4 ms·

Too bad the last few years have been a downturn and an ongoing series of mistakes, which drove too many users toward Google.

by Endy 9y ago

robin_reala 9y ago
To be fair, it wasn’t just technical problems with Firefox that drove users to Chrome: it can also be blamed on Google advertising Chrome heavily as an upgrade in prominent positions on google.com start page and other properties, Google crippling their own software to only work with Chrome, Google having the financial resources for multi-billion-dollar TV advertising campaigns, bundling Chrome in a pseudo-malware opt-out fashion with other software downloads (e.g. Java updates), etc etc. At least the Chrome team seem pissed off with the ongoing problem of Chrome-only Google applications, although they seem powerless to do anything about it as the problem continues.
- notafxn 9y ago
  For a very long time Chrome has been vastly superior to Firefox. Now Firefox is starting to reach the level of Chrome, but they seem to be unable to stop pissing the bed, which in the end I believe will make their technical efforts worthless.
  - Endy 9y ago
    Well, if they hadn't given in to WebDRM, WebAssembly, and the rest of it, and had stayed with the pre-Australis Firefox, developing that in logical directions for a web browser, not a do-everything-program, it would have been good. Then again, I'm also opposed to the multiprocess nonsense, and to this day I only use a single-process browser.
    - jcranmer 9y ago
      As I still remember the days when Flash ads hung the web browser, I was ever so grateful when multiprocess for plugins came about and I could Flash without killing the web browser.
      - superkuh 9y ago
        You never needed browser multiprocess for that on linux. It was easy to just kill the plugin process. I don't know about windows.
        jcranmer 9y ago
        No, Flash used to be same process (even on Linux), until Firefox 3.6 or so.
      - Endy 9y ago
        You know, it's really funny. People keep complaining about things like Flash hanging their browser, or how "slow" Firefox was. I never experienced those problems and I don't understand why or how anyone else did. I mean, there was a good while there that most of my web use was on Newgrounds and Kongregate. If Flash was going to hang my browser, you'd think games and heavy video content would do it - but no, it never did. And Firefox was and is one of the fastest-loading programs on my PC - and I don't use or allow multiprocess to happen.
    - JoshTriplett 9y ago
      > WebDRM, WebAssembly Those two things are nothing like each other. EME, the DRM mechanism, should never have existed, should certainly never have been "standardized" (to the extent that concept even makes sense for a feature that fundamentally exists to glue in perpetually non-standard proprietary plugins), and it's debatable whether more harm than good was done by Firefox trying to make sure people didn't have to switch browsers to run Netflix. WebAssembly, on the other hand, is one of the most exciting technologies to come to the web in a long time.
- jcranmer 9y ago
  The worst of the only-works-in-Chrome Google apps (to me at least) was Hangouts. With the impending death of NPAPI plugins, it was rebuilt on WebRTC (the first shipping implementation of which was Firefox!), but enabled only for Chrome. To be fair, I've heard that the Chrome developers themselves were livid at this.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

Too bad the last few years have been a downturn and an ongoing series of mistakes, which drove too many users toward Google.

by Endy 9y ago

Too bad the last few years have been a downturn and an ongoing series of mistakes, which drove too many users toward Google.

robin_reala 9y ago

To be fair, it wasn’t just technical problems with Firefox that drove users to Chrome: it can also be blamed on Google advertising Chrome heavily as an upgrade in prominent positions on google.com start page and other properties, Google crippling their own software to only work with Chrome, Google having the financial resources for multi-billion-dollar TV advertising campaigns, bundling Chrome in a pseudo-malware opt-out fashion with other software downloads (e.g. Java updates), etc etc. At least the Chrome team seem pissed off with the ongoing problem of Chrome-only Google applications, although they seem powerless to do anything about it as the problem continues.

notafxn 9y ago
For a very long time Chrome has been vastly superior to Firefox. Now Firefox is starting to reach the level of Chrome, but they seem to be unable to stop pissing the bed, which in the end I believe will make their technical efforts worthless.
- Endy 9y ago
  Well, if they hadn't given in to WebDRM, WebAssembly, and the rest of it, and had stayed with the pre-Australis Firefox, developing that in logical directions for a web browser, not a do-everything-program, it would have been good. Then again, I'm also opposed to the multiprocess nonsense, and to this day I only use a single-process browser.
  - jcranmer 9y ago
    As I still remember the days when Flash ads hung the web browser, I was ever so grateful when multiprocess for plugins came about and I could Flash without killing the web browser.
    - superkuh 9y ago
      You never needed browser multiprocess for that on linux. It was easy to just kill the plugin process. I don't know about windows.
      - jcranmer 9y ago
        No, Flash used to be same process (even on Linux), until Firefox 3.6 or so.
    - Endy 9y ago
      You know, it's really funny. People keep complaining about things like Flash hanging their browser, or how "slow" Firefox was. I never experienced those problems and I don't understand why or how anyone else did. I mean, there was a good while there that most of my web use was on Newgrounds and Kongregate. If Flash was going to hang my browser, you'd think games and heavy video content would do it - but no, it never did. And Firefox was and is one of the fastest-loading programs on my PC - and I don't use or allow multiprocess to happen.
  - JoshTriplett 9y ago
    > WebDRM, WebAssembly Those two things are nothing like each other. EME, the DRM mechanism, should never have existed, should certainly never have been "standardized" (to the extent that concept even makes sense for a feature that fundamentally exists to glue in perpetually non-standard proprietary plugins), and it's debatable whether more harm than good was done by Firefox trying to make sure people didn't have to switch browsers to run Netflix. WebAssembly, on the other hand, is one of the most exciting technologies to come to the web in a long time.
jcranmer 9y ago
The worst of the only-works-in-Chrome Google apps (to me at least) was Hangouts. With the impending death of NPAPI plugins, it was rebuilt on WebRTC (the first shipping implementation of which was Firefox!), but enabled only for Chrome. To be fair, I've heard that the Chrome developers themselves were livid at this.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]