The year is 2008 and I had been using Mozilla Firefox for two years after my painful but inevitable breakup with Internet Explorer. But, out of school and professional necessity, I had to make the swi
There are only three engines out there, Gecko from Firefox, Blink in Chromium and WebKit in Safari. Google can’t block it, because this will cause of a head-on confrontation against several large companies, including Microsoft and therefore would be equivalent to commercial suicide for Google, Chromium is FOSS and even Google can change this.
Naturally it will continue to try to add different tracking APIs to Chromium, which are also regularly retired by companies that rely on the privacy of their browser, as Vivaldi has been doing for years.
Google also managed to damage many Chromium forks, by removing Google Sync, but this had no effect on Vivaldi either, by using its own server for this function, this one that many other chromiums now lack, including Brave.
Chromium along with its derivatives controls vast majority of the market, and Microsoft is already using Blink as their engine for Edge. Any user hostile features Google introduces will likely be seen as a positive by other corporations like Microsoft, so not really seeing them complaining.
As I said, changes like trackers and the store are superficial. The real meat is in the rendering engine, and if that gets significant changes to prevent stuff like ad blockers that are hard to work around then browsers like Vivaldi will have a problem because at that point they would have to start maintaining their own version of the engine.
Incidentally, this is why we have WebKit and Blink. Google and Apple disagreed on how the rendering engine should work and Google forked it. Now these have diverged significantly. Google was able to do this because they have effectively unlimited resources, I don’t see how a small company would be able to do the same.
The engine in Chromium IS Blink, used by all Chromium forks, not only by Edge. All current engines are directly or indirectly controlled by Google, also Gecko, all of these needs certain GoogleAPIs for no loosing the compatibility of most webpages. F.Exmple, without using the Google Crypto Token API, you can’t acces to any Google services, which a lot of people and companies use. This API is permantently active in all browsers, only in Vivaldi you can desactivate it in the settings when you don’t use any Google services.
As I say, Google can’t block the Chromium nor revoce the FOSS status, but he don’t need to do this, because he controlled the webpages wich include all type of tracking systems frm Google, not only the Google analytics and tracking APIs from Alphabet and NEST, (Googles advertising companies, also Mozilla do this, but not Vivaldi, this is the difference, not only because it’s a European cooperative, not a US company like others. You can only opt out of this tracking, requesting it directly in Alphabet, with your personal data.
No Google here, same for Brave, but which I don’t trust so much, because of strange crypto mining behavior and redirects to sponsor sites in the past.
Ok, Firefox is obviously an excellent browser, but not as private as it is always claimed, it protects you well against third-party trackers, but not so much against the data that it sends itself to Google, because Mozillas incomings are by Google advertising companies.
Vivaldi’s business model is different, by default include links and search engines from sponsores and only recive incommings if the user use these, but he’s free to delete these if he don’t. Apart of Donations (only after the massive request of the user and a Store with merchandising.
Maybe also som comissions by Renault, to include Vivaldi in it’s navigation system, and from Pole Staras default Browser in it’s Navigator, the first browser optimized for these uses in the market, not bad for a small team. As in the past also the first which accept vertical text for asiatic users.
Gecko is in no way controlled by Google though, and and implementing APIs is different from relying on code Google implements. The discussion isn’t regarding what Mozilla website sends to Alphabet, but whether Firefox has an independent browser engine implementation that’s not based on Blink. You keep conflating Mozilla website and Firefox browser which are two completely separate things. Please show me where these APIs you refer to in Firefox are that can’t be deactivated.
We’ve had this discussion before, and I really don’t see the point of rehashing it. I see anything based on Blink as being inherently compromised and you aren’t going to change my mind on that.
Yes Gecko isn’t from Google, it’s Mozillas own engine, but as I said before, this don’t change the fact that Mozillas existence is also based by the advising subvencions of Google. At least if you need to sync your data, you do it in the servers of Mozilla, even if you use a fork instead of Firefox.
And yes, we had this discusion before and I know that Blink isn’t compromised, not more than any other engine, what is compromised is the Chromium as is and all forks who only put little more as the own logo on it, not the case in Vivaldi, nor in Brave and some others (certainly few).
Vivaldi is as private as FF, both are the best browsers out there today, out of over 100 existing browsers. Where I do not change my opinion that Firefox is praised as the most private and best for using its own engine developed 20 years ago, like Blink, when even Google still followed its motto of ‘don’t be evil’, and other as crap because they decided to use Chromium as a base, which is profoundly false.
