Microsoft’s recent announcement that it is, in effect, abandoning the unloved and unlamented Edge browser stack in favor of Chromium is, well, both hilarious and dripping in irony.
Consider at first blush the history of the web in the barest terms:
- 1991 — http, html, etc. invented using NeXT computers
- 1992 — Early browsers (Mosaic, NetScape, etc.) implement and extend the standard, notably NetScape adds Javascript and tries to make frames and layers a thing. Also, the
<blink>tag. - 1995 — Microsoft “embraces and extends” standards with Internet Explorer and eventually achieves a 95% stranglehold on the browser market.
- 1997 — As NetScape self-destructs and Apple’s own OpenDoc-based browser “Cyberdog” fails to gain any users (mostly due to being OpenDoc-based), Apple begs Microsoft for a slightly-less-crummy version of IE5 to remain even vaguely relevant/useful in an era where most web stuff is only developed for whatever version of IE (for Windows) the web developer is using.
- 2002 — FireFox rises from the ashes of NetScape. (It is essentially a cross-platform browser based on Camino, a similar Mac-only browser that was put together by developers frustrated by the lack of a decent Mac browser.)
- 2003 — Stuck with an increasingly buggy and incompatible IE port, Apple develops its own browser based on KHTML after rejecting Netscape’s Gecko engine. The new browser is called “Safari”, and Apple’s customized version of KHTML is open-sourced as Webkit.
- As a scrappy underdog, Apple starts a bunch of small PR wars to show that its browser is more standards-compliant and runs javascript faster than its peers.
- Owing to bugginess, neglect, and all-round arrogance, gradually Microsoft loses a significant portion of market share to FireFox (and, on the Mac, Safari — which is at least as IE-compatible as the aging version of IE that runs on Macs). Google quietly funds FireFox via ad-revenue-sharing since it is in Google’s interest to break Microsoft’s strangehold on the web.
- 2007 — Safari having slowly become more relevant to consumers as the best browser on the Mac (at least competitive with Firefox functionally and much faster and more power efficient than any competitor) is suddenly the only browser on the iPhone. Suddenly, making your stuff run on Safari matters.
- 2008 — Google starts experimenting with making its own web browser. It looks around for the best open source web engine, rejects Gecko, and picks Webkit!
- Flooded with ad revenue from Google, divorced from any sense of user accountability FireFox slowly becomes bloated and arrogant, developing an email client and new languages and mobile platforms rather than fixing or adding features to the only product it produces that anyone cares about. As Firefox grows bloated and Webkit improves, Google Chrome benefits as, essentially, Safari for Windows. (Especially since Apple’s official Safari for Windows is burdened with a faux-macOS-“metal”, UI and users are tricked into installing it with QuickTime.) When Google decides to turn Android from a Sidekick clone into an iPhone clone, it uses its Safari clone as the standard browser. When Android becomes a success, suddenly Webkit compatibility matters a whole lot more.
- 2013 — Google is frustrated by Apple’s focus on end-users (versus developers). E.g. is the increase in size and power consumption justified by some kind of end-user benefit? If “no” then Apple simply won’t implement it. Since Google is trying to become the new Microsoft (“developers, developers, developers”) it forks Webkit so it can stop caring about users and just add features developers think they want at an insane pace. It also decides to completely undermine the decades-old conventions of software numbering and make new major releases at an insane pace.
- Developers LOOOOVE Chrome (for the same reason they loved IE). It lets them reach lots of devices, it has lots of nooks and crannies, it provides functionality that lets developers outsource wasteful tasks to clients, if they whine about some bleeding edge feature Google will add it, whether or not it makes sense for anyone. Also it randomly changes APIs and adds bugs fast enough that you can earn a living by memorizing trivia (like the good old days of AUTOEXEC.BAT) allowing a whole new generation of mediocrities to find gainful employment. Chrome also overtakes Firefox as having the best debug tools (in large part because Firefox engages in a two year masturbatory rewrite of all its debugging tools which succeeds mainly in confusing developers and driving them away).
- 2018 — Microsoft, having seen itself slide from utter domination (IE6) to laughingstock (IE11/Edge), does the thing-that-has-been-obvious-for-five-years and decides to embrace and extend Google’s Webkit fork (aptly named “Blink”).