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Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

The problem is this:

- the browser is undeniably critical as everyone's window through which they view the online world;

- the user gains a huge amount of value by a browser being integrated into the OS, webviews in other applications, etc

- browsers aren't really a self funding product

- having a single for-profit US advertising company control everyone's view of the online world, however slightly (e.g. by obstructing adblockers), is Not Good

Splitting it off solves the latter problem but immediately raises the question of how to pay for it. A very artificial arrangement where Google pay "arms length browserco" to maintain Chrome?

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You raise some very important points.

Specifically, this one:

    > browsers aren't really a self funding product

I feel the same. I also feel the same about a modern C library and C compiler (and C++, if you like). They are essential to build any modern system and applications. Yet, those are also (mostly) no longer self-funding products.

What do you think will happen if Google is forced to divest Chrome?

> What do you think will happen if Google is forced to divest Chrome?

The new Chrome company will struggle for a year or two then Apple will try to buy it but lose out after Oracle submits a higher bid.

Oracle Chrome, Ha! I wouldn't even be surprised if that's exactly how it plays out.

God help us, haha!

I'm sure Meta is doing some math on what they can afford.

>The new Chrome company will struggle for a year or two then Apple will try to buy it but lose out after Oracle submits a higher bid.

We're in the worst timeline, so I could see that happening.

Elon buys it to "preserve free speech everywhere" then turns it into the same swamp twitter is. So you know, could be worse.

Oracle Chrome would remain free at first, but one year down the road all new versions would become free for home use but $50 per seat yearly for commercial use, with a clause that allows Oracle to enter your offices to audit your compliance at any time

If the choice is no internet, forever, or giving Oracle money, I'm gonna live in 1990 from here on out.

Return to Konqueror Browser from KDE - the grandfather webkit browser.

In all seriousness, I kind of wish that someone could build a sustained non profit like apache to take over chromium - if Google or Microsoft or others want to custom roll their own flavor fine, but Google being for-profit has been making decisions against the best for everyone browsing the web (such as the new plugin stuff around adblocks) (conflict of interest)

What did Oracle do?

The Chief Legal Officer is probably the most powerful person at Oracle after Larry the Lawnmower.

Besides gutting my former employer so that Larry can have even more money than he could hope to spend in a human lifetime?

Did you know that Oracle used to have its own web browser PowerBrowser? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_PowerBrowser

This sounds surprisingly likely.

Netscape used to cost the equivalent of $100 inflation-adjusted dollars and was only forced to go free to compete with Internet Explorer. Now the genie can't be put back in the bottle, and anyone trying to sell you a browser would become irrelevant the same way Delphi's paid compiler lost out to free C compilers.

Maybe you could carve out a niche that's willing to pay, the same way C# did before dotnet core. But for a mass product the best-case scenario would be something similar to today's Opera.

However what it would do is open up the market to competition. Right now Google is spending a lot on Chrome development and Chrome advertisement. Opera and Edge both have given up on their own engines because they couldn't keep pace with Chrome development, and Firefox kept its engine but can't compete with Chrome's ad spend. If Chrome had to compete on a more even playing field there would be more room for diversity and competition. That could be a net positive, even if it makes Chrome worse.

There was never a time that you as individual couldn’t use an ftp client back in the day and download a free version of Netscape.

So who would buy “Chrome” when they can get Chromium for free and fork it?

I am confused by this comment too. I don't recall ever being asked to pay for Netscape. (not that I would have, at 12ish)

I remember it was originally paid for (i vaguely remember seeing an ad in a pc mag) but by 1996 I got it for free

I clearly remember it being boxed and on a shelf along side Internet Explorer for like $40 at CompUSA. Nearly an entire isle for browsers.

Yes, that was for people who didn’t know how to connect to Netscape’s official FTP server and download it directly

It was never required to pay for it. As was common with software back then, the free download was a fully featured "evaluation" version denoted by an "N" appended to the version number. That didn't last long though and it just stayed free.

