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Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

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Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#311

Post by ahartmetz »

kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #245
ahartmetz wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what does it matter to you? You can ignore it. It's a good browser and it doesn't insert political messages into websites.

They explicitly said the want to do more censorship and promote fake news (like the New York Times), so how can I trust that they won't influence my browsing? What is their differentiating factor to Google now? It is a 180° turn on what they seemed to stand for in the past, an open web.

> fake news like the NY times

...OK?

> What is their differentiating factor to Google now?

Mozilla doesn't gather your data to show you ads

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#312

Post by GoblinSlayer »

bool3max wrote: post #124
NoboruWataya wrote: post #103

It's a depressing situation, particularly knowing that Firefox is pretty much kept alive at Google's whim. It makes one seriously wonder whether it is feasible at all to maintain an independent open-source web browser in 2021. People tend to blame Mozilla's management and I'm sure there have been management failures but I'm not sure what they could do to make Firefox a thriving, independent, sustainable browser. It s…

I have to strongly agree with your last point - I also never understood the massive hard-on that the technical user-base has against useful telemetry. Perhaps it's just the loud minority, but to me it seems that most of them have never worked on an user-facing product (for-profit or not). Yes, users can themselves explicitly communicate feedback regarding the product or its features, and no, most of them don't do tha…

I work on a user-facing product and our users don't hesitate to provide feedback on stuff like long click sequences or bad keyboard navigation.

In case of mozilla specifically telemetry didn't help them to not destroy firefox's UI.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#313

Post by Mikeb85 »

K0nserv wrote: post #153

I've been meaning to write almost exactly this blog post for a while now, glad that someone else did it. Two things that I think are worth calling out: 1. In many ways Apple's anti-competitive behaviour on iOS/iPadOS is a blessing. It's one of the few things that keep Chromium's dominance in check. Of course, it's not great that Apple are stifling innovation like this, but consider the alternative: Chromium dominance…

1 is the worst possible rationale I've ever heard.

"Let's support a company that abuses its customers, developers and refuses to implement web standards just so a company that makes a far superior product doesn't gain more market share..."

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#315

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

I do my part, using firefox on all my devices and insisting it to be the main browser in my company. Interestingly, I also feel that Firefox is actually superior to Chrome in every aspect that matters: it is faster, passwords sync better and more reliably, and the user interface is better.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#316

Post by addicted »

jasode wrote: post #134
zesterer wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So does Google really control us that much? Yes. Contributing code to something doesn't mean that you suddenly control the direction of that thing. Google still makes the big decisions about what gets to enter the codebase: which web features to support, which ones to deprecate, how to interpret standards, and how to slowly align the web with their own financial incentives.

>Yes. Contributing code to something doesn't mean that you suddenly control the direction of that thing. I think the idea of gp's point about others forking code means the forkers can also influence the code because they control the fork . Otherwise, if we take your comment at face value, we'd conclude that Google's contributions to Webkit means it can't "suddenly control the direction" of Apple's Webkit. That's true…

This makes no sense because it ignores the reality that unlike KHTML, or WebKit, the vast majority of browsers were not based on those rendering engines. There was never a time where a web app developer saw your browser was not Webkit or KHTML based and told you to upgrade to them on every platform. There was never a time where KHTML or Webkit completely dominated browser share.

There was also a much wider array of browser engines at the time (MS had 2, Opera had 1, Firefox had much higher market share than it does today).

So KHTML/Webkit hardly had control over the web the way Chromium might because they never had the market share Chromium did, and further, they were never the dominant engine embedded in nearly every browser the way Chromium/Blink are now.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#317

Post by jefftk »

72deluxe wrote: post #137
jefftk wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. You can donate to the Mozilla Foundation, but they will use your money for outreach and advocacy, not Firefox.

This seems to be a repeat of the GNOME issues years and years and years ago where people would complain that donations were used to try and encourage women to program instead of spending it on infrastructure etc. I seem to remember people who complained about it were shouted down as mysogenist. It seems the organisations forget why they're here - to write software, not to try and solve all of mankind's issues and inj…

The Mozilla Foundation has seen their role as much larger than that for a long time. The first Mozilla manifesto came out in 2008 [1] and includes:

The Mozilla Foundation pledges to support the Mozilla Manifesto in its activities. Specifically, we will:

- build and enable open-source technologies and communities that support the Manifesto's principles; build and deliver great consumer products that support the Manifesto's principles;

- use the Mozilla assets (intellectual property such as copyrights and trademarks, infrastructure, funds, and reputation) to keep the Internet an open platform;

- promote models for creating economic value for the public benefit; and

- promote the Mozilla Manifesto principles in public discourse and within the Internet industry

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20081218222911/http://www.mozill...

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#318

Post by spicybright »

raxxorrax wrote: post #29
technobabbler wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be easier for companies (who aren't anti Google) to administer Chrome policy via their existing Google/Gmail accounts and Google Workspace. Profiles, sync, extensions, etc. can all be centrally administered. And also deployed to Chromebooks for certain users. All without having to manage the overhead of a minority browser with Especially for any web shop... Firefox is even less relevant than Microsoft now an…

I couldn't name you a single webapp that requires Chrome and it wouldn't fit our quality p expectations and would get booted. Apps that require a certain browser will cause problems in the future or force Chrome to become IE. Can you centrally administrate Google accounts? Because employees certainly aren't allowed to use their privat ones.

Small business/government sites in the US sadly are very guilty of breaking. Esp. for payments, which makes me feel like I'm back in the late 90's with form submissions...

I use chrome for important stuff for that reason.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#319

Post by addicted »

DeathArrow wrote: post #138
resonious wrote: post #53

I used to hold the same opinion: Google controls the world because everything is Blink/Chromium based! Must use Firefox to protest! Then I looked closer look at the history of Chromium and Blink. The reality is that a lot of the other "Chromium-based" browsers actually only use the Blink renderer. They don't use many (if any) other Chromium components other than probably V8. In ancient times, Blink itself was a fork…

>I used to hold the same opinion: Google controls the world because everything is Blink/Chromium based! Must use Firefox to protest! The end users don't care about who controls what. They care about having a simple, fast browser who just works.

People said this about IE as well.

In fact, what's often forgotten is that even before MS's illegal monopolization, IE dominated Netscape because it was genuinely better.

But a few short years later it was regular end users who were suffering due to IE and it's lack of competition, which led to MS sleeping on it and letting security issues (both technical and social) pile up.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#320

Post by truculent »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #313
K0nserv wrote: post #153

I've been meaning to write almost exactly this blog post for a while now, glad that someone else did it. Two things that I think are worth calling out: 1. In many ways Apple's anti-competitive behaviour on iOS/iPadOS is a blessing. It's one of the few things that keep Chromium's dominance in check. Of course, it's not great that Apple are stifling innovation like this, but consider the alternative: Chromium dominance…

1 is the worst possible rationale I've ever heard. "Let's support a company that abuses its customers, developers and refuses to implement web standards just so a company that makes a far superior product doesn't gain more market share..."

They aren't advocating or supporting Apple, though. They are merely pointing out that in suchg a dire situation as the one we have now, Apple's interests partially align with consumer interests.

I think their tone makes it relatively clear that this is not a healthy state to be in!

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