QUIC is not quick enough over fast internet

> Could you expand more on why this seems like evidence that Google unilaterally dictating bad standards?

I guess I'm just generally disgusted in the way Google is poisoning the web in the worst way possible: By pushing ever more complex standards. Imagine the complexity of the web stack in 2050 if we continue to let Google run things. It's Microsoft's old embrace-extend-and-extinguish scheme taken to the next level.

In short: it's not you, it's your manager's manager's manager's manager's strategy that is messed up.

> It's Microsoft's old embrace-extend-and-extinguish scheme taken to the next level.

It literally is not.

Because?

Edit: I'm not the first person to make this comparison. Witness the Chrome section in this article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...

This is making a pretty big assumption that the web is perfectly fine the way it is and never needs to change.

In reality, there are perfectly valid reasons that motivate QUIC and HTTP/2 and I don’t think there is a reasonable argument that they are objectively bad. Now, for your personal use case, it might not be worth it, but that’s a different argument. The standards are built for the majority.

All systems have tradeoffs. Increased complexity is undesirable, but whether it is bad or not depends on the benefits. Just blanket making a statement that increasing complexity is bad, and the runaway effects of that in 2050 would be worse does not seem particularly useful.

Well it may be possible to make the comparison in other things google does (they have done a lot of things) it makes no sense for quic/http3.

What are they extending in this analogy? Http3 is not an extension of http. What are they extinguishing? There is no plan to get rid of http1/2, since you still need it in lots of networks that dont allow udp.

Additionally, its an open standard, with an rfc, and multiple competing implementations (including firefox and i believe experimental in safari). The entire point of embrace, extend, extinguish is that the extension is not well specified making it dufficult for competitors to implement. That is simply not what is happening here.

Nothing is perfect. But gigantic big bang changes (like from HTTP 1.1 to 2.0) enforced by a browser mono culture and a dominant company with several thousands of individually well-meaning Chromium software engineers like yourself - yeah, pretty sure that's bad.

Contributing to an open standard seems to be the opposite of the classic example.

Assume that change X for the web is positive overall. Currently Google’s strategy is to implement in Chrome and collect data on usefulness, then propose a standard and have other people contribute to it.

That approach seems pretty optimal. How else would you do it?

How does this have any relevance to my comment?

How does your comment have any relevance to what we are discussing throughout this thread?

What I meant with Microsoft's Embrace, extend, and extinguish (EEE) scheme taken to the next level is what Google has done to the web via Chromium:

They have several thousand C++ browser engineers (and as many web standards people as they could get their hands on, early on). Combined with a dominant browser market share, this has let them dominate browser standards, and even internet protocols. They have abused this dominant position to eliminate all competitors except Apple and (so far) Mozilla. It's quite clever.

Except that HTTP/1.1 to HTTP/2 was not a big bang change on the ecosystem level. No server or browser was forced to implement HTTP/2 to remain interoperable[0]. I bet you can't point any of this "enforcement" you claim happened. If other browser implemented HTTP/2, it was because they thought that the benefits of H2 outweighed any downsides.

[0] There are non-browser protocols that are based on H2 only, but since your complaint was explicitly about browsers, I know that's not what you had in mind.

You are missing the entire point: Complexity.

It's not your fault, in case you were working on this. It was likely the result a strategy thing being decided at Google/Alphabet exec level.

Several thousand very competent C++ software engineers don't come cheap.

I mean, the reason I was discussing those specific aspects is that you're the one brought them up. You made the claim about how HTTP/2 was a "big bang" change. You're the one who made the claim that HTTP/2 was enforced on the ecosystem by Google.

And it seems that you can't support either of those claims in any way. In fact, you're just pretending that you never made those comments at all, and have once again pivoted to a new grievance.

But the new grievance is equally nonsensical. HTTP/2 is not particularly complex, and nobody on either the server or browser side was forced to implement it. Only those who thought the minimal complexity was worth it needed to do it. Everyone else remained fully interoperable.

