What will a Chromium-only Web look like?

Even if Google was an absolute saint without a trillion-dollar ad business, there's still a problem of "bug-compatibility".

Without a second browser engine to test pages in, it's really hard to know what is a bug and what is intentional. Devs don't know all the specs by heart. They write whatever happens to work for them, but sometimes they accidentally depend on obscure edge cases in the implementation that were never meant to exist.

In the long term it's paralysing for the engine maintainers, because any change in implementation could be changing some subtle behavior that breaks some pages. W3C requires two independent implementations, so that they'll share intentional behaviors, but hopefully their bugs will differ.

The single-engine Web will be as fun to maintain as Windows: Windows 11 Explorer has a shiny new context menu with an option to reopen it as an older, uglier context menu, because Microsoft couldn't touch a line of code of the old context menu without breaking apps.

The chromium-only web is not google’s fault. It is a symptom of a body of web standards that has grown wild to the point of being all but unimplementable.

Building a browser for the modern standards-based web is effectively impossible, because it costs too much, takes too long, and requires a standing army to keep up with.

We are at an impasse. The standards cannot be deprecated because they are used all over the web, and because they are used all over the web a new browser maker has little choice except forking chromium or firefox. Even microsoft couldn’t afford to keep adding all the standards to their browser engine. Normally the solution for a messy overgrown implementation is a grand reboot. But we can’t do a grand reboot of the web because we cannot get rid of the legacy. The only viable strategy I see to have real browser engine diversity without giving up on compatibility is moving as much of the standards implementation as possible into JS modules, so new browser makers can start with a small engine that loads the publicly hosted standards modules.

  > Building a browser for the modern standards-based web is effectively impossible, because it costs too much, takes too long, and requires a standing army to keep up with.

  > We are at an impasse. The standards cannot be deprecated because they are used all over the web, and because they are used all over the web a new browser maker has little choice except forking chromium or firefox.

"Hi, you seem to be browsing without being signed into Google with your government verified identity. Please do so to continue seeing the ads, I mean the internet"

We don't have to speculate, we've been through this already during the IE4 to IE6 era.

Microsoft just did whatever they wanted with the web "platform", and so will Google.

In Microsoft's case what they wanted was nothing. They weren't a web business, saw it as a threat to their platform leverage, and so just left it abandoned and stagnant for years.

Google is simultaneously better and worse: they won't leave it stagnant because the web is their platform, but on the other hand they have a lot more to gain by abusing control of it.

If there is only one implementation, then whichever body (private, public, for profit, not for profit, doesn't matter) controls this implementation will control the direction of the entire web. It's the definition of consolidation and monopoly control. There is no reasonable argument to make for a Chromium only web from anyone without vested interests.

We did this on ourselves. As everyone was laughing at Internet Explorer, another behemoth was overtaking IE and nothing was in their way.

Mozilla (Firefox) was our chance for something different. They were ahead of IE once but they watched on and did nothing whilst they had their pockets lined up with Google's money and allowed them (Google) to overtake everyone and now everyone is complaining about it. It even goes back before Chrome was a thing when the Mozilla CEO declared that they could move away from depending on Google's money. [0] Now 14+ years later, they are still unable to do so.

Since then it is only Google (Chrome) and Apple (Safari) again, just like for Android and iOS. All other attempts at stopping them was a complete failure like Firefox OS was and now Mozilla and Firefox are the ones fizzling out of existence as they are unable to make money as the majority of users are running to Chrome, Brave, Edge and Vivaldi.

It is no wonder websites are beginning to not only break on Firefox, but also tell or block users from their web apps to instead use Chrome.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20120105090543/https://www.compu...

I think it's very unlikely that the web will end up Chromium-only.

macOS-specific browser share numbers are hard to come by, but on our own moderately sized website we see about 60% of macOS users choosing Safari. Even if iOS allows other browser engines, presumably a similarly large number of iOS users would also choose Safari, either because it's the default or because they like it. So regardless of what happens with iOS regulation, it seems likely there will always be significant Safari usage on the web.

So then the only way we end up with a Chromium-only web is firstly assuming a worst-case scenario for Firefox essentially falling out of use, but its usage on desktop appears to have stabilised around 7-8%. Secondly Apple would then need to decide to ditch WebKit for Chromium. I can't imagine they'll ever do that. Apple have a strong desire to do things their own way and keep full control over how their browser works. So I think we're a long way from a Chromium-only web.

I think we already know from internal documents revealed during the discovery phase of the various antitrust filings.

