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I feel like I've seen this cycle a few times now. Around the 2010-2013 time Firefox was pretty popular and the browser wars had cooled down a bit, various stand

I feel like I've seen this cycle a few times now. Around the 2010-2013 time Firefox was pretty popular and the browser wars had cooled down a bit, various standards had progressed to the point where the web was mostly the same for Firefox users and Chrome users. Then Google Docs, Drive, Voice and a few other apps with the addition of Chromebooks started to appear and all of the sudden a few key features stopped working for Firefox. Probably the most important teachable moment was just how few features it takes to flip users. Maybe we'll see Firefox regain browser share are users dump Chrome. Edge even has a shot at this point - a strange irony bringing us full circle. I guess the real question is how long until we iterate on this loop again? What will compel users to jump back into the embrace of <insert not yet but eventually evil company> versus the relatively consistent arms of Mozilla. Also, FWIW, Mozilla isn't innocent either. Despite being very much _less scummy_ they have still upped their scum factor a bit over the years. Let's not forget they are quite happy to trade millions of dollars to make Google the homepage for their users. While nowhere near as egregious they have some tracking happening ("experiments"), they aggressively push their Firefox Accounts stuff, appear to be selling spots on the homepage tabs, etc.

slver 6y ago
> Also, FWIW, Mozilla isn't innocent either. Despite being very much _less scummy_ they have still upped their scum factor a bit over the years. Let's not forget they are quite happy to trade millions of dollars to make Google the homepage for their users. "Innocent Mozilla" wouldn't exist today, first because apparently there's always something to complain about, and second because those people also feed families and pay bills. First thing every web user does, pro or amateur, is configure their browser to access Google easily. One way or another, Firefox will serve Google first, except for a loud minority of people who would use Duck Duck Go or something like that. So why would Mozilla walk away from millions of dollars? Only to see itself bankrupt and Chrome take its already dwindling marketshare?
- rapnie 6y ago
  > So why would Mozilla walk away from millions of dollars? Only to see itself bankrupt and Chrome take its already dwindling marketshare? These millions sure are a juicy carrot. Question is, were there other revenue model options, before taking on such a huge conflict of interest? One that effectively compromises you and assures you can never take a real principled stance against your competition.
  - slver 6y ago
    > One that effectively compromises you and assures you can never take a real principled stance against your competition. I don't understand this attitude. Is there any better search engine than Google today? No. If Firefox hardcoded Bing to the homepage, or some other such "principled stance", people would completely stop using them. Principled stances work great for TV pundits and politicians, and in both cases because they don't care if they lie to you. In the real world we deal with nuance and practical situations. Mozilla doesn't have to HATE or DESPISE or BAN Google, or whatever other verb implies strong enough principled stance. They can recognize them as the lead search engine, and do their part when they're in position to. It seems in the public debate we want to reduce every situation to a pro-wrestling match.
    - Ygg2 6y ago
      > Is there any better search engine than Google today? From time to time, Bing and DDG are better at searching web than Google. Not always, but the number of times I started reaching for an alternative search engine has increased.
      - mk81 6y ago
        For anything political (which is almost everything non-technical now, sadly) Google is a non-starter now because of how much they suppress or otherwise manipulate results.
        slver 6y ago
        Depends what you consider "political".
- ddtaylor 6y ago
  > "Innocent Mozilla" wouldn't exist today, first because apparently there's always something to complain about, and second because those people also feed families and pay bills. Do you think companies have to be unethical to feed their families or pay bills?
  - slver 6y ago
    I think we need to tone down our understanding of "unethical" to something reasonable. There's nothing unethical about Firefox having a Google homepage. If you start digging too deep, it's unethical we get up from bed in the morning at all. The problem is it's become a cultural phenomenon to hate big corporations, as a way to offset our guilt for using their products and services. Ask anyone and they'll tell you how much they hate unethical Big Oil and they may even tell you so while using oil-produced electrical power or driving a gas-powered car. If enough people really cared, they'd change their homepage from Google to something else. They don't. Ergo I guess we're all unethical. Or maybe we need to stop lying to ourselves and realize the world is shades of gray, not black and white.
