I respect your opinion but honestly fragmentation sucks. I wish there was even more consolidation - ever use a power drill? 7 different battery types non compatible with each other.
On a related note I’m happy usb seems to be the general connector winner (though it’s certainly not without fault).
What would the average consumer gain if there were say, 10 different browser engines equally popular?
Chromium is open source and you can easily disable features you disagree with. Don’t see the downside. Fork it and add functionality you’d like, like Brave.
I'm finding it hard to give you the benefit of the doubt because it really sounds like you're advocating for a Google monopoly, which doesn't help anyone. Sure having a bunch of different battery types is annoying but in that case either you should find a brand you trust and stick with them, or brands have fragmentation within themselves which is a different issue altogether. The "fragmentation" you're talking about here is competition though, there isn't really any downside to having a bunch of different popular browsers and the upside is that none of them get to do anything crazy knowing there's no serious alternative so you can't leave. Google is already invasive of privacy, I can only imagine it'd be even worse if they didn't feel like there was significant risk of people switching browsers because nothing else was popular.
I'd even argue that the battery issue is more complex than centralization/decentralization. Look at USB or RCS. If there is a political push or reason to capture a wide variety of users, then these things work better. (hand held) Tools have a different issue, which is brand loyalty, which allows manufacturers to create a lock-in environment (see Apple). If there was proper competition, then lock-in is very hard. I would bet that if there was a big market if you could create a universal adapter, battery, or tool. But the issue is that you'd need to create a lot of brand loyalty. There's so many cheap tools that perform terribly and break that this space helps reinforce the brand loyalty. But just because new comers have a large uphill battle doesn't mean it isn't possible. In fact see how LTT is tackling a few different products. Yes, premium, but they show it off and the perfectionist mindset is essential. Also helps that they already have a userbase and brand recognition.
We see similar issues with browsers actually. If other browsers could get name recognition, many would turn from Chromium. But I don't think that it helps that us nerds squabble about Brave v Google v Firefox and just call the one we don't like "trash" or "absolute garbage." Honestly, they are all fine.
But I would like to point out how there is a real world slippery slope. We all used to complain about how Apple products were too expensive for the hardware the sold. How the lock-in and fanboy-ism would affect the rest of the market. And that reality has come true (at least for phones). Apple sets a price and others follow. I don't really want a world where a singular company dictates how the web should work.
Google is not really the point. The point is that there’s a single standard. Doesn’t matter who’s it is to me.
> The "fragmentation" you're talking about here is competition though, there isn't really any downside to having a bunch of different popular browsers and the upside is that none of them get to do anything crazy knowing there's no serious alternative so you can't leave.
If this is your opinion then what difference does it make if there’s a monopoly? You can use Firefox or Safari no?
Not to mention chromium is open source. Anyone can fork it, like Brave in FTA. I don’t see any downsides, given that you can disable and features you object to.
An implementation isn't a standard, though... and the concern is that Google are using their dominance here to push more half-baked ideas (some of which they then discard, see HTTP2 Push)
There already was single standard. I think your point is that you want there to be a single implementation. You can't really have that at this point without allowing powerful commercial interests to basically have free reign over what code is executed on your computer.
> If this is your opinion then what difference does it make if there’s a monopoly?
The argument is against monopoly, even an effective one. Chrome has about 65% market share (88.5% in India), I'd call that an effective monopoly (especially considering all the chromium based browsers). Large enough to dictate how things should be done and people will follow because they have to. It doesn't matter that it is open source, it matters that there is too large of a userbase that decisions fall into the hands of few. It's not like Microsoft's Internet Explorer abused this in the past and we have no precedence or anything...
I guarantee you that this will only lead to a fracturing of the internet, especially considering it is a global network.
> Not to mention chromium is open source. Anyone can fork it, like Brave in FTA.
I don't think you understand what a fork truly means. Blink, the web browser engine used by Chromium is a fork of WebKit. WebKit and Blink are now completely separate browser engines made and maintained by different companies.
Meanwhile, Brave is a skin on top of Chromium. They've patched Chromium to their liking. You can read the first paragraph in the link to confirm this.
People are really underestimating what hard forking a behemoth project like Chromium really means. I don't think anyone besides Microsoft has the capability to do it and they've already given up on that prospect.
> ever use a power drill? 7 different battery types non compatible with each other.
OK, but do you think you would be well-served if this problem were solved by there being only ONE manufacturer of power drills, take what they give you at the price they charge or nothing?
It would be one way of solving the problem of lack of standardization of power drill batteries.
It is the analogy of what you are speaking in favor of by analogy.
