Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A tale of how Google tried to win against Mozilla

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 194 posts

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

#41

Post by the_duke »

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…

Have you tried using the new Gmail interface on Firefox?

It's ridiculously slow, to the point of being completely unusable.

A Google engineer claimed here on HN the reason was that the UI framework uses some deprecated API that is polyfilled in Firefox but available on Chrome.

Something like that should never have launched, but may have been a somewhat acceptable reason months ago. Now, after being in production for months, not fixing this is either saying "we don't care about those Either of those amount to the same thing and classify as malicious to me.

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

#42

Post by pjmlp »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #33
pjmlp wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yep, https://twitter.com/acdlite/status/1089273195281080335

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

#43

Post by nautical »

the_duke wrote: post #41
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…

Have you tried using the new Gmail interface on Firefox? It's ridiculously slow, to the point of being completely unusable. A Google engineer claimed here on HN the reason was that the UI framework uses some deprecated API that is polyfilled in Firefox but available on Chrome. Something like that should never have launched, but may have been a somewhat acceptable reason months ago. Now, after being in production for…

I have completely shifted away from web UI to native application for the same reason.

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

#44

Post by ludston »

jasonkester wrote: post #37
austincheney wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 h…

Nice story, but Firefox about:preferences has an option like, "Use a background service to install updates".

I never checked it, so I guess it is on by default.

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

#46

Post by acqq »

ludston wrote: post #44
jasonkester wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

Nice story, but Firefox about:preferences has an option like, "Use a background service to install updates". I never checked it, so I guess it is on by default.

> about:preferences has an option like, "Use a background service to install updates".

But even if it's checked, it seems the Firefox managers/decision makers still think that it improves the users awareness on the Firefox brand that they spend your time on these (quoted from jasonkester's post):

"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."

vs.:

"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."

Note: Nevertheless I personally avoid Chrome as much as I can because I really believe Google has too much power. Monocultures, political power and all that. For me is Chrome in the position IE was before, even if currently a lot of web developers prefer it.

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

#47

Post by flukus »

eitland wrote: post #38
flukus wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 U…

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

It's not like that's the only choice. They could have local auto complete and only send the search request to google when you hit enter.

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

#48

Post by evmar »

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…

I was thinking about this comment and I thought of the perfect analogy: accessibility.

Everyone in the abstract would like to make accessible websites. Some people at Google are really passionate about accessibility and advocate for it, while others don't know as much about it or overlook it when building their product. There's surely some organization-level guidelines like "make sure your product is accessible before launch" that have likely changed over time as different people in power have prioritized different things, and with uneven enforcement when it comes time to launch a given product a given team will make a random judgement call as to whether to delay their launch or cut some other feature in order to make the product accessible. (Inevitably someone will protest here with "it's not that hard to make an accessible product, just do X Y Z and test configuration Q, and it's really important". That is true but doesn't change the reality that it has a cost that takes away from other work.)

Now substitute "Firefox compat" for "accessible" in the above and it all still applies pretty much perfectly.

I don't believe there's an anti-Firefox (or anti-accessibility) conspiracy at Google, but rather just that Firefox/a11y compat is not a hard blocker for launches. The net effect is the same, of course, in that it's as if every product somehow discovers a way to break a11y/Firefox, but it's actually just how entropy works -- unless you're continuously watching out for and verifying your a11y/Firefox it's inevitable you'll break it.

(disclaimer: I worked on Chrome but I wouldn't know either way if there is any higher-level conspiracy; as an engineer who has built multiple products in different orgs I have seen a general lack of specific guidelines/requirements for a11y/Firefox)

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

#49

Post by pjmlp »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #45
pjmlp wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, https://twitter.com/acdlite/status/1089273195281080335

They do claim it's the Chrome team that reached out to them, though.

One way or the other, will we ever see those "improvements" come up in other browsers?

Or it will be like when one reaches YouTube, Hangouts,... with other browsers?

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

#50

Post by sgift »

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…

> But he loses me on the next bit where he rules out incompetence and then jumps to org-level malice.

I think he has a reasonable justification for his position (two even):

- Google would have to be very incompetent for it to be incompetence (stated in the article)

- If Mozilla comes around every few weeks "hey guys, you broke it again" it's hard to argue they "don't care" or "don't prioritize" in the sense of "oh, we have so many things to do ..."

You even state it yourself: "People building say, Inbox were told it was acceptable to launch a product that is only accessible to one browser at launch."

Yeah. That's active malice if your company produces the one browser they choose. Whether you couch it as "simple prioritization" or not.

At the end of the day I still think the competition agencies should have thrown the law book at Google so hard that it bleeds. Start with a few billion and go up from there. Google had (has) a virtual search monopoly and actively used it to promote their browser. At least in the EU that's illegal. And that the agencies didn't kick Googles ass for it is for me one of their biggest regulation failures.

Post reply on HN