151–160 of 357 posts
Google Chrome gained dominance and was not the default on Windows or Mac. Firefox is an Ok product but isn't super compelling for a typical user.
10-12 years ago, when Chrome appeared, HN was full of posts like "I switched my parents computer to Chrome", "I convinced my company to switch to Chrome", ...
Mozilla should totally build an OS / laptop and do the same
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The meme that MS lost the case about bundling IE with Windows is about as false and pervasive as “cable TV was once ad free”. MS won the case on appeal and absolutely nothing changed in the US. Even the cited Wikipedia article says as much. There was never a time since IE was bundled with Windows that IE didn’t come with Windows in the US. There was also no browser choice mandate in the US.
Not only that but barely anything changed in Europe either. They were required to show a browser choice screen... for 4 years. Only a tiny fraction of the population will have ever seen it.
Does Firefox have a future? I'm writing this from Firefox, having used it ever since the days when Firefox releases used to have launch parties, and tabs was the revolutionary killer feature. Let me rephrase the question: does Gecko/Spidermonkey have a future? I think it's clear the Firefox branding will live on, since it is Mozilla's crown jewel. But in today's landscape, you can target WebKit (Apple) and V8/Blink (…
I'm not an expert on the web tech. so apologies in advance but wouldn't it be great if Mozilla spent all that money Google gives them on something more revolutionary like a new runtime for ephemeral apps and the corresponding UI engine that's not bound to the legacy JS and HTML and has near native performance and access to hardware sensors? Add to that the support for multi device setups where you can move an app ses…
Does Linux force you to use Firefox? Every distro I know has it by default. Yet the first thing I do on a new install is install Chrome... And of course everyone does the same on Windows. Only Edge has started to slightly change that trend, and that's with some very aggressive tactics by MS.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Microsoft got smacked because they weren't playing ball with Washington politics, they weren't bribing enough congressmen nor capitalizing on their market dominance to make themselves strategically useful to national interests. Since then, big tech companies have known to grease the gears and befriend power brokers in Washington. They now contribute to political campaigns, and have made themselves useful to the defen…
While this does align with my beliefs and biases, do you have any proof or evidence to point to that was the case? Specifically that the antitrust suit was due (in whole or in part) to Microsoft not engaging with politics, and that the result has been a trend towards big tech playing ball, and hence future antitrust being unlikely?
Fortune magazine article about it from 2002 (hosted by CNN):
> For a couple of embarrassing years in the mid-'90s, Microsoft's primary lobbying presence in D.C. was "Jack and his Jeep." As the software giant's sole in-house lobbyist, Jack Krumholtz, then 33, had to battle endless traffic jams to get from Microsoft's suburban sales office to Capitol Hill. "Early on I spent most of the day in my Jeep Grand Cherokee on my cellphone," Krumholtz says. "I hit an all-time low on the day I was parked on a Capitol Hill side street reading through my mail with the laptop on the steering wheel."
> No longer. After the Justice Department filed its antitrust suit in 1998, Microsoft--a company famous for its disdain of government--undertook the largest government affairs makeover in corporate history. The company now boasts one of the most dominating, multifaceted, and sophisticated influence machines around, one that spends tens of millions a year. It's no great surprise that one of the country's wealthiest companies can bankroll a beefed-up lobbying operation when it faces a crisis. But what few people realize is that Microsoft has reached the very highest ranks of lobbying so quickly. Says David Hart, a lobbying expert at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government: "Microsoft has joined the top tier"--with such longtime heavyweights as Philip Morris, Lockheed Martin, and AT&T.
https://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2002...
Bill Gates quote from 2020:
> "I was naive at Microsoft and didn't realize that our success would lead to government attention," Gates said, referring to Microsoft's antitrust challenges from more than 20 years ago. "And so I made some mistakes — you know, just saying, 'Hey, I never go to Washington, D.C.' And now I don't think, you know, that naivete is there."
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/14/bill-gates-i-was-naive-at-mi...
One of the next frontiers as a barrier to browser switching will be "software"-backed WebAuthn/FIDO2/"passkeys". If you look at the APIs available on MacOS/iOS at present [0], and how WebAuthn works, you need to "trust" the client-side software to correctly identify the site origin (i.e. protocol, domain, port) and pass it to a physical security key. In the case of a software token, you need to restrict which app(s)…
I wasn't sure what your concern was, but is it that? 1 ) Hardware authenticators won't spit their root secret, almost by design. 2 ) Webauthn doesn't require that the authenticator store the list of accounts, also by design (for privacy). So if you want to switch from iPhone to Android, you have to remember all websites you used Passkey on, and go one by one hunting down the right security settings page.
The specific challenge here is around software webauthn for passwordless access (think using Safari to create an account on a site). In this scenario, the average user has no portable authenticator. They cannot move to a new browser - you install Chrome, but can't log in from Chrome, as only safari can do a passkey login.
Even if chrome supports an equivalent setup (their version of passkey over Google sync, for example), you can't enroll it - to enroll, you need to sign in using Safari. To enroll your new device (chrome), you need to use it. You can't get logged in on chrome to do this. The average user has no option. A tech savvy user could manually copy session cookies to steal their own session, perhaps, or use a hardware key as a "bridge".
In essence, if you sign up for something using a passkey, you won't be able to easily leave that ecosystem at all, without pretty advanced tech knowledge (using a dedicated hardware webauthn key, or stealing and porting session cookies).
My separate observation about a lack of support for hardware keys to be "paired" to support an off-site backup use-case is unrelated, but perhaps relevant for tech savvy users who want to better "own" their own identity, and link their webauthn keys together for backup use-cases. Otherwise you have to maintain a list or spreadsheet of every site you use - I have one, so I can ensure I enroll each token I have with each service!
Is their Google search deal (~$400m a year) that expires next year being renewed? If not, might explain some of the desire to bite the hand that has fed it for so long.
You have to wonder what Mozilla are doing with $400m a year.
Does Firefox have a future? I'm writing this from Firefox, having used it ever since the days when Firefox releases used to have launch parties, and tabs was the revolutionary killer feature. Let me rephrase the question: does Gecko/Spidermonkey have a future? I think it's clear the Firefox branding will live on, since it is Mozilla's crown jewel. But in today's landscape, you can target WebKit (Apple) and V8/Blink (…
I'm not following your question. How does Firefox branding live on without Gecko/Spidermonkey?