Chromium Browsers Preferencing *.google.com Domains

Gruber is a shmuck, of course he sees a problem with this and demands we need to better regulate gatekeepers when it's Google. Also, he thinks regulators are deciding if Chrome is winning? Consumers have spoken and overwhelmingly use Chromium browsers. Don't get me wrong, I mostly use Firefox forks myself, even on Android, but I am by far a minority. (Pssst, I'm posting this comment from WaterFox on Arch Linux at this very moment.) If it wasn't for Apple blocking all competitors on the platform, Chromium based browsers would have destroyed Safari's marketshare on iOS as well. What a dope.

Not defending Google here, not sure how I feel, I don't use Chrome at all, but dabble with some browsers like Vivaldi. Seems kind of sneaky, but I will read more of the linked articles.

Is anyone really surprised by this? Chrome is basically the new Internet Explorer, subverting and controlling web standards to the benefit of Google. (Although I think they're trying to skip the whole ActiveX malware vector part of being Internet Explorer.)

@Nathan_RETRO This makes me wonder about *why* Chrome is the most popular browser, because it's certainly not the best browser. Almost everyone I know who uses it, at least on the mac, complains their battery getting drained, even (especially) when they're not aware that Chrome is at fault. The only real advantage it has at this point is that, being so pervasive, it's usually the browser that's guaranteed to work on any given website. Again, it's like Internet Explorer.

The obvious answer is that Google leveraged their immense popularity to convince people to switch to their browser, and now it has tons of momentum. But I wonder what other factors there are. It would be even easier and lazier to just use Safari on a mac, and most users in my experience tend to take the most easy and obvious path in terms of how they use their computer or phone, and yet people still choose to switch to Chrome.

Embrace and Extend, all over again: support the web as a "standard", make the browser that supports the most said standards, then add your own shit, and gain an unfair advantage.

If this report is true, now that "google" has become a synonym of "search", they're doing the same with their search engine. I now use yandex whenever google & duckduckgo don't even find what I'm looking for, but everyone who's business depends on google will be in trouble.

The "open web" has now become "Facebook", "Google", the "App Store", "Twitter", etc. It's mostly censored. And more and more of it will becomes "the dark web". Not exactly what we had in mind in the early days.

@Bri
Maybe? I remain unconvinced it is the new Internet Explorer on desktop given IE was never an open source project, as far as I know, so it saw much less widespread adoption in forks. Yes, I know there were browsers that were wrappers around Trident, but not on the level you see Chromium based browsers or even Firefox forks. Nor is Chrome the default browsing option on most Linux, Mac, and Windows computers out of the box. Since almost every Chrome user went out of their way to install it on their desktop system, users have literally spoken when it comes to choice. Unlike IE which was the default web browser on not only Windows but for Mac OS for a time as well. Also, unlike IE, Chrome, for better or worse, is constantly iterating and constantly updating. Once Microsoft thought IE had won, development stagnated badly on IE. Also, technically most changes Chrome makes, again for better or worse, can be adopted into other browsers, unlike Active X extensions for example. See the new Manifest V3 extensions being integrated into Firefox. Which might be for the worse in many ways, but it's there.

However! I do think Google should open up this tool for any site to use if it's helpful for better performance and compatibility. If Google does not, then the EU can have at it when it comes to fining and/or sanctioning Google. That is perfectly swell actually. I don't think they have to open the tool to other web browsers, alas, but all sites should be on equal footing within the Chrome ecosystem. I do think Google has a greater level of control on the web than I prefer, but IE really was a whole other ball of wax. If you want to make the argument Chrome is so popular on mobile because of bundling of Chrome with every Google Android device, then I would agree with more of your points. And yes, mobile browsing is very important. I largely use Firefox (well, Mull) on Android with Vivaldi or Via as my backup.

As to battery life on Chrome vs Safari on Macs, every benchmark I see from the last couple years looks like 5% of less difference either way. So not sure what's going on. I don't use MacOS at the point, so I can only go by benchmarks, alas.

