Essay
January 2020 saw the release of the first Microsoft
Edge browser to be powered by Google’s Chrom ium
engine, which joined Chrome, Samsung Internet and
Opera in the list of Chromium-powered browsers.
According to Statcounter, this means 70 per cent of users
are now using Google-powered browsers.
SO, IS GOOGLE’S DOMINANCE A
BAD THING?
Browser ‘monoculture’ has been a topic of heated debate
within the developer community, ever since the days of
Internet Explorer’s dominance in the early 2000s. The
argument goes that if usage of a browser becomes so
prevalent, developers stop coding for any other browsers
and over time standards erode and the dominant company
can create its own ecosystem, locking users into their
products and opening the doors to potentially harmful
abuses of its position.
Supporters of the monoculture say that having only
one engine frees up developers from maintaining
different engines across a range of browsers, all with
their quirks and idiosyncrasies, to focus on new feature
sets that add value to users and improve people’s browsing
experience. They make the case for faster innovation
and increased investment in product development.
I look at that 70 per cent and growing user base and I
feel that more Chrom ium-powered browsers in the world
means we have a single point of failure – if a Chromium-
based engine goes wrong at base – or worse still gets
compromised by hostile forces - there will be issues
across more of the web. When bolstered by concerns
about Google’s commitment to privacy, monetisation
and data selling, we could see a browser landscape where
Google holds a monopoly over browser engines – and
the touch points within them - that a lot of users use to
access the web.
Many de velopers bel ie ve in diversit y, fai r competition
and the forces for good across the web: a future where
no single provider is entirely dominate and where users
have a healthy choice of tools to do the job.WHAT CAN DEVELOPERS DO TO
HELP PROMOTE DIVERSITY?
To avoid driving us towards a monopoly, designers,
developers and tech-savvy people need to take an
impartial look at what’s happening in the browser space
and what this means for the people who use it.
Community-led change can educate people about
what’s happening in this space. We have a legacy of
effecting change based on our traditional stance. A stance
that can be described as non-conformist, subversive and
sceptical of poor practices. This has been the norm for
nearly two decades. Take a couple of recent examples
where critique from developers made big tech rethink
their choices.
In 2019 the Chrome team were challenged by the
community when they announced that their engine
would support a new html tag: ‘<std-toast>’ – a
notification tag that jumps from the bottom of the screen- the naming of which raised questions around clarity.
The fact that the introduction of this tag wasn’t
discussed with the parties involved (and impacted) was
seen as Google abusing its power to bypass best practice
W3C standards process. This sparked a reaction from the
WHAT DOES THE FUTURE
HOLD FOR BROWSERS?
Illustration by Kym WintersBROWSERSNico Turco examines the state of play with browsers,
whether developers should encourage diversity or monopoly
and how Google fits into it all