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In the case of Chrome, you can't blame Google. They made a good browser, did some marketing and it got popular. However the current situation is worrisome, bec

In the case of Chrome, you can't blame Google. They made a good browser, did some marketing and it got popular. However the current situation is worrisome, because alternative implementations are dying and in the case of the web, diversity is important. Both Opera and Microsoft's Edge are now powered by Chromium. Chromium is a project controlled by Google. Its redeeming quality, in terms of its open source nature, is the ability to fork, however competitors such as Microsoft proved that they no longer have the capacity to develop a modern browser. At this point the only remaining alternatives are Firefox and Safari. I think nowadays Firefox is a much better browser and that Mozilla is better at guarding my interests, so I would use Firefox even if it weren't a better browser, however the market isn't necessarily interested in that.

noname120 7y ago
> competitors such as Microsoft proved that they no longer have the capacity to develop a modern browser This is incorrect. They absolutely can as demonstrated by the fact that former Edge works great, has better hardware acceleration than Chrome, and consumes less power. However, they are not willing to anymore, which is a huge concern for future innovations in that domain.
- thrower123 7y ago
  Edge working great is quite an exageration, in my experience. Barely workable, with it's own host of weird bugs, that Microsoft did their typical slow-rolling and prevarication on handling. Tying it to a specific operating system version was also a poor decision if they wanted adoption.
- The_rationalist 7y ago
  "they are not willing to anymore" wtf does this mean? Have you looked at chromium commits activity? Microsoft is actively working on improving chromium, especially improving it's integration with windows 10. Convergence create synergies instead of reinventing the wheel and make Google no longer the only player in the development of chromium. Firefox has ~600000 commits Chrome has ~700000. Do you realize the order of magnitude of improvements that we users should have, if mozilla devs had worked in improving chrome instead?? No those numbers are far too much to realize for a human brain, but at least we can realize that we don't realize. Btw hello double standards, why shouldn't QT, WPF or GTK have redundant implementations?
  - The_rationalist 7y ago
    Downvoting is nice, counter arguing logically is better.
- Andrex 7y ago
  It is correct, but it hinges on your interpretation of the phrase "modern browser." Edge was falling behind on implementing the web spec compared to Chrome (among other things.) > This is incorrect. They absolutely can as demonstrated by the fact that former Edge works great, has better hardware acceleration than Chrome, and consumes less power. If Edge had all those things but could only render HTML4 and below, would it be considered a "modern browser" still? I would say no. That's an extreme hypothetical but it was similar to the future Microsoft saw for Edge, and a major factor in the switch to Chromium.
gingabriska 7y ago
> They made a good browser, did some marketing and it got popular In initial days of chrome, it wasn't that better. It grew in popularity because of the bundle model of advertising they employed which was initially used to distribute spyware and the browser started growing. All the nice things came later.
- icebraining 7y ago
  It had an uncluttered UI, multi-process tabs, sandboxing, V8, Incognito, and a few more. Some of these were available in other browsers, but the mix was rather new.
writepub 7y ago
I do not trust Google, but I do not trust Mozilla either. An overwhelming majority of Mozilla funding comes from Google, Microsoft, and other giants it directly competes with. Added to that, many of it's battles (at the W3C and like) prioritize philosophy over customer satisfaction and ease of use. 99.9% of browser users don't care or don't even know if their browser is open source - what they want is convenience and ease of use. I hope Mozilla prioritizes the ones that actually matter - the users, over whatever philosophy it claims to live by, that often times isn't rooted in customer centricity.
- TAForObvReasons 7y ago
  Mozilla really hasn't helped their cause with various privacy-related issues over the last few years, like the Booking.com ads (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18800360 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18800360). The obfuscatory language around it are arguably more insulting than the ads themselves. As John Gruber so eloquently wrote: > If you want to sell ads, sell ads. Own it. Don’t try to coat it with a layer of frosting and tell me it’s a fucking cupcake. https://daringfireball.net/linked/2014/02/16/mozilla https://daringfireball.net/linked/2014/02/16/mozilla
  - r3bl 7y ago
    They didn't sell the space to Booking.com. They've promoted one another in their user bases: Firefox showed a message about Booking, Booking showed a message about Firefox. There was no money involved. I'm not gonna defend their action to do so because I disagree with it too, but if you wanna feel outraged about it, at least get the facts right. John Gruber should do the same.
    - TAForObvReasons 7y ago
      Ironically that Gruber comment was about the "user-enhancing" Sponsored Tiles episode from early 2014. That we are still seeing questionable and un-telegraphed behavior in 2019 suggests none of the privacy-relevant lessons were taken to heart.
dTal 7y ago
