[HN Gopher] Now DuckDuckGo is building its own desktop browser
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Now DuckDuckGo is building its own desktop browser
Author : waldekm
Score : 238 points
Date : 2021-12-22 11:56 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.zdnet.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.zdnet.com)
| 9387367 wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29316022
| yawaworht1978 wrote:
| A mix of Firefox , opera(I kinda like some features), safari
| without the proprietary issues and the chromium parts minus the
| tracking would be amazing.
|
| Rooting for the team, everyone used to say it's too hard to
| create a new browser from scratch, the monopoly is too
| overwhelming etc.
|
| But we got brave, at least it's something fresh. And it appears
| duck has generated money or investments for following googles
| path. Next they could go for an email client, a good copy of the
| Ms suite and a video platform and google might become dethroned
| some day.
| xigoi wrote:
| They're not going to create a new browser from scratch,
| unfortunately.
| jdpedrie wrote:
| There seems to be a growing consensus around the idea that
| alternative search engines aren't viable without their own
| browser. Cliqz (acquired by Brave), DDG (obviously successful by
| some metrics, but not a real threat to Google), Kagi (pops up
| from time to time here)[0]. Given that Google considers it worth
| tens of billions of dollars a year to remain the default on Apple
| devices and Firefox, the default search advantage is clearly
| quite important.
|
| I'm not sold on the idea that convincing people to install a
| different browser will be easier than teaching them to install an
| extension or choose a different default search provider, but
| clearly the latter isn't paying off.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28799049
| toper-centage wrote:
| They are viable, but growth is significantly hindered by
| GOOGLE. When you install a search engine extension, that is
| explicitly labeled as such, Google will still "warn" users that
| an extention has "hijacked" their default search provider, and
| recommend to revert back. This is obviously anti-conpetitive
| but governments are too slow to react. Furthermore, extensions
| are at the mercy of extension stores' obscure policies, and are
| often dropped on a whim by "reviewers".
|
| With that said, tens of millions of users is hardly "unviable".
| There are several profitable search engines.
| yosito wrote:
| Alternative title: "DuckDuckGo is joining the band wagon and
| releasing another white labeled variant of Chrome"
| tristan957 wrote:
| Or you could read the article.
| hestefisk wrote:
| The web really needs a truly cleansheet, non-invasive, open
| source browser written in a modern language. It's disheartening
| to see the consolidation in the web space on Chrome. We need an
| alternative. There has to be someone who can counter Chrome's
| dominance with a modern, fast browser engine.
|
| (PS - I am and have been a Firefox user for many many years)
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| The web has become so overdesigned and complicated that I just
| don't see that happening. No open source group has the kind of
| funds to take on google. Firefox is barely in there but only
| just because they were around before google's engine became
| dominant and google gives them a half billion dollars a year.
| heresaPizza wrote:
| And I think you should stick to Firefox (just as I'll do). It
| will be built on top of the system web view, so chromium on
| Windows and WebKit on macOS. It will be minimal and lack
| extensions, and I can't imagine living without extensions. And
| if you don't use any I recommend you to try some. I see no
| point in this browser, as it will basically be a Firefox Focus
| for desktop.
| pleb_nz wrote:
| As I read I was thinking Please don't use chromium Please don't
| use chromium Please don't use chromium Please don't use chromium
| Then I found it... Yes Then I saw 'building or own'... I thought.
| Why oh why.... sigh... At least consider Firefox
| jmnicolas wrote:
| You didn't read enough: they will be using the default os
| webview so Edge on Windows, Chrome on Android and Webkit on
| Apples.
| Yizahi wrote:
| Edge = Chrome
| speedgoose wrote:
| The Google trackers are replaced by Microsoft trackers.
| It's a bit different.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| totally different.
| pleb_nz wrote:
| Oh I read that alrigt. I think you may have missed my
| point...
| toper-centage wrote:
| So I suppose... No Linux support? I assume a significant
| share of their users are Linux users.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| If they're using webkit on Apple it's safe to assume they
| could use QtWebkit or GtkWebkit on linux. Linux will be
| lower priority probably strictly from a numbers game
| though.
| hestefisk wrote:
| Btw it's total non-news that they are building a browser. It's
| just a repackaging of the existing OS browser control in a new
| GUI. So still Chromium / Edge behind the scenes on Windows.
| cebert wrote:
| Instead of building another Chromium-based browser, I'd love to
| see if it were possible for Mozilla and DuckDuckGo to form a
| partnership that potently helps both firms. I'm concerned we will
| end up with a monolithic browser stack controlled by Google
| unless Firefox gains more adoption and support. I believe
| multiple parties and players help us build a more open and
| standards based web.
|
| I use Firefox as my daily driver primarily for privacy concerns
| and control, and secondarily to avoid monolithic browser stacks
| controlled by Google. Firefox isn't perfect, but I enjoy the
| experience and have no issue browsing the web with it.
| cainxinth wrote:
| I use Chrome for everything. I have 27 plug-ins running right
| now. But if Manifest 3 turns out to be as bad as predicted,
| I'll abandon ship for Firefox without a second thought.
| xNeil wrote:
| If you use Chrome, aren't you sending all your data to google
| directly? Can any number of plugins ensure your privacy?
| [deleted]
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Lol no you aren't "sending all your data to google". Come
| on man, certainly they spy on you but all your data is a
| bit of a bogey man story.
| deepstack wrote:
| use brave or ungoogled chromium (search for it on github)
| shall stop that.
| mccorrinall wrote:
| Im curious what plugins you use. 27 seems to be a lot.
