[HN Gopher] The endless browser wars
___________________________________________________________________
The endless browser wars
Author : signa11
Score : 185 points
Date : 2021-02-05 09:01 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (lwn.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (lwn.net)
| doublerabbit wrote:
| Until someone creates a new browser with a new render/scripting
| engine. Which everyone always jumps on saying "it's impossible",
| the war is over. Chrome has won. Chrome is currently giving life
| support to Mozilla and when they decide to axe that, well it's
| game over for Mozilla.
|
| The depressing part is the freedom, the new that the internet
| once provided is over. It's been turned in to a commercial
| breeding ground and we are the cattle to be milked and bred.
| Until we create a whole new infrastructure, protocol suite away
| from the broken existing OSI model, the internet isn't going to
| heal. It's going to be robbed and stabbed repeatedly over and
| over again.
|
| Look at your browsing history today, how many times have you
| visited that one site in the last year? Now compare that to how
| many new sites you have visited in the same year; not a lot I
| expect.
| stiray wrote:
| The issue is that Firefox HAS created a new rendering engine,
| but people don't switch. It has nothing to do with technology,
| people wont even try to switch. Some for fanboyism, some
| because they would have to adapt, some don't even know what
| browser is.
|
| What I do consider staggering is how many technically capable
| people are not prepared to make a switch.
|
| Google is slowly closing down the lock-down trap they have
| nurtured for so many years and now it should be obvious to
| anyone who is looking at "progress" (or decline?) of internet,
| but this is still not enough to at least stop using the chrome.
|
| Ah, people... we will just never learn.
| atombender wrote:
| Until recently, I used Firefox on my Mac, and had been for a
| couple of years. I got tired of the browser being a bit slow
| and consistently consuming 20-30% CPU even when not doing
| anything. My MacBook Pro's fan was running 100% of the time.
| I don't have many tabs open and never found an explanation.
|
| Last week, I decided I had enough, and switched over to
| Chrome. Now the fan doesn't run anymore, and Chrome consumes
| much less CPU. I was also quite astounded by just how much
| faster Chrome is. Firefox feels fine when using it, but even
| with all the Rust stuff they've integrated, it still can't
| measure up to Chrome. It feels like I've upgraded my machine.
|
| I don't miss anything from Firefox. I wouldn't mind having
| something like container tabs, but I can do without them. On
| the contrary, I discover things I prefer in Chrome. Like the
| really superior 1Password integration that fully enables form
| fields, or the way keyword searches work from the address
| bar.
|
| I say this with some regret -- I'd rather have Mozilla
| dominate the web than Google. But if they had thousands of
| people working on Firefox and still couldn't make it as good,
| I'm not holding out hope.
| nikon wrote:
| I did the same, but Chrome -> Safari. My battery life is
| considerably better.
| pdimitar wrote:
| Safari almost has no extensions, and is severely lagging
| on a workstation-grade Mac and I suspect it's the huge
| amount of bookmarks that I have.
|
| Furthermore, invoking the list of tabs (actually a grid
| of tabs) is also very slow and feels like the machine is
| struggling doing it.
|
| I like Safari. It's extremely lightweight. But it's not
| given proper attention by Apple, which is a big shame.
| They have the resources to make it as fast as Chrome is.
| But they don't. :(
| atombender wrote:
| I'd certainly prefer Safari (which I used for years), but
| it is unfortunately severely lacking in extensions.
| pygy_ wrote:
| I'm afraid Firefox has gotten to a point where it is too
| niche to recover. The last time I checked, 80+% of
| https://webcompat.com's reports were sites that were broken
| in FF, not because it is less standards compliant than the
| competition, but just because there was no testing.
|
| Mozilla had been courting devs with MDN, ever improving dev
| tools and sexy tech (Servo) for years, with some success,
| although they weren't there yet.
|
| Now they've completely dropped that ball (and fired the
| respective people working on these techs). Without Web dev on
| board, I don't think they'll ever catch up.
|
| Degooglified Chromium was already the way to go since the
| June firings IMO, it's great that Google makes it easier to
| get that experience.
| CivBase wrote:
| > Degooglified Chromium was already the way to go IMO, it's
| great that Google makes it easier to get that experience.
|
| For now. Android has shown us exactly how Google treats
| their "open source" products once they have rid themselves
| entirely of viable competition.
|
| Google really has become the late-90s, early-2000s
| Microsoft. First they "embrace" by releasing a product as
| open source. Then they "extend" by packaging the official
| release of the product with their own proprietary
| functionality. Then they "extinguish" by slowly siphoning
| functionality from the open source project into their own
| proprietary extensions (see Google Play Services).
| pygy_ wrote:
| Yes, it sucks. They've also pulled some form of EEE with
| the whole Web platform by allocating so much manpower to
| Chrome and related techs.
|
| According to
| https://www.w3.org/community/wicg/participants Google has
| 168 employees working on incubating Web specs, vs 47 for
| Microsoft, 10 for Apple and 9 for Mozilla (maybe they
| require their employees to disclose their status in that
| page and others don't though, there are quite a few
| unaffiliated folks on that page).
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Mozilla has also shot itself in the foot by alienating
| Firefox's core userbase (power users) with terrible attempts
| to copy Chrome in a (failed) attempt to cater to idiots.
|
| They ended up trading off powerful extensions for what? A
| terrible, slower copy of Chrome with Pocket and a _share
| button built into the browser_. Seriously.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| YMMV but I've found the new Firefox Quantum faster and its
| extensions easier to write. While the UI customizability
| has dropped a bit it's more secure with the line of death
| keeping out deceptive UIs
| MisterTea wrote:
| They lost the power users because they lost focus on their
| core product which is a web browser. If they want to keep
| power users then make a useful non hostile browser that
| puts the user back in FULL control. Under no circumstances
| should a website EVER manipulate windows, open windows,
| prevent me from closing a window, or play audio or video
| without my consent. Instead we get a poor chrome copy.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| > Google is slowly closing down the lockdown trap they have
| nurtured for so many years
|
| I think that forks of Chromium which have their own sync are
| easily thwarting this effort. If nothing else, you can always
| use Edge.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| It's so much more pernicious than that. As long as one
| company controls the One Rendering Engine to Rule Them All,
| one company _de facto_ controls the Web itself, and
| everyone else is mostly just along for the ride.
| throwaway2245 wrote:
| It's worse even than that.
|
| As long as one company controls the One Rendering Engine,
| all websites are tested against that One Rendering Engine
| (i.e. not the truth of the spec).
|
| It becomes impossible to create a new rendering engine
| without actively copying the quirks behaviours.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| It also - and this is why folks got so keyed up about the
| last browser monoculture - makes it impossible to create
| a successful alternative software platform without the
| support of the One Rendering Engine. So it becomes an
| agent of an overall software monoculture.
|
| Sadly, I fear that the reason Free Software folks don't
| seem to be getting quite so keyed up about Chrome is
| that, at least for now, the One Rendering Engine happens
| to work on Linux. It seems that even principles can be
| mercenary.
| acomjean wrote:
| This is true. The importance of a good browser to Linux
| cannot be overstated.
| [deleted]
| kmeisthax wrote:
| In other words, Flash is back.
| loudmax wrote:
| Chrome to Edge is just trading one monopolist vendor lock-
| in for another.
| dijit wrote:
| Have people forgotten that edge is chromium already?
|
| https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-
| edge/download-...
| mumblemumble wrote:
| "Just trading one monopolist vendor lock-in for the same
| monopolist vendor lock-in, but now wearing a fake
| mustache."
|
| I was originally pretty excited about Edge, even as a
| non-Windows user. I'm not sad to see IE go. But times
| have changed, and the balance of power has shifted. Now
| that IE is no longer dominant, simply losing it only
| worsens the browser oligopoly. Replacing it with a new
| rendering engine that's designed from the ground up to be
| standards compliant, though, makes things better. It
| could have meant that Firefox could once again have had
| an actual ally in trying to prop up a free and open Web.
|
| Microsoft giving up on Edge's rendering engine and
| replacing it with Chromium, though, means that,
| ironically, the death of IE ultimately served to further
| exactly the bad situation that it once emblematized.
| cutenewt wrote:
| This is like saying why move from a dictatorship to
| democracy.
|
| We're just trading one leadership figure for another.
| latexr wrote:
| > Some for fanboyism, some because they would have to adapt,
| some don't even know what browser is.
|
| And some because they find Firefox unusable. On macOS,
| Firefox is a subpar browser--it's awful for automation (no
| AppleScript support) and accessibility (with Voice Control
| on, say "show numbers" in both Safari and Firefox). I could
| go on in all the ways it lacks, especially if I referenced
| other HN threads where macOS users talk about Firefox. Many
| of us try to like Firefox, but Mozilla doesn't make it easy.
| bbotond wrote:
| I tried to switch multiple times but Firefox was unbearably
| slow and used a lot of memory. I guess I'm not the only one
| with that experience.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Afaik, Mozilla didn't release any Firefox version with their
| new rendering engine. They just declared it a failure without
| any attempt to make it run.
|
| I know, because I've been following its news and was eager to
| try anything that Mozilla declared beta quality. I just am
| not willing to go search for a hidden code repository and
| compile it myself.
| detaro wrote:
| Firefox Quantum did massively rework the browser engine and
| is presumably what the parent is talking about
| (multiprocess support, new CSS engine, various other bits
| and pieces)
|
| I assume you mean Servo, which was a research project from
| the start and never intended to be a new production engine,
| but did produce side products like the CSS engine that are
| used.
| pygy_ wrote:
| Yes, the last major piece AFAIK was WebRender (hardware-
| accelerated compositing), which has been shipped last
| autumn.
