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Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

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Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#511

Post by _jal »

Barrin92 wrote: post #418
_jal wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I also never understood the massive hard-on that the technical user-base has against useful telemetry. > it seems that most of them have never worked on an user-facing product If you have worked on user-facing products, then I think you do understand. I think you just don't like the answer. Here it is in a nutshell: In the general case, how do you distinguish 'telemetry' from 'surveillance'? And the answer is you c…

>how do you distinguish 'telemetry' from 'surveillance'? For starters, consent. Telemetry generally supposes that the user opts into, either directly or by accepting the terms of using a service, and is free to walk away. I find the increasing usage of the word surveillance completely silly and ideological. If the NSA vacuums data from some underwater cable that's surveillance, when I exchange information, aware of w…

> I find the increasing usage of the word surveillance completely silly and ideological.

That's nice. I find downplaying the reality of surveillance to acclimate people to even more of it very dangerous and ideological.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#513

Post by soundnote »

dralley wrote: post #486
soundnote wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Brave is a good model for developing alternative, independent revenue streams. They're helped in large part by having a community that understands the need for it, a lot of the vocal Firefox fanbase seems to want an independent browser engine and service backend run and distributed as donationware.

Brave does ad-hijacking and has been caught hijacking referral links in the past. I'm not sure I would call their model "good". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23442027

Ad-hijacking?

The referral code thing was a bug that got fixed - the intended function was Firefox Suggest-esque sponsored links from a local directory when you typed a word but not a complete url, eg. "binance". The bug was that it gave you a suggestion for complete, legit urls too (eg. "binance.us") and put the suggestion at the top. The bug was fixed to make the feature work as intended, and the feature is turned off by default.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#514

Post by filoleg »

freediver wrote: post #436
sfink wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are arguing that people "should" pay based on value. This is a competitive market. There are reasonable alternatives. Cost to switch is low. Economics 101 (literally that class!) says that the price in that situation is going to be based on competition (for the companies/producers that survive), and the price of the competition is $0. (It's actually not, you're paying with slightly less personal data for Firefox…

> You are arguing that people "should" pay based on value. I believe I am arguing that we underestimate the willingness of people to part with their money when there is a right product. > Cost to switch is low. Economics 101 (literally that class!) says that the price in that situation is going to be based on competition (for the companies/producers that survive), and the price of the competition is $0. Not sure whet…

> yet 50 million people still choose to pay $12/mo for YouTube Premium.

Yes, because de facto YouTube has no viable competitors, so I am not feeling that analogy.

If I want to watch YouTube videos specifically, I have to go to YouTube. People don't use YouTube because they necessarily like the experience of how YT does things, they use it because it has the content users want. Browsers aren't like that. Both Firefox and Chrome on a high level provide the exact same content.

Sidenote: adblockers and such are nice, but, as others have pointed out alread, non-tech savvy users won't bother. And the situation on mobile devices and smart TVs (which account for a growing percentage of YT consumption) have a pretty non-simple adblocker story (or non-existent, if we are talking about using native YT app on a mobile network).

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#515

Post by defaultname »

tomxor wrote: post #499
defaultname wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We seem to agree entirely. Many developers would prefer a single, universal browser. A single platform. A single input mechanism (a single development language, compiler, RDBMS, filesystem, cloud provider, backup system, etc). All for obvious, practical reasons, at least in the short term. That would be devastating for the future, but if it makes projects easier today, many developers are entirely onboard. That was v…

> That was very much a dominant position among developers in the IE days. Other browsers were a nuisance, and maybe they should just be cut out entirely. I don't usually resort to personalised dissection of post, but to be frank, you've taken a giant shit all over this subthread so I think it deserves it... this notion of yours seems to be the underlying theme of most all of your comments - that everyone here critici…

You have left a number of these meta comments now (a sockpuppet account even appeared to lend you support), apparently that injured that someone disagreed with your comment. To say these add no value is overstating their contribution.

