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Google isn't the company that we should have handed the Web over to
Back in 2009, Google introduced SPDY, a proprietary replacement for HTTP that addressed what Google saw as certain performance issues with existing HTTP/1.1. Google wasn't exactly wrong in its assessments, but SPDY was something of a unilateral act, with Google responsible for the design and functionality. SPDY was adopted by other browsers and Web servers over the next few years, and Google's protocol became widespread.
[...] The same story is repeating with HTTP/3. In 2012, Google announced a new experimental protocol, QUIC, intended again to address performance issues with existing HTTP/1.1 and HTTP/2. Google deployed QUIC, and Chrome would use QUIC when communicating with Google properties. Again, QUIC became the basis for IETF's HTTP development, and HTTP/3 uses a derivative of QUIC that's modified from and incompatible with Google's initial work.
It's not just HTTP that Google has repeatedly worked to replace. Google AMP ("Accelerated Mobile Pages") is a cut-down HTML combined with Google-supplied JavaScript designed to make mobile Web content load faster. This year, Google said that it would try to build AMP with Web standards and introduced a new governance model that gave the project much wider industry oversight.
A person claiming to be a former Microsoft Edge developer has written about a tactic Google supposedly used to harm the competing browser's performance:
A person claiming to be a former Edge developer has today described one such action. For no obvious reason, Google changed YouTube to add a hidden, empty HTML element that overlaid each video. This element disabled Edge's fastest, most efficient hardware accelerated video decoding. It hurt Edge's battery-life performance and took it below Chrome's. The change didn't improve Chrome's performance and didn't appear to serve any real purpose; it just hurt Edge, allowing Google to claim that Chrome's battery life was actually superior to Edge's. Microsoft asked Google if the company could remove the element, to no avail.
The latest version of Edge addresses the YouTube issue and reinstated Edge's performance. But when the company talks of having to do extra work to ensure EdgeHTML is compatible with the Web, this is the kind of thing that Microsoft has been forced to do.
See also: Ex Edge developer blames Google tricks in part for move to Chromium
Related: HTTP/2 on its Way In, SPDY on its Way Out
Google Touts QUIC Protocol
Google Attempting to Standardize Features of Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
Google AMP Can Go To Hell
The Next Version of HTTP Won't be Using TCP
HTTP/3 Explained: A Work in Progress
Microsoft Reportedly Building a Chromium-Based Web Browser to Replace Edge, and "Windows Lite" OS
Mozilla CEO Warns Microsoft's Switch to Chromium Will Give More Control of the Web to Google
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bradley13 on Tuesday December 18 2018, @12:55PM (2 children)
Wow, just about the first time ever: a question in an article title, where the answer is "yes".
Allow me to digress: I just discovered another way that Google and stupid UX designers haved screwed up again. Go to Google Maps. Zoom in on a town until some business pops up, one that has a website. Click on the little bubble, and information about the business displays in the sidebar. Part of this information will be the web address of the business. So far so good. Now, imagine you actually want to visit that web address. I know of two ways that this should work. If you don't want to risk losing the current web page, you right-click on the link and choose "open in new tab". This does not work. They've buried that natural and obvious functionality under some stupid Javascript. You can't even just copy the link address, so as to paste it into a tab.
I don't like Quic, I don't like AMP, I don't like any single company with the power to force through changes to protocols and web standards. Google now has that power - of course they will abuse it, just like Microsoft did back in the days of IE6. It doesn't even have to be deliberate - simple carelessness by a bull will destroy the china shop, whether or not the bull intends harm.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by crafoo on Tuesday December 18 2018, @01:40PM (1 child)
Javascript was a mistake.
We need a web standards committee that has an open and free web as it's core goal.
The web browser should not be a second-class OS.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday December 18 2018, @03:06PM
Don't worry, in time some new type of standardized vendor neutral platform will emerge that runs on top of all of the web browsers.
Then corporations will fight over it, one will win, and then some newer open platform will be developed which runs on top of the previous platform.
Eventually you have turtles all the way down.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.