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Unfortunately this is the future. Handing the world wide webs future to Google was a mistake, and the only remedy is likely to come from an (unlikely) antitrust breakup or divestment.


> Handing the world wide webs future to Google

Nobody handed anything to anyone. They go with the flow. The flow is driven by people who use their products. The browser is how Google delivers their products so it’s kinda difficult to blame them for trying to push the envelope but there are alternatives to Chrome.


> They go with the flow.

The ancient history of just 10-15 years ago shows Google aggressively marketing Chrome across all of its not inconsiderable properties like search and Youtube, and sabotaging other browsers while they were at it: https://archive.is/2019.04.15-165942/https://twitter.com/joh...


Indeed. There was time I myself used it as my primary browser and recommended it to everyone around. That changed when they started insisting on signing into the account to „make the most out of it” so I went back to Firefox. Since then I stopped caring. I know, virtue signalling. My point is: nobody handed anything over to Google. At the time alternatives sucked so they won the market. But today we have great alternatives.


And some developers shipping Chrome alongside their apps, instead of learning proper Web development.


I doubt websites as we know it will be what we’ll be dealing with going forward anyways.

What is a browser if we just digest all the HTML and spit out clean text in the long run?

We handed over something of some value I guess, once upon a time.




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