Developers just replaced IE as the only thing they develop for with chrome, users then _have_ to use chrome because of web developers who only develop for chrome and consider any behaviour other than "it works in chrome" as a bug in other browsers, just as they did with IE.

Then there's the relentless parade of "alternative browsers" that are just chrome skins - a period IE also went through - that intentionally try to trick people into believing they're not just using chrome but with less security engineering, and more scams.

You’re conflating lots of unrelated things. IE was a horrible browser to support because Microsoft deliberately implemented their own incompatible version of web standards, or refused to implement modern standards. The push to deprecate IE was because it was creating a massive burden, I personally dealt with IE6 support in corporate world and can attest it’s depreciation was necessary.

What you call chrome skins isn’t a thing, people are building softwares on top of Blink, the rendering engine used by Chrome. The issue here is the risk of ending with a single rendering engine for the majority of the browser market, a diversity of engine ensure a good respect of web standards, that has nothing to do with privacy or security.

When you say “they just replaced IE”, that was >10 years ago…

You’re responding to someone complaining about an overly authoritative government by saying that you don’t see the problem, it’s just that the local police force tortures people with downright medieval techniques.

What

While I obviously disagree with your prior comment, I feel "What" is a pretty much perfect comment here. +1.

What.

It seems like my analogy was too difficult to follow.

The point is that the fundamental problem is a company in a monopoly position throwing their weight around and/or keeping their product stagnant “because they can”, which is also a function of power. This is the “authoritarian government”.

The police part is referring to people thinking of specific IE6 technical issues “as the problem”, when it’s just a symptom of a larger problem.

Microsoft treated web developers badly because they could. Google will abuse the whole world in the same way now that Chromium has achieved near total dominance.

It became trendy recently to break compatibility with Firefox. Blogs almost bragging about how they boldly made the choice. Very embarrassing stuff

Do you have examples? I would like to see how they talked about it.

It’s on hn here or there, or in random blog posts shared in here. Just keep your eyes open for a bit and you’ll see something pop up