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The endless browser wars

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Re: The endless browser wars

#221

Post by kelnos »

tristor wrote: post #177
richeyryan wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I encounter it occasionally. Either broken or omitted features. Slack calls don't work in Firefox just because. Blurring out your background in Google meet isn't available on Firefox. Some utilities websites here, in Ireland, don't work in Firefox but do in Chrome.

>Slack calls don't work in Firefox just because. Slack calls don't work in Firefox because Slack explicitly made the choice to not support Firefox and to not follow web standards in how they implemented Slack calls. Furthermore, they go a step further by detecting your browser and blocking the feature for Firefox users and telling you to switch to Chrome. [1] This is not a failure of Firefox, it's a failure of Slack.…

That's the thing, though: very few Slack users will care that it's Slack's fault that calls don't work on Firefox. They'll blame Firefox, and switch to Chrome, if that feature is important to them. (Or they'll use Slack's Electron app.)

Re: The endless browser wars

#222

Post by jamienicol »

PascLeRasc wrote: post #195

I’d like to start contributing money to Firefox. Can anyone weigh in on whether that’s best done through a donation to Mozilla or by paying for the premium Firefox features like Pocket or their VPN? I don’t necessarily need or want these, but they seem more Firefox-focused than a donation to Mozilla.

Mozilla employee here. A donation to Mozilla Foundation can't be spent on Firefox development. So if you want to specifically help Firefox then yes, pocket or VPN are the best ways to do that. It still won't go 100% towards Firefox development, but rather just in to the corporation's "pot", the majority of which is spent on Firefox development. (Donations to the foundation are kept separate, but are also spent on very worthwhile causes in my opinion.)

Re: The endless browser wars

#223

Post by JBiserkov »

xg15 wrote: post #127
CivBase wrote: post #111

> The larger problem, though, is that it's not at all clear that Firefox will remain a viable alternative to Chrome. Its market share has been falling for years, and not everybody is pleased with the directions that the Mozilla Foundation has taken. I'm disappointed by how many people cling to Chrome/Chromium under the justification that they don't like where Mozilla is going. If you can't tolerate Firefox because of…

> If you can't tolerate Firefox because of Mozilla's problems, how can you possibly stomach Chrome/Chromium with Google at the wheel? OT, but I think this is an interesting psychological phenomenon that occurs in a lot of settings, in particular politics: People, services, products etc are not judged by objective (or even just common) standards but by the standards they announce for themselves . So someone who claims…

Interesting take. But then, I'm old enough to remember the times when Google's motto was simply "Don't be evil."

Killing people's browser sync / safe-browsing / search suggestions / spell-checking / etc is pure evil.

Throw the anti-trust book at them. Make them spin-off YouTube and the rest of the alphabet (ha!).

Re: The endless browser wars

#224

Post by jamienicol »

djhaskin987 wrote: post #135

My favorite quote from the article: > Chromium has taken a path similar to Android's; there is a core built with free software, but getting its full functionality requires accepting layers of proprietary code on top of it. The fact that said code is running on a remote server somewhere does not really change that situation. Google has used this wolf-in-sheep's-clothing approach for yeas, and it has worked. Fortunatel…

To follow the analogy, having the choice of Chrome and edge is like having the choice of Google android and Samsung Android. I don't want either, I want a real FOSS browser (and mobile OS)

Re: The endless browser wars

#225

Post by foolmeonce »

amelius wrote: post #197
xg15 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you can't tolerate Firefox because of Mozilla's problems, how can you possibly stomach Chrome/Chromium with Google at the wheel? OT, but I think this is an interesting psychological phenomenon that occurs in a lot of settings, in particular politics: People, services, products etc are not judged by objective (or even just common) standards but by the standards they announce for themselves . So someone who claims…

> So someone who claims strict moral integrity and then falls short of that is seen as less trustworthy than someone who is upfront about being shady and then surprisingly acts less shady than expected. I don't think this effect exists at all. Google broke "don't be evil" and people still massively choose to use Google services as if nothing ever happened.

