Okay, folks. This is new territory for me. I'm stepping into the world of....
t h i n k p i e c e s π₯π€―π₯
I've been thinking a lot about an oooold problem in the web dev community, one that's been the subject of π₯flamewarsπ₯ basically since web browsers have existed: "browser monoculture". This topic has flared up again recently as a result of Microsoft dropping their EdgeHTML browser engine and moving Edge to Google's Chromium engine.
I have a crazy idea. I'm not entirely sold on it myself; I'm sure there are aspects I'm not considering. So I want some feedback on it. But first, I need to lay some groundwork.
What does "browser monoculture" even mean, and why should we care?
A "browser monoculture" is when a single browser becomes so dominant that it triggers a chain reaction: it's effectively the only choice, so it's the only browser anyone uses, so it's the only one anyone cares about, so it's the only one developers write code for.
That's one main worry: the concern is that if one browser becomes too dominant, developers may begin to ignore other browsers and just target the set of CSS and JavaScript features supported by the dominant browser, never bothering to test for cross-compatibility in other browsers.
And this isn't unfounded: this is exactly what happened in the early 2000s, at the height of the browser wars: Internet Explorer became so absolutely dominant that devs often specifically targeted IE, and many websites simply didn't work in any other browsers. The worst part was that IE was super quirky, didn't follow the standards, and was very slow to change or improve.
And this is another major concern: when there's really only one player in the market, the push for that browser vendor to follow standards and play by the rules declines; they can effectively do whatever they want. You might think that the developer community would get mad and start moving away from that browser, providing a check to their power, but the thing is, most browser users aren't web developers. Most users don't know or care about this stuff, and they aren't going to start moving to a different browser just because some π€nerdsπ€ are complaining about "APIs" and "standards".
That said, there is a third, less technical concern that non-developers do care a bit about: when everyone uses a single vendor, that vendor then has access to everyone's user habits, data, etc. This is not exactly unfounded, either; many people have big problems with how Google has handled user privacy issues in the past.
An emerging Chromium monoculture?
And that brings us to recent events. Google Chrome's underlying browser engine is developed as an open source project known as Chromium. It's designed such that it can be used as the basis for new browsers, and many browsers have been built on top of it, including browsers you've heard of. Opera and Samsung Internet both moved to Chromium-based builds in 2013, and of course, as mentioned earlier, the big news this year is that Microsoft Edge will be moving to Chromium as well.
So this is the concern: what if enough of the market share ends up on Chromium based browsers that we end up with a Chromium monoculture?
Looking at current statistics, we do seem to be heading that way:
| Browser | % of global usage |
|---|---|
| Chrome | 62.70% |
| Safari | 15.89% |
| Firefox | 5.07% |
| Samsung Internet | 3.38% |
| UC Browser | 3.16% |
| Opera | 2.55% |
| IE | 2.51% |
| Edge | 2.17% |
| (Others, each <1%) | 2.57% |
(retrieved June 7, 2019, from statcounter.com)
Chrome alone has over 60% of the global browser market share. Add in Samsung Internet, Opera, and Edge, the top Chromium-based (or soon-to-be-Chromium-based) browsers, and the figure goes up to 70.8%!!! Imagine if Apple decided they were tired of everyone moaning about Safari's missing features (as Safari now tends to lag the furthest behind in implementing cool new web platform APIs) and decided to go the same way as Microsoft. It's unlikely, but I could see it happening.
Many of the new experimental browser projects of the last several years have also been based on Chromium, such as Vivaldi, Brave, and Epic. And this makes sense to me: Chromium is a very well-established, actively maintained, and easily extensible browser engine. The task of creating complete JavaScript, HTML, and CSS engines from scratch is absolutely monumental; Chromium has literally decades of work behind it (considering it's based on a WebKit fork), and catching up seems impossible, especially for an independent startup. Plus, these browsers aren't primarily trying to improve the state of web languages; they're focused on higher level features like security, privacy, etc. I don't fault them for using Chromium as a base and focusing on the features they care about.
And that's kind of the point I want to get to: Chromium is beginning to be positioned as a de facto standard for browser engines, sort of a canonical implementation of W3C specifications. But we'll put a pin in that. π
What about Firefox? π₯π¦
Back in the days of the browser wars, Firefox was the hero we all needed, breaking up the Internet Explorer monopoly and charging gloriously into the new era of browser diversity and cooperative web standards.
