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Chrome Won

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Re: Chrome Won

#61

Post by MBCook »

gkoberger wrote: post #51

I agree with this blog post. But I don't think Mozilla lost. I worked for Mozilla for a few years, after seeing John Lily (CEO at the time) speak. It was right after Chrome started getting popular, and a smug person in the crowd asked him about how he felt about Chrome. John's response was awesome. "This is the web that we wanted. We exist not because we want everyone to use Firefox, but because we wanted people to h…

The problem is we're moving extremely fast to a chrome only world. If it wasn't for corporate sites and the success of the iPhone chrome would probably be dominating the way IE used to.

I definitely run into sites that only work on chrome and not in any other browser.

In my opinion chrome isn't doing a good job either. It's a massive energy hog and waste more CPU than it needs to. Unlike IE and FireFox and Safari it comes from a company that is notorious for wanting to know everything about you.

The time to celebrate victory was a few years ago. Now it's starting to look like the new boss is the same as the old, maybe worse.

Re: Chrome Won

#62

Post by brian-armstrong »

km3k wrote: post #58
Crisco wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, recently I've consistently noticed Firefox running faster than Chrome for my usage scenario. It might be bias, but I find browsing on Firefox a more enjoyable experience and uses a lot less of my system resources. I stuck with Firefox through the times where it was much slower than Chrome for idealistic reasons as well, but now I feel like speed is less of an issue because they are both pretty even.

It might be a placebo effect, but I find that I switch back and forth between Chrome and Firefox every 6-12 months after the one I'm using feels slow and the other feels faster. Maybe they're actually leapfrogging each other in performance, maybe not. I'm currently on my Chrome phase.

One thing that I think could be an interesting variable is how many tabs you've accreted. Browser A with 100 tabs open versus Browser B with 1 tab.

Re: Chrome Won

#63

Post by cies »

So Mozilla lost Firefox OS. And their browser share is smaller then Chrome, and then it was, but still top tier and winning from M$.

I'm much less pessimistic.

Besides a cross platform and extensible browser we see also the following coming out of Mozilla:

* Rust, a modern low-level programming language with cutting edge "safety" build in at zero runt time cost, luring many system programmers.

* Servo, tomorrow browser, from scratch, in Rust.

* Thunderbird, x-platform desktop email client (interesting for those not trusting the cloud enough).

* MDN, everything MSDN and w3school wish they could be. :)

A lot with revolve around privacy and safety in the future, a space that Mozilla is very well positioned to florish in.

Chrome is a good product. But I prefer Firefox. And seeing what is becoming of Servo I will soon start using that. Form me Firefox has won, and is not at all losing. I dont need the "most popular" browser, I need the most secure one.

And when I see what programming languages Google came up with... (Seriously? Is Go the best money can buy?) Then I think Rust shows single handedly that Mozilla beats Google in that arena as well.

Re: Chrome Won

#64

Post by andrepd »

gkoberger wrote: post #51

I agree with this blog post. But I don't think Mozilla lost. I worked for Mozilla for a few years, after seeing John Lily (CEO at the time) speak. It was right after Chrome started getting popular, and a smug person in the crowd asked him about how he felt about Chrome. John's response was awesome. "This is the web that we wanted. We exist not because we want everyone to use Firefox, but because we wanted people to h…

We cannot possibly be talking about the same Google. This is the Google of AMP et al. You think they won't do the exact same thing Microsoft did with IE when they find themselves in a similar dominant/monopolistic position in the market? You're sorely mistaken. We already find many examples of websites and Web apps that work only on chrome or the chrome "web store". This not to mention the surveillance and privacy nullifiying "features" they impose, which is even more important to me personally than standards compliance.

A world with Google owning a monopoly on web browsing isn't any less bad than if it were Microsoft.

