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> The majority of browsers that were commercially closed software didn’t make it Keep in mind that the last time this was tried, free/open-source alternatives

> The majority of browsers that were commercially closed software didn’t make it Keep in mind that the last time this was tried, free/open-source alternatives were on-par if not better and the web was much less hostile. Nowadays, not only is the web teeming with hostility that can best be addressed by a browser, but the closest free/open-source solution (Firefox) is half-baked and doesn't actually solve many of these issues nor is it incentivized to due to murky funding (most of it comes from Google, a big advertising provider) and a dysfunctional company. A browser whose funding comes directly from its users wouldn't have these misaligned incentives and wouldn't be afraid of doing bold moves that piss off adtech. The Enterprise™ spends a lot of money on (often dubious) security products and given that the browser is often on the front-line for various threats, a browser with built-in security features (both against malware and other features such as DLP, blocking/filtering/monitoring without middleboxes) with a paid enterprise plan subsidizing a free version for personal use could become a sustainable business.

ushakov 4y ago
how is Firefox half-baked? i'm using it every day along with Safari and don't see any significant differences
- sosull 4y ago
  +1, it’s a great piece of software.
- zamadatix 4y ago
  With something as wide scoped as a browser this inevitably comes down to "well the 200 things I think are relevant do/don't work the same in favor of a/b" out of tens of thousands, if not more, of things implemented. For me Firefox is about as good as any. Upsides here, downsides there, and nothing truly outstanding overall. It seems severely far behind in modern color (e.g. HDR videos or all of the wide gamut CSS specifications coming out), ahead in terms of single profile compartmentalization (containers), but behind in profile management (the profile manager sucks if you even know how to get to it). For as much as it champions being the last bastion of the free web it comes default with a decent amount of crapware (pocket, vpn) and has lost its way in terms of power user flexibility (UI customization, mobile extension limits, removal of power user flags). That said it's still better than the alternatives in those spaces, just not as good as it used to be. For another none of these might matter but a lot of other reasons I don't even think about might. In the end even Firefox's own usage statistic point to the vast majority seeming to agree it doesn't have anything compelling enough to be worth switching to/evangelizing for anymore though.
  - shkkmo 4y ago
    Firefox on desktop is pertty solid, despite some controversial decisions. Firedox on android has a lot of issues.
    - iamcurious 4y ago
      Which ones? On principle, I never use chrome on android. Am I missing some killer feature?
      - shkkmo 4y ago
        Constant crashes that lose open tabs, layout glitches where display gets offset from ui trigger points (including on this site), downloads that just fail / don't work. You'd think that this would have me stop using it, but I really don't want to use Chrome/Brave/DDG so have just been putting up with it.
        dicknuckle 4y ago
        why not Kiwi Browser? uses chromium under the hood. allows chrome extensions to be installed, but most don't work.
        zamadatix 4y ago
        Like most small-backing Chromium clones it's usually ~2 months behind on patches (normal and security) and the published source is about ~10 months behind. Being effectively closed for the release version and very small from a development side it does wonky things like redirect your "Google" searches through their servers since they don't have proper search agreements. I.e. it's basically "an interesting Chromium clone maintained by a couple of folks out of Estonia". If you're cool with that it can be a nifty browser, for many that just makes it to unproven to dump access to their entire online world into.
        TingPing 4y ago
        Anecdotally I've never experienced a single one of those bugs in Firefox on Android as a heavy user.
Taywee 4y ago
Which issues do Firefox fail to solve?
- tux3 4y ago
  I frequently cannot log in to my bank with Firefox. The problem is that my bank's website was made by a bank, but as a Firefox user this impacts me in my daily life.
  - skinnymuch 4y ago
    How would this be solved by an up and coming browser that isn’t based off Blink/Chromium and why can’t Firefox do the solution?
    - Nextgrid 4y ago
      Firefox's problem is the company behind it, not the rendering engine. Firefox is actually a pretty fine browser if you pair it with uBlock Origin and neuter its wide range of user-hostile "features" and keep maintaining that as updates often introduce new "features" you'll need to disable.
      - djbusby 4y ago
        What's your top three user hostile feature? Have you looked at LibreFox? Edit: I see there is a LibreWolf and a LibreFox
        Nextgrid 4y ago
        See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31551947 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31551947.
    - Barrin92 4y ago
      at least according to this article from last year Arc is chromium based. https://www.protocol.com/browser-company https://www.protocol.com/browser-company
brundolf 4y ago
> The Enterprise™ spends a lot of money on (often dubious) security products > a browser with built-in security features (both against malware and other features such as DLP, blocking/filtering/monitoring without middleboxes) It'll be hard to outdo Google at security research and hardening
- Retric 4y ago
  Last month Google announced 30 new security including critical vulnerabilities in chrome. They might be doing a great job at hardening, but they don’t have a great reputation.
  - meibo 4y ago
    What is that supposed to say about reputation? It's the most popular browser by far, and they actually do have a very publicized team that reports bugs to not just Chrome, but Apple and Mozilla as well. In my circles this is well respected, and personally, it inspires more confidence in the infrastructure around Chrome to me. I'd be wary of any "new" browser engines in unsafe languages.
    - Retric 4y ago
      > What is that supposed to say about reputation? Just that people don’t consider chrome extremely secure, it may be acceptable 99% of the time, but it doesn’t get a free pass in extreme security environments.
      - pvg 4y ago
        What is the 'extreme security environment' you have in mind? Very little end-user software operates in an environment and with operational parameters as adversarial as a modern web browser's.
  - imajoredinecon 4y ago
    Do you mean “30 security vulnerabilities, 1 of which was critical”? Because that seems to be the reality: https://chromereleases.googleblog.com/2022/05/stable-channel-update-for-desktop_24.html?m=1 https://chromereleases.googleblog.com/2022/05/stable-channel...
irrational 4y ago
Firefox is half baked? What does that mean? I’ve used Firefox as my primary browser for many years, including for my full time job as a web developer, and have never had any issues. The only time I ever use Chrome is when I need to put in my PTO at work since their time-off web app doesn’t work with Firefox.
1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago
"Half-baked" means Firefox adopts slogans like "protecting the open web" and it purports to represent the interests of web users, however its true goals are to generally to match Chrome feature-for-feature and preserve the status quo on the web which is that it provides an optimal medium for advertising. It gets over 90% of its financial support from Google, not web users. From the comments some people's idea of a fully baked Firefox is a browser that generally works exactly like Chrome and Safari on the surface but is somehow better, e.g., because it does not overtly sell advertising services. An enormously complex program with a gazillion knobs and dials that no average web user would ever touch. Sending all search queries of these users to Google by default. Perfect. Another idea of a fully-baked "Firefox" is one that has options to allow mere mortals to compile it from source on modest hardware in a reasonable amount of time. There could be multiple versions of Firefox, that could all be built from the same source tree, each a different compile time option, or a set of compile-time options. Some of these might exclude support for features that make the web optimal for advertising or commerce, i.e., essential features of Chrome or other "modern" web browsers. Scaled-down versions might be optimised for different experiences. Not all them driven by Javascript. For example, fast consumption of noncommercial content with minimal surveillance, and no advertising. Essentially "Reader Mode" as the default. What is the point of having Firefox be open source if almost no one can download the source and start creating new and different web clients with it. Instead it is a project that only tries to keep pace with Chrome, getting larger and larger, more and more complex. It appears to have no other purpose. Tunnel vision. Follow the leader. Make no mistake, I am not suggesting there should be no Firefox version that does almost everything that Chrome does, as there is now. Mozilla has supported use of the web for advertising and commerce. They have supported Yahoo, Inc. and Google, LLC. That's wonderful. Great job. What I am suggesting is that Firefox should also have smaller, simpler versions that deliberately do not do all the things that Chrome does. Mozilla should also work to support noncommercial web use. Compile-time options to remove Javascript, telemetry and a host of other things some users may prefer to do without. Give people choice.
- NetOpWibby 4y ago
  An Electron-like framework using Servo would be great! I opened an issue on that repo and Mozilla said no. Then they fired a bunch of people so…welp.

