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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

#181

Post by tssva »

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).

I have never run my MacBook Pro in anything but the default scaling resolution. Quantum has been and continues to be a nightmare on my device. Unusably slow performance with high CPU utilization and occasionally spiking CPU utilization to 100% for prolonged periods. Usually long enough that I am forced to reboot the laptop.

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

#182

Post by darkhorn »

a_imho wrote: post #52
ahartmetz wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is ridiculous that JS benchmarks are accepted as "browser benchmarks". They are probably so popular with tech journalists because they are easy to run. How do you properly measure page load time (of real pages over the internet) anyway?

I found benchmarks to be a red herring. For me, the most significant factor seems to be an adblocker. Without one, most sites are barely usable.

You can block ads in Firefox without using addon. There is an setting for that.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/content-blocking

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

#183

Post by chansiky »

amelius wrote: post #79
the_duke wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried using the new Gmail interface on Firefox? It's ridiculously slow, to the point of being completely unusable. A Google engineer claimed here on HN the reason was that the UI framework uses some deprecated API that is polyfilled in Firefox but available on Chrome. Something like that should never have launched, but may have been a somewhat acceptable reason months ago. Now, after being in production for…

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." But since Google's engineers are far from stupid, you may have a point.

This whole article makes me question that statement. I hear it all the time, but passive aggression is a very real tactic in a bloodless war.

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

#184

Post by frosted-flakes »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #121
cm2187 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get your point but actually it should go the other way round. If the owner of Google Doc is really focused on own user base only, the incentive would be to make it the most browser compatible. By making it run on chrome only, google docs is potentially sacrificing its user base for a greater purpose.

Why? Remember that at this point, Google Docs is "sticky". Its audience is to some degree captive, and won't switch just because the document lags a bit on Firefox. What would they switch to? Office365, for which they have to pay? It wouldn't even solve their problem, as the document in question is a link they got from a friend, already in Google Docs. It's just easier to switch to Chrome. Most of SaaS applications o…

Online Office 365 is free and has more or less the same functionality as Google Docs.

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

#185

Post by kdtsh »

dblohm7 wrote: post #177
kdtsh wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is some nuance required here, since ‘corporation’ is such a vague term. Even Mozilla Corporation, which is wholly owned by the not-for-profit Mozilla Foundation, is a for-profit organisation (i.e. it aims to turn a profit and is taxed) which which reinvests its profit back into Mozilla’s projects and and other work which Mozilla considers to be in the public interest for a free and open Internet. Everyone has t…

MoCo is for-profit in the legal sense, yes. But it doesn't "aim to turn a profit".

If it’s not supposed to make money, what do you think it does?

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

#187

Post by gregknicholson »

nindalf wrote: post #114
evmar wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking about this comment and I thought of the perfect analogy: accessibility. Everyone in the abstract would like to make accessible websites. Some people at Google are really passionate about accessibility and advocate for it, while others don't know as much about it or overlook it when building their product. There's surely some organization-level guidelines like "make sure your product is accessible befor…

This is an excellent analogy. Personally I'm surprised by Google's attitude to a11y/Firefox because all their products have millions of users. 10% doesn't sound like much, but 10% (Firefox market share) of 50 million is more than the population of many countries. I guess they rationalise it by saying "our product is new, with 0 users right now. Let's focus on the largest segments of users (Chrome, non-a11y) and ship…

That's market forces for you.

If you just chase money all the time, you always end up with shoddy crap — there's no incentive to be any better than barely adequate, so you're constantly riding that line.

We only end up with nice things when someone dedicates time and effort _despite_ market forces. Mediocre businesses and their besuited human avatars spend so much time insisting they're “passionate” because even _they_ know that giving a shit is the only way you get anything other than crap.

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

#188

Post by statictype »

cm2187 wrote: post #56
evmar wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking about this comment and I thought of the perfect analogy: accessibility. Everyone in the abstract would like to make accessible websites. Some people at Google are really passionate about accessibility and advocate for it, while others don't know as much about it or overlook it when building their product. There's surely some organization-level guidelines like "make sure your product is accessible befor…

Even for smaller websites, I don’t think any web developper doesn’t test how the website renders on Firefox and Safari. Not doing so during the development process seems like a deliberate decision rather than an omission from engineers that do not know better.

Plenty and plenty of developers never tested on anything more than IE. And today on anything more than IE and Chrome.

And plenty of developers test on IE and Chrome and Safari For iOS and call it a day.

Its very much not obvious that this is a deliberate decision and not an omission.

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

#189

Post by a_imho »

darkhorn wrote: post #182
a_imho wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found benchmarks to be a red herring. For me, the most significant factor seems to be an adblocker. Without one, most sites are barely usable.

You can block ads in Firefox without using addon. There is an setting for that. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/content-blocking

I only skimmed this page but I don't see it mention ads only trackers? Honestly, FF should just integrate something like ublock but this won't happen for reasons.

Anyway, the performance impacts alone are so huge, imo adblocking should be enabled by default for every user focused browser not supported by ad money. Simply a superior browsing experience.

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

#190

Post by msla »

roenxi wrote: post #6

One of the 'mysteries' of corporations is that they will either do nothing, or take an action that furthers their corporate interests. People don't seem to expect that of companies with a public face and seem surprised when they turn out to be just like any other corporate group. It's a coordination thing - coordinating a large group of people is so challenging only simple messages like 'make a profit' get through on…

When Firefox killed RSS support, they mutilated my bookmarks to remove all of the RSS URLs.

Those bookmarks were mine, and Firefox destroyed them without even giving me a chance to opt-out.

I can't use Firefox if it's going to do stuff like that. I use qutebrowser, instead.

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