| ▲ | jorvi 4 days ago |
| Google doesn't have control of Chromium though. The source is available and it is permissively licensed. If they did something truly onerous, Microsoft would fork it within hours and everyone would switch their upstream to Edgium. The only reason Google calls the shots is because they pour billions of dollars into maintaining Chromium. The fact that they can do that (and even fund Firefox at the same time) is because of their ad monopoly. Same with search, Gmail, Translate, Maps. None of those things can exist without the ad monopoly funding it all. Complaining about Chrome is barking up the wrong tree. |
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| ▲ | latexr 4 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| > If they did something truly onerous It would very unlikely be something which would affect Microsoft’s bottom line. They wouldn’t care. > and everyone would switch their upstream to Edgium. Who’s “everyone”? Anyone who cares minimally about possible shenanigans in Chromium is already selectively merging changes. Edge aggressively sets itself as the default browser and slurps information from Chrome without permission. Edge and Microsoft are not and will not be a saviour from Google and Chrome. |
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| ▲ | mossTechnician 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Anyone who tries to push changes to Chromium will quickly find Google does control it. |
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| ▲ | jonplackett 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | And look at how Adblock has gone | |
| ▲ | zaphar 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I think you missed the point here. Forking is and always has been a totally viable hedge against any other parties control in an Open Source product. Google can't force Microsoft to take it as it is with no input because Microsoft can absolutely fork. Just like Apple and Google forked from each other. The real difficulty is that you need someone with large pockets to fund any forks if those forks are going to be viable. And that is due to the complexity of the web as a platform. | | |
| ▲ | glenstein 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | The person they're replying to straight up claimed "Google doesn't have control over Chromium", which to me reads most naturally as treating the unforked code base as a community project where anyone can submit commits. As you noted, I don't think forking and maintaining a Google sized code base is a realistic alternative. But by the same token, I don't think that the possibility of forking said code base is what people typically mean by not having control. | |
| ▲ | latexr 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Just like Apple and Google forked from each other. “Each other”? Google forked from Apple; Apple forked from KDE, not Google. |
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| ▲ | WhyNotHugo 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > Google doesn't have control of Chromium though. They do. If they merge DRM into it tomorrow or something alike, it trickles down to all users of Chromium and Google Chrome. You can build _a fork_ of it. But the enormous majority of the masses don’t use your fork — they use upstream. |
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| ▲ | drakythe 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Chromium is upstream of Chrome, not the other way around. However, Google Chrome is so ubiquitous that any changes Google makes to it are expected to be available in all other browsers and its a kind of defacto control even if it isn't technically control of the upstream Chromium project. | | |
| ▲ | immibis 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | In practical reality, Chromium is a downstream less-googled fork of Chrome. First they decide what they want to put into Chrome, and then they put the less-googled parts of that into Chromium. | | |
| ▲ | drakythe 4 days ago | parent [-] | | While I agree with you, as indicated by my comment about Google having de facto control, the terms upstream or downstream when discussing forking an open source codebase has specific meaning. Chromium is not a downstream forked that has ripped all the google pieces out. It is the upstream codebase that Google then builds all their telemetry and other Google shenanigans into. If we're discussing someone else forking Chromium because hypothetically Google decided to once again Be Evil it is important to understand, from a technical standpoint, that the fork comes from code before Google does their stuff and not after. Ripping all of google's tendrils out would be a monumental undertaking. Building a similar browser from before Google bakes in their telemetry is infinitely easier and more trustworthy in my opinion. | | |
| ▲ | cosmic_cheese 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Some of the "evil" isn't the Google stuff, but rather "standards" that Google is pushing or dropping support for without the support of the other members of the consortium and just as present in Chromium as it is in Chrome. | |
| ▲ | immibis 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | "upstream" and "downstream" is about the direction changes flow. Changes flow from Chrome into Chromium. The fact they arrive in the Chromium repository before they arrive in a public release of Chrome is not relevant. | | |