>In the case of Chrome, you can't blame Google. They made a good browser, did some marketing and it got popular. Where "did some marketing" equals "unethically abused monopoly position to aggressively push through dark patterns", sure. I think I can still blame them for that.
- bad_user 7y ago
  I've seen dark patterns from Google, but in the case of Chrome I have a hard time remembering any. Do you mean that they advertised for Chrome on their properties? Advertising on your own property is legitimate in my book. And simple advertising isn't a "dark pattern". Or do you mean something else?
  - syshum 7y ago
    I know many many people that had chrome installed with out them activlity seeking it out, and had their default browser changed with out their permission So much so that many many people I know that worked on helpdesk;s at the time where getting lots of complaints about "the internet is missing" meaning their Icons changed from the IE logo to the Chrome logo because chrome was changed to the default browser with out them understanding what happened. Add to the fact that Chrome would also install in AppData to avoid having to have Admin rights to install so it could be install on corporate/enterprise systems by normal users...
  - GoblinSlayer 7y ago
    What's fine for a small business, isn't necessarily fine for a monopoly.
  - replax 7y ago
    For example it used to be the case that whatever you downloaded from google or 3rd parties (google earth, picasa, oracle java etc.) automatically installed google chrome by default and set it as your default browser. This is on par with IE toolbar spamming in installers.
  - glandium 7y ago
    Many app installers, including Adobe Flash, would install Chrome along whatever they install. In the case of Flash, there was a checkbox to disable it, but if you don't pay attention, you don't see it. And I think in that case, you might even end up with Chrome as your default browser. The most interesting part in all this is that the Adobe Flash you just downloaded and installed is not even used by Chrome, which ships its own.
jjeaff 7y ago
"Some marketing", ha. It was prominently advertised with a message that almost made it seem required, all by itself, on the otherwise almost blank Google search page. One of the most, if not the most visited pages on the planet.
- josteink 7y ago
  Yes I remember that too, worded with scummy, deceiving wording, like most other malware/spyware at the time. Instead of “Virus detected! Click here for free scan” it was “Old browser detected. Click here to upgrade”. It was literally 100% out of the malware deployment hand guide.
  - mda 7y ago
    In this case Chrome was actually miles better and secure than those old browsers though. It wasn't deceiving, it was the truth.
    - hdfbdtbcdg 7y ago
      Better than Chromium?
      - icebraining 7y ago
        Did they show that message to Chromium users?
dageshi 7y ago
The web is a mature platform at this point, it's not really surprising everything has consolidated towards a single implementation, the economics of actually producing websites dictates that's an inevitability.
josteink 7y ago
> In the case of Chrome, you can't blame Google. They made a good browser, did some marketing... And paid lots of third party software vendors to bundle it as a drive-by installation 100% malware style. There’s a good reason many of my technically inclined friends still today don’t trust Chrome. It’s malware after all.
dalbasal 7y ago
"They made a good browser, did some marketing and it got popular." They did make a good browser. However, their market share is not down to better browser or "some advertising." They use their other assets (search, youtube, android, docs..) to make chrome the "default" option. It's a dominance breeds dominance cycle... a hallmark of modern monopoly. Chrome wouldn't have gotten anywhere if it wasn't a very good browser. It is good. But, I don't think it could have been that kind of wipeout without leveraging google's greater web dominance. There was a time when IE was a good browser and the default one. They dominated. A few years later, Mozilla had the better browser. Firefox slowly climbed to the middle, by being very good. They never got to 50% of the market. IMO, during the IE6_v_FF days the feature and quality gap between browsers was at its highest. Much bigger than Chrome_v_FF ever was. Still Chrome today is far more dominant than FF or anything ever was... except IE in its monopoly day.
- tuxt 7y ago
  So they make good product. Bing can be Edge only too.
- anewhnaccount2 7y ago
  If you search for Firefox, Google says "did you mean Chrome?" Edited to add: This has actually happened to me when setting up a new Windows PC for someone.
  - julienfr112 7y ago
    That's fuel for a millions dollars lawsuit by the European Commission.
    - dalbasal 7y ago
      Billions, if at all. The EC recently ruled against Google in a "slam dunk" case about anti-competitive contracts with "search partners." €1.5bn & it barely got noticed.
  - inflatableDodo 7y ago
adito 7y ago
Well, even for Edge that use chromium, this situation can happen. https://www.reddit.com/r/windows/comments/btz1lc/youtube_material_design_no_longer_works_on_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/windows/comments/btz1lc/youtube_mat...
duiker101 7y ago
A lot of "third party browsers" like Opera, Vivaldi and Brave choose to go for Chromium as their engine, would they be able to use Firefox's engine the same way? If yes, why does it seem that no one actually does it? I personally don't particularly enjoy Firefox as a browser, but I don't have anything against their engine. If there was a version of Vivaldi that implemented that I would probably choose it over the Chromium version.
