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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

#31

Post by etaioinshrdlu »

austincheney wrote: post #22
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…

> Chrome generally outperforms Firefox. I don't agree. Chrome is pretty fast at executing JavaScript, but it is hundreds of times slower at executing DOM instructions compared to Firefox. It is also the slowest modern browser, by very far, at executing CSS animation.

And Safari has seemed to be best at DOM manip for something like 5 years...

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

#32

Post by TeMPOraL »

bprasanna wrote: post #16

I don't know whats going wrong with Firefox. Im still an active firefox user. I intentionally avoid Chrome and use it rarely to see if the site which doesn't work in Firefox also doesn't work in Chrome. IMHO Firefox didn't make me feel slow anytime. The whole point of Google Chrome automatically logging-in as Gmail user throughout the browser should have sounded alarm for people who care about privacy. I do agree Goo…

> I do agree Google brings latest of web tech to Chrome fast, but that makes other browsers falling behind in terms of features.

Fire and Motion. By being first to add stuff that users (web developers) immediately start expecting from everyone, they ensure everyone else is too busy catching up with them to actually compete. Thus, they secure their leadership position. See: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/01/06/fire-and-motion/.

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

#33

Post by TeMPOraL »

pjmlp wrote: post #20
bprasanna wrote: post #16

I don't know whats going wrong with Firefox. Im still an active firefox user. I intentionally avoid Chrome and use it rarely to see if the site which doesn't work in Firefox also doesn't work in Chrome. IMHO Firefox didn't make me feel slow anytime. The whole point of Google Chrome automatically logging-in as Gmail user throughout the browser should have sounded alarm for people who care about privacy. I do agree Goo…

Latest example I became aware of, React team speaking with Chrome one for special APIs.

Wow, that's just insulting. How did we get there?

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

#34

Post by blub »

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…

Google had an ever growing amount of Chrome advertising and bundling.

You think a browser becomes #1 by word of mouth advertising? They used almost every trick they could to make people switch.

I'm wondering why you felt the need to comment on the topic, if you don't even know such basic things.

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

#35

Post by blub »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #32
bprasanna wrote: post #16

I don't know whats going wrong with Firefox. Im still an active firefox user. I intentionally avoid Chrome and use it rarely to see if the site which doesn't work in Firefox also doesn't work in Chrome. IMHO Firefox didn't make me feel slow anytime. The whole point of Google Chrome automatically logging-in as Gmail user throughout the browser should have sounded alarm for people who care about privacy. I do agree Goo…

> I do agree Google brings latest of web tech to Chrome fast, but that makes other browsers falling behind in terms of features. Fire and Motion. By being first to add stuff that users (web developers) immediately start expecting from everyone, they ensure everyone else is too busy catching up with them to actually compete. Thus, they secure their leadership position. See: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/01/06/fi…

Yes, Google's using all sorts of these tactics against Firefox.

I don't think Ff will survive, too many useful idiots out there to have any hope left.

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

#36

Post by loup-vaillant »

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…

This lack of care is awfully convenient. That each "oops" gave them more Chrome users might be a happy coincidence at first, but I'm sure some exec noticed the effect and suggested they continue to "prioritise" that way.

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

#37

Post by jasonkester »

austincheney wrote: post #22
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…

> Chrome generally outperforms Firefox. I don't agree. Chrome is pretty fast at executing JavaScript, but it is hundreds of times slower at executing DOM instructions compared to Firefox. It is also the slowest modern browser, by very far, at executing CSS animation.

Part of Firefox's slowness is intentional on their part. They (as of last time I opened it) still refuse to silently auto-update the browser, and instead insist on telling you about it and making you watch.

So my experience opening Firefox always involves it saying "wait. Before we get to what you wanted to do, I'm going to spend a minute downloading a new version. OK, now I'm going to install it. Almost there. Now here are a bunch of browser tabs full of information about the things we changed. If you still want to do what you wanted to do after reading those, you can open a new tab. Because we filled the starting one with a message saying we updated Firefox, in case you hadn't noticed."

That means I never use Firefox unless I absolutely need to, to test that a new responsive layout works on them or after implementing a semi-cutting edge bit of the html spec. Which, of course means that they're guaranteed to have updated the thing at least once since I used it last, which means I get the whole two-minute sit and spin to load again.

Try the same usage pattern in chrome, and what happens is that Chrome loads up in zero point seven seconds and lets you get on with your life. It may then start updating in the background but you as the end user never need to hear about it.

It's nutty that Firefox still does this, 15 years after everybody else got it right.

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

#38

Post by eitland »

flukus wrote: post #28
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…

> The GUI features Google introduced were very important. Draggable, swappable tabs that can be pulled out into separate windows Meanwhile all the extensions for better tabs are still broken because the tab bar still exists across the top. They had a more capable browser then they killed it. I doubt these issue are visible in their telemetry. > address bars with integrated search engines The original mozilla suite ha…

> The original mozilla suite had this, no idea why it was separated in Firefox.

Privacy.

Mozilla thought it was a good idea to avoid sending every keystroke you type to Google.

Turns out people don't care or complain loudly that it doesn't work like in Chrome so now it is combined by default AFAIK, but there is a fallback for people like me (and many other HNers).

As for why consider what happens when you type .com

Until the .com this looks like a search.

Examples:

- internal websites with revealing URLs

- support websites for things yoou don't want ads for (mental conditions etc)

- etc

I used to be in the nothing to hide, nothing to fear camp but 2 decades of Internet use have changed my mind (even if I still think I have nothing to hide for police or family.)

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

#39

Post by loup-vaillant »

judge2020 wrote: post #29
black-tea wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> address bars with integrated search engines, That is the worst thing to happen to Web browsers that I can remember. When I type an address into that bar, I expect the browser to attempt to contact the server I specify. I do not expect it to decide that what I typed was a search term and send me off to Google. Firefox had actual quick searches in the address bar years before. That is where you prefix what you type w…

Back when IE was king and there were separate search/address bars, everyone I knew either went to search engine websites or used the search bar. Only those in my tech-literate circle occasionally typed in full domain names when they knew exactly what website they want to go to. The web was marketed as a place to "find anything", and the address bar didn't do that for the regular user.

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 being tracked.

(Less of a problem now that I use DuckDuckGo by default, though.)

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

#40

Post by 48309248302 »

judge2020 wrote: post #29
black-tea wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> address bars with integrated search engines, That is the worst thing to happen to Web browsers that I can remember. When I type an address into that bar, I expect the browser to attempt to contact the server I specify. I do not expect it to decide that what I typed was a search term and send me off to Google. Firefox had actual quick searches in the address bar years before. That is where you prefix what you type w…

Back when IE was king and there were separate search/address bars, everyone I knew either went to search engine websites or used the search bar. Only those in my tech-literate circle occasionally typed in full domain names when they knew exactly what website they want to go to. The web was marketed as a place to "find anything", and the address bar didn't do that for the regular user.

You can still do that in Firefox. It's in the settings.
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