[N-Krause]

I wonder, seeing the immense growth in 2023/2024, how that correlates with the ladybird project, which officially started in 2024.

Could Manifest v3 be the reason we have so much fresh air blowing in the browser ecosystem or does it just stem from a general unhappiness of said ecosystem?

[azertify]

I think that Ladybird has driven a lot of the effort, otherwise we'd just see browsers continuing to use Chromium with backports to allow v2 being worked on.

Ladybird was already progressing rapidly within SerenityOS well before it was officially launched, and I think that's given people a new inspiration for how plausible it is to create a browser from scratch. I'm really pleased we're seeing Servo having a resurgence too.

[p-e-w]

It’s indeed rapidly progressing feature-wise, but I have yet to see an explanation for how they intend to manage security once market adoption happens.

Ladybird is written in C++, which is memory-unsafe by default (unlike Rust, which is memory-safe by default). Firefox and Chrome also use C++, and each of them has 3-4 critical vulnerabilities related to memory safety per year, despite the massive resources Mozilla and Google have invested in security. I don’t understand how the Ladybird team could possibly hope to secure a C++ browser engine, given that even engineering giants have consistently failed to do so.

[silotis]

The increased activity came from Igalia who started working on Servo in 2023 with support from the Linux Foundation. Prior to that the project was effectively dead in the water with no sponsored development.

[Vinnl]

And Igalia is notable for contributing to every major browser engine: https://www.igalia.com/2026/01/05/Doing-Our-Share-for-the-We...

[N-Krause]

But the question still remains, why did Igalia pick up a dead project?

I doubt you'd invest that kind of money/time into a project without a good reason. I am not saying that ladybird or manifest v3 are the reason, I just notice a lot of new energy in the not-just-chrome category and wonder what the other reasons might be.

Andreas Kling is pretty open about his reasons to have started the ladybird project and I just know Servo from his monthly videos and a few other sidenotes, so I was surprised that it gained so much traction after being basically dead.