Considering that the two projects funded by Cloudflare are headed by known bigots (Andreas Kling and DHH), it makes me distrust Cloudflare even further.
Really hoping this project goes well and has a strong start.
As the top comment on the Hacker News thread notes,
Cloudflare clearly wants to move us to a future where only approved browsers are allowed to access the web… an independent open source web browser is obviously against that ethos.
I’m suspicious on that basis alone.
I’m hyped as long as Ladybird supports uBlock Origin; hoping it’s technically feasible.
When it incorporates something like TreeStyleTab, I’ll look into it, horizontal tab bars are just silly - most have widescreen displays and content is usually in narrow columns.
I guess I won’t be using it then. 🤷♂️
This is very encouraging:
Ladybird uses a new browser engine called LibWeb that is being created from scratch by the development team.
Browsers that rely on Chromium / Blink rely on Google. Firefox relies on Google for its funding, so any browser based on Gecko relies on Google. If they can make a browser engine that has rough feature parity with Chromium but doesn’'t rely on Google that’s very healthy for the web.
You do know the difference of “built by” and “partly funded by”, right?
What exactly is your problem by Mozilla/Firefox being partly funded by Google?
The standard point is most around how big that ‘partly’ is, and how attached a project can become to that part. If a project has, for easy math, a $10M bankroll and $5M comes from, say, Goog or MS, the project can face a moment where the corporation comes and says, ‘we don’t like that you’ve implemented this feature that interferes with our control of users. We’re pulling our funding unless you remove it.’ (more realistically, ‘we see you have allocated some dev time to this feature request we don’t like. Cancel it before the public can demand it.’) If that happens, you have to have a project lead with some real rectitude to say, ‘okay,’ and just cut their budget in half. The more diversely sourced a FOSS project’s funding is, the harder it is to control, and vice versa.
Wauw, that’s crazy speculations. Google buys a service from Firefox, that doesn’t give them the right to manage Firefox. Give me 1 example where Google did what you say? Otherwise, let’s archive that fantasy rambling as paranoid speculation.
- It’s a standard discussion point, not my argument in particular. It’s the same one as for why it’s a problem to have so much corporate money behind news media, political campaigns, and just about anything else.
But - It’s all speculation, both the idea of priority manipulation happening and your idea it does not. The general population doesn’t know anyone at these projects, so everything has to be discussed in vague generalities. You can say ‘I trust X never to take a bribe, because I know X.’ but you can’t say ‘I trust all members of the profession X is in, because they are in that profession.’
Saying you don’t trust Google is just sensible. Saying you don’t trust management at something like Mozilla because they are faceless management, (not that all the things said about choices made inside Mozilla are likely to encourage trust) though a bit generalizing, is also fairly understandable. As such, it’s not at all unusual that people are going to hold some distrust for the combination of the two, especially when one of the big drivers of Firefox usage is specifically that it’s supposed to be more respecting of privacy than chrome or edge. The user base is already primed to be distrustful of tech companies, and not through paranoia but experience.
I’m not saying manipulation of Mozilla by Google is guaranteed to happen but it’s honestly less speculative to expect creepy activity from google, a company for which the business model is ‘do sneaky shit on the internet,’ than to assume absolutely everything going on is totally trustworthy.
So not a single example, but paranoid speculation, based on your general distrust. That’s fine - you’re allowed to feel that way.
It’s a silly and stupid fallacy, to say that it’s speculation that they are not being manipulated. But no, it’s not speculation, it’s the general principle to say that something needs proof. But I guess you are always in a state of flux. “Be weary of gods, because we can’t prove they are there, but I believe they are - because someone else can’t prove that they are not there…” That’s so incredible silly.
But thanks for the talk. Now, please go find some other paranoid person to share your speculations with.
- It’s a standard discussion point, not my argument in particular. It’s the same one as for why it’s a problem to have so much corporate money behind news media, political campaigns, and just about anything else.
“Partly funded by”?
Google contributed roughly 83% of Mozilla’s income from 2020-2023, and 89% of overall income since 2005.
That’s what you call “partly”. You know, unlike “solely”…? So what is your question here?
Do you mean “almost completely”?
Which is still partly, because it’s not solely. But yes, that is a rather large part of the total sum.
Firefox relies on Google for its funding, so any browser based on Gecko relies on Google
Google introduced Extension manifest v3 to effectively to kill/handicap AdBlock extensions.
Mozilla, though getting funding from Google to make google its default search engine, officially decided to keep supporting Manifest v2.
Adblockers are direct challenge to Alphabet’s ad revenue which is still their biggest cash cow.
That speaks a valume about how much control google has on Mozilla decision making process.
Mozilla, though getting funding from Google to make google its default search engine, officially decided to keep supporting Manifest v2.
For now. Google probably isn’t too concerned since they have a more than 70% market share, and nearly 90% if you count all Chromium-based browsers. Firefox has managed to do what Google wants, which is “exist” and “not meaningfully compete with Chrome”. If that changes, Google might lean on them harder.
