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Nerd and power-user evangelists are the only reason FF ever had any market share to begin with. We installed it on everyone's computer we had access to. We did

Nerd and power-user evangelists are the only reason FF ever had any market share to begin with. We installed it on everyone's computer we had access to. We did this because even non-nerds could tell it was better than the OS' default browser, out of the box. Non-nerds can no longer tell it's better, so I stopped doing that. No longer worth the effort, might even end up adding to my friends-and-family tech support burden rather than reducing it. I still use it myself anywhere Safari's not available, but yeah, it's a power-user-only product now. Chrome only did better with regular users because 1) it was OS-bundled, and 2) they could shove "try Chrome!" banners at the top of every Google property. I don't think the product itself is significantly more focused on normal users. Google's just got a way, way better platform for promotion. They can snap their fingers and get a million installs of something in a day, if they really want to. But fact is FF doesn't have that. What they did have was power users doing all their marketing for them. Not so much, these days.

mda 6y ago
You forgot something, Chrome was also significantly better than all other browsers technically.
- war1025 6y ago
  People say this, but I always find Chrome just oddly unappealing to use. It just doesn't "feel" right. Which is the opposite of what I hear lots of people say, but it's always felt that way to me nonetheless.
  - spanhandler 6y ago
    FF was really crashy/hangy around when Chrome came out—the main appeal of Chrome was that it'd do the same thing but confine the damage to one tab. Also IIRC its dev tools were on par with or better than Firebug (remember that?) early on, and performed way better. FF has gotten a lot better since then so the difference is much less stark. It was worth a little UI weirdness at the time to not have your whole session die when one tab misbehaved.
    - war1025 6y ago
      I guess I just looked at fewer shady websites than most. Never really had an issue with Firefox crashing on me.
      - spanhandler 6y ago
        Didn't need shady, just... any javascript, really. No other browser was any better so I don't think anyone thought much of it until Chrome came out with the amazing new feature of per-tab crashing.
  - tomc1985 6y ago
    IIRC it was the first browser to pass ACID3
  - jansan 6y ago
    You can measure it. For our large Javascript-heavy application Chrome is twice as fast as Firefox. V8 is an amazing piece of technology and the Chrome team should be proud of this.
- def_true_false 6y ago
  Maybe the internals. Chrome UI was (and is) total shit compared to Opera (Presto Opera, not the new Blink one). The tab bar was literally unusable for like 10 years if you had more than ~20 tabs open. Last time I used Windows without an SSD, Chrome kept stalling on IO every couple minutes (for some profile or temp files bs), fixed by symlinking to a ramdisk. Chrome still can't properly VSYNC, can't keep a stable framerate and has unnecessary frames of input lag. When (if) they make ad blocking impossible, they will lose every single tech savvy user they have.
rrdharan 6y ago
> Chrome only did better with regular users because 1) it was OS-bundled, What OS bundles Chrome? Do you mean ChromeOS? > and 2) they could shove "try Chrome!" banners at the top of every Google property. That happened way later. Maybe you have forgotten since it was so long ago, but the original wave of power users migrating to Chrome and bringing their non-power user friends along was exactly like the wave of folks who moved to Firefox. Chrome came out in 2008, had process-per-tab isolation and custom Chrome (i.e. window decorations, that's where the name comes from) that used less vertical space. Your statement is revisionist history.
- Ygg2 6y ago
  > What OS bundles Chrome? Android.
- spanhandler 6y ago
  > What OS bundles Chrome? Do you mean ChromeOS? Android. [EDIT] and Chrome was better enough that it got power users switching (this is before "Google has become very obviously evil" was common geek opinion yet, which helped), but I'm not sure it would have gotten them installing it on normal folks' computers with quite the fervor we did Firefox, back in the day. The banner ads are what got them on normal people's computers.
- tomc1985 6y ago
  It was power-users. That process isolation thing was a big part of its selling point. IIRC they put out a comic strip touting how technically awesome it was https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/ https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/ edit... I'm sort of amazed the whole thing is licensed as CC
rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
At the time Chrome took off, Firefox had gotten bloated and slow, and Chrome was lightning by comparison. (I'm sure part of it was simply due to having enough features out of the box, thus requiring less add-ons / extensions.) Firefox of course got much better eventually, but by then the damage was done, and Chrome's ability to sync with the rest of Google products (and Android devices) made the browser extremely sticky.