LightG 6y ago
"Apple has decided to make Internet Explorer its default browser on the Macintosh (booing, clearly audible “Nos”). Since we believe in choice (laughter), since we believe in choice we’re going to be shipping other Internet browsers as well on the Macintosh and the user can of course change their default should they choose to (cheering), but uh, we believe that Internet Explorer is a really good browser (jeering) and we think it’s going to make a fine default browser" - Steve Jobs, obvs Since we believe in choice ... the Google homepage "scum accusation" is a little harsh. I'm very happy Mozilla / FF are still in the game.
pjmlp 6y ago
It already happened with native mobile apps. Thanks to desire to kill Flash, and the broken support for hardware accelerated canvas and WebGL, given that as game studio you have zero control over hardware support on customer's browser, the flourishing Flash indie scene has moved into Unreal, Unity and Godot targeting native instead. Even if WebGPU and WebAssembly ever fix what happened during the last decade, they are years away to actually replicate the capabilities Flash offered to gamedevs in 2011.
ornornor 6y ago
Isn’t the newer edge based on chrome’s rendering engine anyway? What’s stopping google from doing what they did with Android: remove more and more and more of the parts included with open source Android and move them into closed source Android to the point where vanilla open source Android has much lower utility?
- krageon 6y ago
  The answer is nothing, but then again there's very little stopping your neighbour physically from murdering you in your sleep too. Perhaps this is not something to worry about, or perhaps it is! The way to figure out whether or not that is the case is to reason a little deeper than "well it's possible", which is true for far too many things to be useful.
- ddtaylor 6y ago
  > What’s stopping google from doing what they did with Android: remove more and more and more of the parts included with open source Android and move them into closed source Android to the point where vanilla open source Android has much lower utility? This is somewhat explored territory. KHTML, Webkit, Blink etc. have resulted in a lot of the "important bits" being in WebkitCore.
- reader_mode 6y ago
  >What’s stopping google from doing what they did with Android: remove more and more and more of the parts included with open source Android and move them into closed source Android to the point where vanilla open source Android has much lower utility? Microsoft has more than enough resources and engineers to continue to support or even fork Blink even if Google went full closed source (just like Google did back in the day with webkit). I wouldn't trust Microsoft to be better than Google on privacy TBH. In fact I feel that given the opportunity Microsoft has prooven time and time again they would be worse, but they aren't as successfull with Bing so they don't have the opportunity.
  - tinus_hn 6y ago
    Google can’t go closed source with WebKit because it is LGPL software not originally written by Google. WebKit came from the KDE project via Apple to Google.
bjt2n3904 6y ago
> Also, FWIW, Mozilla isn't innocent either. Mozilla, you're like... 50/50 on this. You do awesome things like per-site containers and default off for 3rd party cookies, and then you do weird things like the Mr. Robot alternate reality game. Like... it kills me, because I'm pretty sure you were just trying to be fun and delight your users. And I hate that the web is at the point where nobody trusts anyone. (JoCo? If you're reading this, "Solid State" was ahead of it's time. My favorite album.) But we need you, HARD.
- Tempest1981 6y ago
  False equivalence
boobsbr 6y ago
I didn't flip because of features, everything was working just fine for me. I flipped beacuse Chrome, at the time, was incredibly faster and snappier than Firefox. And it remained like that for a long time. I bet a ton of users switched for the same reason.
- dman 6y ago
  Having much better autocomplete in the URL bar is what caused me to switch.
  - sanxiyn 6y ago
    Fascinating! For me, Firefox does much better autocompletion in the URL bar than Chrome, and that kept me from switching.
- jasonvorhe 6y ago
  Exactly this. Chrome was fast, Firefox wasn't. It still isn't: https://arewefastyet.com/mac/benchmarks/overview?numDays=60 https://arewefastyet.com/mac/benchmarks/overview?numDays=60 I'm glad there are alternatives to Chrome though.
  - Ygg2 6y ago
    Wait don't the graph show that Firefox is mostly faster. Lower on the graph means better.
  - varispeed 6y ago
    On my Linux laptop I am running Chromium. Do you know if it is going to have this feature or is it just in Chrome. I think websites on Chromium look better than on Firefox and that's important for me. But if that feature is going to be in Chromium too, maybe I'll look how to remove that feature, but I'll have to learn how to compile the whole thing. I tried couple of times but always got stuck somewhere.
    - hmry 6y ago