I'm not entirely sure where you're coming from here, to be honest. Like, is your belief that there are no possible tradeoffs here? Nothing can ever justify even such minor amounts of complexity, no matter how large the benefits are? Or do you accept that there are tradeoffs, and are "just" disagree with every developer who made a different call on this when choosing whether to support HTTP/2 in their (non-Google) browser or server?

Microsoft just did shit, whatever they wanted. Google has worked with all the w3c committees and other browsers with tireless commitment to participation, with endless review.

It's such a tired sad trope of people disaffected with the web because they can't implement it by themselves easily. I'm so exhausted by this anti-progress terrorism; the world's shared hypermedia should be rich and capable.

We also see lots of strong progress these days from newcomers like Ladybird, and Servo seems gearing up to be more browser like.

Edit: this whole comment is incorrect. I was really thinking about HTTP 3.0, not 2.0.

HTTP/2 is not "particularly complex?" Come on! Do remember where we started.

> I'm not entirely sure where you're coming from here, to be honest. Like, is your belief that there are no possible tradeoffs here? Nothing can ever justify even such minor amounts of complexity, no matter how large the benefits are? Or do you accept that there are tradeoffs, and are "just" disagree with every developer who made a different call on this when choosing whether to support HTTP/2 in their (non-Google) browser or server?

"Such minor amounts of complexity". Ahem.

I believe there are tradeoffs. I don't believe that HTTP/2 met that tradeoff between complexity vs benefit. I do believe it benefitted Google.

Yes, Google found the loophole: brute-force standards complexity by hiring thousands of very competent engineers eager to leave their mark on the web and eager to get promoted. The only thing they needed was lots of money, and they had just that.

I think my message here is only hard to understand if your salary (or personal worth etc) depends on not understanding it. It's really not that complex.

"We" started from you making outlandish claims about HTTP/2 and immediately pivoting to a new complaint when rebutted rather than admit you were wrong.

Yes, HTTP/2 is not really complex as far as these things go. You just keep making that assertion as if it was self-evident, but it isn't. Like, can you maybe just name the parts you think are unnecessary complex? And then we can discuss just how complex they really are, and what the benefits are.

(Like, sure, having header compression is more complicated than not having it. But it's also an amazingly beneficial tradeoff, so it can't be what you had in mind.)

> I believe there are tradeoffs. I don't believe that HTTP/2 met that tradeoff between complexity vs benefit.

So why did Firefox implement it? Safari? Basically all the production level web servers? Google didn't force them to do it. The developers of all of that software had agency, evaluated the tradeoffs, and decided it was worth implementing. What makes you a better judge of the tradoffs than all of these non-Google entities?

> What I meant with Microsoft's Embrace, extend, and extinguish (EEE) scheme taken to the next level is what Google has done to the web via Chromium

I think this argument is reasonable, but QUIC isn't part of the problem.

Yeah, sorry, I mixed up 2.0 (the one that still uses TCP) with 3.0. Sorry for wasting your time.

> I think my message here is only hard to understand if your salary (or personal worth etc) depends on not understanding it. It's really not that complex.

Just because someone disagrees with you, doesn't mean they don't understand you.

However, if you think google is making standards unneccessarily complex, you should read some of the standards from the 2000s (e.g. SAML).

> They have abused this dominant position to eliminate all competitors except Apple and (so far) Mozilla.

But that's like all of them. Except edge but that was mostly dead before chrome came on the scene.

It seems like you are using embrace, extend, extinguish to just mean, "be succesful", but that's not what the term means. Being a market leader is not the same thing as embrace, extend, extinguish. Neither is putting competition out of business.

This is one of those HN buzzword medley comments that has only rant, no substance.

- MS embrace extend extinguish

- Google is making the world complex

- Nth level manager is messed up

None of the above was connected to deliver a clear point, just thrusted into the comment to sound profound.