To clarify my use of Google:
I don't use Google search very often (it's not the default search on any of my devices).
I don't use the Chrome browser at all (as stated numerous times on this site, but I do occasionally use non Google Chromium based browsers).
I refuse to use ChromeOS as long as it remains largely a frontend for the Chrome browser.
I do use Gmail since I retain free domain hosting with Google.
I do use Android (but I disable/uninstall a lot of the Google apps and often use alternatives, even for Keyboard and voice to text).
I do find Google TV pretty good since you can turn off most of the distractions and simply have rows of apps to launch which is nice than what Roku has turned into and definitely nicer than FireOS. Having said that, I have one of those TVs and everything else right now has a Roku connected or built-in.
I do use Google DNS, but also Cloudflare and other options.

I use Chrome as a secondary browser basically because it works (as intended, by Google) and because Mozilla (and its FOSS disciples) are a bunch of sanctimonious, reactionary arseholes who will defend whatever anti-user feature Mozilla decides to include this week, regardless of the hideous misalignment of incentives that imperfectly (but meaningfully) impact the values they claim to hold. Because this is capitalism, and free-as-in-gratis doesn't put bread on the table, but shady dealings with ad-tech companies do. So you might as well use the technically superior option from Google, instead of the inferior option that's constantly playing catch-up while selling its users down the river at every opportunity and failing utterly to put up a fight to distinguish itself, culminating of course in ad-click attribution, a feature in Safari for which there is—and will continue to be—an off switch.

Christ, this keto diet is killing me.

It's funny how Gruber suddenly manages to understand the DMA when it applies to Google.

"This makes me wonder about *why* Chrome is the most popular browser"

Yeah, I'm wondering the same thing. Installing Chrome and then making in the default browser is not a trivial thing to do. I think part of it is that google.com suggests it to you, and another part is that a lot of people use Android, and there's incentive to install Chrome and use the same account on both your mobile phone and your desktop.

But still, it's kind of crazy that Google manages to maintain its market share against Safari and Edge, and it isn't really reflected in my observation of normal people. They seem to use Safari on Macs, and Edge on Windows.

Maybe one part of the skewed Chrome market share is caused by the fact that people who install Chrome are also very likely to use the Internet more often than people who stick to the default browsers.

@Plume I’m seeing a lot of Chrome use among “normal” people. I think it’s mostly about compatibility.

"The "open web" has now become "Facebook", "Google", the "App Store", "Twitter", etc"

Maybe we need to go back to the early days of manually curated search engines that focus on quality content generated by human beings.

Facebook is now full of AI-generated conspiracy theories, Twitter has become borderline unusable, it's now mainly just a bunch of nazis and Russian bots, App Store top sales lists are dominated by gambling and scams, more and more subreddits are invaded by AI-generated posts and comments. All platforms that primarily focus on recommendation algorithms are now essentially dead, they're full of bots yelling at each other, generating fake traffic that can be sold to stupid advertisers.

Even YouTube is starting to show signs of this.

The only "social network"-like recommendation website that still works perfectly well is Hacker News.

We need to stop surfacing these cancerous websites, and start surfacing self-hosted content written by human beings for other human beings again.

"I think it’s mostly about compatibility."

That makes some sense for Safari, but not so much for Edge.

@Plume I wonder whether that’s because Chrome had so much traction before Edge even existed.

@Plume Yeah, @Michael Tsai has it right, it is largely because it took so long for Edge to show up and then a while longer for it to start using Blink. I use one Windows device for personal use, a Surface Pro 3 that my daughter no longer needs given she has a slightly newer Surface Pro 6 we just picked up very inexpensively. On that SP3, I use Edge exclusively. I disable all the AI stuff, I never login to a Microsoft account, and I don't use Bing for search.

I wanted to really like K-Meleon, which is currently built on top of Goanna, a fork of Gecko, but YouTube uses far more CPU and about the same amount of ram compared to when it runs on Edge. I think it's a codec thing. Where YouTube is serving different ones to K-Meleon. I think for most basic web use, K-Meleon is a decent choice actually and you can really customize the interface, but Edge is already there so I use it most of the time instead. I know, I've shamed myself here. :)

I don't hate Safari, well, no I largely do hate Safari, I don't hate Webkit I should say, but since Apple is the biggest driver of Webkit development these days, it has suffered a bit. On the Mac, I'd rather use iCab than Safari. By far. Yes, I know the engine is the same.