All four major web browsers are about to lose 80% of their funding

Re:All four major web browsers are about to lose 80% of thei... by mickelsen on Thursday May 01, 2025 @01:32AM (#43854010)

I'm not so sure about that, I bet we'd probably still have Flash, Java Applets, Silverlight and ActiveX controls. The web was a mess before. The recent capture by big platforms is more about taking you out of the web, into their superapps.

edit: On a second thought, as a dev now, I look at React, Angular, all these mega frameworks... and wonder if we're just patching over problems big tech baked into the modern web. First point still stands tho.

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Re:All four major web browsers are about to lose 80% of thei... by robin_reala on Thursday May 01, 2025 @01:54AM (#43854128)

Oh, that’s definitely revisionism. The iPhone killed Flash, and ActiveX (outside of South Korea / Silverlight) and applets were already dead at that point.

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Re:All four major web browsers are about to lose 80% of thei... by michaelt on Thursday May 01, 2025 @03:12AM (#43854566)

The iPhone was undoubtedly the deciding factor, I agree - but interestingly Netflix used to rely on Silverlight for DRM [1] until Google introduced video DRM to Chrome in ~2013 [2]. iPhone netflix users had to use an app.

[1] https://www.engadget.com/2008-10-26-netflix-finally-brings-w... [2] https://netflixtechblog.com/html5-video-at-netflix-721d1f143...

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Re:All four major web browsers are about to lose 80% of thei... by mickelsen on Thursday May 01, 2025 @02:14AM (#43854231)

Yeah, true. I forgot that, even Steve's letter on why they wouldn't put flash on the iPhone.

That was the final blow, yup. But the web was still a clunky mess of plugins, broken standards, and browser-specific hacks.

Google pushed to make the web better. And through Chrome they helped bring WebKit to multiplatform: I still remember I couldn't even get rounded edges or nice typography support across platforms, only in Safari.

It wasn’t until Chrome took off that the rest started paying attention.

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Re:All four major web browsers are about to lose 80% of thei... by asadotzler on Thursday May 01, 2025 @07:35AM (#43856320)

Why was ActiveX dead? Why didn't it succeed when MS launched it at a time IE had 90%+ user share?

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Re:All four major web browsers are about to lose 80% of thei... by pixl97 on Thursday May 01, 2025 @08:38AM (#43856899)

Because it required Windows in a time that iPhones were storming the market.

Also the ActiveX security model was pretty horrific.

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Re:All four major web browsers are about to lose 80% of thei... by taftster on Thursday May 01, 2025 @01:41AM (#43854056)

I mean, I don't disagree with you. I think we needed Google and needed their investment to push forward past Applets, ActiveX, and Flash.

But now, we're stagnating again. So maybe drying up those funds will be part of the cure.

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Re:All four major web browsers are about to lose 80% of thei... by mikelward on Thursday May 01, 2025 @01:54AM (#43854133)

I think Apple also forced the world to move on from Flash. The iPhone didn't have Flash.

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Re:All four major web browsers are about to lose 80% of thei... by taftster on Thursday May 01, 2025 @02:06AM (#43854187)

All the other plugins were dying on their own (for whatever reason). But Flash was a stubborn virus, to be sure.

Yes, it definitely took the big slap from Apple to kill Flash once and for all.

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