But unfortunately, tragically, Firefox usage has been falling over the years, really ever since Chrome came on the scene. I think Mozilla has done heroic work recently with Quantum, and they've often led the charge on implementing new web platform features, especially in CSS (subgrid!!! π).
But here's the bottom line: Google is huuuuuuuuge. They just have so many people working there. I don't think Mozilla or the open source community around Firefox has enough manpower or institutional support to keep pace with Google.
And I don't think the right solution is for Google to fire a bunch of their browser team so that Firefox can keep up, either. I love that they're constantly trying cool new things. So what do we do?
Do we have a monoculture?
In an important sense, yes. There seems to be at least a good chance of a browser engine monoculture emerging in the next 5-10 years. At the moment, the two primary opponents to Chromium are Safari and Firefox, who collectively hold about 21% of usage. Chrome's usage numbers have been slowly but steadily increasing for years now, and probably will continue to do so. Now that Edge is Chromium based, I imagine its numbers will go up a bit as well.
Buuuut... here's where I'm going to get controversial. I want to posit that this is a different kind of monoculture than what we saw in the 2000s with Internet Explorer 6, and it has the potential to become a very different kind, one that may not really deserve the name "monoculture". Stick with me here!
Is it bad?
Okay, let's dip our toe into controversial waters. Here's a take I've been developing:
All three of the concerns I laid out earlier are based on a scenario where a single browser becomes dominant, including all the hooks into a specific corporate structure with solitary business priorities and hooks into the company's proprietary ecosystem (e.g. hooking your Google account into your browser). But Chromium is already not that, and it has the potential to be quite the opposite.
To recap, here are the three main concerns I've heard raised in browser monoculture discussions:
- One dominant browser will lead developers to target just that one and ignore compatibility with smaller browsers.
- When a single browser becomes too dominant, it loses a lot of the motivation to follow and contribute to shared web standards.
- The more people use a single browser, the larger the pool of user data and habits available to the company that owns that browser, which raises privacy concerns.
These all change quote a bit when you recognize that we aren't talking about a Chrome monoculture; we're talking Chromium, the underlying browser engine. As it stands, Chromium is the basis for a variety of browsers, not just Google's flagship. From what I can tell (as a non-expert on Chromium's source, so please correct me), the Googley stuff that makes privacy advocates nervous is independent from the core Chromium browser engine. I mean, Microsoft clearly isn't going to ship an Edge with any hooks to Google's ecosystem still in it, so it's gotta be easily separable.
Privacy
For me, this distinction between "browser" and "browser engine" already answers the main concerns about privacy. The engine itself isn't where the privacy issues lie. Heck, two of the Chromium-based experimental browsers I mentioned earlier, Brave and Epic, are all about providing a more secure, privacy-preserving option.
Single Dominant Platform
As for concerns about developers targeting a single web engine if it gets too popular, that's definitely a real thing. Some claim this is happening already with Chrome.
But here's the thing: since it's the base of several different browsers, when Chromium gets a new JavaScript or CSS feature, it's not pushing Chrome ahead of the rest of the pack, it's pushing all of these browsers forward. So when the Verge (in the article linked above) says that Chrome is becoming the new IE, "with web developers primarily optimizing for Chrome and tweaking for rivals later", they should really replace "Chrome" with "Chromium-based browsers". To "optimize for Chrome" is also to optimize for Opera, Vivaldi, Samsung Browser, and soon Edge, because they all use the same engine.
That being said, this is a problem for Firefox, Safari, and anyone else still trying to maintain a parallel implementation. Let me come back to this in a sec.
Web Standards
This one is a big deal. Google has historically been a big player in pushing for and developing web platform standards for everyone to use, but as the Verge rightly points out, they've strayed from that message a bit in the last few years:
Whether you blame Google or the often slow moving World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the results have been particularly evident throughout 2017. Google has been at the center of a lot of βworks best with Chromeβ messages weβre starting to see appear on the web. Google Meet, Allo, YouTube TV, Google Earth, and YouTube Studio Beta all block Windows 10βs default browser, Microsoft Edge, from accessing them and they all point users to download Chrome instead. Google Meet, Google Earth, and YouTube TV are also not supported on Firefox with messages to download Chrome. Google has publicly promised to support Earth on Edge and Firefox, and the company is βworking to bring YouTube TV to more browsers in the future.β
This isn't great. But from what I can tell, this is isn't always strictly a matter of Google ignoring the standards; it's often a matter of other browsers not keeping up with Google's pace on implementing cutting edge APIs. Again, Google has a massive amount of resources to throw around, so IMO this is somewhat inevitable. But once again, since Google is contributing to Chromium, not just Chrome, all Chromium-based browsers get those benefits.