- syshum 7y ago
  At the time they made those choices there were 3 main reasons to choose chromium over FF as a base 1. Smaller Size, chromium was just a smaller foot print with less legacy code 2. Better Performance. There was no doubt the before firefox quantum Chromium was the performance leader, Bink and V8 where superior then, today not soo much 3. Better rendering support. Like IE6 in the 90's today there are many many sites that ONLY work correctly on chrome, so if you use chrome's render you have less work to do, and will have less complaints by users blaming your browser for some websites poor code
  - glandium 7y ago
    More relevant: better embedding story. Gecko is not exactly great to embed.
    - vthriller 7y ago
      No idea why you're downvoted: things like [0] are marked as obsolete, GtkMozEmbed et al. are basically dead, and there's no viable alternatives except when you use Android [1]. The only option is to dive deep into Thunderbird's mess of a source code and learn things the hard way, hoping Mozilla will not change things a lot in a road to post-Quantum future. [0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Gecko/Embedding_Mozilla/FAQ/Embedding_Gecko https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Gecko/Embed... [1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/GeckoView https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/GeckoView
- icebraining 7y ago
akerro 7y ago
Purposely slowing down websites on competing browsers, breaking web-standards on cutting edge tech, abusing their other products, using slower codecs on other browsers on YT, not allowing some websites use certain features of google-doc, constantly showing popups to switch to Google Chrome on google docs - this all anti-competitive behavior to squeeze more data from your life and browsing habits.
jakeogh 7y ago
Surf works excellent: https://surf.suckless.org/ https://surf.suckless.org/
- sascha_sl 7y ago
  yes, because "compile webkit yourself" is super suckless
  - jakeogh 7y ago
    Nonsense unless your are on LFS. Your package manager does that whether it's binary or source based for every dependency for every app. Maybe instead we can bemoan how the version of webkit in xyz repo is outdated?
macspoofing 7y ago
>However the current situation is worrisome, because alternative implementations are dying and in the case of the web, diversity is important. Are they though? Adherence to standards is very good across the board. It isn't like it was in the 90s when standards were seen as mere guidelines and suggestions. Safari is going strong. FF is going to be around but they are certainly struggling - and it's their fault. They have had the uncanny ability to make the wrong decision every time. They are hamstrung by their legacy architecture that they are just starting to break out of. Their side projects (Firefox OS, Pocket, Reality) were/are a total waste of time. And of course, they promoted and then fired Eich over nothing - which leads one to wonder what kind of a circus they run internally. Microsoft is interesting and for now they are using a packaged version of Chromium - but I could see them do a hard-fork in the same way that Google forked WebKit because at some point a trillion-dollar company won't want to be tied to another trillion-dollar company's roadmap.
reitanqild 7y ago
> In the case of Chrome, you can't blame Google. They made a good browser, did some marketing and it got popular. They spammed it massively as in - adding it to other popular downloads - ads everywhere on their properties, including on the front page where no one else has ever been allowed to buy ad spots - lies: would shamelessly present itself as a better browser not just for users of old IE versions but also for users of Firefox and probably Opera as well.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
lunchables 7y ago
>I think nowadays Firefox is a much better browser and that Mozilla is better at guarding my interests, so I would use Firefox even if it weren't a better browser, however the market isn't necessarily interested in that. Agreed. Firefox is really fast, and I love it. Been using it for a couple years now. But even if Chrome was demonstrably, objectively faster, I would still use Firefox.
holtalanm 7y ago
i tried firefox, and loved the experience, but ran into a few minor bugs related to css that just made absolutely no sense. also, it regularly ran my cpu at max throttle when doing anything video-related within the browser (watching netflix, on a video chat, etc), while chrome is much more cpu-friendly with those things (don't know why that is). I tried Opera, as well, and ran it as my main browser for months (almost a year, actually), but there is a wierd bug in windows related to the browser bar expanding when the machine wakes up from sleep, where the only way to fix it is to restart the browser entirely.
skybrian 7y ago
Microsoft has the resources to fork Chromium if necessary, much like Google forked WebKit (after sending patches upstream for a while) and Apple forked KHTML. This is just how open source works and isn't a problem in itself. By doing this, Microsoft gets compatibility with the world's websites on day one, and they can take it from there. It's a smart move that many people seem to be misinterpreting.
- throwaway808080 7y ago
  It’s a money move. Ms sunk billions in Edge. With chredge bing ads makes profits. It will come installed in windows by default. If google’s killing ad block extensions, Microsoft will most definitely follow suite. Your only best bet is Firefox right now. Chrome is a Trojan horse and Google most definitely doesn’t give a shit about your privacy.

