this post was submitted on 01 May 2025

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All four major web browsers are about to lose 80% of their funding | by Dan Fabulich | Apr, 2025 (danfabulich.medium.com)

submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by 1984@lemmy.today to c/technology@lemmy.world

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I know this sounds bad, but maybe this is a blessing in disguise. Necessity is the mother of invention and maybe browser technology should be funded by governments instead of privately owned advertising megacorps?

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[–] namingthingsiseasy@programming.dev 40 points 1 day ago (6 children)

This is great in my opinion. Web browsers are infernally complicated and need to be simplified. CSS is a bloated mess. Javascript is a bloated mess. I would love to see large swathes of both of them eliminated from existence, and maybe the maintenance burden leaves a very small chance that we could start to see some of these technologies starting to get dropped. I personally would love to see web components disappear most of all.

Regardless, Google really fucked over the web when they decided to add all these unnecessary technologies to Chrome. No doubt a EEE strategy to take over all browser development on the web. Something should have been done much earlier about it, but now we'll have to see how this mess gets sorted out.

[–] surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 26 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

CSS is a bloated mess. Javascript is a bloated mess.

Why would less money make people do more work to fix this?

[–] OmegaSunkey@ani.social 5 points 12 hours ago

Their point is to make them dissapear, not fix.

[–] eRac@lemmings.world 43 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Nobody can make a successful browser that is simpler. The moment a user hits a website that no longer works, they are going back to their old browser.

All these new features exist because websites replaced every single program most people used. Web browser now have to be capable of doing anything pretty well. It's not some grand conspiracy to take over the internet, it's providing the features devs want so they can deliver the things they want in the modern multiplatform no-install world.

[–] namingthingsiseasy@programming.dev 13 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Of course developers wanted this. They wanted to push all the complexity into the browser so they didn't have to worry about it themselves. Google was happy to provide this because it meant that they could be the only ones that could write a browser. That was the "conspiracy" you're talking about - but it wasn't a conspiracy, it was more of a strategy on behalf of Google, who knew that they were the only ones that could provide this level of support, and so if they did it, nobody else would be able to compete with them. Even Microsoft gave up on their own engine.

But the only reason Google could do this is because they were deriving revenue from their advertising monopoly. If their web browser was honestly funded, many, many of the features that we see in Chrome today would have never existed.

[–] A_norny_mousse@feddit.org 7 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago)

Google was happy to provide this because it meant that they could be the only ones that could write a browser.

Word. That, and so many other things.

[–] namingthingsiseasy@programming.dev 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Also, I'm not going to argue that things aren't better for developers today than they were before. Sure, web development is much easier these days. But at the same time, I think web applications are way too overengineered. There are lots of things that could be done in simpler ways - for example, why is it necessary to restyle scrollbars, or reimplement standard components like drop-down menus with reimplementations written entirely in Javascript? Things like this are just stupid and having to drop support for trivial things like this in the name of making browsers simpler is well worth it in my opinion.

[–] kogasa@programming.dev 6 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Dropping support for that stuff means breaking 95% of the websites people currently use. It's a non-starter, it cannot ever happen, even if you think it would be for the best.

[–] Maltese_Liquor@lemmy.world 2 points 2 hours ago

I remember a lot of similar arguments about how ubiquitous Flash was when mobile devices were first taking off. Not saying it will be easy or even likely not saying it will never happen is a bit of an assumption.

[–] barryamelton@lemmy.ml 4 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Just compile everything to webassembly and ship that,using your preferred language and libraries.

Which means that we will get blobs to interact with, instead of JavaScript code that can be "reviewed" or monkey patched away.

Fun times. Thanks, monopolistic assholes like Goggle, Microsoft and Apple.

[–] girsaysdoom@sh.itjust.works 3 points 22 hours ago

Don't give them ideas!

[–] gencha@lemm.ee 14 points 1 day ago (1 children)

This is so wild. I really don't miss Flash, but since Steve killed it with the iPhone, Web development has spent more than 10 years to reinvent the ActionScript3 environment and make the entire web depend on it. And who solely prevented AS3 as a web standard from happening? Chris Wilson, Web Standards Tech Lead at Google, in his former role at browser monopolist Microsoft.

