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Chrome Won

andreasgal.com

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Re: Chrome Won

#481

Post by sqeaky »

glogla wrote: post #229
home_boi wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there is more than just web browsing. Microsoft owned the entire platform at one point.

Google owns Android, the most used computing platform in the world. It is official, Google is the new Microsoft.

Compare the scale of Google's Scandals to Microsoft's scandals?

Microsoft lied to the Justice department, microsoft intentionally broke software on other system, microsoft actively tried to kill open source, microsoft tried to co-opt standardization bodies, microsoft has bought competitors only to fire their staff, microsoft has...

Microsoft has a plethora of criminal charges levied against it.

Google.... Reads your email if send to or from Gmail and sometimes some of its things don't work in FireFox and even then they try to fix it. Google open sources a bunch of things, even when there is no obvious profit motive or requirements to do so.

There is a world of difference. Google's shit doesn't smell like roses, but they are only human and not overtly evil.

EDIT - If you downvote me, please comment so I can know what part of what I said was wrong.

Re: Chrome Won

#482

Post by true_tuna »

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 switched to Opera recently. Got sick of finding Chrome hogging insane amounts of resources. I'm quite happy with it (built in VPN and Adblock!) I don't feel like anyone is trying to force me back to Chrome. Choice and competition are key. Chrome and Firefox did great things, but never forget that competition is the real hero.

Re: Chrome Won

#483

Post by true_tuna »

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 switched to Opera recently. Got sick of finding Chrome hogging insane amounts of resources. I'm quite happy with it (built in VPN and Adblock!) I don't feel like anyone is trying to force me back to Chrome. Choice and competition are key. Chrome and Firefox did great things, but never forget that competition is the real hero.

Re: Chrome Won

#484

Post by scholia »

zastrowm wrote: post #452
rmurri wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://vivaldi.com

My understanding was that vivaldi wasn't completely open source either. [0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/vivaldibrowser/comments/54kzpc/psa_...

Vivaldi isn't open source but you can read the source code, which is better than nothing....

There is some debate inside Vivaldi about making it open source and it would be easy enough to do. I'd guess that it probably doesn't make economic sense while it has such a small market share, but I don't know if that's true.

Re: Chrome Won

#485

Post by scholia »

hooluupog wrote: post #353
eloisant wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google regained control of Android many years ago by progressively moving every bit that matters from AOSP to Google Apps and Google Play Services. Now OEM have to obey to Google because losing the Google apps and services licence (thus losing the Play store and the whole ecosystem) basically means they're dead as an Android manufacturer.

Except china.

And except Amazon ;-)

Re: Chrome Won

#486

Post by scholia »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #448
thewhitetulip wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"best viewed with IE" got updated to "best viewed in Chrome"

Yes, except that "best viewed with IE" was there (at least initially) as part of a campaign where Microsoft was paying web sites to put in stuff that was incompatible with Netscape/Mozilla, and "best viewed in Chrome" is there because web developers are lazy.

> as part of a campaign where Microsoft was paying web sites to put in stuff that was incompatible with Netscape/Mozilla

I'd be interested to see the evidence for that....

Re: Chrome Won

#487

Post by scholia »

m3rc wrote: post #456
eloisant wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox took marketshare from IE because Microsoft abandoned it for several years (IE6) then did an half-assed update with IE7. It was a big pile of poop and Firefox succeeded not because it was a great product because because it was the right product at the right time. For Chrome on the other hand, its near-monopoly situation is worrisome but it's actually a pretty good product. So there is no pragmatic reasons to l…

It's pragmatic to leave Chrome for the exact same reasons people left IE, the parent company has stopped improving the product. Chrome sold people on the promise of a much faster, lighter-weight browser than the heavy but competent Firefox of the time, a promise that Chrome no longer delivers on. The "added users" Mozilla has claimed in 2016 were developers realizing Chrome wasn't light or speedy anymore and if they…

Exactly right. I moved to Chrome when it came out, and moved back to Firefox a couple of years ago because of Chrome's growing memory-hogging problems and its inability to handle hundreds of tabs.

Re: Chrome Won

#488

Post by nilved »

m3rc wrote: post #457
nilved wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Firefox took marketshare from IE when that was impossible. It could do it again with Chrome, if things change a bit. Maybe, but they're getting rid of extensions instead, so they're effectively committing suicide.

They are not "getting rid of extensions".

They're getting rid of extensions and replacing them with Web extensions.

Re: Chrome Won

#489

Post by shmerl »

a2decrow wrote: post #241
shmerl wrote: post #213

Chrome can't properly compete privacy wise, same as Google in general can't. Privacy will be an issue, and increasingly so. Personally, I never understood Chrome hype, though I admit, that Mozilla's focus on FirefoxOS was distracting, and slowed down their desktop progress. It's good they are back on track now.

> Privacy will be an issue, and increasingly so. Do you really believe that? The way I see it, most people just don't care. At all. Else they wouldn't sell their souls to private companies (e.g. Facebook and Google) without a second thought and we'd see more outrage against government surveillance that's being pushed in nearly every country all over the world. Firefox is unlikely to gain much of a market share with o…

I think more people care about it than you think, when their attention is brought to the issue. Mozilla should keep that in mind, and make it part of their marketing efforts.

Re: Chrome Won

#490

Post by geoelectric »

petra wrote: post #336
geoelectric wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was also at Mozilla during the time period Andreas outlines--I worked on the Firefox OS test team, for that matter, almost from the beginning of it graduating from Boot2Gecko as a Labs project until right before it got killed. While my perspective isn't as strategic or metrics-driven as his, I had a lot of time to observe and think as both a community member and Mozilla employee. FxOS also wasn't my baby, so there'…

Thanks for a great analysis ! What do you think about Firefox mobile, the only browser that supports add-ons , could it use it to get some relevance or is that battle lost too ?

In terms of usage and leverage, it doesn't seem to be moving a needle. It's been around for quite awhile and still has an awfully small market share.

That said, Firefox for Android is a great technical accomplishment, and a valuable project. The fact that they are able to differentiate themselves with extensions is very powerful.

The fact that this awesome accomplishment hasn't made much impact in share probably proves that "customization" isn't going to significantly outweigh "default" in that market, though my guess is it would still be a leading factor for the very small number of people who aren't using the default browser.

I don't mean to say that Mozilla should avoid mobile efforts entirely. Fennec is necessary, and I think Firefox OS would have been a fantastic reference implementation if Mozilla hadn't chased partnerships and commercial releases in combination with it.

The problem wasn't that Mozilla put time or resources into these things, it was that Mozilla bet on these things to the detriment of their core competencies and, frankly, mission.

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