> Thank heavens. Google's efforts to 'improve' the web have been disastrous.

This Apple action is done to honor the AMP teams design of how AMP URLs should be handled, so it's actually, in a sense, part of Google's efforts to improve the web, not a counter to them.

It's also done to DECRAPIFY the links that people try and share with their friends, providing a non-crappy user experience.

In this case that HAPPENS to align with what Google wants.

Of course google could've decided not to screw up the web in the first place… but we're obviously way past that.

Or because Google paid them. Google already pays over a billion dollars a year to Apple.

I find Apple making AMP suck less for pay, to be much more likely than the Apple developers doing it because they think this is good for the web.

Right, but they're not here to improve the web. If anything, these efforts are just to delay getting the next billion-dollar fee.

I probably wouldn't have cared much if AMP pages weren't broken or missing content so often, but anything that means less AMP sounds good to me.

I cannot help but think that the answer lies in requiring licensing of the major browser brands to special interest groups.

There will be no loss of trademark aspect, in law or effect, would Chrome be available in the edition provided by the Royal Institute of Engineers, or Firefox found in a edition created by the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants. US DoD AND PBS all have the place and reason to augment the capability of the FUNCTIONAL UTILITY of Web browsers. Google, Apple, Microsoft and the greater OSS diaspora, should be able to healthily play both the supporting role, and Arbiter of First Resort.

> would Chrome be available in the edition provided by the Royal Institute of Engineers, or Firefox found in a edition created by the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants

You do realize that Chrome and Firefox are open-source, right?

There exists a free browser that can be built from the Google Chrome source repository, but "Chrome" isn't it.

Mozilla has similarly and previously made their branding intentions clear.

I picked on the a Royal Charter professional body for my example, because ascent to the ranks of the association is a distinction in any engineering career.

I chose my example to convey the substance of a most respected voice in a profession, but there are thousands more.

These institutions have budgets and charters to assist their membership.

Browsers are perennially in need of support, financing and quality assurance.

I venture a dream in which out professional associations and not Google or Microsoft, are the recipient of our browsing data, and a world in which my browser use is assisted by the data that my associates have been winnowing for the answers that generally have been disappearing in my search results, since the early days of a WWW largely populated by academics and domain experts.

There is a awful lot which I believe other engineering professionals can contribute to the browser ecosystems and which as a byproduct may free us from the free no charge supply of the meta data that is often the actual result of considerable real work.

Consumers too, might be easily induced to pay a modest sum, to have a specific facility in plug in already installed and smoothly running, offered by one of the most respected bodies in the country.

Of course none of this is possible without the projects being open source. I am closer than my job title admits, to similar projects. I have also practice intellectual property law, in defence of my company and the rights which we also trade to creative works for clients who have had their work exploited and used commercial by companies beyond their ability to affect. Not now, but I will soon write up my litigation stories for public consumption. I have a awareness of the value placed on professional work and the way it affects often necessarily issues guarded and unwilling correspondents on possession of libraries which are essential to their profession, but must never be made freely available. The chance to be a member organisation with commit rights to the repositories, and the ability to control their own security audit is a very real consideration that might be very important progress indeed, as the meta data from closed libraries is invaluable for the use of search engines generally. The opportunity to use the latest software from a respected institution, who has their own additional security review process, for a token sum, like 5 pounds or 8 dollars, is something that I would like to buy, when I am selling to that sector.

Yes, but I'm a advertising professional trading advertising positions in the industry association magazines, and I am very aware of the untapped potential interest in providing assistance to the organisation members.

I spoke above about branding.

And professional collaboration with financial support from highly respected engineering professionals in hundreds of comparable organisations, who are individually identified with the essential infrastructure of our built world and industry.

There incentive for organisations like these, to actively engage and support, possibly augmenting their distribution with a contribution to the projects of browser tools that assist the user in potentially specific ways such as archive cross reference private searches of the user's history and tabs, against closed or private libraries, which is a common service that is provided by associations in a physical form.

Firefox is losing XUL and this is upsetting a considerable number of people I speak to, who have developed in house assistant plug in software.

I am personally very disappointed with the depreciation and actually complete removal of XUL, and the initiative to port the superb microcosm of browser tools, really requires a very strong effort, which is the exact example of what the associations I spoke to privately whish they were able to make a genuine connection to the project maintainers, who universally respond to genuine inquiry with the exact reply which you just gave me.

I started my career 25 years ago and stayed in a very stop gap sales job, originally intended to fill a gap year before applying to university, because I was able to speak to serious company directors on a frank and open basis, from which I realised that I might gain no better experience in my education. Starting my own business was a natural step. The advertising trade newspapers claim every opportunity that online advertising is fully displacing print and the shrill claims have been proven empty for two decades now. This is a market that is unloved but vast in terms of the ability to address the most senior professionals in any known industry field. The economy is a incredible experience for untying the knot of misdirection that has turned the business of advertising agencies permanently away from their clients and completely to align their capabilities to sell, in funnelling the unsuspecting into unmeasured deals with above 60 percent of the cost, captured by integration of the so canute non real advertising "exchange" system, crippling opportunities for small business. The result is decimation of the small business economies of the USA and the UK.

I venture a promotional acronym : Google, Apple, Microsoft and Unaligned Technologists. G.A.M.U.T.

I have no idea at all what purpose that would serve. Care to elaborate?

If budget could be made from only the top thousand professional organisations in the western hemisphere, channeled via branding distribution of the existing browsers, with the vertical profession sharing search meta data among themselves instead of feeding for free Google with invaluable information about how to structure searches without any restrictions on how Google use that data... Funnelling the meta data into the professional association plight instead, - this is a spare time program I want to pitch to get funding during next year, to finance the necessary work on plug in tools for assisting with typical heavy and long searches amid the hundreds of tabs my colleagues will have open... This is a need for tools to exploit the state of such long searches and record and protect from leaking trade secret indicators and the similar - - - these are plug inside which I want to pay for, and many like me, and thousands of professionals who just don't speak online because they are not permitted to risk the company assets by loose speech. The price of 5 dollars or so, would bring millions in revenue to the development team, before very long, because branding is a very desired product for professional institutions and my ideas are received and not novel so much as already popular demand that isn't expressed by communities who just don't speak through HN and the similar.

Security of meta data. Reuse of search and general browsing use recycled to make vertical market assisted tools for search and research annotation and collection. Independent funding separated from conflicts of interest. A new revenue stream for the project maintainers. Improved oversight of security.

That's the most of the improvements I am seeking.