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The Browser Monopoly

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Re: The Browser Monopoly

#51

Post by wpietri »

abtinf wrote: post #5

I was shocked to see the browser market share graph. Chrome appears to be collapsing on itself, dropping from from an all-time high of 65.4% to 55.4% in just 16 months, effectively losing all share gains since 2016. But then I looked closer at the data, noticing that only net 120 basis points of the change can be explained by share changes in the other browsers. The rest of the data seems to be missing, as the number…

"Fundamentally discredits" strikes me as extraordinarily dramatic.

Yes, there's a dip right at the end. But browser stats are pretty noisy, so it could be nothing. Statcounter, for example, doesn't show that drop: https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share#monthly-2009...

And Wikipedia's data similarly doesn't show that big falloff: https://analytics.wikimedia.org/dashboards/browsers/#all-sit...

Even looking at just the original one graph, the only thing showing a big rise is IE, with a 39% jump in usage. The author makes clear how that fits his thesis, in that Edge is now built on Chrome.

Re: The Browser Monopoly

#52

Post by Gpetrium »

Monopolies like these are partially built by the demand side flowing towards the option of least resistance. In such case, the average person will float towards browser X when Y seems to, for example, become slower, take more processing power or pure peer pressure "I can't believe you are still using browser P, it is so slow!".

As demand floats towards few suppliers, organizations with the most value to gain from it will either look to purchase one of the current suppliers or increase investment to outpace its competitors. In time, the market becomes a monopoly/oligopoly due to both demand (customer) and supply (org/biz interests). At this point, the mono/oli has the means to change things, either slowly or drastically, to maximize their gains.

Unless a good portion of society takes further interest in keeping what they believe to be right (e.g. privacy) and put their money and time where their belief is, non-profit orgs or less agressive ones are most likely to lose 99 out of 100 times in the long run. This is a human nature challenge, not necessarily an entity problem.

Re: The Browser Monopoly

#53

Post by [deleted] »

basch wrote: post #3

>Chrome introduced a lot of neat new features (Porn “Incognito Mode,” multithreaded memory changes, tabs and more). Now chrome is getting credit for in private browsing and tabs? (Safari and Opera respectively. Phoenix/Firefox popularized them long before Chrome was a twinkle.) >It is mind-boggling that basic tools like these are not yet standard features in browsers. How long have browsers offered to save passwords?…

[deleted]

Re: The Browser Monopoly

#54

Post by basch »

jsutton wrote: post #43
basch wrote: post #3

>Chrome introduced a lot of neat new features (Porn “Incognito Mode,” multithreaded memory changes, tabs and more). Now chrome is getting credit for in private browsing and tabs? (Safari and Opera respectively. Phoenix/Firefox popularized them long before Chrome was a twinkle.) >It is mind-boggling that basic tools like these are not yet standard features in browsers. How long have browsers offered to save passwords?…

Password managers don't hold your password in plaintext, so the liability there only exists if you don't think the latest encryption methods are enough.

Thats not true. Theres other ways into your account besides breaking encryption. Off the top of my head, a brick to my head and the use of my thumbprint would do it.

Unlike how a normal service is normally supposed to store my password (hashed, but with no copy of the original password anywhere, EVENT THE LOGS) the password manager DOES retain a plain text copy of a password, not JUST a hashed derivative.

Re: The Browser Monopoly

#55

Post by pmikesell »

aluren wrote: post #23

I don't get why people (I mean technically minded people who are aware of privacy issues and so on) don't just use firefox. They are pretty much at feature parity (Firefox may even get the edge due to the fantastic extensions ecosystem), except one spies on you and the other doesn't. Why do people find the switch so hard? In addition, Firefox + ublokc origin is pretty much the only option on mobile if you want to blo…

I'm a technically minded person. I've been using web browsers since NCSA Mosaic. I switch browsers probably once per decade (mosaic -> netscape navigator -> firefox -> chrome).

At the time I started using Chrome IE was the dominant web browser and firefox was losing the war because content creators were continually accidentally making things work in IE only. (By "accidentally" I mean that the standards were very confusing, and understanding what would work with which browser was a continual battle, and Microsoft had a good 15 years under its belt of attempting to make the web a windows only affair).

So then Chrome comes along, backed my Google, and people started treating it as a first class citizen. Sites were belt to run with, and tested on Chrome.