The better solution might be multiple drill manufacturers agreeing on a battery standard to all use together, so their batteries can be interchangeable, but you still have your choice of different competing drill and battery manufacturers. What would be the analogy with browsers, do you think?
> OK, but do you think you would be well-served if this problem were solved by there being only ONE manufacturer of power drills, take what they give you at the price they charge or nothing?
Imagine having 20 different gas guzzling cars with 20 different proprietary fuel inlets. If you buy an Audi say, you'd have to go to the Audi refilling station.
> What would be the analogy with browsers, do you think?
There's no need for analogy -- we've experienced this in the past, e.g., MS ActiveX and other Internet Explorer bugs (or features). There's also the proprietary web, e.g. SilverLight and Flash, before HTML5 Canvas came along.
And then HTML5 was a branding effort. Browsers needed to support it to be marketable to the general public. Things just started working again without needing to install plugins or to keep plugins up to date (Flash) -- it was a better web.
The W3C could do this if the web gets too fragmented again.
What a strange argument. The diversity in cars helped set the universality in the gas port. The same thing is happening with electric vehicles. Yeah, there are some proprietary ones like Tesla, but as more manufacturers have gotten into the space there have become standards as companies realize that a standard charging port helps them beat Tesla (being a united force). Network effects are real.
My rebuttal is saying that your premise is bad and indicating why. I can't disagree with points because I disagree with the foundation you build your points on.
The point you seem to be missing is that Chromium isn't a standard.
If you want to reduce fragmentation while avoiding having one entity with too much control, the solution is fair setting of web standards and multiple browser implementations from different entities.
Requiring everyone to "just fork Chromium" would leave far too much power in the hands of Google (as if they didn't have far too much power already).
> ever use a power drill? 7 different battery types non compatible with each other.
Battery is the proprietary part. The engine (battery + motor) makes it spin, but for the purpose of making a hole or driving a screw one can use a wide array of standardized bits from various manufacturers. You may need an SDS adapter (one way or the other) and that's it. Same bits will even work with a hand cranked drill press built 100 years ago.
More browser engines does not imply standardization.
Would you prefer the 2000s when you had your choice of dozens of power connectors for cell phones?
There’s a reason the EU is mandating USB-C. Corporations have no reason and historically will not standardize amongst themselves for most things unless there’s a single winner.
They still screw you on batteries and indeed would do so harder if there were fewer companies. Instead of incompatible batteries per brand it would be per year.
Sorry sir that's a 2022 tool it can't use 2021 batteries.
You can either ask congress to establish a standard, start a power tool company that supports more brands with adapters, or basically suck it up because selling batteries way over cost is extremely profitable and nobody wants actual competition in that space.
The one thing you don't want is consolidation. Likewise you think you want consolidation among browser engines but you really don't because it gives the vendor future leverage to fuck you.
Fragmentation sucks, but code monopoly even more. A healthy ecosystem needs a plurality of implementations, or Chromium needs to come under committee control. (W3C? Something like the C++ standards committee.)
I'm glad there are multiple different power-tool manufacturers, and I'm not entirely sure there'd be as much competition if they were all forced to use one battery connector.
(You can buy adapters if you want, but it's generally not worth it).
Because the companies can develop different toolsets that do different things (the weight/power tradeoff for one, some battery connectors allow more than just voltage to cross, but also information and the tool can work with the charger/battery to produce better power), and for me the actual downsides have been minor or none.
Even construction guys often have a huge mix of various tool brand and battery types and it's sometimes a minor annoyance.
And you'll notice that AA batteries are almost universally ... gone; replaced with built-in batteries or custom-wrapped lithium batteries.
Standards are great when things are calmed down, but when there's rapid advance they can cause their own issues (we saw this in the wireless world). Even the electric charger for cars thing runs into the limits of the standard (the fastest charging is almost always non-standardized).
Having a "baseline" standard for those could be nice, something like we have with USB, but even that has its annoying problems.
> And you'll notice that AA batteries are almost universally ... gone; replaced with built-in batteries or custom-wrapped lithium batteries.
Ever open up a Dewalt battery pack? It's a circuit board and a whole bunch of 18650's. All of them are 3.7 V. What's different is the amount of power they supply and the energy they hold, how fast they can recharged, etc.
But we have that with the AA/A/C/D standard as well. Some batteries can hold more energy, some can deliver more current for a longer time, etc. NiCad, Alkaline, NiMh... etc.
On a related note I’m happy usb seems to be the general connector winner (though it’s certainly not without fault).
What would the average consumer gain if there were say, 10 different browser engines equally popular?
Chromium is open source and you can easily disable features you disagree with. Don’t see the downside. Fork it and add functionality you’d like, like Brave.