| cainxinth wrote:
| Here's a partial list: - Dark Night Mode
| - FireShot - Force Background Tab -
| Google Docs Offline - Google Mail Checker
| - Hacker News Enhancement Suite - Image
| Downloader - Instapaper - LastPass
| - Linkclump - Popout for Youtube -
| Privacy Badger - Read Aloud - Reader
| Mode - Reddit Check - Reddit
| Enhancement Suite - ReviewMeta - Send
| from Gmail - Tampermonkey - The
| Camelizer - uBlock Origin
| znpy wrote:
| I honestly think that some body like duckduckgo should fork
| firefox, hire as many firefox developers as possible and get
| seriously on track with developing a seriously better browser.
|
| Firefox has been consistently getting worse in dumb ways, and
| the mozilla foundation seems to be interested in anything and
| everything but delivering a superior web browser.
| steviedotboston wrote:
| If Chromium works well and is open source, why does it matter?
| luxcem wrote:
| The standard adoption might be pushed by Google only or at
| best by a limited group of developers working on chromium.
| Monopoly, even with open source is dangerous.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> If Chromium works well and is open source, why does it
| matter?
|
| Where's the source for the MS version of it?
| Devasta wrote:
| Monolithic browser controlled by Google is already the case,
| the corpse of firefox is being dangled about "Weekend at
| Bernies" style so they can pretend they don't control the web.
|
| Chromes dominance is not going to be changed outside of
| government action.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| > Chromes dominance is not going to be changed outside of
| government action.
|
| Is it the dominance of 'Chrome' or 'Chromium'. I see 'Chrome'
| as Google's official product, 'Chromium' though seems to have
| become a boilerplate in recent years for kickstarting your
| own browser, and I don't know how I feel about this.
|
| On the one hand Google is already a monopoly in the browser
| space, because we have gone from "Browser Wars" to "Engine
| Wars" where 3 distinct browsers (Edge, Chrome and Brave) all
| running the same tech from Google.
|
| On the other hand I see this as a major service Google has
| done to help everyone in web development. In a way this
| engine monopoly has made things much easier, I no longer care
| if you're running Chrome, Edge, Brave or some other V8 based
| browser, I know I will see a consistent experience across
| those browsers. And while part of me is fearful or this
| shift, another part of me is like "so what". So what if
| Chromium is a dominant browser "core", it's OSS and though
| Google has major influence, it's still OSS.
| pc86 wrote:
| Chrome (not Chromium) has something like 63% global market
| share. I'm not sure Brave, with its ~1%, is worth talking
| about unless you're also talking about Vivaldi and Opera
| and every niche browser that exists.
|
| Sincerely, a happy Brave user.
| hestefisk wrote:
| I use FF every day and it works really well for my purposes.
| I do all of my daily desktop browsing in it and only open
| Chrome if I need to access an internal corporate web site on
| my work laptop. To me, FF isn't a dangling corpse, it works
| well and it's just not fair to the devs at Mozilla to make
| such a harsh statement.
| throw10920 wrote:
| Statcounter says that Firefox has about a 4% worldwide
| market share, compared to Chrome's 64%[1]. Assuming that
| the parent poster was talking about Firefox's _quality_
| instead of _market share_ is more than a little
| presumptuous.
|
| [1] https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share
| sydbarrett74 wrote:
| I respectfully disagree. If Mozilla can lessen its dependence
| on hush-money from Google, that is a /good/ thing. One may
| believe that Firefox/Gecko is an animated corpse, but it's
| the only realistic alternative to the Chromium ecosystem that
| we currently have. Other rendering engines are too obscure to
| matter and/or the hobbyist project of one person or at best a
| small team, including Palemoon and its ilk.
| SllX wrote:
| > Chromes dominance is not going to be changed outside of
| government action.
|
| Heard this once already when the song was about IE6.
| diputsmonro wrote:
| And it was true
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_
| C....
| SllX wrote:
| IE6 post-dates the conclusion of this lawsuit, and held
| ~90% of browser, not desktop browser, but _browser_
| market share for the better part of the next decade.
|
| What changed? Firefox was released, Safari was released,
| and quite a bit later, Google Chrome was released, but it
| would still be a while before IE6 would lose its
| dominance even once IE7 was released.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| Key differences between this situation and IE6/7:
|
| 1. IE6/7 were just egregiously bad experiences for both
| users and developers, with Microsoft being almost
| entirely disinterested to the point of disbanding their
| browser team. Holding the web back was clearly part of
| their strategy.
|
| 2. Chrome, on the other hand, is well-maintained and
| rather good. Unlike Microsoft in the 2000s, the web is a
| core pillar of Google's business. Any challenger to the
| throne will have to overtake a _moving_ target powered by
| a world-class engineering powerhouse, rather than a
| static dinosaur like IE6 /IE7.
|
| 3. The barrier to entry in the browser market today is
| roughly an order of magnitude greater than it was back
| then. Browsers today are far more complex; they're more
| like operating systems.
|
| As far as the free market is concerned, nobody is
| seriously challenging Chrome in this area. Ever.
| Unless/until Google loses interest and stops competing.
| SllX wrote:
| All of your criticisms of IE6 are fair and on point, but
| if you recall IE7 was Microsoft putting the gang back
| together again and trying to put some effort in again.
| Still not a great browser, but still a marked point where
| they abandoned their abandonment of Internet Explorer as
| a project.
|
| Google also originally piggy backed on WebKit to build
| their browser. The JavaScript runtime was homegrown, but
| Google worked within WebKit before forking out of there.
| My guess is when Google Chrome is eventually overtaken,
| it will be by another Chromium-based browser under
| similar circumstances.
|
| The web also isn't just desktop browsers anymore. It's
| much harder to make the case that Google Chrome is the
| only major browser of concern with MobileSafari running
| around, and per Apple's policies, WebKit the only useful
| browser engine on iOS and iPadOS.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| The web also isn't just desktop browsers anymore. It's
| much harder to make the case that Google Chrome
| is the only major browser of concern with
| MobileSafari running around, and per Apple's
| policies, WebKit the only useful browser engine on iOS
| and iPadOS.
