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It was incredible to me how aggressively Microsoft came out supportive of the Chrome team and how loudly they discussed the wonderful amount of collaboration th

It was incredible to me how aggressively Microsoft came out supportive of the Chrome team and how loudly they discussed the wonderful amount of collaboration the two companies had been up to since starting work on the new Edge. I've seen Googlers responding to Edge developers about how they'll get some mishandling of Edge fixed internally at Google. But really, this is just the same story as before: The "oops" have begun: https://www.zdnet.com/article/former-mozilla-exec-google-has-sabotaged-firefox-for-years/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/former-mozilla-exec-google-has...

thaumasiotes 7y ago
Pretty interesting article. > "Google Chrome ads started appearing next to Firefox search terms. Gmail & [Google] Docs started to experience selective performance issues and bugs on Firefox. Demo sites would falsely block Firefox as 'incompatible'," he said. > "All of this is stuff you're allowed to do to compete, of course. But we were still a search partner, so we'd say 'hey what gives?' And every time, they'd say, 'oops. That was accidental. We'll fix it in the next push in 2 weeks.' > "Over and over. Oops. Another accident. We'll fix it soon. We want the same things. We're on the same team. There were dozens of oopses. Hundreds maybe?" > "I'm all for 'don't attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence' but I don't believe Google is that incompetent. I think they were running out the clock. We lost users during every oops. And we spent effort and frustration every clock tick on that instead of improving our product. We got outfoxed for a while and by the time we started calling it what it was, a lot of damage had been done," Nightingale said. You can do a lot more damage as a trusted friend than you can as a known enemy.
- amelius 7y ago
  > Google Chrome ads started appearing next to Firefox search terms Why don't webdevs fight back and put "best viewed on Firefox" pop-ups on their pages (whenever the user is using Chrome).
  - ocdtrekkie 7y ago
    Microsoft can and does do this now in retaliation, they own enough web properties that this makes a difference. Firefox doesn’t have a huge web presence though, nothing anywhere on par with Google advertising their browser in their search engine and email client. Unfortunately, from my experience many third party web developers only test in Chrome, and hence actually encourage Chrome use even when there’s no incompatibility with Firefox or Edge.
  - AJ007 7y ago
    I’ve started doing this. In the case of CCPA, GDPR disclosures and “do not track” requirements I suggest uninstalling Chrome and all Google software and switching to Firefox with proper as locking software enabled. I think Google is compliant with neither, and if a user is actually concerned about their privacy they definitely shouldn’t be using Chrome.
    - ORioN63 7y ago
      It would be great to understand the downvotes on this. Chrome/Chromium phones home, period. Last time I've personally checked this [1] was still true. It's hard to argue that Google doesn't have an interest on collecting as much data it can. Especially, since their heavy focus on ML, where the algorithms are very data-hungry. [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/Chromium/comments/3fgabt/privacy_issue_chromium_always_connecting_to_google/ctribr3/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Chromium/comments/3fgabt/privacy_is...
  - tapoxi 7y ago
    Netscape Now!
    - option 7y ago
      browser is too important piece of everyday computing for the masses to leave in the hands of Big Corp. This is why my family uses Firefox
      - deleted 7y ago
- Middleclass 7y ago
  If you replace "friend" with "courtesan" or "prostitute" your analysis is correct.
- oblio 7y ago
  Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
  - ignoramous 7y ago
    > Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Ironically, it seems Google did just that to the detriment of Mozilla. Browser Wars are such shit-shows.
  - ksec 7y ago
    >Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Whoever said that didn't have many enemies. - Stannis Baratheon
- xienze 7y ago
  > All of this is stuff you're allowed to do to compete, of course. Is it though? It blows my mind how Google gets a pass on stuff like this. Way back when MS got slapped for monopolistic practices the key argument was that by bundling IE with Windows they were leveraging their dominant position in desktop OSs to gain an unfair advantage in another industry (browsers/web, via IE). Meanwhile Google leverages their position in search, email, etc. to push Chrome and whatever else, and no one bats an eye.
