Microsoft just did whatever they wanted with the web "platform", and so will Google.
In Microsoft's case what they wanted was nothing. They weren't a web business, saw it as a threat to their platform leverage, and so just left it abandoned and stagnant for years.
Google is simultaneously better and worse: they won't leave it stagnant because the web is their platform, but on the other hand they have a lot more to gain by abusing control of it.
We already have a number of Chromium based browsers that go against some of Google's most fundamental interests (e.g Brave).
Costs matter, and Web development costs are high. Google benefits from coordination, funding, and one migh presume, cost advantages, which would be exceedingly difficult for any comparable US or EU effort to match.
Development in lower-cost-of-living regions, perhaps most viably China, might pose an alternative.
Open source is that option. The economics of starting from scratch vs starting from Chromium's latest commit are fundamentally different.
I'm not saying that it's easy, only that it is not remotely comparable to the IE situation.
MSIE was bypassed not by a code fork of MSIE (itself originally based on the Spyglass browser, which was a fork of the NSCA's Mosaic codebase), but by independent implementations of an HTML-standard parser. Microsoft had some influence over Web development (noteably through ActiveX) but far less than Google has now.
My point is that Open Source of itself is not sufficient, and moreover simply is not viable. Glibly asserting that it is ... is utterly unrealistic.
Though the alternative of forking a Web-like markup and transport, as Gemini is attempting to do, is one option. For other technologies which have become sufficiently baroque, similar worse-is-better alternate paths have been pursued.
Otherwise, this is an antitrust issue, and Google very badly need busting.
And I didn't claim that it was. My point was merely that Chromium being open source changes the equation pretty fundamentally compared to the IE situation.
Whether it's enough to make a Chromium monopoly consistent with an open web, I really don't know. There are very good reasons to be sceptical.
I'm not seeing your more recent statement as consistent with the first, given my own response: "Open source without the option for an alternate development organisation to drive or steer development direction means vey little."
Again: Microsoft's locus of control was not based on source code or standards, but on its control over the PC desktop market. MSIE shipped by default with that desktop, and any other browser, including Chrome, had to find its way to that desktop.
Microsoft has now ceded its own browser engine (Trident, I believe) for Google's (Blink), with Microsoft Edge. As this browser still ships by default with Windows, Chrome owns that platform by default.
Google also controls its own operating systems, Android (mobile and tablets) and ChromeOS (Chromebooks). Given Android's overwhelming numerical advantage in overall devices,[1] Google effecitely have Microsoft's previous leverage mechanism to themselves.
Google as the dominant search provider have an advertising advantage in advocating their browser, both within search and on Google properties with "works best with Chrome" or equivalent.
And again, Google effecitvely dominate both development of Chrome and Chromium, including gatekeeping over what code makes it in to each project, and through its own browser development, dominance within WHATWG, and ranking preferences withing Google Web Search, as well as compatibility favouritism through popular Google properties such as YouTube, Web standards themselves.
Microsoft's monopoly lock-in had a single peg, Google has four (OS, promotion, Chrome development, Web standards).
I do have to admit though, yes: It is a completely different situation. Microsoft's advantage was far weaker than Google's now is.
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Notes:
1. "As of April 2022, Android, an operating system using the Linux kernel, is the world's most-used operating system when judged by web use. It has 43% of the global market, followed by Windows with 30%, Apple iOS with 17%, macOS with 6%, then (desktop) Linux at 0.98% also using the Linux kernel." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_syste...
My point was merely that Chromium being open source changes the equation pretty fundamentally compared to the IE situation
Yes, and I stand by that. Chromium being open source changes the situation completely. It makes no sense to compare the IE era to any Chromium monopoly without even mentioning that Chromium is open source.
>I'm not seeing your more recent statement as consistent with the first, given my own response: "Open source without the option for an alternate development organisation to drive or steer development direction means vey little."
