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Re:Ladybird passes the Apple 90% threshold on web-platform-t... by ericmcer on Monday October 06, 2025 @02:30PM (#45494589)
It is nuts, when you think about how much a browser does, it is a crazy feat.

Just building a good html/css renderer and a JS engine is crazy, but now you are hooked into the ecosystem and at the mercy of whatever comes next. Chrome can push back against proposals but little browsers either use chromium or are basically in a riptide trying to make sure they keep up.

Re:Ladybird passes the Apple 90% threshold on web-platform-t... by echelon on Monday October 06, 2025 @03:30PM (#45495298)
The government(s) need to force Google to obey web standards that are set by an industry consortium. One that also has small player participation as a requirement.

If Google is strong arming or pushing ahead their own agenda, the standards body should have plenty enough votes to veto.

And for teeth, compliance should be a requirement for Google to even be allowed to have its own browser. If they break it, no more browser for Google.

Re:Ladybird passes the Apple 90% threshold on web-platform-t... by supportengineer on Monday October 06, 2025 @03:46PM (#45495460)
The government and most voters don't even know what a file is. They can't even vote in favor of their own basic needs like health care. Do you really think this band of incompetents should be empowered to strangle innovation?
Re:Ladybird passes the Apple 90% threshold on web-platform-t... by echelon on Monday October 06, 2025 @04:48PM (#45496150)
There are plenty of experts in our industry willing to help the government pen regulations. I'd gladly volunteer.

Google isn't your friend.

If you're a consumer, they're limiting choice.

If you're a startup or midcap, they're in your way.

I expect startups to out-innovate once the giants get a regulatory buzz cut.

Re:Ladybird passes the Apple 90% threshold on web-platform-t... by throw10920 on Monday October 06, 2025 @09:29PM (#45498440)
> There are plenty of experts in our industry willing to help the government pen regulations. I'd gladly volunteer.

And there's no way, in general, to differentiate you (who I'm assuming to be a good-intentioned actual-expert) from someone who is either (a) not an expert or (b) not good-intentioned (i.e. a lobbyist) - so this offer is effectively useless, and the more general point of "there are experts that can help" is invalid.

I've been thinking about this problem a lot, because it is one that needs to be solved. But it's more complicated than just saying that "experts from the community can offer to help draft regulations" because the problem of how lawmakers can trust those offering help is very difficult.

...and that's assuming that the lawmakers are operating in good faith and accurately representing their constitutents' interests, which there is scientific research[1] that indicates is not true.

[1] https://www.scholars.northwestern.edu/en/publications/testin...

Re:Ladybird passes the Apple 90% threshold on web-platform-t... by fkyoureadthedoc on Tuesday October 07, 2025 @02:59PM (#45507288)
We have to let Google do whatever they want, lest we strangle innovation. The people we trust to literally run the country, to build, operate, and maintain nuclear weapons and submarines - they can't be trusted with things like files.
Re:Ladybird passes the Apple 90% threshold on web-platform-t... by bakkoting on Monday October 06, 2025 @05:06PM (#45496332)
Google mostly does obey web standards that are set by an industry consortium (WHATWG, W3C, or in the case of JavaScript EMCA).

Chrome has the best compliance with standards of any of the big three (see wpt.fyi) - which is not surprising, because they also have the most engineering time dedicated to their browser, and the most people working on standards.

These bodies require buy in from multiple vendors, but generally not unanimity. That said, browsers can and do ship things which haven't been standardized (e.g. WebUSB, which is still only a draft because only Chrome wants to ship it). In a lot of cases this pretty much has to happen pre-standardization, because it is difficult to come up with a good standard from the ivory tower with no contact with actual use. Chrome is unusually good about working in public to develop specifications for such features even when other browsers aren't currently interested in shipping them.

I don't know what problem you think this proposal would solve.

Re:Ladybird passes the Apple 90% threshold on web-platform-t... by troupo on Tuesday October 07, 2025 @01:30AM (#45499661)
> Chrome is unusually good about working in public to develop specifications for such features even when other browsers aren't currently interested in shipping them.

That is, if there's a promotion, or a company bet, or a need to establish/secure market dominance for one property or another, Chrome dumps a scribble on a napkin, barely engages in any conversation, and ships to production within a few weeks after dumping said scribbles.

Once it's out there, it couldn't care less what other browsers vendors will say. Dominant market share and an army of developers who never bothered to learn about standards processes will make sure that this is now a standard.