  - mey 7y ago
    Or bundling Chrome and Android
    - icebraining 7y ago
      Supposedly they now ask users in the EU which browser they want to use: https://www.blog.google/around-the-globe/google-europe/supporting-choice-and-competition-europe/ https://www.blog.google/around-the-globe/google-europe/suppo... I can't say I've ever seen that dialog, though.
      - QuesnayJr 7y ago
        I got a popup telling me I could install other browsers, and some directions on how to do so. I knew it had to be in response to the EU case, but you couldn't tell from the phrasing that they did it involuntarily.
  - icebraining 7y ago
    Presumably there's an investigation ongoing in the US: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/09/google-antitrust-investigation-monopoly https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/09/google-an... That's besides the EU's investigation and fine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_vs._Google#Android_and_mobile_apps_charges https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_vs._Google#Andr...
- drewg123 7y ago
  > [Google] Docs started to experience selective performance issues and bugs on Firefox As a firefox user, the thing that annoys the hell out of me is the inability to use the mouse menu for cut and paste in Google Docs unless you're using chrome. I don't understand why it forces you to use the keyboard shortcut. I'm an emacs user, and find the windows-y keyboard shortcuts foreign, so I have to think about them, and prefer just using the right-click mouse menu.
  - sp332 7y ago
    I just tried this in Firefox and it worked fine?
    - benjaminjackman 7y ago
      I think it was recently fixed, because I remember getting the messages gp mentions but haven’t for a while now.
    - cptskippy 7y ago
      For me, Copy works but Paste results in dialog telling me to use the keyboard.
  - kingofpandora 7y ago
    I used to have this problem but the behaviour has changed and it works fine now.
    - drewg123 7y ago
      I just got it today, with firefox 73
  - nikofeyn 7y ago
    > I'm an emacs user, and find the windows-y keyboard shortcuts foreign, so I have to think about them, and prefer just using the right-click mouse menu. it's a little surprising to me that you can't remember cut, copy, and paste that works on any computer in the last two decades but can remember all of the esoteric emacs shortcuts, which include references to a key that doesn't even exist.
- vatueil 7y ago
  > "When I started at Mozilla in 2007 there was no Google Chrome, and most folks we spoke with inside [Google] were Firefox fans," Nightingale recollected in a Twitter thread on Saturday. > "When Chrome launched... ... many of those same folks started to use Chrome, making it easier to miss Firefox bugs? Jonathan Nightingale is claiming a company-wide conspiracy ("coordinated plan" in Jonathan's words) across "hundreds" of different product teams could be executed without any Firefox users or other internal Mozilla sympathizers picking up on it. We're talking Google here: they have a hard enough time coordinating internally when they're openly trying. This seems like a very complicated theory when the natural consequences of everyone switching to a different product provide an obvious and ready explanation for what we're seeing. Ideally developers ought to test everything across different browsers, I agree, but we know in practice developers are only human and humans are lazy. And testing is still no substitute for using a browser day in and day out. I want better support for Firefox and other browsers, but blaming lack of support on a conspiracy is an easy cop-out that doesn't help us address the real issues at stake.
  - leshenka 7y ago
    > We're talking Google here: they have a hard enough time coordinating internally when they're openly trying. Yet for some reason each oops only resulted in Google's favor. It's like slipping on banana peel and doing a perfect backflip. Every time.
  - WorldMaker 7y ago
    > We're talking Google here: they have a hard enough time coordinating internally when they're openly trying. Which is an interesting point here: is Google a drunken master pretending to be an incompetent but way more coordinated than they appear or is Google simply an incompetent company whose left hand never knows what its right hand is doing, but yet has been extremely lucky at pretending to be competent? (Either way, given such history how can you trust anything about Google if they seem so uncoordinated and prone to so many "oops"?)
- joshspankit 7y ago