If that changes, Google might lean on them harder.
If you remember, at one time Firefox used to hold 30% of total browser market share, and it was pro-privacy organization back then as it is now.
Even at that time Google was not managed to influence their decision making process.
What makes you think Google didn’t influence their decision making process? (Assuming that’s what you’re saying)
That speaks a valume about how much control google has on Mozilla decision making process.
It doesn’t say anything about that at all. Just because you’re paying for something doesn’t mean they have to do it your way. It is at most something to keep an eye on.
Google pays them for two reasons. To be the default search engine giving them substantial marketing and ad space, and to keep them floating and independent to lessen their probable status as a monopoly.
In fact, in the recent antitrust ruling, Google is precluded from even making exclusive deals with them.
You are agreeing with the person you replied to lol
Ironically, we already had that - Microsoft’s first version of Edge was using their own engine. On release, it had the highest W3C compatibility score.
Google started shitting on it (including things like serving clear HTML version of Gmail because “the browser is outdated” if it detected the Edge user agent) and massive self-delusion campaigns of “Edge is just Internet Explorer” eventually killed the thing and forced MS to switch to Chromium.
I have Ladybird installed and I check it out every now and then, but I honestly doubt that a bunch of random developers will succeed where Microsoft failed. Unless Cloudflare somehow chips in and forces Google’s hand into compatibility, but I don’t know if even they are big enough to do that.
Personally, I think if the engine was closed source, then we didn’t in fact “had that”. Maybe Microsoft had it, not us.
What makes things like chromium, firefox and webkit actual ecosystems is that they at least have an open source basis. Edge isn’t an ecosystem, it’s a black box. We don’t even know whether it’s true or not that it was its own thing or just they sneakily used bits and pieces of chromium from the start anyway.
User Agent checks is the easiest thing to overcome. Had edge’s engine been open source we would have had spins of it resolving the issue within hours. There are many examples of “random developers” succeeding where big companies tied by business strategies (I bet they had business reasons to keep a distinctive user agent) didn’t, to the point that the web runs on servers using FOSS software.
Personally, I think if the engine was closed source, then we didn’t in fact “had that”. Maybe Microsoft had it, not us.
Well, yeah, in that aspect, you’re correct. I meant that as a “we had a non Google-reliant engine”.
Yes, I understand that. But in my view, Microsoft is the one that might have had “a non Google-reliant engine” (if it’s true that they didn’t rely on Google code).
They just let us use it under their conditions, for the limited time they decided to make it available to us… but it was never “ours”. We were just contractually allowed to use it, but we didn’t really “have” it.
Semantics. I agree with you in principle, but the matter of fact is that we ended up with effectively zero choice over the browser engine.
Yes, the matter of fact is that the reason why that choice was taken away is because everyone except MS was forbidden from “having” that engine. It might have still been alive today in some form had it not been an exclusive MS-owned thing.
I imagine the reason that Cloudflare is doing this now is that Google just got off with no punishment from their antitrust loss.
Anybody who competes with Google now has to worry that they’ll do to them what they did to Microsoft. And, with Trump’s DOJ, the government will probably just ignore it if Sundar Pichai shows up with a shiny bauble for Trump. So, I’d imagine that Microsoft, Cloudflare, Amazon (AWS, Twitch), and Meta, among others, might all decide to fund an alternative browser.
doubt that a bunch of random developers will succeed where Microsoft
Ladybird doesn’t have to be profitable and the org cannot be bought.
Not what I meant.
Microsoft - in theory - had the finances to push their browser to peoples homes. Be it by baking it in to Windows, by ad campaigns, etc., etc. And they still lost to Google’s control over the Web.
Ladybird, by comparison, is an obscure no-name product, being made by a controversial figure, with (relatively to MS) zero ability to market itself to the wider audience. All Google has to do is make their products completely inoperable under Ladybird and, other than some extremely committed power-users who want to “de-google” their lives, nobody will use it.
You are right, but as you noticed, we don’t argue the same thing.
eventually killed the thing and forced MS to switch to Chromium.
Ladybird is not threatened to be killed by whatever anybody but the developers do.
Ladybird is not threatened to be killed by whatever anybody but the developers do.
It absolutely is. If Google forces incompatibility on it (like it did with Edge) ordinary users won’t switch. Because the majority of ordinary users are still deep in the ecosystem.
All it takes is for Google to block high quality streaming on YouTube and the browser will never go outside of 2-3% market share.
I think not being a default browser means that, for now, it’s not for ordinary users anyway.
But we’re discussing the potential future of the browser, not its current state. Right now it can barely render a modern page without crashing (but not always).
That’s not bad.
What’s not bad? Ladybird sitting at floor-leves of market share?
If we want to threaten the status quo in any way, it absolutely is. Firefox has 2.26% and - in terms of defining standards or forcing changes upon Chromium - it’s 100% irrelevant.