Re:Ladybird passes the Apple 90% threshold on web-platform-t... by troupo on Monday October 06, 2025 @05:04PM (#45496313)
> Chrome can push back against proposals

The problem isn't Chrome pushing back proposals. The problem is Chrome pushing ahead with its own proposals regardless of anyone: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45371575

Re:Ladybird passes the Apple 90% threshold on web-platform-t... by jppittma on Monday October 06, 2025 @05:53PM (#45496738)
OTOH, are all of the browsers supposed to move in lock step? Is chrome supposed to wait for everyone else's approval before launching any kind of feature?
Re:Ladybird passes the Apple 90% threshold on web-platform-t... by edoceo on Monday October 06, 2025 @06:01PM (#45496811)
Right. There are a number of features Chrome has that others don't that make it viable for a kiosk. Right now it's the only one.
Re:Ladybird passes the Apple 90% threshold on web-platform-t... by troupo on Monday October 06, 2025 @06:01PM (#45496806)
That is literally how a standard supposed to work: arrive at consensus and have two independent implementations before it can be claimed to be a standard. Or at the very least arrive at an API shape and hammer out obvious problems before shipping.

Otherwise you get Internet Explorer, in reverse: https://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2021/08/breaking_th...

Chrome literally doesn't even bother pretending that many of their proposals are more than some scribbles in spec-adjacent format. E.g. a spec for WebHID that other browsers could implement was just dumped into the repo after Chrome shipped it.

Constructable Stylesheets had both a badly named API and a trivially triggered race condition. Shipped in Chrome in the middle of discussion because Google-developed lit "needed" it.

And so on and so forth.

Re:Ladybird passes the Apple 90% threshold on web-platform-t... by jppittma on Monday October 06, 2025 @07:30PM (#45497500)
But is every feature in a browser supposed to be standardized? Like, it's against the rules somehow to develop features without asking permission from Apple and Mozilla?
Re:Ladybird passes the Apple 90% threshold on web-platform-t... by asadotzler on Monday October 06, 2025 @08:42PM (#45498068)
It's not against the rules, but it is hostile to the web. Forking the web because a company is big enough to do so may sound just dandy to you, but to the rest of us who have spent decades working on interoperability it's a big middle finger.
Re:Ladybird passes the Apple 90% threshold on web-platform-t... by nerdix on Monday October 06, 2025 @09:18PM (#45498353)
Allowing Apple to have a veto on which features are allowed to be added to a browser is even more hostile to the web.
Re:Ladybird passes the Apple 90% threshold on web-platform-t... by JimDabell on Monday October 06, 2025 @09:39PM (#45498509)
Apple doesn’t have a veto. If two independent implementations are required for something to become a web standard, all Google have to do is convince anybody outside of Google to implement their specs, such as Mozilla – who Google pay billions of dollars to.

The problem with all of these new specifications is that Google can’t convince anybody to do this, no matter how much money they throw at them. That’s not an Apple veto stopping these things from becoming standards, that’s Google pushing shitty specs.

Re:Ladybird passes the Apple 90% threshold on web-platform-t... by cestith on Tuesday October 07, 2025 @10:50AM (#45503787)
Your conclusion would be true were your premise true.
Re:Ladybird passes the Apple 90% threshold on web-platform-t... by nerdix on Monday October 06, 2025 @09:12PM (#45498307)
And one of the browsers is maintained by an OS vendor that benefits from the lock-in that comes from native apps and rent seeking from their app store. I'm sure they would love to control the pace of browser innovation by just deciding not to implement certain features.
Re:Ladybird passes the Apple 90% threshold on web-platform-t... by culi on Monday October 06, 2025 @09:56PM (#45498613)
I wouldn't say stuff like Manifest V2 is "new features". A lot of what Chrome is pushing is just to support its commercial interests.

We've kinda come full circle. Web standards were made to prevent what happened when Internet Explorer ruled the world but now a corporation has near-monopoly browser share and is driving the web standards themselves

Re:Ladybird passes the Apple 90% threshold on web-platform-t... by refulgentis on Tuesday October 07, 2025 @01:35AM (#45499690)
Manifest v2 was having the same privacy guarantees as Safari and it broke a lot of people’s brains. Even if we assume it’s a secret way to neuter ad blockers even though they are fine, it does not imply we have IE or anything close. I’m kinda happy people take positions like these because they keep companies honesty but it’s completely irrational.
Re:Ladybird passes the Apple 90% threshold on web-platform-t... by rs186 on Monday October 06, 2025 @10:11PM (#45498707)
I think the word "standard" carries a certain meaning.
Re:Ladybird passes the Apple 90% threshold on web-platform-t... by ksec on Tuesday October 07, 2025 @08:13AM (#45502168)
>It is nuts, when you think about how much a browser does, it is a crazy feat

At this point a modern browser is basically an operating system.