Thanks

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#516

Post by handrous »

defaultname wrote: post #302
tomxor wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Apple of today has a very conflicted relationship with webkit, the anticompetitive reasons they want to keep their platform "webkit only", simultaneously encourages them to support and neglect webkit development. i.e on the one hand, webkit must be reliable and secure and compatible "enough" to provide a decent basic browsing experience. But should not improve so much as to make developing applications competitiv…

"basic browsing experience" Google pushes out yet another half-baked, poorly considered new feature in Chrome and overnight has mobs chanting about Safari purportedly holding everyone back because of some close to irrelevant fringe thing. Safari might just be the fastest browser, and it supports a ridiculous, awe-inspiring array of features and standards. And the greatest indictment of the ridiculous anti-Safari smea…

Last I checked, iOS users use their phones way more than Android users period, including the browser. That plus (probably relatedly, though other factors are also in play) spending habits are why so many apps choose to go iOS-first, or to prioritize iOS Safari compatibility over Android for web sites or web apps.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#517

Post by soundnote »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #200
NoboruWataya wrote: post #103

It's a depressing situation, particularly knowing that Firefox is pretty much kept alive at Google's whim. It makes one seriously wonder whether it is feasible at all to maintain an independent open-source web browser in 2021. People tend to blame Mozilla's management and I'm sure there have been management failures but I'm not sure what they could do to make Firefox a thriving, independent, sustainable browser. It s…

> So Mozilla tries to move in Chrome's direction, removing configuration options and "dumbing down" the UI, which frustrates its existing user base (including me) while apparently also failing to eat into Chrome's market share. Well, no surprise there. Technical people like us experiment. Mainstream users just use what they know, and what their techie friends recommend them. They're not suddenly going to use Firefox…

> Note that this approach didn't work for Microsoft either (and they went a lot more 'like chrome' than Mozilla!). They're having some success with Edge but it's mainly because they push it really hard to enterprise users with their O365 integration, so people are getting to know it at work and bringing it home.

Edge is also - aside from being a privacy disaster - a legitimately good product that does a lot of good UI innovation on top of stock Chrome.

Things like normie-friendly but powerful vertical tab implementations, turning menus into floating panels that can be turned into sidebars with a click, Collections etc. They're actually adding lots of customer-facing features that are really well designed.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#519

Post by cpeterso »

sfink wrote: post #452
KennyBlanken wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe because Mozilla collects a massive amount of "telemetry" on users, in a way that is personally identifiable, despite zero need for it to be so? https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/toolkit/components/t... Or maybe it's because you can toss some money at Mozilla and they'll silently install a browser extension on behalf of an advertising company for a shitty TV show about a l33t haxx0r d00d? By the way, the b…

> Maybe because Mozilla collects a massive amount of "telemetry" on users, in a way that is personally identifiable, despite zero need for it to be so? Please point out how to personally identify a telemetry user. I am a Firefox engineer who uses telemetry data, and know of no way to personally identify any of my users. Well, one way -- you can voluntarily put your email or other info into a crash report, though I kn…

btw, Firefox crash reports no longer have an email address field, though they still have a comment field:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1688883

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#520

Post by jaywalk »

upbeat_general wrote: post #498
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another reason is actually security. Remember that Apple doesn't allow other web browser engines in any application. Imagine if an Electron application on iOS just decided to ship with it's entire, own browser engine. We would have super-bloated apps like our desktops, and if a security flaw was found, good luck getting all those apps to update. In a way, Apple knows that allowing other browser engines means: 1. Chro…

Security isn’t a great argument when Apple only updates safari with full system updates. Sure, iOS has a high update rate compared to Android but it’s still far lower than an App Store update would be. Plus, security is somewhat less of a concern when the application only accesses a limited site and isn’t for general purpose browsing for untrusted sites.

> Security isn’t a great argument when Apple only updates safari with full system updates.

But they can put those updates out whenever they want, so that doesn't go against the security argument at all.

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