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godelski
pjmlp
Yeah, everyone is doing their little contribution to help Google take over the Web and turn it into ChromeOS Platform.
Why did we ever bothered with the IE lawsuit, for a newer generation to give the Web on a plate to Google?
rjh29
Because at the time IE6 was a terrible browser with poor standards support, while Chrome is an excellent browser with leading standards support. It is a gilded cage.
Calavar
> Chrome is an excellent browser with leading standards support.
Google learned it can be "standards compliant" if it submits a draft spec to WHATWG/W3C, and while the comment and revision process is still ongoing, roll out those features in Chrome and start using them in YouTube, Gmail, Google docs, and AMP. Now Firefox and Safari are forced to implement those draft specs as well or users will leave in droves because Google websites are broken. Soon enough, Google's draft spec is standardized with minimal revisions because it's already out there in the wild.
The debate, revision, and multistakeholder aspects of the standards process have been effectively bypassed, a la IE6 and ActiveX, but Chrome can claim to be on the cutting edge of standards compliance. This is a case of Goodharts's law.
pjmlp
That is revisionism, IE only stagnated because they kind of wipedout the competition, like Chrome is today, and Microsoft withdraw most of the development resources from the team.
WPF XAML was originally designed by ex IE team members, and they were the same that a few years later proposed XAML Grid concept as CSS Grid initial design.
Many JavaScript devs have to thank their abuse of JavaScript in the browser to XMLHttpRequest introduced by IE.
supermatt
> leading standards support
"Leading" being the operative word. Ship a new feature, submit it as a standard and encourage its adoption so things only work on chrome and further increase market share when people find other browsers "broken".
MS did exactly the same shit with IE - the only really difference was that the standards body (w3c) was independent, so they couldn't self declare it as a standard. Now the "standards" body (whatwg) is mostly google...
lenkite
It is nice when you have replaced the original standard committee with your own committee. You can always have "leading standards support".
MS was not smart enough to do this. Google was smarter.
modo_mario
Isn't part of the issue that they have a big hand in defining the standards?
reaperducer
leading standards support
Except no support for:
CSS Canvas Drawings
CSS filter() function
Video Tracks
Audio Tracks
FIDO U2F API
SPDY protocol
JPEG XL image format
HTTP Live Streaming
HEIF/HEIC image format
SVG fonts
CSS hanging-punctuation
CSS font-smooth
CSS Initial Letter
Speech Recognition API
CSS -webkit-user-drag property
CSS3 Multiple column layout
CSS text-indent
Synchronous Clipboard API
HEVC/H.265 video format
TLS 1.1
text-decoration styling
CSS display: contents
CSS Container Style Queries
CSS clip-path property for HTML
CSS Counter Styles
Ruby annotation
WAI-ARIA Accessibility features
Media Fragments
autocomplete attribute: on & off values
DOMMatrix
SVG effects for HTML
X-Frame-Options HTTP header
DNSSEC and DANE
WebXR Device API
DeviceOrientation & DeviceMotion events
Permissions Policy
asm.js
Network Information API
theme-color Meta Tag
Document Policy
The whole "Chrome is the leader in standards" meme is a lie.
meindnoch
>Chrome is an excellent browser with leading standards support
Yes, Chrome has leading standards™ [1] support!
_________
[1] A so-called standard™ is a piece of source code that sits on the main branch of the Chromium repository. Not to be confused with actual standards!
matheusmoreira
The "standards" are now effectively controlled by Google.
dotancohen
> Why did we ever bothered with the IE lawsuit, for a newer generation to give the Web on a plate to Google?
azeemba
Just to remind everyone though, Microsoft won that lawsuit on appeal.
So the history here is that Microsoft lost its monopoly on its own poor decision making.
vovavili
The last thing Google would want is the web to turn into a Chrome platform. Unlike with Microsoft or even Apple, their source of revenue is web, and they they are doing everything in their capacity for this platform to win. This is exactly why they open-sourced most of Chrome and almost fully finance Chrome's biggest competitor.
glenstein
>Unlike with Microsoft or even Apple, their source of revenue is web, and they they are doing everything in their capacity for this platform to win.
I feel like there's a missing step in the argument here. Yes Google's revenue comes from the web, yes Chromium being open source and paying for search deals are a hedge against anti trust, but why does it follow that they wouldn't want to dominate the browser space? They do, and it seems to be working quite well for them. But it feels more like a minimum effort hedge against antitrust then a demonstration of a healthy ecosystem.
Also, every time Chromium comes up you have people pointing to it like it's a counterpoint to their browser dominance. It's open source, so what's the issue? But the issue is that Chromium as a body decides whether commits make it into the browser and the decision making body is an invite only group of full time Google developers. So it is controlled by Google after all.
pjmlp
They already did, Safari is the only one left standing, by the market share.
Plus all the Electron crap that gets shoved as "native".
godelski
An alternative explanation is they fund Mozilla to avoid a monopoly breakup. The evidence? The fact that everyone currently knows exactly how much Google pays Mozilla because of the recent attempt to do a monopoly breakup.
RoryH
It was also a time before Google demoted "Don't be evil." from their company literature.
chasing0entropy
I took "don't BE evil" to mean don't let the company image be that of an evil company which already made me distrust them. Once it was gone I knew the death star was fully operational.
EchoReflection
the (very challenging) "trick" is to use Libre hardware/software, like Pinephone and LineageOS, but that's not realistic for the vast majority of people :(
JoshTriplett
> So what, our choices are Firefox (Gecko),
Don't forget Servo. People are actively working on it, and it could use more help.
cropcirclbureau
It's not just anyone, it's the folks at Igalia. I think people disregard Servo since it's no longer under Mozilla but Igalia aren't just random contributors picking up the slack, they're browser experts that also work on Chromium.
ModernMech
Personally, I disregard Servo because I've been hearing about it for 10 years. I'll start paying attention again when they remove the "don't log into your bank with Servo" warning.