My crazy idea
Okay, we did it, we laid all the groundwork. And by this point it might be obvious what my idea is. So here we go:
What if the entire web standardized on a single browser engine? What if Chromium became the basis for a reference implementation of web standards, and all browsers converted to be based on it?
Now before you get out the pitchforks, let me elaborate.
A collaborative engine
I hope it's obvious, but I'll say it anyway: I'm not suggesting we cede control of the web to Google. Quite the opposite, actually. My vision is that the developers that currently spend countless hours writing the same code in parallel in different codebases instead are united under a single, common codebase.
Ideally, this codebase would not be controlled by any single company. I'd love to see a common browser engine controlled by an independent nonprofit foundation, like the Python Software Foundation, including (though not primarily made of) a few representatives from each participating browser vendor.
Just imagine with me for a moment: What if Safari and Firefox and everyone else stopped maintaining separate codebases, duplicating a ton of effort and desperately trying to keep up with the pace of the behemoth that is Google's development team, and instead began contributing to a shared codebase? What if everyone benefitted from everyone else's work?
We've seen examples of this. Opera developers have done this in the past, and the Edge team has begun doing this as well, both teams bringing their expertise to benefit Chromium.
I'm currently very frustrated that while CSS Subgrid has been implemented in Firefox Nightly, Chromium has yet to start working on it. Imagine if the Firefox devs' work contributed to Chrome as well! This problem would vanish!
And this is a classic problem on the web platform in general: we all get excited by some awesome demo of a new Web API in a certain browser, but the immediate response is, "Sure, but how soon can I actually use that? How soon will all the other browsers implement it?" Maybe there's an opportunity here to get rid of this problem forever.
What about the lost diversity of implementation?
Here's a possible downside I'm worried about: one thing I love about the variety of browser engines currently in the wild is that they often implement the same feature in different ways, and one is often faster than others. I have to imagine (though to be honest I don't know) that there have been occasions when a Chrome dev has seen how Firefox solved a problem and borrowed an idea or two, and vice versa. Would we be giving this up? How big of a loss would this be?
I have two thoughts here.
First, I note that this isn't a big deal for other platforms; I don't hear much complaint that there's no big competition for CPython (the Python reference implementation) to encourage alternative ways of implementing features. But maybe that's not a counterargument. Maybe that's a bad thing for the Python community, and they would benefit from some competition. I don't know.
Second, though, maybe there's a way to preserve this feature of the web to some degree. Yes, all browsers would be built on the same engine. But maybe the engine could be (or already is? Again, I'm no expert) built in such a way that each browser could build initial implementations of features on top of the core engine. Maybe this could develop into a regular process: when a new API is being discussed, or even after the spec is initially published, maybe each browser that's interested writes their implementation of the feature and tries it out. Maybe we spend 6 months or whatever with a different version of the feature in Firefox, Chrome, and Opera, then a committee at the foundation sits down together and hashes out which implementation should be merged into the master branch.
This is a point I'd love specific feedback on. I'm not sure how it would go down, but it feels like there has to be a way to get it done.
Wrapping up
Okay, that's it. If you've read this far, holy crap, thank you so much. This was a long, rambly one without any practical application, so I really appreciate anyone who gave me that much of their time.
To say it once more, I'd really love feedback on this! The growing disparity between browsers is something that's been on my mind a lot for a while. I don't think the current trajectory is sustainable, and I don't want either for a single browser to win out while still being corporately controlled, nor for browsers that are able to push ahead of the pack because of greater resources to be held back for longer and longer amounts of time while other browsers struggle to catch up, all the while being criticized as "the new IE6".
I think we desperately need a new conversation on this topic. This is my contribution. Now please, give me yours! π
More resources
Here's some other people talking about this topic that have informed my own opinion, including some stuff I linked in the article.
