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Yes, it's due to Mozilla failing to keep up. Possibly Google paying companies to bundle Chrome with their software installers had a part as well. Perhaps putt

by gkbrk 4y ago

Yes, it's due to Mozilla failing to keep up. Possibly Google paying companies to bundle Chrome with their software installers had a part as well. Perhaps putting a Chrome advertisement to the Google homepage and recommending an "upgrade" to all Google visitors played a part too. Maybe.

zaphar 4y ago
When Chrome came out it was unambiguously: * A safer browser. * A more performant browser. Which was more than enough for most of us to recommend everyone switch. Much the same was as when Firefox first came out it was unambiguously: * A safer browser. * A more performant browser. Which was more than enough for most of us to recommend everyone switch. The switching cost of a browser is quite low. The next browser to meet the above criteria will experience a similar jump in users. The challenge is in actually delivering a browser that can do so. The web standards are massively complex for many reasons, some of them legitimate. The barrier for entry is going up over time and shows no sign of slowing down.
- imbnwa 4y ago
  I was coaching a HS debate team when Chrome dropped and all my students switched to Chrome organically with no input from myself, a techie, within a week of release. Don't even think they were running the ads yet, there was just the web comic.
wolrah 4y ago
I think the biggest boost to Chrome's initial success was the fact that it's capable of installing entirely within the user profile, so unless a corporate IT department has gone out of their way to lock a system down an unprivileged user can install it for themself. Remember, Chrome was released in 2008. Internet Explorer, with almost 2/3 of the browser marketshare, was on version 7 at that time and a stupid number of corporate IT departments would continue to default to IE 6 rather than updating or fixing their ancient garbage applications for years to come. Chrome provided a way for power users to have a non-shitty browser, which then blossomed from there as more and more web sites made use of modern browser capabilities and worked worse and worse in corporate-mandated IE instances. Putting on my BOFH hat obviously I'm not the biggest fan of such "shadow IT" processes but I understand that they happen when needs and wants aren't being met and sometimes this is the most effective way to force a necessary change.
ldng 4y ago
It's not Mozilla failing to keep up, it's Mozilla growing an unhealthy, greedy and complacent middle-management fat.
- acdha 4y ago
  Firefox’s decline has been in progress for a long time, starting when Google deployed billions of dollars of Chrome ads and pushing users of Gmail, YouTube, etc. to switch, and as people moved onto mobile devices where Firefox couldn’t run (iOS) or was at a disadvantage competing with the OS developer (everything else). Don’t forget things like the video wars where Google made a promise to drop H.264 support in the name of openness, let Firefox suffer the compatibility hit, and then retracted that promise. Mozilla has made some bad decisions but we should acknowledge that a fair fraction of them were also flailing around trying to recover from those competitors’ actions. I don’t think Firefox OS would have happened if, for example, iOS allowed a real browser market.
  - ldng 4y ago
    My point is not that they were not struggling. But that they were (and somewhat still are) spending elsewhere in stuff barely related to Firefox and this amplify the problem. A lot of money was spent on project not really relevant that were then shelved/dump.

by gkbrk 4y ago

zaphar 4y ago

When Chrome came out it was unambiguously: * A safer browser. * A more performant browser. Which was more than enough for most of us to recommend everyone switch. Much the same was as when Firefox first came out it was unambiguously: * A safer browser. * A more performant browser. Which was more than enough for most of us to recommend everyone switch. The switching cost of a browser is quite low. The next browser to meet the above criteria will experience a similar jump in users. The challenge is in actually delivering a browser that can do so. The web standards are massively complex for many reasons, some of them legitimate. The barrier for entry is going up over time and shows no sign of slowing down.

imbnwa 4y ago
I was coaching a HS debate team when Chrome dropped and all my students switched to Chrome organically with no input from myself, a techie, within a week of release. Don't even think they were running the ads yet, there was just the web comic.

wolrah 4y ago

I think the biggest boost to Chrome's initial success was the fact that it's capable of installing entirely within the user profile, so unless a corporate IT department has gone out of their way to lock a system down an unprivileged user can install it for themself. Remember, Chrome was released in 2008. Internet Explorer, with almost 2/3 of the browser marketshare, was on version 7 at that time and a stupid number of corporate IT departments would continue to default to IE 6 rather than updating or fixing their ancient garbage applications for years to come. Chrome provided a way for power users to have a non-shitty browser, which then blossomed from there as more and more web sites made use of modern browser capabilities and worked worse and worse in corporate-mandated IE instances. Putting on my BOFH hat obviously I'm not the biggest fan of such "shadow IT" processes but I understand that they happen when needs and wants aren't being met and sometimes this is the most effective way to force a necessary change.

ldng 4y ago

It's not Mozilla failing to keep up, it's Mozilla growing an unhealthy, greedy and complacent middle-management fat.

acdha 4y ago
Firefox’s decline has been in progress for a long time, starting when Google deployed billions of dollars of Chrome ads and pushing users of Gmail, YouTube, etc. to switch, and as people moved onto mobile devices where Firefox couldn’t run (iOS) or was at a disadvantage competing with the OS developer (everything else). Don’t forget things like the video wars where Google made a promise to drop H.264 support in the name of openness, let Firefox suffer the compatibility hit, and then retracted that promise. Mozilla has made some bad decisions but we should acknowledge that a fair fraction of them were also flailing around trying to recover from those competitors’ actions. I don’t think Firefox OS would have happened if, for example, iOS allowed a real browser market.
- ldng 4y ago
  My point is not that they were not struggling. But that they were (and somewhat still are) spending elsewhere in stuff barely related to Firefox and this amplify the problem. A lot of money was spent on project not really relevant that were then shelved/dump.