
Google isn’t the company that we should have handed the Web over to - sbuk
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/12/the-web-now-belongs-to-google-and-that-should-worry-us-all
======
mrep
Discussed yesterday:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18703172](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18703172)

~~~
magicalist
Unsourced HN anecdote becomes Ars story becomes HN discussion.

[https://xkcd.com/978/](https://xkcd.com/978/)

~~~
ineedasername
exactly. it's like money laudering, only for bad anecdotal information, or
conspiracy theories. I'd sooner invoke Hanlon's razor than a single div tag
that Edge's hardware acceleration should have been robust enough to handle
anyway.

------
Santosh83
A lot of statements for and against this or that company having stewardship of
the web, but the more important point is we should, IMO, strive for a web
which cannot be controlled by any one entity. In this view, whether Google is
a 'better evil' than MS or Exxon controlling the web is beside the point. The
web has a good chance to approach the ideal of direct democracy rather than a
representative one. Sure it might be a long road, but let's not give up and
concede to the established paradigms on the web too, though some will say it
is already too late.

~~~
martindale
Hear hear! The commons belong to us all.

------
Zelphyr
Maybe Google should split Chrome and related assets (Chromium, Blink, are
there others?) into a separate foundation that has control over the source
with a board that has membership by major players such as Google themselves,
Opera, and Microsoft. That way Google can put a wall between their direct
influence in such a powerful and relied-upon piece of software so as not to
have the undue influence we’re all worried about.

~~~
matmann2001
Worked for Android, right?

~~~
thesephist
Android's governance is entirely under Google/Alphabet for all practical
purposes today, even as the OS is open source. Reasons for this are numeorus
(licensing, Play Services, etc.) Chromium is in a similar boat. Parent is
proposing that Google effectively spin off Chrome and related assets as a
separate company or nonprofit entity, much like the Linux Foundation, to avoid
potentially monopolistic behavior that such vertical integration may lead to.
I think this is one possible way to a solution.

~~~
ahartmetz
Though please not exactly like the Linux foundation, which is doing some
pretty shitty things. Companies can become members of the Linux foundation and
violate the GPL of Linux no problem, they are paying their membership fee
after all. The Linux foundation is effectively the "Megacorps Linux user
group". Its executive director Jim Zemlin famously doesn't use Linux himself.

------
bsimpson
His arguments are really weak. He uses both SPDY and QUIC as examples of
Google behaving badly. From my perception, Google basically said "this major
web standard is inefficient. If we make these changes, the network is faster
(especially for people with poor connectivity." They validated those
hypotheses with real traffic on real devices over real networks, and then
proposed standards based on that work. The standards bodies started there, and
made adaptations until there was consensus, and new standards were minted.

What part of that is bad?

------
cageface
_As another example, YouTube uses a feature called HTML imports to load
scripts. HTML imports haven 't been widely adopted, either by developers or
browsers alike, and ECMAScript modules are expected to serve the same role.
But they're available in Chrome and used by YouTube._

At least in this particular case my understanding was that Google was pushing
for the adoption of HTML imports as a web standard, which would have been
better for all browsers, but other browser vendors balked and Google was
forced to use JS module imports instead. AFAIK I know they are now
discouraging any further use of HTML imports. This is a bummer because it's
not possible to leverage web components without JS now.

I'm concerned about a web monoculture too but so far Google has mostly done a
good job IMO. Even Mozilla has done some pretty dumb things when it comes to
web standards (unilaterally killing WebSQL, for example). I certainly can't
think of any other big tech company I'd prefer to see calling the shots on the
web.

~~~
JeremyBanks
WebSQL's SQL spec was literally:

> User agents must implement the SQL dialect supported by Sqlite 3.6.19.

That's only a "standard" in the way that "Chromium-compatible" is becoming a
standard.

~~~
cageface
Yeah this was the argument at the time. I still think it would have been
better to formalize that spec instead of just pull indexdb out of some
unmentionable orifice.

------
jhuni
The problem is that maintaining a browser engine is enormously expensive.
There are so many features you need to maintain, security issues to deal with,
etc. In the past Microsoft made money off of their operating system, and they
made Internet explorer then Edge off of that, but now they make money off of
the cloud and clients expect people to support Chrome. Microsoft was spending
too much money they didn't need to for return. I think because of the
expensiveness of maintaining a browser engine used by so many people, they
were destined to be basically a natural monopoly operated by a few concerned
actors. Of course, google as one of the two major internet giants, is the most
concerned with supporting the development of a web browser.