GoblinSlayer
Won't servo thus become just a translation of chrome?
esad
Maybe it's just me, but from time to time I try latest Servo build and it never survives more than few minutes of usage before crashing. Last time I did it was 3 days ago, I opened a website and it crashed with "RefCell already borrowed" in what seems to be a logger module. This always strikes me as weird because one of the selling points for Rust is memory and thread safety (quote from the website: "eliminate many classes of bugs at compile-time").
homebrewer
This is perfectly safe behavior, would you prefer it slightly corrupting the destination address when transferring money through online banking?
indy
Hopefully the Ladybird browser will become a viable choice soon
pndy
Did Andreas even mention anything about extensions in Ladybird?
I hardly can imagine browsing the Internet without ublock origin or other extensions like cookie autodelete, privacy badger, ublacklist
typpilol
I think we're many years off it even being viable for most people
Zardoz84
I hope that not. Or at least, get out of the control of the controversial person behind it.
If I would put all the eggs on a basket, I will prefer Servo.
lynndotpy
I agree with you here. I want a viable non-Chromium browser.
But even if that existed, I also think a practical Chromium browser is important to have access to. I'm a developer and I use the web, so sometimes I just need Chromium. I think that will continue to be necessary for at least 10 years.
And I think the landscape of Chromium browsers is very bad. As a minimum, I want adblocking, low- or no-telemetry, timely security updates, no forced arbitration clause in its ToS, and support across platforms.
Right now, I think that makes Brave the best Chromium browser. That is not an accolade, I deeply dislike Brave, for dozens of reasons. It's just the best of a bad bunch. (But credit where it's due, I do very much like its "Shields" control.)
I only learned about Helium from this thread, but it checks almost all of my boxes. I was really excited to see a new browser that hits my checkboxes... But it's MacOS only :( Alas
lelanthran
> I agree with you here. I want a viable non-Chromium browser.
It doesn't look like you do.
Firefox has worked for me across 7 different employers in the last 15 years with no problems, and yet you haven't switched to it.
Actions speak louder than words. There is a viable alternative. You aren't using it.
lynndotpy
You are making assumptions about me which are not correct. I am not using Firefox because it has bugs which made it stop working as web browser for me. I have had breaking problems with Firefox on every platform I've used it on.
On desktop (multiple Linuxes, Windows 7 and 10, and MacOS) I run into problems which I spend hours trying to fix, until I give up and go back to a Chromium browser. On iPadOS and iOS, it would crash when using arrowkeys to navigate URL history(or something like that, if I remember correctly. Been awhile). I had another issue with it on Android, the details of which I'd forgotten. I don't even use the sync features- these are just independent bugs.
Every time I tried to switch to Firefox, it's a time sink that ends with a broken install. I used Firefox as my primary browser in the early 00s through to ~2010. I tried to switch back every few years between 2017 and 2023.
The recent bad new changes (forced built-in advertising, new worse ToS, forced AI stuff) make me uninterested in spending more time on Firefox. I'm happy it works for you, but we are not the same person, and Firefox is entirely nonviable for me.
hedora
What is your definition of “viable”? Plenty of people own iPhones, which is locked down to webkit.
Similarly, firefox is fine. I switch between it chromium and safari for dev work, and (unless you go out of your way to find a counterexample) they’re completely interchangeable in terms of compatibility and real-world performance.
Firefox runs fine on android, so there’s not even a platform where chrome is the only choice (other than chromebooks).
lynndotpy
I know this is not typical, but I just run into breaking bugs on Firefox on every platform which prevent me from using Firefox (except Intel MacOS, which I have not used, and Windows, which I haven't used in a few years.)
For Safari, the problem for most platforms is that it doesn't run on most platforms. It doesn't really count to me if I can't use it on my computers. (Caveat that there are non-Safari webkit browsers, but they're not very good.)
butlike
I like Arc browser by The Browser Company. As far as I understand it, it's made by a bunch of jaded ex-google employees, so the Google stuff is also stripped-out. The features are next level, and I feel it's a very forward-thinking browser. Maybe it will work for you
ruszki
That’s dead: https://browsercompany.substack.com/p/letter-to-arc-members-...
I didn’t know either until a few weeks ago.
bitpush
Arc was famously not built by ex-Chrome people but rather a bunch of opinionated UX folks. It amounted to what I can best describe as a glorified "skin" for Chromium and nothing innovative under the hood.
They realized they couldn't make any money with that, so they abandoned it and started Dia which was "AI". Again, they had no capability nor plan to make any solid product, was just sold to Atlassian
Actually, they really knew how to hype up their product. And their marketing videos were top notch. Innovation I suppose.
BatteryMountain
Literally the first thing I looked for...(if it is based on chromium).
When can we get a new kind of browser that doesn't use html/css/js...? Build one from scratch with a common design language (but modifiable by the user)
ranguna
So you mean a browser that can't load any existing pages?
PUSH_AX
This is a gargantuan task, I can’t even articulate how much work this would be.
ionelaipatioaei
Depends on your goals but I think a minimal and useful browser with completely new APIs wouldn't be so hard to do if you leverage the huge amount of existing open source libraries. The hardest part would be getting people to actually use it.
teekert
Make it markdown based. It'll be like the web once was... Just documents linking to other documents, with images and videos. We just pretend web 2.0 never happened. Everybody can write markdown so we don't even need web2.0.
hoistbypetard
chneu
Security isn't just about your data. It's about the security of an open web. Having one rendering engine that controls everything is not secure.
norskeld
While I agree that monopolies suck, I _absolutely hate_ having to waste my time adjusting styles and writing workaround code just to make everything look and work consistently in a multitude of browsers. This is one of the reasons — among a hundred others — that I grew to somewhat hate front-end, doubly so with the rise of mobile devices. And the more rendering engines we have, the more developers will have to fight frustrating battles with inconsistencies and quirks.
xpe
Indeed front-end development in software can be painful. Much of the cruft can be attributed to computing's byzantine history of incremental experimentation. You might take some comfort in knowing that the biological analogue is vastly more complicated: the transformation of genotype to phenotype. Trying to figure out the evolutionary pressures and various mutational accidents that drove particular biological changes feels way harder than trying to figure out WTF Project X was thinking when they decided to pivot from being a social network for dog walkers to a low-latency query planner for a database no one has heard of.
xpe
“Resilience” conveys your meaning better than “security”, and it calls to mind more relevant interventions.
photomatt
It's actually the beauty of open source that we can align on a few primitives that are reusable in several different contexts to build radically different product experiences and world views. If you think of the phylogenetic tree of software this is exactly what you want to happen.
