this post was submitted on 01 May 2024
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Unpopular Opinion

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The categorical hate towards Chromium and non Google Chromium Browsers is absolute nonsense. (self.unpopularopinion)
submitted 7 months ago by aluminium to c/unpopularopinion
13 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Before you downvote check the community and maybe read my argument.

In recent times on Lemmy or really in any tech affine corner its become the norm to trash Chrome and ALL other Chromium based browsers. However I’d argue thats complete nonsense and maybe even counter productive. Really Safari and GOOGLE Chrome should be enemy #1. Not smaller Chromium browsers. The fact that two 100% big tech controlled browsers have such a dominating position is the real cause for concern. And lets not pretend that Firefox’s further development is also heavily predicated upon Google writing them a check.

Because really the issue right now is that the if both Google and Apple come together to start enshittifying their browsers by for example adding invasive DRM that allows websites to deny you service if you run adblockers, rooted or jailbroken devices (like Google tried) with their combined market share of > 90% they could just push through. Since many websites would loose very little in terms of potential users if they outright denied service to any browser (Chromium or not) without that DRM in place.

However if Google Chrome and Safari had lets say less than 40% market share another 50% was controlled by a dozen or so smaller based Chromium browsers, these browsers could simply first off not merge in these anti features into their codebase and maybe even deny merging any new Chromium changes in protest until Google or Apple give up on it. Because what use is there for Chrome to add new features if only a third of the browsers support it? No website can really use them

Also I’m still in full support of Chromium’s idea of giving webapps more capabilities. In my opinion giving webapps the ways to access System stuff like Bluetooth, USB Devices, … through a robust permission system and making them a even more viable type of Application is a great cause. The Applications are still sandboxed, they are multiplatform by nature and the web is a very democratic and user-friendly way to distribute them (way more so than the big tech owned Appstores). Or let me put it this way : If i have to run a closed source Application, I at least feel better doing so if its in a sandboxed environment like a browser and without supporting the iron grip the Appstore or Playstore have on their respective platforms.

My approval for Chromium however does not extend to electron and other “Website packaged as a ‘native’ App” frameworks. Fuck that crap. Especially since 90% could just be a regular Webapp or PWA but yet decide to ship and entire browser along with 1MB of JavaScript code that uses maybe 1% of the Browsers features.

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

Google controls the Chromium project. They decide what gets merged in or not. The other browsers are basically soft-forks. They can rip stuff out after the fact, but they can’t stop Google from merging stuff into Chromium in the first place.

I’d argue Chrome’s marketshare may not have been as high as it is right now if every browser out there didn’t cave in and become Chrome-in-disguise.

Don’t get me wrong, I still use Chromium browsers for a bunch of stuff, but its hegemony on the web and the fact Google doesn’t have to wait for anyone’s approval before merging their shit is basically turning Chrome into the new IE.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 7 months ago

+1

Personally, I abandoned chromium last year when Google forced the web drm nonsense into the code base. It was a grand example of the problem. Sure, they backed out the change a few months later. But the damage was done and I already migrated to Firefox. It’s been great.

For anyone not familiar, here’s a random article on the topic: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/googles-web-integrity-api-sounds-like-drm-for-the-web/

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

good and well written post, OP. i agree with you and this is definitely an unpopular opinion.

the only reason to hate on non-google chromium in general is when it narrows the pool of browsers in the market, and therefore gives chromium devs more opportunity to make web-breaking changes, and lazy web devs an opportunity to make less compatible sites, thereby giving google something of a brute strength monopoly.

for example, when edge switched to chromium, that was a genuine loss to the user. you know those pop-ups you get that say “this site works better on Chrome?” yeah, it’s not a coincidence that has been happening since the Edge transition and loss of EdgeHTML/Trident.

my only two disagreements: when you say safari is enemy #1. again, engine diversity is important to the quality of web pages, keeping control of the web out of the hands of one company, and WebKit is safari’s unique engine. it’s good that safari continues to exist. if safari just disappeared, or switched to chromium, we would be absolutely fucked because we’d all be left with one monolothic version of the web led by google and microsoft.

other disagreement is yours and others’ distaste for mozilla taking funding from google et al. they need cash to keep existing, and they have been nothing if not transparent about the changes they make to their browser in exchange. if they did shady things for pay it’d be a different story but that’s just not the case.

[–] aluminium 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Thanks I appreciate the long comment :D.

Maybe it didn't come across right but Mozilla taking Google funds is no problem for me, but people just need to be honest about the situation and aware that Firefox isn't 100% independent and could have serious trouble staying alive if Google ever decided to stop funding them. If Google really wanted to go all out and really kneecap Firefox into the ground, antitrust aside they would have a lot of leverage to do so.

About the whole engine diversity argument - I removed my argument in the original post because really the whole post was already long enough. For me this falls into the same category as people wanting a third mainstream Smartphone OS besides Android and iOS. You already need a monumental amount of investment to even get a browser that even works with the top 100 most visited sites. On top of that you also need at least significant better performance (almost impossible) or some big new feature for the mainstream to even be interested adding further to the cost. And finally you also need to convince product managers and developers to make sure that the experience on browser #4 is also on par with the other 3 - in a age where some sites can't even manage to even function properly on all 3 I think honestly this is a lost cause and instead we should make sure the entrenched goliaths are kept in check.

And in the end I don't even know how desirable a potential 4th browser engine with its own quirks and workarounds really would be. I think 2 or 3 is usually the magic number for these large fundamental technologies. We have 3 major browser engines, 2 major mobile operating Systems, 3 major Desktop Platforms, 2 Graphics APIs, 2 major consumer CPU architectures, ... . And in cases where there are more developer support usually is strechted very thin and neither Platform feels compelling. Case and point - Smartwatches, Smarthomes stuff and Smart TVs.

And finally about Safari and why I despise it. Safari and WebKit have an iron grip on the web experience on iOS and iPad OS and thus a huge chunk of users. And they have many times shown that they blatantly put Apple's profits higher in priority than providing a feature complete browser. They kneecap many PWA related features - most prominently the Notifications API on iOS. Not to mention that testing if your site even works on Safari requires you to use Safari which requires an Apple device as there aren't really any other Webkit browsers, other than tiny projects around.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

valid points against safari. still do think it would be worse to lose it but yeah it would be better if apple opened it to other platforms. perhaps call it enemy #3 :P

my thought on the “fourth engine” is that 4 actually is the optimal number. before chrome we had monopoly issues caused by microsoft, and after the death of edgehtml we have an exacerbation of monopoly problems from chrome. the decade or so between with 4 major engines in the market we were all slightly better off.

[–] aluminium 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I think the big difference why IE was so problematic is that was absolutely proprietary so there was no way of even soft forking it and that it and that many features were deeply tied to windows having the secondary effect that it kept people locked into windows.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

chrome is not fully open source either, nor is (most distros of) android or chromeos. google are using the “open source” banner as a facade to get away with the same nonsense ms was doing in the 2000s. we are slightly more protected as consumers since the engines involved can be forked, but that does not excuse the immense power of the monopoly, only softens it.

[–] Stovetop 1 points 7 months ago

Chrome isn't open source, but Chromium is, which is what OP is getting at. The Google bloat is what is wrong with it, not the FOSS framework.

If anyone doesn't like the direction Google is taking the Chromium project, they're free to fork it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

Chromiums alright, most people tend to dislike google chrome like myself.

[–] Stovetop 0 points 7 months ago

As FOSS-friendly as Lemmy is, there is definitely a lot of hostility towards Chromium and Android, which are also still FOSS. Even de-Googled.