Notices by ocdtrekkie (ocdtrekkie@mastodon.social), page 2

@slightlyoff @alcinnz @chriscoyier This is false. And again, just lacks experience being out in the world of the industry. You just aren't speaking with any sort of knowledge of how real technology vendors operate in the enterprise (or even consumer) space.

@rysiek @alcinnz @slightlyoff @chriscoyier The issue, of course, is that nearly all backing of dealing with Apple is disingenuously promoted by people with a strong vested interest in expanding Chromium's monopoly.

@rysiek @alcinnz @slightlyoff @chriscoyier The thing is, Apple isn't "winning" by holding control of it's own devices, which are a distant second in the market. Apple is a monopolist but it's a relatively harmless one.

It'd be great to deal with it, sure, but when a bad guy is preventing the apocalypse, you do something about the apocalypse first, before taking out the bad guy.

Let's deal with Apple: After we obliterate Google's chokehold on the web.

@slightlyoff @chriscoyier In the same way, if we do not aggressively reduce Chromium use, the web will be written for Chromium, not web standards. Just like the old IE days, but with an advertising-revenue-primary company at the helm.

@slightlyoff @chriscoyier Mobile Safari is currently preventing the worst case scenario, however. Because the iPhone platform is too big to ignore/drop, and requires you support WebKit, it ensures developers *must* develop for the web, and not for Chrome.

As soon as developers can push people to install Chrome (or "compete" on iOS, as you claim), support for web standards will no longer be business-critical, and developers will increasingly require Chrome-proprietary APIs that are harmful.

@slightlyoff @chriscoyier Does Apple have it's own reasons for gatekeeping Safari on iOS and limiting the usefulness of web apps? *Absolutely.* Apple, like Google, is also a monopolist which exacts large taxes on society.

But that doesn't change the critical role it currently plays in protecting us from a far more malevolent entity.

@slightlyoff @chriscoyier Your corporate antimonopoly training is clearly up to date.

But no, it's network effects. Because of Chrome's large network share (largely created by Android's illegal bundling behavior, and deals to inject Chrome installers when people installed Adobe Reader or Flash Player, and three popups in Gmail), developers no longer feel the need to support browsers except for Google Chrome. They write for it, test with it, and refuse to provide support for anything else.

@slightlyoff @chriscoyier The problem is that beyond the problematic ways Google spawned Chromium's market share, the greater it grows from here, the worse it is for web standards. The more people use Chromium, the less developers write for the web.

Consider how many people write Android apps that don't require Play Services APIs. Almost none, because so few people have removed Play from their phones. The proprietary fork wins because the share is so high.

@slightlyoff @chriscoyier I will try to hold back on my view of teams like Project Zero and why they exist. ;)

But no, nobody switched off Internet Explorer because of security. Web developers forced them to for compatibility. "If you want to use this service, you must install Chrome" has driven nearly all enterprise browser shifts. That's the network effects.

@slightlyoff @chriscoyier In fact, multiple vendors I deal with at work claim their products only work on Chrome, even when demonstrably false. We often have to use a Chromium-based browser when calling support at vendors before they will even consider that the issue is something else.

As of yet, we've never had an issue actually caused by not using Chrome. Thanks to Safari ensuring all web apps have to support standards, so we can use Firefox.

@slightlyoff @chriscoyier It's so much wrong concentrated in one article.

People switch browsers because network effects force them to. It's a term Google (and probably Microsoft) teach their employees not to utter or claim to understand, but it's why Chromium is where it is. (It certainly isn't product quality.)

The fact you claim people switch browsers for improved security is... not even something that can be taken seriously. Nobody does that.

@slightlyoff @chriscoyier Fundamentally, Safari is crucial to the web: It moves slowly, deliberately, and creates a lowest common denominator of compatibility. This is a GOOD thing, even though tech nerds obviously hate it.

Democracy is slow/somewhat dysfunctional by design. Things being hard to accomplish quickly without high consensus prevent a radical group from breaking the government.

@slightlyoff @chriscoyier Similarly, browser standards need to move slow. Bashing the company which cares about privacy and good standards design isn't the way to help the web. Getting obsessed with the downfall of browsers that won't implement technologies considered "harmful" by the rest of the ecosystem isn't the way to move things forward.

We need to do something about Chromium. And we need to shut down anyone trying to push it further.

@teleclimber What's ridiculous is this use case could be phrased and deployed far more ethically too: We absolutely restrict and filter employee web access where I work, but it's focused around ensuring legal compliance and security, not nanny-camming staff.

@lightweight I literally had well-known activist Googlers block me on Twitter for stating that Google "wasn't worth saving". Years later, they do not work for Google anymore.

Especially once you already work at some of these companies, the cult effect can be really strong.