The browser wars are back, but it’s different this time

[aum]

It’s about privacy, not marketshare

 

IfIf you weren’t convinced we live in a new era for Microsoft’s consumer-facing software, the one-two punch of Windows 7 closing down and the new Chromium-based version of Edge officially launching ought to do it for you. Microsoft’s new Edge Chromium browser is out now for both Windows and macOS.

 

We’ll be taking a closer, more critical look at the Edge browser now that it’s no longer in beta over the coming days. Tom Warren has just as many thoughts about the future of Windows as I do about the implications of the switch over to the Chromium codebase, which is mostly maintained by Google.

 

We’ll be getting into all of it, but I want to start with some very high-level things to know about browsers right now — because after many years of stasis, things are really about to change.

 

Just today, alongside the Edge launch we also got the very sad news that Mozilla had to lay off about 70 people, TechCrunch reports. In a public memo, interim CEO Mitchell Baker wrote that “to responsibly make additional investments in innovation to improve the internet, we can and must work within the limits of our core finances.”

 

The Mozilla and Microsoft news isn’t directly connected, but it is indirectly connected in a thousand ways. Both companies have in some sense spent the past few years contending with Google.

 

For Microsoft, it was the realization that its project to create its own web rendering engine was an uphill climb that wasn’t worth the investment. Too many websites rendered oddly in Edge, often because they were coded specifically for Chrome or Safari’s Webkit instead of following more generic standards. The deep irony is that long ago, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer nearly broke the web because it demanded custom code from web developers.

 

So Microsoft made the tough call: it bailed and switched to the same technology that runs Chrome. But there are key differences: Microsoft has taken a different stance on web tracking than Google and it has also, obviously, plugged Edge into Microsoft’s services.

 

For me, the key thing to watch will be whether or not this new Chromium-based Edge feels tacked-on to Windows. On a very personal note, the fact that some Microsoft email clients still revert to Word’s HTML rendering engine is a huge thorn in my side. But there are a million ways that HTML rendering affects and OS, and I’ll be waiting to see how Chromium affects Windows and vice verse. One of the old Edge’s best features was how kind it was to battery life.

 

There’s also the question of Microsoft’s app framework future — how much of it will be Electron, how much will be Progressive Web Apps, and how much will be actual Windows apps. All open questions, and all questions I’m likely to defer to Tom Warren on. As with everything else, something to watch.

 

For Mozilla, it was switching back to Google Search as the default in Firefox and leading the charge to a more privacy-focused model. Firefox’s decisions around blocking trackers inspired Apple to be even more aggressive in doing the same last year. This week even Google was forced to throw in the towel and commit to eventually disabling third-party cookie.

 

As I noted in my article on Tuesday about Chrome’s decision, there are many, many (many!) forces at play in the coming browser wars. At a high level, if I had to explain what’s happening without worrying too much about the details, here’s how I’d put it in one incredibly overwrought sentence:

 

The mobile web is broken and unfettered tracking and data sharing have made visiting websites feel toxic, but since the ecosystem of websites and ad companies can’t fix it through collective action, it falls on browser makers to use technological innovations to limit that surveillance, however each company that makes a browser is taking a different approach to creating those innovations, and everybody distrusts everybody else to act in the best interest of the web instead of the best interest of their employers’ profits.

 

Here’s a shorter sentence: the next browser war is here and it’s a goat rodeo.

 

I’ve been avoiding getting into the precise details of the proposals out there to fix the tracking problem because things are changing so quickly across so many different tracks. I am sure that sometime soon I will break and tuck into Google’s Privacy Sandbox and Apple’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention and Mozilla’s defaults that deserve credit for kicking a lot of this off. Until then, know that there are two important things to know.

 

First: there are new browser technologies and limits coming that could radically change how ads work and could make it easier for you to protect your privacy no matter what browser you use. Since this is the web, it’ll take time, but everybody seems committed.

 

Second: the way many of us think about a Browser War is in terms of marketshare — and that is the wrong metric this time. There is a browser war, but it won’t be won or lost based on who can convince the most people to switch to their browser. Because most people can’t or won’t switch on the platform that matters: mobile.

 

In 2020, the desktop is a minor skirmish compared to browsers on phones.

 

On phones, many people aren’t really free to choose their browser. That’s literally true on the iPhone, which Apple locks down so apps can only use its web rendering technology. And it’s for-intents-and-purposes true on Android, where the vast majority of browsers just use Chromium. Yes, there is an Android browser ballot happening in Europe, but it’s much too early to know what its effects will be.

 

That brings me back to the new Edge. Microsoft has committed itself to Android so fully that it is currently working on making its own Android-based Surface phone, due out later this year. And so if you’re Microsoft, it makes perfect sense to want to get your own first-party browser that’s fully kitted up with your services on that phone.

 

The easiest, best way to do that on Android is to just use Chromium. And if you want your company to be good at Chromium on mobile, it doesn’t hurt to ensure it’s also good at Chromium on Windows.

 

The fact that I’ve looped all the way back to Microsoft needing to provide services on mobile isn’t (just) my usual rhetorical meandering, it’s the whole point. The new Browser Wars aren’t about who makes the fastest or best browser, they’re about whose services you want and whose data policies you trust.

 

Anyway, here’s how to download Microsoft’s new Edge browser. You should do it. And install Firefox. And maybe Brave and Vivaldi and whatever else. A return to real browser competition on the desktop means we might have our best chance in years to fix up the web again — and it might just create some momentum that could make the mobile web better too.

 

Source

 

 

[DLord]

Google's Chromium project was destined to be great from the beginning.  It's V8 engine set a new standard and dominated the JavaScript and WebAssembly arena.

After Chrome's fast rise in the browser's world, we are now witnessing software giants incorporating Chromium code in there browsers and soon maybe in their OS itself.

[steven36]

The 1st browser war was about a monopoly and Microsoft setting illegal web standards , Only reason  they stop getting away with  was  Microsoft was sued for it . There was a time after when  we had a diverse browser ecosystem and testing browsers meant something  but Google Chrome won the 2nd   browser wars and unlike  Microsoft  Google went by the book and done  it by w3c  standards  in order for there to be  a war there must be fierce competition and  there is none any more . The only thing Web masters have to test is do Chromium work on there website  because  Google done ate the  browser ecosystem alive .

 

Anything  to do with privacy  , adblocking  , is not new  , I been blocking  1st party and 3rd party  cookies , ads and trackers every since i switch to Firefox in 2006 . Browsers baking this stuff in has nothing do with a browser war it don't gain them no marketshare because people are  going  to block these things no matter what . Even if they have to  use DNS , host block  , etc and block them at the root . plus  there  is no baked in adblocker /Anti tracking i ever seen  work as good  as 3rd party ones  .  90% of the time i use Waterfox Classic and block this stuff like i always did before they got privacy laws that are forcing browsers  to change.

 

The browsers just now baking in Tech that been widely  used every since 2002

Quote

Henrik Aasted Sørensen, now an independent software developer based in Copenhagen, wrote the source code for Adblock, which was the first widely used ad blocking extension back in 2002.

 

It took Browser Vendors  17 years to try to  reinvent the wheel and act like  it's something new and 3rd party adblockers are much better than they was in 2002 .

[Sylence]

@steven36 Microsoft setting illegal web standards? lol

look where Google is at now. setting web standards as the company in control of Chromium source

[steven36]

4 hours ago, Sylence said:

@steven36 Microsoft setting illegal web standards? lol

look where Google is at now. setting web standards as the company in control of Chromium source

Yes but they done it legal Chromium source is open source  your free to use there source . Open Source won  the only  2 used  engines  outside of Apple  is open source . I dont see no big tech companies ganging up to sue Google there all embracing the standard  of the Chromium source. You dont have to use Google version if you don't want too like you had to use IE   because they use active x and things.

