"they’re Google’s way of pushing the limits of the Web as a platform."
Nope, they're Google's way of extinguishing non-Chrome browsers. Only Chrome/Chromium will be supported. That's called vendor lock-in - regardless of being open source.
Nope, they're Google's way of extinguishing non-Chrome browsers. Only Chrome/Chromium will be supported. That's called vendor lock-in - regardless of being open source.
You can make this work inside XULRunner if you want. You only have to write some library which provides the same API as the chrome_gen package (reading/writing files etc) and then import it instead of chrome_gen or just overwrite the package. Everything else is regular web stuff.
Anyhow, using some apps which use Chrome as runtime doesn't meant that you have to use Chrome as default browser. You only need to have it installed. Just like any other runtime you're using.
In order for it to be "vendor lock-in", people should care about those apps in the first place. Which they don't, much. In fact, they are quite niche.
So, yes, they'll might lock a 0.1% of people with that.
Now, if they did the same for Search, Mail or YT I'd be worried.
(Hint: even after all those years, Google Docs, a flagship has an insignificant user base -- and that one is not even Chrome-locked).
If you want an example, see OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice.