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Essay

Everything Is Chrome

  • 2539 words

The chances are you’ve heard of Google Chrome. It’s currently the biggest browser in the world, but that comes with issues. Issues that I think need addressing. However, it’s crucial to examine how we reached this stage to form comprehensive opinions. Let’s start at the start with the birth of the first browser.

The Early Days

In 1990, WorldWideWeb (later known as Nexus) was released by Tim Berners-Lee for the NeXTSTEP operating system exclusively. This was the first web browser and the sole way to see the web. In 1992, the first stable version of the Line Mode Browser was released, with support for the more widely used X Window System. Following that were many more browsers, such as Erwise and ViolaWWW, and later Cello and Lynx, but there was one that really stood out. Releasing in 1993, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications’ Mosaic came with big changes and huge influence.

A vintage web browser interface displaying the homepage of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois. The website is shown in an early version of the Mosaic web browser, with a simple layout and minimal graphics.
Screenshot of Mosaic version 1.2.

Mosaic was a marked shift. It was the first browser to display images in line with the rest of the content and was notably easier to setup. As with all things in this early stage of the web, it didn’t stay stagnant for long. Towards the end of 1994, Mosaic began losing its dominance to a new player. Netscape.

Inspired by the success of Mosaic, Netscape very quickly made a name for itself in the browser arena. It introduced showing content as it downloaded, which made it preferable for the average dial-up user who previously had to wait for the entire page to load before it would display. Its flagship browser, Netscape Navigator, was one of the first to support JavaScript.

Around this time, Opera emerged. It entered the market with its own proprietary layout engine, titled Elektra.

The First Browser War

Microsoft took notice of Netscape’s success and saw the internet as a profitable market. They created the now infamous Internet Explorer. Initially considered inferior by many, Explorer began to slowly claw away some market share for itself, gradually chipping away at Navigator and its competitors.

Netscape Navigator came in two editions: Gold and Standard. With the release of version 4, the Gold Edition (which was notable for having many extra functions that negatively impacted stability) was rebranded to Netscape Communicator. This name change was a shot in the foot that affected their brand recognition and, bundled with performance slower than Microsoft’s new Internet Explorer 5, spelled their demise.

By the time the new millennia rolled around, many new browsers had launched (such as KDE’s Konqueror), Netscape was on its deathbed, and Explorer was thriving, with a peak market share of 95%. Google also began showing some interest in the browser market with the release of Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer. It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows for Microsoft’s browser, though. Microsoft was accused of leveraging its dominant position in the market to unfairly promote Internet Explorer over other browsers to stifle competition.

This came to a head in 2001 with the ominous sounding United States of America vs Microsoft Corporation. It concluded with Microsoft drafting a settlement proposal that permitted PC manufacturers to use non-Microsoft software.

The Second Browser War

Shortly after this lawsuit, in 2003, Apple released their own browser, Safari, which quickly gained popularity on their Macs, although they initially failed to release it elsewhere. Safari used the WebKit engine, a fork of the KHTML and KJS libraries from KDE’s browser, Konqueror. Also in 2003, Opera 7 released with a large rewrite and a new layout engine, titled Presto.

By the time 2004 rolled around, a product concocted by a small group formed by Netscape in 1998 had materialised. The product became Firefox, and the group became the Mozilla Foundation. The same year, rumours began swirling that Google was building a browser of its own.

Firefox was free, leaving little barrier to entry, and people were more then interested in leaving Internet Explorer, which had gained a reputation for poor security and questionable support for web standards. Firefox also used a unique rendering engine called Gecko and was open source.

Upon release, Firefox immediately challenged Explorer’s dominance. Within a mere nine months, the browser had amassed in excess of 60 million downloads. It continued to grow until it’s peak in 2009, with just over 30% market share.

Apple realised that they were limiting themselves by only including their browser on their own OS. As such, they released a version for Microsoft Windows. Unfortunately, this couldn’t have come at a worse time, as the next year Google finally entered the browser market and released Chrome.

The Rise of Chrome

Despite initial reluctance from Google CEO Eric Schmidt to enter the browser wars, he eventually relented, and in 2008, Google Chrome released. Using components from Firefox and Apple’s WebKit, it was built upon Chromium, an open source base also developed by Google. The release was marked with a short comic by Scott McCloud.

