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Choose Firefox Now, Or Later You Won't Get A Choice

robert.ocallahan.org

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Re: Choose Firefox Now, Or Later You Won't Get A Choice

#251

Post by stephenr »

DCKing wrote: post #236
lucb1e wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google really does not care if you use Firefox, Chrome, iOS, Android or whatever I think they do. Maybe it's not a huge deal, but it's an advantage to control more aspects of what users use (ISP, OS, browser, and finally the service itself). With Google Chrome they can make anything the way they want and support any feature they like, whereas with Firefox they'd have to wait for the guys at Mozilla to agree with so…

> I think they do. Maybe it's not a huge deal, but it's an advantage to control more aspects of what users use (ISP, OS, browser, and finally the service itself). Fair enough. Make it "Google really does not care much if you use Firefox, Chrome, iOS, Android or whatever". The point is that even if Google prefers that you use Chrome, it's not an argument to go for vendor lock-in. It's an argument maybe for wanting to…

> It's an argument maybe for wanting to increase market share. This piece suggests that Google has motivation for breaking other platforms though, which I find ridiculous as it will only diminish their returns.

I'm going to guess you weren't active in the industry when Microsoft was at it's "peak".

Try this little scenario in your head:

Google owns web properties that are highly trafficked on a variety of devices/browsers.

Google then says "hey guys we're going to make the web better by building a browser ourselves!".

They're quick to focus on making it faster using existing standard technologies.

A bit later they create some non-standard stuff for their browser like Dart, Native Client, WebP, etc.

Slowly they start to rely on these new things they've created on their highly trafficked websites, and encourage people to use their browser because it will give "a better experience".

Yes, some people will find an alternative (if they are able to make that choice, and it hasn't been bought out/squeezed out by Google's "free" offering) thus "hurting" Google, but if they have to sacrifice some of their user base in order to have more control over the rest of the user base, they will absolutely do that.

Re: Choose Firefox Now, Or Later You Won't Get A Choice

#252

Post by chestnut-tree »

jfuhrman wrote: post #136

For those saying Google is a benevolent company, here are a few signs that the bean counters are taking over: Tracking Google Apps for Education and even paid Google Apps for Business emails to build ad profiles, making misleading statement to the public that they're not doing so, and then when it finally came to statements to federal court, lacking the dare to continue lying and finally confessing the truth and then…

I don't view Google as either evil or benevolent. I view them as a corporation that acts in its own self-interest (as you'd expect). They do a lot of good things for the tech community such as releasing open source code. However, I often avoid their products because they are not open about what they track and record. That doesn't matter to many people, including many people in the tech community, but it matters to me.

Google arguably tracks online activity more than any other company. They propbably know more about your online behaviour than you do yourself. They have made tracking appear to be a perfectly reasonable and normal thing to do. They even have an OS (ChromeOS) that tracks everything you do from the apps you use to the web pages you visit, to even the documents you print (all routed through Google's cloud print service, even if your printer is sitting next to your ChromeBook). This isn't even done anonymously given that you have to sign in to use these services (you can't use a ChromeBook without signing in, using it as a guest limits what you can do). How many people would be happy to sign in to MacOS, Windows, Linux and know that everything they were doing was being recorded and tracked? Meanwhile, the tech community just gives Google the easiest ride possible on such matters.

I don't believe Google does anything remotely sinister with the data it collects. But it is a staggering amount of data that they capture. And if you read their lengthy privacy policy, it's notable how little it tells you. How is my data aggregated? Who sees it inside Google? How is it anonymised (if indeed it is - no mention of this in their privacy policy). Some of Google's services ask for very personal info: date of birth, mobile phone number. It's reasonable to want to know what Google uses this data for. Is is really just for security and verification? If they cared about privacy, they'd actually tell you. Their statements about privacy are always framed in terms of security. Yes, privacy is not possible without security, but security does not equal privacy. To me Google's attitude is summed up thus: we'll do everything to keep yoru data secure but we won't stop tracking you to death.