slver 6y ago

> Also, FWIW, Mozilla isn't innocent either. Despite being very much _less scummy_ they have still upped their scum factor a bit over the years. Let's not forget they are quite happy to trade millions of dollars to make Google the homepage for their users. "Innocent Mozilla" wouldn't exist today, first because apparently there's always something to complain about, and second because those people also feed families and pay bills. First thing every web user does, pro or amateur, is configure their browser to access Google easily. One way or another, Firefox will serve Google first, except for a loud minority of people who would use Duck Duck Go or something like that. So why would Mozilla walk away from millions of dollars? Only to see itself bankrupt and Chrome take its already dwindling marketshare?

rapnie 6y ago
> So why would Mozilla walk away from millions of dollars? Only to see itself bankrupt and Chrome take its already dwindling marketshare? These millions sure are a juicy carrot. Question is, were there other revenue model options, before taking on such a huge conflict of interest? One that effectively compromises you and assures you can never take a real principled stance against your competition.
- slver 6y ago
  > One that effectively compromises you and assures you can never take a real principled stance against your competition. I don't understand this attitude. Is there any better search engine than Google today? No. If Firefox hardcoded Bing to the homepage, or some other such "principled stance", people would completely stop using them. Principled stances work great for TV pundits and politicians, and in both cases because they don't care if they lie to you. In the real world we deal with nuance and practical situations. Mozilla doesn't have to HATE or DESPISE or BAN Google, or whatever other verb implies strong enough principled stance. They can recognize them as the lead search engine, and do their part when they're in position to. It seems in the public debate we want to reduce every situation to a pro-wrestling match.
  - Ygg2 6y ago
    > Is there any better search engine than Google today? From time to time, Bing and DDG are better at searching web than Google. Not always, but the number of times I started reaching for an alternative search engine has increased.
    - mk81 6y ago
      For anything political (which is almost everything non-technical now, sadly) Google is a non-starter now because of how much they suppress or otherwise manipulate results.
      - slver 6y ago
        Depends what you consider "political".
ddtaylor 6y ago
> "Innocent Mozilla" wouldn't exist today, first because apparently there's always something to complain about, and second because those people also feed families and pay bills. Do you think companies have to be unethical to feed their families or pay bills?
- slver 6y ago
  I think we need to tone down our understanding of "unethical" to something reasonable. There's nothing unethical about Firefox having a Google homepage. If you start digging too deep, it's unethical we get up from bed in the morning at all. The problem is it's become a cultural phenomenon to hate big corporations, as a way to offset our guilt for using their products and services. Ask anyone and they'll tell you how much they hate unethical Big Oil and they may even tell you so while using oil-produced electrical power or driving a gas-powered car. If enough people really cared, they'd change their homepage from Google to something else. They don't. Ergo I guess we're all unethical. Or maybe we need to stop lying to ourselves and realize the world is shades of gray, not black and white.

