It is a bit like calling a supermarket a cartel if it relies on local residents for 80% of its profits. No, the technical term is they are paying customers (although in Google's case it is complex and non-traditional because they are carrying the financial burden on behalf of the people who click on ads and there are a bunch of free riders). The odds are against a bunch of alternative customers hiding in the wings waiting to pop up; if they go away then they are just gone.
This comparison does not make sense?
That is like identifying the prime customers of a supermarket - people who live nearby.
Having customers who are particularly keen or invested for whatever reason does not make an enterprise a cartel.
Breaking up this 'cartel' is literally going to mean that the best 4 web browsers won't get quite as much development effort directed towards them. The plan seems to be to choke them of so much development that even dodgy hobbyist projects can complete. That is a low-quality bar.
Just ask yourself this: Google is one of the largest and most profitable companies on Earth. They are a for-profit, capitalistic company. Legally, their main duty is to maximize shareholder profit. Why would they give away somehting for free, if in the end, it does not benefit them more than not giving it away for free?
Competition is always better for consumers, unless you believe in a "benevolent dictator" situation (which, as reality shows, also never ends well).
People expect web browsers to be provided for free, which heavily complicates funding.
There is nothing stopping someone from making a new browser. The base of Chrome is open source, you don't even have to do the hard part. And distribution worldwide is relatively easy, if you can give people a reason to use your browser.
Not the fact that Google is the one doing the paying?
Some remember the time, when browsers existed before chrome as well .. and I am not a ware of a uniquie chrome feature, removing significant barriers.
But by developing the browser, they can
A) decide the direction where the web is heading
B) get direct control over peoples internet experience and their data
You also didn't have very good security from browser exploits until Chrome.
Chrome also made the web significantly faster to use.
Chrome was critical in unblocking the use of Linux on desktop.
[1] https://gitlab.winehq.org/wine/wine/-/commit/2c25c3e9442c69b...
Wasm and webgl/webGPU are really useful for anything performance related.
With the browser.
And most real estate sites also do have a map for example.
Too often.
" Map widgets also shouldn't really be a performance concern"
Have you ever build one?
I hate those stuttering ones build by suckers and enjoy those that just run smooth GPU accelerated.
Also I frequently encounter maps on various sites.
The tracking service for my package. The shop showing me the nearest stores. A map with points of niche interest ..
You can sometimes see a flash if you pan quickly and a new tile is loading in, but the embedded Google Maps on Zillow has a (much more obvious/longer) visible delay for new tiles loading in too. And actually the full, real google maps has tons of stuttering/tearing on my computer when panning, so mine seems to perform better on my computer (though to be fair theirs takes more of the screen. Mine seems to do fine when upping the page zoom level to make it bigger though). The big difference though is my (frontend portion of the) widget can be built during a lunch break, and it's easy enough to see what's going on that a high school student could figure it out with view-source.
Note that for real world use cases, it'd probably also make sense to restrict the range that the user is allowed to zoom and pan around anyway (e.g. Zillow or your delivery tracker don't need to let you scroll a world map to look at a neighborhood/get context). For something like a delivery tracker, you might not be allowed to move the map at all, in which case you're pretty much dealing with a static image where you maybe reposition a marker every minute or so. This does not require wasm or webgpu, and it's a poor use of engineering resources to add that kind of complexity.
The use of USB authentication devices (FIDO2) is also interesting.
Sure, but it was about more people using the internet in general.
The very small minority using linux desktop (hello, I am among them) could and did use the internet before chrome.
And from a technical point of view, I do love chrome dev tools. But that is besides the point.
"development of chrome on desktop Linux have any benefits for mobile Linux?"
Android is the big market, that gets prime support.
Otherwise android and linux desktop just share the kernel (and not even the same one).
So the developement of chrome on android probably makes it a bit easier to target linux desktop, but not much.
(I still don't have WebGPU on my linux desktop but since quite a while on my old android phone)
MS development slowed around IE6 after winning browser war against Netscape.
Apple's mobile ecosystem competes successfully with web, but could have gone further.
Chrome and Android have helped keep the web more relevant.
So it monopolizes the distribution platforms for search engines.
The easier analogy here is an oil monopolist paying off all the tanker and rail and pipeline companies so nobody else can get oil to customers, and then splitting the massive profits with the shippers.
By the way this example actually happened and is the origin of the term “antitrust” which is the area of law that Google was found guilty of violating by multiple judges. So the analogy is right on the nose.
And who made the specs so stupidly complex in the first place?
Back in early 2000s you could visit pretty much every site using a KHTML-based browser and that was written by a handful of KDE devs.
I certainly peacock every time the new latest greatest [thing] is added to the spec, and am certainly not shy about using those features. There is a handful of misses, but it feels a little dishonest to point the finger squarely at Google when HN in particular lights up like a Christmas tree with every new feature.
Want me to link to our discussion(s) about the new browser DateTime library - Temporal? Or what about Streams, Pattern Matching, Subgrid, Container Queries, color-mix, et al. We ask for this stuff, and we're thrilled when it arrives. Seems hypocritical to then turn around and complain that they're making the browsers "too complicated."
Blink and v8 are open source. You don't even need to implement the spec yourself. New browsers can piggy back off open source (which is what Chrome, Firefox, Edge, etc also did) to help making a browser easier.
Also I seriously doubt there is any conspiracy here!
(opinions are my own)
Google pushes over 400 new web APIs per year, often with no true specs and with no input or consensus from other browser vendors.
So. Who is responsible for complexity?
I always thought they do that to make it more expensive for anyone to compete with them. E.g., want to introduce a new operating systems for phones? No one will use it unless it has a web browser. So you have to hire a thousand expensive developers to create and maintain the browser (or maybe somehow induce Mozilla to port Firefox to it, which would probably also be expensive).
When ads win (they always win) we get FLOC and other bullcrap.
etc.
Cambridge Dictionary: A cartel is a group of similar independent companies or countries that join together to control prices and limit competition. It involves restricting output, controlling prices, and allocating market shares.
Group of similar but independent companies (check) that join together to control prices (no, but they do join together to control the web in other ways), and limit competition (yes, by constantly adding features to HTML whilst market dumping they prevent competitors from arising). It involves restricting output (not in the literal sense, does apply if you consider the synchronized way they implement standards), controlling prices (yes, forcing them to zero instead of the natural market rate), and allocating market shares (yes, if you consider iOS browser restrictions).
If other browser outbids Google, the members of your "cartel" will shift to them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartel
I don't agree that the current situation in the browser market fits the definition of a Cartel, as I understand it! :-)
In an actual cartel or oligopoly, you'd expect at least the cartel members be relatively equal in power. But if the article is right, the Google has basically all the power to decide the course of web tech going forward, as the other browsers devs can't meaningfully deviate from whatever vision Google has for the web, without risking their funding.
Manifest v3 for example, and various standards that make fingerprinting easier.
It’s textbook.
Given that browsers are essential to access information, I think they shouldn't be developed behind a business model, but rather as part of a global digital infrastructure fund.
There should be some independence guarantees in order to make that organization not have to bow to pressure from governments to sacrifice privacy due to funding threats.
> With the Sovereign Tech Fund, we invest globally in the open software components that underpin Germany's and Europe's competitiveness and ability to innovate.
Not globally funded, but does invest globally.
But yes, a browser engine is potentially an embeddable library, so an open source one might qualify :)
That’s not an accident. So yes, there’s precedence
Canonical is UK-based.
I can think of Suse but even that changed hands several times through a bunch of US companies.
Red Hat/Fedora, PopOS, Chrome OS etc. all are not european
It's Google that's in control of Chrome and sponsors it's competitors, not the government.