|
| Yeah and, perhaps I'm giving them too much credit for
| strategy/foresight, but it feels like this all plays
| precisely into Google's hands.
|
| There is _just_ enough competition, and Google 's web
| apps are _just_ functional enough on Webkit /Firefox, for
| Google to sail clear of accusations of monopoly.
| SllX wrote:
| Well, not sure what to tell you mate. You can make the
| case that Google Chrome is a monopoly that should be
| brought to heel by the Law, under new legislation if
| necessary, or you can't.
|
| Again, I don't even particularly like Google Chrome, but
| do you know the only reason I keep a Chromium-based
| browser installed at all is? Government websites. Not
| Chrome though, currently it's Brave with all the crypto
| stuff turned off. I don't even need one for anything
| else. To the extent that Google Chrome is entrenched,
| it's the same entities whose powers you mean to bring to
| bear on them helping them stay entrenched.
| sydbarrett74 wrote:
| Some of us feel trepidation about Chrome being 'too big
| to fail' simply because Google has demonstrated itself to
| be capricious and fickle in terms of continued support
| for products. One only has to glance at
| killedbygoogle.com to see a pattern of rather arbitrary
| decisions to kill various things. If for any reason
| Google decided to kill off Chrome, it would be nice to
| have an alternative to fall back upon.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| The web is 10x more complicated now. Firefox's challenge
| was being bug-compatible with IE, but the challenge now is
| replicating the entire browser runtime.
| SllX wrote:
| Does the web being 10x more complicated mean that 1.
| Google Chrome, which full disclosure: isn't my browser of
| choice, deserves the same end as Internet Explorer? And
| 2. That the government is the means by which it should be
| brought to heel?
|
| I mentioned this in another comment, but Google Chrome
| originally piggybacked on WebKit, homegrown JS runtime
| aside, before forking out of there. I think there's a
| decent chance that the same could happen to Google via
| another Chromium-based browser. Just because it's not
| immediately apparent how Chrome will lose its dominance
| _today_ doesn't mean it won't ever happen. Nor does that
| mean it _should_. People actually like Chrome. I used to
| like Chrome, and it's easy to see how people with a
| different set of priorities than mine still do.
|
| The old song was about IE6, and today's song is about
| Google Chrome. The lyrics might be different but it's
| still the same old song.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| I don't want to see Chrome (and Chromium) die, I merely
| want to see other browser engines flourish. Heck, even
| Trident, if we could turn back time and have Explorer
| become a good web citizen.
|
| My problem with Chrome dominance is that it's both a
| dominance of a single company (since Chrome is by far the
| dominant "fork" of Chromium, and owned by an advertising
| corporation), and a dominance of a single browser engine.
| The latter is IMO a really big threat, as it leads to
| browser engine monoculture. Monoculture leads to a single
| point of failure, and in this case, a loss of knowledge
| about how to build a browser engine that's "the websites
| that are actually out there"-compliant. Much more relies
| on the web now, so it's paramount that we have a useful
| alternative browser engine implementation.
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| This is assuming quite a few things:
|
| 1. We the people are completely unable to use the power of
| market forces to come up with an alternative and supplant the
| established market leader
|
| 2. The government will regulate this in a way that is better
| than the alternative
|
| 3. That lobbying forces and the general corruption that is
| widespread in D.C. won't impact that in any negative way.
|
| 4. That big tech companies aren't experts in skirting
| regulations or that Google doesn't already have a plan B if
| something happened to one of their moats.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Market forces generally cannot stop a monopoly without
| government interaction. It's simply too powerful. They
| either buy upstarts or sue them into destruction in court.
| The only other way is if technology has a huge shift and
| the monopoly can't keep up before an interloper comes in
| and disrupts. That doesn't look to be happening anytime
| soon. I only see "Web3" and "Metaverse" and neither of
| those really spark joy in most people.
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| Chrome does not even come close to meeting the definition
| of a monopoly. Google is not "unreasonably restraining
| competition" nor is it even selling its browser.
|
| Besides that point, you have to be keen to distinguish
| between a situation where there is just a clear market
| winner versus a company attempting to monopolize, e.g. do
| people just prefer to use Chrome at the end of the day?
| Most internet users today are aware of Microsoft's
| browser. Almost all millennials and under are
| additionally aware of Firefox. The definition of monopoly
| isn't just "people choose to use this product in lieu of
| others" but something closer to "people are forced to use
| this product in lieu of others" or "people have no other
| choice than to use this product"
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| Re: point number 1 - market forces can't fix lack of DRM
| support in a browser made completely from scratch. Even
| Spotify, and sometimes news sites ask to enable EME now
| (which I refuse out of principle). A brand-new browser
| already got squashed by Google's refusal to allow Widevine
| modules to run on said browser, and if DRM becomes a
| commodity solution, it's goodbye to the open market of web
| browsers.
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| But you just said the crux if the issue: _you_ refuse out
| of principle, but that doesn 't mean others share your
| principles.
|
| Why did Google's refusal squash a brand new browser? Why
| was it even a factor? Did it have to be? Is there an
| alternative approach one could take to not need google's
| involvement to include a Widevine module in their said
| brand-new browser?
