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Really interested to see the mental gymnastics it takes to argue that implementing new features for the Web Platform--in open, freely-available standards that a

Really interested to see the mental gymnastics it takes to argue that implementing new features for the Web Platform--in open, freely-available standards that are negotiated with all the major stakeholders, including Mozilla, who is allowed to implement them whenever they feel like stopping chasing after shiny baubles and get back to developing Web browsers--is "abusing [Google's] near-monoply", versus Apple not implementing standards to push developers off the Web and into the App Store. But sure, yeah, let's keep the Web Platform at early 2000s standards. Let's make everyone download apps from a small set of walled garden app stores. Let's force developers to submit to those app store review processes and potentially have their content blocked for whatever opaque whims the store has today (ever changing, with little chance for appeal!). And then they can just snoop on their users through the local, natively installed app, that has all the permissions granted under the sun because users don't read installation prompts. That's so much better for privacy.

wisniewskit 5y ago
As someone working at Mozilla on web compatibility, I'm tired of people excusing Google like this. I personally spend most of my time figuring out the Chrome-specific quirks that pages rely on which are non-standard, and the Chrome devs almost never fix before conjuring up some new, ill-defined "standard" that they ship to production before others have even had a chance to figure out the last three. It's maddening, especially when you look at Google's not-so-sterling track record just with major new "standards" like Web Components, WebRTC and Pointer/Touch events, not to mention how often they ignore Chrome's spec bugs until the web is reliant on them, and other vendors have to change their behavior and the spec to match them. Folks always seem to ignore all of the trouble Google causes, and just think "ooh, shiny new toy! Google good!" Just imagine trying to implement all of those "standards" while Google is constantly changing them, under-documenting everything, have no reference implementation aside from the one they ship that's deeply tied to Chrome, and expect you to work on their time frame. All while not fixing bugs in the last two new APIs they pushed out, while pushing out two more at the same time. You wonder if they're doing it on purpose so no matter what the "standards" say, they just wait for the web to become reliant on their bugs, and then everyone else has to figure the whole mess out for them, like glorified janitors. And then you look at the backlog of things you'd like to have fixed instead of figuring out the latest interop issue with some quirk that has a crbug open for three years, and the new privacy APIs and features you'd like to push and you start to feel a bit burned out. So you hop onto HN only to see yet another comment like yours, acting like we're doing nothing at all except "chasing shiny baubles". It's enough to make me wonder whether people like you actually care about the web at all or just want more half-broken new APIs to complain about.
- dblohm7 5y ago
  Thanks for writing this. 100%
- moron4hire 5y ago
  Ah, yes, well-known defect-free Firefox is being held back by Chrome's bugs. It has nothing to do with the fact that, anytime Mozilla claims it's getting serious, its answer is to make widely and wildly unpopular UI changes. This is the same, dead-end, low-energy excuse that Mozilla has been using since Chrome released. How did Firefox ever claw 30% of the market from Internet Explorer in the first place if it's true that "the incubment's bugs and half-baked featuers hold us back"? If that's the narrative you're telling yourself, it's no wonder Firefox steadily lost 85% of its marketshare over the last 13 years. I don't hate Firefox. I don't want browser hegemony. But if Firefox is our last, best hope against a Chromium hegemony, then we're doomed. It's been a decade since Chrome surpassed Firefox in marketshare. Not once, in 10 years, has Mozilla expressed any sort of believable plan to turn the ship around. Mozilla is failing Firefox.
  - wisniewskit 5y ago
    Ok, so the answer is clearly that you don't care. For ten years now we've been watching non-Chromium browser engines die off while complaining about this, with no new one able to really compete because of the gigantic web API footprint Chrome has championed. But yeah, go on telling me how some UI changes in Firefox are responsible for all that is wrong with Firefox. I'm sure all of the users still who still can't use Chrome-WebRTC apps in Firefox care about that more.
    - moron4hire 5y ago
      It's not my job to care about Firefox. My job is to deploy applications to my users. You make a better browser than Chrome, I can do that on Firefox. I mean, I already do support Firefox, but maybe I'd stop cursing your name when I have to do stuff like compromise on user experience because I can't offload large chunks of image processing onto a web worker because you still don't support 2D graphics contexts off the UI thread. It's YOUR job to care about Firefox. And as far as I can tell, not enough people at Mozilla care enough about Firefox to make up for going from #2 browser in the world to numbers comparable to (checks notes) Samsung Internet. You complain about having to follow Google's lead. You aren't just following Google anymore. Y'all have to follow everyone. And don't even talk to me about WebRTC. You folks have had 10 YEARS to get an act--any act--together around WebRTC. Firefox's WebRTC performance has been notoriously bad for that entire time. So, wait, let me get this straight. You complain about having to bend over backwards to appease Google's way of doing things. But now you're complaining about a case where Mozilla steadfastly refused to bend over backwards for Google for a decade? Over the format of the SDP lines. Because that's a hill worth dying on. Get out of here.