I use also Firefox as second browser and know well the difference to FF and Vivaldi, it’s the same between a simple Letter opener and a Swiss Army Knife. Vivaldi is on the way to be more an online OS than a simple browser, nothing to do with any other.
But ultimately, the best browser is the one that best suits the needs that each one has, for you it is FF and for me it is Vivaldi since 6 years. Everything else is more or less irrelevant, in today’s network other things that really endanger a free network are much more important, not the brand of the car you use to travel, if it can do this witout problems.
Yes Gecko isn’t from Google, it’s Mozillas own engine, but as I said before, this don’t change the fact that Mozillas existence is also based by the advising subvencions of Google.
Yes, Mozilla gets a lot of money from deals with Google. However, you have yet to show how that translates into any negative impact on the design of Gecko.
The value of Gecko is that it’s an independent implementation of web standards. This is what allows us to know that there are standards as opposed to web being tied to implementation details of Blink engine. Having at least two independent implementations of the standards is crucial for standards to be meaningful.
I’m not arguing against your preference for Vivaldi. I think Blink based browsers work fine at the moment. My concern is with Blink becoming the only game in town in the long term.
I think that it is in a long term irrelevant, relevant is only which engine works the best in the webpages, mostly optimized for the most used engines (Blink), because of this in all benchmark tests Chromium browsers way better than all others.
It’s the same with all other tecnologies, at the end there are only the best way to make something and all use than this methode, but certainly it don’t rest the variety of existing products
If it were not this way, today TV are still working with the Nipkow system and not in 3D 8K and all brands (dozends) with this specs using the same system.
What system is better, 110V US plugs and system or 220V EU plugs and system? Apocalypsis if all the whole World use the EU system? With the advantage that nobody needs more an adaptor to use his PC everywhere in the World, and a cheaper infrastructure because higher voltage, fewer Ampere and less copper for the cables for the same potence?
We fundamentally disagree here. I think that standards that are independent of any single engine are the only thing that’s relevant in the long term. We’ve already lived through the days where the web was whatever IE was doing and I’m personally not interested in going back to that.
And you think really that a browser with less than 4% marketshare of Firefox can change this? Even IE had more users until its end a few month ago. Adding that FF with its policy tangential to the user is losing more and more.
They seems not to know, that a soft is only so good as it’s community. If they don’t wake up, they will disappear through their own fault and no one else’s.
https://www.gizbot.com/internet/news/mozilla-s-firefox-loses-millions-of-users-market-share-declines-079280.html
There are only three engines out there, Gecko from Firefox, Blink in Chromium and WebKit in Safari. Google can’t block it, because this will cause of a head-on confrontation against several large companies, including Microsoft and therefore would be equivalent to commercial suicide for Google, Chromium is FOSS and even Google can change this.
Naturally it will continue to try to add different tracking APIs to Chromium, which are also regularly retired by companies that rely on the privacy of their browser, as Vivaldi has been doing for years. Google also managed to damage many Chromium forks, by removing Google Sync, but this had no effect on Vivaldi either, by using its own server for this function, this one that many other chromiums now lack, including Brave.
Chromium along with its derivatives controls vast majority of the market, and Microsoft is already using Blink as their engine for Edge. Any user hostile features Google introduces will likely be seen as a positive by other corporations like Microsoft, so not really seeing them complaining.
As I said, changes like trackers and the store are superficial. The real meat is in the rendering engine, and if that gets significant changes to prevent stuff like ad blockers that are hard to work around then browsers like Vivaldi will have a problem because at that point they would have to start maintaining their own version of the engine.
Incidentally, this is why we have WebKit and Blink. Google and Apple disagreed on how the rendering engine should work and Google forked it. Now these have diverged significantly. Google was able to do this because they have effectively unlimited resources, I don’t see how a small company would be able to do the same.
The engine in Chromium IS Blink, used by all Chromium forks, not only by Edge. All current engines are directly or indirectly controlled by Google, also Gecko, all of these needs certain GoogleAPIs for no loosing the compatibility of most webpages. F.Exmple, without using the Google Crypto Token API, you can’t acces to any Google services, which a lot of people and companies use. This API is permantently active in all browsers, only in Vivaldi you can desactivate it in the settings when you don’t use any Google services. As I say, Google can’t block the Chromium nor revoce the FOSS status, but he don’t need to do this, because he controlled the webpages wich include all type of tracking systems frm Google, not only the Google analytics and tracking APIs from Alphabet and NEST, (Googles advertising companies, also Mozilla do this, but not Vivaldi, this is the difference, not only because it’s a European cooperative, not a US company like others. You can only opt out of this tracking, requesting it directly in Alphabet, with your personal data.
