13 ms·

The Browser Monopoly

164 points by ntang 7y ago

tannhaeuser 7y ago
> Firefox is a fine browser by itself [...] I have the comfort of knowing that my personal information is protected (to the extent possible) – and also that my portal to the web is not custom-built to track me and serve me ads FF is fantastic, but the uncomfortable question is, will it always be, given Mozilla has to found further development and is financed by Google's money as well? Apple's Safari actually has better standing in terms of alignment of user and developer incentives. For a sustainable web (what's left of it anyway), it would be more helpful to radically simplify the web such that developers have reasonable and feasible specs to work against, and have diversity in browsers once again. Meanwhile, Google is working hard to lead audiences elsewhere via AMP, a Trojan made possible by JavaScript in the first place.
- giancarlostoro 7y ago
  > FF is fantastic, but the uncomfortable question is, will it always be, given Mozilla has to found further development and is financed by Google's money as well? Apple's Safari actually has better standing in terms of alignment of user and developer incentives. Looks like they've got a plan in place to handle this. I also secretly wish Mozilla would offer up a paid email service that only scans emails to filter our spam. Maybe some incredible Rust based email server. https://thenextweb.com/apps/2019/06/10/mozilla-will-reportedly-launch-a-paid-version-of-firefox-this-fall/ https://thenextweb.com/apps/2019/06/10/mozilla-will-reported...
  - kgwxd 7y ago
    I have to believe that spam filtering is a solved problem that could be cheaply self-hosted. Is that not true?
    - giancarlostoro 7y ago
      I suppose this is true as well. Would just be a nice to have.
    - basch 7y ago
      Its a perpetual arms race, if the spammers have access to the blocking software they can work around it. Anti-evil works best when the evil cant see the inner workings.
      - wpietri 7y ago
        As somebody who runs their own mail server, I think it's also just a problem of time and relative importance. The full-time job of a spammer is to spam, while I adjust my anti-spam solution only when the spam gets bad enough to prompt action in my spare time. At this point I'd love to turn running my mail server over to a paid service that I trusted, because they could have full-time people dealing with spam proactively. But Google's free service means a lot of people no longer pay, so the market seems to be very limited.
      - kgwxd 7y ago
        Does no one offer a solution that uses data from "voluntarily" monitored emails which can be self-hosted?
        lazylizard 7y ago
        Vipuls razor?
      - saagarjha 7y ago
        > Anti-evil works best when the evil cant see the inner workings. That’s just security by obscurity.
        basch 7y ago
        Being able to see what a spam filter is filtering for makes it easier to avoid the rules. It's not security through obscurity.
    - pjc50 7y ago
      Spam filtering is a horrendous problem which can never be "solved" because people continue to innovate around the filters. It only looks "solved" because gmail have enough data to do an amazing job of it. I have a gmail account and a non-gmail account, and the non-gmail privately hosted one gets considerable spam, some of which even makes it through my manually curated filters. I used to self-host email but the minimum time and expertise investment is now too high for me - I got fed up of having to fix breakages or losing email from random other sources.
- HNcantBtrustd 7y ago
  >Apple's Safari actually has better standing in terms of alignment of user and developer incentives. Apple gets credit for being aligned with users and developers? Out of any of the tech companies, I see Apple the most detached from their users and developers. Forcing proprietary software, hardware, and accessories is not "for users and developers". That's Apple's way of generating additional sales and data for Apple. If they had users and developers as their primary goal, it would be easier to be an Apple customer.
  - majewsky 7y ago
    At least with Apple, the users are actually customers. Google's customers are advertisers.
  - rsynnott 7y ago
    I assume they meant aligned _with respect to users and developers_. Google is primarily an advertising company, and Firefox's revenue comes mostly from Google. Apple has no interests in ads these days (and their old ad platform never did browser ads anyway), so you don't have the same sort of competing incentives.
  - tannhaeuser 7y ago
    > Apple gets credit for being aligned with users and developers? Yeah I can see where this wasn't very well put into words. I meant Safari core browser development is financed via Apple sales, as opposed to FF being in the position where Mozilla wouldn't want to bite the hands that feed them. Though Apple is also taking Google money for listing them as default search provider on Safari and has ambitions to push their service business.
- glenneroo 7y ago
  > Mozilla has to found further development and is financed by Google's money as well? This was also mentioned at the bottom of the article: > If I were a Product executive at Mozilla, I would be banging the table to introduce useful, paid products that could enrich and support the Firefox ecosystem. Chief among these would be a low-cost, independent email service focused on privacy and spam protection that would allow people to migrate off of Gmail; a VPN service; a media/content whitelisting service combined with an ad-blocker that allowed people to easily pay for content; and maybe even its own password manager.
  - lioeters 7y ago
    > introduce useful, paid products that could enrich and support the Firefox ecosystem This is where I'm wary, that it could become just a better walled garden. I trust Mozilla more than Google, but they've had hiccups in the past that tarnished that trust. > allow people to migrate off of Gmail My utopian dream is Mozilla spearheading open alternatives to all Google services: email, Open Street Maps, search, password manager, P2P file transfer, ad blockers, maybe even ethical ads. It gives me hope to see them already embracing some of this general direction.
  - ryacko 7y ago
    No, they just have to offer ads without tracking clicks or impressions. Something similar to the former service of Project Wonderful.
- theboulevardier 7y ago
  Google pays Apple $12 billion a year to be the default search in Safari unfortunately, so Apple are making a lot of money from keeping Google happy.
  - Despegar 7y ago
    The billions Google pays Apple is purely a tax that they extract from them. If it's meant to buy Apple off then it doesn't appear to be working given the privacy features that Apple continues to roll out.
- Paul-ish 7y ago
  Do you use Safari?
basch 7y ago
