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Chrome Won

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Re: Chrome Won

#391

Post by PatentTroll »

asfdsfggtfd wrote: post #375
jhasse wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in the same way as IE.

Closed source is a boolean. Chrome is distributed only as a binary. I.e. it is totally closed source. It currently has a very large relation to the open source Chromium project. But Google could change that tomorrow if they wanted to - they could also gradually move more and more to their closed source Chrome builds (as they have done with Android).

Are there any viable chromium based open source browsers out there that have consistent updates?

Re: Chrome Won

#392

Post by ryandrake »

MBCook wrote: post #61
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…

I think a "Chrome only" world like the IE-only world we had years ago is a long way away. I don't know how long Chrome has been out, but in that time I have literally never used it. I've never needed to. I could not have made that statement about IE during its heyday. It was nearly impossible to use PCs in any way without using Microsoft. If you never got to experience the Internet in the late nineties, early 2000s, you have no idea how dominant Microsoft was.

Re: Chrome Won

#393

Post by mercer »

vacri wrote: post #185
SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google products, which I can't get away from, are starting to fail completely on Firefox. I've run into several other complex sites that fail on Firefox. It's sad, because I've used it for years. I'm using it right now. But my default just switched to Chrome because I started having too many Firefox issues.

The real problem is not that Firefox has issues, but that it's a small enough market share now that more and more web services can get away with not bothering to test on it.

I hate how, as a web developer, I've probably been part of the problem. My workflow has somehow ended up being 'do everything in chrome and only at the end test if it all works in firefox and safari'. More than once I forgot that step and ended up making small fixes for Safari on request, but not Firefox because nobody reported issues.

Once I became aware of this, I've been trying to be more diligent about thoroughly testing things on Firefox.

I wonder how many other developers are in a similar situation, where Chrome is their default browser and/or their main debugging environment. Part of the problem for me is that I find the Chrome dev tools superior, and that makes it so much easier to just forget about the rest (not that I'm justifying my behavior, btw).

Re: Chrome Won

#394

Post by zzbzq »

andrepd wrote: post #64
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 nu…

Nah, it's different. Google's evil is directly on the opposite side of the coin from their generosity. Google essentially "wastes" money just to promote the web itself. This is because the web is a fairly terrible platform, but they must promote it because they've capitalized on its flaws.

If the internet exploded and we had to rebuild it from the ground up, there would be no html/web, and no 3rd party search engine which attempts to reconstruct the web by viewing it as a blackbox. We would build search into DNS, since that's basically what DNS is supposed to be for, and along with the monetization of search (register your site for x search keywords, pay the root DNS for additional keywords.) All of Google's revenue is but a hack of a patch on a chaotically formed system.

Google needs the web, but the web is terrible. It's made for showing static documents with hyperlinks to other static documents. But that's clearly not what people want to view or build, they want apps. So we have 1 million javascript frameworks trying to vie for support on various browsers on various operating systems. All this infrastructure to support 'web apps' that can only call into http and dom manipulation apis. Mobile apps have proven there are other ways to make apps, with security and containerization and allowing full (but secured) access to all OS apis, and easier compatibility. All Google's endearing endeavors to create cool, web-based tech, are just efforts to prop up the terrible web platform, to prevent it from being superseded by a better open system. Facebook (which uses the web only non-exclusively) shows us a better system is possible, but it is not open.

So, back on topic, Google won't stop being good to the web, because the greatest evil of Google is that they're good to a platform which doesn't deserve it.

Re: Chrome Won

#395

Post by ocdtrekkie »

dmh2000 wrote: post #374

I understand why Google gives Chrome for free, to bring people into their sphere of influence. But what does Mozilla get for giving out Firefox? Is it monetized somehow? Or is it just to win an imaginary distinction.

One of the ways Firefox makes money is the default search provider. Google gave Firefox a billion dollars at one point to keep Google as the default search. More recently, when Firefox switched it's default to Yahoo in the U.S., it would be because Yahoo outbid Google. The defaults are set by country, in many places it still defaults to Google, and I think it may default to other search engines in some countries too.