| ▲ | dpranke 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Context: I worked on Chrome for 15 years (until June) and am still a Chromium committer. I am probably as familiar with how development in Chrome actually works as anyone (at least as of a couple months ago). It is correct that Google can and does decide that some features should remain private before they are developed. However, there are significant logistic and cultural hurdles to keeping something private, and as a result it's really only possible in certain parts of the codebase. Sometimes things that have been developed in private are eventually made public, and Chrome devs will often call that "upstreaming", but I think that's not really the same thing as what most people are talking about when they use the words upstream and downstream. And these instances are fairly uncommon in the history of the project. Otherwise, IMO it is not really correct to say that changes flow from Chrome into Chromium. Nearly all development is done in the public repos and so they would be available simultaneously for either build. There aren't really official releases of Chromium per se, but a full build of Chromium containing a given change is basically always available before the corresponding full build of Chrome. There may be very rare exceptions for security fixes that are shipped before they are made public, but it would actually pretty hard to land such a change so I doubt it's happened more than a few times. So, more generally speaking, in my opinion it's not really useful to talk about "upstream" and "downstream" for Chrome and Chromium, definitely not in the day-to-day sense. Chrome and Chromium are multi-repo projects, and there is only ever a single copy of a particular repo that is used for either. The same branches in a given repo are used for both Chrome and Chromium at any point in time. There is a main branch and release branches, and most of the time (but not always) a change will land in the main branch before a release branch. But I don't think most people would call "main" upstream of "release" in that sense. [ There are rare situations where Google will develop experiments on a private branch of a repo, but those don't usually end up getting shipped to anyone. ] This is different from how (most of?) the other Chromium-based browsers operate, where my understanding is that they usually do have true forks of (some of) the repos and changes flow downstream from the Google-maintained ones to ones under their control in the normal sense of the word. |
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| ▲ | glenstein 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I didn't take them to be suggesting that, and I don't think it makes any difference to the point they're making. Google controls commits to Chromium which then make it into Chrome. They do have technical control over the upstrean Chromium project. There's an invite only pool of developers who decide what gets committed to Chromium and they are Google employees. |
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| ▲ | ammar2 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > Microsoft would fork it within hours I haven't trudged through Chromium's commit statistics but has Microsoft been upstreaming many contributions? I'm skeptical that they are ready to take on the full brunt of Chromium maintenance on a whim, it would take a decent while to build up the teams and expertise for it. |
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| ▲ | FinnKuhn 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Before they swapped Edge over to use Chromium they were capable of maintaining their own engine just fine. Probably not overnight, but in the past they have shown that they have the budget to support a browser engine if they want to. | | |
| ▲ | fabrice_d 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Why do you think they moved to Chromium then? They switched because they could not support a competitive engine by themselves. | | |
| ▲ | pseudosavant 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Because no amount of money was going to solve the problem of people saying they think Microsoft's browser is slower/worse/etc. Switching to Chromium negated that in a way nothing else could. When Microsoft beat Netscape with IE, it was by building a far better browser. Google is a stronger competitor than Netscape ever was though. Without Google dropping the ball (like Netscape), Microsoft would never exceed Chrome's performance by enough to be the fastest, most compatible (with Chrome), etc. It is also just classic Microsoft when they are hungry. Like making Word use WordPerfect files and keyboard shortcuts. Only today it is that their browser is mostly Google, Linux is built into Windows 11, SQL Server ships on Linux, and their most popular IDE is open-source built on open tech (Electron) they didn't create. When they get threatened, nothing is too sacred for Microsoft to kill or adopt. | | |
| ▲ | thewebguyd 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | We have enough people of working age now that hasn't lived through the Microsoft of old and don't remember what they can/could do. Microsoft firing on all cylinders, when they want to, is a terrifying force. | |
| ▲ | zem 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I feel like they burnt enough browser goodwill with IE that no one who was on the internet back then wants to touch a microsoft browser regardless of the engine |
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| ▲ | sarlalian 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | They are on the record about why they switched to a chromium based browser. It’s been a while, but if I’m remembering correctly, at the time Google was making changes to YouTube to make it actively slower, and use more power on IE. Microsoft realized that while they could compete as a browser, they couldn’t compete and fight google trying to do underhanded things to sabotage their browser. | |
| ▲ | FinnKuhn 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Because they could archive the same product using chromium with less cost. Should that change their investment in that area would probably increase as a consequence. | | |
| ▲ | fabrice_d 4 days ago | parent [-] | | No, because using Chromium was the only way the could stay relevant in the browser space. They were just unable to build the same product with their own stack. | | |
| ▲ | pjmlp 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Unable is not the right reason, more like management wasn't willing to fund the team as it needed. Just like management doesn't a F about the state of UWP, WinUI and anything related to it. |
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| ▲ | bee_rider 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | They were facing the same problem that everybody is—Google adds features too fast to keep up. If Google went in a bad direction with Chrome, they’d Microsoft would just have to keep up with Mozilla and Apple. |
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| ▲ | dpranke 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Yes, Microsoft actively contributes to Chromium. Microsoft lands many changes in Chromium first before they show up in Edge (logistically it's easier to do things this way for merging reasons), but they do also upstream changes to Chromium that show up in Edge first. |
