The browser engine landscape has significantly consolidated. Opera's and Edge's shifts to Chromium-based engines in 2013 and earlier this year, respectively, as noted by Mike Taylor's "Decreasingly Diverse Browser Engine World," left us primarily with Chrome, Firefox, and Safari ecosystems. While Chrome and Safari share a common ancestor, their independent evolution and walled gardens justify considering them distinct.
The complexities of browser engine architecture—Chromium's Blink and V8, Firefox's Gecko (evolving into Quantum), and Safari's WebKit with WebCore and JavaScriptCore—can be simplified by focusing on the primary browser name.
This consolidation presents a double-edged sword:
- Reduced competition and innovation: A less diverse ecosystem might stifle competition and technological advancement.
- Increased efficiency: Eliminating cross-engine compatibility issues would significantly boost global productivity. A single ecosystem could even be more beneficial.
Regardless of perspective, the current state is established. Future prospects are the focus.
Several possibilities emerge:
- Diversification through forking: Instead of engine diversity itself, competition might shift to forks of existing engines, leveraging strong foundations for innovation.
- Web standards implications: A single remaining engine raises concerns about web standards. Without interoperability pressure, the dominant engine might deviate from standards. However, this doesn't automatically preclude future competition.
- Feature-driven competition: Browsers can still compete on user-focused features without impacting web standards. Password managers, security enhancements, innovative bookmarking, reader modes, payment integrations, and VPNs illustrate this. Vivaldi's customization, Brave's privacy focus, and Puma's monetization strategies showcase this trend.
Brian Kardell's "Beyond Browser Vendors" highlights the open-source nature of remaining engines. This fosters external contributions, exemplified by Igalia's significant role in developing CSS Grid for both WebKit and Chromium. Igalia's contributions extend to CSS Containment, ResizeObserver, BigInt, and other web standards improvements.
The loss of browser engine diversity may be offset by the increased openness and contributions from external players like Igalia, demonstrating that innovation can continue even within a consolidated landscape.
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