1. "Lil' indie dev can make an engine" is irrelevant in terms of standards or browser/engine marketshare unless he can obtain significant browser/engine marketshare. He can't. So framing the current state of the browser engine market/"monopolies" as a barriers-to-entry problem with engine/standards complexity is completely nonsensical. Especially when engines are fully open-source.
2. Super-simple engines that any indie can solo-code means disregarding 95% of feature demands by web developers (your audience, remember?), even basic things like encryption, video/audio streaming, chatting, conferencing, that users (your "actual" audience) expects and demands. It means killing basically every part of the web that isn't text documents, which means turning everything else into native apps beholden to their own monopolies, that are mostly crappy (contractor-made, less sandboxed/secure than on the current web). That's also nonsensical, if your objective is "consumers". And it means making every company's revenue dependent on Apple/Google/MS instead of a web domain they control.
Really you should examine your assumptions and logic far more thoroughly.
> "Lil' indie dev can make an engine" is irrelevant in terms of standards or browser/engine marketshare unless he can obtain significant browser/engine marketshare. He can't.
How is market share relevant?
What would be wrong with designing simple web standards and as a result having 1000 options each with 0.1% market share?
> Super-simple engines that any indie can solo-code
This is a straw man.
> video/audio streaming
There used to be browser plugins for things like this.
> web developers (your audience, remember?)
> users (your "actual" audience)
Which is it?
Catering almost exclusively to web developers, as the browsers have done, unfortunately, is not in the best interest of web users.
> native apps beholden to their own monopolies, that are mostly crappy (contractor-made, less sandboxed/secure than on the current web)
This is false.
> And it means making every company's revenue dependent on Apple/Google/MS
This is true regardless, native or web.
And people like the article author like to claim that Apple is forcing companies to write native apps, but notice that on Android, where there are alternative web browser engines, these same companies still write native apps. That's not because WebKit is bad, because WebKit is irrelevant on Android. Rather, it's because smartphone browsing is generally inconvenient and also native apps offer some inherent advantages over web pages.
To be clear, monopolies are bad, both for operating systems and for web browsers. But turning web browsers into operating systems won't break the current monopolies, because it's the same companies in either case.
The unfettered market has failed. We really need democratic governments to break up the monopolies. Whether that will happen or not remains to be seen.
> instead of a web domain they control.
Do you even "control" a web domain? Web browsers can throw scary warnings over http and force you to adopt https certificates. Then the web browsers can decided which certificate vendors to trust or distrust. And all the web browsers have so-called "safe browsing" that can arbitrarily decide, with no warning and no resource, that your domain is unsafe.
Market share is relevant to your argument because it determines the standards that determine engine complexity.
> turning web browsers into operating systems won't break the current monopolies, because it's the same companies in either case
False. Linux is a perfectly great mainstream desktop option thanks largely to web apps (+Electron). Basically everything's available. How incredible is that? Or swap Linux with any other alternative.
The fact is you can make an indie engine right now. It won't support most of the web, but then again you don't want any of that to exist because of the additional barriers to entry for engines. So what's the problem? Make it.
In your world, somehow every platform vendor stops making web browsers, and we might have a bunch of browsers with 0.1% marketshare. How? Ludicrous. And proprietary browser plugins, really? So you're not looking to reduce complexity after all, then?
> Market share is relevant to your argument because it determines the standards that determine engine complexity.
I talked about two different things, (1) what is and (2) what should be.
(1) "The web standards bodies are a joke now because of the dominance of these few companies over web browsers". (2) "the web standards should be so simple that a little indie developer could write a full-fledged web browser."
You appear to be criticizing (2) by assuming (1), but (1) is the opposite of (2). The latter is an ideal, not the sad reality.
> Linux is a perfectly great mainstream desktop option
Linux is not a mainstream desktop option, because consumers can't walk into a computer retailer and buy a desktop running Linux. That's why Linux has a practically nonexistent consumer market share.
Of course techies can run Linux, though I wouldn't call Electron apps "great" by any measure.
> In your world, somehow every platform vendor stops making web browsers, and we might have a bunch of browsers with 0.1% marketshare. How? Ludicrous.
It was purely a hypothetical scenario. The point of the hypothetical scenario was to explain why market share shouldn't be relevant to standards (as I also explained at the beginning of this comment).
> And proprietary browser plugins, really?
They were in fact not all proprietary and are not necessarily proprietary.
What's wrong with modularity? Some software vendors can specialize in HTML/CSS, some in video, etc.
> Again I don't think you've thought it through.
You can disagree with me, but these continuing, unnecessary, personal, condescending comments are in violation of the HN guidelines. Please stop.
Do you have any arguments that are not? The article presents actual evidence, whereas you seem to be intent on littering this thread with hypothetical counter points and abstract versions of reality.
> > Again I don't think you've thought it through.
> You can disagree with me, but these continuing, unnecessary, personal, condescending comments are in violation of the HN guidelines. Please stop.
This is absurd, you need to stop invoking HN guidelines inappropriately just because someone (far more respectfully than me) disagrees with you. Grow up.
> This is absurd, you need to stop invoking HN guidelines inappropriately just because someone (far more respectfully than me) disagrees with you. Grow up.
I don't know how a discussion about browser engines ended up here, but please don't comment like this, no matter who or what you're responding to. You're a longtime user whom we've not had to warn for several years, but we need everyone to avoid behaving like this on HN. Longtime users should be the ones to de-escalate heated discussions and raise the standards on HN, not drag them downward.
> And proprietary browser plugins, really? So you're not looking to reduce complexity after all, then?
Maybe they haven't lived through the world of pain that was Silverlight, Flash and Java Applets et al. I suppose from a more innocent position without any history it might seem like a good idea to break complexity out into little modules, but the reality was poor integration, more platform lockin, and a security nightmare.
2. Super-simple engines that any indie can solo-code means disregarding 95% of feature demands by web developers (your audience, remember?), even basic things like encryption, video/audio streaming, chatting, conferencing, that users (your "actual" audience) expects and demands. It means killing basically every part of the web that isn't text documents, which means turning everything else into native apps beholden to their own monopolies, that are mostly crappy (contractor-made, less sandboxed/secure than on the current web). That's also nonsensical, if your objective is "consumers". And it means making every company's revenue dependent on Apple/Google/MS instead of a web domain they control.
Really you should examine your assumptions and logic far more thoroughly.