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The Browser Monopoly

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Re: The Browser Monopoly

#151

Post by scarface74 »

basch wrote: post #3

>Chrome introduced a lot of neat new features (Porn “Incognito Mode,” multithreaded memory changes, tabs and more). Now chrome is getting credit for in private browsing and tabs? (Safari and Opera respectively. Phoenix/Firefox popularized them long before Chrome was a twinkle.) >It is mind-boggling that basic tools like these are not yet standard features in browsers. How long have browsers offered to save passwords?…

Now chrome is getting credit for in private browsing and tabs? (Safari and Opera respectively. Phoenix/Firefox popularized them long before Chrome was a twinkle.)

Just for reference

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_browsing

It was available for 3 years in Safari before it became available in Chrome and four years before Firefox.

Re: The Browser Monopoly

#152

Post by scarface74 »

CoolGuySteve wrote: post #89
basch wrote: post #3

>Chrome introduced a lot of neat new features (Porn “Incognito Mode,” multithreaded memory changes, tabs and more). Now chrome is getting credit for in private browsing and tabs? (Safari and Opera respectively. Phoenix/Firefox popularized them long before Chrome was a twinkle.) >It is mind-boggling that basic tools like these are not yet standard features in browsers. How long have browsers offered to save passwords?…

Chrome had the nifty break away title bar tabs before anyone else. But the major improvement that made everyone switch was process separation for each tab. One tab could crash while the others stayed functional and a security vulnerability in one tab would have a more difficult time compromising the others. It's also one of the reasons Chome uses so much memory, they failed to keep optimizing their copy-on-write pagi…

Chrome had the nifty break away title bar tabs before anyone else.

The first time I saw break away tabs in Safari for Windows in 2007. Before Chrome was introduced.

Re: The Browser Monopoly

#153

Post by scarface74 »

ozten wrote: post #150

Why Chrome exists is missing a key driver - A significant portion of Google's search traffic came from business deals where they paid browser vendors (or others) to be the default search option. As they cannibalized the browser market they eliminated this cost or gained significant negotiating power. "Driving innovation on the web" is the don't be evil slogan that motivates us all to allow them to "vertically integra…

As they cannibalized the browser market they eliminated this cost or gained significant negotiating power.

They still pay Apple a reported $12 billion a year and they have no negotiating power on iOS.

Re: The Browser Monopoly

#154

Post by EpicEng »

glenneroo wrote: post #63
aluren wrote: post #23

I don't get why people (I mean technically minded people who are aware of privacy issues and so on) don't just use firefox. They are pretty much at feature parity (Firefox may even get the edge due to the fantastic extensions ecosystem), except one spies on you and the other doesn't. Why do people find the switch so hard? In addition, Firefox + ublokc origin is pretty much the only option on mobile if you want to blo…

HackerNews mods could help out by messing with rendering on Chrome, as revenge for Google's continual messing with Firefox rendering issues[1] ;) [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20755348

Pretty sure that would only hurt HN users and Google won't give a single damn.

Re: The Browser Monopoly

#155

Post by lioeters »

glenneroo wrote: post #64
tannhaeuser wrote: post #2

> Firefox is a fine browser by itself [...] I have the comfort of knowing that my personal information is protected (to the extent possible) – and also that my portal to the web is not custom-built to track me and serve me ads FF is fantastic, but the uncomfortable question is, will it always be, given Mozilla has to found further development and is financed by Google's money as well? Apple's Safari actually has bett…

> Mozilla has to found further development and is financed by Google's money as well? This was also mentioned at the bottom of the article: > If I were a Product executive at Mozilla, I would be banging the table to introduce useful, paid products that could enrich and support the Firefox ecosystem. Chief among these would be a low-cost, independent email service focused on privacy and spam protection that would allo…

> introduce useful, paid products that could enrich and support the Firefox ecosystem

This is where I'm wary, that it could become just a better walled garden. I trust Mozilla more than Google, but they've had hiccups in the past that tarnished that trust.

> allow people to migrate off of Gmail

My utopian dream is Mozilla spearheading open alternatives to all Google services: email, Open Street Maps, search, password manager, P2P file transfer, ad blockers, maybe even ethical ads. It gives me hope to see them already embracing some of this general direction.

Re: The Browser Monopoly

#156

Post by lioeters »

unknown2374 wrote: post #137

This article has a lot of wrong or otherwise misleading information. One I haven't noticed in the comments so far is that the author refers to Chromium as being free and open-source. It isn't [0]. It downloads more Google account and activity tracking related blobs than ever when building the code as well. While I agree with the gist of the article, this is worth pointing out since a lot of people do use Chromium bec…

I remember seeing an article a few months ago, that Microsoft removed 51 Google services from Chromium while they transitioned Edge to it.

https://imgur.com/Szwkb0O

That list helps to show how Chromium is far from the open-source ideal.

Re: The Browser Monopoly

#158

Post by klingonopera »

blub wrote: post #135
pmikesell wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a technically minded person. I've been using web browsers since NCSA Mosaic. I switch browsers probably once per decade (mosaic -> netscape navigator -> firefox -> chrome). At the time I started using Chrome IE was the dominant web browser and firefox was losing the war because content creators were continually accidentally making things work in IE only. (By "accidentally" I mean that the standards were very conf…

IE wasn't winning any war against Firefox, it was Firefox which was gaining marketshare from IE, which had a crap reputation at that point. For this reason and the fact that you think lawnmower ads are the worst that surveillance capitalism can do, I'm skeptical that you are technically minded at all. This is 100% how the average Joe thinks.

I remember when I made the change, must've been 2004 or 2005, I was reluctant at first to change from IE to Firefox, but the killer feature FF had at that time was tabbed browsing.

Kids these days will never know the struggle of having 10 browser windows clogging up the task bar...

Re: The Browser Monopoly

#159

Post by klingonopera »

jfk13 wrote: post #44
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest problem is the subtle frustrations if you use Google websites or services at all, since Google builds the Internet explicitly for Chrome, and sometimes works on other browsers okay-ish. reCAPTCHA harassment is particularly egregious too. I'm a Firefox user, but I've also already excised most of the rest of Google from my life. If you're still using Gmail, you're likely to stick with Chrome.

I use Gmail, but through Thunderbird and occasionally Firefox. Works pretty well for me. I keep Chrome around mainly for occasional compatibility testing.

Same, Gmail with Thunderbird is quite solid.

...I'm guessing we have a pretty much standardized IMAP protocol to thank for this?

Re: The Browser Monopoly

#160

Post by thezeebass »

s_y_n_t_a_x wrote: post #113
thezeebass wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brave, guys. Switch to Brave. Brave is everything.

Brave has too much bloatware for my taste.

Too much bloat? It's lean and getting leaner, and has a dashboard on your homepage showing just how much bloat it has saved! It's the natural successor to Firefox from Firefox's founder. I don't think it can be dismissed that easily.
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