noname120 7y ago

> competitors such as Microsoft proved that they no longer have the capacity to develop a modern browser This is incorrect. They absolutely can as demonstrated by the fact that former Edge works great, has better hardware acceleration than Chrome, and consumes less power. However, they are not willing to anymore, which is a huge concern for future innovations in that domain.

thrower123 7y ago
Edge working great is quite an exageration, in my experience. Barely workable, with it's own host of weird bugs, that Microsoft did their typical slow-rolling and prevarication on handling. Tying it to a specific operating system version was also a poor decision if they wanted adoption.
The_rationalist 7y ago
"they are not willing to anymore" wtf does this mean? Have you looked at chromium commits activity? Microsoft is actively working on improving chromium, especially improving it's integration with windows 10. Convergence create synergies instead of reinventing the wheel and make Google no longer the only player in the development of chromium. Firefox has ~600000 commits Chrome has ~700000. Do you realize the order of magnitude of improvements that we users should have, if mozilla devs had worked in improving chrome instead?? No those numbers are far too much to realize for a human brain, but at least we can realize that we don't realize. Btw hello double standards, why shouldn't QT, WPF or GTK have redundant implementations?
- The_rationalist 7y ago
  Downvoting is nice, counter arguing logically is better.
Andrex 7y ago
It is correct, but it hinges on your interpretation of the phrase "modern browser." Edge was falling behind on implementing the web spec compared to Chrome (among other things.) > This is incorrect. They absolutely can as demonstrated by the fact that former Edge works great, has better hardware acceleration than Chrome, and consumes less power. If Edge had all those things but could only render HTML4 and below, would it be considered a "modern browser" still? I would say no. That's an extreme hypothetical but it was similar to the future Microsoft saw for Edge, and a major factor in the switch to Chromium.

