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A tale of how Google tried to win against Mozilla

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Re: A tale of how Google tried to win against Mozilla

#161

Post by themaninthedark »

nindalf wrote: post #30

I thought the thread would have more substance to it. His claim is that Google products would have performance bugs or would explicitly block any non-Chrome browser. As a long time Firefox user, I’m with him so far. But he loses me on the next bit where he rules out incompetence and then jumps to org-level malice. I don’t think it’s either. A simpler explanation is that Google simply stopped caring about non-Chrome b…

> People building say, Inbox were told it was acceptable to launch a product that is only accessible to one browser at launch. I hated that decision because it affected me directly but that’s not malice, simply prioritisation.

Would it have been acceptable if the one browser was Edge, Firefox or Opera? I bet dollars to donuts that they would not launch until they had it working on Chrome.

Re: A tale of how Google tried to win against Mozilla

#162

Post by wolco »

zaphar wrote: post #144
srouhaewaehy wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The engineer doesn't decide the schedule though. Usually their activity is controlled by having to do X tasks in time(X)-time(Y)=available_time, with Y being any set of reasons, political, financial, organisational that the engineers will accept as true. Then as engineer what can you do? Either assume toxic Management (and switch Jobs) or do a subset of what you would usually do, and that means optimize for your own…

Admittedly, when I was at Google, I only worked on three different products. However, while there I had no real deadlines. My work was done when it was done. Performance was measured in quality and impact. This was in fact a part of the culture that was communicated to my team on multiple occasions. With that said, there is some indication from the outside that the culture is changing. It can be difficult to sustain…

I wish more companies came closer to this.

Re: A tale of how Google tried to win against Mozilla

#163

Post by jhasse »

Scrantonicity wrote: post #159
jhasse wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With all the other benefits Chrome has over Firefox (e.g. advertisement on google.com), you'll need to be more than only "not as bad as Chrome".

How about extensions on the Android app, container tabs, better ui, no google integration, built in tracking protection etc

Doesn't seem to be enough, otherwise market share wouldn't be where it is today.

Re: A tale of how Google tried to win against Mozilla

#164

Post by normalhuman »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #123
TelmoMenezes wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a coordination thing - coordinating a large group of people is so challenging only simple messages like 'make a profit' get through on average. Simple things with clear metrics. No, it's a self-interest thing. Also known as greed, or selfishness. Do you honestly believe that if "being a decent human being" came with a simple metric like money, then companies would deviate one iota from pure profit motive? Some…

Self-interest is rarely an issue by itself. It's the coordination problems that make greed dangerous. Coordinating means recognizing longer-term win-win solutions - cases where sacrificing immediate personal gains leads to bigger personal gains in the future. When coordination fails, people tend to pursue their immediate interests, to the detriment of many (and sometimes all) of them.

I'm pretty sure that the executive that decided to break Firefox had that covered. They looked into the future, and realized that the extra money in their bank account would make their long term more pleasant, more than enough to offset any annoyances created by browser incompatibilities.

> cases where sacrificing immediate personal gains leads to bigger personal gains in the future

As Kaynes once said: "in the long run, we are all dead".

To go beyond this shallow level of morality requires an expansion of the concept of "self". Beware though: this sort of perspective shift might make you unemployable.

Re: A tale of how Google tried to win against Mozilla

#165

Post by tptacek »

rayiner wrote: post #89
mastrsushi wrote: post #4

All I got out of that link of tweets was a series of "Look at all the ways big evil Google steered us off the internet". I'm not doubting any if those claims are true. At the same time, I don't think any of those malicious motives were strong enough. That post came off as more of a whistle blowing speech from an oppressed developer. Nothing written was solid enough to make me think "Ohhh that's how Google killed Mozi…

We had built in PDF viewers in IE long before Chrome. In fact, it was even better because it was an OLE component, so IE could embed Adobe PDF, not the cut-rate alternative Chrome has. (Edge is even worse, it’s PDF viewer can’t even search large documents properly.) We have massively regressed on that front over the last 20 years.

The IE PDF reader setup you're describing is extraordinarily dangerous.

Re: A tale of how Google tried to win against Mozilla

#166

Post by neilv »

Sylos wrote: post #87
neilv wrote: post #23

One way Mozilla could still differentiate is by doing privacy&security all-out. It currently seems that Firefox is only a little more privacy-respecting than the browser of one of the most invasive surveillance dotcoms. It's been that way for years, and every year is lost ground. I suspect that Mozilla's need for funding, and the sources of funding for so long, are what have them looking so similar to a dotcom. When…

It's definitely true that Mozilla needs funding beyond what users are willing to donate. Especially with other 'free' browsers available. But all scandals that I'm aware of were nonsense that journalists wanted to believe, in order to land the next big "the good guys are actually evil"-story. A more privacy-friendly default search engine is clearly the elephant in the room, but their other financing strategies have b…

Every year is lost ground:

1. Your conception of a modern browser is what surveillance&brochure dotcoms want it to be. "Tools to fix the defaults" doesn't fix this.

