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Wow. I remember watching these stats, waiting for Firefox to edge past IE in the 2000s. Chrome really took the ball and ran with it. They had the advantage of s
by mmastrac 11y ago
Wow. I remember watching these stats, waiting for Firefox to edge past IE in the 2000s. Chrome really took the ball and ran with it. They had the advantage of seeing things that FF did that really worked (tabs, extensions, find-as-you-type) and the intelligence to iterate on that (multi-process support, a world-class debugger) and a really solid foundation in WebKit (née KHTML).
In a way Chrome was in the right place at the right time, with the right bunch of people. If they hadn't launched, Firefox would likely be sitting where Chrome is now, though likely without a bunch of drive to improve things as much as they currently have.
Of course, in an alternate universe where Firefox was #1 and IE #2, we might have had royalty-free video codecs mandated by standards and no W3C-endorsed DRM...
- kpcyrd 11y ago> Chrome really took the ball and ran with it I'm still kind of bitter with the way they did that. A lot of windows installers, which usually installed you toolbars if you forgot to uncheck a box, started installing chrome as your default browser if you forgot to uncheck a box. I've seen a lot of non-technical people using chrome who have no idea what chrome is or remembering giving consent to installing chrome.
- mmastrac 11y agoInteresting. I didn't see that - I assumed it was just a result of advertising it to everyone who searched on Google. Do you have any specific examples?
- vlan0 11y agoAdobe is guilty of this. If you download Flash Player from their site, the "Optional offers" are to also install Chrome and Google Toolbar. Both of which are checked by default.
- zobzu 11y agoyou're thinking google did not pay adobe for this, adobe is doing this just cuz they like it? are you mad
- JohnTHaller 11y agoAdobe Flash - When you download and installed Flash for Opera or Firefox, it would trick you into installing Chrome as your default browser unless you noticed and unchecked a box: http://i.imgur.com/Uldw6X3.png http://i.imgur.com/Uldw6X3.png Java - When updating, Java on Windows would often trick you into installing Chrome as your default browser unless you noticed and unchecked a box Avast, AntiVir, etc - Nearly every free antivirus on Windows was paid by Google to install Chrome. The free antivirus would notify you there was a new version and if you clicked the UPDATE or CONTINUE button without noticing and unchecking the box, you'd wind up with Chrome installed and set as your default browser: http://i.imgur.com/hNZLbmL.jpg http://i.imgur.com/hNZLbmL.jpg The majority of the non-techies I know and had set up with Firefox have no idea how Chrome got on their machines and became their default browser. I'd wager a lot of Chrome's desktop userbase on Windows is due to shady bundleware arrangements. Chrome was still engaged in the above behavior the last time I checked.
- k__ 11y agoGrowth hacking at large. Impressive :)
- MOARDONGZPLZ 11y agoNo, it's not impressive. It's deceptive and a dark pattern.
- Aldo_MX 11y agoGoogle's not at fault; Adobe, Oracle, and every other greedy software vendor are.
- JohnTHaller 11y agoGoogle is knowingly paying for it.
- Aldo_MX 11y ago
- mordocai 11y agoccleaner and possibly the other piriform products do this
- tunap 10y agoCorrect: all Piriform products do this... unless chrome is already installed/detected.
- neerdowell 11y agoCCleaner: https://i.imgur.com/LNFjqzd.png https://i.imgur.com/LNFjqzd.png The checkbox is pre-selected.
- nacs 11y agoThe irony in CCleaner, a tool to help you get crap off your computer, doing auto-install offers.. For those looking for an alternative, try Bleachbit [1] (works great on Linux/Windows, open-source). [1]: https://www.bleachbit.org/ https://www.bleachbit.org/
- nathancahill 11y agoAgreed. Similar to how Adobe Reader leveraged itself into computers everywhere with their Get Adobe Reader button beside every .pdf link.
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y agoChrome also had the advantage of being advertised on Google.com.
- tdkl 11y agoIt also had an advantage of being a friggin' fast browser. I switched in 2009 and never looked back beside occasionally trying out FF and nope'ing back to Chrome.
- shmerl 11y agoFirefox became faster than Chrome quite a while ago already. Not sure what you were measuring.
- Aldo_MX 11y agoUI Responsiveness probably, any perception of speed is lost if loading a website freezes the entire browser for several msecs.
- Drdrdrq 11y agoThis. I love FF and use it wherever I can, but there are small tricks in Chrome that make it seem much faster in normal use. No matter what you do, action feedback is instant. Firefox should really imitate this.
- delecti 11y agoYep. A bit part of the perception of speed isn't "always be fast", it's "never be slow".