| majewsky wrote:
| WebRender is neither "shipped" nor "not shipped", it's
| rolling out to increasing audiences based on Mozilla
| Corp's confidence concerning stability of WebRender on
| certain platforms and hardware configurations.
| pygy_ wrote:
| https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/WebRender_Where
|
| I had missed the "with approved hardware" bit regarding
| Win10 :-)
|
| Still, it does run in the wild on all major OSes.
| rukshn wrote:
| You just summarized what I wrote two days ago
| https://ruky.me/2021/02/03/would-you-pay-me-if-i-built-a-web...
| Zambyte wrote:
| It is both possible and extremely likely that people will
| continue to create new web browsers. Simply not for the HTTP
| web.
|
| https://gemini.circumlunar.space
|
| Gemini is a web protocol that aims to achieve the original goal
| of HTPP: to create a document web. It is extremely strict about
| adding new features to the protocol, unlike HTTP. This means
| that it is easy and should remain easy to implement new
| browsers, and I think that is a fantastic thing!
| tyingq wrote:
| The barrier to entry just seems too high now for a new browser
| or render/scripting engine. Things like Widevine/DRM, Apple's
| refusal to allow another browser, the broad footprint of
| browser functionality, etc. It's almost like it would have to
| be something other than a browser. Like the transition from
| gopher/ftp/newsgroups to web browsers. A bigger leap.
| kungito wrote:
| There is too much money in milking average non technical people
| in any way possible. I guess whichever "new internet" pops up
| will be awesome and used by just a small number of power users.
| Great and flexible tools will never be used by the average
| person. I've had 2 close family members in a span of 2 weeks
| get lost in the whole "log into your chrome account" vs "log
| into your google account within your chrome account" thing. Any
| remotely complex feature beyond "2 clicks to all of the 4
| things I use the internet for" is just confusing people. And
| it's OK because that seems to be the reality.
|
| Ads for the general public are here to stay
| sinkflay wrote:
| > Chrome is currently giving life support to Mozilla and when
| they decide to axe that, well it's game over for Mozilla.
|
| Mozilla has a viable business model: making a browser and
| selling placement of search engine. They aren't on "life
| support" from Google.
|
| I use Firefox every day and it's a great browser. Chrome has
| not leap-frogged the competition. It's just the default choice
| for most people.
| [deleted]
| ornxka wrote:
| Nobody is addressing the elephant in the room, which is the
| reason why there are only two viable browsers in the first place
| - because the endless and ever-growing list of specifications and
| standards web browsers must comply with has grown to the point
| where it is apparently impossible to build a browser without the
| budget of a nation state. For example,
| https://drewdevault.com/2020/03/18/Reckless-limitless-scope....
| has done some calculations, and has found that "the total word
| count of the W3C specification catalogue is 114 million words at
| the time of writing." Good luck implementing that, if you're not
| Google!
|
| A lot of things could be done to simplify the amount of labor it
| takes to build a web browser. If you look at the architecture of
| the web, there is no reason for things to be this complicated -
| the web doesn't need a complicated high-level language runtime
| when it could have bytecode a la WASM, for example. But that's
| exactly the problem, because the reason why things have become so
| complicated is not because that's just how complicated the
| problem space is that a web browser attempts to solve, but
| because the people in charge of the web actually have a vested
| interest in things being as complicated as possible. When you
| already have the budget of a nation state, there is not only no
| benefit to your job requiring less labor to perform, it actually
| harms you because now competitors need that many fewer resources
| to compete with you. That's the real problem - they don't want it
| to be simple and easy, they want it to be complicated and hard,
| and the present problem of lack of browser diversity is just a
| consequence of that.
|
| This is the real reason why things have gotten this bad in the
| browser space, and it's never going to get any better without
| first addressing this fact and then by breaking basically the
| entire web by decimating the volume of standards documents web
| browsers have to follow. There is no other option. Nobody is
| going to sift through 114 million words of specification
| documents to build another web browser for the web that exists
| today.
|
| The web can't be saved. Its replacement will have to start from
| scratch.
| djhaskin987 wrote:
| My favorite quote from the article:
|
| > Chromium has taken a path similar to Android's; there is a core
| built with free software, but getting its full functionality
| requires accepting layers of proprietary code on top of it. The
| fact that said code is running on a remote server somewhere does
| not really change that situation.
|
| Google has used this wolf-in-sheep's-clothing approach for yeas,
| and it has worked. Fortunately, though, it's also backfired a
| bit. With things like Microsoft Edge using the open core that
| google has provided (Chromium) on the market, users have a choice
| of browser host, including what servers their bookmarks/syncing
| lives on. Not the best choice, perhaps, but still, a choice. :)
| PascLeRasc wrote:
| I'd like to start contributing money to Firefox. Can anyone weigh
| in on whether that's best done through a donation to Mozilla or
| by paying for the premium Firefox features like Pocket or their
| VPN? I don't necessarily need or want these, but they seem more
| Firefox-focused than a donation to Mozilla.
| sdeframond wrote:
| > having to retry broken web sites in Chrome is a ritual that
| many Firefox users have had to get used to.
|
| I, for one, have been using Firefox both on desktop and mobile
| for years without ever having to install Chromium, or even any
| Webkit-based browser.
|
| Where does the idea that the web does not work well with Firefox
| come form exactly ?
| danaliv wrote:
| For some n=1 anecdata, I very (and I do mean very) occasionally
| have to bail out of Firefox and use Chrome, most recently on
| Logitech's ecommerce site. I confess though that I'm never
| quite sure whether it's a browser issue or the fact that I've
| got Firefox configured to extreme "adtech is psychological
| warfare" mode.
| collsni wrote:
| Firefox is the way to go, you can disable anything you don't
| like.
|
| I'd also be okay with a degoogle chromium.
| mozey wrote:
| Maybe Linux distribution specific builds of Chromium isn't a good
| idea, instead there should just be Chromium distributions, e.g.
| https://brave.com?
| turminal wrote:
| Distro packaging doesn't work like that. Distros enable or
| disable certain features of the software at compile time, they
| also attempt to make sure the software plays well with the rest
| of the distro and abides to its stated goals and guidelines.
| Distro packagers also make sure whatever the software
| developers make up isn't blindly accepted and followed.
| Chromium in particular is particularly hard to package in a
| meaningful way (there was a recent controversy concerning that
| in the Mint distro). But that doesn't mean it is not worth
| trying.
| Asmod4n wrote:
| I just wish Firefox would support HDR, more than 60hz refresh
| rate and more than two channel audio.
| mkl95 wrote:
| Every Chromium user needs to understand that Chromium is a Google
| project, and Google like to sacrifice a random project once in a
| while (don't be evil huh?).
|
| I'm completely unaware of how Google handle these decisions
| internally, but from the point of view of an outsider they are
| trying to optimize their resources and output as much as
| possible. If some service is not extremely successful and
| profitable, and it's being actively maintained, someone at Google
| will eventually suggest to move on to other stuff.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| How do you sacrifice an open-source project that people can
| just fork?
| mkl95 wrote:
| Technically, Chromium is not being sacrificed, it will just
| lose access to some powerful APIs. In practice it means
| Chromium as we know it is done. Most people who want or need
| these features will be unaware of some community fork and
| will simply switch to Chrome or Firefox.
| mminer237 wrote:
| I can't imagine all that many people are using just
| Chromium itself though. Most beneficiaries of Chromium are
| by virtue of browsers built on top of it such as Brave,
| Vivaldi, and Edge, all of which have already built their
| own synchronization services. And if someone was using
| Chromium, I would think there's a decent chance they would
| switch to one of those three.
| hyper_reality wrote:
| "Just fork" underestimates the huge amount of effort it
| requires to develop a modern browser that stays up to date
| with the latest web standards. There's a reason why even
| Microsoft's browser now is based on Chromium.
| mkl95 wrote:
| As other people have pointed out, Chromium has a gargantuan
| codebase. Unless dozens of seasoned developers are willing
| to become active contributors and maintainers for free, I
| don't see it happening soon.
| dgb23 wrote:
| Chrome and Chromium are not some niche products. Same with ads,
| search and GCP. These things are here to stay for a very long
| time.
|
| There are other problems with Chrome and Chromium.
|
| Google is a brilliant company and I want to like them. Out of
| the biggest tech companies they seem to apply the least
| bullying tactics, worker exploitation and so on.
|
| But the fact that they are an ad company that profiles my
| behavior leaves a bitter taste. They often gather data in a way
| that is completely opaque to most people, which I think is
| problematic.
| mkl95 wrote:
| Linux makes heavy use of GNU technology, but the GNU OS
| itself is relatively unknown. Just like Chrome and Edge make
| heavy use of Chromium, but it is used directly by relatively
| few users (don't get me wrong, I was a Chromium user for
| years). Google may be trying to turn the Chromium browser
| into a "Chromium userland" rather than a browser will full
| capabilities.
| lqet wrote:
| Key points:
|
| > Much of what appears to be Chrome (or Chromium) functionality
| is, in truth, provided by servers in Google's data centers. These
| include bookmark synchronization, the safe-browsing feature,
| search suggestions, spell-checking, and more.
|
| > On January 15, the Chromium blog carried this brief notice
| that, as of March 15, non-Chrome builds of Chromium would lose
| access to these APIs.
|
| > Anticipating this, distributors are already wondering whether
| packaging Chromium is still worth the effort.
|
| From a first read, I guessed it is time to install Firefox.