It didn’t see success as instant as Firefox, but instead slowly crept up, to the point that by 2012 it was beating all other major browsers. From that point on, it only continued to grow and has taken complete dominance.

In 2012, Safari was discontinued for Windows, where its market share had been decimated. However, it’s continued to remain a popular choice on Apple operating systems.

The following year, Opera announced its intention to switch from Presto to WebKit, although around the same time, Google announced they would be forking WebKit, to which they were already the largest contributor, to create Blink. Following this, Opera revised their plans and moved to Blink.

With 2015 came Microsoft’s attempt to reaffirm their place in the browser market. They unveiled Edge, a new browser built from the ground up with their own engines – the proprietary EdgeHTML browser engine and open-source JavaScript engine Chakra. Following this unveiling, they announced plans to sunset Internet Explorer and subsequently adopted Edge as the new default browser in Windows.

Unfortunately for Microsoft, Edge wasn’t much liked upon release. While praised for performance, it was slandered for its lack of features and poor design choices, among other issues. Microsoft saw this and announced in 2018 that it would rebuild Edge as a Chromium based browser. This move was completed in 2020 and was seen much more favourably.

This left the web with three major engines: Google’s Blink, Mozilla’s Gecko, and Apple’s WebKit. Almost every browser currently in existence relies on one of these three engines.

Apple’s WebKit sees significant use on its own devices. Safari is the browser of choice for most MacOS users, as it’s preinstalled. WebKit also sees unanimous use on both iOS and iPadOS, where all browsers are relegated to merely a front for it. It also sees a degree of use in embedded applications thanks to its performant nature and in some other browsers.

Mozilla’s Gecko sees very minimal use outside of Firefox. It is used by a few Firefox forks, but very little beyond that.

Google’s Blink sees the most use by far. This is what this article has been building up to and where the issues lie. Almost everything uses Blink.

Edge? Blink. Opera? Blink. Opera GX? Blink. Vivaldi? Blink. Brave? Blink. Samsung Internet? Blink. UC? Blink. Silk? Blink. Arc? Blink.

But it goes beyond that. It’s not only the engine used by most of the most popular browsers; it’s also the engine that powers Electron. Thus, the desktop applications for Discord, Spotify, VS Code, Figma, Obsidian, Signal, Slack, et al are all using Blink. It’s everywhere!

The Problem with Chrome

There is no choice in the browser market. It’s all just Blink, and Blink is Google. This means that Google has complete and absolute control over the browser market. Bundle this with the most popular search engine, and they have near complete control over the web.

This simply isn’t acceptable. The web, at its core, is open. That is what was defined when it was created, and that is how it must stay. Almost everyone on this planet relies on the web in some way or another, and the idea that a single entity can control the entire thing is preposterous.

The interface of Google Chrome displaying the browser's minimalistic design with tabs, address bar, and navigation buttons. The browser is open to the Wikipedia homepage.
Screenshot of Google Chrome version 96.

If you’ve been reading attentively, you may remember the comic I mentioned that was released alongside Chrome. Well, in 2022, a parody released with a few changes. It outlines a few of the things that Google is doing within Chrome that have far-reaching implications. Beyond all the spying, the comic touches on something of particular interest: the advent of Manifest v3 and its implications.

Manifest v3

Most browsers have support for the WebExtensions API, which is a system for developing extensions that can be used across browsers. These extensions require a file called manifest.json that defines metadata, behaviour, and an assortment of other information.

Naturally, this specification has evolved over time. The latest iteration is Manifest v3. It attempts to address issues regarding privacy, security, and performance. Namely, it embraces service workers, prevents remotely hosted code, and depreciates the webRequest API.

This is, in general, a good thing. Extensions are a huge attack vector with potential for malicious use, and the changes introduced by Manifest v3 act to lessen their potential impact. Unfortunately, these changes also restrict the capabilities of extensions, especially content blockers.

Blocking adverts, trackers, and the likes isn’t just a nice-to-have anymore – it’s a near on required tool for safe web browsing. Even the FBI recommends you use an adblocker.