I don't see any inconsistency. I simply disagree with you. It matters a great deal that Chromium is open source. It changes the politics in the industry. It changes the economics. It changes the regulatory situation. It changes the facts on the ground in terms of available browsers.
I do get your point though, and it's not that I disagree with everything you're saying. I just disagree with the claim that open source Chromium "means very little".
This is just a ridiculous assertion. Blink being Open Source does not change what Google does with the engine. If the web was Blink with a handful of irrelevant Blink forks then the web is Blink. That means whatever stupid specs Google puts forward like WebBluetooth or WebFacialTrackingAttentionMonitor become de facto web technologies.
No one outside of Google will affect the direction of Blink. Even if Microsoft tried, Google still has an overwhelming number of deployments and overwhelming influence with search and advertising.
Part of the problem of IE dominating the web was Microsoft using that domination to push their ecosystem and nudge out competitors. If things like ActiveX and VBScript had been more popular there would have been no room for Firefox to make inroads against IE.
Google's Web* specs they push are their equivalent of Microsoft's proprietary extensions of the web. No browser written from scratch can hope to catch up to Blink without billions of dollars of investment. A Blink fork disabling the most privacy invading Web* specs can't meaningfully compete with Google's install base and promotion.
What you're missing is the fact a project is Open Source doesn't mean it's governance is in any way open. The governance of Blink is not meaningfully open. Nothing a non-Google contributor says means anything to Google. They already add in half-baked and poorly thought out Web* specs to Blink with little concern for standards processes and there's at least some competition from Firefox and Safari. If Google doesn't care now it's ridiculous to assume they would care if Blink completely dominated in the browser space.
That's absolutely right, but it's not the point.
What matters is how much investment is required to offer an alternative to Google's Chrome. Does it take billions or does it take mere millions?
Building on top of Chromium means that it takes mere millions. And that changes the situation.
For that to be true, it is not necessary to wrest power from Google when it comes to deciding what does or does not go into Chromium as Google doesn't get to decide what goes into any forks.
Does any of this negate the power that Google currently has over web standards by way of Chrome's overwhelming market share? Certainly not.
What it changes is Google's margin of safety when it comes to imposing truly user hostile technology on everybody or stop investing in the technology.
And I don't mean "user hostile" in the sense that it enrages the HN crowd. I mean user hostile in the sense that many normal users will actually look for better alternatives on their own accord, not for political/advocacy reasons.
The fact that open source Chromium exist makes Google's dominance over the web far less assured than it would otherwise be.
> Building on top of Chromium means that it takes mere millions. And that changes the situation.
This simply does not follow. If you're building on the back of Blink you're still chasing whatever Google unilaterally decides to include in Blink. You need to do extra work to merge stuff you want and keep stuff you don't want properly disabled. Google has no impetus to make it easy or even possible for third parties to disable features in Blink. The cost to maintain a defanged Blink can very easily go from "mere" millions to billions if Google makes it difficult to merge upstream changes in defanged forks.
If web developers readily adopt whatever Google throws out, and lets be honest it's adtech companies adopting "features" to better fingerprint users without cookies, then a Blink-based alternative to Chrome will get zero uptake. If the top sites on the Web require Google's version of Blink/Chrome with all of Google's handy dandy anti-privacy features then it does not matter in the slightest that a non-Google Blink browser can exist.
You're pretending that Blink being Open Source is somehow going to affect the decisions of web developers (adtech companies). They are going to chase Google's version of Blink/Chrome because that's how they make the most money. Right this second Apple and Mozilla are just barely keeping Chrome from fully dominating the web.
Google is never going to make Chrome overtly user hostile. They're just going to continue to making Chrome an advertiser's dream browser because they are an advertiser. While WebEyeTracking might have some non-advertising use 99% of the user cases will be to make sure people looked at an advertisement long enough. If Google controls the specifications that define the web and sites adopt those technologies, there's no room for alternatives that aren't Google's Blink. Not only can defanged Blink not be practical but neither are non-Blink browser engines.