Having many engines implement the same spec means they can keep each other in check. Monopoly means complacency.

Maybe, but only if that rendering engine isn't heavily controlled by one company. Sure you can fork Chrome, if you don't like where Google is going, but then you're back to having multiple rendering engines.

Currently I'm not sure that Google is the very best steward of "The One and Only" rendering engine. Being a commercial enterprise, Google may also have commercial interest that doesn't not always work in favour of the user. The Chrome rendering engine is NEVER going to have anti-tracking features for instance.

Edit: Let's not forget the security implications. A bug in Chrome/Blink will allow attackers to target 90% of the web, that's dangerous.

Generate a html table (don't use html tables) with 500.000 x 500.000 elements containing short random strings. Put an element on the page that is locked to vertical and horizontal scrolling. Scroll away and watch the difference in FF and Chrome (both browser will have difficulties but one of them is usable).

Why throw that away? I heavily disagree that one rendering engine would be preferable.

I really like to use Chrome but it is opinionated. Bad image quality for scaled images for example. Do not like.

I am no web developer, I think someone could give you more details.

Having a monopoly is hardly a positive thing unless you are the monopolist.

It's better in the short term, for sure.

If you look at the longer term, though, that's not true anymore.

I wrote a few things on the topic here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18664053

That's without even counting that Google get to decide on what can be experimented upon and what can't. You probably don't want a single company to decide this.

It's used by people who oppose further commercialization of the Internet by large advertising entities.

How can you say it's a trend when firefox has a low market share compared to chrome?

Apparently you don't remember the Internet Explorer 6 years.

I don’t remember it being Open Source, it’s not a direct one to one situation.

EDIT: I found the Downvoters, but can I get a comment so we can discuss? :)

Android is open source. Yet Amazon's fork is the only thriving one.

Open source isn't a magic solution to Google's kind of monopoly. It's a herculean task to match Google with its free + convenience + monopoly + open source + strong brand recognition offering.

Chrome is already past IE's level of dominance without our realising it - market share percentages just obscures reality.

Google's next card is obvious from their android play book.

They'll soon rip off vital parts of chromium - make em proprietary or google cloud dependent.

Short of using their services to render web pages, or run JavaScript server side, what could they possibly rip out and make dependent now? There’s always going to be vendor proprietary stuff (like the voice search binary blob), even Firefox has Pocket who h is still entirely closed source iirc.

I'm not sure why you are getting downvoted either. I'd prefer multiple options as well, but you are fundamentally right that this is quite a bit different.

Each Chromium fork is bound to implement its own features to some extent or another. Granted, there is still some monocultrure elements at its core, but this is far from the sheer stagnation that came along with the overreliance on IE6.

What is the "firefox trend"?