>Chrome introduced a lot of neat new features (Porn “Incognito Mode,” multithreaded memory changes, tabs and more). Now chrome is getting credit for in private browsing and tabs? (Safari and Opera respectively. Phoenix/Firefox popularized them long before Chrome was a twinkle.) >It is mind-boggling that basic tools like these are not yet standard features in browsers. How long have browsers offered to save passwords? Seems like a lot of bad history in this article. >The way existing password managers work, the vendor’s liability even if they are hacked is minimal. They don’t hold any passwords! HUH? Yes they do.. They absolutely hold a copy of your password ... in the cloud. >Sure, Chromium and the V8 engine are open-source, but they still belong to Google in a way that, say, TCP/IP or IMAP does not. Im gonna feel really bad breaking the QUIC / HTTP/3 news. Cuz google totally wrote the new transport layer. They wrote the last one too (SPDY HTTP/2.) With this much market share, what google implements and forces the hands of the standards organizations. >This is why Microsoft’s decision to kill Internet Explorer, once the leading portal to the web, and replace it with a Chromium-based successor says so much about its new direction as a company. I suspect that decision had more to do with clearly understanding Microsoft’s strengths and weaknesses than anything else. Its primarily for two reasons. 1 is battery life, they want to embed blink into the os so programs dont need to bundle it (electron included.) 2 is because 99% of the web just targets blink now. I dont think you can credit "the move to ssas" alone with Microsoft finally abandoning IE derivatives.
- abtinf 7y ago
  Regarding tabbed browers: they are ancient. I remember the first time I used tabs with a wrapper for IE 4 or 5 back in the mid-90s. I think it was called NetCaptor or NetRaptor or something. It was magical. Of course, back then, no one knew anything about the privacy implications of something like that.
  - basch 7y ago
    Apparently InternetWorks and Netcaptor came before Opera. I shouldnt be so cocky. https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-history-of-tabbed-browsing https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-history-of-tabbed-browsing
abtinf 7y ago
I was shocked to see the browser market share graph. Chrome appears to be collapsing on itself, dropping from from an all-time high of 65.4% to 55.4% in just 16 months, effectively losing all share gains since 2016. But then I looked closer at the data, noticing that only net 120 basis points of the change can be explained by share changes in the other browsers. The rest of the data seems to be missing, as the numbers add up to less than 100%. What the heck is going on? Edit: It goes without saying that the article's failure to address this point fundamentally discredits the author. It should be obvious that the first thing an article claiming monopoly would need to do is explain the plummeting market share of the thing that is allegedly a monopoly..
- ihuman 7y ago
  I think w3counter's graph only shows the major browsers, and doesn't include data from the rest. Wikipedia has a breakdown of browser usage with more browsers (and an "other" section) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Summary_tables https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Su...
- kgwxd 7y ago
  60% of the time charts are wrong every time.
- gilrain 7y ago
  Maybe fewer people using web browsers to access Internet content? That could be explained by social networks like Reddit pushing users toward single-purpose apps.
- rwbhn 7y ago
  Here's a different source that shows no such drop. These stats are highly dependent on how/where one measures. https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share
- sebazzz 7y ago
  I am also wondering why Opera (=Presto) is in that graph. Since the latest Opera is Chromium-based I would expect it to be counted as Chromium.
brootstrap 7y ago
Interesting i was just thinking about this yesterday. I should ditch chrome. yet here i am typing more shit for google to harvest from me and sell to the highest bidder.
- glenneroo 7y ago
  What is the point of making this comment? Why haven't you switched? It's not that hard.
  - thezeebass 7y ago
    Brave, guys. Switch to Brave. Brave is everything.
    - s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago
      Brave has too much bloatware for my taste.
      - spidermango 7y ago
        whats your alternative?
        s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago
        FireFox or one of the many other Chromium derivatives.
      - thezeebass 7y ago
        Too much bloat? It's lean and getting leaner, and has a dashboard on your homepage showing just how much bloat it has saved! It's the natural successor to Firefox from Firefox's founder. I don't think it can be dismissed that easily.
pcurve 7y ago
I really tried hard to use Edge as much as possible, but it was rubbish until the day MS threw in the towel.
mcv 7y ago
I recently ditched Chrome and switched back to Firefox, at home and on my mobile, only to discover that a surprising number of sites don't work in Firefox. In particular: Twitter doesn't work on Firefox Mobile. Most work fine, but still, I ended up switching to Safari, to discover that it's just not quite as good an experience as Firefox or Chrome.
- darklion 7y ago
  > I ended up switching to Safari, to discover that it's just not quite as good an experience as Firefox or Chrome. IMO, I find it to be just the opposite--neither Firefox nor Chrome are as good an experience as Safari. Maybe the difference is that when a particular site does not work in a given browser, I don't blame the browser, I blame the website.
  - Medicalidiot 7y ago
    Spotify and some video sites do not work on Safari, which is mind blowing to me.
  - __dawid__ 7y ago
    Safari seems to lag a lot in features. In compatibility it's a modern IE
    - s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago
      This is my experience as well. They are much slower to meet standards.
    - robertoandred 7y ago
      Hardly. It took how long for Chrome and FF to support position sticky, or backdrop filter?
  - mcv 7y ago
    That's a bit presumptuous. My issue with Safari isn't that sites don't work; its seems comparable to Chrome in that regard. But using it doesn't feel as nice as Firefox or Chrome. It's harder to find features I need. Though to be honest, I find all browsers a bit lacking. I want more granular control over which cookies to accept and for how long, and how exactly to treat various sites. And I certainly don't blame browsers for badly written sites, but blaming the site doesn't magically make it work either. Having less sites work for me is still a worse experience, no matter whose fault it is.
aluren 7y ago