There was a "Gold" version they sold at retail for some time that had a WYSIWYG editor in it, until they made it standard as part of the Communicator suite.

Windows is a paid-for product; either enterprise licenses or via the manufacturer. Yet few people (mainly those who build PCs themselves) realise this.

What if the browser had a similar model? The manufacturer pays a certain 'browser development fee' into escrow, then on first boot, the copmuter shows a browser ballot, which gets set as the default, and the fee goes to the chosen browser developer? There's probably a bunch of problems with this approach, and, at least initially, wouldn't break the monoculture, but it might be a good starting point for how to fund browser development.

> They are essential to build any modern system and applications. Yet, those are also (mostly) no longer self-funding products.

so, an utility.

create a (partially?) state-owned steward with a legislated mandate to develop the browser, self-funded via extra tax on digital goods and services.

Currently, talented engineers flock to google to contribute their skills to making the best web browser. My concern for a publicly owned utility is that the top talent won't want to work there.

Many of them have left Google (and competitors) and work for a consulting firm called Igalia that contributes to all browser engines.

https://www.igalia.com/technology/browsers

> Currently, talented engineers flock to google to contribute their skills to making the best web browser.

I don’t think these engineers have the right incentives, and their interest is not aligned with mine. I don’t really care what they do to Chrome and their efforts benefit me only indirectly. I am also not convinced by the "best browser" thing, even using it every day on my office computer. So, meh. I don’t care too much either way but I won’t lose anything if Google has to spin it off.

Agreed! I was on Arc for a while and really enjoyed it (obviously Chromium-based), but have found that both Orion and Safari are phenomenal choices! I don’t see any reason to switch back, although I will admit that I keep Chrome around in case I need/want to cast content to a Chromecast-enabled device (until I find an inexpensive alternative to that).

This may have been the case 10 years ago; it isn't anymore. The writing's on the wall on Google going downhill pretty fast.

The way governments fuck up basically anything (with very few exceptions) IT related I would say no. Personal example: my name is Marcello and I had troubles applying for a permit online because names can't contain musical instruments (Cello in this case).

Create a consortium or interested private entities but let's not give such an important piece of technology to governments where meritocracy is non-existent (also based on personal experiences).

I generally agree, I don't want this to be government-owned but since it can't be funded privately and is of great public value an utility-like contract would be in order. I don't see it happening with at least initially a stake from the government (maybe I'm wrong, will gladly be!)

My experience is that utilities don't innovate at all. In fact, the do their best to get the government to give them funding for innovation ("you know, because we love people") and then just... don't actually do what the money was for.

> The way governments fuck up basically anything (with very few exceptions) IT related I would say no.

Just wait until you have to justify IT expenditure to a for-profit corporation that isn't solely focused on technology.

Government screws things up because it's (by design) slow. Business screws things up because f*ck your needs, we need to get a check to a retiree who never even worked here.

Free market competition sorts that out right quick.

Either your business is spending the economically optimal amount on IT or you're running at a net deficit disadvantage.

Note that the economically optimal amount may not be what people want or expect, which is why in general we rely on (mostly) free markets and not centralized human planning like the USSR.

Free market competition does not sort it out right quick, particularly in an economy where capital has consolidated as much value as they have through an oligopoly.

The problem with this is that people think that the net deficit disadvantage matters.

It doesn't. Companies are now owned by shareholders that are set up to not have to care about that company within a fairly short period of time. They're not owned by people who have any pride in "winning" that market or an existential threat to their finances if things go poorly. Most publicly-traded shares of companies on stock exchanges are owned by pension and retirement funds, and the person at the head of that fund has exactly one job: make money for the members. If that means gutting the company they hold shares in like a fish, while simultaneously setting up to exit the position, that's what that means. The company's net deficit disadvantage is not the fund's net deficit disadvantage, and that's by design.

Now, that has massive economic consequences for the people who are at the company (and, y'know, actually do the work), and for customers who relied on the product or service, but the fund has made money. Whether its members spend it on anything that will create more economic value over time is another matter. For example, fast-rising homeowners insurance rates in places in the Southeastern US that have been popular with retirees over the last few decades would indicate that they aren't spending it wisely, but, hey.

