Being open source is a red herring in this instance.
Say that Chrome implements a web feature you don't like. You fork the browser and remove that feature. But websites expect Chrome, and they use that feature, so your fork doesn't work with those websites.
Say that Chrome refuses to add a feature you want. You fork the browser and add the feature. But websites expect Chrome, so they don't use your feature so as to not break for their Chrome users, and your fork is no better off.
The insidious part of a web monoculture is allowing Google to dictate the standards of the web platform. Being able to fork the codebase only gives one the power to change things that are strictly client-side.
Your examples have nothing to do with whether you use Chrominum engine, though.
Say that Chrome implements a web feature you don't like. MS use their own MSengine for their Edge browser that doesn't have that feature. But websites expect Chrome, and they use that feature, so MS Edge doesn't work with those websites.
Say that Chrome refuses to add a feature you want. MS use their own MSengine for their Edge browser that has that feature. But websites expect Chrome, so they don't use MS Edge feature so as to not break for their Chrome users, and MS Edge browser is no better off.
Not sure what this is attempting to refute. Your comment is about why monocultures are bad for competition, which I happen to agree with. My comment is about why Chromium being open-source doesn't alleviate any concerns about monoculture.
How is the situation better if there are two browsers with 50% market share? You still can’t add a new feature the other side doesn’t want, because 50% of users won’t be able to use it.
Any feature that requires a site owner to do something to support it isn’t going to be added.
You've just illustrated the advantage of a polyculture: changes to the platform are not unilateral decisions, and therefore require discussion, communication, and documentation. Furthermore, if one actor tries to do something out of blatant self-interest that would be a detriment to the platform as a whole, that action can be blocked. With a Google monoculture, at the end of the day, the web will be whatever the CEO of Google allows it to be. Imagine how little control users have over the Android platform; envision a future where that's the web's model as well.
The difference being now that we're in no danger of IE6-ification. If Google annoys enough people, people can take Webkit and do whatever they want. It happened to Microsoft, arguably to Mozilla, it can happen to Google.
So long as the players are well behaved, having a single dominant browser is beneficial. How much time, energy, productivity, and money has been lost on cross-browser (in)compatibility wrangling?
> The difference being now that we're in no danger of IE6-ification. If Google annoys enough people, people can take Webkit and do whatever they want.
The entire point of this subthread is that it doesn't matter that you can take Webkit and do whatever you want, because the web is a client/server (browser/site) protocol, and having the ability to fork the client is irrelevant when this makes you incompatible with every server. Technical capital isn't sufficient; it takes social capital to pull off a hard fork.
> So long as the players are well behaved, having a single dominant browser is beneficial.
I've been on HN long enough to remember this tired argument from back before the Blink fork. The gain in efficiency from having a unilateral dictator is not worth the loss of mutual counterbalancing oversight. It is completely without foundation to give Google the benefit of the doubt that they will be well-behaved when there are no consequences for misbehavior. Google is not your friend, nor is Google's mission to make the web better. Google is a corporation whose purpose is to maximize profit by selling advertisements. You might as well hand stewardship of the web over to Comcast.
> If Google annoys enough people, people can take Webkit and do whatever they want.
Not sure if that should have been Blink, or if you're making a subtle point about how Blink was forked from WebKit (which was in turn forked from KHTML).
Personally, while I can see why some may react to this news with concern about a monoculture, I find it hard to feel sorry about the end of the last significant closed source browser engine.
If Microsoft gives up IE and Edge then all the major browsers will have an open source foundation. With Gecko, WebKit, and Blink there remains a healthy range of options, too.
And as the history of KHTML/WebKit/Blink demonstrates, derivatives will appear if there's enough interest. Perhaps someday Microsoft will follow the examples Apple and Google have set by creating their own fork, if the circumstances warrant it.
It also demonstrates that forks are irrelevant and no one cares about them unless they come from major players with enough money and political power to push them.
WebKit was forked from KHTML. Chromium used WebKit, until Blink was forked. All of that was only possible because the browser engines are open source.
As with anything, you always need somebody (or a group of somebodies) to help something new gain traction. There's no magic pixie dust that will let you develop a major new platform without commensurate resources. What open source does do is lower the cost of entry and make it easier to build up to a level where you can make an impact.
> You still can’t add a new feature the other side doesn’t want
That's not quite true. This happens all the time with things not standardised (yet). With time those either get wide adoption because people want them, or get dropped, or get standardised in a different widely agreed form.
Your argument is easily proven false by looking at the various CSS properties prefixed by vendors like -moz-* and -webkit-* that eventually made it into the standard.
Microsoft using Chrome only somewhat reduces Microsoft's power in this regard. In no way does that change your ability to project your will on the internet through Chrome forks. Small devs have little power now and that will stay unchanged if Edge goes Chrome.
Web devs will have to build for the lowest common denominator so this change improves that slightly.
An actual downsides is it increases the power of the Chromium team to make defacto changes.
It might also reduces innovation but I can't really see Microsoft deciding to drop a feature because it would take them further from the chrome trunk.
Being open source is a red herring in this instance.
Say that Chrome implements a web feature you don't like. You fork the browser and remove that feature. But websites expect Chrome, and they use that feature, so your fork doesn't work with those websites.
Say that Chrome refuses to add a feature you want. You fork the browser and add the feature. But websites expect Chrome, so they don't use your feature so as to not break for their Chrome users, and your fork is no better off.
The insidious part of a web monoculture is allowing Google to dictate the standards of the web platform. Being able to fork the codebase only gives one the power to change things that are strictly client-side.