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Over the last few months I have had ~30,0000 visits to my website, almost entirely from HN, and I was disheartened to find that 52% of visitors were using Chrom

Over the last few months I have had ~30,0000 visits to my website, almost entirely from HN, and I was disheartened to find that 52% of visitors were using Chrome[1]. Given the pro-open-web and anti-FAANG sentiments that's shared on HN I had expected slightly different results. [1]: https://simpleanalytics.com/vishnu.tech?start=2019-10-18&end=2020-10-18 https://simpleanalytics.com/vishnu.tech?start=2019-10-18&end...

gambiting 6y ago
I'm surprised that it was so low. I work in tech and I don't know anyone who uses anything other than Chrome.
- reachtarunhere 6y ago
  Lots of us do. Firefox is my browser on all my devices. I do use Chrome when visiting Google Docs which I assume is deliberately sabotaged on Firefox though.
  - SafaT 6y ago
    I strongly agree with you, most of the time I feel that non-Google browsers including Safari is somehow blocked or slowed down.
    - shadowgovt 6y ago
      It's more lack of optimization. We could alternatively put the blame on Mozilla's doorstep for not optimizing FF's engine to run Docs better.
  - lettergram 6y ago
    I found Firefox to work fine on google docs tbh. It used to be slower, but haven’t had an issue in probably a year
    - vishnumohandas 6y ago
      On my 2015 Mac, both Docs and Maps perform significantly better on Chrome, and I keep it around for these 2 use cases.
    - tedivm 6y ago
      It really depends on which part of google docs you're using. Trying to use the presentation system with Firefox is an awful experience for example.
  - subhro 6y ago
    I have never used Chrome and use Safari with GDocs. It seems fairly functional to me. What is the sabotage scene you are talking about?
    - Sebastian_09 6y ago
      I have a different experience with that: on a current MBP, Google office suite software (docs, slides, agenda, mail etc) regularly uses 100% cpu in safari for no apparent reason, and clearly also has some memory leaks were single tabs bloat to 2-3 gig memory... Have to kill the the threads manually. I would say it’s fairly unoptimized / pushes you to chrome
    - reachtarunhere 6y ago
      I second the experience of the other commenters. Keep it open long enough and it sucks up all the resources in non-chrome browsers. I also include Google Slides in my experience btw. It is more severe with Slides than docs.
  - shadowgovt 6y ago
    It's not deliberate; it's lack of investment. Docs is complicated enough that the small deviations in browser implementation add up---to make something as complex as Docs not work in Firefox, all you have to do is be willing to publish without hating new features on FF end-to-end tests.
  - methodsignature 6y ago
    Might just be that Google doesn't test on Firefox and also maybe are "to smart for their own good" coming up with out of the box solutions that can be more likely to fail to begin with. Maybe I'm being overly optimistic, but I kinda read myself as saying "they probably just don't give a sh!+."
- reader_mode 6y ago
  I'm using Safari by default simply because Chrome is a CPU hog on my machine and I can notice my PC heating up considerably faster when running it. I considered Firefox and tried to switch for a month before but the recent reorg + the stuff about their top officer pay makes it seem like it's a cushy position some people entrenched themselves in and the org is completely lost - the browser experience was inferior and I don't have sympathy towards them so why bother. Chrome has plenty of forks so I try to run those on other platforms.
  - mrgordon 6y ago
    Yeah I’m amazed how many Mac users use Chrome when it’s such a resource hog. Safari has better privacy and battery life as well. Maybe people use Chrome syncing or something and that’s why I don’t understand but it seems like they went out of their way to get a worse experience.
    - vincnetas 6y ago
      I was trying to switch my wife to use safari on chrome (because battery usage), but her argument is that "safari does not display favicons near here bookmarks" and it's big no-go for her. Makes you think about reasons of regular users when choosing browsers.
      - armagon 6y ago
        That's so interesting. I'm very computer literate, and a huge reason I couldn't stand Safari is because it didn't show it didn't show favicons in the tab bar. I typically have dozens of tabs open, and really need some way to tell them apart quickly -- such as favicons showing up. (I did find a hack to do it, but didn't love it.) You might ask her to try again. Safari 14 actually shows favicons, and that is such a welcome relief.
        vincnetas 6y ago
        It shows favicons on tabs but not on bookmarks bar.
- chefandy 6y ago
  Almost everybody in my office of designers/developers uses Firefox.
- userbinator 6y ago
  I work in tech, and people are very surprised to hear that I use IE. When they ask, I tell them it's because I do not like where "modern" browsers (and software in general, but that's another can of worms...) are going. IE11 is the latest browser to have things like user stylesheets and per-zone security configuration by default. It's a small rebellion, but nonetheless an act of opposition to the increasing corporate monopolisation and bloat of the web.