Re: Choose Firefox Now, Or Later You Won't Get A Choice

#253

Post by schwap »

frooxie wrote: post #108
srean wrote: post #43

Almost every other comment that have been posted so far are complaining that FF tabs are not independent processes. Let me express my contrarian opinion. For my use case FF is just excellent and has served me well, I have absolutely no complains now. There was a time when FF leaked, and held a lot of memory, that time has since passed, at least seams so. I regularly keep several hundreds of tabs open for months on en…

I also keep several hundreds of tabs open for months on end. I use Firefox and have simply accepted that it will crash about four times per day, requiring me to wait a few minutes while it restarts and reloads the tabs.

You can set Firefox to only reload tabs on access.

Re: Choose Firefox Now, Or Later You Won't Get A Choice

#254

Post by WorldWideWayne »

pm90 wrote: post #131
Kenji wrote: post #123

Why should we choose a product that is qualitatively worse (in my opinion, this is up to debate, but just compare the JavaScript engine, V8 owns) just to keep having a choice? A free market works exactly because people choose what they like the most and let the things that can't compete die. Through this darwinian selection, products gradually converge towards a better quality. What you are proposing is completely ir…

Not really. People chose windows because there was simply no other choice (they still do). Simple Darwinian selection is rarely that simple. Free markets are rarely really free.

I choose Windows for my home and business because it's got the most logical and stable desktop experience. It's simple, utilitarian and it works extremely well as evidenced by it's world-wide usage in homes and businesses of all sizes.

I choose Windows Server for my business because it's by far the easiest network server system to setup and maintain while still offering me the absolute best experience for maintenance and control of my enterprise.

Clicky-clicky-click in the free UI-admin-tool that is included and I've got a new IIS web site up. Click...I've got a new SQL Server database built. Click...I've got a a new Virtual Machine, etc. Click...I've got a .NET app and developer workflow already built and scaffolded without having to memorize one single command.

Unix operating systems including Apple's don't offer anything even close to the experience that you get with Windows. That's why people choose Windows over Unix when they actually think about it. After that, they choose Windows simply because everybody else is using it, making it the default choice. (This is all in my highly experienced opinion of course.)

Re: Choose Firefox Now, Or Later You Won't Get A Choice

#255

Post by Silhouette »

shangxiao wrote: post #201
lucb1e wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you make software (which people want to use, of course) and notice a mainstream open source browser (in this case Firefox) being slow at something in particular, wouldn't it be advantageous to you and everyone else if some of you could briefly look under the hood to see what the problem is? Maybe not fix the bug, but at least let Mozilla know that there is a pain point somewhere (perhaps with specific source files…

Have you ever "looked under the hood" ? Browsers aren't your average weekend open source project, they're behemoths :) I once checked out chromium in order to test out whether file writing would be easy to do. The size of the project alone meant it took me forever to find out where to patch it. (Edit: This was something like 5 years ago before I started to grow a distaste for Chrome)

Have you ever "looked under the hood" ? Browsers aren't your average weekend open source project, they're behemoths

I've sometimes wondered whether the barrier to entry is the biggest thing holding back FOSS.

I'm an experienced developer, quite capable of diving into the kind of code these projects run. Now and then I have enough spare time that I might be able to make a useful contribution. I would be happy to support some of these projects in the spirit of giving something back.

Every single time I look at a major FOSS project where I'd like to help, the very first thing I run into in the developer documentation is an installation/build process a mile long with absurd overheads. Large FOSS projects often require a whole set of custom tools. Many don't comply with normal conventions on the host OS; I'm on Windows, and assuming every developer in the world runs Linux is a particularly common problem. Quite a few require installation of a specific version of a certain compiler toolchain.

I understand that portability is difficult. I've worked on projects that had to be compiled on many different platforms. I've worked on projects that had to be cross-compiled from one platform to run on another. The issues raised by these environments aren't trivial.

Even so, I have never worked on a successful professional project that managed to make things as complicated as large FOSS projects almost always do. And while I'm happy to help out if I can, I simply don't have time to ensure that I've got this week's project's specific preferred version of a VCS, Bash, GCC, and so on installed so they clutter my standard file system, environment settings, registry, editor/IDE preferences, and all the other things that any developer surely wants as clean and tidy as possible while they work.

