Digital Sovereignty in Practice: Web Browsers as a Reality Check
Reading in Servo’s latest weekly report that it’s now passing 1.7 million Web Platform Subtests, I started wondering: How much investment would it build it into a competitive, independent browser, in the context of all this talk on digital sovereignty?
The current browser landscape reveals how concentrated digital control has become. Roughly 75% of global web traffic flows through browsers based on Google’s Chromium engine; not just Chrome, but Microsoft Edge, Samsung, and dozens of others. Apple’s Safari dominates iOS but remains locked to their ecosystem. Firefox, once a genuine alternative, has declined to under 5% market share globally. This means American companies control how billions of users worldwide access the web. Every search, transaction, and digital service flows through infrastructure ultimately controlled by Silicon Valley. For societies valuing their independence and sovereignty, this represents a fundamental vulnerability that recent geopolitical events have made impossible to ignore.
Digital infrastructure is as important as energy or transportation networks. Unlike physical infrastructure, however, digital systems can be controlled remotely, updated unilaterally, and modified to serve the interests of their controllers rather than their users. Browsers exemplify this challenge because they’re both critical and seemingly replaceable. In theory, anyone can build a browser. The web standards are open, and rendering engines like Servo prove it’s technically feasible.
In practice, building browsers requires sustained investment, institutional coordination, and overcoming network effects that entrench existing players. If democratic societies can successfully coordinate to build and maintain competitive browser alternatives, it demonstrates their capacity for more complex digital sovereignty goals. If they cannot, it reveals the institutional gaps that need addressing.
Firefox offers important lessons about the challenges facing independent browsers. Mozilla has indeed faced difficulties: declining market share, organizational challenges, and ongoing technical issues. The organization has also alienated its most dedicated supporters by pivoting toward advertising, AI initiatives and cutting their impactful public advocacy programs.
However, Firefox remains the only major browser engine not controlled by Apple or Google, serving hundreds of millions of users worldwide. Its struggles reflect structural challenges that any alternative browser would face: the enormous engineering effort required to maintain web compatibility, the network effects favouring dominant platforms, and the difficulty of sustaining long-term technical projects through diverse funding sources.
Yet, building a competitive alternative browser infrastructure would require substantial but manageable investment. Here is a ballpark estimation I made based on existing browsers: Annual operating costs would include:
Engineering Team of ±50 developers, designers, managers etc.: €15 million.
Quality Assurance and Testing Infrastructure: €10 million
Security Auditing and Vulnerability Management: €10 million
Standards and Specification Development: €5 million.
It would probably take around 3-4 years to fully build an alternative browser from scratch, less so if it’s a fork of one of the existing ones. Forking Chromium/Gecko or building upon Servo’s foundation could reduce this timeline to 18-24 months for basic functionality, though achieving full web compatibility and market readiness would still require several additional years of refinement. The initial development sprint needs to be followed by a sustained engineering effort needed afterward, for maintaining compatibility with evolving web standards, fixing security vulnerabilities, and keeping pace with performance improvements.
The core challenge isn’t technical; it’s institutional. How do you sustain long-term technical projects through democratic processes that span multiple countries with different priorities, resources, and political systems? Successful models exist. The European Space Agency coordinates complex multi-national technical projects. CERN manages cutting-edge research infrastructure across dozens of countries. The Internet Engineering Task Force maintains critical internet standards through voluntary coordination among global stakeholders. The “Reclaiming Digital Sovereignity” proposal specifically addresses this challenge by advocating for “new public institutions with state and civil society representation” to govern universal digital platforms, alongside “multilateral agreements on principles and rules for the internet” as safeguards for autonomous, democratically governed solutions.
Browser development could follow similar patterns: international frameworks that respect national sovereignty while enabling coordinated action, governance structures that balance technical expertise with democratic accountability, and funding mechanisms that provide stability across political cycles. The Reclaiming Digital Sovereignity’s report’s emphasis on “democratic international consortia” and “public knowledge networks led by a new public international research agency” provides concrete institutional models that could be adapted for browser development. Germany’s Sovereign Tech Agency represents another model for public investment in digital infrastructure for the public interest.