freedomben 6y ago
Worth remembering is that the commenters on the site are the minority. There are a lot or lurkers on HN (possibly orders of magnitude more lurkers than commenters), so "the pro-open-web and anti-FAANG sentiments that's shared on HN" may be a vocal minority.
- bosswipe 6y ago
  There's no reason to believe that lurkers have substantially different behavior than commenters. More likely is that those who use firefox are more passionate and informed about browser issues.
  - anm89 6y ago
    Lurking is a substantially different behavior than posting.
  - Zak 6y ago
    Commenters by definition have substantially different behavior than lurkers: they comment. Furthermore, people tend to be louder about things they perceive as threats, such as corporations dominating the internet. Those who comment about those threats are likely to be the same ones taking active steps to mitigate them.
  - pessimizer 6y ago
    Commenters are extreme outliers. Only a tiny single-digit percentage of forum readers online ever comment. HN is also a highly regarded, particularly alienating site with a strict tone expected from commenters. I'd imagine the ratio of lurkers to commenters is 100:1.
    - SpecialistEMT 6y ago
      I imagine the ratio is even smaller. HN is a often a particularly uninviting place to comment on.
      - 6y ago
polote 6y ago
From my figures on 100k visitors from a few days ago it is 21% for Firefox an 40% for Chrome, not bad
tzs 6y ago
Firefox can be kind of annoying to use on HN, at least if you post often. I use Firefox for most of my personal browsing other than Fastmail's webmail interface, and most of my general work browsing. I use Chrome for a lot of testing and development at work and for dealing with PayPal. These things all get separate profiles, and Chrome handles multiple profiles better than Firefox. Yes, I know about Firefox containers, but I need separate bookmarks and history. Containers just deal with cookies and maybe cache. I've been tempted to switch to Chrome for at least HN and Reddit because I tire of dealing with Firefox's spell checking. It regularly tells me things are spelled wrong that are not (such as "webmail" in this comment). It's not just that it is terrible that irks me--it is that it is inexplicably terrible. What I mean by inexplicably terrible is that they are using Hunspell. That's the same open source spelling engine that is used by Chrome, and LibreOffice, and MacOS. Those all have great spell checking. I thus infer that Firefox's problem is not an engine problem. It's a dictionary problem. So why don't they they grab the ones LibreOffice uses? Here are some words that came up in comments of mine either here or on Reddit that Firefox incorrectly told me were spelled wrong. Each one interrupted my writing flow as I had to stop and go look it up elsewhere to make sure that I had it right. > all-nighter auditable automata blacksmithing bubonic cantina commenter conferenced epicycle ethicist fineable inductor initializer lifecycle micropayments mosquitos pre-programmed preprogrammed prosecutable responder solvability spectrogram splitter subparagraphs subtractive surveil tradable transactional tunable verifiability verifier There's an issue in the Bugzilla for reporting misspelled words. I've reported all of those there so they should eventually be fixed. I'm not sure how long that takes. Here's a bunch I indirectly reported earlier, that are now fixed: > "ad infinitum" anonymized backlit bijection commoditization else's handwrite heliocentrism merchanting natively photosensor plaintext pre-fill preload prepend resizable scoresheet surjection unrequested (Indirectly because I asked about them on /r/firefox, and someone responded telling me about the Bugzilla issue, which he had already added them to). Here's my list of ones I have not yet reported: > ballistically chewable counterintuitive exonerations mistyped phosphine programmability recertification shapeshifting tradeoffs webmail
fpgaminer 6y ago
One can be anti-Google and still use Google products. The browser is an exceedingly important piece of software. For some people, the cost of switching to something other than Chrome is too great. Maybe Firefox doesn't work well. Maybe they hate Safari. Maybe their favorite extensions aren't available. Whatever the reason, the cost of switching is greater than the price they put on their anti-Google stance. And that's okay. Personally, I switched from Chrome to Firefox a long time ago. But I still use plenty of other Google products. I'm overall anti-Google, but I'm not a religious about it. I disconnect from Google where I can, and support products that match my views when I can. If anything, I'm surprised the percentage of non-Chrome users your site encountered was as high was it was. Makes me kind of hopeful.
- bgorman 6y ago
  Aren't Opera, Edge and Brave pretty much drop-in de-googled replacements for Google Chrome?
underdeserver 6y ago
A lot of people likely use a work laptop and have to use Chrome at work - due to internal apps that only work on Chrome.
nuker 6y ago
Safari is healthy 31%, nice
shadowgovt 6y ago
People say one thing and do another. That's the most consistent rule of human behavior prediction.
nicbou 6y ago
I get 63% Chrome, 26% Safari, 5% Firefox, 2% Edge.