wisniewskit 5y ago

As someone working at Mozilla on web compatibility, I'm tired of people excusing Google like this. I personally spend most of my time figuring out the Chrome-specific quirks that pages rely on which are non-standard, and the Chrome devs almost never fix before conjuring up some new, ill-defined "standard" that they ship to production before others have even had a chance to figure out the last three. It's maddening, especially when you look at Google's not-so-sterling track record just with major new "standards" like Web Components, WebRTC and Pointer/Touch events, not to mention how often they ignore Chrome's spec bugs until the web is reliant on them, and other vendors have to change their behavior and the spec to match them. Folks always seem to ignore all of the trouble Google causes, and just think "ooh, shiny new toy! Google good!" Just imagine trying to implement all of those "standards" while Google is constantly changing them, under-documenting everything, have no reference implementation aside from the one they ship that's deeply tied to Chrome, and expect you to work on their time frame. All while not fixing bugs in the last two new APIs they pushed out, while pushing out two more at the same time. You wonder if they're doing it on purpose so no matter what the "standards" say, they just wait for the web to become reliant on their bugs, and then everyone else has to figure the whole mess out for them, like glorified janitors. And then you look at the backlog of things you'd like to have fixed instead of figuring out the latest interop issue with some quirk that has a crbug open for three years, and the new privacy APIs and features you'd like to push and you start to feel a bit burned out. So you hop onto HN only to see yet another comment like yours, acting like we're doing nothing at all except "chasing shiny baubles". It's enough to make me wonder whether people like you actually care about the web at all or just want more half-broken new APIs to complain about.

dblohm7 5y ago
Thanks for writing this. 100%
moron4hire 5y ago
Ah, yes, well-known defect-free Firefox is being held back by Chrome's bugs. It has nothing to do with the fact that, anytime Mozilla claims it's getting serious, its answer is to make widely and wildly unpopular UI changes. This is the same, dead-end, low-energy excuse that Mozilla has been using since Chrome released. How did Firefox ever claw 30% of the market from Internet Explorer in the first place if it's true that "the incubment's bugs and half-baked featuers hold us back"? If that's the narrative you're telling yourself, it's no wonder Firefox steadily lost 85% of its marketshare over the last 13 years. I don't hate Firefox. I don't want browser hegemony. But if Firefox is our last, best hope against a Chromium hegemony, then we're doomed. It's been a decade since Chrome surpassed Firefox in marketshare. Not once, in 10 years, has Mozilla expressed any sort of believable plan to turn the ship around. Mozilla is failing Firefox.
- wisniewskit 5y ago
  Ok, so the answer is clearly that you don't care. For ten years now we've been watching non-Chromium browser engines die off while complaining about this, with no new one able to really compete because of the gigantic web API footprint Chrome has championed. But yeah, go on telling me how some UI changes in Firefox are responsible for all that is wrong with Firefox. I'm sure all of the users still who still can't use Chrome-WebRTC apps in Firefox care about that more.
  - moron4hire 5y ago
    It's not my job to care about Firefox. My job is to deploy applications to my users. You make a better browser than Chrome, I can do that on Firefox. I mean, I already do support Firefox, but maybe I'd stop cursing your name when I have to do stuff like compromise on user experience because I can't offload large chunks of image processing onto a web worker because you still don't support 2D graphics contexts off the UI thread. It's YOUR job to care about Firefox. And as far as I can tell, not enough people at Mozilla care enough about Firefox to make up for going from #2 browser in the world to numbers comparable to (checks notes) Samsung Internet. You complain about having to follow Google's lead. You aren't just following Google anymore. Y'all have to follow everyone. And don't even talk to me about WebRTC. You folks have had 10 YEARS to get an act--any act--together around WebRTC. Firefox's WebRTC performance has been notoriously bad for that entire time. So, wait, let me get this straight. You complain about having to bend over backwards to appease Google's way of doing things. But now you're complaining about a case where Mozilla steadfastly refused to bend over backwards for Google for a decade? Over the format of the SDP lines. Because that's a hill worth dying on. Get out of here.