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| My refusal to allow EME content is entirely my own
| decision, and irrelevant to the point I'm trying to make.
|
| My point was that DRM (EME) support is becoming an
| expectation, and you are outright locked out from certain
| EME schemes like Widevine unless you're a "blessed"
| browser (which you can't be, yet - by definition, you're
| too small to enter any meaningful communication with a
| large player, as the browser I mentioned found out).
|
| > Why did Google's refusal squash a brand new browser?
| Why was it even a factor? Did it have to be?
|
| Said browser (Metastream [0]) was meant to build a
| different experience for watching video streams together,
| potentially including DRM-ed sources. Widevine allegedly
| has a 70% market share, so the refusal really was a big
| deal and a deal-breaker for the intended vision of the
| browser.
|
| > Is there an alternative approach one could take to not
| need google's involvement to include a Widevine module in
| their said brand-new browser?
|
| What do you propose, beyond technical workarounds that
| can cease working at any time? I imagine that there may
| be a risk of invoking the DMCA or lawsuits, whether
| wrongful or not (might makes right after all, and Google
| has the deeper pockets here)
|
| The right way to do this is to engage into a DRM
| licensing process, which is a fundamentally business-
| based one. And when you're small and dealing with a
| stubborn large business, there's no right to appeal their
| decision.
|
| [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19553941
| keithnz wrote:
| if you look at the stats in the US, chrome is slightly less
| than 50%, safari has a much bigger slice of the pie (with
| edge a wee bit more popular than the worldwide trend)
| mfer wrote:
| > Chromes dominance is not going to be changed outside of
| government action.
|
| This is because business tactics rather than technical or
| product ones are the reason for their domination.
|
| While I love technologies, it's so important to focus on the
| things outside of the tech itself at times.
| Devasta wrote:
| Tbh a lot of the tech is business tactics. Pumping so much
| stuff into the browser makes it an impossible task just
| trying to maintain feature parity nevermind compete on
| quality.
|
| Building out a high quality subset is not viable, the
| second your browser stops working with Amazon or Ebay or
| whatever else your browser is finished.
| mfer wrote:
| > Pumping so much stuff into the browser makes it an
| impossible task just trying to maintain feature parity
| nevermind compete on quality.
|
| To compete or gain a market doesn't mean you need to have
| all the features. Doing things differently can and does
| work. The more I read books like _Competing Against Luck_
| and _The Design Of Everyday Things_ the more I 'm able to
| see it and even work on projects that do that.
|
| > the second your browser stops working with Amazon or
| Ebay or whatever else your browser is finished
|
| This is why standards are so important. Why it's
| important to have Firefox and Safari in the marketplace.
| Apple using Safari on iOS and iOS large market helps keep
| the standards ecosystem in check with Chromes dominance.
|
| The lack of modern tech communications standards is
| causing problems for consumers. While I don't always like
| the HTML, CSS, and JS specs... the fact that we have
| specs and multiple implementations is a benefit to people
| who want to try and compete.
| kaba0 wrote:
| When it comes to a platform which's only redeeming
| quality is that it is a standard, then not following that
| standard is quite dump in my opinion.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> Chromes dominance is not going to be changed outside of
| government action.
|
| Well not with that attitude.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| What do you propose instead of government action? Turning
| up as a crowd with pitchforks outside of the Google HQ?
| ravenstine wrote:
| I agree, though I think your characterization isn't entirely
| fair.
|
| Firefox might have become irrelevant in terms of market
| share, but it's far from being a "corpse", if you meant
| anything by that outside of the "Weekend at Bernie's"
| analogy. It works quite well, its extensions are far less
| likely to get totally nerfed for the purpose of showing ads,
| and it even still develops features before Chrome does.
|
| It's definitely being dangled out there for the sake of
| excusing Google, but it also seems like someone's seriously
| holding it back. The Servo debacle was pretty inexcusable.
| Servo of course still exists under the Linux Foundation, but
| we'll be lucky if we ever see it mean anything to Firefox or
| become anything other than a curiosity.
| teh_klev wrote:
| > I use Firefox as my daily driver primarily for privacy
| concerns and control
|
| I'd switch to Firefox in an instant if they would just make the
| multi-profile functionality a first class citizen instead of
| hiding it behind _about:profiles_.
|
| It's a feature in Chrome that is hugely essential to my daily
| workflow and the current equivalent in Firefox has too many
| friction points to sway me at the moment.
| dkdbejwi383 wrote:
| It's not (necessarily) Chromium:
|
| > "Instead of forking Chromium or anything else, we're building
| our desktop app around the OS-provided rendering engines (like
| on mobile), allowing us to strip away a lot of the unnecessary
| cruft and clutter that's accumulated over the years in major
| browsers," explains Weinberg.
| kaba0 wrote:
| That takes a small fraction of the dev time than a complete
| browser though, so it doesn't really help the very chrome-
| centric landscape.
| Comevius wrote:
| The OS-provided rendering engine is Chromium's engine on
| Android and Windows, and Safari's on iOS and macOS.
| isodev wrote:
| "Safari" refers to the browser app built on top of the
| WebKit engine. Browsers on iOS use the WebKit engine (and
| not the Safari browser itself).
|
| The same engine (WebKit) is available on all Apple
| platforms. One can also build a desktop browser on top of
| WebKit like DuckDuckGo suggests it may do on macOS. This
| approach has a tremendous advantage for solid platform
| integration and allows them to focus on building a good
| user experience (and, in this case, secure* good user
| experience).
| smoldesu wrote:
| WebKit is also fully usable on other platforms too, but I
| seldom ever reach for it unless I'm forced to by the OS.
| cma wrote:
| > This approach has a tremendous advantage for solid
| platform integration and allows them to focus on building
| a good user experience
|
| It basically only lets them do a bit more than skinning
| it. No deep plugin architectures like you see with
| Android Firefox, allowing real ad blockers.
| isodev wrote:
| WebKit is just the part that renders web content. Browser
| makers are free to include plugin functionality in their
| implementation if they want to, including content
| blockers like ad-block, fancy tab and theme
| functionality, etc.
|
| It is also possible to extend the content blocking
| feature, so it also works in Safari itself through a
| regular web plugin or a content blocker extension.
| DuckDuckGo offers the "DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials"
| plugin for iOS and macOS, blocking all kinds of trackers.
| cebert wrote:
| Yes, I'll admit that part of the article is was a bit unclear
| to me. On iOS for example, you have to use Safari as your
| rendering engine. Chrome, Firefox, and any other browser
| ultimately us that on iOS. Android the os-provided rendering
| engine is Chromium. For desktop OSes I didn't get the
| impression that they're building their own rendering engine
| and at this point it would be a hefty engineering effort to
| do so. My assumption is that Chromium would be the underlying
| technology most commonly employed here.
| dkdbejwi383 wrote:
| One can use WKWebView on MacOS as well as iOS.
|
| How they will support Linux is a mystery.
| BurningPenguin wrote:
| Probably depends on the GUI framework they're using. QT
| uses Chromium for its QtWebEngine. I think that would be
| one of the most sensible choices to achieve cross
| platform support.
| [deleted]
| neoberg wrote:
| lynx
| [deleted]
| 3np wrote:
| Sounds like no Linux release then..?
| kaba0 wrote:
| It could just use qt's or gtk's native renderer.
| CursedUrn wrote:
| So could Google just put spyware (sorry "telemetry") in the
| rendering engine?
