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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."
so doing what they always have done. use someone else stuff. its litterly how dos/windows came to be.
The concern now is that Google has all the power. It's not that they are particularly malicious (as Microsoft proveably was), but rather when one company controls everything, they can get apathetic and make bad design decisions. Ideally, there would be three or four major browsers, all competing.
That is why I lament the loss of Edge, not because I liked it (or Microsoft) at all.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Fix Firefox so that it does useful things again and tons of people would be glad to switch back.
Not sure I'm entirely comfortable with pretty much everyone except Mozilla jumping on to the Chromium bandwagon.
Lack of choice has never been a good thing, and if everything is running with Chromium at it's heart, there's no choices anymore.
How much data is Google slurping from every Chromium based browser install is another problematic issue.
I'm not a big fan of Edge, but it was an alternative choice from Firefox, Chrome or others. I think choice and diversity in web browsers is ultimately a good thing, since it keeps everything fairly open and sane, since everyone has to cooperate on the standards. If Chromium's engine dominated the web, they can start making tweaks and changes, not telling Mozilla about it, effectively shutting out existing and future competitors. Hmmm. It's play right out of Microsoft's playbook, and you'd be a fool to think Google won't do it.
None of this can ultimately be good for users.
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.
Mozilla, for people to choose you, they have to pick you because you're a good alternative, not just because you're an alternative. The fact that Fred Mbogo is an alternative to my local hospital doesn't mean I'm going to go to him if I break my arm. If I wanted to run Chrome I'd run the actual Chrome, not the crappy second-rate copy of it that you've turned Firefox into.
It's literally how Microsoft came to be, with MS Basic based upon listings grabbed from the litter bin.
I know there's a lot of people going "Waheyyy!", because microsoft are axing Edge, but this isn't a positive thing in the grand scheme of things.
Back in the IE6 days, nearly every browser was IE6, with nearly 95% market share at it's height. Despite this incredible monopoly over browser share that microsoft had, we still had plenty of competing rendering engines. We had Firefox (Gecko), Safari (Webkit), Opera (Presto), as well as multiple smaller browsers with their own rendering engines, such as KHTML, NetPositive, etc .
Now we're in an era where there's a near monopoly on rendering engines. With Chrome being based on a fork of webkit (blink), Opera using a fork of blink, and Microsoft now also using Blink, we're in an era where there's really only 3 rendering engines now, and 2 of those (Webkit and blink) are nearly brothers. The only true non-related renderer is Firefox's Gecko.
So surely this is a good thing? If everyone uses the same renderer, the web will look much more consistent right? Yes, that's true. But consistency and standards compliance are not the same thing. In the age of IE6, the web was very consistent, as every website was written for the quirks in Trident, but now we're going to see an era where websites are designed for Chrome, because every browser uses the Blink/webkit rendering engine.
This change isn't a positive one, oh no. Quite the opposite
If you gave me a choice between a printer and a giraffe with explosive diarrhoea, i'll get my ladder and my raincoat
IE6 was closed source, controlled by one company and was allowed to stagnate for 5 years. How is that in any way similar to the current situation?
What it tells me today is that Microsoft has actually lost a lot of knowledge and that they are basically re-skinning their stuff when they realize that they don't know how to fix it.
Also look at the quite "interesting" problems that appears each time Windows 10 gets an update. It makes me even less inclined to "upgrade" from Windows 7.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Contractually, Google has no real influence over what Mozilla does with their product beyond being granted the default search engine spot in certain countries. Mozilla has other options available to them as well for funding, and they have saved up enough to be able to survive until they do.
The problem is that every time Mozilla tries to diversify their revenue, people hate the idea more than them just using Google. Adding less invasive ads on their home page for a brief experiment? How vile! Buying and adding a read-it-later service? How vile! A PR stunt with Mr.Robot? How vile! Nothing Mozilla ever does is acceptable to the peanut gallery, who think that just selling T-shirts and working with their preferred niche companies (who have no substantial money) could somehow pay the bills.
Thankfully Mozilla can at least do things like FireTV with Amazon, and their recently-announced collaboration with Qualcomm, otherwise they would simply be stuck on Big Search's teat because nobody will even let them investigate other options without acting like Mozilla is becoming too evil to support.