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0 pointsglenstein7mo ago0 comments

>Unlike with Microsoft or even Apple, their source of revenue is web, and they they are doing everything in their capacity for this platform to win.

I feel like there's a missing step in the argument here. Yes Google's revenue comes from the web, yes Chromium being open source and paying for search deals are a hedge against anti trust, but why does it follow that they wouldn't want to dominate the browser space? They do, and it seems to be working quite well for them. But it feels more like a minimum effort hedge against antitrust then a demonstration of a healthy ecosystem.

Also, every time Chromium comes up you have people pointing to it like it's a counterpoint to their browser dominance. It's open source, so what's the issue? But the issue is that Chromium as a body decides whether commits make it into the browser and the decision making body is an invite only group of full time Google developers. So it is controlled by Google after all.

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vovavili7mo ago

>But the issue is that Chromium as a body decides whether commits make it into the browser and the decision making body is an invite only group of full time Google developers.

Not if you fork it.

glensteinOP7mo ago

I understand that "just fork it" has been the canonical response to disagreements over direction of open source software. Sometimes that's the right call, the world is better for having a forked Syncthing, forked Nextcloud, and so on.

But I think there are cases, such as Chromium where the "just fork it" response is unrealistic about the burden of maintaining a codebase or the ongoing relationship to new updates, or not having capacity to solve new problems or comply with new standards in Google-independent ways. Part of the problem of Chromium is that it's normalized a velocity of development and of codebase size in exactly the way you would if you were going for embrace-extend-extinguish.

And the foundational point is still true, Google controls commits to Chromium, so the core project itself is not ever going to be an organic manifestion of community desires for an egalitarian internet. It's going to be whatever helps consolidate Google's monopoly.

lima7mo ago

You're not wrong, but there are organizations which could hard-fork Chromium, it just happens to be more productive to collaborate as long as Google remains a good steward.

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