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Well it's open source so they can just rip it back out as
| well, that's what brave does.
| tarboreus wrote:
| As much as I think Firefox is great as a project, if only
| because it's not Chrome. I think we could use more people
| entering the space with fresh ideas. A monoculture with just
| Firefox and Safari outside it is is still basically a
| monoculture. Plus Mozilla is pretty solidly captured by Google,
| sorry to say, that's where all of their revenue comes from,
| more or less. If Firefox actually started getting big market
| share tomorrow, Google could just pull the plug on them.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Revive servo, and call it drust.
|
| Another one byte the drust quick song ala winamp on first
| launch.
| numlock86 wrote:
| > "Don't use X! Use Y instead!"
|
| > I believe multiple parties and players help us build a more
| open and standards based web.
|
| How is choosing Firefox over Chromium going to help in that
| regard? And why do you think Chromium is a monolithic browser
| stack by Google? How is it monolithic? I see plenty of
| "Chromium parts" forked and used in different environments on
| their own all the time. Blink, V8 or mixed combinations like
| CEF ... Also what makes you think it's "controlled by Google"?
| You say you want more open standards, but funnily enough
| Mozilla is one of those ignoring most new widely adopted and
| open standards because of ... well, some developer simply
| doesn't want Firefox to support it. See the "Web Serial API"
| for example.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| > How is choosing Firefox over Chromium going to help in that
| regard?
|
| Chromium is absolutely dominant in that space, since
| basically all major browsers except Safari and FF are based
| on it. Creating your own stack is hardly an option and Safari
| isn't forkable, so if you don't want to support the near-
| monopoly of the Chrome browser stack Firefox is the only
| option.
|
| Now, I do agree that FF made some very questionable decisions
| recently, but so did Chrome (see Manifest v3) and the way
| it's going right now, we'll have yet another Internet
| Exporer-like scenario on our hands soon.
| mattkevan wrote:
| Didn't Google fork WebKit to make Chrome? If I remember
| correctly, the first few versions of Chrome were actually
| fully WebKit.
| marcellus23 wrote:
| Yes, I guess by "Safari isn't forkable" he means the GUI
| application, but WebKit itself is definitely open-source
| and has been forked before (and is itself a fork of
| KHTML).
| Sebb767 wrote:
| Indeed, that's what I meant. You can fork WebKit, but you
| don't start out with a working browser, like you would
| when forking Firefox or Chromium.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Internet explorer was proprietary. Bad analogy.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| It's still mostly controlled by a single company. The
| fact that it's open source makes the situation a tad
| better, but it's still a lot of power and network effect
| centered on a single entity.
| luxcem wrote:
| Agreed, we already had discussion here about Gecko beeing used
| more in project I think there were a project for a Gecko based
| electron alternative.
|
| That said I'm not sure what is the current state of Gecko and
| how it could be used easily in new project. I'm not even sure
| that's a goal Mozilla is pushing.
| quincunx wrote:
| I also use Firefox as my daily, but more and more software
| seems incompatible with it.
|
| For instance, AWS EC2 Global View insists I switch away from
| Firefox, that's just one example, but there are more.
|
| Anyone know why? I've always viewed Firefox as the de-facto
| standard, why the recent breakage? Why is it deemed acceptable,
| by AWS of all orgs?
| arilotter wrote:
| Since it's got such a low market share, it's much easier to
| declare your website "not compatible with Firefox" than it is
| to test on Firefox, even though 99% of sites that claim
| they're not compatible with Firefox work perfectly as soon as
| you spoof your user-agent to WebKit.
| [deleted]
| antihero wrote:
| I'm looking at AWS EC2 Global View now (on Firefox) and am
| seeing nothing about switching away from Firefox.
| quincunx wrote:
| ok, interesting. I just checked, as of right now I still
| very much get the message "Unsupported Browser - In order
| to provide the best experience we require you use a
| different browser." So I'm not sure where our
| configurations differ.
|
| Firefox 95.0.2 64-bit fwiw.
| sydbarrett74 wrote:
| Perhaps Mozilla should create more paid coding positions
| rather than padding Mitchell Baker's purse. She's sucked a
| lot of the air out of that organisation.
| najqh wrote:
| Precisely the last thing we need is more ads and unwanted
| features in Firefox.
| sh4un wrote:
| The best is the furniture maker splash screen.
|
| My wife says what does it have to do with the internet. I
| told her Mozilla has conflicting priorities.
| pizza234 wrote:
| DDG has been very lightweight with regard to user experience.
| And they actually have to, otherwise, they couldn't
| distinguish themselves from the competition (ie. Google). So
| there's no realistic risk of invasiveness.
|
| WRT the features: Firefox needs market share above all. I'm
| actually terrified by a future where companies can't be
| bothered to put even a minimal effort to make a
| website/service run acceptably on Firefox. Try to use Slack
| on it, and you'll see what I mean.
| najqh wrote:
| "Firefox has been very lightweight with regard to user
| experience. And they actually have to, otherwise, they
| couldn't distinguish themselves from the competition (ie.
