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Alibaba’s UC Browser is dominating in Asian markets with lower-end smartphones

wsj.com

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Re: Alibaba’s UC Browser is dominating in Asian markets with lower-end smartphones

#61

Post by ams6110 »

aceofspad3s wrote: post #53
Sylos wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you actually tried Firefox? They've had a pretty big update recently, which also broke many extensions and ways of making advanced extensions, so some people do take that as reason to say that it's now "long way from its former glory", but if you've been a Chrome user up until now, it'd strike me as odd for you to think that, since it's still much more extensible than Chrome. Well, unless you haven't seen the ne…

Firefox is much slower than Chrome on Android, at least on my (reasonably powerful) Qualcomm 625

I'm pretty happy with Firefox Focus on a Moto G3. Some people may not like the lack of features in that browser however, e.g. no history, no cookies saved, etc.

Re: Alibaba’s UC Browser is dominating in Asian markets with lower-end smartphones

#62

Post by Endy »

aceofspad3s wrote: post #54
greenbush wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you read the article. :) The article specifically talks about smartphones, not feature phones. It mentions how Chrome is an issue for cheaper smartphones with less storage: "The UC Browser app takes up 31 megabytes of space, compared with Chrome’s 125 megabytes". And aside from a smaller app size, UC also compresses data and blocks ads to reduce data requirements (data tends to be expensive in emerging…

>The UC Browser app takes up 31 megabytes of space, compared with Chrome’s 125 megabytes Given that bundling Chrome is a requirement if you want to ship a mobile phone with the Play Store, this is a moot point

Several devices I've bought in the last few years (mostly cheap ones of chinese manufacture), did not include Google Play; they mostly encouraged either Aptoide or 1Mobile Market. Heck, that's part of why I keep F-Droid on my phone now.

Re: Alibaba’s UC Browser is dominating in Asian markets with lower-end smartphones

#63

Post by EKLM-ZK88 »

gketuma wrote: post #50

UC Browser is now holding the web back by not adopting new standards like css-grid and flexbox. No version of UC supports these standards and with the rise of UC globally, developers are hesitant to use these standards as millions of users especially in India and China are left out. I know there are ways to configure fallback, but still.

Why do these markets use these browsers and not chrome or firefox, or even the built in browsers on their phones?

Re: Alibaba’s UC Browser is dominating in Asian markets with lower-end smartphones

#64

Post by yegle »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #33
0xmohit wrote: post #26

There have been reports talking about security issues in UC Browser [0] for a while [1] now [2]. It was also removed from Google Play Store [3] (although temporarily). Kinda surprises me to see it as the 'dominant' browser. Maybe people are indifferent. [0] https://citizenlab.ca/2015/05/a-chatty-squirrel-privacy-and-... [1] https://citizenlab.ca/2016/08/a-tough-nut-to-crack-look-priv... [2] https://tech.blorge.com/20…

Consider that Qihoo 360 used to do a lot of "security" work for IE. Given how shady Qihoo 360 was, Alibaba is definitely an improvement!

Qihoo 360 actually does have a lot of contribution to security, for one: they upstreamed a lot of patches to AOSP: https://source.android.com/s/results/?q=%22Qihoo+360%22

Re: Alibaba’s UC Browser is dominating in Asian markets with lower-end smartphones

#65

Post by kuschku »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #51
AndrewWarner wrote: post #11

If you’re in iOS, UC is a great way to pop out videos so you can, for example, watch a YouTube video while reading Hacker News. It also enables you to listen to just about any video in the background, when you switch to other apps.

> watch a YouTube video while reading Hacker News. The YouTube app also does that (although possibly only if you have YouTube Red?)

Correct, only if you have YouTube Red, which is almost exclusively available in the US.

Re: Alibaba’s UC Browser is dominating in Asian markets with lower-end smartphones

#67

Post by metilda »

fencepost wrote: post #56
fny wrote: post #15

UC Browser apparently has more mobile usage that Firefox in the US. In 2017, they've clocked in at 1.22% vs Firefox's 0.59%. Years ago, (~2004) I used to use a desktop version years to get around firewalls at my high school. Nowadays I wonder how the Chinese government uses the traffic data to take the temperature of the US. [0]: http://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/mobile/united...

That's really sad, because Firefox on Android is actually really great and the fact that you can run addons (e.g. uBlock Origin) makes it even better. In years past Firefox would occasionally crash on me, but I'm not sure it's ever even done that on my current phone, which is closing in on 9 months old. I'm not exactly treating it kindly either, I currently have 93 "tabs" open and though it doesn't keep those in memo…

Dark background, light text for Firefox Android is pretty good, makes reading websites much easier for me!

Re: Alibaba’s UC Browser is dominating in Asian markets with lower-end smartphones

#68

Post by [deleted] »

metilda wrote: post #67
fencepost wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's really sad, because Firefox on Android is actually really great and the fact that you can run addons (e.g. uBlock Origin) makes it even better. In years past Firefox would occasionally crash on me, but I'm not sure it's ever even done that on my current phone, which is closing in on 9 months old. I'm not exactly treating it kindly either, I currently have 93 "tabs" open and though it doesn't keep those in memo…

Dark background, light text for Firefox Android is pretty good, makes reading websites much easier for me!

[deleted]

Re: Alibaba’s UC Browser is dominating in Asian markets with lower-end smartphones

#69

Post by jray »

figure8 wrote: post #36
jaxondu wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also enlarge the default font size similar to desktop browser. Can not do that on Chrome, Firefox and Safari. Reading this site on UC is much easier on my eyes.

This text reflow feature is key to my choosing a mobile browser. I use Opera mainly for this reason. Text reflow used to be standard. Does anyone know why Chrome and Firefox removed it?

Text reflow is a "must have".

Re: Alibaba’s UC Browser is dominating in Asian markets with lower-end smartphones

#70

Post by CydeWeys »

0xmohit wrote: post #26

There have been reports talking about security issues in UC Browser [0] for a while [1] now [2]. It was also removed from Google Play Store [3] (although temporarily). Kinda surprises me to see it as the 'dominant' browser. Maybe people are indifferent. [0] https://citizenlab.ca/2015/05/a-chatty-squirrel-privacy-and-... [1] https://citizenlab.ca/2016/08/a-tough-nut-to-crack-look-priv... [2] https://tech.blorge.com/20…

Very true. Amongst many other security flaws, UC Browser also does not support HSTS (headers or preload list) at all. That means that a connection made by UC Browser to any site can be man-in-the-middled and inspected or modified.

As far as the Chinese government is concerned, however, this may be a feature rather than a bug.

No one should be using UC Browser, full stop. It's pathologically insecure.

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