With all that being said, browsers represent one of the more achievable digital sovereignty goals. They’re built on open standards, rely heavily on open source components, and face fewer network effects than platform-based services. Other areas of the technology stack would be far more challenging, and far less open.
Success here would demonstrate that democratic societies can coordinate effectively on complex technical infrastructure and pass the first hurdle. Failure would reveal institutional gaps that need addressing before attempting more ambitious digital sovereignty goals. Democratic digital sovereignty is challenging but feasible, if societies are willing to think institutionally, invest sustainably, and build incrementally rather than trying to recreate Silicon Valley with different ownership structures.
Ultimately, the real question isn’t whether democratic societies can build alternative technologies, but whether they can build the democratic institutions necessary to govern them effectively across the complex realities of international coordination, competing priorities, and long-term sustainability. I believe browsers offer an ideal place to start testing these institutional innovations. The technical challenges are surmountable. The institutional ones remain to be proven.
Views expressed are personal and do not represent any organization.
It's hear! I finally was able to convert it to mp3, so that way, Mastodon supports it. My mother had this phone, when i was growing up, and i wanted one, to add to my collection! My good friend, Stephen, was going to throw the phone out, because he couldn't root it. I heard him talking about it, and i told him, if you don't want it, let me have it, as it's one of thos phones that are becoming hard to come by. He gave it to me, in an Olive Garden parking lot, one year ago, and i have been taking care of it since, along with two other old phones my mom and dad gave me. Anyways, i hope this brings you back to the early days of Android, where Accessibility was not fully featured, and was just a nightmare of buttons. Eyes Free Shell will be featured, however, it is no longer being developed. It was an accessible Android launcher, made to give some level of accessibility to blind android adopters. This phone runs Android 2.2, if you are curious!
@fireborn the battery is bad on that phone, that is why it's dependent on a charger. The battery is not removable, unless you take apart the bottom of the phone and remove the QWERTY keyboard.
39 years today since Jim Henson's cult classic 'Labyrinth' was released on June 27th 1986, with George Lucas as executive producer, starring Jennifer Connelly as Sarah Williams and David Bowie as Jareth the Goblin King.
EUSurvey is an online survey-management system built for the creation and publishing of globally accessible forms, such as user satisfaction surveys and public consultations.
what was once a cornerstone of the #milwaukee burger scene, bombers has since lost its way. food quality has diminished over the years and there are far better places to grab a burger (oscars and archies to name a couple).
although i've never been a fan, thanks for pioneering the modern burger scene in our city!
Mal.was erfrischendes aus der Verwaltungswelt: Offizielle Kommunikation mit Behörden via @matrix und #MLS!
Der #ITPlanungsrat hat heute die Fortführung des Vorhabens zur „Zielarchitektur Postfach- und Kommunikationslösungen” beschlossen. Jetzt geht es in die nächste Phase der Transitionsplanung & Validierung.
Bund und Länder planen ein Bürgerpostfach, wohl mit dem Messaging-Standard Matrix. Ein Durchbruch für die Digitalisierung oder ein neues De-Mail-Fiasko?
Oh, wow! The German IT Planning Council decided yesterday to consolidate a bunch of disparate communication tools into a unified system based on Matrix and MLS.
Valgrind is an instrumentation framework for dynamic analysis tools. It translates your program into an intermediate representation (VEX). Valgrind tools (like memcheck) transform/instrument the VEX representation. Valgrind then uses classic compiler optimizations on that internediate representation. And finally the VEX is translated back to machine code.
Well, I received my Lumina Probiotic and used it. There are many brow beating nerds on Orange Site that were convinced it would hurt people because... ~reasons~
I decided to maximize my chance of the bacteria colony taking hold that I would avoid brushing my teeth for at least 24 hours after. It's been over 24 hours. My mouth feels fine, my teeth feel fine, my wife says my breath has zero smell. It might actually be working!
I'm used to waking up with an unpleasant feeling in my mouth. Where you wouldn't forget to brush your teeth because you're aware of it. So this is strange but maybe it's the observer effect. Time will tell.
I wonder if some people don't actually have "bad teeth", but it's a bad strain of bacteria that excretes too much acid and this causes fast decay?