| However, I noticed that I: 1) don't sync bookmarks, 2) don't care
| for the safe-browsing feature (I understand it is the annoying
| message that a website is "not safe"?), 3) have my own spell-
| checking service. So what exactly is meant by "search
| suggestions"? Is Google actually disabling access to their search
| API? Why wouldn't this affect Firefox? Why would Google even
| consider doing this? And, I guess that 4) I can still use another
| search engine.
|
| So, does anyone know what's hidden under "and more"? Because even
| if all the features from above were missing, I fail to see why
| this should result in Chromium being removed from distros. It's
| still a functional, reliable and very fast browser. I am
| additionally confused because Chromium _without_ these features
| is more attractive to me than the current version.
| hyper_reality wrote:
| I think the article somewhat misconstrues the reasons why
| maintainers are thinking of dropping support for packaging
| Chromium. Maintaining the Chromium package is an unusually
| laborious task, with a lot of releases, and huge compile times.
| It's simply a gigantic codebase with the order of millions of
| lines of code, and there are only a couple of people (at best)
| in each distro dedicating time to keep track of the latest
| changes. The Chromium in Debian has been developing a growing
| list of security issues as it falls behind the latest versions
| https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=972134
|
| Google's forced removal of features from Chromium may just be
| the straw that broke the camel's back. I see other comments on
| HN and LWN question the maintainers' judgement, without
| realising how many resources it takes to package Chromium for
| distros.
| jedimastert wrote:
| I'm guessing that means personalized search autocomplete from
| the url bar.
| Artlav wrote:
| I find this seriously confusing too. None of these sound like
| major, or even all that useful, features, and yet they talk
| about "considering whether there is any value in a crippled
| version of Chromium".
|
| What makes it crippled?
| indymike wrote:
| Not a single one of these features matter to me, either.
| Probably the only feature I'll miss is automatically installing
| my Chrome apps when I log in, but it gets used so infrequently.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| Safe browsing is an incredibly useful thing. Anyone can report
| a phishing website, and if it actually is, it gets added to the
| safe browsing blocklist. Then when anyone gets tricked into
| clicking a link to the phishing website they get a big red
| warning, no matter how closely the phishing website matches the
| real website.
| tyingq wrote:
| Chrome's sync does sync more than just bookmarks. You can paste
| "chrome://sync-internals/" into the url bar to see the list of
| synced stuff, it's in a table on the far right, or click the
| "data" tab. The synced autofill, for example, is useful to me.
| pixl97 wrote:
| "The synced autofill, for example, is useful to me."
|
| Yet another reason to remember to use private mode when
| browsing at 'home'.
| hpoe wrote:
| I'll throw out there that I did switch from Chrome to FF back
| when Quantum came out and haven't looked back since.
|
| It's snappier than chrome, seems to hog less resources and I
| find their containers feature a godsend for seperating my work
| and personal accounts.
|
| So I'd encourage it, I've been with FF for a couple years now
| and I love it.
| acomjean wrote:
| I agree.
|
| Firefox is my main browser. I use the others (mainly for
| testing).
|
| It's gotten better and better and no longer find "debuging
| JavaScript is enough better in chrome" to do that . I also
| really like the way the dev tools handle css grid.
| lucideer wrote:
| > _Why would Google even consider doing this?_
|
| The author's extrapolations seem implausible.
|
| Bookmark synchronization is a non-issue as this is something
| any bundler of Chromium would have to build & maintain
| themselves no matter what engine they bundled. So Google
| excluding it is irrelevant.
|
| But for Safe-Browsing and Search Suggestions, not only are
| these sources of data/insight/revenue for Google, but more
| oddly: Google Safe-Browsing is used by Firefox and other
| browsers, and Search Suggestions is provided by ALL search
| engines that have such a feature to ANY browser integrating
| their search. Excluding these from Google's own open-source
| engine while non-Google engines continue to use them seems
| unlikely.
| jC6fhrfHRLM9b3 wrote:
| And Firefox is now pro-censorship. i.e. dead to me
| 0xy wrote:
| Sync to me is an anti-feature that seems like a privacy
| nightmare, I especially don't want it to going to an advertising
| company.
|
| Similarly, the vast majority of new browser APIs are absolute
| garbage infested with security flaws. Most of them are abused
| almost exclusively by ad networks, including WASM, Audio Context,
| Beacon and more.
| dkdk8283 wrote:
| Sync supports E2E of your data.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| The original browser "war" between Microsoft and Netscape was
| over the definition of HTML. Microsoft wanted to control it, and
| was prepared to damage Netscape's business to quash the
| competition illegally to impose an arbitrary monopoly.
|
| HTML5 has long been an open standard, maintained by the W3C.
| Google's role as a W3C member was to end the original browser war
| by supporting W3C processes with implementations and evangelism
| that lead to Chrome becoming the most popular browser.
|
| The article's news, about Chromium losing access to app features
| such as syncing, is a different battle. It is not about arbitrary
| syntax being controlled by a corporation vs a standards body. It
| is about the cost of making useful software that serves the
| public and is given away for free to enable the commons.
|
| Everybody has the right and the technical opportunity to make a
| browser and ancillary services such as sync. However, a couple of
| people in a garage don't live long enough to make a browser. Only
| well funded and well organised groups have the resources to do
| so.
|
| Even Mozilla relies upon funding from Google to implement
| Firefox, so really, Google is funding the whole browser
| ecosystem. That's an entirely different problem to the one
| Microsoft got busted for in 1996.
|
| It's a problem alright, and one that needs air and sunlight.
|
| To really give this problem the prominence it deserves and
| requires, we shouldn't be calling it "the endless browser war".
| We should be calling it something else. Until we do, the status
| quo is just going to get stronger and more entrenched, because it
| isn't anything illegal, proprietary, or closed.
|
| The fact that most consumers like Google and don't see the
| problem makes it all the more urgent to give this problem a name.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| "Browser monoculture problem" sounds like a good name.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| > Even Mozilla relies upon funding from Google to implement
| Firefox, so really, Google is funding the whole browser
| ecosystem
|
| Don't forget that Microsoft forked Chromium also, and that
| Chromium has been forked by several open-source groups.
| 015a wrote:
| This is rather written in the perspective of "shame on google for
| removing these API keys", but it feels to me that this should be
| a (small, incomplete, but still a) win for open source; if I want
| to run an open source, free browser, I don't want it phoning home
| to Google every day.
|
| There's a separate problem in that Chromium isn't capable of any
| other ways of more freely and openly syncing the things it used
| to sync to Google's servers. But when thinking about any open
| source software, I feel that its important to separate "things it
| does which I don't want it to do" and "things I wish it did". In
| other words, code which was written that doesn't serve the users'
| interests, and code which could serve the users' interests if it
| were written. I don't believe its productive to worry or complain
| about the latter; its more productive to just write it, file
| feature requests, etc. Of course, in Chromium's case, its
| unlikely they'd be accepted, but that's a separate, third issue.
|
| I also disagree with the article's position that Firefox isn't a
| valid alternative. Firefox is somewhere within the range of 98%
| to 102% as good as Chrome, depending on the website you're
| visiting. By comparison, I would place Safari (the only other
| real alternate browser on any OS) at 92%-96%. Firefox is a
| fantastic browser which can absolutely replace Chrome/Chromium,
| and should be used by more people if for no other reason than to
| add more balance to the Big Three. Throw out the FOSS ideals for
| just a second; there are effectively three browsers left, and the
| most ideal marketshare for those three is 33% each, given that
| the primary long-term benefit and risk from marketshare is, at
| the end of the day, power toward influencing the future of the
| web. Power should be distributed, always.
|
| And this is hardly contentious, but the industry need a 4th
| browser. I would rank this as the single most important project
| any company, group, or individual could commit productivity to at
| this time. Of course, important things are rarely easy, but to
| me, it doesn't even matter if its open or closed source; open
| source would be better, but what matters far more is distributing
| power further.
| latexr wrote:
| > Firefox is somewhere within the range of 98% to 102% as good
| as Chrome, depending on the website you're visiting.
|
| Perhaps when only taking into account webpage rendering. But
| how you interact with the browser is also important, and to
| many of us Firefox falls short in that regard:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26036353
| qu-everything wrote:
| > if I want to run an open source, free browser, I don't want
| it phoning home to Google every day.
|
| Exactly, it feels more like a win than a loss from where I
| stand
| w0mbat wrote:
| There is a major factor that kicks in when a browser gets the
| most market share, particularly >50% of the total, as Win IE did
| in the 90s and Chrome did a few years ago. Because web site
| developers test their site in the "top" browser, and then maybe
| other browsers too, becoming the top browser gives you a huge
| boost in compatibility through no virtue of your own. Every
| website works in that browser now because website developers make
| sure they work.
|
| This creates a shift among users, who notice that every site
| works in the top browser, but only 90% work in browser x, and
| they start shifting to the top browser and often won't even
| report problems they have with other browsers. The effect is
| obviously self-reinforcing, and the top browser continues to gain
| share.
|
| The counter-measure to this is standards. With rigorous web
| standards followed by websites and browsers, if the top browser
| works, so do all the rest.
|
| There isn't much to enforce this though, and there are
| temptations on all sides not to do the right thing.
| Yaggo wrote:
| I wish there was a true war, but unfortunately Chrome has too
| much domination, expect on Apple's ecosystem.
| loeg wrote:
| This is pretty similar to the 90s/00s situation with Internet
| Explorer! It's an apt metaphor; IE6 emerged as dominant at the
| conclusion of the first browser wars. Chrome is today's IE6.
| Yaggo wrote:
| I don't like that comparison. Nowadays there's a collaborated
| effort to agree about standards, although the process may not
| always be ideal, but it's still very different from the IE
| era.