SuperHeavy256
A browser being based on Chromium has nothing to do with how private it is. Yes you are furthering an internet monopoly by using chromium. But there is noncorrelation between being based of Chromium and Privacy.
yupyupyups
Yes it has, unless they plan to do significant changes to how the relevant JS APIs function, which is usually prohibitively expensive to maintain. Standard Chromium allows websites to fetch a lot of fingerprintable bits, this is even true for Brave. Tracking protection on Chromium is a joke.
Firefox on the other hand is better in this respect and even has a setting explicitly for resisting fingerprinting.
fastball
Last time I checked, Brave was actually the best-in-class for resisting fingerprinting.
vasco
How is firefox legitimate competition when they are basically financed by Google?
scbzzzzz
You need to look at history. In early 90s why did Microsoft invest in apple when it is its competitors. Investment doesn't mean they are medling into mozilla business. For companies like google (present) or Microsoft in 90's. It is better to have a crippled competitor than no competitor. No competitor attracts government agencies for monopoly which is worse.
baruz
In the 1990s Microsoft “invested” in Apple because Steve Jobs allowed them to save face by giving them the option to settle their part of Apple v San Francisco Canyon Co by calling part of it—$150 M—a stock purchase that only lasted a few years. I do not know how much the total cash settlement from Microsoft was, but industry rumors went up to $1B.
rkomorn
Maybe it's also the other way around: if Firefox was legitimate competition, Google wouldn't "fund" them (quotes because really, google is also just buying user traffic with their investment).
Is Google actively sabotaging Mozilla or is Mozilla a genuine competitor that just hasn't figured out how to build a browser that'll actually challenge Chrome (and Chromiumy browsers) beyond ideologist users?
I say it's the latter. Google's money doesn't actually negatively impact Firefox's competitiveness.
theK
I dont see how the competitiveness argument can still stand. I've been using both browsers for the better part of two decades now and chrome/chromium never was the better product. Sure it had slightly better devtools for a while but nowadays it is very difficult to argue either way. Performance was rubbish on both ends for years in a row, right now both seem to do fine. Firefox has sync, a significantly better product than whatever google comes up with every two years. So yeah, I think Mozilla has a good enough product to challenge chrome. What they don't have is comparable traffic to their site.
Oh and of course focus. Mozilla has lacked focus for almost a decade now with all the random products and initiatives they launch.
pjmlp
Unfortunely most people have decided it isn't worthwhile to buy software, including those whose job depends on selling software.
pessimizer
> is Mozilla a genuine competitor that just hasn't figured out how to build a browser that'll actually challenge Chrome
Mozilla had a browser that had huge market share and was growing, and actively destroyed it for the sake of Chrome, at the same time as they became a financial dependent of google.
> google is also just buying user traffic with their investment
Google is not buying user traffic from a browser with a 3% share and falling. Google is probably responsible for 2-300% of firefox's profits, because if they stopped paying them off, they'd have to close up shop in 6 months. Everything else they do is a failure, and if it looks like it has a chance of being successful, like Servo and Rust*, they get rid of it.
They're not going to give them money to them with a check with "Bribe to fail continually, and to never give users a feature that they would leave Chrome for ever again" written on it. Money is fungible. If they couldn't bribe them like this, they'd create an "Extensions Interop Consortium," let Mozilla host it, and fund it to the tune of a half-billion dollars. Let Google prove this "partnership" is profitable, this default search engine placement on the 3% browser used exclusively by people who are experts, know how to change their defaults, and hate google. It doesn't pass the stupid test.
But actually, they don't have to prove anything because even though they're officially a monopoly, one of the worst of the many horrible, horrible Obama judges has now affirmed that there will be no remedy, because a remedy might affect their business. He then immediately went on tour, telling audiences how the government is bullying tech companies.
[*] And maybe firefoxOS, I accidentally had one as my daily phone for a year, and it worked fine. I didn't love it and I didn't even like the idea of it, but it certainly worked.
troupo
> Is Google actively sabotaging Mozilla
Oh, Google did sabotage Mozilla: https://archive.is/2019.04.15-165942/https://twitter.com/joh...
FlyingSnake
Because it's the only other browser engine that's currently available in the market.
ssl-3
Indeed.
It is important to try to avoid letting perfection be the enemy of good.
Firefox is at least something that is distinct from WebKit or Chromium (which is itself based on a fork of WebKit). That's good.
It's not perfect, in part because deals with Google pay for most of it, but it is still good despite its imperfect status.
esskay
Which sucks because it's not exactly fantastic as a competitor. There's still very, very noticeable performance differences and render speed/pattern differences that after you've been using a chromium based browser for a long time give firefox a feeling of being slow (it's not, it is absolutely just a perception thing, but it's enough to put you off using it)
tclover
Mozilla is fine taking money from Google, because it keeps "competition" alive otherwise Google would face antitrust lawsuits for running a monopoly.
fumar
Isn’t Safari 30% of browser share in the US?
godelski
Allow me to rephrase my earlier choice
Chromium: Entirely dependent on Google, a $3T company who's entire business model relies upon invading your privacy and currently has a >70% global share of browsers
WebKit: A closed source browser with ~18% of browser share and run by a nearly $4T company who forces all browsers on their mobile devices to be reskinned versions of their browser and probably wants to do the same on their other devices
Gecko: An open source browser with ~4% of the browser share, run by a non-profit with a mission of to preserve privacy but is struggling to find funding.
So what... we're going to let the internet get screwed because a bunch of dudes making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year can't toss some beer money over to the little guy?
You paint this as a hopeless picture, but seriously, have you considered donating? Every time I see these types of threads I see comments like
> I would happily pay a small monthly subscription fee for a browser if it has strong legally protected privacy guarantees.[0]
Do you really think your browser provides to you less value than your Netflix (160%/360%/500% more expensive) or Spotify (240% more expensive) account? Seriously? If literally 30% of FF users gave to Mozilla what they are willing to give to Spotify, then the problem is solved. Or 15% of users did it through their company's matching program. If instead of discouraging people, you got more people to convert then the percentage of necessary contributors decreases!