I've been very lucky my whole life to eat a shitty diet and my teeth are solid. One cavity in ~40 years. But if this thing can further reduce damage long term or just as I age so I don't have to deal with expensive dental work that would be great.
There was some dried white stuff inside the vial and it dissolved in water. It didn't really have any flavor at all, was basically like water that got a tiny bit foamy as you swished it and brushed it around
@lain wife wants it as well now, so putting in another order
funny part is that if USA did something silly like completely ban fluoride this treatment would probably save kids from getting a mouth full of cavities
GTK development would not be possible without the help of the @gnome project. Donations—especially recurring ones—to GNOME are necessary to ensure the continued existence of the infrastructure GTK relies on for building and testing.
The next episode of #AccessAbleton comes out at 12:30 EST today. In this one, we explored Live's browser, and take a look at adding your own folders to it in order to find your samples and other content more easily. Sorry for the delay with this one, I had some issues with Live's tagging system and wanted to make sure I knew what I was doing so as not to give out the wrong info. Link to the RSS feed: pinecast.com/feed/access-ablet…
Does it include recommendations for sites or other providers to get stuff like samples or instruments from? Abletons build in stuff get's pretty boring soon, well at leaswt if you haven't paid for it so far XD
@jonathan859 Hey, I am planning to do a full episode on some good websites to get samples, there's a lot of free options out there. I think I mentioned this in the latest episode, but towards the end I demo adding your own samples to the browser. I got those from Sample Radar: musicradar.com/news/tech/free-…
Not sure if you covered this yet, haven't had a chance to listen to the backlog, but I'd love to see you cover more granular editing techniques like the use of automation, the use of the Utility device/other devices in that class that let you do things Ableton normally doesn't super comprehensively offer. Thing changing the volume of only part of a track, or the panning of just one line of a vocal take for example. I know you can jump into an external editor and do it there but that's been my main hobble with Ableton so far; things that feel very simple but turn out not to be :)
@zersiax Yes, automation and more detailed editing stuff is definitely on the list and will be covered after I talk about effects and instruments in the next episode coming out on Monday.
Stung by customer losses, Comcast says all its new plans have unlimited data No data caps: "Four simple national Internet tiers that include unlimited data." arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20…
Tramvaji jezdim v Liberci zridka. Vsude to mame kousek a navstev oblasti za nadrazim, kde by se tramvaj hodila, je za rok presne nula. I tak letos potkavam dost casto tuhle modrou smrt na novych karetne-listkovych terminalech.
Udelat to modre je za me dobry napad. Vina se prenese na windows a lide se vubec na chudactvo tramvajove ridicstvo nezlobi. Ovsem vcera jsem se dozvedel plot-twist. Tady se nic nesynchronizuje, ani zadna komunikace neprobiha. Je to aktivni stav toho zarizeni, ktery si muze revizor zapnout a vypnout magickou kartickou ... kdyz to vidam tak casto, tak si rikam, kdo jim tu magickou karticku vyfouk a jen tak ze srandy vypina terminaly v tramvajich.
Sen Paula Simons @Paulatics on the Senate passing Bill C-5 today w/o amendments bc they were "painted into a corner": #cdnpoli
"If we had made amendments, it would either require all the MPs to come back from their summer vacation and make the PM very unhappy, or we would have to wait until September ... and the PM had made a commitment the bill would be passed by July 1."
Senators have ONE job: be the sober second thought. You should have opposed it. I personally can't because the excuse of MP I have in my riding already called me extremist in the past when I disagreed with Bill the Senate let past.
Lot of people want to abolish the Senate. You just gave us the reason. And I'm am now agreeing with them.
I have to tip my hat to Microsoft for having worked so hard to convince the world that the City of Munich failed with their Linux migration.
It's of course just a big fat lie. Munich is since 20+ years growing their Open Source footprint. They are sharing and they are growing their use of open source.
"So we needed a feature in WinSCP, that was an open feature request since 3 years. We asked the maintainer, he said it would be 2 days of paid work. We paid, he delivered and it's now implemented not only for us, but for all of you out there. This all took less than a week." Yep, that's @klml
Just so you know, #OsmAnd is celebrating its 15th anniversary with 50% off its plans, which you can now pay for directly without paying the 'app tax' to Google or Apple.