I just wanna say that we have Webkit. After Google moved over to Blink Webkit has not stopped development… and it even has multiple big names behind it (like Apple, but also Valve partnered with WebkitGtk maintainers, and many devices like Amazon’s Kindle are heavily invested on it) so it’s not gonna go away anytime soon. Specially with Safari being the second most used browser on the web, right after chrome and several times more users than Firefox.
On Linux we have some browsers making use of Webkit (like Epiphany, Gnome’s default browser) that are thus independent from Google or even Mozilla. I’m not sure if there’s any browser like that for Windows though.
There’s also Netsurf, they also have their own rendering libraries, but development for it is super slow, I’ve been following them for a couple decades and they still haven’t got a stable javascript engine, so it only works for the most basic of websites. The plus side is that it’s very light on resources, though.
I love WebKit exploits because they suddenly open up several gaming consoles to homebrew, almost all of them have browsers based on WebKit too.
There’s also Palemoon with its goanna engine, which forked off Firefox when Mozilla retired XUL and has diverged since
You are not much challenging the status quo by partnering up with the NSA.
i give them the benefit of the doubt, as stated on their website:
All sponsorships are in the form of unrestricted donations. Board seats and other forms of influence are not for sale.
AIPAC doesnt partner up with politicians. They just give them. “uNrEsTrIcTeD dOnAtIoNs”.
Is there evidence or something to support your assertion that Cloudflare = NSA?
Even if Cloudflare = NSA, there no evidence to support your parallel. If the Ladybird team does something suspicious or hostile to the interests of its users - please let us know.
Edward fucking Snowden and the Patriot Act.
Cloudflare is not authorized to disclose that they are.
They decrypt all traffic going through them for deep packet analysis. It would be dumb of the US not to make use of that. Look at Palantir. Or the recent Azure fiasco with the Unit 8200.
It is naive to trust any US-based service. The devil’s advocate in me just wanted to hear why you believe what you do, so thanks for that.
My angle was mostly to point out that Ladybird hasn’t done anything obviously morally bankrupt like the politicians you pointed out - the only detracting factors to me about the project are 1) that the nonprofit is based in the US 2) that it’s not written in Rust.
Of course, it’s worth being suspicious of a web browser of all things. I just see Cloudflare’s contribution in a neutral light given Cloudflare’s general strategy towards PR and the fact that the Ladybird browser is likely going to be a very niche product - and they aren’t even focusing on Windows support for the foreseeable future.
Do I trust Ladybird more than Mozilla? Only very slightly, but the bar is pretty low - and it’s not blind trust.
Giving how apple adjacent the project is I have never had much faith in it being able to truly become an alternative to firefox.
Apple adjacent?
It is being rewritten using swift
You go to the website and the images promoting the browser are using apple. The project is being developed only for macOS and linux. They decided to change the programming language to swift.
To many signs that the devs are appleheads and I get the feeling that the main target is apple, linux second and windows completely out of the box (states by devs themselves). Myself personally, not a fan on apple, I don’t have that kind of money to buy hardware and I don’t see any advantages on doing so.
challenge the status quo by partnering with the status quo…
deleted by creator
Without a Windows release it will remain a niche browser even if by chance it becomes the most used on macOS, GNU+Linux and other Unix-like OSes.
windows browsers are all niche when you introduce anything to the mobile market. An android / iOS ladybird browser would crush it
As far as I know, there still aren’t any non-WebKit engines for iOS, even though the possibility is theoretically there as of 17.4… (It may need to be EU-only? I’m not clear on that part.)
Cloudflare and “challenging the status quo” in the same phrase ?
Well, the browser status quo. I guess they want their own Chrome.
Its sponsorship only of an open source browser, with no telemetry, advertising, crypto, etc, etc built in.
Sponsors get listed as sponsors, thats it.
For now
So when they do just fork it?
I likely won’t touch it anyway, but it is fully open source, so it can be forked easily. With the transition to Swift I suspect there would be plenty of devs who could take things forward if they wanted to.
If you look at history, Google did the opposite with Chrome, they forked an open source browser and turned it into the world’s most used.
I guess we’ll see.Thats google though, with the added ability to put it direct into an extremely common OS (Android). With ladybird, you’ve got an apparent neocon and 3 years currently planned for a GA release (2028). Its future is already pretty uncertain regardless of sponsorship.
So when they do just fork it?
say the same for chrome, and think again if you mean it seriously.
Iridium, cromite, edge, brave, thorium, vivaldi, pale moon…
And this is a drastically simpler browser that would be in swift 6.
and what can they do against the manifest v3 migration? they cannot afford to keep maintaining the code for mv2 addons. it is an important topic for efficient content blocking.
its funny you bring up edge as an alternative. brave too has opt-out telemetry and other shenanigans.
ew what
I’m out of the loop, I thought cloud flair was a good company