You really trust the government to fund a browser without content interference?

Quick note that the first browsers were government funded.

And at the time, so few people were on the internet, the government didn’t care about it.

But even then one party in the government wanted to defund PBS for being too liberal

Browsers can be profitable, see Opera: https://investor.opera.com/news-releases/news-release-detail...

But not everything must be for-profit. Free/Libre/Open Source Software is a prime example. Projects like GNU, Linux, GNOME, KDE, WebKitGTK, LibreOffice are sustainable for a long time.

I guess its easy to be a profitable company when you're getting into predatory payday loans! https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/opera-defends-its-android-a...

Every browser also gets a significant amount of money from Google. Mozilla is profitable too. But when Google is forced to stop paying browsers to use their search, it'll put Apple and Microsoft at an even wider advantage since they're the ones that can afford to push their own browsers at a loss...

Not every web browser gets money from Google - Brave, Vivaldi, Pale Moon, Konqueror, Epiphany, Ladybird, Servo, to name a few.

Vivaldi's business model is primarily revenue from deals with search providers. they don't exclusively get money from Google, they get money from all their search partners, including Google.

Brave is into crypto scams and advertising scams, so I guess you're right there. Their revenue is also tiny.

The rest aren't what I'd call "real" browsers, most don't have the same level of functionality and compatibility as Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge... Servo for example is literally just the rendering engine Firefox gave up on.

Do Brave and Vivaldi fund actual browser (engine) development, or are they just using open source Chromium (as they're able to)?

Konqueror and Epiphany are Webkit based, so presumably benefit from Apple's funding of Webkit.

Ladybird and Servo aren't real browsers yet, and have so far been funded by grants which doesn't seem to be long-term stable.

Brave is just Chrome in a trench coat. I am pretty sure all the others are based on something else or are not actually a fully robust browser.

Konqueror, Servo and Ladybird have their own web engine.

Servo isn't a web browser, its just an engine. Ladybird isn't close to usable and Konqueror well, feels like 2005...

Technically Servoshell is a browser bundled with Servo engine.

What's wrong with 2005 where desktop user experience goes? Why is the new sexy only 'let us remove all user choice and customization, throw decades of stable desktop UI features like menu bars, tooltips, keyboard shortcuts and mouse optimized icons, simply stretch a mobile touchscreen onto a widescreen display with gigantic fonts and dumbed down icons and call it a day'?

Because you can only browse pages from 2005 with KHTML (Standards evolves and KHTML hasn't been kept up to date in that respect)

Ignorance is bliss, I'm here to bring enlightenment:

https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations-from-...

https://brave.com/privacy-updates

Opera is not a browser at this point but a chrome skin. Yes, there is some engineering still going on, but they don't run as much engineering as would be needed to build world-class browser software.

Opera is the fifth contributor to Chromium: https://www.igalia.com/assets/i/news/ranking-chromium.svg

Firefox has made Mozilla billions over its lifetime by selling the default search engine rights to Yahoo and Google. Chrome, having a much greater user base, would demand a correspondingly higher fee (probably around $10b a year). Now, the other problem is there is no other search engine to compete with Google at that level, but that might change with independence of Chrome.

Google's payment to be the default search engine was ruled anti-competitive though.

https://fortune.com/2024/08/05/mozilla-firefox-biggest-poten...

Great, but now what? What should fund Mozilla?

Any potential buyer will have to be looking to use Chrome to accomplish the same kinds of synergies that Google is using it for, to get ahead in some adjacent market. Depending on the buyer that could be good for competition, at least in the short term, but it's not clear that it will be better for us as users.

Hypothetically, why would some buyer using Chrome's monopoly to establish a market advantage in an adjacent domain be different than Google using Chrome's monopoly to establish a market advantage in an adjacent domain?