It's even tax fucking deductible so it isn't even that <$5/yr...
user432678
My problem with donating to Mozilla is the donation goes into a pocket of their greedy CEO and only a small fraction to those who do the browser development. And that’s mostly why I donate to Ladybird.
john01dav
You can't donate to Firefox. You can donate to Mozilla, but that money doesn't go to Firefox.
swiftcoder
> WebKit: A closed source browser
You seem to be confusing Safari (a closed source Apple product), and WebKit (an open source browser engine used by multiple browsers).
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rpdillon
WebKit has always been open source.
anon1395
Safari should be on Windows. I don't care what CSS standards it has, it needs to give Chrome and Firefox some competition
pmontra
It used to be there, 2007-2012 https://archive.org/details/safari-5.1.7-windows
I found an announcement in Italian on Apple website. It's from June 2007 https://www.apple.com/it/newsroom/2007/06/11Apple-Introduces...
The original plan with the iPhone was to have web apps, not native apps. That's why they needed to run the rendering engine of the iPhone on Windows. Then they went native and Mac only with the dev environment.
I don't think that Apple would earn one single dollar by porting Safari to Windows again.
password4321
Here are the Windows WebKit builds: https://build.webkit.org/#/builders/1192
"MiniBrowser" opened after installing AppleMobileDeviceSupport64 from iTunes and VC_redist.x64, and it appeared to be making network requests, but it never rendered any web content I could see.
igrunert
The layout tests on Windows are failing at the moment due to a regression introduced a few days ago (likely https://commits.webkit.org/301043@main).
The easiest way to run WebKit on Windows is via Playwright.
NoGravitas
You used to be able to get Epiphany preview on Windows, for quite a long time after you could get Safari on Windows. Doesn't seem to be the case anymore, though.
MountDoom
What makes me a bit uneasy about the project is that the website doesn't explain who is building it. For most open-source, I think that would be fine. But browsers auto-update, so their vendors essentially have the continued ability to run code on your machine. You want some confidence that they won't get owned and won't sell the access to bad actors down the line, so there is an element of personal trust.
All the website gives me is the name of a Wyoming LLC, Wyoming being one of the states you incorporate in if you don't want others to be able to find out who runs the company.
Granted, you can find out a bit more on Github, but in general, if you're building privacy- and security-critical tech... I think you ought to own it.
efilife
It really isn't hard to find. I went to the browser's github page and then the repo author.
I now found who exactly manages this (and it turns out colbalt, too! awesome downloader)
biotinker
You found the authors' screen names and some other things they've made.
That's not finding who they are. No one has signed their names, like their real names, to this. Who are they? Intelligence agents? For which country? There's no way to know.
ambicapter
But their chosen public pseudonym is "dumbmoron". Surely we can fully trust them!
strus
> For which country?
At least one of the authors is Russian. They were giving away Helium stickers to “anyone who is in Moscow”, and not many non-Russians are traveling there nowadays.
jsheard
> and it turns out colbalt, too!
hdjrudni
Oh..that's crazy. I just assumed it was the makers of Kagi search.
zenmac
Well it is just one those element naming chrome fork. Kinda like:
https://iridiumbrowser.de/ But that one looks have not being updated in a while. But what is the point forking Chrome browser now days since manifest 3?
I switched back to firefox/librawolf for now.
snapplebobapple
Try zen browser its my favorite firefox fork with only a few extensions
atraac
I tried using Zen as I moved away from Arc, it really tries to be Arc but had a ton of issues at the time(6 months ago). Ranging from performance, different parts of UI crashing or behaving weirdly, to typos in English translations all over Settings. I settled on Brave for now because I won't give up uBlock Origin but I also didn't enjoy using Firefox long term for some reason. I honestly loved Arc, but I won't use product they won't work on anymore.
cwillu
For what it's worth: “All Chromium extensions are supported and work right away, by default, including all MV2 extensions. We'll keep support for MV2 extensions for as long as possible.”
Whether that's worth much is of course another matter.
extraduder_ire
Do Helium, or any other browsers with intent to keep supporting MV2 extensions say what they intend to use as a repository to acquire them?
I don't think the chrome or microsoft extension websites even let you upload a MV2 extension anymore, and most chromium forks I've used rely entirely on the chrome web store.
Tepix
My thoughts exactly. I read on their website that they're a two person team who care about privacy. But how do they finance their work on these tools? Are they still figuring it out? Do they have a sustainable business model?
adrr
Who is paying for it?
GodelNumbering
I have felt like a perennial browser refugee for a while. For about 20 years now (since OG Firefox was at peak and Chrome was not yet launched), every new browser promises the same things, gets popular enough, then does a full or partial 180.
While I like the pitch of this browser, I find it a little difficult to take it at the face value, especially given there is no info on the founders, or whether it is run as a company or a non-profit etc.
Perhaps someone in this thread could answer: which company/org structure provides best guarantees against gradual, slow, multi-year rot that seems to take over everything?
I would happily pay a small monthly subscription fee for a browser if it has strong legally protected privacy guarantees.
ashikns
I feel the same. For now, I've made peace with having to switch to "whatever is the latest maintained fork with privacy defaults" every 6 months. Hopefully Ladybird becomes a usable browser sometime soon.
lionkor
> which company/org structure provides best guarantees against gradual, slow, multi-year rot that seems to take over everything?
German e.V. [1]
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registered_association_(German...
novok
The hard answer is the project cannot attract the good engineers anymore because it eventually stops being a growth project. Without being a growth project, you don't get investment into what you want to do anymore and there is less potential growth in your career and income.
Mattified
> which company/org structure provides best guarantees against gradual, slow, multi-year rot that seems to take over everything?
I don't think any such guarantees exist, unfortunately.
satyapr93
You can look into Ulaa browser by Zoho. It fits your description.
hoistbypetard
That's wild. I've been a Zoho customer for some time, and I've never heard anything about that.