| Google). So there's no realistic risk of invasiveness."
| neoberg wrote:
| Future? As a webdev I don't remember having to check if
| something works on Firefox since probably 7-8 years at
| least. Userbase is too small to justify allocating
| resources.
| mtberatwork wrote:
| Too small? According to this site [1], market share is
| about equal to Safari and Edge+IE. If you are supporting
| Safari, Edge/IE there is no justifiable reason not to
| support Firefox.
|
| [1] https://kinsta.com/browser-market-share/
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Lots of devs (the ones I work with, anyway) don't even
| test in Safari until you point out it's broken in it.
|
| Really feels dev culture has regressed since the early
| chrome/safari days where working in multiple browsers was
| seen as priority.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| I never did when I was maintaining an embedded web app. I
| checked in Chrome and Firefox. I would go in and figure
| it out if someone reported a bug in Safari but mostly no
| one at the company used Safari so it was really not
| tested for and the app just was never meant to run on
| mobile at all so safari wasn't much of concern.
| deadbunny wrote:
| > I'm actually terrified by a future where companies can't
| be bothered to put even a minimal effort to make a
| website/service run acceptably on Firefox
|
| This isn't the future unfortunately. This is the present.
| rPlayer6554 wrote:
| Mozilla needs Google's money to continue existing so I don't
| think that's going to happen.
| sanxiyn wrote:
| Mozilla partnered with Yahoo just fine, so I don't see why it
| can't with DuckDuckGo.
| no_wizard wrote:
| The prevalence of chromium forks makes me wonder if there is
| something about the Firefox code base that makes it far less
| attractive to work with then chromium's. Is it just raw
| features of the core engine? Or is there a bigger issue? I
| believe the chromium team does put some effort in helping even
| competing forks with technical issues.
|
| I wonder Mozilla is unable to demonstrably provide support in
| this area?
| crate_barre wrote:
| Mozilla is not altruistic enough _like that_ to turn off Google
| funding into their org. This is a company that's trying to sell
| VPN subs for god's sakes, like every other mom-pop vpn shop.
| These cats need that Google money and could give two fucks
| about seriously competing with them.
| kaba0 wrote:
| How do mozilla receiving money for a setting which is
| literally on the first page of the settings page and is
| directly available from the url bar and you can set it with
| like 2 clicks causes you any problem? Are you donating money
| to mozilla in exchange for something? Or are you helping out
| with the code?
| pndy wrote:
| The only thing that bugs me with ddg is that every search inquiry
| is being processed by _improving.duckduckgo.com_ and it 's not
| possible disable it in search options. You can do block it
| manually in few ways if you wish but I think that should be an
| option user can control, in an easy way.
|
| I'm bit concerned how things may look like after Manifest v3 will
| arrive, when it comes to privacy, ads and tracking. Another
| Chromium-based browser? Why not, I won't mind it but everything
| comes to what Google does thru Chromium project people hands. And
| I don't think it can be anything else but Chromium - despite what
| he says. If not immediately then they later switch to it - just
| like Microsoft abandon EdgeHTML in favor of Chromium and Blink.
| drcongo wrote:
| I wish they'd focus on fixing the various things that have broken
| in their search over the last couple of years, like literal
| string searching and negation.
| szszrk wrote:
| Thanks for confirming this, negation is screwed up somehow. I
| ended up using !g for redirection for google instead, when I
| need to negate.
|
| But in general I think result quality went off the roof
| recently, while google's went down for me. I really find it
| more effective to search on ddg now, for any matter, technical
| and personal. Google still has a huge database of businesses
| and integration with maps is awesome, but that advantage is so
| small that I switch to google less then a few times a month.
| MrAlex94 wrote:
| This raises a few questions:
|
| * Will this be open source?
|
| * Will this support WebExtensions? Assuming they'll have to
| develop their own implementation since they are using the
| operating system's own rendering engines, so they will most
| likely have to have their own implementation.
|
| * Will this allow ad-blocking and tracking protection? Once
| again, seems they will have to develop this feature themselves.
| Will the ad-blocking whitelist their own properties or does the
| user have granular control?
|
| * Will this allow usage of other search engines within the
| browser, or are you locked in to DDG only? (Of course, ignoring
| actually navigating directly to the relevant search engines own
| website).
|
| Interestingly enough, from their blog post[1]:
|
| > Instead of forking Chromium or anything else, we're building
| our desktop app around the OS-provided rendering engines (like on
| mobile), allowing us to strip away a lot of the unnecessary cruft
| and clutter that's accumulated over the years in major browsers.
|
| On macOS, Safari is probably the most anaemic "major" web browser
| out there. Interested to see how it compares to that. I'm not
| convinced a more minimalist browser compared to Safari is
| actually useful?
|
| [1] https://spreadprivacy.com/duckduckgo-2021-review/
| gwbas1c wrote:
| I interviewed for the position. (They regularly posted the
| position in the "Who's hiring" threads for awhile.)
|
| It's going to be an extremely simple browser. Their strategy is
| to use the HTML rendering component built into each OS. The way
| I interpreted it was that they're trying to make a browser
| that's simple enough to develop with a small team, "good
| enough" for most people, and doesn't have every feature under
| the kitchen sink.
|
| > Will this be open source?
|
| Doubtful. It also doesn't "make sense" to open source, as
| they're basically using the same rendering engine as Edge /
| Safari, with a different UI around it.
|
| (Side note: If you want something like this that's open source,
| it's probably easier to clone it than to fork it. Every few
| years I write an experimental browser based on these rendering
| engines, and I frequently come across "simple" open-source
| browsers that provide great examples of how to use these
| components.)
|
| > Will this support WebExtensions?
|
| No. They are building ad-blocking and privacy functionality
| into the browser. To paraphrase what they told me, most people
| only install ad-blocking and privacy extensions.