LightG 6y ago

"Apple has decided to make Internet Explorer its default browser on the Macintosh (booing, clearly audible “Nos”). Since we believe in choice (laughter), since we believe in choice we’re going to be shipping other Internet browsers as well on the Macintosh and the user can of course change their default should they choose to (cheering), but uh, we believe that Internet Explorer is a really good browser (jeering) and we think it’s going to make a fine default browser" - Steve Jobs, obvs Since we believe in choice ... the Google homepage "scum accusation" is a little harsh. I'm very happy Mozilla / FF are still in the game.

pjmlp 6y ago

It already happened with native mobile apps. Thanks to desire to kill Flash, and the broken support for hardware accelerated canvas and WebGL, given that as game studio you have zero control over hardware support on customer's browser, the flourishing Flash indie scene has moved into Unreal, Unity and Godot targeting native instead. Even if WebGPU and WebAssembly ever fix what happened during the last decade, they are years away to actually replicate the capabilities Flash offered to gamedevs in 2011.

ornornor 6y ago

Isn’t the newer edge based on chrome’s rendering engine anyway? What’s stopping google from doing what they did with Android: remove more and more and more of the parts included with open source Android and move them into closed source Android to the point where vanilla open source Android has much lower utility?

krageon 6y ago
The answer is nothing, but then again there's very little stopping your neighbour physically from murdering you in your sleep too. Perhaps this is not something to worry about, or perhaps it is! The way to figure out whether or not that is the case is to reason a little deeper than "well it's possible", which is true for far too many things to be useful.
ddtaylor 6y ago
> What’s stopping google from doing what they did with Android: remove more and more and more of the parts included with open source Android and move them into closed source Android to the point where vanilla open source Android has much lower utility? This is somewhat explored territory. KHTML, Webkit, Blink etc. have resulted in a lot of the "important bits" being in WebkitCore.
reader_mode 6y ago
>What’s stopping google from doing what they did with Android: remove more and more and more of the parts included with open source Android and move them into closed source Android to the point where vanilla open source Android has much lower utility? Microsoft has more than enough resources and engineers to continue to support or even fork Blink even if Google went full closed source (just like Google did back in the day with webkit). I wouldn't trust Microsoft to be better than Google on privacy TBH. In fact I feel that given the opportunity Microsoft has prooven time and time again they would be worse, but they aren't as successfull with Bing so they don't have the opportunity.
- tinus_hn 6y ago
  Google can’t go closed source with WebKit because it is LGPL software not originally written by Google. WebKit came from the KDE project via Apple to Google.

bjt2n3904 6y ago

> Also, FWIW, Mozilla isn't innocent either. Mozilla, you're like... 50/50 on this. You do awesome things like per-site containers and default off for 3rd party cookies, and then you do weird things like the Mr. Robot alternate reality game. Like... it kills me, because I'm pretty sure you were just trying to be fun and delight your users. And I hate that the web is at the point where nobody trusts anyone. (JoCo? If you're reading this, "Solid State" was ahead of it's time. My favorite album.) But we need you, HARD.

Tempest1981 6y ago
False equivalence

boobsbr 6y ago

I didn't flip because of features, everything was working just fine for me. I flipped beacuse Chrome, at the time, was incredibly faster and snappier than Firefox. And it remained like that for a long time. I bet a ton of users switched for the same reason.

dman 6y ago
Having much better autocomplete in the URL bar is what caused me to switch.
- sanxiyn 6y ago
  Fascinating! For me, Firefox does much better autocompletion in the URL bar than Chrome, and that kept me from switching.
jasonvorhe 6y ago
Exactly this. Chrome was fast, Firefox wasn't. It still isn't: https://arewefastyet.com/mac/benchmarks/overview?numDays=60 https://arewefastyet.com/mac/benchmarks/overview?numDays=60 I'm glad there are alternatives to Chrome though.
- Ygg2 6y ago
  Wait don't the graph show that Firefox is mostly faster. Lower on the graph means better.
- varispeed 6y ago
  On my Linux laptop I am running Chromium. Do you know if it is going to have this feature or is it just in Chrome. I think websites on Chromium look better than on Firefox and that's important for me. But if that feature is going to be in Chromium too, maybe I'll look how to remove that feature, but I'll have to learn how to compile the whole thing. I tried couple of times but always got stuck somewhere.
  - hmry 6y ago