  This whole thing seems somewhat ridiculous to me. If there is intent here (which evidence seems to dictate that there is), then Google is playing a very short-term game and Google’s strength has been it’s long-term thinking. There’s not even much to argue about: web tech is standardized, and each vendor can (and should) be held to an objective measurement o how well they implement the spec. When MS chooses to make spec-compliant sites, they should be easily (and even publicly) able to say “hey your browser is out of spec, and this is why”. Just so odd to think that these sort of classroom politics still happen.
- cbhl 7y ago
  In my opinion, it's very difficult to use a Windows machine as your daily driver as a Software Engineer at Google. Windows VMs are banned by corporate policy. Getting an extra Windows laptop to test things requires a business reason and approval from a VP.
- odomojuli 7y ago
  > You can do a lot more damage as a trusted friend than you can as a known enemy. Reminds me of the Young Pope's first episode. "Friendly relationships are dangerous. They lend themselves to ambiguities, misunderstandings, and conflicts, and they always end badly. Formal relationships, on the other hand, are as clear as spring water."
pingyong 7y ago
If you're ever wondering how much data Chrome sucks out of you, the amount of effort Google goes through to try to keep people from using even Chrome-Edge, let alone Firefox, should give you a rough idea. Microsoft probably won't be much better though in the long run...
- dkns 7y ago
  I reckon Microsoft can be even worse considering how much data they gather about you through telemetry built in Windows. Imagine if you're web dev using windows and edge along with vscode. Oof.
  - doteka 7y ago
    Microsoft is way less interested in selling your data to third parties than Google - ads are not the majority of their income
  - kd913 7y ago
    Have you seen the amount of telemetry built in Android/Chrome or any Google product? Windows is only now trying to level the playing field to that which Google already assumes.
  - techsupporter 7y ago
    > along with vscode For those who don't know about it, VSCodium is a community-delivered build of Visual Studio Code with telemetry removed. https://vscodium.com/ https://vscodium.com/
    - 72deluxe 7y ago
      Very helpful links, thanks.
  - Zelizz 7y ago
    I work on Windows (speaking informally here, these are my own opinions and not those of my employer, etc.) We care a lot about GDPR and privacy, and there's been a big top-down push to reduce the amount of telemetry collected, including giving good justifications for anything we want to keep collecting. We have to make sure all the data is kept in GDPR-compliant systems that can handle the deletion and security policies, and we regularly take training to tell us what is and isn't compliant use of customer data. My team uses it mostly for seeing the success rate of our feature across different hardware, firmware and OS versions, which helps us identify issues and poke certain partners to improve ecosystem reliability. I can't speak for the Edge/Bing/Whatever teams, but I'd hope they take it as seriously as us. I definitely wish users had more control over data collection without resorting to group policy, and I wish users had more visibility and control over more of the OS in general, but I feel we've learned the wrong lessons from Apple so everything must be unconfigurable and only give vague feedback like, "Something is happening..." (but I digress). In terms of caring about privacy I'd still give Apple the crown, but I don't think it'd be unfair to give Microsoft second place.
callmeal 7y ago
>The "oops" have begun... Try running gmail in firefox. It's abysmal. A single click takes a few seconds to open email. This is malice, not incompetence. And I'm not even going to get into the whole endless captcha on firefox 'feature'.
- einr 7y ago
  Another thing: every single time I use Google to search for a Firefox extension such as uBlock Origin or anything else that is available on both browsers, the equivalent Chrome extension is consistently the first result. It knows my user agent. It knows very well that the Firefox extension is the relevant result. This is 100% done out of malice.
  - thrower123 7y ago
    I really, really, suspect that the Google search isn't even close to that smart, that active malice comes in. Pure statistics would put the Chrome version of something higher than the Firefox version due to sheer weight of user-base. Nor are user-agents in any way reliable.
    - einr 7y ago
      Nor are user-agents in any way reliable. Reliable enough to constantly break, penalize and nag me for using Firefox in other ways, apparently. This happens and is well-documented, not a conspiracy theory.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - simias 7y ago
      I agree with you. Given the current browser market share it would make sense for Chrome extensions to be more popular than Firefox's without any special-case meddling.
      - thrower123 7y ago
nimajneb 7y ago
That makes me not want to use Chrome :/

