7 ms·

This has to be worrisome to the Chrome team. I take this to mean that Firefox is getting faster and less janky with recent releases. Enough Windows users who

This has to be worrisome to the Chrome team. I take this to mean that Firefox is getting faster and less janky with recent releases. Enough Windows users who are in the know and who occasionally kick the Firefox tires are finally settling on it. I don't view this as a knock on the quality of Microsoft products as much as an overall improvement in Firefox. I'm on Mac, and I believe Chrome software quality has slipped in the past 12 months. Lots more crashes than I have ever seen and some new CSS curiosities. And that's with me rarely running Chrome - Firefox is my primary browser. Maybe Mac is a much tougher platform to target and isn't the priority for Goog, or perhaps the transition to Blink has been rough. Whatever the reason, Chrome seems to be getting creaky in its old age.

untog 10y ago
> This has to be worrisome to the Chrome team. Looking at the data, not really. Their usage continues to grow, Firefox growth is at the expense of IE/Edge, not Chrome.
- EdSharkey 10y ago
  Yes, Chrome is the current 800lbs gorilla, and they continue to grow. I am still operating under a browser wars mentality where Netscape/Mozilla's marketshare completely collapsed and they slowly recovered over time. I'm just impressed that Firefox is in double digits in terms of marketshare given that they don't have a huge marketing engine driving them (Okay, I guess Yahoo is pretty decent as engines go.) I remember when Chrome shipped with V8 as being a big turning point for the way Firefox was run. Management went from complacent to reactionary. The bug reports regarding JavaScript performance in the Firefox bug tracker at that time were really fascinating to watch - Mozilla was a very disturbed hornets' nest! Then came rapid release and all the arewe*yet.com websites, etc. Mozilla has been punching above their weight class ever since Chrome came to market, but I perceive that recently Mozilla management has been transitioning from reactionary to offensive. Their moves on Rust and sunsetting XUL and XPCOM are geared towards security AND performance, which are painful and necessary shifts. Largely hitting pause on FirefoxOS and Thunderbird and everything else not Firefox is also the right, if painful, thing to do. That's why I'm going to stick with my assertion. Every day that Mozilla/Firefox doesn't shrivel up and die has to be a concern to the Chrome team!
  - sqeaky 10y ago
    Does the Chrome team really care? Ads in Firefox provide the same revenue as ads in Chrome. What does Google gain by monopolizing? I think they care more about internet explorer, they don't want it dead specifically, but if it sticks around they want it reliable. Using ie used to be a giant pain and nothing worked right, people would use it to accomplish their goal and be done. Now using any of the three is fairly pleasant and people on any browser could reasonably view many ads.
    - eunoia 10y ago
      > What does Google gain by monopolizing? I would guess control. Owning the dominant web browser allows them to: * Softly guide front end web tech in a direction of their choosing * Ensure the supremacy of Google the search engine. Also if things ever really come to head between ad-blockers and ad-providers owning the dominant platform the former runs on would be very beneficial to the latter.
      - scholia 10y ago
        > I would guess control. Most big companies want to control their own technology stack and optimize for their own products. So Google wants people using Android phones and Chromebooks (ideally, fed by Google Fiber), with Google Chrome browsers feeding traffic to Google Search, Google Docs (with all your files in Gdrive), Gmail, YouTube etc. This provides the maximum surveillance capacity for maximum tracking and thus the most efficient delivery of advertising. At least to the people who don't use ad-blockers and anti-tracking systems ;-) "The result is a world where our most intimate personal details are collected and stored. I used to say that Google has a more intimate picture of what I'm thinking of than my wife does. But that's not far enough: Google has a more intimate picture than I do. The company knows exactly what I am thinking about, how much I am thinking about it, and when I stop thinking about it: all from my Google searches. And it remembers all of that forever." https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/11/surveillance_as_1.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/11/surveillance_...
        10y ago
- chr1 10y ago
  From the article Firefox didn't even have any growth, just slower fall than IE.
pessimizer 10y ago
Firefox was never janky, or slow. It's just both 1) not pushed on users of the products of the two biggest tech companies we have, and 2) not distinguishable from the other options.
- EdSharkey 10y ago
  It was for me, on every OS I ever ran it. I say that as a dedicated Firefox user. Right now, today, Firefox is generally responsive for me but not faster to render or process than Chrome for most workloads. I still see plenty of jank when framerates matter like when scrolling a busy page. That said, when pages leverage Firefox's special performance features, like ASM.js, I've seen it vastly outperform Chrome, many times faster.

untog 10y ago

> This has to be worrisome to the Chrome team. Looking at the data, not really. Their usage continues to grow, Firefox growth is at the expense of IE/Edge, not Chrome.