gambiting 6y ago

I'm surprised that it was so low. I work in tech and I don't know anyone who uses anything other than Chrome.

reachtarunhere 6y ago
Lots of us do. Firefox is my browser on all my devices. I do use Chrome when visiting Google Docs which I assume is deliberately sabotaged on Firefox though.
- SafaT 6y ago
  I strongly agree with you, most of the time I feel that non-Google browsers including Safari is somehow blocked or slowed down.
  - shadowgovt 6y ago
    It's more lack of optimization. We could alternatively put the blame on Mozilla's doorstep for not optimizing FF's engine to run Docs better.
- lettergram 6y ago
  I found Firefox to work fine on google docs tbh. It used to be slower, but haven’t had an issue in probably a year
  - vishnumohandas 6y ago
    On my 2015 Mac, both Docs and Maps perform significantly better on Chrome, and I keep it around for these 2 use cases.
  - tedivm 6y ago
    It really depends on which part of google docs you're using. Trying to use the presentation system with Firefox is an awful experience for example.
- subhro 6y ago
  I have never used Chrome and use Safari with GDocs. It seems fairly functional to me. What is the sabotage scene you are talking about?
  - Sebastian_09 6y ago
    I have a different experience with that: on a current MBP, Google office suite software (docs, slides, agenda, mail etc) regularly uses 100% cpu in safari for no apparent reason, and clearly also has some memory leaks were single tabs bloat to 2-3 gig memory... Have to kill the the threads manually. I would say it’s fairly unoptimized / pushes you to chrome
  - reachtarunhere 6y ago
    I second the experience of the other commenters. Keep it open long enough and it sucks up all the resources in non-chrome browsers. I also include Google Slides in my experience btw. It is more severe with Slides than docs.
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  It's not deliberate; it's lack of investment. Docs is complicated enough that the small deviations in browser implementation add up---to make something as complex as Docs not work in Firefox, all you have to do is be willing to publish without hating new features on FF end-to-end tests.
- methodsignature 6y ago
  Might just be that Google doesn't test on Firefox and also maybe are "to smart for their own good" coming up with out of the box solutions that can be more likely to fail to begin with. Maybe I'm being overly optimistic, but I kinda read myself as saying "they probably just don't give a sh!+."
reader_mode 6y ago
I'm using Safari by default simply because Chrome is a CPU hog on my machine and I can notice my PC heating up considerably faster when running it. I considered Firefox and tried to switch for a month before but the recent reorg + the stuff about their top officer pay makes it seem like it's a cushy position some people entrenched themselves in and the org is completely lost - the browser experience was inferior and I don't have sympathy towards them so why bother. Chrome has plenty of forks so I try to run those on other platforms.
- mrgordon 6y ago
  Yeah I’m amazed how many Mac users use Chrome when it’s such a resource hog. Safari has better privacy and battery life as well. Maybe people use Chrome syncing or something and that’s why I don’t understand but it seems like they went out of their way to get a worse experience.
  - vincnetas 6y ago
    I was trying to switch my wife to use safari on chrome (because battery usage), but her argument is that "safari does not display favicons near here bookmarks" and it's big no-go for her. Makes you think about reasons of regular users when choosing browsers.
    - armagon 6y ago
      That's so interesting. I'm very computer literate, and a huge reason I couldn't stand Safari is because it didn't show it didn't show favicons in the tab bar. I typically have dozens of tabs open, and really need some way to tell them apart quickly -- such as favicons showing up. (I did find a hack to do it, but didn't love it.) You might ask her to try again. Safari 14 actually shows favicons, and that is such a welcome relief.
      - vincnetas 6y ago
        It shows favicons on tabs but not on bookmarks bar.
chefandy 6y ago
Almost everybody in my office of designers/developers uses Firefox.
userbinator 6y ago
I work in tech, and people are very surprised to hear that I use IE. When they ask, I tell them it's because I do not like where "modern" browsers (and software in general, but that's another can of worms...) are going. IE11 is the latest browser to have things like user stylesheets and per-zone security configuration by default. It's a small rebellion, but nonetheless an act of opposition to the increasing corporate monopolisation and bloat of the web.

