Opinion: Chrome is Turning Into the New Internet Explorer 6 (theverge.com)

Tom Warren, writing for The Verge: Chrome now has the type of dominance that Internet Explorer once did, and we're starting to see Google's own apps diverge from supporting web standards much in the same way Microsoft did a decade and a half ago. Whether you blame Google or the often slow moving World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the results have been particularly evident throughout 2017. Google has been at the center of a lot of "works best with Chrome" messages we're starting to see appear on the web. Google Meet, Allo, YouTube TV, Google Earth, and YouTube Studio Beta all block Windows 10's default browser, Microsoft Edge, from accessing them and they all point users to download Chrome instead. Some also block Firefox with messages to download Chrome. Hangouts, Inbox, and AdWords 3 were all in the same boat when they first debuted.

It's led to one developer at Microsoft to describe Google's behavior as a strategic pattern. "When the largest web company in the world blocks out competitors, it smells less like an accident and more like strategy," said a Microsoft developer in a now-deleted tweet. Google also controls the most popular site in the world, and it regularly uses it to push Chrome. If you visit Google.com in a non-Chrome browser you're prompted up to three times if you'd like to download Chrome. Google has also even extended that prompt to take over the entire page at times to really push Chrome in certain regions. Microsoft has been using similar tactics to convince Windows 10 users to stick with Edge. The troubling part for anyone who's invested in an open web is that Google is starting to ignore a principle it championed by making its own services Chrome-only -- even if it's only initially.

Comments

Monopolies gonna monopolize.

[Kenja]

Chrome is Googles gateway drug, of course they're going to try and get you to use it, and then start getting you to use all other things Google.

Re:Monopolies gonna monopolize.

[Z00L00K]

I don't see a problem when it comes to beta sites, but for full production the site has to be W3C compliant, just use the HTML and CSS validators to ensure that the site follows all standards. But when it comes to JavaScript then it's a headache of its own, primarily on Microsoft browsers where those browsers have a tendency to do things differently.

But a site that depends on JavaScript is in general a pretty crappy site.

Re:Monopolies gonna monopolize.

[amicusNYCL]

But when it comes to JavaScript then it's a headache of its own, primarily on Microsoft browsers where those browsers have a tendency to do things differently.

But a site that depends on JavaScript is in general a pretty crappy site.

That's pretty old-fashioned thinking. Today Edge is fast and holds to standards pretty well, while all of the most used and useful sites use a lot of Javascript. I wouldn't call any map site a "pretty crappy site" just because you have to have Javascript turned on to pan and zoom the map. That's the core functionality of the thing, trying to do some crappy workaround with arrows on each edge of the map where you click an arrow and the entire page refreshes with the map moved that direction is a stupid way to avoid Javascript.

Re:Monopolies gonna monopolize.

[laie_techie]

trying to do some crappy workaround with arrows on each edge of the map where you click an arrow and the entire page refreshes with the map moved that direction is a stupid way to avoid Javascript.

Some anti-JavaScript hardliners here and on SoylentNews have stated that they actually prefer what you call "a stupid way to avoid Javascript." Or they would prefer to download, audit, compile, and install a native map viewer application distributed in source code form.

I've been creating web sites since the 1990s. I still believe that a site should "work" with JavaScript disabled. I like the idea of using AJAX type technologies to just refresh a small portion of the page (eg. scroll or zoom the map), but if JavaScript is disabled clicking on the buttons should cause the whole page to load with the desired adjustment applied.

It doesn't help

[rsilvergun]

that Firefox 57 just broke a mountain of plugins (mine included) and makes fixing said plugins difficult if not impossible (still wrestling with that).

Re:Microsoft

[MightyMartian]

Not to mention the fact that Microsoft continually finds new ways to harass or trick me into using Edge. Microsoft is in no position to complain.

Aww.

[msauve]

""When the largest web company in the world blocks out competitors, it smells less like an accident and more like strategy," said a Microsoft developer"

As they say - What goes around, comes around.

FUD

[sjbe]

It's also been horribly unstable for me since the 57 update. Not a crash for years before. Practically a daily occurrence when 57 first came out.

