Bring popcorn, this is a developing story… 🍿(Happening rn on Threads)
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@hyperreal @asm @lea @marialeal It's as close to a monopoly as makes no difference. Firefox is a rounding error these days, even Edge has more users. The only thing in the market share stats that's hiding the true extent of the Chromium problem is Safari, which is a different problem all of its own.
Yes, Chromium is de jure open source but it's de facto a Google product, and that's a threat to the open web. They contribute the lion's share of dev time and funding and they dictate the direction of the project. Take the Manifest spec for example: the changes from v2 to v3 were specifically to neuter ad blockers. Effective ad blocking is a threat to Google's bottom line, so Google said frog and Chromium hopped, and all Chromium-based browsers are now more privacy hostile by design.
Firefox's soft forks are vulnerable to every piece of dipshittery that comes out of Mozilla. They have to spend time and resources unfucking things that Mozilla have fucked. Speaking of Mozilla, they also get a huge chunk of funding from Google, because that enables Google to point at them and say "look, Firefox is still around, we're not a monopoly".
The browser landscape is utterly fucked.
@woe2you All good points.
"The browser landscape is utterly fucked." Yup. Not to be defeatist, but I don't really know what else we can do about it.
I have some faith/optimism that because these browsers are open source, and because there are enough people who care about it, there is some hope for the open web.
On a related note, I seem to recall reading about a brand new browser that is in development and isn't based on Chromium or Firefox. I don't recall the name or where I read about it. But I hope that is has enough resources and momentum to gain traction in the browser landscape.
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Bring popcorn, this is a developing story…
(Happening rn on Threads)
@marialeal Chromium IS a monopoly. Just add the implicit "de facto" to the sentence and you will agree.
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@makesubarugayagain @marialeal Wait, is that Matt Damon? I've seen this at least a hundred times...
@guyjantic @makesubarugayagain @marialeal ben affleck
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@zakius @marialeal I am not against expensive, petty messaging
But I just have to be pragmatic, I think. Browsers are one of the software tools I use constantly. I'm not a dev, a programmer, or even much of a script kiddie, so my ability to manage my privacy, my statements about instititional behavior, etc. is a little more limited: I can switch platforms, but I can't code my own or fork my own projects, etc. It's also true that my skill level here means adopting some of the more aggressive pro-FOSS or pro-privacy alternatives would require a lot more investment of time and frustration for me than for some other people.
I find myself trying to find a shifting balance: support my values to the extent it is feasible while still doing other important things in my life like my job.
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