EasyMark
Browsers are always going to be "as-is, best effort" . No one, not even google is going to stick out their neck and protect your privacy, that's up to you, and especially not "legally" as that has aspects of easily being sued when privacy/money is involved. Certainly not for a "small monthly fee". Best you're going to get is open source and security community scrutiny of said open source code
cookiengineer
In my opinion that's Ladybird at the moment.
It's hard to predict what future generations of developers are doing, but right now Ladybird seems to have the right values embedded into their nonprofit structure.
All the other browser projects have to be enshittified eventually, and therefore have to fulfill other interests than their users' interests to get there.
neya
For what it's worth, I like Orion - built by the same team that built the Kagi search engine. It's a shit browser for developers (inspect panel crashes half the time and other bugs), but I trust it way more than Chrome or even Safari. For development tasks - if I need to, I simply switch to Firefox.
ulrikrasmussen
Can someone explain to me why most browser forks are based on Chromium? If the goal is to make a privacy focused browser which is independent of Google, isn't it then a bit counterproductive to put all your eggs in a basket which only exists due to the goodwill of your main competitor? Why not webkit or Gecko? There might be a good argument for it, but as a person concerned with privacy and the future freedom of the internet, who is supposedly the target user for a browser like this, I would expect the justification to depend on Google code to be front and center on the page.
zarzavat
WebKit is easy but has terrible compatibility because the fruit company makes money from native apps. They do the bare minimum to keep Safari functional so that people keep buying iPhones.
Gecko has an uncertain future and is perpetually at risk of dying.
It's at least possible to switch from Chromium to WebKit if necessary so the risks of building off of Chromium are not that big.
hnlmorg
Gecko is too big to die. Even with Firefox’s market share being a shadow of its former self, it’s still used by millions.
The real problems with Gecko is just that it’s harder to fork and has less compatibility with the web (that last part is largely just due to Chromium being the de facto standard so fewer people test their sites against Firefox).
leenify
> The real problems with Gecko is just that it’s harder to fork
That goes contrary to my experience. I'm a maintainer of a Firefox fork (with rather extensive changes to a lot of the internals), and it is pretty manageable to maintain. We manage to keep it roughly up to date and add new features without financial backing or folks working full-time on it.
If all you do is change the branding and apply some superficial stuff, Chromium might be doable, but that is hardly a new browser. Everybody who forked Chromium from the folks I know (mostly research/security testing people) gave up due to the constant churn.
For this reason, from my experience, Firefox forks are much easier to maintain once you start applying changes to internal things. Firefox is changing at a slower pace, making keeping up to date much more manageable, but that also has its drawbacks, as it does not support every crazy feature Google pushes out, e.g., WebUSB. But, for example, folks I know maintained a v8 fork that was shelved as the introduction of Torque (which has spotty public documentation, to be very kind) means it is a complete rewrite.
pjmlp
Rather the fruit company doesn't want to implement ChromeOS Platform APIs that never made it into Web standards.
adrr
Couple main reasons: 1) BSD license vs a CopyLeft license. Edge, Opera etc don't want to push their changes back up. 2) Compatibility and performance is why Brave switched from Gecko to Chromium. 75% of the marketshare is chromium based browsers so sites will more than likely work with chromium browsers.
I don't why webkit is more popular. Maybe because it(Apple) is slow to adopt standards.
swiftcoder
> Maybe because it(Apple) is slow to adopt standards
I think this is an interesting bit of propaganda - they are historically not all that slow to adopt actual standards.
What they often are is unwilling to adopt Google's pre-standardisation extensions (things like WebUSB, which have never been adopted as standards).
adrr
WebGPL, WebRTC, Gamepad API, WebASM etc Years behind Gecko and Chromium. Don't get me started on codec support with Safari. Webkit is the new IE.
jnrk
> I don't why webkit is more popular.
Because Safari comes pre-installed on billions of devices?
bodge5000
My guess is just that a lot of people really like Chrome and wish they could have that without the privacy concerns. I mean honestly I'm the same, I'm just seemingly more cynical as to whether that's possible.
That plus the fact that using a chrome based browser effectively hands over a bit more control of the web to chrome. If I don't like the privacy issues with chrome, it seems like a bad idea to hand (more) control of web standards over to the company that makes it, directly or indirectly.
ulrikrasmussen
Everyone mentions compatibility and performance as the main reasons, but this still doesn't make any sense to me. If I switch to a browser which has a stated goal of protecting my privacy and protecting the freedom of the web, then performance and web site compatibility is much further down my list of priorities.
cyborgrising
Even if you have personal priorities for privacy, surely you can understand that many user's first expectation for a web browser is for websites to work correctly.
We've kind of lost the plot if we get too far away from the core notion that a web browser is for correctly and completely rendering websites. The user population don't use web browsers to hide, they use it to look at the internet and do internet work. If a browser has any problems doing this, it not going to be relevant.
rkomorn
I'd agree but performance and compatibility bubbles up to top concern pretty quickly when you use something nearly constantly (which I'd say is applicable for a browser).
mrweasel
I believe that Gecko is notoriously hard to maintain and integrate into other software. It's not something I've attempted myself so take it for what it is. It was one of the issues Servo was suppose to address.
There is a few browsers based on WebKit, so that seems doable.
muglug
Even in 2025 you still get the most compatibility with [insert-website-here] with Chromium
digitalPhonix
Sure but I only use Firefox (no other browser installed (except Edge on Windows)) and I don’t have any issues; so some none-trivial portion of the web doesn’t require Chrom(ium) specific behaviour.
EasyMark
The only websites I seem to have issues with are usually trash sites anyway. All my regular sites like banking, Google Docs, Office 365, finance, etc. work just fine in Firefox. I do find its performance not up to par with most sites that might have a very JavaScript heavy app for gaming and such.
fahimscirex
Google websites intentionally degrade performance if you browse from Firefox. Facebook Messenger's E2E only works on chromium browsers. There are many websites that show popups to use chromium for the best experience. I do get it, these aren't privacy-friendly websites, but for professional purposes, lot of people are forced to use chromium browsers or user-agent strings.
gwbas1c
I don't know the internal details of the architecture, but on Windows, it's very trivial to be "Chromium". The newest web browser component has been based on Chromium for a few years.
rs_rs_rs_rs_rs
>Can someone explain to me why most browser forks are based on Chromium?