I don't get why people (I mean technically minded people who are aware of privacy issues and so on) don't just use firefox. They are pretty much at feature parity (Firefox may even get the edge due to the fantastic extensions ecosystem), except one spies on you and the other doesn't. Why do people find the switch so hard? In addition, Firefox + ublokc origin is pretty much the only option on mobile if you want to block ads, unless you want to fiddle with hosts files or pi-holes or something.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- badhombres 7y ago
  Because when I run Firefox on my mac, the FAA calls me to let me know that I'm not allowed to be running jet engines inside of my house
  - theboulevardier 7y ago
    It runs fine on my Mac, the only time it seems to spin up the fans is for Youtube videos. It wouldn't suprise me if Google has done something to make Firefox not work as well on Youtube as they have done before.
- basch 7y ago
  I use both. The firefox interface still freezes when the page freezes. Hung anything should never stop me from closing tabs. Quantum/Electrolysis was supposed to be a savior, but the problem remains for now.
- ocdtrekkie 7y ago
  The biggest problem is the subtle frustrations if you use Google websites or services at all, since Google builds the Internet explicitly for Chrome, and sometimes works on other browsers okay-ish. reCAPTCHA harassment is particularly egregious too. I'm a Firefox user, but I've also already excised most of the rest of Google from my life. If you're still using Gmail, you're likely to stick with Chrome.
dragonsh 7y ago
I made Firefox as the primary browser even though battery usage during conference call and some webapps is much higher than chrome on a Mac. I do it on principle and make sure my apps work on Firefox besides chrome. Although many friends and fellow developers tell me why I spend extra efforts. Web components created a lot of issue when trying to make them run on both Firefox and chrome. But I went ahead with it and my front end team need to put a lot of additional efforts. I don't know why it's so hard to stick to standards. Both chrome and Firefox will behave bit differently for CSS and JavaScript. Developing a PWA which works good on both browser feels like developing native apps for Android and iOS using cross platform toolkits, which at times require a lot of additional code and testing just so that they work predictable. Still results in not so good experience.
- sfink 7y ago
  What I've heard is that Chrome shipped an unfinished early version of the web components spec, and now there are sites relying on it because it works in Chrome and that's good enough. I think the spec has been more or less finalized now? I'm not sure whether it's shipping in both browsers, though. Something is (eg for firefox it's since 63), but I don't know exactly what. I believe YouTube uses a whole framework based on the preratified spec?
  - dragonsh 7y ago
    Even though the spec is finalized there are enough variation on support on different browsers leading to substantial efforts to make a web components based pwa work on multu-browser. If it had been worked out properly there's isn't any need of react or angular except for a state management library, since the views and components is taken care of by the browser directly.
realshowbiz 7y ago
My only use for chrome is to interact with the google web apps that don’t work well in firefox or safari. Otherwise it wouldn’t be installed. IMO Google softly requires you to use chrome because their tools, in my experience, are unstable in other browsers (I’m looking at you meet) The cynic in me is doubtful that this is entirely by accident.
- neogodless 7y ago
  So I have a Gmail (G Suite Free) account, and I use Thunderbird on any computer I use regularly. Gmail is painfully slow to being almost unusable on Firefox. Sometimes I cannot get emails to send. So if I'm logging in temporarily, I'm usually forced to use Chrome. I think is just one example of Chromium being a bit too ubiquitous, and forcing users into the Google black hole. Is there an affordable paid custom domain email option with good spam filtering?
dec0dedab0de 7y ago
Am I the only one that doesn't like chrome? There has always been a "weird feel" to it that I don't like. I used to really like Konqueror, so I guess its mostly the interface that gets to me. ...As I type this I look the sandwich menu, and lack of search bar in firefox and I die a little inside.
- jfk13 7y ago
  You want a separate search field? Just go to Customise and drag it to the toolbar.
- abawany 7y ago
  I never did either even when most of my savvier co-workers switched. The passive-aggressive nudges such as hiding cookie deletion and other privacy friendly functionality in 'Advanced Settings', not supporting extensions in Android (while Firefox did) really rubbed me the wrong way. I use Chrome when I have to (such as for some unavoidable things on my chromebook) but for everything else, it is Firefox as much as possible
- godshatter 7y ago
  Pale Moon is my go-to browser because it keeps the old Firefox interface. It has problems with some websites, but I dislike the chromification of the web interface more than I care about having to run another browser for certain things.
- Tiktaalik 7y ago
  The lack of room to grab the window at the top has always driven me nuts.
The_rationalist 7y ago
The number of features that gecko (Firefox) lack vs blink (chromiums) is growing everyday... In a factual sense, mozilla slow down the evolution of the web and what it allow web masters to create. But it is nothing in comparison of safari which is pathetically behind blink and gecko feature wise. It's a shame that the most popular websites don't team up to block safari and ask to install a browser that supports web standards. YouTube did this with a version of IE and weeks after they were followed by thousands of websites not supporting this antic version.
- skrowl 7y ago
  For most front-end web devs, iOS Safari is the new IE6.
  - nerdkid93 7y ago
    Truth, mobile Safari is far and away the worst of the "modern" browsers, and it's basically impossible to test unless you have a spare Apple device or you pay for BrowserStack :/
    - no_wizard 7y ago
      Why not use https://webkit.org/ https://webkit.org/ to test against it? you can usually just get the version of webkit that mobile safari is based on and build it Yes, it is a hassle, but it works well in my experience. Also this: https://webkit.org/blog/9395/webdriver-is-coming-to-safari-in-ios-13/ https://webkit.org/blog/9395/webdriver-is-coming-to-safari-i...
    - robocat 7y ago
      You also need a Mac to (a) remote debug Mobile Safari, and (b) Test Safari on desktop. You probably need both an iPad and an iPhone because (1) iPadOS 13 now acts like desktop by default, (2) If you do anything with inputmode= or number fields the virtual keyboards are different, (3) screen size In theory you can test iOS/iPadOS devices in xcode, but I have found real devices far easier and more reliable.
  - 7y ago
Siecje 7y ago
I only use Chrome when I want to exec into a pod in Kubernetes when using `kubectl proxy`. For some reason this doesn't work in Firefox.