gingabriska 7y ago

> They made a good browser, did some marketing and it got popular In initial days of chrome, it wasn't that better. It grew in popularity because of the bundle model of advertising they employed which was initially used to distribute spyware and the browser started growing. All the nice things came later.

icebraining 7y ago
It had an uncluttered UI, multi-process tabs, sandboxing, V8, Incognito, and a few more. Some of these were available in other browsers, but the mix was rather new.

writepub 7y ago

I do not trust Google, but I do not trust Mozilla either. An overwhelming majority of Mozilla funding comes from Google, Microsoft, and other giants it directly competes with. Added to that, many of it's battles (at the W3C and like) prioritize philosophy over customer satisfaction and ease of use. 99.9% of browser users don't care or don't even know if their browser is open source - what they want is convenience and ease of use. I hope Mozilla prioritizes the ones that actually matter - the users, over whatever philosophy it claims to live by, that often times isn't rooted in customer centricity.

TAForObvReasons 7y ago
Mozilla really hasn't helped their cause with various privacy-related issues over the last few years, like the Booking.com ads (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18800360 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18800360). The obfuscatory language around it are arguably more insulting than the ads themselves. As John Gruber so eloquently wrote: > If you want to sell ads, sell ads. Own it. Don’t try to coat it with a layer of frosting and tell me it’s a fucking cupcake. https://daringfireball.net/linked/2014/02/16/mozilla https://daringfireball.net/linked/2014/02/16/mozilla
- r3bl 7y ago
  They didn't sell the space to Booking.com. They've promoted one another in their user bases: Firefox showed a message about Booking, Booking showed a message about Firefox. There was no money involved. I'm not gonna defend their action to do so because I disagree with it too, but if you wanna feel outraged about it, at least get the facts right. John Gruber should do the same.
  - TAForObvReasons 7y ago
    Ironically that Gruber comment was about the "user-enhancing" Sponsored Tiles episode from early 2014. That we are still seeing questionable and un-telegraphed behavior in 2019 suggests none of the privacy-relevant lessons were taken to heart.

dTal 7y ago

>In the case of Chrome, you can't blame Google. They made a good browser, did some marketing and it got popular. Where "did some marketing" equals "unethically abused monopoly position to aggressively push through dark patterns", sure. I think I can still blame them for that.

bad_user 7y ago
I've seen dark patterns from Google, but in the case of Chrome I have a hard time remembering any. Do you mean that they advertised for Chrome on their properties? Advertising on your own property is legitimate in my book. And simple advertising isn't a "dark pattern". Or do you mean something else?
- syshum 7y ago
  I know many many people that had chrome installed with out them activlity seeking it out, and had their default browser changed with out their permission So much so that many many people I know that worked on helpdesk;s at the time where getting lots of complaints about "the internet is missing" meaning their Icons changed from the IE logo to the Chrome logo because chrome was changed to the default browser with out them understanding what happened. Add to the fact that Chrome would also install in AppData to avoid having to have Admin rights to install so it could be install on corporate/enterprise systems by normal users...
- GoblinSlayer 7y ago
  What's fine for a small business, isn't necessarily fine for a monopoly.
- replax 7y ago
  For example it used to be the case that whatever you downloaded from google or 3rd parties (google earth, picasa, oracle java etc.) automatically installed google chrome by default and set it as your default browser. This is on par with IE toolbar spamming in installers.
- glandium 7y ago
  Many app installers, including Adobe Flash, would install Chrome along whatever they install. In the case of Flash, there was a checkbox to disable it, but if you don't pay attention, you don't see it. And I think in that case, you might even end up with Chrome as your default browser. The most interesting part in all this is that the Adobe Flash you just downloaded and installed is not even used by Chrome, which ships its own.

