SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Mozilla's CEO is not enthusiastic about Microsoft's switch to Chromium:
When Microsoft announced that its Edge browser would be revamped using Chromium, the internet's response was generally quite positive. Edge is far from the worst browser on the planet, but it's certainly not what we'd call a fan favorite. As such, even the slightest indication that it could be changed significantly would have been welcome news for many.
However, it would seem that "many" doesn't include one individual in particular: Mozilla CEO Chris Beard. In a blog post published today, titled "Goodbye, EdgeHTML," Beard expressed his frustrations with Microsoft's decision.
"By adopting Chromium, Microsoft hands over control of even more of online life to Google," Beard writes in the post. "This may sound melodramatic, but it's not. The "browser engines" — Chromium from Google and Gecko Quantum from Mozilla — are "inside baseball" pieces of software that actually determine a great deal of what each of us can do online."
Microsoft's switch to Chromium could be a big boon for Google's own implementation.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday December 09 2018, @03:03PM (5 children)
Chrome/Chromium is open source. We already see multiple groups compiling the browser to remove Google's tracking, and advertising. It will be a simple task for Microsoft to compile the source code more to their liking, and distribute Chrome with their own "telemetry" and other bullshit.
The only thing that I see that won't be to Microsoft's liking, is the way IE was embedded into the OS. They'll have to reconsider the manner in which they exfiltrate data, and trigger functions within the OS.
If Microsoft is so incompetent that they give Google control of their OS by using a Chrome browser, then they deserve whatever happens.
(Score: 5, Informative) by tekk on Sunday December 09 2018, @05:17PM (4 children)
It's not the telemetry so much as control over the standards process. We're already at the point where step #1 of troubleshooting web apps seems to be "run it in a Blink browser" (I prefer Vivaldi for this purpose.) At this point a single rendering engine (blink) is going to be about 80% of the web. Every browser except Safari, Firefox (& forks), and some chinese browser called UC (apparently its rendering engine is based on classic Webkit, fork or not I can't say,) that can be used by a normal person will be blink.
In other words Google now controls the web standards process, because any extra feature they add will cover 80% or so of users. 80%'s more than enough for the PHB's to justify leaving everyone else behind.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bobthecimmerian on Sunday December 09 2018, @05:22PM
Exactly. Chromium and Blink the code are open source. But any chance the world had to adjust internet standards away from data collection and advertising just got even smaller. Because any standard that isn't implemented in core Chromium will effectively be killed, since Google will protect its cash cow.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Sunday December 09 2018, @05:56PM (2 children)
This according to Wikipedia.
Perhaps we would do well to submit to our future Communist overlords.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 10 2018, @09:32AM
Just because chinese is the most spoken language by population today does not mean we will all be speaking it in two generations time.
Unless china wins the next world war which frankly is looking likely.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 11 2018, @11:26AM
China might have been communist in the 1950s but today it's certainly more capitalistic than even Russia and USA.