Live data from Hacker News

Mozilla claims Apple, Google and Microsoft force users to use default browsers

techradar.com

341–350 of 357 posts

Re: Mozilla claims Apple, Google and Microsoft force users to use default browsers

#341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brave has so few users that Wikimedia doesn’t even list them on the summary table. They get more hits from Apple Mail. https://analytics.wikimedia.org/dashboards/browsers/#all-sit... Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1102/

Brave has 55 million MAU. That is huge for a browser that's just 3 years old.

[deleted]

Re: Mozilla claims Apple, Google and Microsoft force users to use default browsers

#342
post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also completely remove Pocket and anything else like it. Yeah - hard agree. Pocket feels like a sheer gimmick. It cheapens the experience, and it hurts the trust people have for Firefox when they jam it in your face. I remember the original Firefox ethos where it was just a browser, and that was awesome.

At one point Firefox's slogan was "Your web the way you like it." Now it's more like "You can disable that new change by installing an extension and trusting its developer and whoever they might sell it to at a date TBD."

Yea. I'm just not thrilled to be returning to Firefox after over a decade of Chrome use. 2023 is going to be rough with the removal of the webRequest extension API.

I feel like Mozilla is having an identity crisis - but then again... when were they not.

Re: Mozilla claims Apple, Google and Microsoft force users to use default browsers

#343
post #321

If you want to (or have to) use Apple Business Manager (web portal to remotely manage a number of IOS devices) Apple explicitely requires you to either use Safari or Edge, Firefox doesn't work. So much for the web as the "OS agnostic" interface for the 21st century.

Have you tried lying to Apple?

https://www.ghacks.net/2022/07/10/apples-business-website-is...

Re: Mozilla claims Apple, Google and Microsoft force users to use default browsers

#344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to wonder what Mozilla are doing with $400m a year.

They've put improving their browser on hold to focus on their new passion: fighting decentralized software https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/fellow-research-decen...

(1) That's Mozilla Foundation, which doesn't produce a browser in the first place. And (2) that article is not even anti-decentralization. It's just calling out that the same old stuff is happening in that world too, and the same tools that (poorly) combat that stuff won't work in the decentralized world. The only value judgement is against emergent effects like radicalization; nothing against decentralization itself.

What's the problem again?

Re: Mozilla claims Apple, Google and Microsoft force users to use default browsers

#345
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe Mozilla can knock off the grandstanding, the money wasting, the back patting, and just work on making a competitive browser. You can have the best product in the market but if the deck is unfairly stacked against you it doesn't matter how good your product is.

Firefox is by no means the "best" product, it's an average Chrome clone that's worse than competing Chromium derivatives (Brave, Vivaldi, Edge, etc) from a compatibility and performance point of view. Back when Firefox actually was the best product, it stole ~30% (or even more?) marketshare from Internet Explorer, despite the latter being bundled with the OS. Firefox can be the best browser with third-party add-ons (…

> Firefox is by no means the "best" product, it's an average Chrome clone that's worse than competing Chromium derivatives (Brave, Vivaldi, Edge, etc)

This is software comedy gold. If Firefox is a clone of Chrome then what isn't a clone? Is Safari a clone of Chrome because it has the tabs that Chrome took from Firefox?

Re: Mozilla claims Apple, Google and Microsoft force users to use default browsers

#346
post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the point of such keys is that you can't extract the private part. I've never met a single service that supports Webauthn and doesn't allow you to have multiple tokens: every time I enroll into a new service, I do this: add physical key, add desktop (Windows Hello) if it's personal, add laptop (Touch ID) of it's work and maybe Face ID on iPad.

I have close to a thousand unique websites and passwords in my password manager. It is completely unreasonable for me to expect to re-enroll a thousand times.

Then WebAuthn and PassKey isn't for you. I absolutely do not want secret key to be exportable in this context.

Re: Mozilla claims Apple, Google and Microsoft force users to use default browsers

#347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure I'll get downvoted for this and not believed by hardly anyone on this crowd so I'll keep it short and without evidence, only testimony: I was a US intelligence officer for some time. Not woth NSA, but did a lot of work with NSA, CIA, and the Bureau. The involvement between the US intelligence agencies and FAANG (in terms of the rough narrative involved) is a lot less impressive and threatening than people he…

This directly contradicts nearly everything that was stated by Snowden, where his identity is not only known and affirmed, but also came with extensive documentation affirming, more or less, everything he said. For one such example, here's a fun manual from the NSA on spying on Skype in realtime [1]. It even comes with a handy Q&A technical FAQ like ensuring you can also get the chat of the person the target is speak…

My theory behind snowden is that the NSA "leaked" a bunch of stuff through him that isn't actually true. It was there to provide a chilling effect so that people would use the internet with fear. After all that came out people started self-censoring.

Re: Mozilla claims Apple, Google and Microsoft force users to use default browsers

#348
post #29

Is their Google search deal (~$400m a year) that expires next year being renewed? If not, might explain some of the desire to bite the hand that has fed it for so long.

You have to wonder what Mozilla are doing with $400m a year.

It would sure be cool if they fixed this bug.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=505521

Note: The spiciest comments are labelled "admin reviewed" and collapsed by default.

Post reply on HN