You seem to have a very contradictory opinion
Maybe there is no master plan, sure. But this is not something you or I will ever know.
We are told that there are secret courts, that produce secret orders.
Trust in government is misplaced, when it is in the design that you will not be told all the information. Alternatively stated, these are lies of omission - you don't know what you don't know. This is part of the design of the system - it's not a quirk or accident.
If the governance system were a person - ie someone you know is a liar but you have no means of ascertaining the truth of what they say - I suspect you would not deal with them. However, when it comes to the governance system, everyone thinks this is normal and acceptable. Everyone is an apologist. Because the other option is unbearable to consider, it seems - that the governance system is not there to help. Even though 'government' the name tells you everything : 'govern minds'.
Its a successful system of control and people love it.
I am really unsure what your argument even is, gymbeaux - and how it relates to verisimi's previous point. You're not trying to argue that it was Google's masterplan all along to get the anti-trust ruling, right?
States invest in cultural production, e.g. by film grants, software grants would be a great way to attract talent and solve problems.
All that said, I do think a more open-ended "US public endowment for software development" is a great idea.
How do you ensure it’s not just laundering money with little or no work into the problem.
I think it’s messed up Google essentially funds all browsers but putting it in the hands of politicians isn’t going to help, would be better to try and have more companies funding it so at least the dependency on Google is less.
Sounds like a backdoor way to add a kill switch or censor filter to browsers from a central, unelected authority that does not respect the sovereignty and speech and media laws of the individual users' home countries.
No thanks, I'll take an open source, corporate controlled browser 10/10 times.
Because corporate entities and government entities operate under radically different frameworks.
The domain of government is force. This isn't a bad thing, it is necessary. Government is the recognition that we, as human beings, can interact with each other in two fundamental ways: force or reason/diplomacy. That when reason/diplomacy is chosen life flourishes. People create, produce, trade, freely associate and basically build civilization. When force is chosen you get war, destruction, poverty, misery.
Government's primary role in society, in my opinion, is to remove the element of force from civil existence so that all interpersonal relations are consensual (there are edge cases - the parent/child relationship or the extremely ill etc. but I need to scope cap somewhere).
The concept of rights derives directly from this concept. They are the recognition that rational people can cooexist peacefully if certain aspects of the human experience are recognized and protected. Those aspects being that in order to survive as a human being your tools are reason and action; you need to be able to think freely and you need to be able to act in accordance with your rational judgements. The infringement of a person's rights is fundamentally interference in either the ability to think (freedom of expression / conscience) or the ability to act (freedom to own and acquire property, freedom to travel, freedom of association etc.)
This means that government's entire domain is force. It is the entity that gets to determine the rules around when the application of force is allowed. It is the entity that gets to step in when you and I can't agree on what the definition of "assault" is and one of us calls the cops.
Businesses ought to exist entirely outside of the domain of force. Business is what happens when you remove force from society and people are able to think, create, develop, produce and trade freely without gangs and thieves and thugs interfering.
Where things get blurry is when you marry government and business. But always remember that business operates under the rules that government creates. The more incentive there is for business to care about political policy, the more lobbyists and corporate interest groups you will create but that's the framework you're creating. Government forces it through laws. Business is just playing by the rules that you voted for.
Look to how the Linux kernel is developed, and look to its full history, including forks large and small, alternate releases for alternate reasons, alternate releases by different people and teams, and so on. It's not a hypothetical, it's the organization of one of the largest software projects in the world.
And it's a good thing we don't need a global fund, because trying to start at such a high level is basically asking for this to take the next 15 years to even get started. By contrast, anyone can start a new fork of Chromium or Firefox today... which, again, is not just me theorizing, but is a thing that has happened, several times over. Making it so "getting started" is something that can happen in a distributed fashion without having to get some "global" organization to sign off or be created is superior, which is sort of softballing it a bit because it's honestly the difference between possible and impossible.
