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Ladybird Browser Gains Cloudflare Support to Challenge the Status Quo (linuxiac.com)
submitted 11 months ago by to c/opensource@lemmy.ml
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[–] 15 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Ironically, we already had that - Microsoft's first version of Edge was using their own engine. On release, it had the highest W3C compatibility score.

Google started shitting on it (including things like serving clear HTML version of Gmail because "the browser is outdated" if it detected the Edge user agent) and massive self-delusion campaigns of "Edge is just Internet Explorer" eventually killed the thing and forced MS to switch to Chromium.

I have Ladybird installed and I check it out every now and then, but I honestly doubt that a bunch of random developers will succeed where Microsoft failed. Unless Cloudflare somehow chips in and forces Google's hand into compatibility, but I don't know if even they are big enough to do that.

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  • [–] 8 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 child)

    Personally, I think if the engine was closed source, then we didn't in fact "had that". Maybe Microsoft had it, not us.

    What makes things like chromium, firefox and webkit actual ecosystems is that they at least have an open source basis. Edge isn't an ecosystem, it's a black box. We don't even know whether it's true or not that it was its own thing or just they sneakily used bits and pieces of chromium from the start anyway.

    User Agent checks is the easiest thing to overcome. Had edge's engine been open source we would have had spins of it resolving the issue within hours. There are many examples of "random developers" succeeding where big companies tied by business strategies (I bet they had business reasons to keep a distinctive user agent) didn't, to the point that the web runs on servers using FOSS software.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (1 child)

    Personally, I think if the engine was closed source, then we didn’t in fact “had that”. Maybe Microsoft had it, not us.

    Well, yeah, in that aspect, you're correct. I meant that as a "we had a non Google-reliant engine".

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 child)

    Yes, I understand that. But in my view, Microsoft is the one that might have had "a non Google-reliant engine" (if it's true that they didn't rely on Google code).

    They just let us use it under their conditions, for the limited time they decided to make it available to us.. but it was never "ours". We were just contractually allowed to use it, but we didn't really "have" it.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Semantics. I agree with you in principle, but the matter of fact is that we ended up with effectively zero choice over the browser engine.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

    Yes, the matter of fact is that the reason why that choice was taken away is because everyone except MS was forbidden from "having" that engine. It might have still been alive today in some form had it not been an exclusive MS-owned thing.

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  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago

    I imagine the reason that Cloudflare is doing this now is that Google just got off with no punishment from their antitrust loss.

    Anybody who competes with Google now has to worry that they'll do to them what they did to Microsoft. And, with Trump's DOJ, the government will probably just ignore it if Sundar Pichai shows up with a shiny bauble for Trump. So, I'd imagine that Microsoft, Cloudflare, Amazon (AWS, Twitch), and Meta, among others, might all decide to fund an alternative browser.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    doubt that a bunch of random developers will succeed where Microsoft

    Ladybird doesn't have to be profitable and the org cannot be bought.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Not what I meant.

    Microsoft - in theory - had the finances to push their browser to peoples homes. Be it by baking it in to Windows, by ad campaigns, etc., etc. And they still lost to Google's control over the Web.

    Ladybird, by comparison, is an obscure no-name product, being made by a controversial figure, with (relatively to MS) zero ability to market itself to the wider audience. All Google has to do is make their products completely inoperable under Ladybird and, other than some extremely committed power-users who want to "de-google" their lives, nobody will use it.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    You are right, but as you noticed, we don't argue the same thing.

    eventually killed the thing and forced MS to switch to Chromium.

    Ladybird is not threatened to be killed by whatever anybody but the developers do.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    Ladybird is not threatened to be killed by whatever anybody but the developers do.

    It absolutely is. If Google forces incompatibility on it (like it did with Edge) ordinary users won't switch. Because the majority of ordinary users are still deep in the ecosystem.

    All it takes is for Google to block high quality streaming on YouTube and the browser will never go outside of 2-3% market share.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    That's not bad.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    What's not bad? Ladybird sitting at floor-leves of market share?

    If we want to threaten the status quo in any way, it absolutely is. Firefox has 2.26% and - in terms of defining standards or forcing changes upon Chromium - it's 100% irrelevant.

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