EdSharkey 10y ago
Yes, Chrome is the current 800lbs gorilla, and they continue to grow. I am still operating under a browser wars mentality where Netscape/Mozilla's marketshare completely collapsed and they slowly recovered over time. I'm just impressed that Firefox is in double digits in terms of marketshare given that they don't have a huge marketing engine driving them (Okay, I guess Yahoo is pretty decent as engines go.) I remember when Chrome shipped with V8 as being a big turning point for the way Firefox was run. Management went from complacent to reactionary. The bug reports regarding JavaScript performance in the Firefox bug tracker at that time were really fascinating to watch - Mozilla was a very disturbed hornets' nest! Then came rapid release and all the arewe*yet.com websites, etc. Mozilla has been punching above their weight class ever since Chrome came to market, but I perceive that recently Mozilla management has been transitioning from reactionary to offensive. Their moves on Rust and sunsetting XUL and XPCOM are geared towards security AND performance, which are painful and necessary shifts. Largely hitting pause on FirefoxOS and Thunderbird and everything else not Firefox is also the right, if painful, thing to do. That's why I'm going to stick with my assertion. Every day that Mozilla/Firefox doesn't shrivel up and die has to be a concern to the Chrome team!
- sqeaky 10y ago
  Does the Chrome team really care? Ads in Firefox provide the same revenue as ads in Chrome. What does Google gain by monopolizing? I think they care more about internet explorer, they don't want it dead specifically, but if it sticks around they want it reliable. Using ie used to be a giant pain and nothing worked right, people would use it to accomplish their goal and be done. Now using any of the three is fairly pleasant and people on any browser could reasonably view many ads.
  - eunoia 10y ago
    > What does Google gain by monopolizing? I would guess control. Owning the dominant web browser allows them to: * Softly guide front end web tech in a direction of their choosing * Ensure the supremacy of Google the search engine. Also if things ever really come to head between ad-blockers and ad-providers owning the dominant platform the former runs on would be very beneficial to the latter.
    - scholia 10y ago
      > I would guess control. Most big companies want to control their own technology stack and optimize for their own products. So Google wants people using Android phones and Chromebooks (ideally, fed by Google Fiber), with Google Chrome browsers feeding traffic to Google Search, Google Docs (with all your files in Gdrive), Gmail, YouTube etc. This provides the maximum surveillance capacity for maximum tracking and thus the most efficient delivery of advertising. At least to the people who don't use ad-blockers and anti-tracking systems ;-) "The result is a world where our most intimate personal details are collected and stored. I used to say that Google has a more intimate picture of what I'm thinking of than my wife does. But that's not far enough: Google has a more intimate picture than I do. The company knows exactly what I am thinking about, how much I am thinking about it, and when I stop thinking about it: all from my Google searches. And it remembers all of that forever." https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/11/surveillance_as_1.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/11/surveillance_...
      - 10y ago
chr1 10y ago
From the article Firefox didn't even have any growth, just slower fall than IE.

pessimizer 10y ago

Firefox was never janky, or slow. It's just both 1) not pushed on users of the products of the two biggest tech companies we have, and 2) not distinguishable from the other options.

EdSharkey 10y ago
It was for me, on every OS I ever ran it. I say that as a dedicated Firefox user. Right now, today, Firefox is generally responsive for me but not faster to render or process than Chrome for most workloads. I still see plenty of jank when framerates matter like when scrolling a busy page. That said, when pages leverage Firefox's special performance features, like ASM.js, I've seen it vastly outperform Chrome, many times faster.