Works fine for me. Hasn't crashed once yet on me (and hasn't in years before that) and it's considerably faster than previous versions. I've run it on Windows, Macs and Linux on somewhere north of 20 machines. Color me dubious.

So far, Firefox 57 is somewhere around Windows 10 on the scale of new versions I don't want anywhere near my machines, but given security risks, staying on an older version is not practical in the long term.

Vague and unsupported assertions of instability from an Anonymous Coward. Very believable.

It might happen, but it's a big stretch right now.

[Anonymous Coward]

I was a web developer in the IE6 days. We're nowhere near where we were then. A few Google specific sites blocking Edge is hardly the horribleness that was IE6. With IE6, many, many, many companies thought of it as a software platform to develop software on. You also essentially HAD to have workarounds for IE6 because it didn't support standards.

I'm not in love with Google, and they can most certainly do wrong. But we aren't anywhere near what IE6 was, and I don't see the same thing happening with Chrome.

Also, Google's business model isn't the same as MS's. MS sees the web as a threat to its business model. The web IS Google's business model. They don't really have a huge interest in you using Chrome, they just want the web to grow in popularity. If other browsers adopt the same web standards, that's good for Google, not bad.

Now, that's not to say Chrome's popularity isn't an issue. We need more diversity and less centralization. But for a variety of reasons I find it hard for the same IE6 situation to repeat itself. The world in 2018 isn't the same at it was in 2002.

When Debian's Chromium is "no longer supported"

[DaveM753]

IMHO, it's particularly alarming when the Debian Stable version of Chromium is showing as "no longer supported" by Google Docs. I ran into this warning several times, and it's one of several reasons I had to break my addiction to Google Docs. I can understand Google's desire to add functionality to their Google Docs platform, but to break Docs' functionality in fairly recent versions of their own open-source browser baffles me. There are reasons I don't want to use Chrome, and prefer to use Chromium. When Google slaps limitations on my ability to use W3C standardized browsers and force me to use their non-standard browser, I get the feeling they're only going to do worse in the future - al la Microsoft.

And so, last year I decided to ditch Google Docs and go back to LibreOffice. The most painful aspect of this is the loss of world-wide, easy access to my documents. Leaving the cloud is a hassle, but it's better than vendor lock-in.

Not exactly Internet Explorer.

[DrYak]

There's a difference.

Internet Explorer back then, locked you into a shit ton of closed source proprietary secret poorly documented stuff (embed OLE objects/ActiveX extensions night mare).
There was no sane way to make a web app specifically made for IE to run on anything else except the specific version of IE that it was made for.

Google Chrome mostly relies on open standard. Take another browser that complies with the same open standard, and you can more or less access the same web apps.
Chrome's source code is even accessible. When in doubt you can check how they've implemented some non-compliant stuff.
In practice, very few web apps run in Chrome but completely fail in Firefox, despite both using entirely different engines.

Yes, a lot of web apps fail in Microsoft Edge /Internet Explorer or in Safari, but has more to do with those being bullshit browser which aren't up to date with standard (microsoft's stuff even more so) than Chrome being a proprietary target.

And then, there's the whole anti-trust / profit angle.

Back during the internet explorer scandals, Microsoft was profitting from selling software. By making sure that as many websites and webapps only work exclusively with IE, Microsoft made sure that people desperately need to buy Windows from them in order to get the bundled in Internet Explorer.

Nowadays, Google doesn't profit at all from Chrome. Their hugest profit driver is matching *results* (though not the search results themselves in Google.com, mind you. But matching ads to serve best to end users. And matching content to keep youtube users hooked while they play ads. etc.)
They don't give a shit if you use their browser. They want to use *a* browser, *any* browser, might as well be Firefox if not Chrome (which they *also* finance - Google is pouring money and financing what some could wrongly consider their "main competition").
As long as you end up using this browser to go online, where they can thrown ads at you and sell your eyeballs to the highest bidding advertiser, and where they can monetize the shit out of all the online behaviour data they can gather about you.

Chrome isn't a product on which Google is making money (directly).
Chrome is just one of the possible tools that make their actual business (profiting of users going online) possible.