Gpetrium 7y ago
Monopolies like these are partially built by the demand side flowing towards the option of least resistance. In such case, the average person will float towards browser X when Y seems to, for example, become slower, take more processing power or pure peer pressure "I can't believe you are still using browser P, it is so slow!". As demand floats towards few suppliers, organizations with the most value to gain from it will either look to purchase one of the current suppliers or increase investment to outpace its competitors. In time, the market becomes a monopoly/oligopoly due to both demand (customer) and supply (org/biz interests). At this point, the mono/oli has the means to change things, either slowly or drastically, to maximize their gains. Unless a good portion of society takes further interest in keeping what they believe to be right (e.g. privacy) and put their money and time where their belief is, non-profit orgs or less agressive ones are most likely to lose 99 out of 100 times in the long run. This is a human nature challenge, not necessarily an entity problem.
theboulevardier 7y ago
I have recently returned to Firefox for my personal browsing after using Chrome since about 2014 and it works great. However... In work I'm stuck using Chrome due to the amount of time I spend in Google Apps (Docs, Sheets, Google Analytics, Search Console & Data Studio) as they break certain functionality on Firefox, which makes me less productive. Google has too much power. I work in Search Engine Marketing and it wasn't so long ago that we optimised sites for different search engines, now no-one cares about any search engine other than Google.
thezeebass 7y ago
Can we talk about Brave? Its impressed me immensely, and BAT is a profound new approach to monetization on the web. in the context of this article its the only salvation i see; much like telegram for messaging, it provides a privacy and performance focus that makes it infinitely better than the bloat of chrome at getting you around the web; And without the ads and tracking. Awesome.
- bdcravens 7y ago
  Brave is based on Chromium.
Proven 7y ago
Firefox lacks the credibility to sell (charge for) privacy products or services when they at the same time make money off aggregated browser analytics. That would be no better than that AdBlock company whose income comes from advertisers. It's that Mozilla can't do it right, but rather than they wouldn't be on my list of top 5 privacy service vendors to check out.
Japhy_Ryder 7y ago
Just a quick rant about Firefox -- an INSANELY annoying bug that they've yet to fix is when trying to copy the URL on Mobile Firefox, 99% of the time I get the wrong address (the previous page I was on), because it seemingly doesn't populate the address as the page you're currently looking at if the page hasn't fully loaded yet. It's so odd. Other than that, Firefox > Chrome. Privacy situation is vastly superior and web standards support is comparable. I also just feel that Mozilla is a way better company ethics wise, and for the software community at large, than Google.
notatoad 7y ago
>but what Google was really doing was laying the groundwork for the ability to deliver all sorts of new online ad formats (like video) and complicated Javascript behind them that would help track and target users more effectively. this is just plain dumb. There are plenty of other uses for javascript and powerful programming features beyond ads, and even google's most complicated ad products barely scratch the surface of what's possible with the new js features that have been introduced since the beginning of the chrome project. Just because google is an ad company, doesn't mean everything they do is purely and simply about serving ads. And if you're going to try and make the argument that it is, you had better have something to back it up - you can't just make the claim and then skip on to the next bit of your rant.
unknown2374 7y ago
This article has a lot of wrong or otherwise misleading information. One I haven't noticed in the comments so far is that the author refers to Chromium as being free and open-source. It isn't [0]. It downloads more Google account and activity tracking related blobs than ever when building the code as well. While I agree with the gist of the article, this is worth pointing out since a lot of people do use Chromium because it is advertised this way, thinking that somehow they are not playing into the Chrome/Google monopoly. For those interested, there is an alternative build without all the google stuff baked in: https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9724409 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9724409
- lioeters 7y ago
  I remember seeing an article a few months ago, that Microsoft removed 51 Google services from Chromium while they transitioned Edge to it. https://imgur.com/Szwkb0O https://imgur.com/Szwkb0O That list helps to show how Chromium is far from the open-source ideal.
KuhlMensch 7y ago
Set my default browser to Firefox for the first time in ~10 years.
jacquesc 7y ago
A seemingly minor issue got me really worried about the future of the Chrome monopoly. For some reason, some developer/product manager at Chrome decided to ignore `"autocomplete"="off". This reeks havoc with the 100s of JS autocomplete addons out there when chrome autocomplete pops up over the custom built on. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12374442/chrome-ignores-autocomplete-off https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12374442/chrome-ignores-... Seems like there's no resolution yet, aside from a stream of ridiculous hacks that all tend to break at one point or another. If Google wants to own the browser, they are going to need a more transparent process on these things. It affects everyone now and they have to start governing their changes more appropriately.
ozten 7y ago
Why Chrome exists is missing a key driver - A significant portion of Google's search traffic came from business deals where they paid browser vendors (or others) to be the default search option. As they cannibalized the browser market they eliminated this cost or gained significant negotiating power. "Driving innovation on the web" is the don't be evil slogan that motivates us all to allow them to "vertically integrate advertising and cut costs".
- scarface74 7y ago
  As they cannibalized the browser market they eliminated this cost or gained significant negotiating power. They still pay Apple a reported $12 billion a year and they have no negotiating power on iOS.
  - ozten 7y ago
    Which is to say - "Why does Android exist?"
ilaksh 7y ago
The only way you are going to get a competitive landscape for browsers is to get away from the paradigm of the browser containing the entire kitchen sink, i.e. its own OS. Maybe there could be an alternative that only supports markdown. Or maybe markdown/rst and web assembly.

