- cross-posted to:
- linux@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- linux@lemmy.ml
cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/46655413
The Mozilla Foundation, the non-profit arm of the Firefox browser maker Mozilla, has laid off 30% of its employees as the organization says it faces a “relentless onslaught of change.”
If Mozilla does become defunct, it does raise the question of whether Chrome would be considered a Google monopoly, and therefore subject to antitrust legislation.
I can’t imagine any governments would look kindly upon internet access being guarded behind a single company’s product.
laughs in 2001
Google should be subject to antitrust legislation regardless.
Their position as a monopoly is what enables this.
The firefox browser could exist without quite a lot Mozilla does. A large chunk of its cash isn’t spent on the browser.
There is a new browser based on WebKit (safari), called Orion that looks promising. However, it’s only on macOS and iOS at this point. Hopefully Linux and Android will be a consideration at some point.
Chrome’s engine was originally forked from WebKit. That makes them too similar (even years later) for WebKit to count as a real alternative.
The point is to leave a google controlled ecosystem… which means it counts as a valid alternative. What would you suggest besides chromium and gecko?
w3m
Haha. So I really do wish that all websites had a text version, or like markdown. Can you imagine how damn speedy things would be? Every website would have the same layout. As much as I appreciate good web design, there’s a lot of bad UI choices out there.
I strongly disagree with this. In practice, supporting chrome does not imply supporting safari and vice versa. In particular, Safari is much, much slower about adopting new web technologies. Google basically implements support for anything they can think up, Apple waits for it become a ratified standard and then implements it only if they want to. Their JavaScript implementations are also completely different.
There’s also a new browser based on Firefox/Gecko called Zen. There’s way too many browsers based on Webkit or Blink.
Zen has less frequent security updates. But yes zen is a good gecko alternative.
zen integrates every upstream change a few hours after release, it is built as a set of patch on top of firefox just to make that easy
Hmm. Well, I’ll have to give it a go. Thanks.
deleted by creator
Splitting Chrome from Google wouldn’t make Chrome not a monopoly, though, right?
The split might leave a monopoly still, if it’s the only major browser.
It would be a lot easier to compete with though, since Google couldn’t treat it as a loss leader that still bring them in search revenue by default.
They could try to employ some kind of Apple defense, like, you wouldn’t hit Apple for having monopoly on iOS. As long as it’s not the only solution on the market. And for web, most of time, you could access the same resources and get similar experience by downloading… the apps… wait, they have a monopoly on that, too. Well, they are completely screwed in that case.