| acomjean wrote:
| Memories of doing my timcard. The webpage used to work on
| hpux and Solaris, but the new one was ie only. The solution
| was not to fix the time card website, but to force all
| developers to remote into to a windows box to run Internet
| Explorer..
|
| I don't miss time cards..
| CryptoGhost wrote:
| Maybe trying to maintain a free beer web browser is not the best
| path forward (given all the requirements for a web browser in
| 2021). Perhaps the best solution is a paid application with an
| either free or proprietary source model. Free beer programs seem
| best suited for problem domains where they can age like wine and
| not worry about maintaining some service level agreement.
| npteljes wrote:
| Discussed 10 days ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25913310
| gtsop wrote:
| The discussion around firefox being inferior to chrome I think is
| totally irrelevant and missleading.
|
| Yes, chrome has supperior functionality, if you don't care about
| privacy and freedom then there is no discussion to be had here.
| If you do care, please don't throw arguments like your fans going
| loud and your ram filling up. Instead, support open source
| projects financialy or put volunteer some of your time to help
| fix these problems.
|
| I am not saying that privacy and freedom should be hard, but as
| of right now, they are. You either accept it, suck the downsides
| and help to fix any issues, or you give up and surrender the fate
| of the field to a single company, Google.
|
| We are all free to do what we think best for ourselves. But
| please, no fooling ourselves. No excuses.
| Crazyontap wrote:
| There is a new trend emerging in computing with the advent of
| Machine learning and that is, it is no longer sufficient to have
| talent/knowledge/passion/amazing team to create something. You
| need very deep pockets too.
|
| I've been waiting for a WebspeechAPI implementation in Firefox
| for many years now but the only reason why I don't think it's
| happening is because maybe Mozilla lacks the funds to train the
| models for speech-to-text/text-to-speech, etc.
|
| This gap will grow more and more as new machine learning features
| are introduced (e.g. natural lang page searching, better
| translation, etc) which would be very easy for Google to add to
| it's browser but very expensive for open source projects.
| gggtt wrote:
| I am not convinced this is true.
|
| The reason Mozilla has not text-to-speech is because the guy
| behind RNNoise and LPCSpeech (JM Valin) has been bought by
| Amazon so that they can build even more privacy invasive Alexa
| & friends device.
|
| So yeah, in a way this an issue of money, but not because you
| can't afford GPUs & Data, but because you can't buy the right
| people
| eternalny1 wrote:
| > The reason Mozilla has not text-to-speech is because the
| guy behind RNNoise and LPCSpeech (JM Valin) has been bought
| by Amazon
|
| That is part of the problem.
|
| With smaller projects you are at risk of the "hit by a bus"
| problem, where major/complex technology is dependent on a
| single individual or a very small team.
| fctorial wrote:
| They could ask their users to donate cpu/gpu if this is an
| issue.
| preommr wrote:
| I am pretty sure that Google provides a lot of those services
| at a loss, or at the very least, they can synergize with
| other projects they have in way that justifies the cost.
|
| Either way, people will choose the free option rather than
| the option that requires them to pay even a nominal fee,
| particularly for software that people have gotten used to
| getting for free.
| shakna wrote:
| > I've been waiting for a WebspeechAPI implementation in
| Firefox for many years now but the only reason why I don't
| think it's happening is because maybe Mozilla lacks the funds
| to train the models for speech-to-text/text-to-speech, etc.
|
| The Web Speech API is still in "Draft" spec, but Mozilla have
| been working steadily on it and finished the work for SGML
| parsing back in January. There are actually flags you can
| change to enable it on most platforms, its just they aren't
| considered "stable" yet.
|
| Mozilla's DeepSpeech engine is also not that far off from
| reaching a level of stability. You can help them with it here
| [0] if you're interested.
|
| [0] https://commonvoice.mozilla.org/en
| m-ce wrote:
| All the arguments about Chrome being insecure due to its
| proprietary software built upon it, are true, but why not use
| Ungoogled Chromium? (or another chromium fork that implements
| those features themselves). Mozilla is in a very bad position,
| their main source of income as I understand it is Google, because
| they're the ones that pay the most to have Google as a default
| search engine in Firefox. That and Googles anti-competitive
| practices, like when they implemented the Polymer redesign on
| YouTube, which had Firefox and Edge loading the site way slower
| than Chrome.
|
| I don't know what Mozilla can do even if they do all the right
| things, because Google will just keep throwing money punches.
| dzdt wrote:
| Not mentioned is the password situation. That is the bigger lock-
| in than bookmarks. I don't know what is the tech stack underneath
| or even what chromium does. But as a normal-ish chrome user I
| know behind the scenes google is managing my passwords and it
| would be a nightmare to switch. Too many sites I wouldn't know
| how to access without their password management. That is true
| lock-in.
| kungito wrote:
| This is what I disliked about using password managers with
| autogenerated complex passwords. It feel like too much lock in.
| I'm glad I switched to Firefox Lockwise before getting too
| locked in with Google's password management
| fullstop wrote:
| I switched from Enpass to Bitwarden and it was quite simple.
| Those are out-of-browser, though, and more in my control.
| lorenzhs wrote:
| You can export your saved passwords from chrome on
| chrome://settings/passwords, click the three dot icon to the
| right of "Saved Passwords" then "Export Passwords". You'll get
| a CSV file with columns _name,url,username,password_.
|
| This file can be imported into Firefox with
| https://github.com/louisabraham/ffpass/ (Firefox doesn't
| support importing the passwords from a chrome profile on
| Linux). It shouldn't be too hard to import it into your
| password manager of choice, either.
| Terretta wrote:
| Agree, that lock-in is rough. That said, it's just now possible
| to co-exist or even shift gradually among all three of
| Microsoft, Google, and now Apple, managing web creds without a
| third party tool.
|
| Although it just got pulled, the just-prior iCloud for Windows
| supported Apple Keychain password sync, allowing a different
| GAFAM to manage your creds. There is a Chrome extension as
| well.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/2/22263118/apple-icloud-wind...
|
| After it's back, then a reasonably frictionless way to migrate
| from one of these to another would be to run them side by side
| for a quarter, using the old to supply the cred while accepting
| the prompt to remember it on the new.
|
| As long as you can still access the old cred store some way,
| you'll have most useful creds in order, and only have to look
| up an old one when accessing something you never use.
| nickelcitymario wrote:
| Anyone else get a real "Ides of March" feel with the timing of
| this announcement?
|
| Two thousand years later and massive betrayals are still
| happening on March 15th.
| LarryDarrell wrote:
| Chrome, or at least it's rendering engine, has won the World Wide
| Web. It was able to do this because the company that was the best
| at monetizing every last packet decided it wanted to own that
| last endpoint as well.
|
| HTTP is a lost cause. At this point we need new protocols that
| are designed to be impossible to monetize. From there new
| browsers can be built. It'll never get to be as big as the WWW,
| but I think sub-Internets are the best way to ensure the spirit
| and creativity of the early WWW lives on.
| arpyzo wrote:
| I wish more people with give Firefox a honest try. I've been
| using it for years and I love it.
|
| It's very rare that I need to pull up Chrome to use a site, and
| frankly I blame the website developer. How hard is it to write a
| web application that works in Firefox? IMO, one has to be pretty
| sloppy or lazy to wind up creating a Chrome-only site.
|
| Firefox allows me to customize it exactly that way I want, and
| it's reached the point where I haven't been forced to change that
| look and feel in a long time. It has a ton of cool features I
| haven't even had a chance to take advantage yet, such as setting
| up my own sync server.
|
| That said, it has its warts, and the developer's decisions have
| frustrated me at times, but this goes for pretty much any
| software that gets "upgraded" on a regular basis.
|
| Give is a shot. You might find you like it more than you
| expected.
| PascLeRasc wrote:
| Firefox seems to grow on me more and more every day. I really
| like all the integrations like reader mode, picture-in-picture,
| the new email alias stuff. There's a lot that I don't care
| about like containers or whatever the special tab system is,
| but I like that they're trying new ideas.
| toyg wrote:
| Yeah, I use Firefox and every time I see these pessimist
| statements like "omg i have to open a site in Chrome
| _constantly_" I shake my head.
|
| I've not touched Chrome in _years_ , on Windows and MacOs, and
| I surf my fair amount of the wavy web. I even uninstalled it on
| my personal laptop. If one in a billion sites doesn't work in
| FF (which, again, has not happened to me in _years_ , except
| for intranet sites meant to work only with IE6...), just have a
| dedicated launcher for it, or even better tell their support
| you're dropping them because of that. And if that broken site
| is a Google property: it's well-known that _they do it on
| purpose_ , you're literally giving in to the school bully
| shaking you down for lunch money. Grow a spine.
| cccc4all wrote:
| Google has become too big as company and has to be broken up by
| anti-trust rules, along with many other FAANG companies that
| ballooned up in recent years.
|
| It's laughable that Microsoft was under anti-trust scrutiny when
| they were much smaller company. The Microsoft anti-trust
| situation created enough lanes for smaller companies at the time,
| like Google, Apple, etc. to gain traction.
|
| The situation is the same now, anti-trust rules are in place to
| promote healthy competition at all levels. All these big
| companies has to be broken up under anti-trust rules to further
| competition in technology space.
| izacus wrote:
| Except that you're talking about a completely different
| situation - Microsoft was attacked for defaulting their browser
| in their operating system, which had majority market share.
|
| This isn't really the case with Chrome though - on Windows, I
| keep having my browser reset back to Edge with fullscreen ads,
| on macOS the default browser is Safari (and it keeps spamming
| me with notification advertisements to use it), on Android the
| default browser on most US devices is Samsung Browser...