Because the relationship between Google and Chrome goes both ways. Chrome helps Google keep their monopoly on search and ads, and Google helps Chrome keep its monopoly via Android and its other products.

After the separation, Google won’t have an incentive to promote Chrome - so it’ll lose market share eventually, and Chrome won’t have an incentive to require things like Google accounts or use Google search by default - opening space for other companies to compete.

How does splitting off Chrome as a separate company solve anything? They would still rely on Google for funding (like Mozilla) and being close friends they would do whatever Alphabet tells them to do.

A better solution is to implement a bill like DMA in the EU to enforce competition among web browser vendors and fight monopolies.

Frankly, who cares. The important part is that google doesn't own a browser.

Is the justice department then going to stop Google from using the open source Chromium project to create a new browser?

Almost certainly that would be part of a consent decree, which would prohibit Google from creating or controlling a browser for some period of time, and would include court supervision.

So Google could also not ship a browser with Android devices? Chromebooks?

Selling devices with a browser installed or available for installation is completely tangential to creating and/or controlling the development of said browser.

Would Google not be allowed to make any changes to the open source Chromium browser before installing it on its own hardware?

I find it hard to believe that any court could legally stop Google from developing a new browser if they were forced to sell Chrome.

Any court today? Maybe. Similar arrangements have been pretty common, though.

then you don't understand how any of this works

Yes because government regulation of tech has been so successful in the past. Just look at how well the anti trust lawsuit against IBM went - that they later just dropped because it wasn’t relevant anymore - or the Microsoft lawsuit in 2000.

No there was never a browser choice mandate in the US

> Yes because government regulation of tech has been so successful in the past. Just look at how well the anti trust lawsuit against IBM went - that they later just dropped because it wasn’t relevant anymore - or the Microsoft lawsuit in 2000.

You can surely do better than these examples. Nobody would be better for lack of action against IBM, and lack of serious action against microsoft continues to hurt us today. C'mon. Break these useless, unproductive fuckers up.

Yes because of the Microsoft monopoly, other tech companies have failed to thrive.

Their monopolistic behavior in Windows led to their current browser, mobile, cloud, and game console dominance.

I think the Microsoft antitrust lawsuit was neutered on purpose by the Bush administration.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2001/sep/07/microsoft...

Yes.

If they want to do their job? Yes.

I expect there will be some material constraints that emerge in what browser features they're actually allowed to ship as shipping without a browser also seems to be anti-consumer.

Yes, in the sense that me putting a gun to your head and ordering you to stay still isn't the same as me handcuffing you, because you can still physically move.

But now Bing would have a chance of becoming the default search engine of the most used browser in the world.

That's the difference.

Bing is already the default search engine on the default browser of the most used OS in the world.

If they're not competing well, then that's entirely their fault. Microsoft is not at any kind of disadvantage here.

I don’t think Bing is the default search engine for Android’s browser. I could be wrong though. Is it? That would be a surprisingly fair-minded move of Google.

By context I’m pretty sure they mean Windows OS and not android, sometimes you have to take things in context. Depending on context one could easily argue that linux is the most common operating system depending on where you draw the line on operating system

I am pointing out that Windows is not the most common OS, and Android is.

The original comment was saying that Google is able to perform anti-competitively because they control the most popular browser.

The followup (which I responded to) is saying that the existence of Windows as the most popular OS, and Microsoft’s control over the default browser there, mitigates this anti-competitive potential.

The fact that Windows is not the most popular OS (and that, in fact, the most popular OS is controlled by Google) undermines that argument.

Linux is not the most popular OS in any context that includes doing searches with the thing, unless you include Android, but Android just uses Linux for the kernel mostly, and an OS is more than a kernel.

It's the most common desktop OS. No one was confused by what the parent meant since Windows is not a mobile operating system and doesn't compete in that market.

Bing and Google are competing in the market of search engines, not some device specific search engine market.

I think it's fair for them to point out (however snarkily) that Windows is not the most popular OS. In the context of the discussion, I think it matters that there is another OS, Android, that is more popular.

