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It's a little silly to ignore the impact that Chrome had on the browser market. A from-scratch multiprocess architecture, considerable performance improvements,

It's a little silly to ignore the impact that Chrome had on the browser market. A from-scratch multiprocess architecture, considerable performance improvements, a fairly significant departure with UI, etc. Sandboxed flash was huge at the time. People forget so quickly that only a decade ago the internet was a lot more malicious. Exploits hosted on compromised ads were not uncommon at all. These days all of the big exploit kits rely on social engineering. Those were very appealing things for many people, rightfully so.

BuckRogers 7y ago
That's true, but Google replaced websites exploiting users, to doing the honor themselves.
war1025 7y ago
I agree that Chrome has been good for healthy competition in the browser market. What I don't agree with is that Firefox hasn't been holding it's own the whole time. They did force Mozilla to actually innovate on Firefox, which was great, but they closed the performance gap to insignificant levels pretty quickly. I really think the majority of people switching to Chrome was just momentum of "I use Google and they say Chrome is better".
- staticassertion 7y ago
  I told everyone I could to use Chrome because the risk of being infected by malware was radically lower. Flash 0days used to be so common, I know plenty of people who'd get hit. Java plugin was the other big one and Chrome had it click to play early on IIRC. Chrome had a massive advantage over Firefox, security wise, for quite a long time.
  - war1025 7y ago
    I've been on Linux the whole time, so I suppose the security worries weren't really something that came up for me. Also have always been more cavalier about security than I probably should be.
  - lifthrasiir 7y ago
    > I told everyone I could to use Chrome because the risk of being infected by malware was radically lower. I used to say so too, but that was because at that time everyone was using Internet Explorer, not Firefox. Both Firefox and Chrome had and have been much more secure than IE (and Edge used to be unstable for a long time), so this was not a good reason to prefer Chrome over Firefox even at that time.
    - staticassertion 7y ago
      Chrome was the first browser to sandbox Flash. That was huge for security.
      - lifthrasiir 7y ago
        I don't disagree that Chrome had been (and is still, due to the personpower) more secure than Firefox. But a gap between both and IE is much wider [1] than a gap between Chrome and Firefox and the latter didn't affect the recommendation. Chrome was much more secure than IE and had a good UX, that's it. [1] Qualitatively: both didn't really support ActiveX. Quantatitvely: even back in 2010 (where Chrome's Flash sandboxing and Firefox's out-of-process NPAPI "isolation" was still at their infancy) both crashed much less often than IE.
hoorayimhelping 7y ago
Not just the browser market, but software in general. Remember when people had a conniption about Chrome auto updating and now literally all software does that? Remember when using tabs was kind of a chore and not really worth the effort? Remember when the chrome of a browser would take up 10% of the screen? Remember when browsers had an address bar and a search bar? Remember when installing extensions was a huge, painful process? This whole, "I don't get it," thing is so transparent and juvenile.
- staticassertion 7y ago
  Oh shit, yeah, Windows software used to not ever autoupdate I forgot about that.
- datalist 7y ago
  > Remember when people had a conniption about Chrome auto updating and now literally all software does that? Sure. And is that a good thing? From a developer's perspective maybe, from a user's not so much. > Remember when using tabs was kind of a chore and not really worth the effort? No, I dont. Tabs have not fundamentally changed since they were introduced in NetCaptor some twenty years ago. Yes, you can drag and drop them now, but thats basically it. If anything, tabs have de-evolved. Chrome never allowed any customisation and Firefox stopped supporting it (e.g. vertical tabs) when they switched to "Quantum". > Remember when the chrome of a browser would take up 10% of the screen? Remember when browsers had an address bar and a search bar? If that was Google's only achievement ;) > Remember when installing extensions was a huge, painful process? I dont. Installing extensions was never any of that. It was always fairly straightforward in Firefox and has not really changed since the first versions, again some twenty years ago :)
  - majewsky 7y ago
    > Chrome never allowed any customisation and Firefox stopped supporting it (e.g. vertical tabs) when they switched to "Quantum". Current Firefox has vertical tabs, with the Tree Style Tab extension (like it always has been). The only UI difference is that TST cannot hide the horizontal tab bar automatically, but it will explain to you on first use how to do that.
tekknik 7y ago
Who is ignoring it? Also keep in mind most of these security benefits only helped Windows. There’s a lot of non-windows users here who had app level sandboxing before Chrome sandboxed Flash. Regardless of what they did they’re too “Googlfied” these days and Chrome is a massive window into your personal data. People that have done good things can go on to doing bad things.