- The Verge, "Chrome is turning into the new Internet Explorer 6"
- @shoptalkshow Podcast (@chriscoyier , Dave Rupert),"Breaking Browser News" segment: "Google updates vs the rest of the industry" - This is what got me started thinking about the aspect of Firefox and other smaller engine teams not being able to keep up with Google's resources
- HTTP203 Podcast, "Browser Monoculture" - a somewhat ironic 2015 episode of Google's HTTP203 podcast in which Paul and Jake discuss the time Edge asked the community for suggestions, and the top response was "Stop doing your own thing and use WebKit instead"
- Mozilla, "Goodbye EdgeHTML"
Latest comments (48)
Monocultures are also bad for security: granneman.com/tech/security/securi...
In the interests of a healthy web, a healthy standards process, and to foster real innovation and diversity, I'd propose an alternative way forward: Google, Microsoft, Apple and others should contribute (in funds or developers) towards a viable alternative implementation; i.e., they should help fund Mozilla.
In accepting a monoculture, we're assuming that Chromium is the best solution to the problem of a browser engine there is or will ever be. Without any reasonable competition, it's unlikely we'll see any truly new engine, and it's unlikely we'll see any further true innovation; the kind of innovation that comes from healthy competition. The work Mozilla have been doing with Servo (a new engine built with Rust that fully exploits the potential for parallelism) could offer new leaps in engine performance and possibilities. The Quantum effort (backporting components of Servo into Gecko) is akin to rebuilding a plane in flight, and has been an incredible, pragmatic effort with such limited resources, demonstrating what amazing talent, vision and tenacity Mozilla as an organisation have. Imagine if this effort saw serious investment from the likes of Google and Microsoft (and others) in the interested of a more diverse and innovative engine landscape? The friendly, more level playing field competition would be healthy; I think it would be a wonderful thing.
If you listen to the recent Syntax podcast about Firefox, not only did Wes and Scott find Firefox a pleasure to use, they found it fresh and genuinely different - so much so, both decided to permanently switch. No other browser based on Chromium can boast such a difference - the Chromium browsers are effectively all the same - clones - with very little to set them apart them. We need more developers to switch to Firefox and promote it like this!
Or, just as likely, Subgrid or any other potentially useful progression could be ignored or never implemented because it's not a priority. It could be vetoed by the controllers of the Chromium code (Google and Microsoft) with the only course of action a fork. That doesn't sound like a good situation to be in. It doesn't sound healthy for the web. At least we've got Firefox offering developers a real, working implementation. With an implementation, we move the standards process forward in a much more constructive and open way. The web is about agreement. With only one engine, we diminish if not destroy that healthy agreement process.
The disparity in pace of standards and implementation development is, perhaps, not such a bad thing. Standards should be worked on, debated, looked at from different angles, and a consensus built over time for the benefit of all over the long term. We don't need to rush, not always if ever. Moving at a steady pace has benefits. And isn't it the number 1 complaint of developers these days that they can't keep up, find the landscape confusing, frustrating and unstable? Faster moving implementations will only exacerbate this problem. And with only one implementation, it may mean interesting lines of inquiry are ignored completely.
But there is competition for CPython: other programming languages. There's a healthy, vibrant ecosystem of languages. Arguing for only one browser engine is like arguing for only one programming language. I don't know about you, but I don't think that would be a good place to be, despite the many benefits only one language might yield in terms of developer productivity.
No, I disagree. Just watch this newly released video talks about how Google maliciously neglect other browsers including Chromium based.
I have one fear about the collaborative engine: If Google decides that blocking ads is unethical and should not be possible and remove the API to do so from Chromium, how on earth will Edge, Opera, Brave and Vivaldi implement this functionality?
I'd sure love to only have to test on one browser engine. And I would sure love if websites all worked on the first browser I tried to use.
However, for a small handful of existing siduations, I nee Firefox, and cannot use Chrome. Notably, when using self-signed certifies for Https during early development. But then, if everything was Chromium, in sure we would find a way.
It's not a duplication of effort, though.
It would be if the standards were always agreed upon in advance, and all the browser vendors did was write code. But that isn't how it works -- the vendors themselves are the loudest voice determining what goes into those standards, which are often based on existing implementations. More voices means more innovation, and more checks against poor choices.
Honestly, I can't think of an area where we're more spoiled for choice than page layout.
More generally: the web is comprised of many of technologies, the design of which have have various implications for implementers, content creators, and end users -- of those, ease of styling might just be the least important.