- acdha 11y agoWhen talking about a piece of software as complicated as a modern browser, “became faster” is too broad to have any meaning at all — you can find specific features where almost any browser is faster. In the case of Chrome and Firefox, they're competitive enough that you really need to say both what you're measuring and how you measured it. People tend to say one is faster than the other when they most commonly mean “the set of extensions I installed in A slowed it down more than B”.
- Rudism 11y agoGoogle was paying out $1 per Chrome install for a long time, which is why you saw it being heavily distributed through all sorts of shady channels like monetized installers. For context, a payout of $0.10 for a bundled install would have been considered really good back then; a payout 10x that amount meant you'd pull every dirty trick in the book to get as many installs as possible.
- tarblog 11y agoDo you have a source on this? Even one about the market in general? I wasn't aware of this practice before now.
- yuhong 11y agoI wonder what web designers who dealt with IE thought of that.
- toomanythings2 11y agoI don't remember any such thing and I started using Chrome from day one.
- bigger_cheese 11y agoI prefer to use Firefox. I ended up switching because Netflix refused to work in Linux unless I used Chrome. At that point there was no point having two browsers installed so was path of least resistance just to use chrome for everything.
- bobajeff 11y ago>If they hadn't launched, Firefox would likely be sitting where Chrome is now I very much doubt that. Even before Chrome launched Firefox stopped climbing in share. Mozilla has had this saying about marketshare not being apart of their mission. In fact they've been losing share for some time now. According to NetMarketShare their at about 10% where they were once ~27%.
- nowprovision 11y agochrome did not have extensions when launched, and firebug was far superior back then. it was a long time before extensions came maybe even 2010. they did not run with what ff did, far from it.
- Aldo_MX 11y agoI wouldn't claim firebug was "far superior", unless "far superior" is a synonym of bloated. Since their inception the dev tools were minimalistic (just the DOM Inspector and a JS Console), currently the Dev Tools of Chrome could get some trimming, ex. some tabs such as Sources and Resources could get merged.
- pessimizer 11y agoChrome had the advantage of being pushed by the largest internet company in the world, with one of the most widely used operating systems in the world. Firefox chased after the look of Chrome after being shocked by its sudden rise, and successfully made itself indistinguishable from it. Compelling things about Firefox that are wasted: 1) It's operated by a non-profit which lacks an ulterior motive. 2) It isn't inherently privacy-destroying. 3) The vast number of extensions. Instead of depending on these things, they sneakily put in opt-out features that do destroy privacy and generate revenue, hide the ways to opt-out, and act shocked when you question their motives. They constantly break extensions. They unintentionally highlight that they share the thing that bothers people the most about applications in general: they arbitrarily change UI, something about your workflow is as likely as not to break on every update, and you will spend hours trying to get it to work the way it used to work. There's no reason for them to do this other than some Silicon Valley mindset - it's in the culture, not in the mission. It's as if the Salvation Army kept moving the front door. Worse, it's as if the Salvation Army kept moving the front door because they saw Wal-Mart moving the front door. Firefox should be saying: "We're the safe as milk, simple, straightforward browser that prioritizes privacy and public service, and is infinitely flexible in order to prioritize our user's individual needs." Instead, they're like: "We're an off-brand Chrome. We'll make a phone and an OS, too, just a little crappier. You have no idea where our money is coming from, but our drive to expand beyond what we once did well should make you suspicious. Also, we're removing that button on the next update."
- tunap 10y agoThanks for this. I get downvoted everytime I try less succinctly to air my heartbreak for Mozilla. If I want the latest greatest functionality, I'd be happy to add another plug-in. Not so happy to have to edit a ton of cryptic about:config settings to reduce new, beta features that create gaping vulnerabilities that propagate a slew of new security fixes... talk about a vicious cycle.
- hkmurakami 11y agoThey had the added advantage of being physically located near Mozilla's Mountain View HQ and being able to recruit engineers working on Firefox (granted, many Mozilla engineers are remote, but their recruitment of FF engineers shouldn't be forgotten)
- pcurve 11y agoFor me, Chrome's performance advantage in youtube playback was what won me over. Chrome handled youtube videos a lot more efficiently than FF. I had an old Core 2 Duo 6600, and it had no problem playing youtube 1080p in Chrome, but completely choked in FF and IE.
- rpgmaker 11y ago> multi-process support, a world-class debugger Regular users don't care for any of that. The reason why they are number one it's because they had the "internet's homepage" advantage and were able to spam everybody into installing it. If you happen to be on Firefox and you haven't installed the last two .0001 releases they start to spam you with the annoying "install chrome" messages on google.com. No wonder everyone and their uncle installed it instead of Firefox if only to get rid of that annoying ad. Reasonable people can disagree on Firefox vs Chrome but let's not pretend that this isn't how Chrome got to be numero uno.