Because it's very very very good. Google poored billions into it and it shows.
jitl
This is neat, and reminds me of Kagi's browser Orion, since their hero image features Kagi search.
Orion is WebKit based, so it uses less battery and feels faster to me compared to Chromium browsers, yet it largely supports Chrome extensions via a compatibility layer; like Helium uBlock Origin is included by default. It also has vertical tabs which is essential for me, and open-url routing between profiles.
However, I tried it in January 2025 and gave up on using it after a few weeks of sporadic bugs. I didn't lose data or anything but some actions in the UI didn't produce any result, or they produced a confusing unintended result. I hope they get better - I will probably give it another go in a few months, especially since Arc (my current browser) is now owned by Atlassian.
Anyways, great to see a Chromium browser improving on the privacy of ungoogled-chromium.
setsewerd
I love Kagi as a search engine but the Orion UI feels too similar to Safari to really enjoy it as much.
I do enjoy vertical tabs, faster browsing, better privacy obviously. But "largely" is doing some heavy lifting in your mention of chrome extension support. I use about a dozen chrome extensions typically and about 4 of them are supported by Orion last I checked. Although of course #12 in Chrome is the Kagi search extension itself :)
The bookmarks bar seems consistently wonky though, with bookmarks showing the wrong logos (like Google Sheets showing up with the Google Docs logo, or ChatGPT showing some weirdly cropped version of itself), inability to rearrange bookmarks in a folder without opening the dedicated bookmark manager page.
If some basic usability things like this were fixed, along with adding tab groups (also big for me when I have 50 tabs open), I'd probably give it another go. Kagi search engine has largely replaced google search already for me so I'll definitely give it another go once these things are updated.
dani_kagi
Thanks for the feedback, I definitely see some wonkiness with the bookmarks bar and forwarded them to the team to investigate.
ProfessorLayton
Please add a setting to disable tab hibernation. Opening my laptop on a plane only to discover most of the tabs have been offloaded makes using Orion impossible.
sbinnee
Tried Orion on mac for a week or two. I also had a few bugs when using google docs and sheets. I gave up because I couldn’t work. However I keep using the iOS app. It’s quite good although I need to restart the app from time to time because of some bugs.
rkomorn
Upvoted because this is very relevant to my prospective usage of any alternative browser.
DavideNL
The biggest problem with Orion is the Firefox & Chrome extensions; Many don't work properly, but you don't see any errors, so you have no idea what parts are working and aren't.
Like using a content blocker and "hoping for the best". It might work, or not.
That's one of the reasons i stopped using Orion...
crossroadsguy
Orion was a very unstable/buggy app. I don't know how it is now. The funny thing is when I had reached out to their support with a detailed bug report, they asked me to go to GitHub issues instead (or their feedback forum; not sure whether they had moved). I asked them to pass it to the team since I had already shared it and these were easily and always reproducible; I had added proper steps as well. They said - nope. At that point, I realised what a mistake it had been trying to "contribute" to yet another closed-source software. Mail thread deleted, browsers - both iOS/mac - uninstalled. End of story.
dani_kagi
I'm sorry you had this experience. If you still have the bug report please send it to daniel.langh at kagi.com. I'll check on your original report and see how we can improve our communication going forward.
crossroadsguy
Hey, thanks for asking.
I am afraid I do not have those anymore. There were few in the mail and almost 20 (few of those were feature suggestions tbh) in the notes app. I later deleted those as well when I was cleaning up notes and cleared trash of the app. I just checked iCloud and it doesn't have that old history. If I use Orion again - hopefully when it's open source - I shall report bugs I find directly on the feedback site or the proper bug report channel then. Cheers.
(edited:)
Iirc it was from Jan-Feb of this year or maybe a bit further back. I am sure most of those would have been fixed. I remember one - when I would see the "all tabs" view on iOS and then click "Done" to get back to the normal usage window i.e one tab in focus and nothing happened. i.e basically returning from the "all tabs" view on iOS where you used to reach with swipe up on Safari.
Another - clear history on Mac used to crash for me. These were the most annoying and 100% repro. for me.
One more → iirc there was no way to customise (or I didn't find - not sure anymore) right click context menu on Mac. I almost always used "open in new tab" and there were too many options there which I didn't want or maybe didn't want on top.
pparanoidd
Would use it 100% if it was open source, such a solvable dealbreaker.
Zen browser is eating their lunch at the moment.
DavideNL
Note that Zen Browser is (yet another) Firefox fork. Might as well just use Firefox, with better settings (like Arkenfox user.js, customized how you like it). Would be better security & privacy wise.
Orion is a WebKit based browser (like Safari).
GuinansEyebrows
Might’ve worth giving it another shot. It’s still somewhat buggy but usually just with UI things. I haven’t had a lot of actual functionality issues in the last couple months of use on iOS or macOS.
esafak
If they open sourced it maybe they could get those pesky bugs fixed...
GuinansEyebrows
maybe! I hope they do.
MYEUHD
It's based on ungoogled-chromium and about 3 people are working on it.
its-summertime
I'm guessing it doesn't support certificate revocation very well as ungoogled-chromium has/had some issues with that.
removing every google url in a browser without replacements will have such downsides
cush
> about 3 people are working on it
Hard pass. Arc had an entire dev team with serious investors and couldn't just focus on building a browser
NSPG911
> had an entire dev team with serious investors
thats literally why we get slop, because companies focus on investors rather than users? when there are 3 people working on it, they would listen more to the community
koakuma-chan
And it's written in Python.
joshjob42
Actually it's mostly patch files but they're ignored by github.