I highly recommend OsmAnd — it's a Swiss army knife for maps! Open source. Based on #OpenStreetMap.
Yes, but... On web I cannot buy "Pro" (by clicking on "Purchase" nothing happens, although I am logged-in - using Firefox on Windows 11). In Android app I see even different prices for "Pro" plan (79,99 CZK / month or 400,00 CZK first year, 799,99 CZK next years). Bummer. #osmand
@jan_petrus Don't you have any blocker active? When I click "Complete Purchase", I get a dialog for payment details (Firefox/Linux). The prices in the Android app are higher because they include the "Google Play" tax.
I switched off all adblocks and so on, but no luck. Even on absolutelly fresh Edge (which I don't use at all and have no add-ons), I just see short blink of "working" circle and that's all. Same on "anonymous" version of Firefox...
@JauneBaguette Yeah, but one important feature to me isn't included: OsmAnd Cloud. I use it to sync my own favorite POIs, I can plan a trip on the computer and sync it to my phone etc.
And I think OsmAnd deserves financial support. But sure, if someone cannot afford it, F-Droid is an option, too.
0x8b correctly encodes to ‹, but 0x9b was mistakenly marked as a control character instead of ›. You can see the correct glyphs in this screenshot of Palm OS 3.5, or on this page:
Issue: Missin...
On June 28, 2025, the European Accessibility Act becomes enforceable, advancing digital accessibility and rights for 110M+ disabled people across the EU and beyond.
A few years ago I wrote blog posts on what I called Accessibility Island and Ethical Accessibility. In a nutshell these posts outlined the human consequences of accessibility gaps and the need for …
Jako údajná hlava skupiny na svou popravu čekala nejdéle. „Skutečně postupně slyšela, jak se otvírají dveře jednotlivých cel a Oldřich Pecl, Záviš Kalandra a Jan Buchal jsou odváděni na popravu...“ irozhlas.cz/veda-technologie/h…
Democracy & climate advocates, listen up! 🌍 On "You Are Not So Smart," Erica Chenoweth discusses the 3.5% Rule: nonviolent change with just 3.5% participation. Powerful insights for planet & people. #Democracy #ClimateAction #DigitalGov
If you want to overthrow a dictator, resist an authoritarian regime, or create a movement that can change the national status quo, you don’t need half the country to join, you only need 3.5 p…
Don't miss Marcy Jacobs, Maryland's Chief Digital Experience Officer, on The #CXTippingPoint podcast!
She shares insights on building user-centered digital government, from her work at USDS/VA to Maryland's new Digital Service team. It's all about designing services around people.
The CX Tipping Point Podcast, hosted by Martha Dorris, is the only podcast focused on improving the experience that citizens, businesses and governments have when interacting, engaging and transacting with the government.
Canadians, pay attention: Bill C-2 is a quiet threat to your privacy and civil liberties.
With so much happening around the world, it’s easy to miss what’s going on in our own backyard. But Bill C-2, now in the House of Commons, deserves your attention.
It lowers the threshold for law enforcement to access your private data—without a warrant. All it takes is "reasonable suspicion."
What kind of data?
* Internet and cellphone metadata
* Your location and activity logs
* Information shared across borders with foreign agencies
All accessed more easily under vague “exigent circumstances”
As a person who’s been accosted based on “reasonable suspicion” due to…. existing, I’m concerned that this bill expands surveillance powers and erodes due process protections that Canadians have long relied on.
I keep seeing arguments like, “If you’re not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about.”
Let me be clear: that’s not how rights work.
Free societies are built on the principle that the law protects the innocent—not that we must prove we have nothing to hide.
If you're concerned (and you should be), reach out to your Member of Parliament. Let them know you oppose C-2 and support real protections for Canadian privacy and civil rights.
On June 3, 2025, the Canadian government tabled Bill C-2, omnibus legislation that, if passed, would introduce a wide array of new federal agency and law enforcement powers, and would significantly reform substantive and due process laws in Canada fo…
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