 

Quote from  thegarbz 

Implementing features openly through standard bodies which are easily adopted by others and implementing features that depend on the underlying OS through closed APIs to stifle innovation are two very different things.

 

The former does not limit or prevent competition, it may strengthen Google's business, but it is not actively diminishing consumer choice. . To date Google has done nothing even remotely as bad for consumers as what was done in the IE days.

 

Only if you're benevolent. MS was not. They ignored standards and pushed the internet in a direction which they knew no one else could implement and we all suffered as a result (any web developers still have PTSD from ActiveX?).

 

While dictating to standards bodies results in no loss of competition to the consumer.

 

Mind you there's a nefarious middle ground too, MS and it's ISO standard document format which it purposely failed to properly implement itself. Again, not something Google has done ... to date.

_____________________________________

 

IE  was never a choice I made to use  when i started using IE when i got my 1st PC  it was the only thing it had .  There was nothing telling me about other Web browsers .even after Microsoft got sued  only in the EU did windows  come with  a thing to install other browsers . Even with all  the effort Microsoft put in keeping Windows a IE only OS.  Advertisement won out  world wide in the end and Google had the best Advertisements so they won . If it was up too Microsoft you still be using IE  only reason they changed  they were forced to adapt to the modern web or die!   Only time i looked for software back then was if i needed  it too do something that was not baked  in .

 

That's all Edge Chromium is about  so people want use something  not already in the box .  It may appeal  to Enterprises  that use Microsoft services but it want appeal to consumers who use Google services  because it want  sync with Google services. As far as  Edge using Chromium it just going to cause  it to lose what browser test Edge Html  won making  using Microsoft  of no more benefit unless you use only Microsoft services .  As far as speed there is not enough difference in Chromium spins to matter no way. Most people dont use Chromium or Google  because it faster no way they use to sync to Google services across all devices .

 

As much CPU as Chromium uses it should be faster because it blotware . Electrion that is based on Chromium  is one the most hated apis they use to make apps and that what Big Tech is using to make there apps  a bloated mess.

 

You know what ruined  Firefox ?  It was because they laid the guy off who  invented  JavaScript and co founded Mozilla because of his beliefs were not the the same as the left winged mainstream now he makes Brave Browser  . They never recovered  from getting  rid of him. Now it's coming back on them . It's Karma biting them in the . Never punish  your employees because of there  beliefs   are your looking for a load of trouble  down the road . Who cares who they vote for as long as they can code good. Mozilla are known  social justice bullies. I wonder were Linux would of ended up if they would of fired Linus for having a potty mouth ?

 

Netscape is now Mozilla they use to be closed source and before they baked IE  into  windows.  Netscape was the most used browser . Every since they became open source  they try to play the social justice warrior ,  protector  of the internet and privacy card and thats not the  reason we used Firefox it was because it was better than IE was why . Them playing on peoples morals  never got them no were.

 

Quote CDNet:

"Losing Brendan will shake the organization," one former Mozilla employee said. "Maybe it needs the shake, but he is a giant in the industry -- one of a small handful. If he doesn't get back in the game, then the open Web movement truly loses."

 

Still, it may be some time before the Mozilla community recovers. The episode has become a touchstone around whether political correctness now means CEOs of Silicon Valley companies are less free than other Americans to assert their First Amendment right to free speech.

------

That was 2014  and it don't look like Firefox will ever recover  and now the same social justice warrior movement is trying to end the right to free speech for the rest of the internet today . Crybaby internet warriors were nothing is right  and everything is wrong  .They taking  all the fun out of it .

 

No one is sure were Google is headed today because there co founders step down as well.

[halvgris]

On 1/17/2020 at 3:46 PM, Kalju said:

One completely empty article, only meaningless wail and howling.
But this has always been the case - where the mind ends, the wailing and yelling begins. Everyone else is guilty, but not me.

agreed also nowadays some of the browsers rely on

faster cpu's while older computers are slow and as

always if you install linux and firefox browsing is so

much faster and smother.

 

on my setup chrome and brave works fine while other

stalls stops. this is with or without plugins installed.