/~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~\
So, I stayed mostly quiet about this, since I'm not really the conspiracy
theory type, but thanks to jirka's latest post[1], and the recent revelation
about a YouTube dev's march to kill IE6 without permission[2], and the whole
idea that Google was deliberately sabotaging Edge[3] and Firefox[4] and Windows
Phone[5]... It's not sounding so much like a theory.
See, several years ago, Brendan Eich was very suddenly attacked by members of
the "Mozilla community". I place that phrase in quotes because the attack came
out of nowhere on Twitter, yet seemed strangely orchestrated in how it was
pulled off. Members of an LGBTQA+ group just attacking Brendan Eich for
something that happened several years ago, leaving other members of the LGBTQA+
community utterly baffled by their outburst. Even *I* had to call them out on
their actions, and I'm trans.
Cue Brendan Eich having to step down because of all of this, and Chris Beard
being put in his place. Suddenly, Mozilla starts becoming more
corporate-focused. A rebranding that relied on study groups for the final
design instead of the community, internal policies turning more IBM-like in
ways, the Mr. Robot incident despite their pledge to be user-oriented, their
sudden UI change to make the browser more Chrome-like, proposals to drop PDF.js
for Chrome's inferior product, suddenly killing off Firefox OS and then leaving
the community high and dry, the Lea Verou incident[6]... Like... The list just
keeps growing.
And now another sudden "oops" moment in which they reveal that add-ons will
stop working for *everyone* if they don't keep up the backend certs?
I'm honestly convinced that Chris Beard is a Google plant, and that the initial
outburst from a pair of "LGBTQA+" people were actually two Google devs posing
as such to get rid of one of their biggest threats in the web browser space.
They knew Edge wasn't a threat because it wasn't even up to par with the alpha
of Firebird, and with Opera on Chromium (and now Edge), they don't have any
real competition. Especially given that Google practically owns WHATWG, giving
them control over the living HTML5 standard as well.
I know, affirmation bias and all of that. But given what we've been seeing with
everything falling apart on the web, and Google taking over so much, it's not
too far-fetched to come to such a conclusion.
\~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~/
[1]:
gopher://sdf.org/0/users/jirka/Phlog/2019_05_02.txt
[2]:
https://www.zdnet.com/article/ex-youtube-developer-reveals-how-he-conspired-to-kill-ie6/
[3]:
https://www.extremetech.com/internet/282490-ex-microsoft-intern-google-deliberately-crippled-edge-browser
[4]:
https://twitter.com/johnath/status/1116871231792455686
[5]:
https://twitter.com/tomwarren/status/1117475795621036032
[6]:
https://twitter.com/leaverou/status/778182677040074753
