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Discussion on: Google IO: Chrome is closing the gap between web and native

 
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rhymes

I obviously hope I'm wrong, and I hope MS adopting Chromium (though I would have loved if they were to adopt Firefox's engine instead) will curb this trend a bit.

Chrome only (or mostly) websites already exist, and not just Google products (like Hangouts):

I think the difference between Chrome now and the Netscape and IE days is twofold: the companies were smaller (and the market was as well) and Microsoft didn't control the search engine and there weren't billions of Android devices around (though unlike Windows then you can install your own choice of browser, as I did). There are new browsers popping up, but they are based on Chromium, I don't blame them, you need VC kind of money (or Google kind of money :P) to develop a browser from scratch, market it and sustain it while charging zero :-)

Part of Mozilla's funding is Google paying them to keep Google as a default search engine. Same does with Apple (though they obviously need the money less so).

This thread about the complicated relationship between Google and Mozilla is worth a read:

Perhaps you'll be right and it will end up that way, I guess it just doesn't really bother me as long as the product is solid.

Again, I hope I'm wrong. The quality of the products usually tend to be related to the drive ignited by competition and innovation. It's not like monopolies do not innovate ever, they tend to have less reasons to do so though.

I'm 100% sure Google wants a better web, we then need to define what a better web means though ;-) (for example: Google is proposing a change to Chrome that would break ad blockers like uBlock Origin)

Google is a huge company and like all huge companies they have many layers, some are great, some less so.