Even if one's attitude is "whatever it takes to make the trains run on time," a trinket like CSS subgrids still doesn't strike me as a fair trade for monopoly control of the world's most important publishing platform.
Sounds neat, but who's going to pay for it? And who decides what they build?
βJust imagine with me for a moment: What if Company A and Company B and everyone else stopped maintaining separate products, duplicating a ton of effort and desperately trying to keep up with the pace of the behemoth that is the market leader, and instead began contributing to a shared product? What if everyone benefited from everyone else's work?β
I mean, I was born in socialist Yugoslavia, so Iβm not the most pro-capitalistic person out there but what youβre suggesting sounds like something that is completely incompatible with capitalism.
Just the idea that all browser vendors would agree on a single engine without one of them ever wanting to fork sounds utterly utopian.
Ha, maybe. And maybe my idea will stall until the after the revolution β
But I wouldn't count it out altogether. Standardization on a shared core has worked before (see: Linux kernel), but admittedly it hasn't been on this scale, with this much existing market entrenchment.
I agree that it's a major problem to be dealt with, but I'm not convinced that it's insurmountable just yet.
I remember what caused me to switch to Chrome was that, I'd recently changed jobs. As a result, my previous, employer-issued laptop was one of the things I forefeited when I left (it was a 2+ year old, MBP with really flaky hardware, so, not a super-big loss). My new employer was supposed to issue me a laptop, but their processes were slow (took them nearly six months to finally decide that, rather than issue me, let me expense one of my own choosing). So, there was a gap between my start date and getting the employer-paid laptop. Unfortunately, I needed something to work on ...but, obviously, didn't want to go buy a cadillac-laptop that I "might not be using in a month" (that, ultimately turned out to be six). So, I cheaped out. The "temporary" laptop had a trifling amount of RAM and Firefox was just too huge to run on it. At the time, Chrome ran blazingly-fast in a tiny footprint.
Now... I still don't know which browser is the leakier pig.
At any rate, I don't disagree that Chromium's dominance has the potential to be problematic. I'd likelier feel more comfortable if Google one day said, "ya know what: we'd really like to just contribute this steaming pile of code to a trusted, third-party OSS specialist like Apache.Org". I mean it's great that Chromium is open source, I'd just feel a lot better if it wasn't owned by a commercial entity (for much the same reasons it sucked that Java ended up owned by Oracle via the Sun acquisition).
FTFY π
Noice. =)
The biggest issue (which has been hinted elsewhere) is that even though there is an open source version of the Chrome engine called Chromium, Google still has overwhelming power over Chromium.
This has been revealed lately in the deprecation's of the Extension Manifest 3 (which has been noted elsewhere) as part of the WebRequest API which is being done in Chromium. Google has been deceptively saying these changes are done due to performance reasons however their real reason (which was also revealed in an obligatory K12 document they had to reveal to shareholders) is that pure Adblockers such as U-Origin are posing a significant risk to Googles revenue (advertising is Google's primary source of income).
If Chromium wasn't owned by "Google" and was in charge of a non-profit neutral organization than I would agree with you. There is already however a browser that fits this description, its called Firefox. Firefox, unlike Google, doesn't have ulterior motives and conflicts of interest.
Yes and no. It's a large group of tech companies, both old and new, that pay dues in order to have a say in emerging standards recommendations. It includes the browser vendors. This thread is worth a read.
They did attempt to set their own agenda with XHTML 2 and related work. But it was both too ambitious and too far from the browser vendors' wishes, and it was ignored. We instead got HTML5, which codifies the superset of quirky crap the vendors had added since 4.01, and adds some new tags. It's maintained by WhatWG (i.e. the browser vendors). They don't even bother to version it.
We already have a "reference implementation" model, although Google doesn't call the shots in every case yet.
Some things follow the old process: W3C made the IndexedDB recommendation, and the vendors went to work on it. Even then, there were only a couple of main players: Apple created a SQL solution that got decent support. But Mozilla pushed for a more storage-neutral standard, and ultimately got it.
The browser extension APIs went the other way: Google made a set of APIs for Chrome, then Mozilla began a now-stalled effort to standardize them. Mostly it involved using generic names for things, which Google ignored. Google's now working on "Manifest v3," which among other changes, removes extensions' ability to intercept requests (e.g. ΞΌBlock) and run remote code (e.g. Tampermonkey).