Re: Choose Firefox Now, Or Later You Won't Get A Choice

#256

Post by ZenoArrow »

tambourine_man wrote: post #167

If your only argument is ideology, you are in serious trouble. I know from experience. Firefox changed the game back in the early 2000s not only because it fought for the open web, but because it was way better than the competition. Granted, beating a very actively developed product is much harder than a stagnant one. Google's got a lot of smart people working on it. I think Mozilla is going to have radicalize and go…

If eye candy is more of a feature to you than privacy then what does that say? Would you give up all privacy and choice for something flashy?

Re: Choose Firefox Now, Or Later You Won't Get A Choice

#257

Post by DCKing »

stephenr wrote: post #251
DCKing wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think they do. Maybe it's not a huge deal, but it's an advantage to control more aspects of what users use (ISP, OS, browser, and finally the service itself). Fair enough. Make it "Google really does not care much if you use Firefox, Chrome, iOS, Android or whatever". The point is that even if Google prefers that you use Chrome, it's not an argument to go for vendor lock-in. It's an argument maybe for wanting to…

> It's an argument maybe for wanting to increase market share. This piece suggests that Google has motivation for breaking other platforms though, which I find ridiculous as it will only diminish their returns. I'm going to guess you weren't active in the industry when Microsoft was at it's "peak". Try this little scenario in your head: Google owns web properties that are highly trafficked on a variety of devices/bro…

> I'm going to guess you weren't active in the industry when Microsoft was at it's "peak".

Microsoft sold their platforms for money. Microsoft never open sourced anything. All of this "non-standard stuff" is open sourced. Dart and WebP work in Firefox as good as they do in Chrome. NaCl is open source and it looks like a failed project. How is this even remotely comparable to Microsoft's practices?

Google are being assholes often and they should be called out for it. I agree that it is frightening that they are getting so much power.

But this "Google is the next Microsoft" meme is demonstrably wrong and should die.

Re: Choose Firefox Now, Or Later You Won't Get A Choice

#258

Post by lucb1e »

shangxiao wrote: post #201
lucb1e wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you make software (which people want to use, of course) and notice a mainstream open source browser (in this case Firefox) being slow at something in particular, wouldn't it be advantageous to you and everyone else if some of you could briefly look under the hood to see what the problem is? Maybe not fix the bug, but at least let Mozilla know that there is a pain point somewhere (perhaps with specific source files…

Have you ever "looked under the hood" ? Browsers aren't your average weekend open source project, they're behemoths :) I once checked out chromium in order to test out whether file writing would be easy to do. The size of the project alone meant it took me forever to find out where to patch it. (Edit: This was something like 5 years ago before I started to grow a distaste for Chrome)

> Have you ever "looked under the hood" ?

Actually, I have. I know it's not small, but Firefox' code was quite structured.

Re: Choose Firefox Now, Or Later You Won't Get A Choice

#260

Post by stephenr »

personZ wrote: post #237
kybernetyk wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is that really the behavior HN wants? He/She might have good reasons for anonymity. As long as the post contributes to the discussion I don't really care if the account is 10 years or 10 days old or if it has been posted 20 days ago.

It doesn't contribute to the discussion. It's a wall of noise hit list of entirely random quality, that draws absolute, nefarious conclusions from complex situations. If someone hates Google, then sure, it's "contributing". If you're just looking for information it's just extremist nonsense. Indeed, this very submission was already submitted a week ago (just as that hit list appeared before), and of course would have…

Right, because on a comment thread about google's ever-increasing control over the web/etc, the following are irrelevant:

* A court case about breaching US federal privacy laws

* A court case about Google using it's relationship with device manufacturers to negatively impact a company with a competing service

* An article about how Google tracks mobile users and the disclosure/notification about said tracking, with input from the EFF

* An article about how Google was less than open and transparent about the handling of an employee who spied on/stalked four underage users of Google services

* Several articles about what are basically deceptive practices - paid inclusions, much less identifiable ads compared to organic search results and artificially increasing the search rank of it's own properties when a search mentions a specific competitor

* An article about Google's decision to refuse any interaction with a news agency that posted an article discussing Google in relation to privacy concerns, in which they demonstrate the risks by publishing material about Eric Schmidt that was found via google searches

But no, you are right. None of them are relevant. Remember what I said in another comment about cult-like status? Should I call Rick Ross for you?

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