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 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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