Slightly buried in the news that #Chrome will have to be sold off, there’s also news that Google cannot pay browsers to be their default search engine.
That’s going to have huge effects, especially for browsers like #Firefox - it’s going to be an interesting to see this pan out

#tech #webdev #google #programming #web #code #Mozilla

  • Note that it’s not “will have to be” sold off, it’s that the demand is for that to happen. The case still has to play out (including appeals) before we know what the actual consequences will be.

  • This is going to be very interesting. Not getting that sweet Google money anymore will Mozilla a) finally concentrate on making a good browser or b) enshittify all the things! I really wonder if it would possible for the community to maintain a fork when Mozilla implodes. It seems to be working for Thunderbird but E-Mail is probably a lot less complicated than keeping up with a gazillion webstandards pushed by thousands of Chrome engineers.

    • @jlow if the Google funding dropped out, I really don’t know how tenable it would be to keep the Gecko engine working / with pace with Chromium etc.

      Ironic that this is to help competition, when really it’ll probably end it.

      • That would be just awful, I cant really believe that is going to happen. I’d think it end up maybe be a browser for “just” browsing websites and you’d need a Chrom(ium) based one (or - like back the day! - specialised programs!) for fancy stuff like videocalling, DRM video playback, docs, chat and whatever else you do in the browser nowadays. Which would be awful as well but …

    • @jlow@beehaw.org

      @hazz223@mstdn.social Hopefully Chrome can’t do much better. Also hopefully Apple continues to make Safari good, but rejects adding more standards in general (a few might be good, but not too many)