|
| > Will this allow ad-blocking and tracking protection?
|
| Yes, that is the major feature they are trying to build. They
| have extensive blacklists already, as they already ship
| privacy-focused plugins for Chrome. (Their take-home assessment
| involved using a well-known privacy list published on Github.)
|
| > Will this allow usage of other search engines within the
| browser, or are you locked in to DDG only?
|
| We didn't discuss that. This is speculation on my part, but I
| think their motivations are to "keep it simple" instead of
| offer every feature under the sun.
| kgwxd wrote:
| I can't imagine it not being open source. Closed source
| pushes any privacy assumptions that can be made to 0. Trying
| to pitch it as a privacy focused browser would be even more
| disingenuous than all the mainstream, open source, browsers
| that already try to make that claim. IMO, it would completely
| destroy all of DDG's credibility to even try to justify it.
| bscphil wrote:
| > To paraphrase what they told me, most people only install
| ad-blocking and privacy extensions.
|
| Welp, zero interest from me then. And probably most others
| here as well.
|
| I don't use Firefox from hatred of Google or even fear of
| monoculture. I use Firefox because that's where the
| enthusiast community is. All the cool stuff (Tree Style Tab,
| uMatrix) gets built for Firefox, not for Chrome. Firefox is
| currently retaining that group, in part because there's
| nowhere else for them to go. What I would like to see is a
| diversity of _enthusiast_ browsers.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| IMO: Sounds like a good reason to create an open-source
| browser that just re-uses the OS's rendering engine. Most
| of these features have very little to do with HTML
| rendering.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| > Their strategy is to use the HTML rendering component built
| into each OS.
|
| So sounds like they are not going the Chromium route. Many
| comments in this thread are pretty cynical on that point.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| On Windows, the plan (when I interviewed) was to use C# and
| the new WebView2 (apologies if I got the name wrong)
| component.
|
| Under-the-hood, it uses Microsoft's fork of Chromium in a
| separate process.
| nunez wrote:
| To be fair, Chrome also started as a very simple browser that
| was "good enough" compared to IE6.
| salmo wrote:
| And Firefox was refreshingly light before it. All browsers
| are doomed to bloat or remain niche.
| [deleted]
| foxfluff wrote:
| Now DuckDuckGo is building a new skin for someone else's old
| browser engine.
| Yizahi wrote:
| Yet another Google Chrome clone with privacy mods. How many of
| those we have already? Four? Five? Good job cementing Googleopoly
| of internet.
| IceWreck wrote:
| They're using OS provided rendering engines.
|
| So Chromium based Edge Webview on windows, Webkit on Safari and
| what exactly on Linux ?
|
| QTWebengine ? Gecko ? No linux support ? Who knows.
| [deleted]
| up6w6 wrote:
| Taking from Tauri [1], which tries to use native rendering
| engines too, it's WebKitGTK [2]. I thought that only OSX and
| mobile OS had an integrated rendering engine to call it native,
| though.
|
| [1] https://github.com/tauri-apps/tauri#introduction [2]
| https://webkitgtk.org/
| chupasaurus wrote:
| Which isn't there outside GTK-based environments.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| You're joking right? GTK apps work just fine outside of
| "gtkbased environments". They have since the beginning.
| Some may not have the styling of their DE but they run just
| fine. I use Gimp and Meld all over the place, including on
| windows without any issues.
| fikama wrote:
| I think he mean that it's not preinstalled on not "gtk
| based environments"
| jmnicolas wrote:
| It's not like it can't be installed. I use KDE at home, but
| I have quite a few GTK apps installed.
| khimaros wrote:
| this is also what epiphany (GNOME Web) uses for rendering.
| chupasaurus wrote:
| Lynx/links as a dependency. /s
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| I really hope they end up using servo.
|
| If you're ignoring established engines, it's a pretty good first
| step
|
| I don't think the web is fixable as it is though. Performances
| are going to be terrible no matter what unless we pick a subset
| of functionality and provide native code to handle that.
|
| EDIT: ooh, they're going to use the native engine on each
| platform! Wow! This is a non news.
| mariusor wrote:
| The more I see how Mozilla does nothing to allow
| Firefox/Gecko/Servo to be a base for other browsers, the more I
| start to believe that it's not just a problem of not having it
| prioritized on their road map, but it's actually undue influence
| from outside the company.
|
| It's impossible that in the 10 or so years since people
| manifested desires to have a way to embed a browser engine which
| is not Google controlled in applications, nobody at Mozilla
| actually realized how good of an idea that is for their
| popularity, influence, and why not, monetization capabilities.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| > but it's actually undue influence from outside the company
|
| I mean we've all seen how Mozilla execs behave. I'd say it's
| likely an influence inside the company.
| mook wrote:
| 10 years or so? Try 20.
| https://web.archive.org/web/20000815063229/http://www.mozill...
|
| Yeah, they used to support embedding. But it kept being under
| resourced, with bug reports and patches often being ignored.
| shmerl wrote:
| May be they can turn Servo into a complete engine.
| [deleted]
| quiet_cool wrote:
| Couldn't find it in the article but I'm assuming it will only run
| on current officially supported Win and Mac OS
| ac130kz wrote:
| They seem to oversold "engine" things to the journalists, the
| article itself even states that it's simply a thin wrapper to
| WebViews aka Chromium/Webkit. Yes, it's not a fork, yet it uses
| only already available engines.
| anoplus wrote:
| If improving DDG - or any privacy respecting search engine -
| would require extra funding, I just want to say I would be happy
| to pay subscription fees for a good service.
| azangru wrote:
| How many web developers get peeved when they see news of another
| prospective web browser, I wonder?
