17 ms·

Mozilla claims Apple, Google and Microsoft force users to use default browsers

510 points by mikece 4y ago

QuasarOne 4y ago
I can't use Firefox with reddit; but that's probably reddit with any browser! I can't even report how bad reddit is to reddit.
- guilhas 4y ago
  I mostly use old.reddit.com It loads 10x more information 10x faster
daviddever23box 4y ago
...and so did Mozilla, when FirefoxOS was a thing. Gecko is still the default engine for KaiOS. Are we in browser-whining season again? (Typing this from Firefox on macOS.)
- croes 4y ago
  There is a difference if Apple, MS and Google do something and if much smaller companies do the same.
- VWWHFSfQ 4y ago
  Were there any other browsers even available on FirefoxOS?
  - fabrice_d 4y ago
    You could develop a different browser, but not change the underlying runtime. But asking from a web based OS to be able to run a different web runtime is a bit like expecting that you can provide your own SurfaceFlinger on Android or the equivalent on iOS; there are reasonable limits to what can be swapped out by a 3rd party app.
  - MacsHeadroom 4y ago
    The Browser was the OS, much like ChromeOS (only even more so). Everything was run through the browser engine. This is a silly comparison.
- anvic 4y ago
  For Mozilla it always is browser-whining season but it never is browser-improving season.
arnvald 4y ago
They're right, recently I've installed some Windows update for my parents and I had to reject like 5 suggested changes - installing Office trial, switching default browser to Edge yet again, and more. But this goes way beyond the browsers - I've never explicitly installed Keychain on my iphone and yet it shows as an option next to 1password every time I fill in a password field. Google calendar asks me to install an app every time I open a web version on my phone, my work laptop has 1 active notification in system settings for a year because I didn't enable iCloud backup. I'm not sure what's the solution here. I stick to the apps I use because I know what I'm doing, but so many users will just click "yes" when shown a pop-up. On the other hand, the built-in integrations provide value (e.g. it's better that people use and save random passwords in Keychain than using the same one everywhere). I feel it's always a cat-and-mouse game where the big tech is punished after they've already gained a lot, so they win anyway.
- weikju 4y ago
  Regarding keychain for password filling, you can choose to disable it in the settings -> passwords -> options. It’s selected by default but if you tap it it will deselect it.
  - Wowfunhappy 4y ago
    It would be nice if it disabled itself when another password manager is installed...
    - birdyrooster 4y ago
      Many of us use more than one (especially shared use with work) and the default behavior seems correct.
      - themadturk 4y ago
        I actually use both Keychain and LastPass. They are more or less in synch. I need LastPass (or at least another non-Keychain alternative) because I don't just work in the Apple ecosystem, but I use Keychain as well because it is very convenient when I'm on an Apple device.
neogodless 4y ago
It drives me nuts that a fresh install of Android apps defaults them all to "in-app" browsing instead of my default browser. And you have to go to each app and turn it off in a different place. Wish I could just override all of them and "open every web page in My. Default. Browser."
- yrro 4y ago
  But how else could they inject their JavaScript into the pages you read so that they can capture every page you view, every link you click & every key you press?
- lol768 4y ago
  If apps are written correctly, they can use the Custom Tabs protocol with your default browser (which can be Firefox, as it has support). You'll get the same embedded browser experience, support for add-ons and ability to pop out the site into a separate 'window'/activity. Of course, many apps don't properly do this and end up hardcoding references to Chrome...
  - agluszak 4y ago
    > Of course, many apps don't properly do this and end up hardcoding references to Chrome... I think what OP is referring to is this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32415470 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32415470
- Rapzid 4y ago
  Yeah it's bad "Why am I not logged in?".
- jlokier 4y ago
  I've set my default browser on Android to Firefox Focus, and found that many "in-app" sessions appear to be running an in-app variant of Firefox Focus. It's not quite the same as running actual Firefox Focus, but there's a drop-down menu option to let you switch to launching the in-app page in proper Firefox Focus. That's almost instant and appears to preserve the page state. So between that and the way cookies always seem to be reset in in-app sessions, which is great, that's why I think the in-app sessions are using Firefox Focus.
bombcar 4y ago
Google Chrome is highly successful on Mac and Windows so it’s clear that Microsoft and apple aren’t forcing that hard. Mozilla is just not doing so hot.
- phpisthebest 4y ago
  Reskinned Chrome is the default on windows
  - nijave 4y ago
    And macOS (Safari uses WebKit, if that's the criteria)
    - lol768 4y ago
      Edgium is much closer to Chrom(ium) than Safari/WebKit, I'd say. If Safari used Blink and V8 I'd agree with you
    - saghm 4y ago
      Google swapped Chrome from WebKit to Blink (i.e. they forked WebKit) years ago. WebKit is essentially only used by Safari now; Edge does not use it.
