tangeli

Destruction of precious resources in order to create a monopoly is not good for society.

It’s best for the AI companies if there are no sources other than their AI.

I don’t mean to disparage anyone’s efforts. I linked the WikiPedia page to provide the context. I hope the interest grows and they achieve a stable release.

Yes, exactly. Laydybird was started in 2019 and only this year is expected to publish an alpha release and hoping for a beta release in 2027 and first stable release in 2028, confirming that it is too difficult. And what are the chances that those targets will not slip? And how much will the specification change in the meantime? It shouldn’t take a decade to write a conformant browser. A simpler specification would allow more projects to deliver compliant browsers.

A significant part of the problem is the W3C making the standards relevant to web browsers and servers so complicated that the purported objective of allowing anyone to build a browser is defeated. While it is technically true that anyone can build a conformant browser, it is practically impossible for anyone without the resources of companies like Google, Apple and Microsoft to keep up. New, independent implementations are almost impossible due to the technical complexity and the anti-competitive practices of the incumbents.

According to this report:

As of 2026, three engines account for virtually all browser rendering globally.

Those are: Blink, WebKit and Gecko

What’s needed is new standards that restore the practical possibility for others to develop a compatible browser. That would help resolve or avoid this problem and many other problems that are similarly rooted in vendors attempting to control the user’s data and experience.