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Chrome Won

andreasgal.com

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Re: Chrome Won

#251

Post by stephenr »

home_boi wrote: post #225
stephenr wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think google is pushing web-everything and chromebooks? They want to own the entire platform just as Microsoft did.

Their intention doesn't matter. Companies can strive for a monopoly without breaking rules. The point is that at this moment, they don't have it and there is high competition (although oligopolies) in both mobile and desktop preventing them from having a platform monopoly.

Your comment that I replied to, didn't talk about intentions, and neither did I.

You said "Microsoft owned the whole stack" (OS, Office Suite, Browser). My response is, that Google is trying to achieve the same thing: The blurred O/S+Browser that is Chrome, and browser based software like Google Apps.

You're right, that what they intend to do with said monopoly is not relevant to that specific point. The point is that both saw an advantage of some kind that made it worthwhile having control over a large portion of the software their user's ran.

Where it does matter though, is that in the Microsoft monopoly, it was a monopoly of defaults and business contracts only. Nothing technically prevented someone from installing a separate browser, a separate office suite, etc., on their computer.

With a Chromebook, which Google is pushing heavily in education, what options do you have when it comes to installing an office suite? What options do you have when it comes to installing a different browser?

If your answer is "Android Apps", I suggest you read up on Google's own docs, which show that just 10% of devices support that functionality, only 7% support it without using a Beta.

Re: Chrome Won

#252

Post by sjun »

jcranmer wrote: post #156
geoelectric wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was also at Mozilla during the time period Andreas outlines--I worked on the Firefox OS test team, for that matter, almost from the beginning of it graduating from Boot2Gecko as a Labs project until right before it got killed. While my perspective isn't as strategic or metrics-driven as his, I had a lot of time to observe and think as both a community member and Mozilla employee. FxOS also wasn't my baby, so there'…

Having been a contributor (mostly to Thunderbird, though) for a decade, I hold that Mozilla's biggest mistake was effectively killing off embedding and stable extension APIs. They merrily took the opportunity afforded by the Gecko 2 transition to kill all the compatibility, which is understandable, but the task of providing a simple frozen or at least not-going-to-change-soon API kept falling off the radar. It meant…

I see WebExtensions as taking a good/easy API that the Chromium team has created and proven and standardizing it like they standardized the web.

I never worked on the previous Firefox extension API but I find it ridiculously easy to have a cross platform extension that works on Chromium and Firefox. That counts for something.

Re: Chrome Won

#253

Post by nabaraz »

theprop wrote: post #136

I primarily use the Epic Privacy Browser (it is chromium based). No other browser except TOR comes close to them in terms of privacy.

So many mention of Epic browser in this thread. Is this some kind of marketing effort? How can a closed-source software be better in terms of privacy?

Re: Chrome Won

#254

Post by Grue3 »

It sure did. We could've had at least one open-source, configurable, programmable browser for power users, now Firefox is removing XUL, and power users don't have a choice of a browser anymore. And for what purpose? Mozilla's management should be listed in the dictionary as the definition of "incompetency".

Re: Chrome Won

#255

Post by coldtea »

flukus wrote: post #238
coldtea wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only sites I've seen that only work on Chrome are generally due to the developers being lazy and only targeting the top platform. That was the case with sites only working on IE 6. What did you expect? And after some market share point, it's not about laziness either, it makes business sense to not waste time for a small percentage of users (100% reach is not always better than 90% reach -- there's this thing c…

> And after some market share point, it's not about laziness either, it makes business sense to not waste time for a small percentage of users (100% reach is not always better than 90% reach -- there's this thing called "opportunity cost"). A lot of companies that thought short term like that our paying through the nose for the decision now because they are still stuck on IE6. There is a business case for avoiding ve…

That was for using special IE-only features, like Active-X and co, that were never part of the standards.

Not about not caring to test/optimize for other browsers, or using standard stuff some browser gets out faster -- which is what some companies do today with Chrome.

Re: Chrome Won

#256

Post by _b8r0 »

Chrome didn't win. Android did.

The proliferation of Android devices with Chrome is where that popularity is coming from. Ironically, had FirefoxOS been a success, we'd probably see a very different graph. Safari shows up for the same reason, just a different platform.

As for a turnaround, I'm using Firefox to type this. It's easy to think desktops don't matter in a world of tablets, phones and mobile devices but they do.

Firefox is about choice and an open web. Chrome is about user tracking and advertising. As long as Firefox exists, there will be people using it.

Re: Chrome Won

#257

Post by dorfsmay »

glogla wrote: post #229
home_boi wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there is more than just web browsing. Microsoft owned the entire platform at one point.

Google owns Android, the most used computing platform in the world. It is official, Google is the new Microsoft.

To me, that's one more reason to use Firefox over Chrome/Chromium.

Re: Chrome Won

#258

Post by pjmlp »

qznc wrote: post #240
diminish wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla lost the mobile OS war unfortunately if that what's inspiring you. What's next isn't clear to me

The Mobile OS war can still be continued. Mozilla should join forces with Lineage OS instead of wasting time with their own. Do the embrace, extend, extinguish strategy with Android. Secure messaging is also still a hot topic. Join forces with Signal or Wire or Matrix or XMPP. For example, Wire intends to open source their server code and enable federation [0]. Voice control requires some weight for an Open Source so…

I don't know a single Android user that even knows what Lineage OS is all about.

Re: Chrome Won

#259

Post by Joeri »

aerovistae wrote: post #16
fiatjaf wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mobile thing is just mass distraction. Everybody says "mobile" is eating the world, but when you look at it, 99 in 100 mobile core users are stupid facebookers who don't even know what is the internet and wouldn't be using the internet at all if it wasn't for Facebook, Instagram or whatever share-your-stupid-life network they may be using.

I have secretly held this opinion for years. 4 out of 5 times that I look over someone's shoulder at their phone on the train, they're rapidly scrolling through a feed of photos, memes, and emote-filled status updates, endlessly. It scares me, to be honest. I wonder where this tendency in people will lead in the very long run, particularly when you consider the ideas suggested by companies like Neuralink. It brings B…

I've been taking public transportation from before the era people had their smartphones with them. What I used to see where people reading tabloid newspapers, celebrity magazines, or cheap novels; here and there the rare person who was reading something interesting and insightful, and most people staring out of the window with their eyes glazed over. What I see now is lots of instagram, snapchat, facebook and mobile games, with a rare person here or there who is reading actual long-form articles, and with a minority of people staring out the window with their eyes glazed over. I don't think the difference is all that big to be honest, except that fewer people stare out the window.

What amuses me is when I see someone reading an actual physical book. It is so rare, and it is almost every time someone trying to be hip.

Re: Chrome Won

#260

Post by pjmlp »

pcwalton wrote: post #224
vatotemking wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know that HN loves Rust and at the risk of being burned at the stakes, i'd say Rust is overrated. Lets get real, it doesn't have that many users, its not even on top of TIOBE. If you are going to start a career in Rust, good luck finding any jobs. I saw maybe one or 2 in the past, and it requires knowledge of C/C++ anyways. You might say, "its new language give it a break" but I bet Kotlin will overtake it by the e…

> Servo is an "experimental" browser engine. While Chromium is cranking out features, servo is yet to reach version 1.0. This would be a more convincing point if any of memory safety, parallel styling, parallel layout, retained mode rendering as suggested by the GPU vendors, and so forth were on Chromium's roadmap.

I agree with you, but in the end it is a Beta vs VHS uphill battle.
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