mda 6y ago

You forgot something, Chrome was also significantly better than all other browsers technically.

war1025 6y ago
People say this, but I always find Chrome just oddly unappealing to use. It just doesn't "feel" right. Which is the opposite of what I hear lots of people say, but it's always felt that way to me nonetheless.
- spanhandler 6y ago
  FF was really crashy/hangy around when Chrome came out—the main appeal of Chrome was that it'd do the same thing but confine the damage to one tab. Also IIRC its dev tools were on par with or better than Firebug (remember that?) early on, and performed way better. FF has gotten a lot better since then so the difference is much less stark. It was worth a little UI weirdness at the time to not have your whole session die when one tab misbehaved.
  - war1025 6y ago
    I guess I just looked at fewer shady websites than most. Never really had an issue with Firefox crashing on me.
    - spanhandler 6y ago
      Didn't need shady, just... any javascript, really. No other browser was any better so I don't think anyone thought much of it until Chrome came out with the amazing new feature of per-tab crashing.
- tomc1985 6y ago
  IIRC it was the first browser to pass ACID3
- jansan 6y ago
  You can measure it. For our large Javascript-heavy application Chrome is twice as fast as Firefox. V8 is an amazing piece of technology and the Chrome team should be proud of this.
def_true_false 6y ago
Maybe the internals. Chrome UI was (and is) total shit compared to Opera (Presto Opera, not the new Blink one). The tab bar was literally unusable for like 10 years if you had more than ~20 tabs open. Last time I used Windows without an SSD, Chrome kept stalling on IO every couple minutes (for some profile or temp files bs), fixed by symlinking to a ramdisk. Chrome still can't properly VSYNC, can't keep a stable framerate and has unnecessary frames of input lag. When (if) they make ad blocking impossible, they will lose every single tech savvy user they have.

rrdharan 6y ago

> Chrome only did better with regular users because 1) it was OS-bundled, What OS bundles Chrome? Do you mean ChromeOS? > and 2) they could shove "try Chrome!" banners at the top of every Google property. That happened way later. Maybe you have forgotten since it was so long ago, but the original wave of power users migrating to Chrome and bringing their non-power user friends along was exactly like the wave of folks who moved to Firefox. Chrome came out in 2008, had process-per-tab isolation and custom Chrome (i.e. window decorations, that's where the name comes from) that used less vertical space. Your statement is revisionist history.

Ygg2 6y ago
> What OS bundles Chrome? Android.
spanhandler 6y ago
> What OS bundles Chrome? Do you mean ChromeOS? Android. [EDIT] and Chrome was better enough that it got power users switching (this is before "Google has become very obviously evil" was common geek opinion yet, which helped), but I'm not sure it would have gotten them installing it on normal folks' computers with quite the fervor we did Firefox, back in the day. The banner ads are what got them on normal people's computers.
tomc1985 6y ago
It was power-users. That process isolation thing was a big part of its selling point. IIRC they put out a comic strip touting how technically awesome it was https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/ https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/ edit... I'm sort of amazed the whole thing is licensed as CC

rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago

At the time Chrome took off, Firefox had gotten bloated and slow, and Chrome was lightning by comparison. (I'm sure part of it was simply due to having enough features out of the box, thus requiring less add-ons / extensions.) Firefox of course got much better eventually, but by then the damage was done, and Chrome's ability to sync with the rest of Google products (and Android devices) made the browser extremely sticky.