The same is clearly coming for Chromium forks, which is why I've always thought the privacy and ad-blocking forks are a joke - if they ever gain enough marketshare, or if google just tires of the public open source charade, they have no chance of maintaining a modern browser on their own.
This is all the more likely now that Google has been emboldened by not having to sell off Chrome for anticompetitive reasons.
Now, I'm of the opinion that they should have been forced to sell off both, and maybe Chromebooks too, for the good measure.
No company with a direction as vile and openly user-hostile as what Google currently demonstrates should have anywhere near this level of control over the ecosystem.
Maybe the development will slow down, but let's be honest: we would still be fine if Android and iOS had stopped "improving" years ago. Now it's mostly about adding shiny AI features and squeeze the users.
Facebook was once small too. Yet people happily signed up, giving up their privacy in the process. What makes you think the remaining companies offering a free browser wouldn't try to monetize users in a similar way? How many people are willing to pay $5/month for a browser?
When Facebook started, it was a different era. And since then, Facebook has clearly abused their position with anti-competitive behaviours.
> How many people are willing to pay $5/month for a browser?
If they can keep using Google Chrome for free, we already know the answer. If the only way for them to have a reasonable browser would to pay... who knows? People pay more than that to access movies that they could download as torrents.
Also does it have to be 5$ per month? Do browsers need to keep adding so many features, and hence so many bugs and security issues, that only huge companies can keep up and nobody wants to pay for that work?
Maybe it's enough to pay 1$/year for a company to maintain a reasonably secure browser with the features that people actually need. Do people actually need QUIC? Not sure.
Insurgents like tiktok show that even today, people will happily give up their privacy for some dopamine.
>If they can keep using Google Chrome for free, we already know the answer.
Why would google continue maintaining chrome if they can no longer derive any benefit from it?
>If the only way for them to have a reasonable browser would to pay... who knows? People pay more than that to access movies that they could download as torrents.
No, the contention is that people will go for free browsers that violate their privacy or monetize them somehow, not some future where all browsers cost money.
>Maybe it's enough to pay 1$/year for a company to maintain a reasonably secure browser with the features that people actually need. Do people actually need QUIC? Not sure.
Remember when whatsapp was also $1/year, ostensibly for similar reasons? How did that go?
That is unrelated to the sentence you quote: if people can use Google Chrome for free, they don't pay for a browser. But if Chrome disappeared, they would still need a browser. Maybe they would pay if they didn't have a free choice?
> No, the contention is that people will go for free browsers that violate their privacy or monetize them somehow, not some future where all browsers cost money.
If there are more browsers instead of a monopoly, then websites will work on the paid, secure browser that I will use, so I'm happy. I don't want to prevent people from using bad software: I want to make it possible for companies to build good software.
By not using Chromium today, many times the websites don't work correctly because devs don't care, because Chromium is a monopoly. I say split it! Then websites will have to work on more than 1 browser.
> Remember when whatsapp was also $1/year, ostensibly for similar reasons? How did that go?
It was a huge success? WhatsApp is still a huge success.