You can hardly suing them for antitrust violations, Chrome is free (i.e.: "gratis" as in beer) as well as major part free software (i.e.: "libre" as in freedom to look into it and build your own browser).

Re:Not exactly Internet Explorer.

[lgw]

There's already too much Chrome-specific stuff and the point is: it's growing. Sure, Chrome started as fully standards-based, but then so did IE in the (very) early days when it was the best browser around. Then the years went on, and the IE-specific stuff grew until we had the world of IE6.

Chrome is starting to look like it's on that trajectory. Sure, it's still mostly standards-based, but its trajectory is away from that, and in fact looks very much like the trajectory from IE3 to IE6.

Re:Not exactly Internet Explorer.

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Google is trying to tie you to a platform. Not to a hardware or OS platform, but to their web platform, ie. Google services through a Google browser. While they do not tie you to a specific platform, their apps and services work best on Android phones, connecting to Google devices such as Chromecast and their various other devices.

They're not forcing you, they are making you take the easy way, "voluntarily" do everything in the Google ecosystem, to increase their data gathering.

Finding web apps that aren't even trying

[CruisinAdam]

We recently had a product forced on us by our state government that they had written by and outside contractor. Everything works fine in Firefox with a user agent switcher, but otherwise you are blocked with the message "Google Chrome is the only supported browser..." I get the feeling it's people who can't be bothered to test their code in anything other than Chrome.

Re:How so ?

[mysidia]

How could you start an antitrust suit on the grounds of Google Chrome ?

They are modifying their websites to discourage or prevent the use of competing browser software.

Google Chrome is given away for free

The price of the product isn't actually relevant. Internet Explorer was given away "for free" too, but you paid for the OS.
In the case of Google Chrome: when you use the browser it feeds Google information about you, so in a sense Google
receives OTHER compensation than direct payment, but there's still a payment for the product in the form of lost privacy and
Ad Dollars gained from more-effective targeting; ALSO Chrome feeds into OTHER Google services by incorporating them directly.

Google doesn't make a single penny directly out of Chrome.
 

False. As explained Chrome has integrated Google products such as Search defaulting to Google's service, which Google is paid ad dollars for.
Chrome is able to track your browsing and what you type into the Title bar and share valuable info with Google that makes it DIFFICULT for other Ad agencies to compete with Google.

Google doesn't give a shit about which browser, as long as you use *A* browser, and go online,

Clearly that is false, otherwise Google would not be so often prompting users to use Chrome or making websites say they Work better in Chrome, or blocking access to Edge users and sometimes FF users, As explained in the original article.

Google Earth blocks Fx 57 on GNU/Linux

[tepples]

Some also block Firefox with messages to download Chrome.

Not if you're on Linux. They seem to only bully MS users. They know GNU/Linux users know better.

My experience differs from yours on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, Firefox 57.0.3 (64-bit), visiting https://www.google.com/earth/

Google Chrome is required to run the new Google Earth. Please try this link in Chrome. Learn more.

Not the same situation at all

[GuB-42]

Yeah, there are similarities but it is actually completely different, both in philosophy and magnitude.

First, besides a few bleeding edge web apps (pun not intended), the vast majority of websites work on any recent browser. The situation is much better in that regard than it was before. In fact most headaches come more from compatibility between different versions within the same family rather than between the latest version of different families.

And unlike Microsoft in the IE6 days, Google actually wants other browsers to be compatible. Google doesn't make money off Chrome, they make money when you use their online services, they are perfectly happy to have Firefox users too, they even pay good money to Mozilla for it.
Microsoft was in the opposite situation: they make money by selling you the browser (as a component of Windows), they broke compatibility deliberately so that you needed to pay for Windows/IE in order to access a significant part of the web.

The reason Google makes Chrome is to push standards. When they want to add a feature that is advantageous to them (ex: lowers their bandwidth requirements) they don't have to beg standards governing bodies and other browsers developers. They just implement it in Chrome and encourage others to do the same.

Re:Nope.

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Google profits from Chrome domination by intensive tracking data gathering, which they convert to ad revenue. So no, they're not profiting directly from Chrome, but they are profiting indirectly, through ad revenue and Chrome-only products (Chrome is the only browser compatible with Chromecast, for instance).