thaumasiotes 7y ago

Pretty interesting article. > "Google Chrome ads started appearing next to Firefox search terms. Gmail & [Google] Docs started to experience selective performance issues and bugs on Firefox. Demo sites would falsely block Firefox as 'incompatible'," he said. > "All of this is stuff you're allowed to do to compete, of course. But we were still a search partner, so we'd say 'hey what gives?' And every time, they'd say, 'oops. That was accidental. We'll fix it in the next push in 2 weeks.' > "Over and over. Oops. Another accident. We'll fix it soon. We want the same things. We're on the same team. There were dozens of oopses. Hundreds maybe?" > "I'm all for 'don't attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence' but I don't believe Google is that incompetent. I think they were running out the clock. We lost users during every oops. And we spent effort and frustration every clock tick on that instead of improving our product. We got outfoxed for a while and by the time we started calling it what it was, a lot of damage had been done," Nightingale said. You can do a lot more damage as a trusted friend than you can as a known enemy.

amelius 7y ago
> Google Chrome ads started appearing next to Firefox search terms Why don't webdevs fight back and put "best viewed on Firefox" pop-ups on their pages (whenever the user is using Chrome).
- ocdtrekkie 7y ago
  Microsoft can and does do this now in retaliation, they own enough web properties that this makes a difference. Firefox doesn’t have a huge web presence though, nothing anywhere on par with Google advertising their browser in their search engine and email client. Unfortunately, from my experience many third party web developers only test in Chrome, and hence actually encourage Chrome use even when there’s no incompatibility with Firefox or Edge.
- AJ007 7y ago
  I’ve started doing this. In the case of CCPA, GDPR disclosures and “do not track” requirements I suggest uninstalling Chrome and all Google software and switching to Firefox with proper as locking software enabled. I think Google is compliant with neither, and if a user is actually concerned about their privacy they definitely shouldn’t be using Chrome.
  - ORioN63 7y ago
    It would be great to understand the downvotes on this. Chrome/Chromium phones home, period. Last time I've personally checked this [1] was still true. It's hard to argue that Google doesn't have an interest on collecting as much data it can. Especially, since their heavy focus on ML, where the algorithms are very data-hungry. [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/Chromium/comments/3fgabt/privacy_issue_chromium_always_connecting_to_google/ctribr3/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Chromium/comments/3fgabt/privacy_is...
- tapoxi 7y ago
  Netscape Now!
  - option 7y ago
    browser is too important piece of everyday computing for the masses to leave in the hands of Big Corp. This is why my family uses Firefox
    - deleted 7y ago
Middleclass 7y ago
If you replace "friend" with "courtesan" or "prostitute" your analysis is correct.
oblio 7y ago
Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
- ignoramous 7y ago
  > Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Ironically, it seems Google did just that to the detriment of Mozilla. Browser Wars are such shit-shows.
- ksec 7y ago
  >Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Whoever said that didn't have many enemies. - Stannis Baratheon
xienze 7y ago
> All of this is stuff you're allowed to do to compete, of course. Is it though? It blows my mind how Google gets a pass on stuff like this. Way back when MS got slapped for monopolistic practices the key argument was that by bundling IE with Windows they were leveraging their dominant position in desktop OSs to gain an unfair advantage in another industry (browsers/web, via IE). Meanwhile Google leverages their position in search, email, etc. to push Chrome and whatever else, and no one bats an eye.
- mey 7y ago
  Or bundling Chrome and Android
  - icebraining 7y ago
    Supposedly they now ask users in the EU which browser they want to use: https://www.blog.google/around-the-globe/google-europe/supporting-choice-and-competition-europe/ https://www.blog.google/around-the-globe/google-europe/suppo... I can't say I've ever seen that dialog, though.
    - QuesnayJr 7y ago
      I got a popup telling me I could install other browsers, and some directions on how to do so. I knew it had to be in response to the EU case, but you couldn't tell from the phrasing that they did it involuntarily.
- icebraining 7y ago
  Presumably there's an investigation ongoing in the US: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/09/google-antitrust-investigation-monopoly https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/09/google-an... That's besides the EU's investigation and fine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_vs._Google#Android_and_mobile_apps_charges https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_vs._Google#Andr...