164 points by ntang 7y ago

> Firefox is a fine browser by itself [...] I have the comfort of knowing that my personal information is protected (to the extent possible) – and also that my portal to the web is not custom-built to track me and serve me ads FF is fantastic, but the uncomfortable question is, will it always be, given Mozilla has to found further development and is financed by Google's money as well? Apple's Safari actually has better standing in terms of alignment of user and developer incentives. For a sustainable web (what's left of it anyway), it would be more helpful to radically simplify the web such that developers have reasonable and feasible specs to work against, and have diversity in browsers once again. Meanwhile, Google is working hard to lead audiences elsewhere via AMP, a Trojan made possible by JavaScript in the first place.

giancarlostoro 7y ago
> FF is fantastic, but the uncomfortable question is, will it always be, given Mozilla has to found further development and is financed by Google's money as well? Apple's Safari actually has better standing in terms of alignment of user and developer incentives. Looks like they've got a plan in place to handle this. I also secretly wish Mozilla would offer up a paid email service that only scans emails to filter our spam. Maybe some incredible Rust based email server. https://thenextweb.com/apps/2019/06/10/mozilla-will-reportedly-launch-a-paid-version-of-firefox-this-fall/ https://thenextweb.com/apps/2019/06/10/mozilla-will-reported...
- kgwxd 7y ago
  I have to believe that spam filtering is a solved problem that could be cheaply self-hosted. Is that not true?
  - giancarlostoro 7y ago
    I suppose this is true as well. Would just be a nice to have.
  - basch 7y ago
    Its a perpetual arms race, if the spammers have access to the blocking software they can work around it. Anti-evil works best when the evil cant see the inner workings.
    - wpietri 7y ago
      As somebody who runs their own mail server, I think it's also just a problem of time and relative importance. The full-time job of a spammer is to spam, while I adjust my anti-spam solution only when the spam gets bad enough to prompt action in my spare time. At this point I'd love to turn running my mail server over to a paid service that I trusted, because they could have full-time people dealing with spam proactively. But Google's free service means a lot of people no longer pay, so the market seems to be very limited.
    - kgwxd 7y ago
      Does no one offer a solution that uses data from "voluntarily" monitored emails which can be self-hosted?
      - lazylizard 7y ago
        Vipuls razor?
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      > Anti-evil works best when the evil cant see the inner workings. That’s just security by obscurity.
      - basch 7y ago
        Being able to see what a spam filter is filtering for makes it easier to avoid the rules. It's not security through obscurity.
  - pjc50 7y ago
    Spam filtering is a horrendous problem which can never be "solved" because people continue to innovate around the filters. It only looks "solved" because gmail have enough data to do an amazing job of it. I have a gmail account and a non-gmail account, and the non-gmail privately hosted one gets considerable spam, some of which even makes it through my manually curated filters. I used to self-host email but the minimum time and expertise investment is now too high for me - I got fed up of having to fix breakages or losing email from random other sources.
HNcantBtrustd 7y ago
>Apple's Safari actually has better standing in terms of alignment of user and developer incentives. Apple gets credit for being aligned with users and developers? Out of any of the tech companies, I see Apple the most detached from their users and developers. Forcing proprietary software, hardware, and accessories is not "for users and developers". That's Apple's way of generating additional sales and data for Apple. If they had users and developers as their primary goal, it would be easier to be an Apple customer.
- majewsky 7y ago
  At least with Apple, the users are actually customers. Google's customers are advertisers.
- rsynnott 7y ago
  I assume they meant aligned _with respect to users and developers_. Google is primarily an advertising company, and Firefox's revenue comes mostly from Google. Apple has no interests in ads these days (and their old ad platform never did browser ads anyway), so you don't have the same sort of competing incentives.
- tannhaeuser 7y ago
  > Apple gets credit for being aligned with users and developers? Yeah I can see where this wasn't very well put into words. I meant Safari core browser development is financed via Apple sales, as opposed to FF being in the position where Mozilla wouldn't want to bite the hands that feed them. Though Apple is also taking Google money for listing them as default search provider on Safari and has ambitions to push their service business.
glenneroo 7y ago
> Mozilla has to found further development and is financed by Google's money as well? This was also mentioned at the bottom of the article: > If I were a Product executive at Mozilla, I would be banging the table to introduce useful, paid products that could enrich and support the Firefox ecosystem. Chief among these would be a low-cost, independent email service focused on privacy and spam protection that would allow people to migrate off of Gmail; a VPN service; a media/content whitelisting service combined with an ad-blocker that allowed people to easily pay for content; and maybe even its own password manager.
- lioeters 7y ago
  > introduce useful, paid products that could enrich and support the Firefox ecosystem This is where I'm wary, that it could become just a better walled garden. I trust Mozilla more than Google, but they've had hiccups in the past that tarnished that trust. > allow people to migrate off of Gmail My utopian dream is Mozilla spearheading open alternatives to all Google services: email, Open Street Maps, search, password manager, P2P file transfer, ad blockers, maybe even ethical ads. It gives me hope to see them already embracing some of this general direction.
- ryacko 7y ago
  No, they just have to offer ads without tracking clicks or impressions. Something similar to the former service of Project Wonderful.
theboulevardier 7y ago
Google pays Apple $12 billion a year to be the default search in Safari unfortunately, so Apple are making a lot of money from keeping Google happy.
- Despegar 7y ago
  The billions Google pays Apple is purely a tax that they extract from them. If it's meant to buy Apple off then it doesn't appear to be working given the privacy features that Apple continues to roll out.
Paul-ish 7y ago
Do you use Safari?