|
| It's hard to argue that Google is really abusing people to use
| Chrome when there's an uphill battle on every single popular
| platform for users to actually install it.
|
| If Google is really pushing an inferior product, how will you
| argue for antitrust when the users need to go out of their way
| to use Chrome on pretty much every platform except ChromeOS?
| What's the equivalent antitrust argument here?
|
| "Google doesn't want to freely give their server capacity to
| anyone for server-driven features" doesn't really make for a
| strong argument. How do we structure the argument here? "This
| browser is very popular so it needs to be taken away from its
| developers"?
| turminal wrote:
| Google was attacked for bundling chrome in android as well.
| preommr wrote:
| Because it's not about the operating system, but all the
| related services that are embedded in the browser.
|
| I use chrome because it ties with my google account which
| ties in with... pretty much everything. It stores a lot of my
| passwords, it ties in with my gmail, my google workspace, my
| shared extensions that gets installed with any other chrome
| browsers through this google account, other google apps like
| google docs/calendar, and other google services like their
| speech-to-text, and it also ties in with my android phone
| that is linked to my google account.
| Person5478 wrote:
| exactly.
|
| The platform used to be the OS, but google effectively
| commoditized it and the new platform is the 'cloud'. If
| you're on MS your new platform is going to be OWS, Azure,
| etc. With google it's going to be google cloud, gmail, and
| so forth.
|
| What's considered a platform has vastly changed.
| voiper1 wrote:
| I'm actually kinda confused. If chromium had search suggestions,
| spell checking from google, logging in to google for bookmark
| sync and safe browsing, etc, then how is chromium particularly
| de-google'd?
|
| It actually seems like this move by google is what people claim
| to want: an open source browser that doesn't phone home to
| google.
| turminal wrote:
| Chromium utilizes no proprietary code, that's what makes it
| different from chrome. All the listed features were just google
| apis (accessed by open source code) . It still phoned home
| unless those features were disabled.
| CivBase wrote:
| > The larger problem, though, is that it's not at all clear that
| Firefox will remain a viable alternative to Chrome. Its market
| share has been falling for years, and not everybody is pleased
| with the directions that the Mozilla Foundation has taken.
|
| I'm disappointed by how many people cling to Chrome/Chromium
| under the justification that they don't like where Mozilla is
| going. If you can't tolerate Firefox because of Mozilla's
| problems, how can you possibly stomach Chrome/Chromium with
| Google at the wheel?
|
| I believe browser diversity is healthy for the world wide web. I
| don't want Firefox to become dominant either, but right now there
| is a short supply of browsers which are independent from
| Chromium. I don't want the W3C to be replaced by the Chromium
| Project.
|
| I believe Firefox is a good enough browser to go toe-to-toe with
| Chrome. It and it's developer are not without problems. However,
| at this point I'd use Firefox even if Mozilla was just as bad as
| Google because I think the diversity is worth it.
| apostacy wrote:
| > I believe Firefox is a good enough browser to go toe-to-toe
| with Chrome. It and it's developer are not without problems.
| However, at this point I'd use Firefox even if Mozilla was just
| as bad as Google because I think the diversity is worth it.
|
| But what good is it if it won't deviate from Google's vision of
| the web? It will go toe-to-toe with Chrome at being Chrome, and
| almost nothing more.
|
| Mozilla is fine with DRM being a core part of the web, and they
| completely validated and enabled EME extensions. They
| deprecated useful technologies that have not been replaced.
|
| I can't forgive them for validating the direction that the web
| is going in. They had enough leverage to slow it down, and they
| didn't. They have the same arrogance as Google but they don't
| have any of the success.
|
| Firefox (then Firebird) didn't beat Microsoft and IE6 by trying
| to implement half-baked Windows ActiveX and Janus DRM support.
| They didn't even bother implementing stuff that they didn't
| think should be part of the vision of Microsoft, Adobe, etc.
|
| I wish they would aim for the web they want, not just follow in
| the footsteps of others.
|
| I for one use Palemoon, alongside Chrome for sites that need
| it. There are incredibly useful XUL based extensions that I
| rely on still, and Palemoon is much friendlier to sandbox and
| modify. And for modern web garbage, I have Chrome. I don't need
| Firefox.
| CivBase wrote:
| > But what good is it if it won't deviate from Google's
| vision of the web? It will go toe-to-toe with Chrome at being
| Chrome, and almost nothing more.
|
| By all means, criticize Mozilla. I'm not even saying people
| should use Firefox. Like I said, I don't want Firefox to
| become dominant. People just shouldn't use criticisms of
| Mozilla as justification for using a browser developed by a
| demonstrably worse organization.
|
| I've seen a few people respond with examples of poor
| experiences they've had with Firefox. I haven't shared those
| experiences, but if people have found that Chrome/Chromium is
| a significantly better product than Firefox that's at least a
| valid reason to consider sticking with Google's browser.
|
| If people are comfortable using a completely different
| browser like Pale Moon with no ties to Firefox or Chromium,
| that's even better.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| One nice thing with open source is that often you don't have to
| use a "vanilla" version of a given system. I'm using Ubuntu but
| I view Unity and Gnome-Shell as brain-dead, tablet oriented
| interfaces but fortunately, I can use Ubuntu Mate and don't
| have to deal with this stuff at all.
|
| I mostly like where Firefox is going, I like it's multiple
| identity tabs and it's general look. But it might help Mozilla
| to work out various ways to make sufficiently "skinnable" that
| someone else could maintain a Chrome-like version for all those
| people who like whatever it is about Chrome that's cool.
| xg15 wrote:
| > _If you can 't tolerate Firefox because of Mozilla's
| problems, how can you possibly stomach Chrome/Chromium with
| Google at the wheel?_
|
| OT, but I think this is an interesting psychological phenomenon
| that occurs in a lot of settings, in particular politics:
| People, services, products etc are not judged by objective (or
| even just common) standards but by the standards they announce
| for _themselves_.
|
| So someone who claims strict moral integrity and then falls
| short of that is seen as less trustworthy than someone who is
| upfront about being shady and then surprisingly acts less shady
| than expected.
|
| If anyone knows a name for this effect, I'd like to know.
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| There's another angle here I think you are missing
|
| > If you can't tolerate Firefox because of Mozilla's
| problems, how can you possibly stomach Chrome/Chromium with
| Google at the wheel?
|
| It's because it's not enough to be wrong about something
| (according to certain people), but you _must be punished_ for
| being wrong. And narcissists can 't handle a company not
| being "100% right" so they punish them by going to their
| competitors, with no regard if their competitor is
| objectively _worse_ for their causes. The intent is to cause
| harm to get your own way.
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| How about Brave as a Chromium-based alternative to Firefox
| that isn't worse for the cause?
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| That would require nuanced discussion. We can't have
| that! (Kidding aside, I happily use Brave because I find
| Firefox borderline unusable, but also find Google's
| tactics unpalatable.)
|
| The larger issue is there shouldn't be a war. There
| should be as many browsers as people have the hearts
| desire to create, and it shouldn't matter because they
| all follow the same standards.
|
| However, in the real world, we've seen the noble goal of
| open standards get tarnished by the same bullying
| corporatist tactics. What we need is open and democratic
| standards, not just a few voices in the room running the
| show.
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| This post touches on the 'other' issue with Firefox - the
| various user unfriendly features that cause friction when
| using it. I want to love Firefox, but my time is valuable
| and using Brave instead saves time and frustrations, vs
| Firefox.
|
| I'm pretty sure these subtle but numerous usability
| issues are on purpose from up high, because the usability
| could be fixed so easily. Still Google isn't paying 95%
| of Mozilla's and Moz's executives bills for them to beat
| Chrome, but rather to provide a lightning rod for
| monopoly concerns. From Google's point of view it's a
| bonus that it wastes the time of the market segment that
| cares about open systems!
| lostmsu wrote:
| Can you install extensions on Brave for Android?
| sam0x17 wrote:
| Agreed -- Brave takes all those proprietary APIs for
| things like bookmark synchronization and does them in a
| distributed way without hitting third party servers. This
| is the way forward. I have 10 devices on my sync chain
| and it works great!
| amelius wrote:
| > So someone who claims strict moral integrity and then falls
| short of that is seen as less trustworthy than someone who is
| upfront about being shady and then surprisingly acts less
| shady than expected.
|
| I don't think this effect exists at all. Google broke "don't
| be evil" and people still massively choose to use Google
| services as if nothing ever happened.
| dkdk8283 wrote:
| Firefox laid off the majority of their security teams last
| year. I don't trust Google but I trust Firefox less.
| dblohm7 wrote:
| False.
|
| (I am a Mozilla employee)
|
| This is what I know about what happened there:
|
| There were two enterprise IT teams with similar duties but
| different purviews. When management was deciding on
| layoffs, they decided to unify those two teams.
| Unfortunately that meant that there were redundancies.
|
| My heart goes out to those who lost their jobs, and they
| have every right to be upset.
|
| But the inferences being made as a result of the resulting
| tweets just weren't true: this notion that all security
| teams were wiped out is false. And there are now others
| assigned to threat management.
|
| Furthermore, the security teams that work on Gecko and
| Firefox were left mostly if not entirely intact.
|
| I work on security hardening for Gecko on Android, and I'm
| still here. So is our entire hardening/sandboxing team:
| https://twitter.com/gcpascutto/status/1293519587967983616
|
| TL;DR: Don't base your understanding of an organization's
| capabilities off of one tweet.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| I would think it is an excuse to just use chromium, because
| this is what the person actually prefers, but his ideology(or
| peer group) tells him or her to use FF.
| hyper_reality wrote:
| The best I could find is the "false-signaling theory of
| hypocrisy": social psychology research which demonstrates
| that "people judge hypocrites negatively-even more negatively
| than people who directly make false statements about their
| morality" [1]
|
| [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28107103/
| inpdx wrote:
| I.e. republicans holding Biden to the unity standard because
| Biden claimed that mantle, when it was never a goal of theirs
| for the last four years.
| acheron wrote:
| Same. The Mozilla organization has not covered themselves in
| glory over the past few years. And I like some of the things
| Brave is doing. But using a Chromium browser is a non-starter
| for me. I will not switch to one until I have no other choice.
| eitland wrote:
| > I'm disappointed by how many people cling to Chrome/Chromium
| under the justification that they don't like where Mozilla is
| going.
|
| Totally agree. You'll see me criticize Mozilla harshly but I
| still use FF because
|
| 1. the alternative is worse
|
| 2. secondary: technically speaking Firefox has always had an
| edge one way or another
| zingplex wrote:
| What would you say their technical edge is now?
| mitchdaily wrote:
| Not eating memory like it's candy for starters.