Ok, Firefox is obviously an excellent browser, but not as private as it is always claimed, it protects you well against third-party trackers, but not so much against the data that it sends itself to Google, because Mozillas incomings are by Google advertising companies. Vivaldi’s business model is different, by default include links and search engines from sponsores and only recive incommings if the user use these, but he’s free to delete these if he don’t. Apart of Donations (only after the massive request of the user and a Store with merchandising. Maybe also som comissions by Renault, to include Vivaldi in it’s navigation system, and from Pole Staras default Browser in it’s Navigator, the first browser optimized for these uses in the market, not bad for a small team. As in the past also the first which accept vertical text for asiatic users.
Gecko is in no way controlled by Google though, and and implementing APIs is different from relying on code Google implements. The discussion isn’t regarding what Mozilla website sends to Alphabet, but whether Firefox has an independent browser engine implementation that’s not based on Blink. You keep conflating Mozilla website and Firefox browser which are two completely separate things. Please show me where these APIs you refer to in Firefox are that can’t be deactivated.
We’ve had this discussion before, and I really don’t see the point of rehashing it. I see anything based on Blink as being inherently compromised and you aren’t going to change my mind on that.
Yes Gecko isn’t from Google, it’s Mozillas own engine, but as I said before, this don’t change the fact that Mozillas existence is also based by the advising subvencions of Google. At least if you need to sync your data, you do it in the servers of Mozilla, even if you use a fork instead of Firefox. And yes, we had this discusion before and I know that Blink isn’t compromised, not more than any other engine, what is compromised is the Chromium as is and all forks who only put little more as the own logo on it, not the case in Vivaldi, nor in Brave and some others (certainly few).
Vivaldi is as private as FF, both are the best browsers out there today, out of over 100 existing browsers. Where I do not change my opinion that Firefox is praised as the most private and best for using its own engine developed 20 years ago, like Blink, when even Google still followed its motto of ‘don’t be evil’, and other as crap because they decided to use Chromium as a base, which is profoundly false. I use also Firefox as second browser and know well the difference to FF and Vivaldi, it’s the same between a simple Letter opener and a Swiss Army Knife. Vivaldi is on the way to be more an online OS than a simple browser, nothing to do with any other.
But ultimately, the best browser is the one that best suits the needs that each one has, for you it is FF and for me it is Vivaldi since 6 years. Everything else is more or less irrelevant, in today’s network other things that really endanger a free network are much more important, not the brand of the car you use to travel, if it can do this witout problems.
Yes, Mozilla gets a lot of money from deals with Google. However, you have yet to show how that translates into any negative impact on the design of Gecko.
The value of Gecko is that it’s an independent implementation of web standards. This is what allows us to know that there are standards as opposed to web being tied to implementation details of Blink engine. Having at least two independent implementations of the standards is crucial for standards to be meaningful.
I’m not arguing against your preference for Vivaldi. I think Blink based browsers work fine at the moment. My concern is with Blink becoming the only game in town in the long term.
I think that it is in a long term irrelevant, relevant is only which engine works the best in the webpages, mostly optimized for the most used engines (Blink), because of this in all benchmark tests Chromium browsers way better than all others. It’s the same with all other tecnologies, at the end there are only the best way to make something and all use than this methode, but certainly it don’t rest the variety of existing products If it were not this way, today TV are still working with the Nipkow system and not in 3D 8K and all brands (dozends) with this specs using the same system. What system is better, 110V US plugs and system or 220V EU plugs and system? Apocalypsis if all the whole World use the EU system? With the advantage that nobody needs more an adaptor to use his PC everywhere in the World, and a cheaper infrastructure because higher voltage, fewer Ampere and less copper for the cables for the same potence?
We fundamentally disagree here. I think that standards that are independent of any single engine are the only thing that’s relevant in the long term. We’ve already lived through the days where the web was whatever IE was doing and I’m personally not interested in going back to that.
And you think really that a browser with less than 4% marketshare of Firefox can change this? Even IE had more users until its end a few month ago. Adding that FF with its policy tangential to the user is losing more and more. They seems not to know, that a soft is only so good as it’s community. If they don’t wake up, they will disappear through their own fault and no one else’s. https://www.gizbot.com/internet/news/mozilla-s-firefox-loses-millions-of-users-market-share-declines-079280.html