JavaScript

`0:27:44`

— This is one of the hardest problems in computing today is to parse the entire internet. Because thankfully for us as web developers, but perhaps not so much for the browser developers, every webpage that has ever been created minus the brief period with Flash still runs today. The webpage I did in ninth grade would render on a modern browser today, 30 years later. — That's crazy. — That is completely crazy. When you think about the amount of evolution we've had with the web, how much better we've made it, how many more standards browsers have adopted. It's essentially an Apollo project today to create a new browser, which is why it doesn't happen very often, which is why even companies like Microsoft had to throw into towel and say, "We can't do it." Now I actually don't think that's good for the web. There is the danger of the monoculture if we just get a single browser engine that runs everything, and we are in danger of that. I love the fact that the Ladybird project, for example, is trying to make a new browser engine from scratch.

`0:28:46`

I've supported that project. I would encourage people to look into that. It's really a wonderful — Nice. — thing. It's staffed by a bunch of people who worked on other browser projects in the past. — Truly independent web browser. — We really need that. But I can hold that thought in my head. At the same time, I hold the thought in my head that Google's Chrome was pivotal to the web surviving as the premier web development platform. If it had not been for Google and their entire business depending on a thriving open web, Apple, Microsoft, I think would've been just as fine to see the web go away to disappear into being something that's just served native web applications or native mobile applications and native desktop applications that they could completely control. So I have all sorts of problems with Google, but it's not Chrome. Chrome is a complete gift to web developers everywhere,

`0:29:47`

to the web as a development platform. And they deserve an enormous amount of credit, I think for that. Even if it's entangled with their business model and half of Chrome is code that spies on you or informs targeted ads. And a bunch of things, I'm not a big fan of. I can divorce that from the fact that we need champions in the corner of the web who have trillions of dollars of market cap value riding on the open web. — We're gonna take tangents upon a tangents upon a tangents. So let's go to Chrome. I think Chrome positive impact on humanities is immeasurable for reasons that you just described. On the technology front, the features that present the competition they created, it's spurred on this wonderful flourishing of web technologies. But anyway, I have to ask you about the recent stuff with the DOJ, trying to split up Chrome and Google. Do you think this is a good idea? Do you think this does harm? — It's a disaster.