I got online in 1994, so I watched many companies — companies that people were completely dependent on — go out of business, and watched everyone’s uploaded stuff just disappear.

So I don’t trust companies, I avoid the cloud, and run everything myself on my own server.

I don’t depend on tech that’s not truly open source and non-profit, because otherwise I don’t trust that their long-term incentives are aligned with mine.

Chrome exists in large part to put a search engine front and center, which Fisher describes to me as like “a brick wall” for all kinds of browser innovation. “Anything we did that helps you get back to what you were doing, it means you weren’t searching, right?” Fisher says. Better tab management means less searching; sending you straight to the page you want means fewer search results and fewer ad impressions. Making you close your tabs and reopen them all the time isn’t just acceptable for Chrome; it’s a victory. Fisher and his team had lots of UI ideas and new features, but “all these good ideas die on the floor.”