This might just be me, but I’ve recently been wondering—has anyone ever floated the idea of potentially creating a decentralized and/or federated alternative to the browser engines dominating the market?
Right now, it feels like options are increasingly monopolized, with Google Chromium (Blink) being the backbone of almost every browser, and Mozilla’s Gecko engine fighting to hold on.
While platforms like Mastodon, Lemmy, and others prove that decentralization/federation can work remarkably well for social media, could this model apply to browser engines or even search platform ecosystems?
Maybe something open and community-driven that allows different stakeholders or communities to innovate independently while ensuring compatibility standards?
I recognize this would be a monumental challenge, requiring deep technical expertise, time, and resources.
I’d love to explore it myself, but I just don’t have the energy, time, or knowledge to get such a thing off the ground.
However, I’m hoping to hear if anyone has had similar thoughts, knows of any related projects in development, or has ideas about how this could work.
Imagine a world where browser developers aren’t forced to rely on Google’s Chromium, and instead, we could have a crowd-sourced federated system where each contributor could bring something unique to the table without centralized control.
Would this even be feasible?
What do you think?
Is it worth dreaming about, or are there insurmountable hurdles that make such an initiative unrealistic?
Looking forward to hearing everyone’s thoughts.
The biggest issue is economies of scale. Browser engines generally require a lot more coding and maintenance than social media software does (unless you are engineering to be the next Twitter will millions of users). This means more people involved and more organization is required than your typical ActivityPub-related project.
There actually have been many alternate browsers proposed and built, but they usually wind up being abandoned because of the lack of adoption and the amount of work it takes.
And, depending on the type of changes you are making, sometimes it is better to just use what someone else has built and modify it. That is why we have Waterfox, Opera, Brave, and numerous other browsers that use Chromium or Firefox as the base. Why build an entire car, when you can repaint it, change out the seats, add a quality sound system, and swap out the wheels for something nicer?
I do think that there needs to be more choices for browser engines, but I am not sure decentralization is the right word. What we need is more competition, or put another way, more players. The standards are open, so anyone with resources can build a browser. It is a matter of whether people will use the new browsers.