jjeaff 7y ago

"Some marketing", ha. It was prominently advertised with a message that almost made it seem required, all by itself, on the otherwise almost blank Google search page. One of the most, if not the most visited pages on the planet.

josteink 7y ago
Yes I remember that too, worded with scummy, deceiving wording, like most other malware/spyware at the time. Instead of “Virus detected! Click here for free scan” it was “Old browser detected. Click here to upgrade”. It was literally 100% out of the malware deployment hand guide.
- mda 7y ago
  In this case Chrome was actually miles better and secure than those old browsers though. It wasn't deceiving, it was the truth.
  - hdfbdtbcdg 7y ago
    Better than Chromium?
    - icebraining 7y ago
      Did they show that message to Chromium users?

dageshi 7y ago

The web is a mature platform at this point, it's not really surprising everything has consolidated towards a single implementation, the economics of actually producing websites dictates that's an inevitability.

josteink 7y ago

> In the case of Chrome, you can't blame Google. They made a good browser, did some marketing... And paid lots of third party software vendors to bundle it as a drive-by installation 100% malware style. There’s a good reason many of my technically inclined friends still today don’t trust Chrome. It’s malware after all.

dalbasal 7y ago

"They made a good browser, did some marketing and it got popular." They did make a good browser. However, their market share is not down to better browser or "some advertising." They use their other assets (search, youtube, android, docs..) to make chrome the "default" option. It's a dominance breeds dominance cycle... a hallmark of modern monopoly. Chrome wouldn't have gotten anywhere if it wasn't a very good browser. It is good. But, I don't think it could have been that kind of wipeout without leveraging google's greater web dominance. There was a time when IE was a good browser and the default one. They dominated. A few years later, Mozilla had the better browser. Firefox slowly climbed to the middle, by being very good. They never got to 50% of the market. IMO, during the IE6_v_FF days the feature and quality gap between browsers was at its highest. Much bigger than Chrome_v_FF ever was. Still Chrome today is far more dominant than FF or anything ever was... except IE in its monopoly day.

tuxt 7y ago
So they make good product. Bing can be Edge only too.
anewhnaccount2 7y ago
If you search for Firefox, Google says "did you mean Chrome?" Edited to add: This has actually happened to me when setting up a new Windows PC for someone.
- julienfr112 7y ago
  That's fuel for a millions dollars lawsuit by the European Commission.
  - dalbasal 7y ago
    Billions, if at all. The EC recently ruled against Google in a "slam dunk" case about anti-competitive contracts with "search partners." €1.5bn & it barely got noticed.
- inflatableDodo 7y ago

adito 7y ago

Well, even for Edge that use chromium, this situation can happen. https://www.reddit.com/r/windows/comments/btz1lc/youtube_material_design_no_longer_works_on_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/windows/comments/btz1lc/youtube_mat...

duiker101 7y ago

A lot of "third party browsers" like Opera, Vivaldi and Brave choose to go for Chromium as their engine, would they be able to use Firefox's engine the same way? If yes, why does it seem that no one actually does it? I personally don't particularly enjoy Firefox as a browser, but I don't have anything against their engine. If there was a version of Vivaldi that implemented that I would probably choose it over the Chromium version.

syshum 7y ago
At the time they made those choices there were 3 main reasons to choose chromium over FF as a base 1. Smaller Size, chromium was just a smaller foot print with less legacy code 2. Better Performance. There was no doubt the before firefox quantum Chromium was the performance leader, Bink and V8 where superior then, today not soo much 3. Better rendering support. Like IE6 in the 90's today there are many many sites that ONLY work correctly on chrome, so if you use chrome's render you have less work to do, and will have less complaints by users blaming your browser for some websites poor code
- glandium 7y ago
  More relevant: better embedding story. Gecko is not exactly great to embed.
  - vthriller 7y ago
    No idea why you're downvoted: things like [0] are marked as obsolete, GtkMozEmbed et al. are basically dead, and there's no viable alternatives except when you use Android [1]. The only option is to dive deep into Thunderbird's mess of a source code and learn things the hard way, hoping Mozilla will not change things a lot in a road to post-Quantum future. [0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Gecko/Embedding_Mozilla/FAQ/Embedding_Gecko https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Gecko/Embed... [1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/GeckoView https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/GeckoView
icebraining 7y ago