If someday that develops into a "global organization" or some set of such, hey, that's fine. But trying to get "someone else" to start it at that level... and it has to be "someone else" since none of us could even hardly start doing that ourselves... is impractical to the level of impossible.
If there is no global infra fund, there will be some type of ad-hoc board composed of some independent entities, but a lot of entities backed by large businesses. If not US then other countries as in many countries there are large tech companies aligned with government interests.
They're also completely blind deaf and dumb to modern society having never had to suffer.
We have entertained their callousness and allowed them to drown out the conversation for far too long.
But I digress...
We should normalize requiring them to prove their argumentum ad lapidem, otherwise they'll end up depriving us from the very air we breathe.
Many believe the market is the best vector to deliver public good. It's not a mystery why this perspective exists, and it's not obviously wrong, and it's ridiculous to think that government is the universal cure-all for suffering when they're the source of so much.
Wikipedia says:
> A cartel is a group of independent market participants who collude with each other as well as agreeing not to compete with each other[1] in order to improve their profits and dominate the market. A cartel is an organization formed by producers to limit competition and increase prices by creating artificial shortages through low production quotas, stockpiling, and marketing quotas. Jurisdictions frequently consider cartelization to be anti-competitive behavior, leading them to outlaw cartel practices.
What you are alleging sounds bad, but it doesn't sound like a particularly good match for the term 'cartel'.
I used to work for Google for a few years for what it's worth.
If they do it, there would be no reason, other than administrative, for Google to hold this money back to only a handful of vendors.
I think that weakens the cartel argument.
By propping up competitors, Google could always point and say "Look, there's the competition and they're thriving. How can we be a monopoly?"
Google has made sure that _nobody_ can implement a browser with hostile takeovers the "standards" committees and pushing the standards solely in the direction of corporate interests, bypassing consumer interests. The whole point was to make them so complicated it would be impossible for someone without an insane budget to implement one.
Proof of this is the whole advertising sandbox crap... what the hell does an HMTL Client "need" an advert sandbox for?
Breakups are painful. Ultimately they're better for everyone.
Instead this will put all browsers on a much more even playing field, and perhaps it will force governments and citizens to realise that free software takes someone to write it.
Or May be even a new standard that compiles into HTML / CSS / JS. A standard that fits most uses cases and is simpler to implement.
I earned my first money for "web developement" in '99, and as much I understand underlying dynamics, I - as a user but mostly as a developer - really enjoy the current phase and I really liked that brief period when IE was the browser.
All for nothing, in the end even they had to give up and switch to white-label Chromium.
How is that a loss? All Microsoft wants is a controlled space to push their own products/services. Google gave them a tool to do just that for free. Microsoft would absolutely be writing its own (probably worse) browser if Google wasn't so generous to give them on without Microsoft having to incur any development cost.
Never heard of a cartel that gives its product (and the ingredients to make it) away for free to anyone including their direct competitors.
This is absolutely true if you simply want a web browser to be a document reader.
Thankfully (in my opinion) the modern browser is realizing the dream to "reduce Windows to a buggy set of device drivers".
You all were impressed upon by the cartel you claim to hate to prop them up.
It’s electromagnetic geometry in the machine. Future hardware makers do not have an honorific obligation to validate developer illusions. They’re working on closed ecosystems that self manage their electromagnetic geometry through to the task at hand without the energy wasting ad hoc effort of human programmers.
Your real problem is nVidia and other chip companies who have no obligation to save jobs of American workers who are just going in circles repeating old memes like a fuzzy VHS.
If you say browser developers need money from the search giant to compete in browser development, you are saying that - right now - you can't compete in browser development without it.
That is a cartel.
We only have four major browsers because only four players can play on a fair playing field. There are people who have been paid millions to create and perpetuate this system. Web developers worrying about feature development without it is their KPI. None of this is a coincidence, none of this is a natural law.