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0 pointsjacquesm11y ago0 comments

There never was a good reason for Chrome to exist in the first place. Content companies should not produce browsers, it is too much of a temptation for them to optimize their content for their own browser and vv.

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IvyMike11y ago

> There never was a good reason for Chrome to exist in the first place.

Chrome kicked off the browser performance wars, especially javascript. A fast and performant web was important to any strategy Google could have had, regardless of their status as a good or evil company.

bzbarsky11y ago

Please check your history. There was a JavaScript performance war in full swing, with both Firefox and Safari producing new JITs and working on improving them, before Chrome ever appeared.

IvyMike11y ago

My memory was that there was a cold war, but not hot-and-heavy competition until chrome, although this article seems to agree with you.

But man, Chrome sure got good fast.

http://www.cnet.com/news/browser-war-centers-on-once-obscure...

bzbarsky11y ago

Your memory might be based on press releases, not what was actually going on. Safari and Firefox had the jits in their development builds, and were actively competing with each other, but hadn't shipped them in a final release yet at the point when the existence of Chrome was announced. Those JITs shipped a few months after that, with the attendant press hoopla.

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sphink11y ago

I agree. IE kicked everyone else's butt first (in terms of market share), and the Web stagnated. Then Firefox kicked IE's butt, and the Web didn't stagnate quite as much, but let's be honest -- it stagnated. At the moment, Chrome is dominant but no browser is really trampling its competition, especially not in terms of overall quality. And the Web is improving faster than it ever has. (Well, not quite -- the "catch up" phases of the browser wars probably saw faster improvement while they were happening.)

jacquesmOP11y ago

Chrome does not exist to give the world a fast and performant web, it exists to give google full control over the audience from request to delivery, it exists to increase google's control and serves as a collection mechanism for data that it would not otherwise get at.

That it's a performant browser is a side-effect.

kalleboo11y ago

There could be multiple equally valid reasons for Chrome to exist.

IvyMike11y ago

> data that it would not otherwise get at.

My argument is that nobody would have put that data online in a slow and sucky web. If you think Google wants full control over the audience, surely they also want a large audience.

(Note that I do not think that Google is evil. But if they were, I don't think they would need chrome to get most of that information anyways, given all the other ways they are collecting data. Sure, there are some corner cases they would miss but I don't think the incremental coverage would be worth the effort.)

jacquesmOP11y ago

The web wasn't 'slow and sucky' before chrome appeared.

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IvyMike11y ago

> There never was a good reason for Chrome to exist in the first place.

bzbarsky11y ago

Please check your history. There was a JavaScript performance war in full swing, with both Firefox and Safari producing new JITs and working on improving them, before Chrome ever appeared.

IvyMike11y ago

My memory was that there was a cold war, but not hot-and-heavy competition until chrome, although this article seems to agree with you.

But man, Chrome sure got good fast.

http://www.cnet.com/news/browser-war-centers-on-once-obscure...

bzbarsky11y ago

1 more reply

sphink11y ago

jacquesmOP11y ago

That it's a performant browser is a side-effect.

kalleboo11y ago

There could be multiple equally valid reasons for Chrome to exist.

IvyMike11y ago

> data that it would not otherwise get at.

My argument is that nobody would have put that data online in a slow and sucky web. If you think Google wants full control over the audience, surely they also want a large audience.

jacquesmOP11y ago

The web wasn't 'slow and sucky' before chrome appeared.

2 more replies

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse