This is the world we live in.

When it comes to the first world browser problems, there are certainly more important things to talk about than ditching plugins, abandoning flash, and so on…

Just recently, Google revealed a new and open source web compression algorithm called Brotli, which is around 25% than Zopfli, a now previous generation algo from the very same company. Now what happened next is pretty ridiculous. Due to the nature of this name, files compressed with Brotli would have had a file extension .bro, but that is no longer the case as it will be changed to .br. Why?



As it turns out, Mozilla’s Patrick McManus has advised against it, suggesting “a gender problem”. Then for better or worse, Google’s Jyrki Alakuijala has asked a feminist friend about the whole situation, and we are certain that she is really objective when it comes to gender equality, the result? She advised against it.

“I have asked a feminist friend from the North American culture-sphere, and she advised against bro. We have found a compromise that satisfies us, so we don’t need to discuss this further. Even if we don’t understand why people are upset from our cultural standpoint, they would be (unnecessarily) upset and this is enough reason not to use it.”

And that’s how .bro became .br..

[Via: Bugzilla]