Google is either actively malicious to the open web, or doesn't care about it other than as something they can strip-mine as a revenue source. They sufficiently diversified into mobile and Android that the death of the open web would be but a blip to them.

IMO, Firefox should consciously be that alternate source of authority. How they accomplish that organisationally is irrelevant, what is relevant that their browser as a whole is competitive and focused enough that it stops haemorrhaging market share, and can start to slowly rebuild it as people look for a way out of Google's ecosystem.

Firefox used to at least directly target segments of the population with its more comprehensive developer platform, but they have slowly been tearing that out for many years and now Chrome is converging to the same place.

At best I would say "the reason for Firefox to exist is because we need it to exist" argues we would have to prop it up using some kind of government intervention--to deal with the "it is at least slightly worse for every given user"--but the problem is we need people to actually use it, not for it to merely continue to be developed, and "require some random percentage of people to draw lots and be forced to use Firefox" is probably a dystopia for other reasons.

I don't think there's a good case to be made for Safari outside of Apple devices.

> Apple's offering, Safari, currently holds 18.34% of the internet browser market, with an estimated 844 million people using it in 2021. Safari also makes up 23.78% of all mobile device browsers worldwide, which is high considering Apple holds 26.35% of the mobile vendor market. https://backlinko.com/browser-market-share

Those numbers seem relevant to me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safari_(web_browser)

I mean nobody super exciting, but Steam uses it for their software, Adobe CSS uses some of it, etc.

It's more than an Apple thing.

[Edit]: Sorry, nobody outside Apple uses Safari, but a lot of people outside of Apple use WebKit, Safari's engine.

It is also primarily there to render Steam and steampowered.com so not very relevant to keeping web standards in check.

So that's why.

Unfortunately, that reason (browser engine diversity)is compelling to people who understand the situation, but not general consumers - and it's impossible to make general consumers care, unless maybe Firefox went for an edgy "rebel against the man" vibe.

(In case it's not clear, I'm asking in earnest. I'm not trolling.)

- - - -

edit: Okay, pull requests alone are not enough, but the objections y'all are raising seem like they could all be answered by forking, no? If Google upsets their users then a different browser has a chance to gain users:

- Ad-blocking

- Better extension API

- Maintaining backwards compatibility

- No Manifest V3

- Better vision of the web than Google

In other words, effort expended on duplicate functionality for it's own sake is wasted. Why not let Google do the heavy lifting and then improve on their work, rather than trying to compete head-to-head on the whole enchilada (of a complete browser engine)?

Right now, backwards compatibility is protected by competing browsers. If one breaks backwards compatibility too often, it risks becoming known for having sites not work on it.

In a monoculture, Google could take aggressive moves to prevent ad-blocking. In a monoculture, Google could push more ad focused features like FloC. Google could integrate more ways to allow browser fingerprint (not saying they would, but there would be no recourse).

With competition Google knows that people could balk at any point so they must balance their interests with their users' interests. In a monoculture, they wouldn't have to.

In what scenario is maintaining a fork not way easier than a whole separate engine?

So far I think I like how they handle Chromium more than I like what Mozilla is trying to do.

The possibility of forks does little to prevent a Chromium monoculture from embracing, extending, and extinguishing the web. (Something like Brave, with an independent revenue model, does help some with the bad maintainer problem. But it doesn't help with the constant stream of everyday bugs in the underlying engine, ones that would get set in stone with a monoculture.)

For example, see Manifest V3 (and the deprecation/removal of old versions). Almost everybody that hears about it disagrees - users, extension developers, etc. However, despite it's popularity being as low as could be, Google is still putting it in.

Today, if I see an article about FLOC (or whatever they're calling it now) and don't like it I can go and download Firefox. In a Chromium-only world I'm SOL.

A good example of what happens if you only have one implementation is Flash Player. People programmed to the implementation and not the (non-existant) spec. So any reimplementation of Flash Player is largely an exercise in chasing after implementation bugs in the Player that badly-developed movies rely upon. Even Adobe's official internal documentation on SWF and AVM2 is woefully incomplete, because the actual "spec" is the proprietary source code of the player and whatever tribal knowledge had been accrued from decades of maintaining it.

The sole implementation in this case (Chromium) being Free Software does alleviate this a little, but the spec is still more of a suggestion than a reality.

For example, Chromium won't be accepting pull requests to un-break the extension API (https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/12/chrome-users-beware-ma...).

It's a legitimate question, in a realm that many people including in HN's general demographic don't consider.

If someone wants to learn something, why not help them instead of downvoting into oblivion because they don't know or disagree with something you know/believe?

Edit to respond to edit:

The biggest reason I think is that there's no way a fork would survive - the only way that it could would be if Microsoft/Apple/Facebook/$SOMEBODY_WITH_MONEY threw their weight behind it, which is unlikely, because any change which harms users will either help or be neutral to any of these companies.

I would rather educate than downvote, but downvoting has gotten to be more emotional than based on the site guidelines, so not everyone sticks to that.

Back in the day when it was FF vs. Microsoft Internet Explorer the need for a competing FOSS browser seemed very compelling, but I don't think FF won marketshare on that, rather it won on merits: FF was better than IE.

Today the situation seems different. To me it seems to make sense to let the engine become a standardized component (developed FOSS-style) incorporating work by Google for speed, security, and reliability, and let the diversity and competition happen on a higher, more user-facing level, in terms of policy and politics and UI/UX and so on.

I think the real issue is that the vast majority of users don't really care about browser features beyond a certain point, a point which all modern browsers have easily covered. You could sit a person in front of Chrome, Firefox, Edge, or Safari and they'd barely notice. If there's attachment to a certain brand, it's mostly emotional. Arguing that people should use X over Y is like arguing that they should drink Pepsi over Coca Cola..

It's hard to differentiate a browser in such a market. It's just a window to the web, with tabs and bookmarks and a handful of features. And an adblocker extension, for some 30% of users. Beyond that, it just needs to work and be fast.

If the fork offers something compelling to entice users then it would presumably survive, otherwise not, but would they save FF then?

The whole problem under discussion here is that FF is losing marketshare. The things that differentiate FF in the minds of the mass consumers aren't directly related to the browser engine. Chrome/Chromium is arguably better on the fundamentals (speed, security, reliability) so why not take their core and implement user-attracting features on top of it?

I think the idea of having competing FOSS browser engines is largely a holdover from the bad old days of Internet Explorer. The main reason that browser engine diversity might be useful is that it makes for a certain robustness in the face of errors and crashes. If everyone is using the same browser then everyone is vulnerable to the same zero-days, for example.

you've ansewered yourself: as long as chromium accepts pull requests. the day firefox dies, chromium stops accepting pull requests.

Forking is an uphill battle starting at 0% market share, which is less than Firefox has now.