Anyway, from what I can tell, the standards mostly get based on, existing or planned implementations. Some are joint efforts, some aren't. But there are only a handful of vendors, and their numbers shrink as browsers become increasingly complicated.
I can only speculate, but IMO the trade-off is that the standards take longer but the results tend to be more resilient and better-thought-out.
In the immediate future, it looks like users' ability to selectively request content is about to be neutered. That could mean very little, or it could indicate a shift toward a more broadcast-like web, led by a company that makes the bulk of its money on advertising platforms.
I'm not trying to be smarmy -- I seriously don't know. But I do think the current process, which tends to require consensus from the browser cartel, and occasionally the larger W3C, already represents a balance between caution and practicality, and is better than a fully proprietary web. I also think that the TV marketing adage, "if you're not paying for the product, you are the product" applies here in part.
Worst case, even we end up with a monopoly, I do think that the creativity of end users and startups matter more than the platforms. My hope is that the medium isn't really the message, and that the internet remains a world of ends.
And to that end, I'd invite everyone that's read this far to consider throwing the EFF a few bucks.
Hi Ken. Good article. In fact, it inspired me to quit lurking and sign up so that I could make the following comment...
I think you overlooked what I consider to be the most serious albeit least immediate downside to any monoculture: vulnerability to attack. If a substantial portion of our infrastructure becomes oriented around a single platform, then it is possible for the inevitable vulnerabilities in that platform to be exploited in such a way as to disrupt or disable everything that depends on it.
I tried to state that as generically as possible because it applies in many situations. In this case, Chromium is on it's way to becoming the de facto application run-time and information rendering engine on all end-user devices. If that situation actually came to pass, then successfully attacking a single piece of code could be enough to effectively render most of our technology useless. As we become more and more dependent on technology, that becomes synonymous with potentially taking down our entire civilization.
Admittedly, that is an alarmist and over-the-top outcome that is unlikely to occur. The point is that it could occur, and moving from a diverse client-side environment to one of monoculture makes it more likely rather than less.
(Apologies if anyone already mentioned this in the other comments. At the time I read through them, no one had.)
Counting Samsung Browser and UC Browser separately is disingenuous; they both simply provide a new UI around the Android System WebView, which is essentially Chromium embedded as a system framework.
They are a part of the Chromium monoculture, not an alternative to it.
And don't forget Opera is a Chromium fork as well since version 13.
Are they? I didn't realize! (Like I said, I'm no expert π.) I listed them separately in the table only because that's what my source (statcounter.com) did. And I did explicitly refer to Samsung Browser as part of the Chromium monoculture more than once.
I did mention Opera as a Chromium fork a bunch of times, too; even linked to their announcement. Heck, the Opera logo is in my header image!
At any rate, adding additional browsers to the list of Chromium implementations would only strengthen my point. If UC Browser is already a Chromium instance (I'd love if you could give me a source for that, please!), the percentage of current global usage goes up to 74.18!!! Even higher than I thought!
It's not Google's fault that chrome/Blink/V8 is winning over other browsers. Or that MS is too lazy maintain their browsers. Chromium development is completely open and done in collaboration with many groups. When they try to implement standards that not everyone agrees on - they give them up and don't push them, like the Files API or how NaCL was dropped in favor of web assembly. All this fear-mongering over browser monopolies is unnecessary, misunderstood nonsense.
I'm not concerned about a browser monoculture at all - in fact I think it's something I'd embrace!
I remember building sites with IE in mind, and having to sometimes specifically target CSS for it. But back then, with IE6, the web was still so new we were all still arguing over the standards. We're a little more experienced now with the web and a lot of standards are now settling. If a browser monoculture can help speed this along - bring it on!
Nice article Ken. In theory it would make life so easy (browser testing almost eliminated).
I'll keep it simple for once. We should have lots of render engines & lots of browsers. Competition breeds progress, decentralization reduces authoritarian control. Single point of failure. Bureaucracy.
I prefer the webkit render as it is the nicest quality & it is the fastest. Chrome is measured in Gb.
A parallel would be: why don't we just put all the internet on a mainframe, with bootstrap, single design method, one copy of content, no duplication etc. - I know this example is a bit silly, but the principle hold weight.
I just (literally) published a giant list of browsers in the hope that we can de-monopolize a bit.
dev.to/vuild/giant-list-of-web-bro...