The Chrome team says they’re not going to pursue Web Integrity but…
it is piloting a new Android WebView Media Integrity API that’s “narrowly scoped, and only targets WebViews embedded in apps.”
They say its because the team “heard your feedback.” I’m sure that’s true, and I can wildly speculate that all the current anti-trust attention was a factor too.
Unpopular opinion here: I kind of hoped they’d go through with it, as that would completely kill Chrome and Chromium and would lead to a repeat of IE vs Firefox, except Chrome would be the new IE. The fact that they backtracked means that they too saw that people would be massively flocking to Firefox.
I think it’s less, “We’re worried people will flock to Firefox,” and more, “We could get in a lot of legal trouble for trying to force everyone onto Chrome”.
Most Chrome users don’t even know what a web browser is. They would have remained on Chrome and the web would have suffered for it.
To be fair, most IE 5 and 6 users didn’t know what a web browser was either and here we are.
But that was broken and didn’t provide the right functionality. Chrome’s change breaks everything else, not itself.
It definitely wouldn’t. The majority of people would never know the difference. Most people use Chrome and don’t use ad blockers.
Careful what you wish for.
I still think it will come out but on the down low
It wouldn’t. If Google only owned Chrome, then maybe. But combined with services like AdSense, Google can easily leverage people and site operators to keep using Chrome.
Firefox is losing users year over year. I think it’s beyond saving.