Today, every single piece of the web is designed by Google to further their business. And all these fucking Electron applications...

[–] namingthingsiseasy@programming.dev 10 points 1 day ago

I wasn't aware of that, but it's crazy. Thanks for sharing it. The sad truth is that there are probably lots of other standards that didn't make it into browsers either because Google refused to adopt them in Chrome (JPEG2000 for example, but that's a complicated ). Google had way too much influence over web standards because they had total control of the web browser.

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[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 75 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Oh no, where will Apple and MS find the money to continue development!

[–] frostysauce@lemmy.world 10 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah but what about the other one?

[–] jabjoe@feddit.uk 9 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

The only one with a different web browser engine? The only one that is actural competition?

[–] A_norny_mousse@feddit.org 27 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

This is a result of Google most likely losing the anti-monopoly trial that's been underway for a while now, which in my book is a Good Thing.
Focusing on one aspect of it being not so good feels counterproductive to me.

Anyhow, let's see how this plays out first. First of all I want to see the upcoming separations/selling off of Google's tentacles actually happening, and actually resulting in significantly less monopoly for Google/Alphabet.
The skeptic in me says that it won't be quite as glorious as I hope, and funding will just flow differently. Who knows, maybe some other power hungry corp will step up.

OP:

maybe browser technology should be funded by government

Yes, but never directly!

[–] the_crotch@sh.itjust.works 26 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

maybe browser technology should be funded by governments

Yeah let's make it even easier for them to implement backdoors

[–] neclimdul@lemmy.world 14 points 1 day ago

I mean, before DOGE ostensibly took over USDS I was aware of it funding open source projects through normal processes just because their continued improvement helped the government function. Making software good for government agencies was one of their mandates.

If I had full faith in the current Mozilla project like I used to, I'd say they could just accept funding through the nonprofit in a similar setup and just do good things.

My point is there are ways to make it work where there is funding without influence. Just corruption and capitalism are fighting against it.

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[–] solrize@lemmy.world 37 points 1 day ago (1 children)

governments

Be careful what you ask for :(.

[–] pdxfed@lemmy.world 28 points 1 day ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (2 children)

South Korea mandated internet explorer for all purchase checkout until relatively recently maybe the last 5 years. They had all these pieces built around it so checking out at a website you would have to prove your identity using national ID and then only IE would work.

Be very careful what you ask for.

[–] homoludens@feddit.org 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Also: be careful who you vote into office.

[–] notgold@aussie.zone 4 points 1 day ago

Too late

[–] WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

That sounds like Microsoft bribed the shit out of SK 20 years ago.

But, yeah... Elect monkeys, get circus.

[–] Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 29 points 1 day ago (1 children)

This doesn't sound bad at all. This sounds like someone other than Google will be able to have a meaningful affect on web development.

[–] noodlejetski@lemm.ee 43 points 1 day ago

unless, say, OpenAI, or Perplexity, or Microsoft buy it, and then cut Mozilla funding.

[–] 2xsaiko@discuss.tchncs.de 11 points 1 day ago

If only this could lead to scaling down the scope of web technologies so it’s sustainable to develop a browser without that 80% funding.

Wouldn’t be the first time we dropped an ultra complex technology for something much more simple, e.g. DCOM/CORBA for JSON-based RPC.

[–] Engywuck@lemm.ee 13 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Nice. Maybe Mozilla will learn to walk by themselves (spoiler: they won't).

[–] truthfultemporarily@feddit.org 22 points 1 day ago (5 children)

That would require us, the users, to donate more.

[–] tetris11@lemmy.ml 29 points 1 day ago

We happily would if we knew it was going to devs

[–] A_norny_mousse@feddit.org 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Or them to charge for it, or take more money from, say, Alphabet, for services rendered.

Any of those options will get its users on the barricades. FF will always be in the hot chair.

In the end you're right, sufficient donations would be the best way.

(And yeah, they made some really dumb decisions. What about Google, Apple and Microsoft? Do they not pay the wrong people?)

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