111–120 of 207 posts
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Firefox became faster than Chrome quite a while ago already. Not sure what you were measuring.
UI Responsiveness probably, any perception of speed is lost if loading a website freezes the entire browser for several msecs.
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Multi-process is being tested in Firefox Beta right now, according to https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis#Schedule .
While some progress is being made, it worries me that it's taking so long to get this functionality into the release versions. I'm not suggesting it should be rushed out, of course. But the Electrolysis efforts date back to 2009, if not earlier. That's a long time to make users wait!
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Yes, Chrome is the current 800lbs gorilla, and they continue to grow. I am still operating under a browser wars mentality where Netscape/Mozilla's marketshare completely collapsed and they slowly recovered over time. I'm just impressed that Firefox is in double digits in terms of marketshare given that they don't have a huge marketing engine driving them (Okay, I guess Yahoo is pretty decent as engines go.) I remembe…
Does the Chrome team really care? Ads in Firefox provide the same revenue as ads in Chrome. What does Google gain by monopolizing? I think they care more about internet explorer, they don't want it dead specifically, but if it sticks around they want it reliable. Using ie used to be a giant pain and nothing worked right, people would use it to accomplish their goal and be done. Now using any of the three is fairly pl…
I would guess control. Owning the dominant web browser allows them to:
* Softly guide front end web tech in a direction of their choosing
* Ensure the supremacy of Google the search engine.
Also if things ever really come to head between ad-blockers and ad-providers owning the dominant platform the former runs on would be very beneficial to the latter.
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Reminds me of the Microsoft OEM deals and IE. Shows just how much like their opponent Google really is. :)
Microsoft's only interest in IE was to protect the Windows monopoly by suffocating Netscape and its Java Applets. And they told OEMs they wouldn't sell them Windows at all if they preinstalled Netscape or uninstalled IE. Which is why they got sued by the government and lost the trial. Kind of different if you ask me.
It was found guilty in the larger anti-trust case, but not in the browser case.
See Microsoft Wins In Appeals Court -- It Gets OK To Require Use Of Its Internet Browser; Special Master Booted http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=199...
Microsoft Wins Key Ruling An Appeals Court Said The Company's Browser Can Be Integrated Into Windows 95. The U.s. Had Sued To Stop It. http://articles.philly.com/1998-06-24/news/25728049_1_window...
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You think more than 50% of the people using Chrome deliberately sought it out and installed it after making an informed decision? Not because it was pushed via bundlware or a Google-owned property?
You think more than 50% of the people using Firefox or (especially) Internet Explorer deliberately sought it out and installed it after making an informed decision?
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And the thing is it's sadly not a lie. YouTube and such do work best with Chrome. Google's effective web vertical integration means they control every stage of the pipeline. They control the sites and the browser. They can deploy experimental tech in Chrome which nobody knows about and which only Google sites use. It's terrifying.
One example of "google only APIs" that I ran into recently is the chrome extension browserAction.openPopup API. This API is whitelisted (in stable) for use by the Google Cast extension. Extensions authored outside of Google cannot use it. This is creates an uneven playing field. https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=436489
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Interesting. I didn't see that - I assumed it was just a result of advertising it to everyone who searched on Google. Do you have any specific examples?
Adobe Flash - When you download and installed Flash for Opera or Firefox, it would trick you into installing Chrome as your default browser unless you noticed and unchecked a box: http://i.imgur.com/Uldw6X3.png Java - When updating, Java on Windows would often trick you into installing Chrome as your default browser unless you noticed and unchecked a box Avast, AntiVir, etc - Nearly every free antivirus on Windows wa…
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Firefox became faster than Chrome quite a while ago already. Not sure what you were measuring.
UI Responsiveness probably, any perception of speed is lost if loading a website freezes the entire browser for several msecs.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, Chrome is the current 800lbs gorilla, and they continue to grow. I am still operating under a browser wars mentality where Netscape/Mozilla's marketshare completely collapsed and they slowly recovered over time. I'm just impressed that Firefox is in double digits in terms of marketshare given that they don't have a huge marketing engine driving them (Okay, I guess Yahoo is pretty decent as engines go.) I remembe…
Does the Chrome team really care? Ads in Firefox provide the same revenue as ads in Chrome. What does Google gain by monopolizing? I think they care more about internet explorer, they don't want it dead specifically, but if it sticks around they want it reliable. Using ie used to be a giant pain and nothing worked right, people would use it to accomplish their goal and be done. Now using any of the three is fairly pl…
Firefox being a viable and high quality alternative means that any short-term misstep or long-term neglect by Google could create a big fall for Chrome.
A short-term misstep could be something like a disturbing privacy revelation about the Chrome browser that moves large blocks of normal users over to Firefox. Perhaps also the HTML spec might get updated in ways that Google would resist due to it threatening their business. Firefox and other browsers could, and those new features could gain them more long-term converts.
A long-term neglect scenario is maybe possible too. Google might think they've "won" and can reduce their spend on Chrome, or even put it on KLO mode like Microsoft did with IE. Firefox could creep up and get back to 30% marketshare and then not be as easy to displace as the next war begins. The recent instability of Chrome I have experienced makes me wonder if a long-term neglect of Chrome has already set in for at least parts of the browser.