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Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

batsov.com

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Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#3
Firefox would fit neatly in the corporate world in my opinion. You can have a centrally administered configuration file and Firefox is indeed able to just use certificated from your OS. It is just a small toggle. Still, a bit of effort and maybe advertising would do wonders, because there are companies critical of Chrome that think data protection is worth more than personal advertising. I think Edge is trying to fit in here.

Sure, Edge can be configured by domain policies and that is easy too. For example disallowing https exceptions is a popular recent policy (that gets reverted pretty quickly).

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#4
Among the points missing under the "I can attribute this decline to various factors" section is IMO that Moz/FF have managed to alienate their original user base/plugin developers to become "more like Chrome". Maybe that's an unfair thing to say, but I guess it doesn't matter anymore anyway.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#6
I've started using it as my main browser both in daily use and dev.

In the past I had trouble with client projects or dev tools only working in chrome, but I decided that the only way things get freer is to make myself fix those pain points when I come across them.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#7
Firefox is not a (serious) alternative and it is quite frankly irrelevant.

It is either Chrome (Blink) or Safari (WebKit) and I would much prefer WebKit-based browsers over Chromium-based ones and the market-share tells the full story on where to target the most users and it is not Firefox.

Why do you think that these web developers stick banners everywhere to force you to run their apps in several Chromium-based browsers?

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#8
post #5

What's wrong with using Chromium though? I understand most of the work being done on it is by Google, but do they control the direction of the project?

As soon as you do most of the work you are influencing the direction. That is inevitable.

Google is also not known as the company as the company that just has the best for you in mind.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#9
I prefer typing to pointing -- and I like clean interfaces --, so I use the VIm-inspired but Chromium-based Qutebrowser; but maybe I should just use Firefox and let the inconvenience of pointing inspire me to browse less. Qutebrowser would -- at least alternatively -- use the Firefox backend if it could, but Mozilla has chosen not to make it usable by other browsers than Firefox.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#10
I feel the article misses how Firefox's inability to get a foothold on the mobile platform contributed to its decline. There are more people today using web browsers via mobile then desktop. In many poorer countries the first and only access to the open internet for the people is through chrome on Android.

I don't blame Mozilla for this though since they did not have a monopoly on a platform to capitalize on unlike the other players.

Sadly Safari seems to be the only other option.

For a long time Firefox has been dependent on Google for sponsorship. This is a toxic dependency that Firefox hasn't been able to rid itself of and is seeming increasingly less plausible as time goes by.

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