drewg123 7y ago
> [Google] Docs started to experience selective performance issues and bugs on Firefox As a firefox user, the thing that annoys the hell out of me is the inability to use the mouse menu for cut and paste in Google Docs unless you're using chrome. I don't understand why it forces you to use the keyboard shortcut. I'm an emacs user, and find the windows-y keyboard shortcuts foreign, so I have to think about them, and prefer just using the right-click mouse menu.
- sp332 7y ago
  I just tried this in Firefox and it worked fine?
  - benjaminjackman 7y ago
    I think it was recently fixed, because I remember getting the messages gp mentions but haven’t for a while now.
  - cptskippy 7y ago
    For me, Copy works but Paste results in dialog telling me to use the keyboard.
- kingofpandora 7y ago
  I used to have this problem but the behaviour has changed and it works fine now.
  - drewg123 7y ago
    I just got it today, with firefox 73
- nikofeyn 7y ago
  > I'm an emacs user, and find the windows-y keyboard shortcuts foreign, so I have to think about them, and prefer just using the right-click mouse menu. it's a little surprising to me that you can't remember cut, copy, and paste that works on any computer in the last two decades but can remember all of the esoteric emacs shortcuts, which include references to a key that doesn't even exist.
vatueil 7y ago
> "When I started at Mozilla in 2007 there was no Google Chrome, and most folks we spoke with inside [Google] were Firefox fans," Nightingale recollected in a Twitter thread on Saturday. > "When Chrome launched... ... many of those same folks started to use Chrome, making it easier to miss Firefox bugs? Jonathan Nightingale is claiming a company-wide conspiracy ("coordinated plan" in Jonathan's words) across "hundreds" of different product teams could be executed without any Firefox users or other internal Mozilla sympathizers picking up on it. We're talking Google here: they have a hard enough time coordinating internally when they're openly trying. This seems like a very complicated theory when the natural consequences of everyone switching to a different product provide an obvious and ready explanation for what we're seeing. Ideally developers ought to test everything across different browsers, I agree, but we know in practice developers are only human and humans are lazy. And testing is still no substitute for using a browser day in and day out. I want better support for Firefox and other browsers, but blaming lack of support on a conspiracy is an easy cop-out that doesn't help us address the real issues at stake.
- leshenka 7y ago
  > We're talking Google here: they have a hard enough time coordinating internally when they're openly trying. Yet for some reason each oops only resulted in Google's favor. It's like slipping on banana peel and doing a perfect backflip. Every time.
- WorldMaker 7y ago
  > We're talking Google here: they have a hard enough time coordinating internally when they're openly trying. Which is an interesting point here: is Google a drunken master pretending to be an incompetent but way more coordinated than they appear or is Google simply an incompetent company whose left hand never knows what its right hand is doing, but yet has been extremely lucky at pretending to be competent? (Either way, given such history how can you trust anything about Google if they seem so uncoordinated and prone to so many "oops"?)
joshspankit 7y ago
This whole thing seems somewhat ridiculous to me. If there is intent here (which evidence seems to dictate that there is), then Google is playing a very short-term game and Google’s strength has been it’s long-term thinking. There’s not even much to argue about: web tech is standardized, and each vendor can (and should) be held to an objective measurement o how well they implement the spec. When MS chooses to make spec-compliant sites, they should be easily (and even publicly) able to say “hey your browser is out of spec, and this is why”. Just so odd to think that these sort of classroom politics still happen.
cbhl 7y ago
In my opinion, it's very difficult to use a Windows machine as your daily driver as a Software Engineer at Google. Windows VMs are banned by corporate policy. Getting an extra Windows laptop to test things requires a business reason and approval from a VP.
odomojuli 7y ago
> You can do a lot more damage as a trusted friend than you can as a known enemy. Reminds me of the Young Pope's first episode. "Friendly relationships are dangerous. They lend themselves to ambiguities, misunderstandings, and conflicts, and they always end badly. Formal relationships, on the other hand, are as clear as spring water."