Barrin92
it's a few hundred lines worth of scripts to produce an ungoogled chromium with some nicer defaults, why wouldn't it, in case pointing that out is meant to be a criticism.
koakuma-chan
oh ok, welp, :shrug:
_--__--__
From a few months of use I think qutebrowser is good enough to prove that a python web browser is not inherently a bad idea.
imiric
qutebrowser is not technically a "Python web browser". The GUI uses Python Qt bindings, and the browser engine itself is QtWebEngine. Python is simply the glue that ties it all together, and any language could be used instead, since performance is not a concern. This is why there are so many small niche "web browsers", such as Luakit, Nyxt, surf, etc.
undefined
SchemaLoad
I would not feel comfortable with my browsing data being in the hands of 3 random people.
worthless-trash
What about 10,000 ?
zamadatix
Both have their pros and cons, but overall I'd go with the 10,000.
Better than either is the frequency of 3rd party audits/security reviews/research interests - but I think that comes more from usage/popularity than the size of the 1st party dev team.
lunarcave
In the "choose a default search engine" page, it has a slightly amusing summary for each.
> Your personal data fuels its monopoly. Market-dominant due to anti-competitive and anti-consumer practices.
> Qwant
> Based in Europe. Uses Bing results. Sends tracking data to Microsoft.
> DuckDuckGo
> Privacy-focused. Relies on Bing results but never tracks or profiles you.
> Ecosia
> May plant trees for clicking ads. Relies on Bing and Google. Sends tracking data to Microsoft and Google.
> Microsoft Bing
> Collects extensive personal data. Privacy controls are buried and limited. Subjectively overwhelming UI.
> Kagi
> Privacy-focused. Customizable results without ads or tracking. Requires a paid account.
firejake308
Slightly amusing, perhaps, but accurate and concise? Definitely.
hopelite
I wish we could just add our own default search with a search string template like when the Internet was still alive.
That being said, I like using the slightly more obscure presearch.com and Swisscows.com, for what it’s worth.
hdjrudni
> I wish we could just add our own default search with a search string template like when the Internet was still alive.
Can't we? The %s thing works in Vivaldi. Worked in Chrome last time I checked.
lpln3452
Firefox still lets you do this.
You can add any URL as a custom search engine by providing a string template for the query.
It doesn't have to be a formal "search provider". Any URL that accepts a query string will work.
a022311
IMO the problem with Firefox is that custom search engines in Firefox can't use POST requests, even though it's supported. You may want to check Mycroft Project [1] out for that.
int_19h
The only major browser that I can think of that doesn't support custom search URLs, including making one the default, is Safari.
nunobrito
Please review your opinion about Qwant, the overwhelming majority of search results are produced internally and they are very clear about what isn't: https://betterweb.qwant.com/en/2023/09/18/web-indexing-where...
In Europe they are still IMHO the best option for an independent search engine.
undefined
godelski
The irony is it is a Chromium browser...
keyle
Imagine reading that list in 1995. Sigh.
maineagetter
[dead]
TiredOfLife
> Kagi
should be changed to
> Openly and proudly collaborates with russian government
klibertp
Kagi uses Yandex to improve search results for relevant queries. That's all they do.
As a company providing the service of web search, Kagi should do whatever it takes to improve search results. I imagine Yandex is the biggest and most complete index of Russian-language content - not using it would make the search results worse. The fact that Kagi still cross-references other indexes and allows users to downgrade specific results provides a check on propaganda content.
It's OK to have an opinion, and it's OK to dislike Kagi because it doesn't have the same opinion. It's wrong to mischaracterize what Kagi does, using wording that strongly suggests actions way more nefarious than giving a few dollars to a Russian company in exchange for some (anonymized) API calls.
n4bz0r
What's the context? Is there a proof of sorts?
NetOpWibby
Yeesh, tough crowd in these comments. And yet everyone's excited for new Gmail skins. Anyway.
I hope more people take ungoogled-chromium and create new interfaces. It's a shame that Servo's in an unusable state, I'd love to see more tooling around that.
I just want someone to give me Opera 12...I suppose that's Vivaldi though.
ramon156
I still have all my marbles on Ladybird and have no reason to change this. Helium just seems like something that wasn't thought out very far
NetOpWibby
I’ll concede that it does look rather basic
rkomorn
I tried Opera a few months ago and could not stick to it. All the features they were pitching at me felt a little off. The various panel integrations were clunky and didn't seem to offer anything over just... tabs.
Maybe not surprisingly, I'm currently on Vivaldi (although it has its own issues of not infrequent slowness or hangs).
scottydelta
Opera is the worse browser any one could give a chance in 2025: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39123477
Don’t let Opera cloud your judgement since it’s a poor choice to start with.
degosuke
And Vivaldi also supports MV2 extensions - so uBlock origin still works without any issues.
presbyterian
Vivaldi doesn't intend to maintain MV2, from their website:
> We will keep Manifest v2 for as long as it’s still available in Chromium. We expect to drop support in June 2025, but we may maintain it longer or be forced to drop support for it sooner, depending on the precise nature of the changes to the code.
https://vivaldi.com/blog/manifest-v3-update-vivaldi-is-futur...
Daedren
>We'll keep support for MV2 extensions for as long as possible.
This doesn't particularly give people any confidence in your product if even the devs don't know how long they can hold the line. Why not fork Firefox like Zen?
indiebat
I know this is unfair to firefox, majority of enterprise software now (including and starting with Microsoft teams) outright say do not support firefox or have ‘limited’ support whatever that means.
For anyone working remotely like me, teams is a crucial piece of software (however bad it is). So as much as I like Firefox and legends that started it and religiously developed it over the years, bottom line, I can’t use it now.
Some maybe majority of blame falls on Mozilla, they let it stagnate and focus on cosmetic changes in last few years instead of focusing on improving core technology.
zamadatix
> majority of enterprise software now (including and starting with Microsoft teams) outright say do not support firefox
Teams has explicitly supported Firefox for a while now https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/teams-clien... but the problem is "there's always another site that doesn't work right". Firefox usage share got too low, so places just check Chrom* and Safari work with the new feature and ship (sometimes not even the latter, if they don't care about mobile as much).
notpushkin
> there's always another site that doesn't work right
I keep hearing it, but personally I’ve only come across one recently (a site was running some tracking bullshit that broke on FF). And there’s one feature broken on LinkedIn.
derefr
Feels like we need something like early versions of Edge, where it was using Chromium but could be told to open individual tabs (or configured to always open links to certain origins) in an IE webview.