2. The anti-user facilities in your browser that are now expected are what dotcoms wanted. Taking them away will be harder than saying they couldn't have them in the first place.

3. The now-massive complexity of browsers (to provide features and directions that the dotcoms want) is also a barrier to engineering and improvement, and also keeps out upstarts.

4. Dotcoms couldn't always afford to block Firefox.

With the now small market share, Mozilla might be a charity case, or it might be an antitrust buffer case. I'd favor Mozilla adopting a public interest charity model, and taking PR money from big corps (among other sources) in exchange for a sponsor logo, but not selling its users in any way.

Re: A tale of how Google tried to win against Mozilla

#167

Post by spiralganglion »

acdha wrote: post #146
lou1306 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A big problem of early Quantum Firefox on HiDPI Macs was its high battery usage. I think it got slightly better with later releases, but I don't have data to support that.

For people running in non-default scaled resolutions. In the default configuration it's somewhere in between Safari (best) and Chrome (worst).

Unfortunately, a non-native scaling mode is the default on new Mac laptops now. You need to switch to one of the custom scaling modes to get a true, native 2x.

Re: A tale of how Google tried to win against Mozilla

#168

Post by astazangasta »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #123
TelmoMenezes wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a coordination thing - coordinating a large group of people is so challenging only simple messages like 'make a profit' get through on average. Simple things with clear metrics. No, it's a self-interest thing. Also known as greed, or selfishness. Do you honestly believe that if "being a decent human being" came with a simple metric like money, then companies would deviate one iota from pure profit motive? Some…

Self-interest is rarely an issue by itself. It's the coordination problems that make greed dangerous. Coordinating means recognizing longer-term win-win solutions - cases where sacrificing immediate personal gains leads to bigger personal gains in the future. When coordination fails, people tend to pursue their immediate interests, to the detriment of many (and sometimes all) of them.

Coordination becomes difficult precisely because of self-interest, which leads to hierarchies of power. If your organization is built to disenfranchise your workers and empower execs, those execs will naturally have trouble hearing from, and thus talking to, those workers.

Re: A tale of how Google tried to win against Mozilla

#169

Post by ksec »

I disagree about Firefox losing users due to Google's Opps incident.

I forced the use of Firefox over 100s of computer and witness the growth of Chrome all by user installing it themselves. And when I ask them why, trying to talk them out of it, the number one reason was, Chrome was WAY faster than Firefox at the time. From Cold Start, Prefetch, rendering, first time to paint, actual UI etc. Every single god damn thing. And many users notice. At first I would not help them to install Chrome or told them Firefox was simply better. Over time one by one they just install it themselves.

And that was the era when Mozilla thought Javascript speed would solve everything, and Memory bloat was the root of all evil and started MemShrink later.

It wasn't about the Open Web, Standards etc. None of the users cares about any of these. It was the actual browser UX.

Re: A tale of how Google tried to win against Mozilla

#170

Post by loup-vaillant »

acdha wrote: post #150
loup-vaillant wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, and a big reason why Google effectively removed the address bar. People are now too dumb to type addresses? Let's them fall back to our search engine even more often than they originally did. Now when I'm typing an URL, I must make sure it has a valid syntax, because otherwise I'm redirected to the search engine right away. Kind of annoying, since one reason I don't go through the search engine is to avoid bein…

> People are now too dumb to type addresses? This is unwarranted condescension. Many URLs are long and non-obvious — do remember that people usually want specific pages rather than a top-level homepage — and there's a thriving industry registering domains which are one typo away from something legitimate and loading them up with ads & malware. For the average person, it's safer and faster just to let Google figure it…

> For the average person, it's safer and faster just to let Google figure it out.

Of course. Only a genius like me can use the address bar's auto completion. I know: even my programmers colleagues at work reach for the search bar, I must be a unique snowflake.

Seriously though, the difference isn't that big, barely a speed bump. But that speed bump is enough to cause people to go around it, and use Google even when reaching for something as simple as news.ycombinator.com!

I think it's less a matter of capability, and more a misunderstanding of the costs. Giving your search terms away doesn't seem like such a bad deal, considering the search engine is free to use. We just tend to forget that we pay with our data, and that data is valuable because it will later be used to sell us things we would otherwise not have bought.

But such a cost is so indirect and so removed from its actual cause that we tend to just ignore it. I know I often do.

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