BuckRogers 7y ago

That's true, but Google replaced websites exploiting users, to doing the honor themselves.

war1025 7y ago

I agree that Chrome has been good for healthy competition in the browser market. What I don't agree with is that Firefox hasn't been holding it's own the whole time. They did force Mozilla to actually innovate on Firefox, which was great, but they closed the performance gap to insignificant levels pretty quickly. I really think the majority of people switching to Chrome was just momentum of "I use Google and they say Chrome is better".

staticassertion 7y ago
I told everyone I could to use Chrome because the risk of being infected by malware was radically lower. Flash 0days used to be so common, I know plenty of people who'd get hit. Java plugin was the other big one and Chrome had it click to play early on IIRC. Chrome had a massive advantage over Firefox, security wise, for quite a long time.
- war1025 7y ago
  I've been on Linux the whole time, so I suppose the security worries weren't really something that came up for me. Also have always been more cavalier about security than I probably should be.
- lifthrasiir 7y ago
  > I told everyone I could to use Chrome because the risk of being infected by malware was radically lower. I used to say so too, but that was because at that time everyone was using Internet Explorer, not Firefox. Both Firefox and Chrome had and have been much more secure than IE (and Edge used to be unstable for a long time), so this was not a good reason to prefer Chrome over Firefox even at that time.
  - staticassertion 7y ago
    Chrome was the first browser to sandbox Flash. That was huge for security.
    - lifthrasiir 7y ago
      I don't disagree that Chrome had been (and is still, due to the personpower) more secure than Firefox. But a gap between both and IE is much wider [1] than a gap between Chrome and Firefox and the latter didn't affect the recommendation. Chrome was much more secure than IE and had a good UX, that's it. [1] Qualitatively: both didn't really support ActiveX. Quantatitvely: even back in 2010 (where Chrome's Flash sandboxing and Firefox's out-of-process NPAPI "isolation" was still at their infancy) both crashed much less often than IE.

hoorayimhelping 7y ago

Not just the browser market, but software in general. Remember when people had a conniption about Chrome auto updating and now literally all software does that? Remember when using tabs was kind of a chore and not really worth the effort? Remember when the chrome of a browser would take up 10% of the screen? Remember when browsers had an address bar and a search bar? Remember when installing extensions was a huge, painful process? This whole, "I don't get it," thing is so transparent and juvenile.

staticassertion 7y ago
Oh shit, yeah, Windows software used to not ever autoupdate I forgot about that.
datalist 7y ago
> Remember when people had a conniption about Chrome auto updating and now literally all software does that? Sure. And is that a good thing? From a developer's perspective maybe, from a user's not so much. > Remember when using tabs was kind of a chore and not really worth the effort? No, I dont. Tabs have not fundamentally changed since they were introduced in NetCaptor some twenty years ago. Yes, you can drag and drop them now, but thats basically it. If anything, tabs have de-evolved. Chrome never allowed any customisation and Firefox stopped supporting it (e.g. vertical tabs) when they switched to "Quantum". > Remember when the chrome of a browser would take up 10% of the screen? Remember when browsers had an address bar and a search bar? If that was Google's only achievement ;) > Remember when installing extensions was a huge, painful process? I dont. Installing extensions was never any of that. It was always fairly straightforward in Firefox and has not really changed since the first versions, again some twenty years ago :)
- majewsky 7y ago
  > Chrome never allowed any customisation and Firefox stopped supporting it (e.g. vertical tabs) when they switched to "Quantum". Current Firefox has vertical tabs, with the Tree Style Tab extension (like it always has been). The only UI difference is that TST cannot hide the horizontal tab bar automatically, but it will explain to you on first use how to do that.

tekknik 7y ago

Who is ignoring it? Also keep in mind most of these security benefits only helped Windows. There’s a lot of non-windows users here who had app level sandboxing before Chrome sandboxed Flash. Regardless of what they did they’re too “Googlfied” these days and Chrome is a massive window into your personal data. People that have done good things can go on to doing bad things.