5 ms·

Possibly. Their gain? - Less of a monopoly status. Their losses? - The privacy concerned. - Ad-blocker users. - Over-opinionated users. Good move, for th

Possibly. Their gain? - Less of a monopoly status. Their losses? - The privacy concerned. - Ad-blocker users. - Over-opinionated users. Good move, for them.

troels 8y ago
I'm sure Microsoft had the same reasoning about IE.
- beavis2 8y ago
  IE lost users because it was abysmal. And the reason for that was they wanted to keep people on the desktop. Who knows... if IE was already as good as early Chrome, perhaps there would be no Chrome.
  - tjoff 8y ago
    IE 6 was superior in every way, there truly was no competition at the time. Then they didn't bother to do anything for close to a decade and "suddenly" everyone had passed them. Google on the other hand seems to be actively making things worse. Might not take so long time for chrome. One can hope.
    - beavis2 8y ago
      Not really. IE's "killer feature" was ActiveX. Which meant that any browser limitation could be worked around. But there was competition, that's why they made the original effort. Once the competition was killed, they stopped. Sure, they wanted it to be the best browser - but not better than desktop.
      - tjoff 8y ago
        ActiveX wasn't really used outside of enterprises. It was also used for creating wave-effects on an image, cool stuff. The desktop was never threatened, most people were on dialup. Javascript was about changing link colors, not creating "software". Since IE was so much better than the competition it didn't really matter that it got monopoly. Until it stagnated. Same as today, since Chrome was so superior it didn't really matter that all other browsers faded into niches. Until google started abusing it. Maybe we should start prioritizing open software rather than waiting for a monopoly to be formed? The reason for why Fusion 360 is "free" isn't because autodesk are nice guys, it's because that's an effective way to ensure that they won't have to deal with competition in the future.
  - dingle_thunk 8y ago
    IE became abysmal because principled developers didn’t want to continue to work on it. It wasn’t always so.
- mike22223333 8y ago
  Google strikes off a right balance between annoying and convenient. It's kicking off all Privacy concerned people, Ad Block people, overopiniated people off it's platform indirectly. Websites get less money from Firefox users per user then Chrome users. If Firefox users make less money, going to future, devs will not optimize for it. If the only remaining Firefox users block Ads and block analytics, I do not think google or some other search engine will pay to them to keep their default. There is literally no benefit of having such people on your platform.
  - beavis2 8y ago
    > devs will not optimize of it. Yep. I have been a FF user since.. well, Netscape. Yet, FireFox-specific bugs have always been a lower priority. Because, it's "a bug effecting 100 users" vs "a bug effecting 900 users" When you consider FF users are harder to monetise (admit it, we generally are), you can start saying "a bug effecting ~50 potential customers, vs ~800". *(fortunately, now that IE/Edge is out of the picture, those types of issues are rare)
    - simias 8y ago
      We might be harder to monetize with ads but are we harder to monetize beyond that? I'm a Firefox user and you'll have to pry ublock from my cold, dead hands but I do pay for a bunch of online services. I think the main problem with Firefox is the tiny user share, not the composition of said share. We need to make Firefox more mainstream and the problem will solve itself. Unfortunately it's an uphill battle, Firefox is not cool anymore.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
    - n42 8y ago
      Websites work best in the browsers that the developers use to build it, and that will be the only way Chrome can fail.

Possibly. Their gain? - Less of a monopoly status. Their losses? - The privacy concerned. - Ad-blocker users. - Over-opinionated users. Good move, for them.

troels 8y ago

I'm sure Microsoft had the same reasoning about IE.

beavis2 8y ago
IE lost users because it was abysmal. And the reason for that was they wanted to keep people on the desktop. Who knows... if IE was already as good as early Chrome, perhaps there would be no Chrome.
- tjoff 8y ago
  IE 6 was superior in every way, there truly was no competition at the time. Then they didn't bother to do anything for close to a decade and "suddenly" everyone had passed them. Google on the other hand seems to be actively making things worse. Might not take so long time for chrome. One can hope.
  - beavis2 8y ago
    Not really. IE's "killer feature" was ActiveX. Which meant that any browser limitation could be worked around. But there was competition, that's why they made the original effort. Once the competition was killed, they stopped. Sure, they wanted it to be the best browser - but not better than desktop.
    - tjoff 8y ago
      ActiveX wasn't really used outside of enterprises. It was also used for creating wave-effects on an image, cool stuff. The desktop was never threatened, most people were on dialup. Javascript was about changing link colors, not creating "software". Since IE was so much better than the competition it didn't really matter that it got monopoly. Until it stagnated. Same as today, since Chrome was so superior it didn't really matter that all other browsers faded into niches. Until google started abusing it. Maybe we should start prioritizing open software rather than waiting for a monopoly to be formed? The reason for why Fusion 360 is "free" isn't because autodesk are nice guys, it's because that's an effective way to ensure that they won't have to deal with competition in the future.
- dingle_thunk 8y ago
  IE became abysmal because principled developers didn’t want to continue to work on it. It wasn’t always so.
mike22223333 8y ago
Google strikes off a right balance between annoying and convenient. It's kicking off all Privacy concerned people, Ad Block people, overopiniated people off it's platform indirectly. Websites get less money from Firefox users per user then Chrome users. If Firefox users make less money, going to future, devs will not optimize for it. If the only remaining Firefox users block Ads and block analytics, I do not think google or some other search engine will pay to them to keep their default. There is literally no benefit of having such people on your platform.
- beavis2 8y ago
  > devs will not optimize of it. Yep. I have been a FF user since.. well, Netscape. Yet, FireFox-specific bugs have always been a lower priority. Because, it's "a bug effecting 100 users" vs "a bug effecting 900 users" When you consider FF users are harder to monetise (admit it, we generally are), you can start saying "a bug effecting ~50 potential customers, vs ~800". *(fortunately, now that IE/Edge is out of the picture, those types of issues are rare)
  - simias 8y ago
    We might be harder to monetize with ads but are we harder to monetize beyond that? I'm a Firefox user and you'll have to pry ublock from my cold, dead hands but I do pay for a bunch of online services. I think the main problem with Firefox is the tiny user share, not the composition of said share. We need to make Firefox more mainstream and the problem will solve itself. Unfortunately it's an uphill battle, Firefox is not cool anymore.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - n42 8y ago
    Websites work best in the browsers that the developers use to build it, and that will be the only way Chrome can fail.