this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2023
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Even if its not affected by manifest V3 changes directly, we shouldnt forget what V3 means. It shows the direction that Google wants to take Chromium into, unsurprisingly. Google is an Ad company, making a browser that has ad-blocking or has forks (i.e. Brave) that focus on ad-blocking is against its very core goal. Manifest V3 could just be the start. We dont know what changes they have in mind that could be impossible to evade for comparatively small projects like Brave. Imagine important and big features and security updates shipped with spyware so deeply integrated that only a giant company like Google could implement it while making it impossible for any smaller company like Brave to divide. Brave would be dead over night.
That is not a far-fetched future prediction. But as of now, Brave works just fine. No reason to stop using it now from what might happen. If SHTF, I'll simply download something else.
@00 @Monologue @DoctorForesight @suslord Would it be feasible for Google to close the source of Chromium and/or Blink or do they have licenses that prevent it?
The ultimate question would be whether anyone had the soft- or hard-power to stop them if they wanted to, which might be doubtful. But like @Monologue said, it wouldnt be in their interest. Keeping everyone tied to them and their services is far more profitable than actually using hard power to stomp out projects that steal comparatively little from their profit margins. But profit margins are profit margins, so further changes to make Chromium/Chrome even more of a spyware while booting out forks is just a double win.
They can switch to a new licence, but it would only apply to future contributions, not what already exists. So if they did that, the result would be multiple forks. MS would need to maintain their own fork for Edge.
why would they want that? it is better for them this way since they ensure that any competitors will use their engine (which they decide what goes into the code) simply forking it wouldn't be that possible either because you would need to be able to update it regularly to fit the current web standards effectively competing the budget and resources of google
firefox is literally the last bastion of free internet, use the furry be happy