ushakov 4y ago

how is Firefox half-baked? i'm using it every day along with Safari and don't see any significant differences

sosull 4y ago
+1, it’s a great piece of software.
zamadatix 4y ago
With something as wide scoped as a browser this inevitably comes down to "well the 200 things I think are relevant do/don't work the same in favor of a/b" out of tens of thousands, if not more, of things implemented. For me Firefox is about as good as any. Upsides here, downsides there, and nothing truly outstanding overall. It seems severely far behind in modern color (e.g. HDR videos or all of the wide gamut CSS specifications coming out), ahead in terms of single profile compartmentalization (containers), but behind in profile management (the profile manager sucks if you even know how to get to it). For as much as it champions being the last bastion of the free web it comes default with a decent amount of crapware (pocket, vpn) and has lost its way in terms of power user flexibility (UI customization, mobile extension limits, removal of power user flags). That said it's still better than the alternatives in those spaces, just not as good as it used to be. For another none of these might matter but a lot of other reasons I don't even think about might. In the end even Firefox's own usage statistic point to the vast majority seeming to agree it doesn't have anything compelling enough to be worth switching to/evangelizing for anymore though.
- shkkmo 4y ago
  Firefox on desktop is pertty solid, despite some controversial decisions. Firedox on android has a lot of issues.
  - iamcurious 4y ago
    Which ones? On principle, I never use chrome on android. Am I missing some killer feature?
    - shkkmo 4y ago
      Constant crashes that lose open tabs, layout glitches where display gets offset from ui trigger points (including on this site), downloads that just fail / don't work. You'd think that this would have me stop using it, but I really don't want to use Chrome/Brave/DDG so have just been putting up with it.
      - dicknuckle 4y ago
        why not Kiwi Browser? uses chromium under the hood. allows chrome extensions to be installed, but most don't work.
        zamadatix 4y ago
        Like most small-backing Chromium clones it's usually ~2 months behind on patches (normal and security) and the published source is about ~10 months behind. Being effectively closed for the release version and very small from a development side it does wonky things like redirect your "Google" searches through their servers since they don't have proper search agreements. I.e. it's basically "an interesting Chromium clone maintained by a couple of folks out of Estonia". If you're cool with that it can be a nifty browser, for many that just makes it to unproven to dump access to their entire online world into.
      - TingPing 4y ago
        Anecdotally I've never experienced a single one of those bugs in Firefox on Android as a heavy user.