freedomben 6y ago

Worth remembering is that the commenters on the site are the minority. There are a lot or lurkers on HN (possibly orders of magnitude more lurkers than commenters), so "the pro-open-web and anti-FAANG sentiments that's shared on HN" may be a vocal minority.

bosswipe 6y ago
There's no reason to believe that lurkers have substantially different behavior than commenters. More likely is that those who use firefox are more passionate and informed about browser issues.
- anm89 6y ago
  Lurking is a substantially different behavior than posting.
- Zak 6y ago
  Commenters by definition have substantially different behavior than lurkers: they comment. Furthermore, people tend to be louder about things they perceive as threats, such as corporations dominating the internet. Those who comment about those threats are likely to be the same ones taking active steps to mitigate them.
- pessimizer 6y ago
  Commenters are extreme outliers. Only a tiny single-digit percentage of forum readers online ever comment. HN is also a highly regarded, particularly alienating site with a strict tone expected from commenters. I'd imagine the ratio of lurkers to commenters is 100:1.
  - SpecialistEMT 6y ago
    I imagine the ratio is even smaller. HN is a often a particularly uninviting place to comment on.
    - 6y ago

polote 6y ago

From my figures on 100k visitors from a few days ago it is 21% for Firefox an 40% for Chrome, not bad

tzs 6y ago

Firefox can be kind of annoying to use on HN, at least if you post often. I use Firefox for most of my personal browsing other than Fastmail's webmail interface, and most of my general work browsing. I use Chrome for a lot of testing and development at work and for dealing with PayPal. These things all get separate profiles, and Chrome handles multiple profiles better than Firefox. Yes, I know about Firefox containers, but I need separate bookmarks and history. Containers just deal with cookies and maybe cache. I've been tempted to switch to Chrome for at least HN and Reddit because I tire of dealing with Firefox's spell checking. It regularly tells me things are spelled wrong that are not (such as "webmail" in this comment). It's not just that it is terrible that irks me--it is that it is inexplicably terrible. What I mean by inexplicably terrible is that they are using Hunspell. That's the same open source spelling engine that is used by Chrome, and LibreOffice, and MacOS. Those all have great spell checking. I thus infer that Firefox's problem is not an engine problem. It's a dictionary problem. So why don't they they grab the ones LibreOffice uses? Here are some words that came up in comments of mine either here or on Reddit that Firefox incorrectly told me were spelled wrong. Each one interrupted my writing flow as I had to stop and go look it up elsewhere to make sure that I had it right. > all-nighter auditable automata blacksmithing bubonic cantina commenter conferenced epicycle ethicist fineable inductor initializer lifecycle micropayments mosquitos pre-programmed preprogrammed prosecutable responder solvability spectrogram splitter subparagraphs subtractive surveil tradable transactional tunable verifiability verifier There's an issue in the Bugzilla for reporting misspelled words. I've reported all of those there so they should eventually be fixed. I'm not sure how long that takes. Here's a bunch I indirectly reported earlier, that are now fixed: > "ad infinitum" anonymized backlit bijection commoditization else's handwrite heliocentrism merchanting natively photosensor plaintext pre-fill preload prepend resizable scoresheet surjection unrequested (Indirectly because I asked about them on /r/firefox, and someone responded telling me about the Bugzilla issue, which he had already added them to). Here's my list of ones I have not yet reported: > ballistically chewable counterintuitive exonerations mistyped phosphine programmability recertification shapeshifting tradeoffs webmail

fpgaminer 6y ago

One can be anti-Google and still use Google products. The browser is an exceedingly important piece of software. For some people, the cost of switching to something other than Chrome is too great. Maybe Firefox doesn't work well. Maybe they hate Safari. Maybe their favorite extensions aren't available. Whatever the reason, the cost of switching is greater than the price they put on their anti-Google stance. And that's okay. Personally, I switched from Chrome to Firefox a long time ago. But I still use plenty of other Google products. I'm overall anti-Google, but I'm not a religious about it. I disconnect from Google where I can, and support products that match my views when I can. If anything, I'm surprised the percentage of non-Chrome users your site encountered was as high was it was. Makes me kind of hopeful.

bgorman 6y ago
Aren't Opera, Edge and Brave pretty much drop-in de-googled replacements for Google Chrome?

underdeserver 6y ago

A lot of people likely use a work laptop and have to use Chrome at work - due to internal apps that only work on Chrome.

nuker 6y ago

Safari is healthy 31%, nice

shadowgovt 6y ago

People say one thing and do another. That's the most consistent rule of human behavior prediction.

nicbou 6y ago

I get 63% Chrome, 26% Safari, 5% Firefox, 2% Edge.