I think their point is that you can't just say "most popular" without more context because not only is it often subjective, but it can also be interpreted in different ways. Most popular by type of device? number of total users worldwide? etc.

Every Linux distro just uses Linux for the kernel, right? What else is there? Init system and user space stuff isn’t Linux in any Linux distro either, because Linux is a kernel. The real thing that might make Android not a normal Linux distro is the heavy modification of the Kernel.

A Linux distro uses the Linux kernel by definition, I guess, so I think you are right about that. We could talk about distros in general, maybe Homebrew and Cygwin, if we didn’t want to define a distro as being a Linux distro. But I’m not sure what the point is.

I’m not clear on what they meant by Linux. But if we use a definition of “Linux OS” that includes Android and is restricted to devices which people typically use to perform searches (aka consumer devices) (since that was the original topic), then Linux is mostly Android and it is a kind of pointless distinction to make.

If we want to use some definition of Linux that precludes Android, and covers all devices that use the Linux kernel, then we have a bunch of servers, streaming boxes, smart lightbulbs, whatever.

If we want to use a definition which is, like, what I think everyone means when they say Linux in the context of market share: GNU/Linux or BusyBox/other/Linux (I was hoping to avoid the GNU/Linux meme, but here we are), then that doesn’t have much market share.

Even with Android, Linux is not the most popular OS, it's MINIX: https://www.networkworld.com/article/964650/minix-the-most-p...

There is much more Android phones, tablets, TVs, Linux routers and other gear sold every year than Intel-based PCs with ME, so the articles' claim may need narrowing to "OS used in PCs" and even that has a chance of being wrong, given how AMD is doing these years.

If you're going that direction, the largest Android install base is in China, which quite notably does not have Google services.

Not Linux, but MINIX is the most common OS: https://medium.com/@RealWorldCyberSecurity/ever-heard-of-min...

>Bing is already the default search engine on the default browser of the most used OS in the world.

It's actually more embedded in Windows than Google is in Android.

If you change your default engine in Android it changes across the OS.

In Windows, there are dialogs that say "search bing for" embedded into places like the right click menu when you have text highlighted that remain even after attempting to express a different search choice. Another example is the search bar in a new tab.

> A better solution is to implement a bill

Not that I disagree with the overall point, but this is something the DOJ does not do. They would just look at the current laws and decide who to prosecute based on their interpretation of events.

Unless you own a Chromebook, if you have Chrome on your computer, you made a choice to download it. How would a browser choice screen help?

Probably it would forbid "Download Chrome" on Google and "Download Edge" on Bing.

It's less about PC and more about Android, where Chrome is preinstalled.

Look at the effects of breaking up the bells into smaller companies....

Which of the bells provided a valuable free product that could only be funded via other product revenue streams?

BSD Unix comes to mind.

> A very artificial arrangement where Google pay "arms length browserco" to maintain [a browser]?

Sounds almost like Firefox.

Google to Mozilla: "I'm gonna pay you 400M a year for antitrust to fuck off"

Seems like it didn't work though.

Maybe it needed to be a cool billion.

It worked until they decided to unfairly compete with Firefox and get all the market share.

Firefox lost too much market share. And while some of that is due to bad leadership at Mozilla, Chrome running big advertising campaigns and Google advertising Chrome on their own properties (hints to download Chrome on Google Search, Drive, etc. when you visit with other browsers) were also a big driver. Google flew too close to the sun.

I wish the result of the case was just “you can’t pester users to switch browsers. Unless the browser they’re using isn’t meeting an open standard that’s necessary to the proper function of the site you’re pestering them on.”

If another entity buys Chrome, they’re only doing so based on the belief of increased future value/revenue from it. Google doesn’t want to sell it because they see more future value in it. If Chrome sucked, there’d be no antitrust case. So this is all a “you’ve done too good a job, now give it all up.”

I don’t use Chrome or Chromium based browsers because Safari works well for all of my use cases. But I want to see alternatives prosper. I don’t think needing Chrome gets anyone there.

