Hacker News Reader

Comment by EdwinLarkin | Hacker News Reader

It blows my mind that no company is currently able to challenge Chrome. Not even Microsoft or Apple is interested to challenge the status quo.

View on HN

I think they are able. Apple still arguably does. But there's no obvious incentive for them. Developing your own browser engine is a big ongoing investment, constantly adding new features and promptly plugging security vulnerabilities. We've long expected browsers to be free, so it doesn't generate any direct income. If they want to collect data with it, they can wrap Blink in their own app.

Mozilla keeps it up because of the principle that there should be more than one decent rendering engine. For-profit companies can't take that stance.

Apple can't really compete with Chrome. They have walled off one little walled garden (iOS) that Chrome isn't allowed to enter, but everywhere that Chrome is allowed, it is crushing Safari.

> It blows my mind that no company is currently able to challenge Chrome.

I think that as developers we could be doing more to help with that. Using Firefox, testing with Firefox, avoiding Blink-only APIs, etc...

I think it's only a matter of time before Microsoft does a hard fork of Chromium.

Can you elaborate on what makes you think that? (I'd love it to happen, btw)

Same reason Google forked webkit to make blink. Over time the involved parties' priorities diverge and when that gap is wide enough, it makes sense to fork.

Also note it's not just Edge we're talking about. Microsoft is one of the main Electron stewards, and products like VSCode are built on that platform.

As I said, I'd like that to happen, but I don't see MS being bothered by diverging priorities enough to fork after _throwing away_ a whole engine to avoid duplicating work. At least not in the medium term.

I don't have any insider knowledge. It makes sense to me that a trillion-dollar platform company will at some point want to control their browser destiny, and not rely on their competitor's roadmap.

I replied in a sibling, but anyways: I mean, I can also see that _on paper_, but by the same reasoning, MS would have never thrown away their engine.

You may very well be right. I have no special knowledge of internal workings at MS. Having said that, I can guarantee that there are factions within MS that were against getting rid of Edge and factions that are all about MS building their own browser. It's very possible these factions may win out at some point in the future. They certainly have the talent and resources to work on Chromium/Edge independently.

People said that about MS and Linux too but when you're the guy with low marketshare, aggressively Postel Principle-ing is the way to more.

The benefits to common engine are too high.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com