Content blockers are severely restricted in functionality under Manifest v3 as a result of the depreciation of the webRequest API, which is used to block content prior to it loading.

uBlock Origin, one of the most popular content blockers around, has had to release a ‘lite’ version with lesser functionality as a result of these changes, and many other extensions, mainly those that boost privacy and reduce data collection, will be hit the hardest.

Google is a company that makes the bulk of its revenue through advertising and data collection. Perhaps it’s conspiracy to think that they’re making these changes to bolster their income, but it certainly isn’t hurting it. This is a change that is being pushed by Google, and a change that Google has the most to gain from.

Manifest v3 is also being adopted by Firefox to ensure interoperability, though they don’t intend to phase out v2 for the foreseeable future.

Accelerated Mobile Pages

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is another excellent example of the problems with Google having power. AMP is a framework that aims to improve the performance of web content, particularly on mobile. It improves speed by restricting certain elements and optimising content delivery. While these are great intentions, they’ve seen much good criticism.

One large criticism is that it gives Google a huge amount of control over the way content is displayed on the web, which influences how things are built and monetized. It also has impacts on privacy and security.

Another criticism is that Google prioritises AMP links above others, potentially impacting the visibility of non-AMP content. Google’s “Top Stories” section, which is located above the main search results, exclusively displayed AMP links. This more or less forced publishers into using AMP if they wanted any exposure. They only removed the AMP requirement in 2021 after facing legal threats.

AMP is just another way that Google has shown that they are not content with simply existing within the web but instead wish to control it. If you’d like to read more about AMP and its impact, then I’d suggest this Reddit post from the creator of the Amputator bot.

Web Environment Integrity

In April of 2023, some Google engineers created a GitHub repository explaining the details of a proposal for Web Environment Integrity (WEI). Despite huge negative feedback, code started being implemented into Chromium in preparation for implementation. Fortunately, the proposal was abandoned in November, and what had been implemented was removed, although a replacement for Android WebViews titled “Android WebView Media Integrity API” was swiftly proposed and looks to enter testing in early 2024.

You may be wondering exactly what it is. WEI is more or less a way to verify that a site is ‘genuine’. It can be best described as Digital Rights Management (DRM) for the web and, wouldn’t you know, could’ve also impacted ad blockers if they were found to be altering the web environment’s integrity. Perhaps the impact of WEI most relevant to this article is the fact that browsers, especially those out of the mainstream or that offer unique or uncommon features, might have found themselves considered ‘untrusted’ and therefore severely limited.

I could continue with further examples, but I think the point is made, and I expect you’ve gathered the picture. The web is dominated by Chrome, and something needs to be done about it.

The Death of Firefox Support

As Bryce Wray illustrates in his article “Firefox on the Brink?” the US Web Design System mandates official support for browsers exceeding 2% usage on US Government-run websites. A similar requirement is set by the British government. As he suggests, it may be a lot sooner than we expect that Firefox loses consideration for compatibility during development. I very much recommend reading his article for discussion on the topic.

Taking Action

You’re likely wondering what you can do. The answer is simple: support healthy competition and use a browser based on something other than Chromium. The best bet would be using Firefox or something based on it. Firefox is free, open source, available on most platforms, and Mozilla has largely shown a commitment to both the user and the web.

If you’re coming from one of the more flashy ‘cutting edge’ browsers like Arc or Opera GX, then Zen will provide a very similar experience. If you’re looking for something with privacy in mind like Brave or the DuckDuckGo browser, then you can try LibreWolf or Mullvad Browser. If you require anonymity or need to avoid censorship, then you might consider the Tor Browser.

As the web’s future depends on diversity in browse engines, you might also consider supporting the development and growth of emerging projects:

  • Servo is a web rendering engine started by Mozilla back in 2012 that is now handled by the Linux Foundation. It’s pretty far along in development and is beginning to see real-world deployment, such as use in embedded applications.

  • Ladybird is a very new and ambitious project intending to build out a full web browser complete with it’s own rendering and JavaScript engines fully independent of existing browser engines.

Share the message of browser engine diversity. Preserving an open web is crucial. The more people understand what’s at stake, the better chance we have of preventing failure. If you’d like to help me make more content like this, please consider supporting me.

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