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| If not leaving Firefox, what is the preferred way to signal to
| Mozilla that we aren't happy with their leadership's choices?
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| Their leadership has sold their soul to Google already.
| Checkout the executive pay issues, and how 95% of the money
| comes from Google. Moz is just a lightning rod for Google
| these days. Change has to come from the top, and if Firefox
| became a serious competitor by fixing their usability issues
| then Google would kneecap them, subtly and privately at first
| by exerting pressure on the executives about whether the
| money spigot would dry up ..
| CivBase wrote:
| If product usage signals an organization that you're happy
| with their leadership choices, then doesn't leaving Firefox
| for Chrome/Chromium signal to Google that you're happy with
| theirs? Is that really a better message?
|
| I'm not advocating for Firefox here. It's the browser I use,
| but there are other options out there. Safari is obviously an
| option for people in the Apple ecosystem and another user
| suggested Pale Moon. I think there are even justifiable
| reasons for using Chrome/Chromium. Like I said, I don't want
| Firefox to become dominant. I want browser diversity.
| da_big_ghey wrote:
| I've tried to use Firefox, even though I don't like Mozilla's
| direction. But it just sucks too much. The new updates have
| made it worse, not better: these days, it leaks CPU. What do I
| mean? If I leave it running for too long with a bunch of tabs
| open, it will eat more and more of my CPU until it's hogging it
| all. Killing and re-opening solves it, but I can't do that all
| the time.
|
| Surf, Midori, and Qutebrowser are all good options (webkit-
| based) that I'd encourage others in similar situations to
| explore.
| sfink wrote:
| That would be a bug. I use it all day with hundreds of tabs
| (sometimes thousands, but I'm getting better about pruning
| back) and don't see this. I know many, many people who could
| say the same.
|
| If you have time, please file it:
| https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi . If you're
| willing, include a profile ( https://profiler.firefox.com is
| pretty easy to use). You can look at about:performance (or in
| newer versions, about:processes, but I don't think that's in
| release yet.) When you file the bug, you will probably be
| asked if it still happens in safe mode (which would probably
| blame an addon).
| jjav wrote:
| > If I leave it running for too long with a bunch of tabs
| open, it will eat more and more of my CPU until it's hogging
| it all.
|
| That's not normal Firefox behavior. I run multiple windows
| (one in each monitor), each of them with many dozens of tabs
| and only time I ever quit Firefox is if I have to reboot the
| machine for an update, so it runs for many months on end.
| Never seen this runaway CPU consumption.
| oarsinsync wrote:
| > so it runs for many months on end
|
| Danger. You want to restart it more frequently than this
| for updates.
| gryn wrote:
| I've been using it for the last 2 years. both on linux and
| windows, works ok on the later, but on linux I keep getting
| random corrupted graphics / black screens each time ram/swap
| are almost full. looking into filled bugs this doens't seems
| to be something new, I can find some bug reports dating back
| to 6 years and no sugestions for a fix beside disabling
| hardware acceleration, which doesn't work for me at least.
| [deleted]
| playpause wrote:
| I'm not sure anyone claims their reason for not using Firefox
| is that they think Google is a better organisation than the
| Mozilla Foundation.
|
| I agree that browser diversity is a good thing for the web, and
| I'd love it if Firefox was more popular. But I'm not going to
| let that motivate my reasoning about whether it's a good web
| browser.
| foobiekr wrote:
| That depends - is software quality, especially security, a
| relevant part of "better organization"?
|
| I want to use Firefox, but when I use it, mobile or desktop,
| I notice a lot of page-induced crashing bugs or severe
| rendering errors (e.g., things that absolutely look like
| pointer discipline issues, blocks copied into the wrong area,
| etc.), which makes me extremely uncomfortable using it, as
| those crashes may be exploits in waiting, and there are a lot
| of them.
| m45t3r wrote:
| Also, just changing to a Chromium based browser is not
| sufficient. Google still takes most of the decisions in where
| Chromium is going, and downstreams either accept them or
| workaround them (but for every workaround they do it is more
| things to keep maintaining in the long run).
|
| So yeah, using a non Chromium browser is the only way to ensure
| that the Web is still healthy (i.e.: not controlled by only
| Google) in the long run.
| MR4D wrote:
| I think natural entropy will solve that problem over time.
| Give Microsoft another year or two, and I think we'll see a
| hard fork.
|
| Looking back at WebKit, Google forked that into Blink. I
| don't know why Firefox couldn't do the same.
|
| I suppose in a couple years we'll be able to check this post
| to see if Microsoft has done a hard fork or not. Will be
| interesting to see.
| tjoff wrote:
| I don't know why we'd want Firefox to do that...
| dblohm7 wrote:
| As a Firefox developer, I'm not sure why _we 'd_ want to
| do that.
|
| Forking isn't cheap if you want to make significant
| changes to that fork. We'd be better off staying with
| Gecko.
|
| (Oh, and we're still all-in on Gecko)
| kenniskrag wrote:
| why is a redirect after the submission of a login form
| needed? Usually they say, that's to avoid the misuse of
| the history function to login. But firefox already knows,
| that there is a password field and could clear the data
| after the submit. Why it's not done?
| MR4D wrote:
| I don't either, but the option is there if it's ever
| needed. I guess I wasn't as clear with my point for
| Firefox (which was a very different point for Microsoft).
| gtk40 wrote:
| Yeah I've had some disappointments with Mozilla over the years,
| but as this point I use it as my main browser in part because I
| don't want there to be a monopoly with Blink (and Webkit)
| rendering engines.
|
| And Firefox is honestly still quite good. I have to open up
| another browser once in a while, but I use Firefox for 99% of
| my browsing on macOS, Linux, and Windows (mainly Linux these
| days), including a lot of web apps.
| lolive wrote:
| I second that. Reinstalling Ubuntu, I decided not to install
| Chrome, just to see. And honestly, everything is going fine
| (except for some DevTools minor issues).
| jjav wrote:
| > I'm disappointed by how many people cling to Chrome/Chromium
| under the justification that they don't like where Mozilla is
| going.
|
| A very key point. I may rage against the occasional anti-user
| decisions Mozilla makes every now and then, but objectively
| Google and thus Chrome are 100x worse in every aspect. Mozilla
| still does respect privacy and user choice mostly, even if they
| blunder sometimes. Google is an advertising company with a
| mission fundamentally contrary to privacy. No way I would ever
| run Chrome.
|
| And that's before considering the monoculture risk of a single
| browser which is an even larger threat. Maybe some are too
| young to remember when IE was dominant and there was a real
| fear of them closing off most the popular web to be Windows/IE
| only.
|
| Today Google's control over interoperable web traffic is larger
| than Microsoft's ever was, through things like the curse of
| recaptcha that makes browsing more difficult on non-chrome.
| Another reason to vote with my mouse clicks and never run
| Chrome.
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| I think you're conflating different issues here. Usability,
| vs privacy. Chrome usability is actually better, 'not 100x
| worse'. I've stopped using Chrome because of the privacy
| issues, but let's be accurate about the issues so we build
| better community understanding and possibly solution.
|
| e.g. By realising that Mozilla has better (than Chrome, but
| still flawed) privacy, but also issues with usability, a nice
| solution suggests itself: another user-focussed organisation
| could maintain patches to Firefox to produce a better browser
| fixing the regular anti-user things Moz does.
| maceurt wrote:
| I wish I could stomach firefox, but everything about it just
| absolutely infuriates me. Even with a bunch of addons it is
| bothersome to run. The issue is that most people spend majority
| of their time on a PC in a web browser, including myself. Even
| a 5% worse product is still going to add up to a sizable amount
| of wasted time/ unneeded frustration. I personally spend hours
| tinkering with my OS to make it better for me to use, I can't
| justify using an inferior product in regards to taking a moral
| stand.
|
| Or at least if I was going to take a moral stand I would start
| by spending at least 50% more time & money for clothing/ other
| products not manufactured immorally.
| aquova wrote:
| Out of curiosity, what is it that makes Firefox 5% worse than
| Chromium-based browsers in your eyes?
