Becoming a separate for-profit company (as opposed to a nonprofit like Mozilla) could result in some really bad things. Chrome-the-company would have to find new sources of revenue; in the process, it would likely increase its tracking, and it might end up selling info to companies other than Google, which at least tends to hoard user data internally. It may also develop even more industry partnerships around things like DRM that aren't in the interest of users.
If Chrome could somehow be forcefully split off into a decently funded nonprofit, I'd be all for it. I'm not sure that anyone but Google could make that happen, though.
By doing like firefox, making money out of making google the default search engine. Which means their unique source of revenue (and client) would be google. Full circle...
> By doing like firefox, making money out of making google the default search engine. Which means their unique source of revenue (and client) would be google. Full circle...
However, a Chrome-with-Google-revenue would be far more independent of Google than Chrome-the-Google-Subsidiary. Mozilla/Firefox has shown that it's still possible to advance privacy even within such an arrangement.
Also, its far from clear who would have the most power in such an arrangement. Without a popular browser of its own, Google will be forced to pay the browser vendors to stay the default, unless it wants to give a search engine competitor a chance to unseat it.
It only seems like Mozilla is independent because they are the most independent - a truly independent browser would probably do something shocking, like bundling adblock.
Independence comes in degrees, and I'm not convinced a "truly independent" browser would by truly better for consumers. It'd need a revenue model, and its not clear to me what that would be besides bundling with a paid product or displaying banner and text ads.
Essentially Mozilla is selling ads, but only to one advertiser (Google) which is easy to disable.
Unfortunately keeping modern software secure is a full-time job. Internet browsers are just one giant attack surface. This is especially complicated by the speed at which the implementation of new features is required to keep a general audience interested. Unfortunately, a user like my mother wouldn't care how ideologically well-meaning a browser was if she couldn't use it for watching online media.
I recently went looking for a lightweight browser for an older linux box, and it was hard to find anything that didn't either bundle Chromium or just forego having Javascript at all.
Keeping up with modern web standards is pretty much an impossible job for a team of hobby developers on the basis of features alone ( WebGL, WebAssembly, DRM etc ), let alone security.
> This is especially complicated by the speed at which the implementation of new features is required to keep a general audience interested.
That may have been true 10 years ago, but now the feature set is so rich, that any new ones are really solutions in search of a problem rather than an actual user need. The average customer is pretty much using what Google dictates to get to the internet (used to be MS)
Nothing would change if the current feature set were kept constant
(except lots of HN's would be out of a job and Google might struggle to find new ways to show their ads)
> any new ones are really solutions in search of a problem rather than an actual user need
Not at all. App platforms aren't standing still, and one of the goals of web browsers is to make them as capable as app platforms while retaining the safety of the web sandbox.
That includes things like VR/AR, WebAssembly and extensions to it, Progressive Web Apps (PWAs), adjusting pages to match the system theming, better video formats, better authentication (Web Authentication), and a hundred other things people actually want.
I'm very sympathetic to your overall sentiment regarding utility of many of the new features. My point remains however, that even addressing the current feature set is monumental enough of a task. The Javascript standard has become complex enough to implement and maintain from a functionality point of view, let alone keeping it secure.
A good chunk of linux and related development is done by programmers being paid by some for-profit company in whose interest is it either to have those chunks developed or who want to keep their employees happy by letting them do open source contributions. Without this invisible injection of funds, linux development would slow down significantly and it might not remain competitive.
Browsers are a lot less modular than operating systems and they operate in a different market (eg. contributing to their development doesn't help the bottom line of any company particularly), so Firefox doesn't get a lot of paid for third-party developer time. Hence, Mozilla makes unfortunate compromises.
Only in the same way that Gmail and Android are "subsidized" by Google. They're sources of data and play directly into how they generate revenue.
I agree that without those motivations it would be hard to fund these projects without them going paid or taking donations, but I take issue with calling them "subsidized".