>Google had a plan called “Project NERA” to turn the web into a walled garden

https://twitter.com/fasterthanlime/status/145205394150468403...

I think it's bizarre to conflate Apple's refusal to allow other webkits on iOS with the fact that Safari remains a viable alternative engine. They're far from heroes here. I think it's great they maintain a Chrome alternative kit that mostly works but let's not pretend they're saints or kid ourselves about the reasons for it. The only reason they disallow Chromium and Mozilla is they want their users locked into their environment and they want to leverage that substantial locked-in user base to dictate terms. It's only being one of the richest companies in history that gives them a seat at the table. If they're afraid of having to open the platform, that's because they're not keeping up.

It's not that they're one judgment away from that day. They know that. It's just that they want to get as much mileage as they can before they too abandon Safari and first allow, then switch to Chromium. That will happen in the next 5 years.

What might come of it all would be a reset where new branches form and new innovators get to introduce new proposals. Standards aren't a bad thing if they're open. If Safari dies then Google will be next in the line of fire for antitrust action anyway... things will fragment again. I'm personally pissed at the number of great technologies left as litter along the road, not least AS3, just to get to this shitty middle ground / cold browser war between two companies I hope die and one that won't help itself. Let the standards win and let's have a standard platform to innovate on top of.

> “many in the Chromium community are arguing for a Chromium-only Web.”

This is why I'll use firefox until it's gone. Considering the push for mv3, I'd rather have a functioning ad blocker that actually blocks ads instead of having pages 100% work 100% of the time

The Web platform is an abject failure of layering. It's truly the biggest ball of mud that software has yet birthed. If it had only reasonable modularity its implementation would be large integer factors less code and it would not be necessary to wait on three browser engines to ship obscure (declarative!) features for CSS, like dropshadows, which could easily be programmed on top of a better designed, simpler core.

And don't even get me started on "accessibility". The web's barely-acceptable kludges for accessibility could easily be accommodated in a layered, more programmable system.

The web platform is rife with abstraction inversion, employs declarativity where programmability is necessary, and vice versa. It puts magic in pretty much all the wrong spots. And its event-based programming model that puts all JS on the "main" (actually UI) "thread", forcing a painful and awkward asynchronous programming model that we are gaslighting into believing is good for us, is frankly just dumb. But the web has always thought designers and developers are dumb, so it's fair play to just hate it right back.

I'm not a webdev so I mostly don't care as long as it's FOSS, but I will say that firefox loads a lot faster than chromium on my machine. Looking at top it appears that somehow firefox is actually using more memory than chromium is (i only tested a three tabs open in each browser so maybe they don't scale the same under heavier load) but at the same time I can report anecdotally that in addition to being slower, chromium also causes my HDD to make way more noise than firefox ever does.

Web browsers have become huge monolithic applications we all nowadays preach against. So much so that other monoliths get built on top of them. (I am taking the dictionary definition of monolith here: a massive structure).

Many of the solutions given in this thread are similar to ones we give to someone who wants to escape from the monolith mess. Namely, move towards a very slim core, make everything as modular as possible etc etc. And the problems towards such an approach are the same as well i.e., what do we do about the legacy stuff?

The important question here is: what can be done better if we start from scratch? The main issue I see with browsers is that they have become so big that building a new one in a reasonable amount of time is next to impossible. This makes all the open standards pointless because no one can do anything with them except the few already established browsers.

Unfortunately there's no clean way out of this.

Let's break down the browser space:

1. Microsoft: MS was never interested (until it was far too late) in having a standards-compliant, performant browser. It was a spoiler move to keep people Windows dependent.

2. Mozilla: I honestly don't understand what Mozilla is doing other than raising top exec pay while Firefox users go down [1]. As best as I can tell, Mozilla is the Yelp in this situation. Yelp has spent over a decade extolling the evils of Google while doing absolutely nothing to improve their product. It's a great way to collect a fatter and fatter paycheck but you're ultimately doomed.

3. Apple: Safari has almost always been bound by its own ecosystem. It's dominant on iOS because you have no other choice (for now; you can install other browsers but they're still the Safari engine basically). A lot of people use it on MacOS. For a brief time there was a Windows port but it died. This doesn't seem like an area that Apple wants to compete in. I mean at the end of the day Safari and Chrome share a common Webkit lineage.

So I see a lot of failure, lack of prioritization, missed opportunities and finger-pointing in this space so is it any wonder that a massive engineering company has been able to dominate this space?

I don't see us repeating the IE6 era however. The Internet is core to Google's business in a way that it never was to Microsoft.

