this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2023
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I think part of the problem was websites needing to work on other browsers too. When it's your own engine if a website doesn't test against it, the website might be broken. So then the websites say they don't support such and such browser.
Less of an issue when its all chromium.
We run into problems on safari a lot like this since my partner keeps using it on her Mac.
That wasn't really part of the problem. The most used browser engines are often some of the most irritating and frustrating to deal with, just look at Internet Explorer for most of its existence. Safari is an obnoxiously widely used browser because Apple enforces its use on iPhone no matter the browser you use and it has a bizarre update schedule tied to OS version. This causes many iPhones to have ancient versions of Safari.
The problem here is not that there are or were too many browser engines, it is big companies making their browser engines in anticompetitive ways.
We're "lucky" that Blink, the engine that runs all Chromium-based browsers, is currently keeping up with browser standards. For now. Who knows if Google will keep it that way or decide to change course and move away from FOSS standards.
It is dangerous to put so much stock and power into a single huge corporation like this. A large variety of innovative and competing browser engines is far healthier than one dominant engine.