- dralley 4y ago
  Google Chrome: * Got years of free advertising real estate on the most visited website on the internet, but hid the ads if you were using Chrome already * Payed the likes of AVG, Avast, Adobe, Oracle and others to have their own software installers automatically install Chrome and make it the default browser unless you uncheck the boxes * Repeatedly leveraged nonstandard and Chrome-specific APIs (Polymer v0) on their websites which caused other browsers to need slow and clunky polyfills.
  - mhermher 4y ago
    Your second point is such a lost gem of history. I still remember it well and remember how upset it made me. But it seems the world has forgotten, and just assumes that Chrome just meteorically shot up in usage just on its merit. Did you just update Java? Looks like a new browser you've never used is your default now.
g_p 4y ago
One of the next frontiers as a barrier to browser switching will be "software"-backed WebAuthn/FIDO2/"passkeys". If you look at the APIs available on MacOS/iOS at present [0], and how WebAuthn works, you need to "trust" the client-side software to correctly identify the site origin (i.e. protocol, domain, port) and pass it to a physical security key. In the case of a software token, you need to restrict which app(s) can pass this information through to the system carrying out authentication. The end result right now, as I can see it, is that if you sign up to a website using a "passkey" via Safari (for example), there is no real supported workflow that isn't site-specific, for migrating to a new browser - you are effectively beholden to Apple's keychain for getting you back into that site. If you want to enrol a new device (say an Android phone using its own software implementation of WebAuthn), you would need to find a way to sign into your old account (which requires your MacOS/iOS passkey to log in), then enrol your Android device (which is a separate physical device). You'll likely get stuck here. An expert user could add a physical FIDO2 token to their account from the old device (Safari), and use that as the authenticator to log in on the new device, but this is significant friction for a non-technical user. While moving users away from passwords might make sense, I do think we'll see these "passwordless" authentication mechanisms become the next major point of friction in user browser choice. Even if you can implement WebAuthn in your rival browser, unless you get access to the system key store, you won't be able to let users sign in. That will prevent them switching. [0] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/supporting-associated-domains https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/supporting-a...
- dont__panic 4y ago
  Is there any chance that third party password managers like Bitwarden and 1Password will be able to implement add-ons and apps that replace this functionality, and that could open up migration paths? Or is the passkey future even worse than I feared?
  - thewebcount 4y ago
    This has existed for years. I use 1Password for all my passwords and it shows up as an option when entering or creating a password in any browser on iOS. Furthermore, all browser can access the keychain if the user authorizes it.
ram4jesus 4y ago
The most recent W11 update turned on hypervisor on my machine, which I had off to be able to use Bluestacks 5. That config being on/off probably does not make that much money - yet Msoft decided to mess with my settings (not the first time this has happened in W11 and, were I to bet, not the last time either). Why wouldn't Msoft NOT force Edge as the default browser; a company could fill their coffers hugely if they had a lot of browser market share.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Since Windows 10 plenty of security features rely on Windows actually running as a guest OS on Hyper V, like secure kernel and device guard, hence turning on the hypervisor.
  - iggldiggl 4y ago
    Last time I tried it, it also broke hybrid sleep, or possibly actually any kind of hibernate-to-disk at all. Is that still the case?
  - userbinator 4y ago
    Securing the software against you, to be fair.
    - pjmlp 4y ago
      Against the anti-virus that granny downloaded from pop-up on the browser telling her that Microsoft support found a virus.
      - userbinator 4y ago
        What a bunch of corpo-authoritarian BS... Keep the sheeple dumb and dumber, and two generations later they'll be even more subservient and docile, pleading to be milked incessantly for $$$ all of their life instead of actually learning and exercising critical thinking, and thus possibly turning on your efforts to milk them. You can only learn if you make mistakes. They want to "protect" you so they try to stop you from making mistakes, and in the process, take away your ability and will to have individual agency. Fortunately, people are starting to realise the truth.
somenameforme 4y ago
Without commenting on the claims, it's interesting to consider how times have changed. Microsoft originally lost an antitrust lawsuit [1] over little more than tying Internet Explorer into their OS and not readily including alternatives. They not only lost that case, but the initial judgement was that the company was to be broken up. Microsoft started spending dramatically more money on "lobbying" following that. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....
