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Google, Mozilla, and Opera React To Microsoft's Embrace of Chromium (venturebeat.com)
With the news earlier today that Microsoft is embracing Chromium for Edge browser development on the desktop, VentureBeat decided to see what the other browser companies had to say about the decision. From the report: Google largely sees Microsoft's decision as a good thing, which is not exactly a surprise given that the company created the Chromium open source project. "Chrome has been a champion of the open web since inception and we welcome Microsoft to the community of Chromium contributors. We look forward to working with Microsoft and the web standards community to advance the open web, support user choice, and deliver great browsing experiences."
Mozilla meanwhile sees Microsoft's move as further validation that users should switch to Firefox. "This just increases the importance of Mozilla's role as the only independent choice. We are not going to concede that Google's implementation of the web is the only option consumers should have. That's why we built Firefox in the first place and why we will always fight for a truly open web." Mozilla regularly points out it develops the only independent browser -- meaning it's not tied to a tech company that has priorities which often don't align with the web. Apple (Safari), Google (Chrome), and Microsoft (Edge) all have their own corporate interests.
Opera thinks Microsoft is making a smart move, because it did the same thing six years ago. "We noticed that Microsoft seems very much to be following in Opera's footsteps. Switching to Chromium is part of a strategy Opera successfully adopted in 2012. This strategy has proved fruitful for Opera, allowing us to focus on bringing unique features to our products. As for the impact on the Chromium ecosystem, we are yet to see how it will turn out, but we hope this will be a positive move for the future of the web."
Mozilla meanwhile sees Microsoft's move as further validation that users should switch to Firefox. "This just increases the importance of Mozilla's role as the only independent choice. We are not going to concede that Google's implementation of the web is the only option consumers should have. That's why we built Firefox in the first place and why we will always fight for a truly open web." Mozilla regularly points out it develops the only independent browser -- meaning it's not tied to a tech company that has priorities which often don't align with the web. Apple (Safari), Google (Chrome), and Microsoft (Edge) all have their own corporate interests.
Opera thinks Microsoft is making a smart move, because it did the same thing six years ago. "We noticed that Microsoft seems very much to be following in Opera's footsteps. Switching to Chromium is part of a strategy Opera successfully adopted in 2012. This strategy has proved fruitful for Opera, allowing us to focus on bringing unique features to our products. As for the impact on the Chromium ecosystem, we are yet to see how it will turn out, but we hope this will be a positive move for the future of the web."
This is true, but they can't, because Firefox elected instead to embrace the Chrome add-on model.
They had no choice. Go back and use a pre-change version of Firefox. The performance is terrible. It's single threaded, one thread dying takes down the whole browser, like it's the 1980s again. Can't even be properly sandboxed.
And the add-ons were a security nightmare. Bugs in the add-ons could be exploited by web sites to steal info from the browser or underlying OS.
The add-on API was holding the whole browser back. They could make necessary fixes because it would break add-ons. A clean start was the best of a bunch of bad options, and at least they selected an API that was familiar and allowed porting of many existing add-ons on day one.
Firefox is actually decent again now.
What add-ons are you missing, by the way? Maybe we can suggest some alternatives.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
If Linux becomes the dominant system, that will begin to be a problem
Nope. Unlike windows (or the Google search engine), anyone can fork Linux. If the world standardize on Debian, then Arch will be an alternative for those finding Debian too stale. And if Arch too gets stuffy, some hackers will roll their own and eventually become the expert's choice. If the Linux kernel gets bloated, there is BSD.