Choose Firefox Now, Or Later You Won't Get A Choice (2014) • Hacker News Board

Re: Choose Firefox Now, Or Later You Won't Get A Choice (2014)

#101

Post by bigbugbag » Fri, Jan 06, 2017, 9:59 AM UTC

Freak_NL wrote: post #40

eggie wrote: post #9

What about chromium browser? Google's tracking features are disabled there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_(web_browser)#Differe... The author might argue that this is weak resistance because it's just adding fuel to Google's fire. They have co-opted the open source community by building their tools this way. I prefer this to the nearest alternative, which is a company that pushes closed software on the world…

Chromium is a better choice from a privacy standpoint, certainly. It unfortunately doesn't help prevent the vendor lock-in situation. The ideal equilibrium for the open web right now would be 33% each for evergreen Chrome (or other Webkit/Blink browsers), Edge, and Firefox. Bleeding edge prove-of-concepts aside; developing a website or web application that works in all modern browsers has never been so developer-frie…

Wow! your ideal equilibrium is really scary. It leaves no room for a lot of the existing browsers and features two that I do not want to use ever and one that I use reluctantly because it lives on google advertisement money. So your ideal open web is 66% google and 33% microsoft which seems pretty closed up for something open.

Re: Choose Firefox Now, Or Later You Won't Get A Choice (2014)

#102

Post by rtpg » Fri, Jan 06, 2017, 9:59 AM UTC

yuvalr1 wrote: post #31

What is the best way to prevent big companies (like Google, but not only), that have a de facto monopoly on certain and important parts of the internet, from applying vendor lock strategies to kill their competitors?

Antitrust regulation + governments that apply it.

Google's already been denied strategies before

Re: Choose Firefox Now, Or Later You Won't Get A Choice (2014)

#103

Post by pherq » Fri, Jan 06, 2017, 9:59 AM UTC

Quarrelsome wrote: post #47

jonchang wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure this is necessarily the case - Google cross-promoted Chrome extremely heavily across all its web properties, ran massive ad campaigns, and contractually obligated Android vendors to preinstall and use Chrome as the default on their handsets. Mozilla, lacking the power or money to do any of these things, wouldn't be able to compete on these fronts, regardless of who built the better product.

Firefox was over reliant on plug-ins, gave plug-ins too much power and the plug-in as well as firefox update mechanisms were messy. Chrome did more out of the box than firefox reducing the need for plug-ins, sandboxed plug-ins from destroying general browser performance and most importantly realised that updating was not a user concern and performed updates silently. There were also other innovations that Chrome did…

The flaw with this notion, is that neither Firefox nor Opera beat IE.

Chrome did.

Most of the people who argue things like this seem to agree that Firefox and Opera were superior browsers to IE. If that was the case, why hadn't they eaten IE's market share long before Chrome was ever produced?

Could it be that Chrome being widely advertised on the most visited site on the internet helped?

Re: Choose Firefox Now, Or Later You Won't Get A Choice (2014)

#104

Post by kirkdouglas » Fri, Jan 06, 2017, 9:59 AM UTC

dvko wrote: post #53

I recently switched back to Firefox after years of using Chrome. Previously, the few times I had to fire up Firefox for development purposes it seemed sluggish to me. Not anymore. Firefox has been super responsive to me, using less memory than the same browsing activity would on Chrome & Firefox-only (afaik) add-ons like Self Destructing Cookies are A+. On Android, Firefox Mobile works just as good or better than Chr…

Also Firefox for Android has ad blocking.

Re: Choose Firefox Now, Or Later You Won't Get A Choice (2014)

#105

Post by duncanawoods » Fri, Jan 06, 2017, 9:59 AM UTC

The killer feature for me is that Google Docs only works offline in Chrome. Before they congratulate themselves, they have not won a friend by eco-system lock-in. It may not show in their metrics but discontent makes me open to alternatives.

Re: Choose Firefox Now, Or Later You Won't Get A Choice (2014)

#106

Post by Tharre » Fri, Jan 06, 2017, 9:59 AM UTC

jonchang wrote: post #77

Tharre wrote: post #57

> Unlike Apple and Microsoft, Mozilla is totally committed to the standards-based Web platform as a long-term strategy against lock-in. This may sound great in theory, but I have serious doubts that Mozilla can deliver on that. At least from my perspective, their decisions in the more recent past have been erratic at best. They even happily implemented DRM when everyone else was doing it. At the moment it feels like…

> They even happily implemented DRM when everyone else was doing it. This is a totally disingenuous interpretation of EME. I think you mean when Google, despite their ~open source bona fides~ with Chromium, collaborated with Microsoft and Netflix to introduce DRM to the browser and used their crushing market dominance to force Mozilla to comply or fall even further behind?

I'm perfectly aware that they didn't want to. But if Mozilla can be bullied into implementing it anyway, then how does using Firefox stop Google from doing whatever they want?

Re: Choose Firefox Now, Or Later You Won't Get A Choice (2014)

#107

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jan 06, 2017, 10:00 AM UTC

smsm42 wrote: post #75

pyrale wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, no one can reasonably outcompete Google, because they leverage every inch of their monopoly power. This is where regulation is supposed to come into play.

No one could reasonably outcompete Microsoft. Then suddenly nobody even discusses IE anymore. And tons of people use Linux.

[deleted]

Re: Choose Firefox Now, Or Later You Won't Get A Choice (2014)

#108

Post by Ntrails » Fri, Jan 06, 2017, 10:00 AM UTC

Quarrelsome wrote: post #47

jonchang wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure this is necessarily the case - Google cross-promoted Chrome extremely heavily across all its web properties, ran massive ad campaigns, and contractually obligated Android vendors to preinstall and use Chrome as the default on their handsets. Mozilla, lacking the power or money to do any of these things, wouldn't be able to compete on these fronts, regardless of who built the better product.

Firefox was over reliant on plug-ins, gave plug-ins too much power and the plug-in as well as firefox update mechanisms were messy. Chrome did more out of the box than firefox reducing the need for plug-ins, sandboxed plug-ins from destroying general browser performance and most importantly realised that updating was not a user concern and performed updates silently. There were also other innovations that Chrome did…

I actually use firefox at home, but for watching twitch streams I have to open chrome because firefox just fucking crawls if I've got a stream in another tab.

No idea why. Chrome seems to cope fine so I just use it for that. Since I want my stream in a separate window on my other screen anyway it works out pretty well.

Re: Choose Firefox Now, Or Later You Won't Get A Choice (2014)

#109

Post by amq » Fri, Jan 06, 2017, 10:00 AM UTC

I would love to use Firefox on Android, but scrolling is just so much worse than with Chrome, even on flagships.

Re: Choose Firefox Now, Or Later You Won't Get A Choice (2014)

#110

Post by hvidgaard » Fri, Jan 06, 2017, 10:01 AM UTC

fattire wrote: post #62

Wish this issue hadn't been closed. Signal for Firefox is a big missing feature: https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop/issues/415

I don't use Signal for that exact reason. The value in having the unified chat client on my desktop and phone outweight the potential privacy issues, so I'm using Telegram.