basch 7y ago

>Chrome introduced a lot of neat new features (Porn “Incognito Mode,” multithreaded memory changes, tabs and more). Now chrome is getting credit for in private browsing and tabs? (Safari and Opera respectively. Phoenix/Firefox popularized them long before Chrome was a twinkle.) >It is mind-boggling that basic tools like these are not yet standard features in browsers. How long have browsers offered to save passwords? Seems like a lot of bad history in this article. >The way existing password managers work, the vendor’s liability even if they are hacked is minimal. They don’t hold any passwords! HUH? Yes they do.. They absolutely hold a copy of your password ... in the cloud. >Sure, Chromium and the V8 engine are open-source, but they still belong to Google in a way that, say, TCP/IP or IMAP does not. Im gonna feel really bad breaking the QUIC / HTTP/3 news. Cuz google totally wrote the new transport layer. They wrote the last one too (SPDY HTTP/2.) With this much market share, what google implements and forces the hands of the standards organizations. >This is why Microsoft’s decision to kill Internet Explorer, once the leading portal to the web, and replace it with a Chromium-based successor says so much about its new direction as a company. I suspect that decision had more to do with clearly understanding Microsoft’s strengths and weaknesses than anything else. Its primarily for two reasons. 1 is battery life, they want to embed blink into the os so programs dont need to bundle it (electron included.) 2 is because 99% of the web just targets blink now. I dont think you can credit "the move to ssas" alone with Microsoft finally abandoning IE derivatives.

abtinf 7y ago
Regarding tabbed browers: they are ancient. I remember the first time I used tabs with a wrapper for IE 4 or 5 back in the mid-90s. I think it was called NetCaptor or NetRaptor or something. It was magical. Of course, back then, no one knew anything about the privacy implications of something like that.
- basch 7y ago
  Apparently InternetWorks and Netcaptor came before Opera. I shouldnt be so cocky. https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-history-of-tabbed-browsing https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-history-of-tabbed-browsing

abtinf 7y ago

I was shocked to see the browser market share graph. Chrome appears to be collapsing on itself, dropping from from an all-time high of 65.4% to 55.4% in just 16 months, effectively losing all share gains since 2016. But then I looked closer at the data, noticing that only net 120 basis points of the change can be explained by share changes in the other browsers. The rest of the data seems to be missing, as the numbers add up to less than 100%. What the heck is going on? Edit: It goes without saying that the article's failure to address this point fundamentally discredits the author. It should be obvious that the first thing an article claiming monopoly would need to do is explain the plummeting market share of the thing that is allegedly a monopoly..

ihuman 7y ago
I think w3counter's graph only shows the major browsers, and doesn't include data from the rest. Wikipedia has a breakdown of browser usage with more browsers (and an "other" section) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Summary_tables https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Su...
kgwxd 7y ago
60% of the time charts are wrong every time.
gilrain 7y ago
Maybe fewer people using web browsers to access Internet content? That could be explained by social networks like Reddit pushing users toward single-purpose apps.
rwbhn 7y ago
Here's a different source that shows no such drop. These stats are highly dependent on how/where one measures. https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share
sebazzz 7y ago
I am also wondering why Opera (=Presto) is in that graph. Since the latest Opera is Chromium-based I would expect it to be counted as Chromium.

brootstrap 7y ago

Interesting i was just thinking about this yesterday. I should ditch chrome. yet here i am typing more shit for google to harvest from me and sell to the highest bidder.

glenneroo 7y ago
What is the point of making this comment? Why haven't you switched? It's not that hard.
- thezeebass 7y ago
  Brave, guys. Switch to Brave. Brave is everything.
  - s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago
    Brave has too much bloatware for my taste.
    - spidermango 7y ago
      whats your alternative?
      - s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago
        FireFox or one of the many other Chromium derivatives.
    - thezeebass 7y ago
      Too much bloat? It's lean and getting leaner, and has a dashboard on your homepage showing just how much bloat it has saved! It's the natural successor to Firefox from Firefox's founder. I don't think it can be dismissed that easily.

pcurve 7y ago

I really tried hard to use Edge as much as possible, but it was rubbish until the day MS threw in the towel.

mcv 7y ago

I recently ditched Chrome and switched back to Firefox, at home and on my mobile, only to discover that a surprising number of sites don't work in Firefox. In particular: Twitter doesn't work on Firefox Mobile. Most work fine, but still, I ended up switching to Safari, to discover that it's just not quite as good an experience as Firefox or Chrome.

darklion 7y ago
> I ended up switching to Safari, to discover that it's just not quite as good an experience as Firefox or Chrome. IMO, I find it to be just the opposite--neither Firefox nor Chrome are as good an experience as Safari. Maybe the difference is that when a particular site does not work in a given browser, I don't blame the browser, I blame the website.
- Medicalidiot 7y ago
  Spotify and some video sites do not work on Safari, which is mind blowing to me.
- __dawid__ 7y ago
  Safari seems to lag a lot in features. In compatibility it's a modern IE
  - s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago
    This is my experience as well. They are much slower to meet standards.
  - robertoandred 7y ago
    Hardly. It took how long for Chrome and FF to support position sticky, or backdrop filter?
- mcv 7y ago
  That's a bit presumptuous. My issue with Safari isn't that sites don't work; its seems comparable to Chrome in that regard. But using it doesn't feel as nice as Firefox or Chrome. It's harder to find features I need. Though to be honest, I find all browsers a bit lacking. I want more granular control over which cookies to accept and for how long, and how exactly to treat various sites. And I certainly don't blame browsers for badly written sites, but blaming the site doesn't magically make it work either. Having less sites work for me is still a worse experience, no matter whose fault it is.