------
jeromebaek
> even if Google takes Chromium in a direction that Microsoft disagrees with
> or opposes, Microsoft will have little option but to follow along
> regardless.

I keep seeing arguments like this and it doesn't make sense to me. Help me
understand. My impression is that since Chromium is open-source Google cannot
have a monopolistic wield over it. And now the fact that a bunch of Microsoft
engineers will be contributing to Chromium seems to imply that Google and
Microsoft will have the same amount of muscle mass to struggle for control.
For example if Google tries to make a change in Chromium that will break
Microsoft's products Microsoft can quickly respond to this. So why is the
argument that Microsoft is ceding the web to Google, rather than trying to
wrest back? To me it seems like the latter is at least as plausible as the
former.

~~~
jcranmer
Google effectively has the right to veto patches into Chromium. In the worst
case, Google could fork Chromium, and since Google controls the build
artifacts, in a dispute between Google and Microsoft, it's Google who wields
the power.

~~~
vbezhenar
How is it Google? Anyone could just fork Chromium and do anything about it,
it's open source after all. Microsoft could buy people from Google if they
wanted to, they probably could buy an entire Chrome team. Google has some
control over Chromium engine right now, but this control is fragile. It's the
same control that Oracle has over MySQL. Abuse it and you'll have MariaDB
instantly. Abuse Java control and you'll have plenty of companies forked Java
and ready to provide real LTS for Java 8. It'll be the same for Chromium.

The best outcome would be to have some Non-commercial organization funded by
Google, Microsoft, Yandex and other big players who benefit from Chromium
which would have some kind of independence. But current situation is not that
bad.

There are other things than just source code license. May be Google has
patents for Chromium sources and could use them to forbid fork? Then it's a
bad situation but I didn't heard about that point of view yet.

~~~
jacques_chester
Your examples of successful forks are due to branding amongst technologists,
who understand the concept of a fork and who were following the most-trusted
of the descendents (another example being Hudson and Jenkins).

Consumer brands are not as easy to fork. If Coca-Cola opensourced their recipe
and then faced a fork by Examplesucre, I don't think anyone will really be
betting against Coke.

Similarly, the longevity of mainline integrity for Linux relies heavily on the
fact that it is a trademark and that the trademark holder (Linus) is trusted
with it. Fork Linux as much as you please, basically nobody will care.

Google's power over Chromium comes from its power over Chrome. If you don't
think that's true, fork it yourself and prove us all wrong.

~~~
microtherion
> Fork Linux as much as you please, basically nobody will care.

Last I heard, Android was doing OK…

Similarly, I should think that Microsoft still has considerable clout in what
browser Windows users will use by default (although I'm not sure what exact
legal restrictions they currently have to observe re: bundling of browsers).

~~~
jacques_chester
Android is a better example of forking Java, to be honest.

------
nyrulez
People want innovation but ultimately they don't want companies to profit off
them. In the beginning, everyone loved Google. Now that their innovation gap
has increased so much over their peers for some areas, the consequences of
that are starting to sting. I am not sure what people would prefer: for them
to be less competent or to not to profit from it?

The truth is Chrome and their web team has been amazing in advancing and
supporting web standards. (except AMP which is pretty bad in some aspects)

~~~
thesephist
I think a less cynical way to phrase your (correct) idea is that people love
the promise of profit as an incentive to create innovation. It's not a fully
self consistent system. But the end goal isn't profit imo, it's innovation,
and competition via promise of profit is a way to efficiently allocate
resources to innovate. For what it's worth, I think the general arc of
antitrust rulings bend toward the ideal over time and it's a fine enough way
to deal with the self inconsistency.

------
zeckalpha
Don’t forget where Chromium came from. KHTML lead to Safari lead to Chrome
which lead to Chromium. It’s been forked and obounced from open source to
corporation to corporation to open source.

~~~
ajross
All thanks to the LGPLv2, I guess? Maybe we should have handed the internet
over to RMS.

~~~
utopcell
That'd be a nightmare.

~~~
snaky
Ads would be not as perfectly targeted as they are now?

~~~
utopcell
They probably would, they'd just be named GNU / Ads.

------
ori_b
Which one should we have handed the web over to?

~~~
sonnyblarney
It's the 'One Ring To Rule Them All' problem.

They are fine until you hand it over to them and then they are a problem :)

The pragmatic answer is firewalls between layers (i.e. browser separate from
search), and competition in layers, plus decent legislation, plus some degree
of decentralization.