That being said, I think this is one area where government intervention may well be needed sooner rather than later. Google has (and continues to) use their properties to advance Chrome (IMHO) eg [2].

There can be a fine line between advancing the browser space and simply crippling your competitors.

[1]: https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html

[2]: https://mspoweruser.com/engineer-accuses-google-of-sabotagin...

It will not be Chromium only. It will be chromium and safari and it already is. Apple will most likely never open up unless forced, which usually sucks but is a good thing due to the monopoly of the market.

Firefox is responsible for such a low percentage it's sad (the stats I have for the sites I work on it's usually on the 1-2% range). I think it's mainly because of the horrible leadership at Mozilla. I want to use Firefox and promote it but every time I think they've changed Mozilla does something new that boils my blood. You can donate to Mozilla, but not directly to Firefox and they seem to spend a lot of money on political projects. It's a 'get woke, go broke' situation and I have watched the fall of Mozilla in real time over the past years.

I really wish Mozilla changed focus, I would gladly pay for Firefox+ or something if I knew that the money went to Firefox development and not to some racist white male hate project.

So I'll continue using Brave and hope for the best, the future the author is talking about is basically already here.

A single-browser web, like any monoculture, dramatically increases the potential damage of common mode failure. With everything - even important infrastructure and services - becoming directly or transitively dependent on the the web, we should be diversifying the browser ecosystem to limit the scope of a class break[1].

[1] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2017/01/class_breaks....

OP discusses W3C as preferable, but my understanding was that the W3C is already fairly irrelevant to what browsers actually do, usurped by the browser-vendor-organized WHATWG.

> However, they can’t (quite) go cowboy/cowgirl and do it on their own right now – they’ve all agreed to work together on the definition of what ‘the Web’ is in a Standards Developing Organization (SDO), most often the W3C.

I didn't think that was what was going on at all. Has this changed again since last time I was paying attention, has the W3C regained some influence on browser implementations?

> it’s more fundamentally a question of how do we organize society so that important decisions are made well? And, what will be considered legitimate governance of the Web?

Indeed.

I’m a little surprised why Chinese firms aren’t coming in and competing? Maybe they think web is not important for their future anymore?

Probably we have to start again with something different in the same way as the web replaced all the other protocols (gopher, usenet etc). I’m not what that looks like but it should be cleaner, simpler, open and blockchain-free.

> I recently heard from a well-placed contact that “many in the Chromium community are arguing for a Chromium-only Web.”

Seems quite an article for something that's founded on just an unsourced and unquotable rumor.

FWIW, updated with a response from Jake Archibald (Chromium/Google).

I'm kind of torn on this - first, I can clearly see the dangers as well as anyone else, but considering the reality of the situation, the only browser engine with significant market share is Webkit/Safari.

Most webdevs I know consider Safari to be the new IE - they often lag years behind implementing features that are key for new capabilities like WebAssembly multithreading - and it's not hard to see why - the web is a primary competitor to their App Store business.

On the other hand, I feel like the browser is almost done. With WebAssembly and WebGPU and a bunch of other stuff, I can think of very little in terms of capabilities that need to be added to browsers in the future.

The Web is only one Safari away to turn into ChromeOS, as Firefox hardly matters any more.

Edit: to reply to the lovely article. I wouldn't mind if there was a reference implementation for the web. So that people could experiment with things on it. There's nothing stopping me building Chromium which I did on a Windows machine once as an experiment. I couldn't get Firefox to build as Mercurial kept crashing. I would like to see proper SQL APIs in browsers as that's the industry standard for fetching and retrieving data. The browser is a very powerful piece of technology. I see it as a magazine viewer and application distribution platform. I use Repl.it when I am on a low powered windows laptop and IntelliJ and vim otherwise.

I would also like to see a lightweight native API for DOM queuing ala React.

Layout engines are difficult to write and adapt. Especially adapt as they're so complicated.

I read part of the ORC Solver paper and there is algorithms in that paper for writing a layout engine and there's code on GitHub.

https://github.com/YueJiang-nj/ORCSolver-CHI2020

I would like to adapt this approach but write the code myself but it is obviously a challenging area.

I am yet to write a branch and bound optimisation algorithm. But from my understanding you greedily try a number of rows or columns and try arrange objects preferred width and preferred height into the space available. ORCSolver uses intervals and eliminates attempts that are not viable. ORCSolver uses Z3 for the final step to actually get coordinates when the system has been constrained. I plan to use ORTools.