I'd say it's more about other groupings we simultaneously apply to members of the browser group.

Mozilla has to live up to ethics norms we assume for nonprofits in the free software domain which might be Apache or FSF? Google has to live up to UX(?) norms for corporate tech giants, maybe MS and Apple?

Re: The endless browser wars

#226

Post by mortehu »

kelnos wrote: post #218
mortehu wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not GP, but I decided to try Firefox again last week, and had to give up because I couldn't navigate to intranet URLs without explicitly typing http:// Strangely foo/ works (goes to http://foo/ ) while foo/bar does not (instead does a web search for foo/bar).

It's these sorts of things that make me realize that people just don't care about the health of the open web, or about protecting their privacy. Ultimately this is a super minor issue (and turns out there's a way to fix it, per the sibling comment), but everyone just has their own pet excuse why they "can't" change to a browser that is objectively better for the web in every way. Tragedy of the commons, I guess.

Just to be clear, I think having to prefix my web searches is not a fix, but rather an even greater inconvenience. I'll either have to type "http://" dozens of times per day, or "g " a hundred times per day, for no discernible reason.

Aside from that I don't think Firefox is particularly good for the web. Their license is no better than that of Chromium, and Chromium has proven time and again it's a good starting point for a fork.

Mozilla employees are paid with search ad revenue, to an even greater extent (95%) than the subset of Blink developers employed by Google -- so their incentives aren't even any better.

Re: The endless browser wars

#227

Post by [deleted] »

dblohm7 wrote: post #203
dkdk8283 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox laid off the majority of their security teams last year. I don’t trust Google but I trust Firefox less.

False. (I am a Mozilla employee) This is what I know about what happened there: There were two enterprise IT teams with similar duties but different purviews. When management was deciding on layoffs, they decided to unify those two teams. Unfortunately that meant that there were redundancies. My heart goes out to those who lost their jobs, and they have every right to be upset. But the inferences being made as a resu…

[deleted]

Re: The endless browser wars

#228

Post by [deleted] »

dblohm7 wrote: post #203
dkdk8283 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox laid off the majority of their security teams last year. I don’t trust Google but I trust Firefox less.

False. (I am a Mozilla employee) This is what I know about what happened there: There were two enterprise IT teams with similar duties but different purviews. When management was deciding on layoffs, they decided to unify those two teams. Unfortunately that meant that there were redundancies. My heart goes out to those who lost their jobs, and they have every right to be upset. But the inferences being made as a resu…

[deleted]

Re: The endless browser wars

#229

Post by 1MachineElf »

CivBase wrote: post #172
1MachineElf wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If not leaving Firefox, what is the preferred way to signal to Mozilla that we aren't happy with their leadership's choices?

If product usage signals an organization that you're happy with their leadership choices, then doesn't leaving Firefox for Chrome/Chromium signal to Google that you're happy with theirs? Is that really a better message? I'm not advocating for Firefox here. It's the browser I use, but there are other options out there. Safari is obviously an option for people in the Apple ecosystem and another user suggested Pale Moon…

I switched to Brave. To me, it seems like the best compromise.

Re: The endless browser wars

#230

Post by [deleted] »

dimitrios1 wrote: post #138
xg15 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you can't tolerate Firefox because of Mozilla's problems, how can you possibly stomach Chrome/Chromium with Google at the wheel? OT, but I think this is an interesting psychological phenomenon that occurs in a lot of settings, in particular politics: People, services, products etc are not judged by objective (or even just common) standards but by the standards they announce for themselves . So someone who claims…

There's another angle here I think you are missing > If you can't tolerate Firefox because of Mozilla's problems, how can you possibly stomach Chrome/Chromium with Google at the wheel? It's because it's not enough to be wrong about something (according to certain people), but you must be punished for being wrong. And narcissists can't handle a company not being "100% right" so they punish them by going to their compe…

[deleted]
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