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| We don't care we'll just continue to test in Safari and Chrome
| and then ship it. You're on your own if you use something else,
| change the UA and hope for the best.
| dartharva wrote:
| From the official blog:
|
| >Instead of forking Chromium or anything else, we're building our
| desktop app around the OS-provided rendering engines (like on
| mobile), allowing us to strip away a lot of the unnecessary cruft
| and clutter that's accumulated over the years in major browsers.
| With our clean and simple interface combined with the beloved
| Fire Button from our mobile app, DuckDuckGo for desktop will be
| ready to become your new everyday browsing app.
|
| It seems they are making the desktop equivalent of Firefox Focus.
| cloudengineer94 wrote:
| Can't wait to see what they offer I have been using Safari and
| Brave for quite some time now.
|
| For work I use strictly Edge as it keeps everything from o365
| together.
| waweic wrote:
| It's very important to understand that, other than Blink, Gecko
| is incredibly hard to integrate into other software. That's why,
| for example, there is no Firefox-based Electron or Qutebrowser
| equivalent.
|
| This is only due to the failure (and unwillingness) of Mozilla to
| build a truly modular, expandable browser.
|
| Mozilla isn't even trying to compete with Google anymore at this
| point. They are only implementing new features into Firefox that
| Google has first built into Chrome (and firing developers working
| on features that could actually set Firefox apart from Chrome).
| Also, they are quick to implement most "features" Google
| implements, no matter how user-unfriendly it may be.
|
| An example for this is Mozilla implementing Manifest V3:
|
| https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/11/manifest-v3-open-web-p...
| gruez wrote:
| >Also, they are quick to implement most "features" Google
| implements, no matter how user-unfriendly it may be.
|
| >An example for this is Mozilla implementing Manifest V3:
|
| I fail to see how "implementing manifest v3" is user-
| unfriendly. I can see how people think that way, because
| "implementing manifest v3" is being conflated with "removing
| blocking webRequest API". However, there really isn't any
| indication that mozilla is doing the latter. For instance, you
| could implement manifest v3 but still supporting v2, or drop v2
| but still keep the blocking webRequest API as a vendor specific
| API. There are good reasons to do the former, to allow firefox
| to work with extensions built for chrome, so I don't see any
| issues with mozilla implementing v3.
| 8K832d7tNmiQ wrote:
| The reason behind the nonexistense of firefox-based electron is
| mainly rooted in the fact that FIrefox does not offer any
| embedded framework like webkit did with webkit2gtk and chromium
| with CEF.
|
| They used to have one, but just largely forgotten and
| abandoned.
| heresaPizza wrote:
| The reason Mozilla is implementing Manifest V3 is to maintain
| cross-browser support for extensions. There are many extensions
| that will work just fine and not having the new APIs on Firefox
| would mean just loosing them. And I'm not saying this as a
| Google supporter, I hate them, but we have to be objective.
| Also, Firefox devs are pushing forward security with better and
| better site isolation, cookie isolation and now with RLBox. And
| if they implement more stupid features like themes, it's
| totally fine. People complain if Firefox has a low market share
| and then complain again when they implement user-friendly
| design things.
| mariusor wrote:
| I just posted a top level comment before seeing yours, and
| basically I have started to think (with my obligatory tinfoil
| hat on) that it's not just the lack of vision on the part of
| Mozilla's board, but actually external influence and
| intentional sabotage which led to this.
| mwcampbell wrote:
| > we're building our desktop app around the OS-provided rendering
| engines
|
| I'm skeptical that this will give them enough control to fully
| customize all browser behavior. The platform-provided browser
| engine APIs (WebKit, the new WebView2 on Windows) are designed
| for simple HTML embedding scenarios, not a full web browser. I
| struggled with this when developing a browser based on the IE
| engine several years ago. I think Electron would be a better bet.
| Does anyone disagree
| heresaPizza wrote:
| I 1000% percent disagree. Firstly as a user I see no point in
| this browser at all. They should have partnered with Mozilla to
| stick to their commitment to privacy and to their effort to
| support open source projects.
|
| Imho they don't aim to customize the UX that much. They'll
| build something like their mobile browser and push for their
| search engine, mail protection and whatever they'll try to sell
| in the future. And we should just not trust them. So many
| people use browsers as they are (which I find impossible
| nowadays with all the ads and popups) and reading that
| DuckDuckGo magically protected them will be enough for them.
|
| Instead of Electron they could have just used Chromium but that
| is ethically terrible and an un useful effort for them (given
| what I said about their intentions).
| arendtio wrote:
| Most people here probably know it, but for those who don't:
|
| The key point 'Chromium fork vs. OS provided Webview' is somewhat
| non-relevant, because they aren't very different. Chromiums
| rendering engine 'Blink' is a fork of WebKit and most OS provided
| Webviews are either Blink or WebKit based.
|
| The last major rendering engine that is different is
| Gecko/Quantum which is being developed by Mozilla for Firefox.
| Everything else is based on WebKit nowadays.
|
| The only fun thing about the situation is that WebKit is a fork
| of KHTML which was developed by the KDE developers for their
| browser Konqueror for Linux.
| ravenstine wrote:
| As much as I prefer DDG over Google in terms of search, and
| perhaps other services of DDG provided them, I'd beware of
| allowing them to take on the all-encompassing nature that Google
| imposes.
|
| I can see it now... it's the year 2525 and there's DDG search,
| DDG browser, DDG email, DDG video chat, DDG social network... and
| they announce the addition of personalization features based on
| user behavior, restriction of ad-blocking for "helpful ads", and
| then they just get bought by Google anyway.
| spicybright wrote:
| I always use this argument: If you wanted to make a big honey
| pot to collect people's data, how would you market it to get
| the most users? Exactly how DDG is marketed.
|
| While there's no evidence of it happening, it's entirely
| possible they sell data to people on the hush hush.
| timbit42 wrote:
| Up to the point it reaches parity with Google, it's a win for
| users.
| ausbah wrote:
| that's kinda how most successful businesses work? you succeed
| in one area, move into another related area, repeat ad
| infinitum
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