- dont__panic 4y ago
  Amazing that 20 years on, the USA has essentially given up on anti-trust tech regulation. Facebook acquired and repeatedly copied its closest competitors, no problem. Adobe buys up its competitors, no problem. Google aggressively pushes Chrome and fails to makes its own websites fully compatible with competitors, carry on. Apple refuses to give users the freedom to run their own apps on their purchased phones, no biggie. Was there some kind of official policy shift, or did the government just give up?
  - neogodless 4y ago
    I certainly don't know for sure, but one theory would be the 2010 Citizens United ruling. https://www.history.com/topics/united-states-constitution/citizens-united https://www.history.com/topics/united-states-constitution/ci...
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    My guess is that the government realized that FAANG makes for better bedfellows than sworn enemies. They can wave economic incentives in front of their face in exchange for international power beyond what other countries can offer. Having Google, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft under your thumb gives you control over ~80% of the internet and <95% of all PII. There is obviously a domestic interest in controlling that, so it would make sense that our intelligence agencies trade surveillance capabilities for SEC mulligans. That also explains our bipartisan indifference towards real data regulation and privacy legislation.
challenger-derp 4y ago
Firefox has some really good privacy features built-in (some aren't enabled by default and requires minor configuration by users). In contrast, some big tech firms (you know who they are) that have a business model that involves profiting off of users' data are inherently deterred from delivering really good privacy features.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  Firefox's built-in privacy features are meaningless as long as it has single-digit marketshare and the user-agent itself sticks out like a sore thumb. Furthermore, the only real way to make a difference by actually blocking malicious domains and resources - uBlock Origin - still isn't bundled by default despite being permissively licensed and Firefox having a way to install extensions at first run (that's how Pocket is distributed - it's not built into the browser, instead it's an extension automatically downloaded on first run).
andy_xor_andrew 4y ago
Does Firefox have a future? I'm writing this from Firefox, having used it ever since the days when Firefox releases used to have launch parties, and tabs was the revolutionary killer feature. Let me rephrase the question: does Gecko/Spidermonkey have a future? I think it's clear the Firefox branding will live on, since it is Mozilla's crown jewel. But in today's landscape, you can target WebKit (Apple) and V8/Blink (Chrome) and you've surely covered 98% of all use cases. Surely these competing engines have far, far more resources pouring into them than Mozilla can afford. Since the balance of power has shifted towards the owners of these huge players, how can Mozilla keep its browser engine competitive, given that all these new features (such as wasm) surely require massive investment? I know these questions have been asked already a million times, but it keeps me wondering. Will Firefox eventually need to become a fork of Chromium like everyone else, just to keep pace? Can Mozilla keep its entire browser stack afloat in these shifting currents? (pardon the gross metaphor)
- Snitch-Thursday 4y ago
  Maybe it's just the contrarian streak in me, but Firefox being on Gecko is why I haven't left. There must be more than just one browser engine to rule them all! We got rid of our trident just to get blinkered. Firefox moving to Blink means I'm just hopping over to whoever has the slickest Chromium clone right now.
- spideymans 4y ago
  >Does Firefox have a future? Well, mobile is the future of computing. Does Firefox have a future on mobile? I think the answer is clearly no. Firefox will be relevant only until the Desktop PC paradigm fades into obscurity. Eventually Chrome and Safari will join Firefox in obscurity, as more content moves behind apps and walled gardens, and as the desktop paradigm falls into disuse. Give it 10 years.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    Their soul will live on as Web widgets.
  - butterNaN 4y ago
giobox 4y ago
Is their Google search deal (~$400m a year) that expires next year being renewed? If not, might explain some of the desire to bite the hand that has fed it for so long.
- fariszr 4y ago
  If google cuts funding from Mozilla, its probably an existential threat for them, it's really their main income, anything else is tiny and won't be enough. But in the same time, brave seem to be growing quickly, pushing privacy by default, and doing more impactful things for Digital Privacy, on probably a much smaller budget...
- siquick 4y ago
  You have to wonder what Mozilla are doing with $400m a year.
  - boomboomsubban 4y ago
    Building and maintaining a full browser isn't cheap, if it were there'd be more browser engines.
    - userbinator 4y ago
      There is some hope... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32809126 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32809126 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30853392 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30853392 In other words, I don't think Mozilla is making good use of that money at all.
  - guywithahat 4y ago
    They've put improving their browser on hold to focus on their new passion: fighting decentralized software https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/fellow-research-decentralized-web-hate/ https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/fellow-research-decen...
    - 4y ago
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bearjaws 4y ago
On Android all Google apps default to opening in Chrome with no option to change it, even if you change the default URL configuration that only seems to work outside of Gmail / News Feed. This also applies to their search widget, which you cannot remove at all. Incredibly frustrating end user experience when I have everything in FireFox, and Adblock too.
