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Why Did Google Abandon Firefox?
- Fuca 18y agoAdblock
- maxwell 18y agoThe technology is secondary. Firefox, Safari, and Opera are horrible brands that non-technical people hate. For many people IE == internet, and the only brand in the world that can compete is Google. They "abandoned" Firefox so that our parents will abandon IE.
- neilc 18y agoFirefox, Safari, and Opera are horrible brands that non-technical people hate. Um, really? Most of my friends who use Firefox quite like it. Those who use Macs use Safari, for the most part. Basically no one has heard of Opera. But I don't know of a single non-technical user who "hates" any of those brands. For many people IE == internet I think you give far too little credit to most Internet users. Even among older users, the vast majority are aware of the difference between a client application and a website.
- maxwell 18y agoI think you give far too little credit to most Internet users. Even among older users, the vast majority are aware of the difference between a client application and a website. That was equality, not identity! It's a terminology thing. Yes, they know the difference between the internet and their browser certainly, but I know people who more or less refer to IE as "the internet." It's part of the name, after all. I think they generally call the net itself either "the web" or "online." Obviously I'm pulling from a small data set, but nonetheless, IE does give the impression on the outside that it's the authoritative browser, much as Google's homepage does for search.
- mechanical_fish 18y agoSometimes reading the tech business press is like listening to fish talk about bicycling. Here we have an entire article discussing Google's strategic motivation for selecting one open-source project over another for a given task. And there's not a single mention of the possibility that the Google engineers sat down to design a stripped-down Browser of the Future, took a good look at the Firefox source, took a good look at the Webkit source, took a look at each other, and said "Webkit". In Pundit World the amount of work required to turn one buzzword into another buzzword is always O(1).
- rsheridan6 18y ago>And there's not a single mention of the possibility that the Google engineers sat down to design a stripped-down Browser of the Future, took a good look at the Firefox source, took a good look at the Webkit source, took a look at each other, and said "Webkit". Isn't that the same thing the Safari team did, back when Webkit's granddaddy was called KHTML?
- unalone 18y agoYep! Was there a lot of discussion back when THAT announcement was made?
- iamdave 18y agoI agree with you 100%. I found myself asking after reading this article "isn't it possible for these two entities to collaborate and work with each other?" I don't think I've read anywhere on the Internet about Google trying to beat anyone. They made a browser, and instantly they're distancing themselves from Mozilla?
- sutro 18y agoWhile Webkit probably is superior to Gecko, I don't think HTML rendering drove this strategic decision. I'm sure a host of factors went into the decision, but I believe that chief among them were two humble Firefox addons: Adblock Plus and CustomizeGoogle.
- 18y ago
- stcredzero 18y agoNo abandonment here. If the Google Gears, fast Javascript, super secure browser of the future is Firefox and IE8 is dragged halfway along to that, then Google will have won!
- known 18y agoWell everyone wants to rule the world.