gave it up because it was too hard to compete with Chrome.
When Apple is forced to let people replace Safari, I fear we’re going to get into an IE6 situation.
It doesn’t matter how good Chrome is, IE6 was great too. But when the company lets it stagnate for years because there’s no reason to invest, or decides to use it to push their advertising business to new heights, we are all screwed until a new competitor comes around.
Firefox only exists because it was built from the Netscape code base. And ‘a modern browser’ was a WAY easier target 20 years ago. What if no group/company can muster enough effort to dethrone a stagnate Chrome?
The web is in trouble. Even tagging along in 3rd place, Firefox is a good browser that could step up in such a situation. But only if development continues. If Firefox dies next year and Chrome stagnates five years from now we’ll be screwed.
Firefox was not the only competition back then. Opera was also around with its own engine, and it was very popular in Europe. But, yeah, this is when HTML and associated standards were a lot simpler.
>There is a MASSIVE sunk cost to get a modern browser off the ground compared to a static target.
You can incrementally improve the browser. Blink was not created from scratch.
>But when the company lets it stagnate for years because there’s no reason to invest
There are 2 big differences. The first is that what the web is and how platforms work is better understood. Google continues to invest in Chrome despite their dominance. The second is that chromium is open source. This means that if Google stops investing heavily in Chrome then others can still contribute and improve the browser.
>or decides to use it to push their advertising business to new heights, we are all screwed until a new competitor comes around.
If Google does something bad enough to make users stop using the browser that hurts them. Even taking that to be the case making a Chromium fork without that stuff would be possible given the demand for an alternative. You do not need a whole new browser engine just so you can make a policy change.
>What if no group/company can muster enough effort to dethrone a stagnate Chrome?
They can build off of Chromium instead. There is no need to start from some basic browser and put in a ton of resources to modernize it.
>If Firefox dies next year and Chrome stagnates five years from now we’ll be screwed.
If Chrome stagnates then competitor browsers will surpass them.
I was there, I was an IE user and proponent. It was a great browser. I think it was considered one of the best when it was released in 2001.
IE 7 came out in… 2006. So IE 6 just sat there for 5 years. And it’s not like ever upgraded to 7 immediately. Lots of corporate PCs kept 6 for many years longer.
That’s why it has the reputation it does. By 2006 IE 6 was horribly behind FF by every measure. Tons of security bugs had been found. By 2010 it was a total joke but developers were still having to make the modern web work on it, somehow.
If it had been replaced in 2003 or 2004 and MS never paused development no one would remember IE 6 as a dumpster fire.
But once you get a total stranglehold on the market, you can do stuff like that.
You are right in that it was way ahead of its competitors (mainly Netscape) when it launched. It had more features, much better performance, and it looked great in comparison.
But it also had an insanely huge amount of bugs, half-broken features and “I’ll just do it my way” stuff. This was also true already at launch.
Sure, if Microsoft had replaced it in 2003 or 2004, nobody would have such “fond” memories of it even today. But the bad reputation does not come only from the fact that it was not updated for a long time; it also comes from its many problems and issues.
Quite true. That’s one of the reasons that having to continue to support it for so long was so horrible. If it behaved nicely even if it had been stagnant it would’ve been quite as bad.
I guess I’m sort of assuming that if they kept new releases coming those bugs would’ve been fixed anyway in time. Which is certainly not a safe assumption.
This is the problem. There is a MASSIVE sunk cost to get a modern browser off the ground compared to a static target.
Even if you could do it, Chrome is going to keep moving forward. And they have enough power to change things in incompatible ways that everyone will follow because they have the vast majority of the market.
Microsoft made a new modern browser engine. They gave it up because it was too hard to compete with Chrome.
When Apple is forced to let people replace Safari, I fear we’re going to get into an IE6 situation.
It doesn’t matter how good Chrome is, IE6 was great too. But when the company lets it stagnate for years because there’s no reason to invest, or decides to use it to push their advertising business to new heights, we are all screwed until a new competitor comes around.
Firefox only exists because it was built from the Netscape code base. And ‘a modern browser’ was a WAY easier target 20 years ago. What if no group/company can muster enough effort to dethrone a stagnate Chrome?
The web is in trouble. Even tagging along in 3rd place, Firefox is a good browser that could step up in such a situation. But only if development continues. If Firefox dies next year and Chrome stagnates five years from now we’ll be screwed.