For simplicity I plan to break up text into letters and try place them all in a flowing horizontal then vertical layout. I can use GetTextExtents of WX widgets to predict size of a rendered letter. It shall be slow but then how else do you begin writing a layout engine? I would need to read TeX or the Art of Computer Programming.

Layout is expensive especially for grid based layouts with flowing. I wonder if website authors could prerender at different resolutions and provide start point sizes and coordinates for speed. Generally everybody reaches the same numbers on everyone's machines and we don't need to try a lot of aborted work to relayout.

I am the author of additive GUIs which is a declarative rendering approach for bootstrap layouts. https://GitHub.com/samsquire/additive-guis It's not really a layout engine but it does layout things according to mutually recursive rules.

A side-effect of a Chromium-only web is that it gives the Chrome team at Google less incentive to invest in the web platform. It used to be a way to differentiate Chrome from other browsers. Now-a-days that is no longer the case.

Competition is a great way to drive innovation. What will motivate innovation on the web platform going forward? Will there be stagnation? Will another company emerge to push the web forward?

What will this mean for companies that have enjoyed all of the innovation on the web platform in recent years? How much longer will it take for bugs to get fixed?

This will not be a sudden shift. It will happen gradually.

This is a large fraction of the reason why I stick to using Safari on my Mac.

I am increasingly of the opinion that Google Chrome is not a web browser. Chrome is a Google browser. What Chrome does browse is the Google Web, not the World Wide Web.

Has Microsoft ever spoken about why they decided to go with Chromium over say Mozilla Quantum?

Microsoft must have realised that picking Chromium would dramatically increase the odds of a Chromium-only web? On the surface I'd have thought it would make more sense for Microsoft to support the Mozilla Quantum project. Perhaps they just wanted to take the easy route though. Chromium is certainly more popular and has Google's backing. I understand why so many projects use it.

The future of the web is not in a browser.

A significant part of the internet already thrives outside of the traditional browser sphere. Apps and mobile are the future. Eventually no one will be using web browsers. Or the internet web browsers serve up will be like cable TV or AOL: a zombified booby trap of nothing but ads, scraped content and links eager to serve you ransomware.

Maybe I've read too many dystopian novels though.

I've already noticed several things not working on Firefox that work on Chrome and Edge, such as the Discord age selection dropdowns -- clicking on them does nothing in Firefox. It's frustrating as I use Firefox exclusively (outside of testing functionality on Chrome and Edge).

It's good that Chrome is finally on track to provide MathML support (which Firefox has had since version 4), and as of version 91 supports counter styles (Firefox supports it since version 33), but I wonder how much of that will happen if/when Chrome is the only actively developed browser on non-Mac platforms, resulting in WebKit/Blink being the only engine developed for the web.

I'm also concerned about what will happen in regard to the web standards, given that the browsers have abandoned the W3C in favour of continually changing documents, and only seem to be interested in the needs of web browsers. That makes it difficult for other uses like in ePubs to steer the direction of HTML and the associated standards.

The correct header should be "a Chrome-only web". I'm already observing a lot of sites not working or breaking in the Firefox, for instance just today I found out that part of Jira functionality is silently broken in it (integrations). But I was using FF since beta and will see it till it's death and birth of Googlenet.

There's a simple remedy: demand, by antitrust law, that a browser can't be produced by the same party as the one producing content. Forbid bundling of browsers and/or offering browsers for free.

Not having alternatives is really bad. Chromium-only web would suck.

Uh, it's in the name. A Chromium only web is a web controlled by Chrome which is a web controlled by google. It's laughable that these dudes maintaining a fork think they're in control and doing open source when they're basically just eating google's table scraps.

The only way to stop this is personal choice: don't use Chrome or Chrome derived software. There's no other actions any human person can take with more impact.

I really think that a new browser is possible. The people that worked on Firefox and Chromium over the years learned a lot. Programming languages and tools have improved massively.

That doesn't mean it will be easy, but I have little doubt that with enough pressure, some people will start their own browser from scratch, and some of them will be successful.

Then it will be time for a true replacement for website layout & transmission to be developed. HTML is fine for what it is, but bolting CSS on top, then JavaScript, etc., etc., is simply a mess. Better can be done, and this could be the impetus for it, to keep the world at least somewhat out of Google's clutches.

If Mozilla and the various other non-megacorp browsers (Vivaldi, Brave, Opera) banded together and built a governance structure for Chromium, similar to the Linux Foundation, they could try to stop this fate. But they aren't, and they won't, due to hubris, pride, and jealousy.

We’ll have “amazing” technologies like ActiveX and JScript except this time from Google!