aluren 7y ago

I don't get why people (I mean technically minded people who are aware of privacy issues and so on) don't just use firefox. They are pretty much at feature parity (Firefox may even get the edge due to the fantastic extensions ecosystem), except one spies on you and the other doesn't. Why do people find the switch so hard? In addition, Firefox + ublokc origin is pretty much the only option on mobile if you want to block ads, unless you want to fiddle with hosts files or pi-holes or something.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
badhombres 7y ago
Because when I run Firefox on my mac, the FAA calls me to let me know that I'm not allowed to be running jet engines inside of my house
- theboulevardier 7y ago
  It runs fine on my Mac, the only time it seems to spin up the fans is for Youtube videos. It wouldn't suprise me if Google has done something to make Firefox not work as well on Youtube as they have done before.
basch 7y ago
I use both. The firefox interface still freezes when the page freezes. Hung anything should never stop me from closing tabs. Quantum/Electrolysis was supposed to be a savior, but the problem remains for now.
ocdtrekkie 7y ago
The biggest problem is the subtle frustrations if you use Google websites or services at all, since Google builds the Internet explicitly for Chrome, and sometimes works on other browsers okay-ish. reCAPTCHA harassment is particularly egregious too. I'm a Firefox user, but I've also already excised most of the rest of Google from my life. If you're still using Gmail, you're likely to stick with Chrome.

dragonsh 7y ago

I made Firefox as the primary browser even though battery usage during conference call and some webapps is much higher than chrome on a Mac. I do it on principle and make sure my apps work on Firefox besides chrome. Although many friends and fellow developers tell me why I spend extra efforts. Web components created a lot of issue when trying to make them run on both Firefox and chrome. But I went ahead with it and my front end team need to put a lot of additional efforts. I don't know why it's so hard to stick to standards. Both chrome and Firefox will behave bit differently for CSS and JavaScript. Developing a PWA which works good on both browser feels like developing native apps for Android and iOS using cross platform toolkits, which at times require a lot of additional code and testing just so that they work predictable. Still results in not so good experience.

sfink 7y ago
What I've heard is that Chrome shipped an unfinished early version of the web components spec, and now there are sites relying on it because it works in Chrome and that's good enough. I think the spec has been more or less finalized now? I'm not sure whether it's shipping in both browsers, though. Something is (eg for firefox it's since 63), but I don't know exactly what. I believe YouTube uses a whole framework based on the preratified spec?
- dragonsh 7y ago
  Even though the spec is finalized there are enough variation on support on different browsers leading to substantial efforts to make a web components based pwa work on multu-browser. If it had been worked out properly there's isn't any need of react or angular except for a state management library, since the views and components is taken care of by the browser directly.

realshowbiz 7y ago

My only use for chrome is to interact with the google web apps that don’t work well in firefox or safari. Otherwise it wouldn’t be installed. IMO Google softly requires you to use chrome because their tools, in my experience, are unstable in other browsers (I’m looking at you meet) The cynic in me is doubtful that this is entirely by accident.

neogodless 7y ago
So I have a Gmail (G Suite Free) account, and I use Thunderbird on any computer I use regularly. Gmail is painfully slow to being almost unusable on Firefox. Sometimes I cannot get emails to send. So if I'm logging in temporarily, I'm usually forced to use Chrome. I think is just one example of Chromium being a bit too ubiquitous, and forcing users into the Google black hole. Is there an affordable paid custom domain email option with good spam filtering?

dec0dedab0de 7y ago

Am I the only one that doesn't like chrome? There has always been a "weird feel" to it that I don't like. I used to really like Konqueror, so I guess its mostly the interface that gets to me. ...As I type this I look the sandwich menu, and lack of search bar in firefox and I die a little inside.

jfk13 7y ago
You want a separate search field? Just go to Customise and drag it to the toolbar.
abawany 7y ago
I never did either even when most of my savvier co-workers switched. The passive-aggressive nudges such as hiding cookie deletion and other privacy friendly functionality in 'Advanced Settings', not supporting extensions in Android (while Firefox did) really rubbed me the wrong way. I use Chrome when I have to (such as for some unavoidable things on my chromebook) but for everything else, it is Firefox as much as possible
godshatter 7y ago
Pale Moon is my go-to browser because it keeps the old Firefox interface. It has problems with some websites, but I dislike the chromification of the web interface more than I care about having to run another browser for certain things.
Tiktaalik 7y ago
The lack of room to grab the window at the top has always driven me nuts.

The_rationalist 7y ago

The number of features that gecko (Firefox) lack vs blink (chromiums) is growing everyday... In a factual sense, mozilla slow down the evolution of the web and what it allow web masters to create. But it is nothing in comparison of safari which is pathetically behind blink and gecko feature wise. It's a shame that the most popular websites don't team up to block safari and ask to install a browser that supports web standards. YouTube did this with a version of IE and weeks after they were followed by thousands of websites not supporting this antic version.

skrowl 7y ago
For most front-end web devs, iOS Safari is the new IE6.
- nerdkid93 7y ago
  Truth, mobile Safari is far and away the worst of the "modern" browsers, and it's basically impossible to test unless you have a spare Apple device or you pay for BrowserStack :/
  - no_wizard 7y ago
    Why not use https://webkit.org/ https://webkit.org/ to test against it? you can usually just get the version of webkit that mobile safari is based on and build it Yes, it is a hassle, but it works well in my experience. Also this: https://webkit.org/blog/9395/webdriver-is-coming-to-safari-in-ios-13/ https://webkit.org/blog/9395/webdriver-is-coming-to-safari-i...
  - robocat 7y ago
    You also need a Mac to (a) remote debug Mobile Safari, and (b) Test Safari on desktop. You probably need both an iPad and an iPhone because (1) iPadOS 13 now acts like desktop by default, (2) If you do anything with inputmode= or number fields the virtual keyboards are different, (3) screen size In theory you can test iOS/iPadOS devices in xcode, but I have found real devices far easier and more reliable.
- 7y ago

Siecje 7y ago

I only use Chrome when I want to exec into a pod in Kubernetes when using `kubectl proxy`. For some reason this doesn't work in Firefox.