pingyong 7y ago

If you're ever wondering how much data Chrome sucks out of you, the amount of effort Google goes through to try to keep people from using even Chrome-Edge, let alone Firefox, should give you a rough idea. Microsoft probably won't be much better though in the long run...

dkns 7y ago
I reckon Microsoft can be even worse considering how much data they gather about you through telemetry built in Windows. Imagine if you're web dev using windows and edge along with vscode. Oof.
- doteka 7y ago
  Microsoft is way less interested in selling your data to third parties than Google - ads are not the majority of their income
- kd913 7y ago
  Have you seen the amount of telemetry built in Android/Chrome or any Google product? Windows is only now trying to level the playing field to that which Google already assumes.
- techsupporter 7y ago
  > along with vscode For those who don't know about it, VSCodium is a community-delivered build of Visual Studio Code with telemetry removed. https://vscodium.com/ https://vscodium.com/
  - 72deluxe 7y ago
    Very helpful links, thanks.
- Zelizz 7y ago
  I work on Windows (speaking informally here, these are my own opinions and not those of my employer, etc.) We care a lot about GDPR and privacy, and there's been a big top-down push to reduce the amount of telemetry collected, including giving good justifications for anything we want to keep collecting. We have to make sure all the data is kept in GDPR-compliant systems that can handle the deletion and security policies, and we regularly take training to tell us what is and isn't compliant use of customer data. My team uses it mostly for seeing the success rate of our feature across different hardware, firmware and OS versions, which helps us identify issues and poke certain partners to improve ecosystem reliability. I can't speak for the Edge/Bing/Whatever teams, but I'd hope they take it as seriously as us. I definitely wish users had more control over data collection without resorting to group policy, and I wish users had more visibility and control over more of the OS in general, but I feel we've learned the wrong lessons from Apple so everything must be unconfigurable and only give vague feedback like, "Something is happening..." (but I digress). In terms of caring about privacy I'd still give Apple the crown, but I don't think it'd be unfair to give Microsoft second place.

callmeal 7y ago

>The "oops" have begun... Try running gmail in firefox. It's abysmal. A single click takes a few seconds to open email. This is malice, not incompetence. And I'm not even going to get into the whole endless captcha on firefox 'feature'.

einr 7y ago
Another thing: every single time I use Google to search for a Firefox extension such as uBlock Origin or anything else that is available on both browsers, the equivalent Chrome extension is consistently the first result. It knows my user agent. It knows very well that the Firefox extension is the relevant result. This is 100% done out of malice.
- thrower123 7y ago
  I really, really, suspect that the Google search isn't even close to that smart, that active malice comes in. Pure statistics would put the Chrome version of something higher than the Firefox version due to sheer weight of user-base. Nor are user-agents in any way reliable.
  - einr 7y ago
    Nor are user-agents in any way reliable. Reliable enough to constantly break, penalize and nag me for using Firefox in other ways, apparently. This happens and is well-documented, not a conspiracy theory.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - simias 7y ago
    I agree with you. Given the current browser market share it would make sense for Chrome extensions to be more popular than Firefox's without any special-case meddling.
    - thrower123 7y ago

nimajneb 7y ago

That makes me not want to use Chrome :/