this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2022
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Nope because for some removed things there are practical no alternatives available that you could use. Awareness and reliability is a huge factor.
Removing everything without providing alternatives is a key point why people leaving because promises alone are worth nothing if you do not act up on it. People just do not care if there is a logo with google or mozilla, as long as they have something in their hand they can use for their websites. Instead you see paypal and others doing something which they overlook, deliberately or not, plays no role.
No, since employees from Google are not direct representatives for the Corpo. The main Browser is still based on Chrome. It does not change anything that free volunteers maintaining issue tickets, reviewing things etc. your statistic does not include bounty hunters and such people, because no one put them into statistics because they usually do not do this on a regular basis. The external libaries included are also very often not coming from Chrome, there are also libs included coded by others. Also not in any statistic. So no Google does not control the outcome. It is up to you what you implement, and up to Chromium people decide what they accept as trustworthy or not because they only release the open parts, and everyone can inspect them, this is not in Googles control. What they can control directly is only Chrome but what has this to do with Mozilla or Firefox or the overall web, right nothing. Sometimes Google also create their own stuff because they simply invent it or there is no practical alternative that they could implement. I just say this for the reference, QUIC for example.
The web uses that what is reliable, usually open source and gets maintained. If there are no frameworks available no one can code alternatives tools, so that is the underlying problem. There is simply no competition as the govt also only depend on organisations instead of coming with their own stuff, because it is cheaper to let other people do the work than providing your own frameworks and solutions.
I know people that worked on golang and chromium outside of google and then tell me how difficult it is working on it because Google has final decision making power on those projects even though they're open source.
They have a higher voice but you, if you want to still can reject their decision. The drama about manifestv3 was also more echo chamber, vivaldi, brave and others ditched it so adblockers still work. Yet no one has, as of a today a solution. People only come up with, remove ads ... end. This is not what developers or content creators want, they want practical solution without compromising something and ads is simply reliable system. There are also other things that play a role for such decisions, malware etc. Points that some people just ignore. Most people see it from their own perspective and not from developer or content creator perspective. I do not need it or want it ... okay f# it its bloatware or shit ... this is basically how every discussion is about it.
If you pay for development you of course should automatically get a higher voice in your own project and Chrome is simply - theirs. This does not change the underlying truth that you can fork Chromium, adjust it and are finished. If you check the fork history of what people made of Mozilla, there is practical no one from impact, not even Pale Moon as they limit several things drastically. The rest are clown forks with 2 changes ... calling it hardened and independent even if its not because you rely on Mozilla and that is it, not even mention Mozillas failed attempt on Mobile OS and their crippled mobile browser....
Again if govt would provide alternatives as base or fund independent projects by independent people and not rely on others the situation would be better. Then monopolies had a much harder time to compete.
I agree with you that if we don't like their decision then we can fork but we don't have time or money to maintain the fork.
That is why funding and help is essential, this must come from above to at least provide people with opportunities and a guidance beyond ... oh better use x than y.