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| ▲ | glenstein 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| >Google doesn't have control of Chromium though. There's a tightly controlled pool of developers who make up the decision-making body about which commits get approved. That pool is dominated by Google employees so they effectively control whether something gets committed. So it's not open in the sense that would be most people's first impression, which is that anyone can contribute code to the project and see it realized. You'd have to fork it and maintain a Google sized code base. >Complaining about Chrome is barking up the wrong tree. I don't see how that follows. Google disproportionately invests in a browser, controls it and with it much of the destiny of the web. The fact that Google is leveraging their ad monopoly to create and maintain a dominant browser is the issue. At least, it's an issue. The ad monopoly powers their control over the web and vice versa. |
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| ▲ | charcircuit 4 days ago | parent [-] | | >You'd have to fork it and maintain a Google sized code base. As opposed to maintaining an alternate google size code base of a non-chromium browser? | | |
| ▲ | glenstein 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Webkit is ~10% as big as Chromium and Ladybird and Netsurf are less than 1%. |
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| ▲ | cosmic_cheese 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Even if that’s true, are we going to see Google’s dominance in the ad space meaningfully curbed? It seems highly unlikely at best, and it doesn’t matter how loud any of us are barking (at least until there’s a massive shift in political headwinds). Until that’s addressed, Chrome being dominant is a problem, because Google has created an “open moat” with their resource expenditure. Microsoft sure as hell isn’t going to be able to justify that kind of spend on their Chromium fork, and so their influence will never be of note. |
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| ▲ | jorvi 4 days ago | parent [-] | | > Even if that’s true, are we going to see Google’s dominance in the ad space meaningfully curbed? > (at least until there’s a massive shift in political headwinds) It did look like it for a while with the US its antitrust action and the EU also taking aggressive action. But then Google kissed the ring and the DoJ pulled back it's recommendation of Google divesting DoubleClick, and the EU lost the staredown with Trump and made their measures toothless too. Who knows what will happen in the 2030s though. If the Democrats get into power again, I'm sure they'll remember how big tech switched up on them and there will be a serious reckoning. |
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| ▲ | jessikat 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Except they do. One just has to look at the inability to keep JPEG-XL mainlined in Chromium. Sure, some forks still have JPEG-XL, but it's effectively gone at this point. |
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| ▲ | immibis 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Nobody worth mentioning to big corporations uses Chromium. |
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| ▲ | epistasis 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| > Microsoft would fork it within hours and everyone would switch their upstream to Edgium. Why would people trust Microsoft more than Google, though? Even with really bad actions, switching browsers is very difficult (i.e. it requires making an active choice and change about an obscure topic) and I don't see normal people doing it, which is what would be required for this to happen. Microsoft can't get any traction for Edge even with the pushiness on their OS and massive market share. I recently installed Windows 11 on a box and even searching for Chrome had the top portion of the screen show "You don't need a different browser!" at the top of Bing. Did that stop me? No. Not going to use a Microsoft browser, thanks. |
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| ▲ | doublerabbit 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Edge solely exists to keep the Windows OS bundled with their own browser. My 70 year old mother doesn't want the faff of installing Firefox so Edge fits the bill. It provides for her, her needs. I've installed Firefox and it sits untouched. Microsoft doesn't care if people use it or not. It's easier and cheaper for them to integrate as Chromium does than it is to upkeep Trident. It's not their business too. My take to why they chose Chromium is that Firefox (Netscape) has always been seen as an independent rebel. Microsoft is corporate as is Google. I'm sure some backhand deals too. | | |
| ▲ | cosmic_cheese 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > Why they chose Chromium and not Firefox? Firefox has always been independent whereas as Microsoft is corporate as is Google. At least my take on it. I'm sure some backhand deals too. I don't have any more insight than any other commenter, but in my estimation a major factor is how practical the browser is to fork. By the time Microsoft switched to a Chromium base for edge, creating and maintaining a Chromium fork with meaningfully different UI was fairly well-trodden ground because it had been done several times already, whereas almost nobody had forked Firefox (except for toggle some flags or keep the UI frozen in time). The one countervailing example, Brave, also switched to Chromium for similar reasons. Additionally, this was the beginning of the arc of working overtime to court web developers that it's still in the midst of. By shuttering Chakra (the old Edge rendering engine) and switching to Blink, Microsoft improved its reputation with web devs. | |
| ▲ | baq 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Edge has windows-integrated o parental controls which Firefox lacks entirely and Chrome has its own implementation of. Non-parents probably have no reason to care, but edge has an advantage in Microsoft households. | | |
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