Fast forward to now. I actually do want to have a wide array of ad sponsored content on the internet because I appreciate the free content and I'm not going to pay 30 different 5$ per month subscriptions for stuff I might read. Are they tracking me? Yes. When I search for lawn mowers online I get spams (which gmail seems to filter just fine) and my rarely logged into facebook feed is full of lawn mower ads. I use in-cognito when I want to see what a google or linked in search looks like without my user context. I use ABP when sites are too aggressive with their ads.

And it's all fine. I suspect my current experience is common, to answer your question.

Re: The Browser Monopoly

#56

Post by skrowl »

The_rationalist wrote: post #37

The number of features that gecko (Firefox) lack vs blink (chromiums) is growing everyday... In a factual sense, mozilla slow down the evolution of the web and what it allow web masters to create. But it is nothing in comparison of safari which is pathetically behind blink and gecko feature wise. It's a shame that the most popular websites don't team up to block safari and ask to install a browser that supports web s…

For most front-end web devs, iOS Safari is the new IE6.

Re: The Browser Monopoly

#57

Post by linza »

cameronbrown wrote: post #45
aluren wrote: post #23

I don't get why people (I mean technically minded people who are aware of privacy issues and so on) don't just use firefox. They are pretty much at feature parity (Firefox may even get the edge due to the fantastic extensions ecosystem), except one spies on you and the other doesn't. Why do people find the switch so hard? In addition, Firefox + ublokc origin is pretty much the only option on mobile if you want to blo…

I want to like Firefox, and I use it regularly, but I just veer back to Chrome. I still prefer the UI and extensions (which Chrome still has the 'edge' in).

Same here. I use Firefox+adblocker on mobile for some sites. I don't know why it is, but i just dislike the UI of Firefox. I want to like it more, but it just doesn't work out...

Re: The Browser Monopoly

#58

Post by ad-hominem »

basch wrote: post #54
jsutton wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Password managers don't hold your password in plaintext, so the liability there only exists if you don't think the latest encryption methods are enough.

Thats not true. Theres other ways into your account besides breaking encryption. Off the top of my head, a brick to my head and the use of my thumbprint would do it. Unlike how a normal service is normally supposed to store my password (hashed, but with no copy of the original password anywhere, EVENT THE LOGS) the password manager DOES retain a plain text copy of a password, not JUST a hashed derivative.

Encrypted copy != plain text storage. Plain text implies "not encrypted" - an encrypted string representing your password would (in encryption terms) be ciphertext, not plaintext.

Re: The Browser Monopoly

#59

Post by jmkni »

albits wrote: post #14
basch wrote: post #3

>Chrome introduced a lot of neat new features (Porn “Incognito Mode,” multithreaded memory changes, tabs and more). Now chrome is getting credit for in private browsing and tabs? (Safari and Opera respectively. Phoenix/Firefox popularized them long before Chrome was a twinkle.) >It is mind-boggling that basic tools like these are not yet standard features in browsers. How long have browsers offered to save passwords?…

Regarding saving password in browser, the author probably means an encrypted password manager such as KeePass or 1Password, and not the current implementation which does not have a master password

I've noticed Safari on iOS offering to generate a password and store it when I register for new sites recently. It works pretty well (until I'm on Windows and need the password).

Re: The Browser Monopoly

#60

Post by tzs »

aluren wrote: post #23

I don't get why people (I mean technically minded people who are aware of privacy issues and so on) don't just use firefox. They are pretty much at feature parity (Firefox may even get the edge due to the fantastic extensions ecosystem), except one spies on you and the other doesn't. Why do people find the switch so hard? In addition, Firefox + ublokc origin is pretty much the only option on mobile if you want to blo…

I mostly use Firefox, except I use Chrome for certain tasks at work [1]. There is one thing about Firefox that occasionally has me on the verge of ditching it for Chrome.

It has a terrible spell checker. I find about as many errors in its spelling as it finds in mine.

There used to be one other thing that really irked me, but it looks like they recently fixed that (I'm on the beta channel, so not sure if everyone has this yet). That was handling of keyboard shortcuts. Shortcuts, such as OPTION-HOME to go to the home page, did not work if the focus was in the address bar, the "search in page" field, or a text entry field on the page.

[1] Chrome's dev tools seem more responsive and better organized, and it handles multiple profiles better.

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