Except, instead of Chromium, Firefox, and instead of IE, Chromium.
extraduder_ire
I assume you mean early edge2. The first release of edge (project spartan) used a custom rendering engine and javascript runtime. The chrome-based version released five years later.
It might have died with e10s but there was a firefox extension that let you embed IE in a tab on demand or for certain sites.
jitl
Many vendors look at the userAgent. I’d be surprised if Microsoft Teams org doesn't have some soft incentives pushing Edge and if not edge Chromium-based browsers.
Then again, there are definitely some Firefox behaviors that differ from the WebKit-derived engines (webkit, blink, etc); for a few years Notion editor had very different UX in Firefox for this reason. They eventually fixed it though! Firefox's profiler is also excellent, I always analyze my Chrome profiles in https://profiler.firefox.com/ when I'm optimizing CPU use.
yeasku
I work every day with Firefox and the only problem I have is with Citrix.
Citrix has always been shit, so is not surprising.
hooverd
Firefox has been so far so good for me, in terms of support.
chneu
spoof the user agent. it'll probably work just fine.
barbazoo
I just can't go back to horizontal tabs anymore.
_def
vertical tabs never really worked for me. What would you say are the biggest benefits for you?
setsewerd
Not the parent commenter but
1. Great if you have a wider screen (could never do it on my old 13" Macbook Air, for a 15" it's pretty good but for a 24" iMac it's perfect). But if you need the space youjust have it set to minimize by default, maximize on hover.
2. See the titles of your browser tabs, which is great when you are like me and never have fewer than 30 tabs open at once.
3. Easier to select browser tabs when you have many of them open (ie they don't get squished unreadably small)
al_borland
I still use horizontal tabs, but have dabbled with vertical tabs. The biggest benefit I saw was that tab names stayed a consistent width and readable, no matter now many tabs I had open. With horizontal tabs, once you have over 10-15, you’re kind of flying blind.
gwbas1c
Basically, it's easier to see tab titles when you have a LOT of tabs open.
They really only work if you have a large monitor. I use a 50" 4k TV and two other monitors, and a 15" laptop. When I'm on smaller screens I have to hide the tabs.
int_19h
Your typical screen today is wider than most content on the web needs it to be, so most web pages render as tall columns with ample margins. Vertical tabs use up that space efficiently to show a large number of tabs in a way that makes it much easier to see all your tabs at a glance without losing track because the titles are shortened into nothing.
asimovDev
i can't wait for Safari to add proper horizontal tabs. There's a sidebar with tabs but you still have compact tabs taking up precious vertical space
al_borland
They didn’t really take up any space in Sequoia, but Tahoe brought them back. I guess people didn’t like how Sequoia was doing things.
I find the Tahoe tab bar pretty ugly.
the_real_cher
What are you using instead?
vovavili
Edge for me, since it has the single best implementation of vertical tabs on the market, with smooth expand on hover. Every time I try other browsers, I am immediately put off by how lacking in polish vertical tabs feel in comparison and go back.
int_19h
Vivaldi has an excellent implementation of vertical tabs.
Unai
Not OP, but I use vertical tabs with Vivaldi.
Pretty happy with it; I tried basically all browsers out there, fully switching to them for some time even if I didn't even like them, and after all that time I found Vivaldi the best overall browser right now (for me).
dialup_sounds
+1 for Vivaldi, so many options
DauntingPear7
Probably Zen, as Arc is dead
FinnKuhn
Pretty sure both Firefox and Microsoft Edge both offer it as an option too.
teecha
Zen is lovely but I actually really miss the little arc window. Didn't realize how much I used it until it was gone. Sticking with Arc for now.
jitl
Arc works fine; Orion (Kagi's browser) is like an Arc built on WebKit.
trenchpilgrim
Firefox added vertical tabs recently
barbazoo
Arc
tyre
How will they make money? Or is this always meant to be OSS community supported?
The challenge is that people have to get paid and infrastructure to build things costs money. Looks like there are only two people full-time at the company right now, though even then eventually they’ll need some revenue stream.
I love this project, but to have confidence that it stays that way it would be nice to see how they’ll replace they’ll stay afloat.
brcmthrowaway
Why does a browser need to be continually updated?
Is Google/W3C adding more features and busy work to keep browser developers employed?
pantulis
> Is Google/W3C adding more features and busy work to keep browser developers employed?
Most of those changes would be supported by the underlying rendering engine, and the only ones doing that afaik are Ladybird.
It's simply that building and mantaining _the rest_ of what we now expect a modern browser to be is staggeringly hard.
sunaookami
Security updates to fix zero-days? Google releases those very often and such forks take a long time to integrate them (even big forks) so I would not trust such a small team.
johnisgood
Yes. I left a feedback about a website posted on HN, turns out it works just fine on the latest version of Vivaldi, but not a previous version from a few months ago. So yeah, gotta keep it updated. :(
blackqueeriroh
Lol yes
devmor
I really have no interest in using a Chromium/Blink browser at this point, that's the real kicker for me.
I would prefer to use and support browsers using alternate rendering engines and without any ties back to Google, even if it means I personally get a lesser experience, because I don't trust Google and I want to ensure they don't entirely control the direction of the browsable internet.
Get the top HN stories in your inbox every day.
Even with un-googled Chromium I do not think these statements are self-consistent. We need browsers that do not allow Google to control the ecosystem. We need legitimate competition. So what, our choices are Firefox (Gecko), Safari (WebKit), and Ladybird?
Personally I go with Firefox on most devices and Orion (WebKit) on my iPhone and iPad.
This seems like something pretty easy to mess up. Maybe it is good now, but it sure is going to be a cat and mouse game.I really would be curious to have some breakdown comparison with something like the Mullvad browser (Gecko). I have a lot of trust for both the Mullvad and Tor teams. They have a much longer history working with this kind of stuff and have been consistently updating it since release. Launched in early 2023[0] and last update was last week[1].
[0] The Mullvad Browser (mullvad.net) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35421034
[0.5] Mullvad Browser (torproject.org) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37159744
[1] https://github.com/mullvad/mullvad-browser