akerro 7y ago

Purposely slowing down websites on competing browsers, breaking web-standards on cutting edge tech, abusing their other products, using slower codecs on other browsers on YT, not allowing some websites use certain features of google-doc, constantly showing popups to switch to Google Chrome on google docs - this all anti-competitive behavior to squeeze more data from your life and browsing habits.

jakeogh 7y ago

Surf works excellent: https://surf.suckless.org/ https://surf.suckless.org/

sascha_sl 7y ago
yes, because "compile webkit yourself" is super suckless
- jakeogh 7y ago
  Nonsense unless your are on LFS. Your package manager does that whether it's binary or source based for every dependency for every app. Maybe instead we can bemoan how the version of webkit in xyz repo is outdated?

macspoofing 7y ago

>However the current situation is worrisome, because alternative implementations are dying and in the case of the web, diversity is important. Are they though? Adherence to standards is very good across the board. It isn't like it was in the 90s when standards were seen as mere guidelines and suggestions. Safari is going strong. FF is going to be around but they are certainly struggling - and it's their fault. They have had the uncanny ability to make the wrong decision every time. They are hamstrung by their legacy architecture that they are just starting to break out of. Their side projects (Firefox OS, Pocket, Reality) were/are a total waste of time. And of course, they promoted and then fired Eich over nothing - which leads one to wonder what kind of a circus they run internally. Microsoft is interesting and for now they are using a packaged version of Chromium - but I could see them do a hard-fork in the same way that Google forked WebKit because at some point a trillion-dollar company won't want to be tied to another trillion-dollar company's roadmap.

reitanqild 7y ago

> In the case of Chrome, you can't blame Google. They made a good browser, did some marketing and it got popular. They spammed it massively as in - adding it to other popular downloads - ads everywhere on their properties, including on the front page where no one else has ever been allowed to buy ad spots - lies: would shamelessly present itself as a better browser not just for users of old IE versions but also for users of Firefox and probably Opera as well.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

lunchables 7y ago

>I think nowadays Firefox is a much better browser and that Mozilla is better at guarding my interests, so I would use Firefox even if it weren't a better browser, however the market isn't necessarily interested in that. Agreed. Firefox is really fast, and I love it. Been using it for a couple years now. But even if Chrome was demonstrably, objectively faster, I would still use Firefox.

holtalanm 7y ago

i tried firefox, and loved the experience, but ran into a few minor bugs related to css that just made absolutely no sense. also, it regularly ran my cpu at max throttle when doing anything video-related within the browser (watching netflix, on a video chat, etc), while chrome is much more cpu-friendly with those things (don't know why that is). I tried Opera, as well, and ran it as my main browser for months (almost a year, actually), but there is a wierd bug in windows related to the browser bar expanding when the machine wakes up from sleep, where the only way to fix it is to restart the browser entirely.

skybrian 7y ago

Microsoft has the resources to fork Chromium if necessary, much like Google forked WebKit (after sending patches upstream for a while) and Apple forked KHTML. This is just how open source works and isn't a problem in itself. By doing this, Microsoft gets compatibility with the world's websites on day one, and they can take it from there. It's a smart move that many people seem to be misinterpreting.

throwaway808080 7y ago
It’s a money move. Ms sunk billions in Edge. With chredge bing ads makes profits. It will come installed in windows by default. If google’s killing ad block extensions, Microsoft will most definitely follow suite. Your only best bet is Firefox right now. Chrome is a Trojan horse and Google most definitely doesn’t give a shit about your privacy.