The Public Interest Internet

> So, say you want to create a new web standard...

This and the following image have a misguided understanding of the market. We know how this situation plays out because we ran exactly that experiment in the 2000s with Firefox and IE6. Those market share numbers are contingent on Google doing the best possible job as curators insofar as the userbase can tell.

If there are browser features that users want (like tabs) or web standards that enable Cool New Stuff (like modern JS) then users will go out of their way to install browsers that support them. Firefox got all the way to around 20-30% of the market before MS's control of the web collapsed and we entered the current era.

The "problem" that competitors of Google face is that Google is a rather competent steward of web standards. Their browser engine is hard to compete with because it is very good, their web standards are hard to compete with because they are largely appropriate.

Although I stand by a prediction I have that the next wave will be when a Brave-like model takes hold and the price of browsing the web drops from free to negative. With crypto we are surely getting to spitting distance of advertisers paying users directly to look at ads instead of paying Google to organise the web such that users look at ads.

"If there are browser features that users want (like tabs) or webs standards that enable Cool Stuff (like modern JS) then users will go out of their way to install browser that support them."

Pretty sure that tabs were introduced by a software developer without any prior request from any user.

Same goes for "Cool Stuff". Few users even know what JS means, except that if they do not use it or disable it, they will constantly be met with pages instructing them, even commanding them, to enable it or use a browser that supports it. These were introduced by software developers on their own initiative. Users will go out of their way to try to make stuff work. If a page instructs them to install some software, then, generally, they will follow the instructioins.

Once users become familiar with something then they will expect it. That is quite different from users asking for something that does not exist. (Usually such requests for features are never filled as they would go against advertisers' interests in web browsers. Users want a web free of ads. Software developers depend on a web full ads. In this regard, users do not get what they want. Software developers do.)

Users have little control over web browsers. Software developers at the advertising companies, e.g., Google, and their business partners, e.g. Mozilla, have the control. The companies serve their own interests and the interests of their customers who purchase online advertising service. Those customers are advertisers, not users.

For example, browsers like Firefox and Chrome have at times hidden the full URL from the user in the address bar. No user ever requested that. Nor were any users asked if they wanted it. Chrome introduced a feature called FLoC. No user ever requested that. Nor was any user asked if they wanted it. The list of "features" like this is ridiculously long.

Users do not get features because they "want" them. They get the features that software developers decide to give them, without prior consultation.

Whether they want the features or not, they generally are stuck with them.

> Pretty sure that tabs were introduced by a software developer without any prior request from any user.

I'm sure many, many features were introduced by software developers without any prior request from users. Users then selected what software to use based on which of those features they like the best.

This is how most product design works -- features are developed prior to being marketed, and users subsequently validate them or not -- which is analogous to how new biological phenotypes develop from random genetic mutations prior to being filtered through selection pressures.

> Few users even know what JS means, except that if they do not use it or disable it, they will constantly be met with pages instructing them, even commanding them, to enable it or use a browser that supports it. These were introduced by software developers on their own initiative.

And then users validated those introductions of new features and they became standard. This happened with JavaScript, because JavaScript enabled websites to do things users wanted to do. Conversely, the market didn't largely validate Web VBScript, Java applets, and a wide variety of other now-forgotten solutions for adding dynamic content to websites.

> Software developers at the advertising companies, e.g., Google, and their business partners, e.g. Mozilla, have the control.

No, that's very, very incorrect. Vendors can only introduce products and features -- whether or not they stick around and develop further is up to the market, via the complex interplay of end users and site authors.

Chromes replacement of Firefox had more to do with aggressive marketing and deliberate poor performance of their web properties like gmail on non-Google browsers. Not sure how much consumer self direction was involved.

> Not sure how much consumer self direction was involved.

It was entirely consumer self-direction, as neither browser was preinstalled by default on any platform, and all usage of either was initiated by a deliberate end-user choice.

"Aggressive marketing" indeed only has its effect through "consumer self-direction" as its whole purpose is to persuade end users to make a purposeful decision.

There were huge campaigns where google was paying per install, many of these installs were surreptitious. When you create standards that only play well in your garden then the only people making decisions are you and the devs writing them, the users either play along or cant use CORPORATE_WEB_APP - hence why IE is STILL around today.