Gpetrium 7y ago

Monopolies like these are partially built by the demand side flowing towards the option of least resistance. In such case, the average person will float towards browser X when Y seems to, for example, become slower, take more processing power or pure peer pressure "I can't believe you are still using browser P, it is so slow!". As demand floats towards few suppliers, organizations with the most value to gain from it will either look to purchase one of the current suppliers or increase investment to outpace its competitors. In time, the market becomes a monopoly/oligopoly due to both demand (customer) and supply (org/biz interests). At this point, the mono/oli has the means to change things, either slowly or drastically, to maximize their gains. Unless a good portion of society takes further interest in keeping what they believe to be right (e.g. privacy) and put their money and time where their belief is, non-profit orgs or less agressive ones are most likely to lose 99 out of 100 times in the long run. This is a human nature challenge, not necessarily an entity problem.

theboulevardier 7y ago

I have recently returned to Firefox for my personal browsing after using Chrome since about 2014 and it works great. However... In work I'm stuck using Chrome due to the amount of time I spend in Google Apps (Docs, Sheets, Google Analytics, Search Console & Data Studio) as they break certain functionality on Firefox, which makes me less productive. Google has too much power. I work in Search Engine Marketing and it wasn't so long ago that we optimised sites for different search engines, now no-one cares about any search engine other than Google.

thezeebass 7y ago

Can we talk about Brave? Its impressed me immensely, and BAT is a profound new approach to monetization on the web. in the context of this article its the only salvation i see; much like telegram for messaging, it provides a privacy and performance focus that makes it infinitely better than the bloat of chrome at getting you around the web; And without the ads and tracking. Awesome.

bdcravens 7y ago
Brave is based on Chromium.

Proven 7y ago

Firefox lacks the credibility to sell (charge for) privacy products or services when they at the same time make money off aggregated browser analytics. That would be no better than that AdBlock company whose income comes from advertisers. It's that Mozilla can't do it right, but rather than they wouldn't be on my list of top 5 privacy service vendors to check out.

Japhy_Ryder 7y ago

Just a quick rant about Firefox -- an INSANELY annoying bug that they've yet to fix is when trying to copy the URL on Mobile Firefox, 99% of the time I get the wrong address (the previous page I was on), because it seemingly doesn't populate the address as the page you're currently looking at if the page hasn't fully loaded yet. It's so odd. Other than that, Firefox > Chrome. Privacy situation is vastly superior and web standards support is comparable. I also just feel that Mozilla is a way better company ethics wise, and for the software community at large, than Google.

notatoad 7y ago

>but what Google was really doing was laying the groundwork for the ability to deliver all sorts of new online ad formats (like video) and complicated Javascript behind them that would help track and target users more effectively. this is just plain dumb. There are plenty of other uses for javascript and powerful programming features beyond ads, and even google's most complicated ad products barely scratch the surface of what's possible with the new js features that have been introduced since the beginning of the chrome project. Just because google is an ad company, doesn't mean everything they do is purely and simply about serving ads. And if you're going to try and make the argument that it is, you had better have something to back it up - you can't just make the claim and then skip on to the next bit of your rant.

unknown2374 7y ago

This article has a lot of wrong or otherwise misleading information. One I haven't noticed in the comments so far is that the author refers to Chromium as being free and open-source. It isn't [0]. It downloads more Google account and activity tracking related blobs than ever when building the code as well. While I agree with the gist of the article, this is worth pointing out since a lot of people do use Chromium because it is advertised this way, thinking that somehow they are not playing into the Chrome/Google monopoly. For those interested, there is an alternative build without all the google stuff baked in: https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9724409 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9724409

lioeters 7y ago
I remember seeing an article a few months ago, that Microsoft removed 51 Google services from Chromium while they transitioned Edge to it. https://imgur.com/Szwkb0O https://imgur.com/Szwkb0O That list helps to show how Chromium is far from the open-source ideal.

KuhlMensch 7y ago

Set my default browser to Firefox for the first time in ~10 years.

jacquesc 7y ago

A seemingly minor issue got me really worried about the future of the Chrome monopoly. For some reason, some developer/product manager at Chrome decided to ignore `"autocomplete"="off". This reeks havoc with the 100s of JS autocomplete addons out there when chrome autocomplete pops up over the custom built on. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12374442/chrome-ignores-autocomplete-off https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12374442/chrome-ignores-... Seems like there's no resolution yet, aside from a stream of ridiculous hacks that all tend to break at one point or another. If Google wants to own the browser, they are going to need a more transparent process on these things. It affects everyone now and they have to start governing their changes more appropriately.

ozten 7y ago

Why Chrome exists is missing a key driver - A significant portion of Google's search traffic came from business deals where they paid browser vendors (or others) to be the default search option. As they cannibalized the browser market they eliminated this cost or gained significant negotiating power. "Driving innovation on the web" is the don't be evil slogan that motivates us all to allow them to "vertically integrate advertising and cut costs".

scarface74 7y ago
As they cannibalized the browser market they eliminated this cost or gained significant negotiating power. They still pay Apple a reported $12 billion a year and they have no negotiating power on iOS.
- ozten 7y ago
  Which is to say - "Why does Android exist?"

ilaksh 7y ago

The only way you are going to get a competitive landscape for browsers is to get away from the paradigm of the browser containing the entire kitchen sink, i.e. its own OS. Maybe there could be an alternative that only supports markdown. Or maybe markdown/rst and web assembly.