this post was submitted on 01 May 2025
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I know this sounds bad, but maybe this is a blessing in disguise. Necessity is the mother of invention and maybe browser technology should be funded by governments instead of privately owned advertising megacorps?

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[โ€“] namingthingsiseasy 15 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Of course developers wanted this. They wanted to push all the complexity into the browser so they didn't have to worry about it themselves. Google was happy to provide this because it meant that they could be the only ones that could write a browser. That was the "conspiracy" you're talking about - but it wasn't a conspiracy, it was more of a strategy on behalf of Google, who knew that they were the only ones that could provide this level of support, and so if they did it, nobody else would be able to compete with them. Even Microsoft gave up on their own engine.

But the only reason Google could do this is because they were deriving revenue from their advertising monopoly. If their web browser was honestly funded, many, many of the features that we see in Chrome today would have never existed.

[โ€“] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Google was happy to provide this because it meant that they could be the only ones that could write a browser.

Word. That, and so many other things.