I would say almost 100% of it is due to bad leadership at Mozilla. They seem to have zero interest in improving Firefox, and lots of interest in all sorts of random... stuff, like decolonial climate justice using AI in Zambia.

The issue is who controls Chromium. I would create a non profit and staff it with a handful of maintainers. Their primary job would be to ensure safety and squash exploits. Their other job is to curate and approve pull requests from volunteers for enhancements. They should make it open source with the caveat if it is used for commercial purposes, there will be a licensing fee to pay for security enhancements, bug bounties, and the like.

Do you think Google will continue to invest money and resources into the development of Chromium if they were forced to sell Chrome? I don't. The first thing I would do is close source the Chromium project and work on a new closed source browser to compete with Chrome. I also don't see Chrome surviving when all of the Google/Chromium developers have left.

I beg to differ. Google will go where the users are; their ad business depends on it.

So more or less what Mozilla was supposed to be all along?

Yes.

Whoever contributes to it controls Chromium.

If 90% of the contributors were non-Google, then it would effectively be controlled by non-Google, because they could fork it and their fork would still get 90% of development.

See Terraform for a live example.

The only reason Google "controls" Chromium is because Google funds almost, but not quite, 100% of its development.

On a similar note, there's nothing stopping Microsoft from investing equal or greater amounts and forking Chromium (well, arguably they might already have with Edge). Except that they're benefiting from all of Google's investment, for free. Why turn down a massive developer investment from your competitor with no strings attached?

Because all the “owners” who approve commits are all Googlers?

They could sell a lot of the data that Google now gets for free and uses for its ranking algorithms, like Clickstream sells data to SEO tools like AHrefs and SemRush.

Google doesn't use Chrome data for Ads or Search. They're not allowed to based on the TOS, and also they have government regulators watching carefully to make sure they don't make a mistake like that.

The regulators in question are pushing for divestiture of Chrome because they don’t believe that the current structure prevents using Chrome data, so it seems that Google did “make a mistake like that”.

A data leak from earlier this year suggested that they do, although there is no definitive proof.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/31/24167119/google-search-al...

And what legal enforcement of the TOS is there? None. And what are the consequences of Google ignoring their own TOS? None.

We have actual Google documentation leaked that proves you wrong and that they absolutely do use Chrome data for ads. Catch up please.

Sort of sounds like you are one step short of suggesting a browser is critical infrastructure.

I’m consistently fascinated to look at Chrome/Google and think of all the things we lost when we broke IE/Microsoft.

To what extent and I holding a stupid belief, and why? I think I might like to be talked out of this, if reasonable. Want to try?

> browsers aren't really a self funding product

They are, see how both Safari and Firefox, the 2nd and 3rd most popular browsers, have brought in tens of billions of revenue per year. Safari is immensely profitable, Firefox too would be if Mozilla wouldn't be run in an absurdly poor manner.

> the user gains a huge amount of value by a browser being integrated into the OS, webviews in other applications, etc

What is the huge value gain that e.g. Safari being integrated into MacOS is bringing me? Why couldn't webviews be backed by a browser of my choice?

In what way is Safari profitable? How is that even measured? Has any consumer in the last 10 years ever specifically paid for safari? Or do you mean the payments by google to be the default search engine?

If Safari didn't exist, Google wouldn't be paying Apple ~$20-Billion a year to default Safari's search to Google

Why not though? Apple could still install Firefox and set Bing as the default search engine. Or even just Chrome, without selecting google. They don’t get the money for making a browser but configuring their browser in a specific way. That would work with any browser.

Can Apple force Mozilla to make Google the default browser in Firefox?

No? But why does it matter? They can include Firefox in their OS and set the default search engine to anything they want.

The point was that developing Safari isn't what makes apple the money, it's setting Google as the default search engine of the default browser. So if Apple would stop maintaining safari tomorrow and would switch to preinstalling Firefox, they would still get the Google money (for setting Google as the default search engine of their Firefox installation). So Safari isn't profitable for Apple, as was claimed before.