Taywee 4y ago

Which issues do Firefox fail to solve?

tux3 4y ago
I frequently cannot log in to my bank with Firefox. The problem is that my bank's website was made by a bank, but as a Firefox user this impacts me in my daily life.
- skinnymuch 4y ago
  How would this be solved by an up and coming browser that isn’t based off Blink/Chromium and why can’t Firefox do the solution?
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    Firefox's problem is the company behind it, not the rendering engine. Firefox is actually a pretty fine browser if you pair it with uBlock Origin and neuter its wide range of user-hostile "features" and keep maintaining that as updates often introduce new "features" you'll need to disable.
    - djbusby 4y ago
      What's your top three user hostile feature? Have you looked at LibreFox? Edit: I see there is a LibreWolf and a LibreFox
      - Nextgrid 4y ago
        See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31551947 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31551947.
  - Barrin92 4y ago
    at least according to this article from last year Arc is chromium based. https://www.protocol.com/browser-company https://www.protocol.com/browser-company

brundolf 4y ago

> The Enterprise™ spends a lot of money on (often dubious) security products > a browser with built-in security features (both against malware and other features such as DLP, blocking/filtering/monitoring without middleboxes) It'll be hard to outdo Google at security research and hardening

Retric 4y ago
Last month Google announced 30 new security including critical vulnerabilities in chrome. They might be doing a great job at hardening, but they don’t have a great reputation.
- meibo 4y ago
  What is that supposed to say about reputation? It's the most popular browser by far, and they actually do have a very publicized team that reports bugs to not just Chrome, but Apple and Mozilla as well. In my circles this is well respected, and personally, it inspires more confidence in the infrastructure around Chrome to me. I'd be wary of any "new" browser engines in unsafe languages.
  - Retric 4y ago
    > What is that supposed to say about reputation? Just that people don’t consider chrome extremely secure, it may be acceptable 99% of the time, but it doesn’t get a free pass in extreme security environments.
    - pvg 4y ago
      What is the 'extreme security environment' you have in mind? Very little end-user software operates in an environment and with operational parameters as adversarial as a modern web browser's.
- imajoredinecon 4y ago
  Do you mean “30 security vulnerabilities, 1 of which was critical”? Because that seems to be the reality: https://chromereleases.googleblog.com/2022/05/stable-channel-update-for-desktop_24.html?m=1 https://chromereleases.googleblog.com/2022/05/stable-channel...

irrational 4y ago

Firefox is half baked? What does that mean? I’ve used Firefox as my primary browser for many years, including for my full time job as a web developer, and have never had any issues. The only time I ever use Chrome is when I need to put in my PTO at work since their time-off web app doesn’t work with Firefox.

1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago

"Half-baked" means Firefox adopts slogans like "protecting the open web" and it purports to represent the interests of web users, however its true goals are to generally to match Chrome feature-for-feature and preserve the status quo on the web which is that it provides an optimal medium for advertising. It gets over 90% of its financial support from Google, not web users. From the comments some people's idea of a fully baked Firefox is a browser that generally works exactly like Chrome and Safari on the surface but is somehow better, e.g., because it does not overtly sell advertising services. An enormously complex program with a gazillion knobs and dials that no average web user would ever touch. Sending all search queries of these users to Google by default. Perfect. Another idea of a fully-baked "Firefox" is one that has options to allow mere mortals to compile it from source on modest hardware in a reasonable amount of time. There could be multiple versions of Firefox, that could all be built from the same source tree, each a different compile time option, or a set of compile-time options. Some of these might exclude support for features that make the web optimal for advertising or commerce, i.e., essential features of Chrome or other "modern" web browsers. Scaled-down versions might be optimised for different experiences. Not all them driven by Javascript. For example, fast consumption of noncommercial content with minimal surveillance, and no advertising. Essentially "Reader Mode" as the default. What is the point of having Firefox be open source if almost no one can download the source and start creating new and different web clients with it. Instead it is a project that only tries to keep pace with Chrome, getting larger and larger, more and more complex. It appears to have no other purpose. Tunnel vision. Follow the leader. Make no mistake, I am not suggesting there should be no Firefox version that does almost everything that Chrome does, as there is now. Mozilla has supported use of the web for advertising and commerce. They have supported Yahoo, Inc. and Google, LLC. That's wonderful. Great job. What I am suggesting is that Firefox should also have smaller, simpler versions that deliberately do not do all the things that Chrome does. Mozilla should also work to support noncommercial web use. Compile-time options to remove Javascript, telemetry and a host of other things some users may prefer to do without. Give people choice.

NetOpWibby 4y ago
An Electron-like framework using Servo would be great! I opened an issue on that repo and Mozilla said no. Then they fired a bunch of people so…welp.