I don't really agree with the "Chrome is the new IE" sentiment. They participate in the Web Standards process the same as anyone else. That their voice has different gravity in the process due to the fact that they are often the ones pushing the standards forward isn't something they should be compared to IE for. Devs old enough to recall the halcyon days of IE know it was quite different...
IE definitely participated in web standards at the time. Certainly in CSS.
They were not as good at bending standards groups to their will as Google has been, for various reasons, which is why standards did not always match their proposed implementations. But trying to paint IE as not engaged in standards is pretty misleading.
(Now I don't think they were too engaged in things like XHTML2, but neither was any other browser, because that group was fundamentally not interested in browsers being engaged, as far as I can tell.)
It is different but not necessarily better. Where IE got really bad is when they stopped developing it. Development really slowed after 5.5 and once 6 was the undisputed champion they just left it to rot. Whatever else can be claimed about Chrome, they're not idle.
TBH I think if you want a slogan then "Google is the new AOL" is better. When you look at what their doing across technologies it looks more like reinventing AOL's walled browser for the modern age.
Obviously every Google product is different, but how many Google products have reached maturity only for Google to basically stop, and then eventually discontinue it after eliminating the competition in the interim?
Chrome and AMP do seem to be part of Google's long term strategy. I don't see them dropping either anytime soon. Well ok they may drop AMP if they finally get it all integrated into the various web specs. but that's a distinction without a difference.
> Devs old enough to recall the halcyon days of IE know it was quite different...
I'm old enough.
People sharing your view, are agreeing with a broad assumption that isn't based in reality. Ironically, the Chrome has had to adopt from the other direction (webasm) and hasn't created much whole-cloth that other browsers have had to adopt...and developer's certainly aren't hambstringed by these small additions that make Chrome a delight (for now). From a business perspective, the popularity monopoly is not the same as how IE was made "popular". It's VERY different from the old days in terms of quality and the state of the industry.
It's not just developers, just like Microsoft made web applications that only worked on IE (think Outlook.com and the introduction of AJAX) we've seen it here on HN all the time, they announce new products that are only known to work on Chrome initially. Some have even changed the user agent and it works on Firefox, so there's some old school Embrace Extend Extinguish nonsense going on from Google's end when they introduce new products.
I remember that every browser had an AJAX API, where IE had a specific API that was more straightforward. The AJAX capability was a forgone conclusion rather than a technical leapfrog. You could always had access to an HTML request and timers to code AJAX as a final backup.
That definitely didn't work. Features we wanted to use that were standardized could not be used. Even after the browser got updated, we couldn't use them because lots of people used the old browser.
Browser incompatibility was used to lock entire enterprises into using only Internet Explorer. Badges did nothing to help.
The only thing it seemed to do was let you know what browser the developer/s were using.
If you happened to have multiple browsers it was possibly of some benefit if you could switch to that browser.
Enterprises still lock users to one browser if possible for security & maintenance reasons. I do see multiple browsers allowed for certain individuals to support older software.
sure, but Chrome has the power of Google behind it and that makes the browser more attractive because users feel that if the browser comes from the search engine company they already use then it must be compatible with everything they do online. This is a perception which gives Chrome an advantage over other browsers.
It's a bit of a monopoly that Google has on the browser market and so now they have leverage over what gets approved and implemented in those browsers.
Since most people use Chrome then other browsers are forced to follow suit with compatibility.
Chrome is basically a distribution of Chromium; there are some extra bits added like DRM, but otherwise it's built straight from the Chromium tree. It's not like Android, where there's a private repo that occasionally gets thrown over the wall in the form of AOSP.
> I'm not going to give any assistance at all to Google
Neither am I, but I wanted to point it out anyway. If things like chromium-dev had existed back then, maybe we wouldn't have had the IE fiasco we all remember. Or maybe we would have anyway, who can tell :)
