• mspencer712@programming.dev
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    4 months ago

    Also, the development and evolution of these open technologies relies on human interest and attention, and that attention can be diminished, even starved, by free, closed offerings.

    Evil plan step 1: make a free closed alternative and make it better than everything else. Discord for chat, Facebook for forums and chat/email, etc.

    Step 2: wait a few years, or a decade or more. The world will largely forget how to use the open alternatives. Instant messengers, forums, chat services, just give them a decade to die out. Privately hosted communities, either move to Facebook, pay for commercial anti-spam support, spend massive volunteer hours, or drown in spam.

    Step 3: monetize your now-captive audience. What else are they going to use? Tools and apps from the 2000s?

    • forgotmylastusername@lemmy.ml
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      4 months ago

      We are facing a very real possibility of the end of the web browser as we know it. Google owns the chromium engine. Mozilla is on ever more precarious footing. It’s become logistically impossible to build competing products except for tech giant. Even then everybody else gave up and went with chromium.

      • errer@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        And Mozilla is largely funded by Google. We all just hope they don’t pull the rug from them but I have no faith that our inept, slow government would stop that from happening before it’s too late.

        • Liz@midwest.social
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          4 months ago

          Almost certainly the entire reason Google is funding Mozilla is to try and stave off antitrust lawsuits.

          • Iron Lynx@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            The official reason is so that Big G is the default search engine on every install.

            But that may very well just be a smokescreen.

          • 50MYT@aussie.zone
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            4 months ago

            Yep.

            Google will spend more on a legal team working out how to prevent the lawsuits in the first place than they would be giving to Mozilla

          • Waffelson@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            I think this reason is stupid. Why can’t there be a duopoly in the browser market like in the phone market? Even if there is no firefox, there will still be safari on its own engine

            • Liz@midwest.social
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              4 months ago

              I think the phone market should also be broken up.

              The reason a doupoly is bad in any market is that it’s essentially next to no choice for the consumer, and the businesses can force changes to the market that are anti-consumer with little reprocussion. In any given market the minimum number of legitimate competitors necessary for meaningful competition will be different, but even three is too few in the web browser game, especially when the market shares look like this.

    • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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      4 months ago

      But nntpd is still out there. Rebuilding Usenet will suck. But it’s not impossible. Start from the net2 sites again.

      Old mail RFCs included an instant message channel. I’m sure I saw code in either sendmail or uw-imap for it too.

      I like the fediverse, but the old ways are still valid for their particular payload.