I think you’re lost in the sauce buddy.

That search isn't only in Safari, it's in the rest of the OS too via Spotlight.

Similar for Windows.

Mozilla literally gets paid by Google, and not sure how you can quantify Safari as being profitable on its own when it's the default for all Apple products and realistically, the only browser on iOS.

Apple also literally gets paid by Google for the same thing, but a lot more money.

True but a standalone Safari not backed by Apple probably wouldn't command anywhere close to that.

> Safari is immensely profitable

The exact way Safari itself is immensely profitable is under scruity in this exact DOJ case!

This DOJ case isn't looking to ban payments for default search engines in browsers. It is very unlikely that this entire practice will be outlawed/stopped as a result of this DOJ case.

Yes it is, see page 12 of [1]:

> As set forth in Section IV, the PFJ prohibits Google from offering Apple anything of value for any form of default, placement, or preinstallation distribution (including choice screens) related to general search or a search access point.

[1] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.223...

Please provide proof that Firefox has "brought in tens of billions of revenue per year".

hundreds of millions per year, perhaps approaching ten billion lifetime, is more accurate

I meant the combination of both, it was indeed unclear.

> browsers aren't really a self funding product

Yeah... Because massive companies use them anti-competitively as a moat against other companies, and as a loss leader to enable massive data collection and vendor lock in.

"browsers aren't really a self funding product" is a symptom of dysfunction, not the inevitable conclusion of a fair market.

I'm not sure that software entirely obeys normal market theory. So much of it is zero-cost free.

The synergistic effects are so strong that most users would prefer there to be The System, in which everything works together and there's no risk of incompatible choices. They don't necessarily care which system.

The market in things like, say, file explorers is tiny. There's a few shell replacements (free), Midnight Commander and clones, and maybe over in the corner someone making a few thousand dollars a year from an Explorer replacement.

Well, things with open source alternatives tend to fare badly when sold.

Like Jira vs Mantis?

There are probably plenty of such examples.

Firefox has made a mountain of money off of their tiny market share. Chrome as a company would instantly rake in billions.

From making Google the default search engine…

And probably even more if they made Google the only option, assuming it was otherwise perfect for most users.

Browsers should be developed by an intercountry nonprofit. Funded by all the countries' governments.

It works out so well for the UN!

You might have missed recent news about Linux maintainers being kicked off for reasons having nothing to do with Linux. This will not work across "political borders" because psychologically we're all still cavemen in need of a tribe to stick to, and a group of "them" to hate on.

That is your assumption.

> psychologically we're all still cavemen in need of a tribe to stick to, and a group of "them" to hate on.

I'm not sure this is fundamentally true, but regardless of whether it is or not, our political systems have followed an historical path of development such that it behooves political leaders to think like this, and encourage their followers to.

We can't even get the world's governments to agree on what basic human rights are.

You can have country-specific nonprofits that cooperate; you can have consumer-rights nonprofits or free-speech nonprofits cooperating...

The best thing about open source is that cooperating on it is very easy.

That is your assumption.

>browsers aren't really a self funding product

You can use Firefox 3, programs don't rot.

Not really true...

In this specific case I'd be willing to bet that Firefox 3 probably doesn't handle current HTTPS/TLS standards and might not be able to browser the modern Internet at all (let alone display modern webpages, HTML5 video players, single-page web apps, WebRTC live calls, etc.)

Firefox 3.5 was actually the first browser to support HTML5 video and audio. In general for old browsers TLS is the main issue. Most websites that don't rely on JavaScript or newer CSS still render well enough or "fail gracefully" but are still readable.

>HTTPS/TLS

Put it behind privoxy. All those SPA blogs exist solely due to google. No google - no SPA.

I'm curious about the logic there.

- Why would Google (which famously didn't index Javascript well, and liked clear super-optimized URLs) have contributed to the existence of single-page applications (which used to have terrible drawbacks for SEO)? Where's the incentive?

- And what is a SPA blog? That seems like such a far-fetched idea.

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