Re: Chrome Won

#396

Post by Sylos »

pjc50 wrote: post #330
StevePerkins wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand that people who like rust REALLY like Rust, but you do realize that your examples of a purpose for existence consist of: 1. A programming language, that hasn't yet shown "escape velocity" to go beyond D and other would-be-C++-successors in traction. 2. The only major application of that language... a pre-alpha browser engine, which may or may not eventually replace the engine in a browser that is serious…

> Mozilla is an organization with over $400 million in annual revenue. Where that money is going baffles me. This is astonishing. Anyone looked at their accounts?

Most money does still go towards developers. If I remember correctly, something like $230 million. As the other guy said, they publish their financial reports (with about a two year delay), so you can find that in there.

Besides that, a few things to consider:

* Mozilla is currently doing financially well, no one ever claimed otherwise. They are putting money to the side and also diversifying their income strategies, in case their market share falls even lower and revenue from search engines drops out. * They are still by far the smallest of the big browser vendors. Google, Microsoft and Apple could all easily invest far more money than that, if they wanted to. * Mozilla is currently developing two browser engines in parallel, implementing a new extension model, making Firefox multi-process capable and just in general dealing with a lot of technical debt. No way to truly know what Google, Microsoft and Apple are up to, but I can hardly imagine them currently doing more than Mozilla in terms of innovation and development.

Re: Chrome Won

#397

Post by larsberg »

gkoberger wrote: post #83
lewisl9029 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Mozilla has had "we'll be #1 again once X is launched!" things since I was there 5 years ago (and servo was one of those things back then). It won't happen. Mozilla won the browser war. Firefox lost the browser fight. But there's many wars left to fight, and I hope Mozilla dives into a new one.

I'm not quite ready to throw in the towel yet, though that's certainly a sentiment I hear a lot of around town :-)

As technology shifts to a world where most people do not have a monitor on their home computer or a screen on their phone, what it means to be a browser will dramatically change. Certainly, we could post-it the current user experience into whatever we will have tomorrow, but if VR, AR, Speech, and AI and ample cheap private computing power don't excite people for the future of browsers and user agency, I don't know what will.

I know we've been working on tech such as Servo for a long time, but sometimes even just being "better" isn't enough, especially when there's a large legacy gap to close. You also need to get lucky with a point where consumers are making massive changes and open to new things.

I think that time is much sooner than the "always 5--10 years quoted", and you're going to see mind-blowing things on the web in general and supported by the browser and related services specifically. And I'm betting (at least with my current career) that Mozilla will lead the charge.

Re: Chrome Won

#398

Post by helb »

st3fan wrote: post #286
themihai wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox sends the DOM hashes to Google just like Chrome.

Can you please explain this in more detail? Ideally with an example request that you see? (I highly doubt that there is any truth to this claim)

I think they were referring to https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Safe_Browsing … which uses safebrowsing.google.com, but doesn't send any "DOM hashes" to them.

Re: Chrome Won

#399

Post by tclancy »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #345
StevePerkins wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand that people who like rust REALLY like Rust, but you do realize that your examples of a purpose for existence consist of: 1. A programming language, that hasn't yet shown "escape velocity" to go beyond D and other would-be-C++-successors in traction. 2. The only major application of that language... a pre-alpha browser engine, which may or may not eventually replace the engine in a browser that is serious…

> A JavaScript and HTML reference manual. I think you meant this disparagingly, but such a reference is remarkable. Comprehensive disscussion of a massive standard, in a well-written, usable form is a huge accomplishment.

And is exactly where Mozilla should be spending their money, to ward off Tragedy of the Commons situations where the web won't do a good job or will cover their work in so much advertising as to make it unusable.

Re: Chrome Won

#400

Post by [deleted] »

asfdsfggtfd wrote: post #378
pjmlp wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know a single Android user that even knows what Lineage OS is all about.

I bet all the OEM manufactures do. Its not that they care at all about users installing custom ROMs. They will be looking for options to not be tied to Google forever (assuming they have looked at the history of IBM and Microsoft). The problem is they never have to actually release a Lineage OS/Tizen/${insert other phone OS here} they just need a viable option for what they would use instead when they talk to Google…

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