~~~
utopcell
> The pragmatic answer is firewalls between layers (i.e. browser separate from
> search), and competition in layers, plus decent legislation, plus some
> degree of decentralization.

A long-form way for saying 'unusable'.

------
PinkMilkshake
Just a hypothetical.

Is it possible the way to fix this issue is to actually have all vendors do
the same thing.

Should all the vendors including Mozilla switch to Chromium and then fork it,
couldn't we look at this as a "rebasing" of the Web?

If the forks are true hard forks, then we shouldn't necessarily end up in a
situation where one vendor has more power than the other.

On the contrary, all vendors would now be on an even footing with the same
strong, highly-compatible core engine.

All the issues people have with Firefox and Edge would no longer be relevant,
and the only thing left to judge one company from another would be their
value-add services or their ethics.

~~~
aylmao
The problem isn't really who has the engine itself-- I'd say for most
purposes, most browsers are about as good for 99% of workflows.

It's more of the forces and plays each company has around their browser
strategy.

IE wasn't the best browser and didn't have the best engine, but it came
bundled with Windows and was free. Firefox was a better browser by some
metrics back then, in spite of having a company with less resources backing
it.

Today, Chrome isn't the best and doesn't come bundled with devices, but
Chrome-only sites are starting to appear (YouTube TV notoriously was Chrome-
only until just this August [1]. This article lists Google Meet and Google
Earth as other Chrome-only sites, at least at launch [2].

Moreover, you hear stories like these [3]:

> "I very recently worked on the Edge team, and one of the reasons we decided
> to end EdgeHTML was because Google kept making changes to its sites that
> broke other browsers, and we couldn't keep up. For example, they recently
> added a hidden empty div over YouTube videos that causes our hardware
> acceleration fast-path to bail (should now be fixed in Win10 Oct update).
> Prior to that, our fairly state-of-the-art video acceleration put us well
> ahead of Chrome on video playback time on battery, but almost the instant
> they broke things on YouTube, they started advertising Chrome's dominance
> over Edge on video-watching battery life."

So even if all browser engines were to be hard-forks of the same, each one
would be developed different, and each company would play their cards
differently to try to gain or maintain dominance. Google being such a big web
company makes it difficult to compete against.

[1]: [https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/5/17203192/youtube-tv-
google...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/5/17203192/youtube-tv-google-
firefox-browser-support-chrome-update-streaming)

[2]: [https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/4/16805216/google-chrome-
onl...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/4/16805216/google-chrome-only-sites-
internet-explorer-6-web-standards)

[3]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18697824](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18697824)

~~~
ryl00
> Today, Chrome isn't the best and doesn't come bundled with devices,

I think you're forgetting the largest smartphone OS on the planet there. :)

~~~
aylmao
Ah sorry, that's true. I take my statement back. Also, yikes, that's even more
leverage for Google.

------
Waterluvian
It feels kind of like a... Truism? Maybe that's the word?

Any company large enough to "hand the web over to" isn't a company we want to
be handing the web over to.

------
Aeolun
Google was the company I trusted to hand the internet at some point in time.

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
Hopefully you (and others who thought similarly) have finally learned the
lesson that dictatorship is never the solution.

~~~
Aeolun
A benevolent dictatorship is really, really great and effective. It just never
lasts :/

------
the_other_guy
Yet I'd choose Google over Facebook, Apple, Microsoft or Amazon every time if
I have to. Even though monopoly is always worse than competition, Google has
managed to advance the web experience using Chrome/Chromium (e.g. V8, pushing
HTTPS, supporting the latest CSS and JS features, GQUIC, WebP)

EDIT: to downvoters, what's your argument here?

~~~
sonnyblarney
Yes, we can trash Google but I can't think of many others who'd be better.
Imagine if GM, Ford, Exxon or Dow Chemical ran the show :)

~~~
the_other_guy
It seems people keep complaining that Google is "evil" but they forgot that
until only a couple of decades ago, the business world was ruled by oil,
banking and finance ultra selfish assholes who had no shame to bring their own
countries and even the world if possible to its knees to make profits.

~~~
Jedi72
People also forget that when those companies were young they were hailed as
tech innovators who brought economic prosperity, not evil monopolists
destroying the planet with their unintended consequences. That part comes
after

------
dmourati
What is Edge?

~~~
JohnL4
Microsoft's replacement for IE, now with less horrible.