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| Slightly slower page loads (5% times all day remember)
|
| Less usable ctrl+tab behaviour for managing lots of tabs
|
| 20 second pause to start if not already running on many of
| my locked down systems over the years, seems to have been
| fixed in last year or so but perennial problem that was
| infuriating in the same way nag-ware delays are
|
| F** with the extensions
|
| Ongoing 'minor' user-unfriendly decisions to the actual
| users of the products to the point where it seems motivated
| to provide a not-quite-ideal result. In basketball there's
| a saying, watch the waist not the ball, which translates as
| watch what they are doing not what they are saying, and by
| doing this I've begun to realise the regular nature of
| these snafus is probably intentional (at a high level) and
| I theorise it's to keep Google's money flowing in by not
| being a serious competitor to average users who want the
| best usability.
|
| etc etc
| PascLeRasc wrote:
| When I use Firefox on my work laptop I get harassed by
| Microsoft. They keep signing me out of Outlook and saying
| they wouldn't have to do that if I was on Edge. And they
| occasionally put up a message on Microsoft To-Do that they
| won't sync my changes because I'm on an unsupported
| browser. This doesn't happen with Chrome so unfortunately
| that's what I use now. It's not Firefox's fault, it
| actually works better for me everywhere else, but I wanted
| to stop signing in 6 times a day.
| maceurt wrote:
| 1. general UI
|
| 2. keyboard shortcuts
|
| 3. moving around tabs/ windows
|
| 4. crashes/ memory issues
| Tagbert wrote:
| That sounds like some of my complaints about Chrome.
| Different strokes.
| [deleted]
| dr-detroit wrote:
| The documentation for FF ESR on how to enable/disable basic
| features exists but its vast and there's a trillion ways to
| do everything. It seems a lot less like a browser and more
| like a browser wrapped in an open source framework that I
| don't like. Maybe they could sell it to Microsoft and you
| could wrap it in Edge.
| alfu wrote:
| A killer feature for me is opening the history & download
| list in a tab instead of a window. This way I don't have to
| alt+tab twice to switch to the next application. Opening
| the history in the same tab (ctrl+h) isn't good enough
| because I usually need the time of visit and there is no
| shortcut to open the download list in the same window.
|
| Perhaps this is just muscle memory and I would think
| oppositely if I never switched to chrome.
| mortehu wrote:
| Not GP, but I decided to try Firefox again last week, and
| had to give up because I couldn't navigate to intranet URLs
| without explicitly typing http://
|
| Strangely foo/ works (goes to http://foo/) while foo/bar
| does not (instead does a web search for foo/bar).
| scaladev wrote:
| about:config - keyword.enabled - set to false
|
| You'll have to prefix your searches with a key (in my
| case it's w for wikipedia, g for Google, and so on), but
| that's what I prefer personally anyway.
|
| Also set browser.fixup.alternate.enabled to false to
| prevent Firefox from retrying whatever you have typed in
| with a .com suffix.
| sradman wrote:
| This article details the decisions of whether to include Chromium
| in several Linux distributions following Google's announcement
| that it will be _Limiting Private API availability in Chromium_ :
|
| https://blog.chromium.org/2021/01/limiting-private-api-avail...
| loeg wrote:
| Which is also referenced in the fifth paragraph of the article:
| https://lwn.net/Articles/843607/#:~:text=this%20brief%20noti...
| CA0DA wrote:
| What's wrong with Firefox? I use it daily and it works great.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| I actually switched to Chromium as my main browser a few days
| ago. I'm using this branch[1], which follows upstream except for
| a handful of patches to retain support for older versions of OS
| X, which I prefer.
|
| I was somewhat surprised to see that all the syncing features
| seem to still exist in this close-to-stock Chromium. It
| encourages you to sign into a Google account to sync data, use
| and to use Google for search suggestions, and to install
| extensions from the Chrome Web Store. Does anyone know how that's
| possible?
|
| I'd actually be quite pleased if all of this stuff just got
| stripped out of Chromium. As it is, I spent quite a bit of time
| going through and turning off as much of it as I could, in some
| places via semi-confusing defaults write commands.
|
| 1: https://github.com/blueboxd/chromium-legacy
| Zardoz84 wrote:
| > The larger problem, though, is that it's not at all clear that
| Firefox will remain a viable alternative to Chrome. Its market
| share has been falling for years, and not everybody is pleased
| with the directions that the Mozilla Foundation has taken. The
| creators of web sites have responded by not caring about Firefox;
| having to retry broken web sites in Chrome is a ritual that many
| Firefox users have had to get used to. It's not surprising that
| users give up and just run Chrome from the outset.
|
| Pardon ? I don't run on any issue that requires using Chrome
| instead of Firefox. At least, not usually.
|
| Also, as web developer I always work on Firefox and then I try on
| Chromiun and Edge to see if I run on a Blink bug (Yeah! I hit a
| few working on this way) or something that it's different between
| Firefox and Blink engine
| richeyryan wrote:
| I encounter it occasionally. Either broken or omitted features.
| Slack calls don't work in Firefox just because. Blurring out
| your background in Google meet isn't available on Firefox. Some
| utilities websites here, in Ireland, don't work in Firefox but
| do in Chrome.
| tristor wrote:
| >Slack calls don't work in Firefox just because.
|
| Slack calls don't work in Firefox because Slack explicitly
| made the choice to not support Firefox and to not follow web
| standards in how they implemented Slack calls. Furthermore,
| they go a step further by detecting your browser and blocking
| the feature for Firefox users and telling you to switch to
| Chrome. [1]
|
| This is not a failure of Firefox, it's a failure of Slack. I
| think the attitude in your comment is very common, and is
| exactly why it's so hard to build a web browser for the
| modern web that isn't part of the Google Chrome monoculture.
| Users cannot differentiate easily between problems they
| encounter because of their browser vs problems they encounter
| because of the web app, and for the user it doesn't matter
| because it's still a problem. Regardless of the cause, it's
| important that browser makers solve these issues to ensure
| that users can get things done on the web, but that's easier
| said than done.
|
| [1]: https://twitter.com/slackhq/status/958645632620748800?la
| ng=e...
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| > Furthermore, they go a step further by detecting your
| browser and blocking the feature for Firefox users and
| telling you to switch to Chrome.
|
| Well, it is perhaps worth noting that if you fake your user
| agent to remove the block, calls still don't work (I've
| tried). I'm not opposed to blocking a feature which the
| developer _knows_ is not going to work (although it would
| be nice if their was an override, for browser developers if
| no one else).
|
| But, yes, the fact the calls don't work in the first place
| is BS. And it is, sadly, one of the reasons I finally gave
| up and switched to Chrome earlier this week. I need this
| stuff for work, and I just can't fight it anymore!
| Lev1a wrote:
| Adding to the sibling comment, MEGA download of large files
| apparently only works if you use a Chromium-based browser since
| those quasi-standardised a feature that IIRC allows websites
| direct access to local storage.
|
| W.T.A.F.
| toyg wrote:
| Define "large file", that's not my experience (but I've not
| used MEGA in a while, they might have broken something...)
| Lev1a wrote:
| IIRC, it was >3GB or >4GB either in a single file or as a
| combined download.
| simlan wrote:
| True for desktop Firefox. Mobile FF not so much but likely the
| combination of adblock and mobile FF is not ideal if you want
| usual commercial sites to work.
|
| Corporate IT is a whole other story. It has been IE only but
| chrome somehow managed to be compatible with most of the crap
| they came up with to secure the intranet. Firefox could never
| complete there... Just too much Microsoft specific 'extras'.
| karmakaze wrote:
| TL;DR - reminder: Chrome is not/was not
| opensource - Chromium is losing features like bookmark sync
| on Mar 15 because Google will no longer issue API keys
| - if you care about opensource, run Firefox (or Chromium) -
| if you are a web dev, support Firefox
| mminer237 wrote:
| Even if Firefox falls by the wayside and websites stop working
| with it somehow, making Blink (and Webkit) a monopoly (which I
| think is a very important thing to prevent and is the reason I
| use Firefox even if I don't have the warmest feelings toward
| Mozilla), I don't think that the free sync API being removed
| means that everyone will have to use Google Chrome. The major
| Chromium projects--Brave, Vivaldi, and Edge--all already use
| their own sync engines independent of Google.
| meibo wrote:
| I wonder if it would be feasible for e.g. Canonical to offer a
| free, hosted implementation of the Sync servers.
|
| The protocol is openly documented afaik, and there might already
| be efforts to implement an open server. It also has e2ee built-
| in.
|
| Of course then you might as well go off and use Firefox, Brave or
| Vivaldi, but it'd be an option nonetheless, if not quite an
| expensive one.
| hackerman_fi wrote:
| Don't know if I'm in minority but I couldn't care less about
| these Google provided services.
|
| I have no reason to bookmark pages between devices - different
| devices for different purposes. I don't need my work bookmarks on
| my gaming computer.
|
| For posting random comments to social media I don't need spell
| checking either. If grammar needs to be spot on, I use Word etc.
| korethr wrote:
| Mixed feelings on this. Personally, I'd switched back to Firefox
| from Chrome years ago, because I'd lost some trust in Google, and
| didn't want a browser that required me to sign in to make use of
| its features. My own personal use case for Chromium wasn't for
| any Google-specific features, it was the same reason I would
| occasionally use Internet Explorer back in the day -- a site I
| needed/wanted was broken in anything else. AFAICT, the removal of
| these API keys doesn't break any of the things I used Chromium
| for.
|
| But on the other hand, I recognize that I am an outlier amongst
| outliers. The everyday user of Chrome probably _does_ make use of
| and depends on the Google-specific services embedded in the
| browser. And so by revoking the API keys for those features,
| Chromium is crippled and no longer at feature parity with Chrome.
| While _I_ don 't care, a lot of other people will, and so those
| who might be inclined to install Chromium are going to be less
| inclined if Chromium is now less featureful and useful to them.
| Only the especially hardcore about software freedom and personal
| privacy are going to to see installing the feature-stripped and
| less-useful Chromium as worth the tradeoff. Those persons are
| like me, outliers amongst outliers. The net effect? Distros stop
| providing packages for a browser with an install base that
| shrinks to something too small to be worth supporting. And now,
| the only option becomes the proprietary Chrome.
|
| Honestly, this strikes me as a tactic similar to, if not the same
| as "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" for which Microsoft was so
| roundly lambasted in the late 90s and early 00s. The question
| remains then, what to do about it? Anti-trust or other
| regulations? Something else?