Re: Chrome Won

#65

Post by detaro »

reedlaw wrote: post #60
467568985476 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't buy it. Eich was hardly a wunderkind capable of carrying a browser on his shoulders alone. And in a market for engineers that currently favors labor, do you really want to be on the wrong side of the social issues that your staff generally care about? Maybe they would have left to work on Chrome if Eich had stayed. That doesn't even speak to the myriad technical and resource issues that Mozilla faced prior to…

> Eich was hardly a wunderkind capable of carrying a browser on his shoulders alone. How about Brave [1]? 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_(web_browser)

Has most of the engineering done by Google, since it is based on chromium?

Re: Chrome Won

#66

Post by lewisl9029 »

gkoberger wrote: post #51

I agree with this blog post. But I don't think Mozilla lost. I worked for Mozilla for a few years, after seeing John Lily (CEO at the time) speak. It was right after Chrome started getting popular, and a smug person in the crowd asked him about how he felt about Chrome. John's response was awesome. "This is the web that we wanted. We exist not because we want everyone to use Firefox, but because we wanted people to h…

Agreed that Mozilla's original mission has been accomplished in spades, but I wouldn't count Mozilla out of the browser race just yet.

Servo and Webrender[0] will completely shake up the browser landscape, and will allow web apps to match (maybe even surpass?) native mobile apps in terms of rendering performance. Unless Chrome, IE, and Safari can develop an answer to Servo and Webrender by the time those technologies are ready for prime time, I wouldn't be surprised to see "Best viewed in Firefox" badges start popping up everywhere.

[0]

https://github.com/servo/webrender/wiki

https://air.mozilla.org/bay-area-rust-meetup-february-2016/

Re: Chrome Won

#67

Post by millstone »

Chrome may be technically great, but we should also acknowledge the fact that it was the sole advertisement for years on the most valuable piece of web real estate in the universe, the google.com home page. I can't think of any other product with that distinction.

What would the browser war look like if google.com advertised Firefox instead?

Re: Chrome Won

#68

Post by Spooky23 »

aerovistae wrote: post #4

> I started Firefox OS in 2011 because already back then I was convinced that desktops and browsers were dead. Not immediately–here we are 6 years later and both are still around–but both are legacy technologies that are not particularly influential going forward. I don't understand this perspective. Browsers are legacy technologies that are not particularly influential? What? I feel like the web dominates our lives…

You have to make wacky statements like this to pull off the "visionary" schtick. All of the hotshots were talking Post-PC world in 2011.

The reality is that computers are still computers. Mobile is the new TV.

I run EUC in a large diversified enterprise. We have about 0.05% pure mobile users, mostly iPad based. That is growing quickly, but probably won't exceed 3% in the next 5 years based on the current pipeline. There are exceptions, iirc Comcast has 50k iPads. Other field service orgs are similar.

Server based computing is a thing though. There's alot of BYOD and thin clients in our future. Thin clients are approaching $100 and going lower. VDI/Citrix has a positive ROI for me.

I think the future looks more like Issac Asimov's multivac.

Re: Chrome Won

#69

Post by reedlaw »

I've stuck with Firefox for years because I value open source and open web but today I finally switched to Chrome. It feels like I have a new computer. Firefox constantly pegs my CPU. It seems to have gradually gotten slower.

Re: Chrome Won

#70

Post by mbrookes »

walterbell wrote: post #45
aerovistae wrote: post #4

> I started Firefox OS in 2011 because already back then I was convinced that desktops and browsers were dead. Not immediately–here we are 6 years later and both are still around–but both are legacy technologies that are not particularly influential going forward. I don't understand this perspective. Browsers are legacy technologies that are not particularly influential? What? I feel like the web dominates our lives…

> Does someone see a replacement on the horizon for the supposedly "legacy" laptop/desktop power combo? Even on a phone/tablet, communication often includes web hyperlinks. The obsession with mobile is a reflection of business model. If you are in the advertising / surveillance capitalism business, mobile ("sensor phone") devices provide non-desktop signals that can be monetized. Unfortunately, desktop software was h…

> Today, Apple makes money on desktop hardware rather than desktop software.

Uh, App Store? http://appleinsider.com/articles/17/01/13/revenue-from-apple...

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