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| >Current estimates suggest that 60-70% of web users are running
| on Chrome.
|
| Aren't those mostly Windows users?
| 1337shadow wrote:
| Why exactly is Google doing this ?
| mumblemumble wrote:
| What really strikes me here is that so many of us, perhaps taken
| in by the tacit assumption that embrace, extend, extinguish is a
| peculiarly Microsoft behavior, didn't see this sort of thing
| coming, and even spent much of the past decade cheering it on.
| minikites wrote:
| It remains baffling to me that supposedly tech-savvy people seem
| to love a web browser made by an advertising company.
| approxim8ion wrote:
| Holding strong to Firefox as long as I have to.
|
| What really strikes me is why more people aren't pushing for
| open-source browsers. One would think that it is important to
| have an element of trust for something that makes up the bulk of
| your computer's uptime, but perhaps open source is no longer a
| good indicator of trust for projects as large and complex as
| modern browsers, or people are willing to trust them anyway.
|
| Other than Firefox and Brave, I can't think of any "mainstream"
| browser choices that can be considered free software or open
| source.
| nhoughto wrote:
| most people don't even think that deeply about it, firefox and
| chrome are both trusted, end of thought.
|
| ease of use beats moral advantage most times (almost every
| time)
| thejohnconway wrote:
| If you're running a closed source operating system (or large
| parts of it are closed source) why would you be particularly
| concerned about your browser?
| redis_mlc wrote:
| Your question doesn't make sense except from a very, very
| narrow ideological perspective.
|
| It's useful to have an Open Source browser since:
|
| - most of the standards that a browser implements are also
| open standards
|
| - if it's under a permissive license, you can port it to
| either your own device, or unsupported devices.
|
| - proprietary browsers are influenced by business goals to do
| untoward things with regard to privacy and incompatible
| changes.
|
| - cross-platform abilities. I use Firefox across Mac OS,
| linux and Windows, though mainly Mac OS.
|
| Source: ex-Netscape,was a member of a well-known browser
| protocol committee.
| enriquto wrote:
| > if it's under a permissive license, you can port it to
| either your own device, or unsupported devices.
|
| You can do that even if it's copylefted. What difference
| does it make? As long as it is free software you can do it.
| Yaggo wrote:
| Apple's webkit is open source as well. All major browsers are
| based on open source engines. The situation could be much
| worse.
| nescioquid wrote:
| And Webkit itself started a fork of KHTML, if I recall
| correctly.
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| That's true, but Safari uses a closed source JavaScript
| engine.
|
| Seems to me it doesn't count for much unless the whole
| browser is Free and Open Source. A single non-Free component
| is enough for them to sneak in functionality that you don't
| want.
|
| See also: the _VSCodium_ editor /IDE. Official builds of
| Visual Studio Code do not correspond to the published Visual
| Studio Code source-code, as they ship with additional
| telemetry code. The VSCodium project releases binaries more
| faithfully based on the Open Source code.
| esprehn wrote:
| Safari's JS engine is open source:
| https://trac.webkit.org/browser/trunk/Source/JavaScriptCore
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| My mistake, thanks. TIL.
|
| Is it used in any fully Free and Open Source browser?
| spijdar wrote:
| Yes, many. Every WebKitGTK based browser [1] will use
| JSC, so that includes the "GNOME Web" web browser,
| Midori, and a host of smaller niche browsers.
|
| [1] https://webkitgtk.org/
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| Neat. Konqueror uses a different engine, right?
| spijdar wrote:
| It can. Historically Konqueror used KHTML, however, the
| default has been changed to QTWebEngine, which is based
| on Blink i.e. Chromium.
|
| It also supports (supported?) rendering using WebKit, or,
| you can manually change back to KHTML. However, all
| recent versions of Konqueror default to WebEngine.
| https://wiki.debian.org/Konqueror
| pwdisswordfish6 wrote:
| These browser war threads always attract the worst kind of
| pundits: ones who have strong opinions but no idea what
| they're talking about.
|
| > That's true, but Safari uses a closed source JavaScript
| engine.
|
| No.
| majewsky wrote:
| These thread always attract the worst kind of commenters:
| ones who make strong claims without providing any
| explanation or evidence.
| pwdisswordfish6 wrote:
| It's good that we agree.
| [deleted]
| kaladin_1 wrote:
| You don't consider chromium open source?
| approxim8ion wrote:
| My understanding is that chromium can't be run on Windows or
| Mac. Chrome Canary or some testing variant can but not
| Chromium. It's hard to consider it a mainstream option in
| that case for me.
|
| EDIT: this is untrue, chromium builds are available for all
| platforms from chromium.org. Please ignore
| jchw wrote:
| FWIW, I don't think that is true.
|
| https://www.chromium.org/getting-involved/download-chromium
| Yaggo wrote:
| Confirm, just click and run a pre-built package. I
| recently downloaded Chromium 79 for Mac in order to debug
| an issue in Tesla's browser which is based on that. Neat.
| approxim8ion wrote:
| I didn't realize they were using a user-agent to
| determine which platform to serve executables for. Was
| just getting Linux which confused me.
| approxim8ion wrote:
| Oh, that's good to see. I stand corrected.
| worble wrote:
| >can't be run on windows
|
| I'm not sure exactly what you mean by that. chromium.org
| doesn't offer chroimium builds on their website but there
| are a number of places you can get someone elses build, for
| example https://chromium.woolyss.com/ or
| https://github.com/macchrome/winchrome/tree/master or
| presumably just build it yourself if you wanted to.
| chromie123 wrote:
| The Chromium project does maintain an official
| alternative to those: download-chromium.appspot.com. I
| _think_ it 's discoverable via documentation on
| chromium.org albeit perhaps (I don't remember) not from
| the main download page.
|
| (Disclosure: I work at Google on Chrome.)
| approxim8ion wrote:
| My comment was poorly worded, of course they can be built
| and run. I just feel like the extra hoops one would have
| to go through, finding a build or building from source
| (which is a very power-user use case) would be
| disqualifying it from being considered a mainstream
| choice available to the masses.
|
| But yes, that is fair.
| ciceryadam wrote:
| or even easier:
|
| choco install chromium
|
| choco install ungoogled-chromium
|
| https://chocolatey.org/packages?q=chromium
| fretn wrote:
| and if you want extensions the easy way in ungoogled-
| chromium :
|
| https://github.com/NeverDecaf/chromium-web-store
| elwell wrote:
| I think OP does because Brave uses Chromium.
| treeman79 wrote:
| For many many people Facebook down means internet is broken.
| Can't even tell me if using browser or App.
|
| When driving somewhere I often ask the navigator which app they
| are using, google of Apple Maps. 5 years still can't tell the
| difference. Oddly She knows Waze.
|
| Tech people concerns don't line up well to normal people.
| rakoo wrote:
| I've discovered a new one recently: I asked people what
| browser they were using on their Android, and they couldn't
| tell me. When I asked them to show me, they showed me the
| Google search bar on the homepage.
|
| People don't even use a browser anymore, they're using a
| previewer for browsing the web. I was kinda sad to see that
| they used that thing, but in a way we should be happy about
| that; when people want to check the recipe for a cheesecake,
| they go and get a recipe for a cheesecake. They don't care
| about what tools are in the way and they shouldn't. We tech
| people tend to forget about _why_ we build software. If
| Google wasn 't Google I'd be very fine with people forgetting
| about the name of their browser, but in this instance they're
| using one of the worst ways to browse the web.
| crocodiletears wrote:
| I switched over to Waterfox after their recent blog post[0].
| Not a political matter, it just reeked of paternalism. I'll
| hold on to Gecko as long as I can, but Mozilla keeps making
| decisions that force me to hold my nose.
|
| [0] https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2021/01/08/we-need-more-
| than-d...
| akie wrote:
| I don't see _at all_ how that post is forcing you to hold
| your nose.
|
| It is a straight and simple denunciation of the attack on the
| US Capitol, and a call to critically investigate the role
| social media played in it. How is that controversial?
| crocodiletears wrote:
| No, I absolutely agree with the sentiment of the post. It
| was a singular sentence that indicated Mozilla's comfort
| with intermediating between the user and the content they
| consume.
|
| >Turn on by default the tools to amplify factual voices
| over disinformation.
|
| It's an innocuous sentiment, but one with significant long-
| term implications for the behavioral norms of web-browsers.
|
| I've held my nose at a few decisions pertaining to the
| general direction of the browser, such as the by-default
| inclusion of Pocket - which I resented, but could
| understand their need to find ways to become financially
| independent, and the browser otherwise improved
| consistently.
| approxim8ion wrote:
| _shrug_ I 'm not the biggest fan of the post, but unless
| their opinions become downright offensive or affect their
| product in any way I'm not inclined to drop it. Different
| strokes for different folks, of course.
|
| Waterfox seems nice enough but I'm not sure how I feel about
| it being a fork of an older version essentially. It'd help if
| I had an idea about the technical stuff that goes into the
| browser, but I'm just not sure if I can trust it as much as I
| do Firefox for example.
| turminal wrote:
| Sadly the impact of this will be so small google won't even
| notice. And even if all the angry chromium users that are
| potentially going to have to switch their browser would take
| action and be vocal and do something about what is going on with
| the web, nothing would change. Such is the price of monopolies.
| elwell wrote:
| How will this affect Brave (which uses Chromium)?
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