- px43 4y ago
  I have the default browser on my Pixel 5a set to Brave, and everything opens in Brave. I have the Google news feed disabled, but links from gmail and the search window all open Brave as expected.
  - saghm 4y ago
    My default browser on my phone is Firefox, and even when I open articles from the news feed in the Google App, they open from Firefox as well. I guess it's possible that this could vary by phone, but I've never had an issue with an Android phone using my non-default browser when opening a link from an app in years.
kitsunesoba 4y ago
While Google, Microsoft, and Apple clearly factor into the equation here (especially Google — when Chrome first came out the marketing for it was a real force to contend with, and they've aggressively pushed Chrome ever since), the other big thing is that Mozilla ceased to be a leader. They started chasing Chrome and put Firefox on the back burner, and now they're reaping what they've sown. I am a huge proponent of web engine diversity, but Mozilla is going to have to do some serious self-reflection and enact major changes internally to have a fighting chance. As things stand, even if regulation limiting MS/Google/Apple's abilities to self-promote went into place it will make precious little difference because Firefox gives few reasons for non-technical users to switch to it. As big of a splash as Manifest V3 has been, it's ultimately a storm in a teacup that only a portion of technical users know and care about.
- Osmose 4y ago
  The quality of Firefox has nothing to do with the anti-competitive actions of platforms. This affects Vivaldi, Brave, and all the 3rd-party web browsers (or the platform browsers on other platforms, e.g. Chrome on Windows). Mozilla doesn't make this argument because their browser share is lower than it used to be, but because diversity, not domination, is the goal.
  - shultays 4y ago
    How come Chrome towers over Edge then?
    - fabrice_d 4y ago
      A marketing budget in the billions (including shady bundling deals), and free Chrome advertising on top web properties helps quite a bit.
  - kitsunesoba 4y ago
    I would say that diversity without significant numbers, at least when it comes to web engines, is meaningless. If Firefox remains at ~2% marketshare, web developers will pay it no more regard than they do now. It needs to be more popular so proper support for it can't be shrugged off, and so Mozilla has a stronger hand at the web standards table to stop Google from railroading whatever they please through.
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falcolas 4y ago
While Mozilla uses that same force with Pocket, their VPN, ads on the home screen, “experiments”, Google search, etc.
smm11 4y ago
Brave and Duck Duck Go on my S21 phone. Edge on Windows 10 and Mac. I have Firefox on all, but it's secondary, and launched rarely. It just doesn't work as well.
ravenstine 4y ago
What exactly are these companies supposed to do? Web access really is the meat behind modern OS usage. Say what you want about Microsoft, but that's exactly what they realized when they began shipping Internet Explorer with Windows (and got into hot water over it). Safari can't be deleted from iOS, but aspects of Safari are integral to the OS. As long as someone can use another web browser for actual web browsing, as opposed to something that an app might use as a web view, I really don't see what the big deal is. Not being able to delete apps sucks, but this goes beyond browsers, and is hardly the worst thing any of these companies are up to. Should there be an initiative to create a standard pluggable API for web views that operating systems comply with? Oh boy, let's create yet another worthless committee! Maybe Mozilla can knock off the grandstanding, the money wasting, the back patting, and just work on making a competitive browser. Also completely remove Pocket and anything else like it.
- JadoJodo 4y ago
  > and just work on making a competitive browser. I think the issue here is that Mazilla feels that they do. The problem for the average user is not “Do I want to use a Porsche (Chrome) or a Mercedes (Firefox)?”. It’s “Which icon is the one that makes The Internet open up and show me all the things I want to see?” They don’t care beyond that.
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
  > What exactly are these companies supposed to do? Web access really is the meat behind modern OS usage. I mean, Europe used to mandate a selection screen on first boot that would just ask the user what browser to install; that seems pretty reasonable. Failing that, they could let the user actually change their default browser without harassing them or resetting it constantly (Windows) or allow people to actually use other browser engines at all (iOS). > just work on making a competitive browser They did. But it's hard to get people to switch when the OS vendor makes it artificially hard to switch.
  - honkler 4y ago
    they should first try to retain their users, before dreaming of switching others.
pipeline_peak 4y ago
Unpin Edge from taskbar, restart your pc and tell me that isn’t one of the most annoying things MS has done since the Balmer era.
summerlight 4y ago
Unfortunately in the current landscape, I think Firefox will unlikely gain the traction again even if we can bring those big techs to a fair playground. Browser development becomes an extremely complex, expensive project that requires at least hundreds of engineering headcounts and Mozilla cannot simply afford it. Worse, Servo was a kind of big bet to change the equation from the ground but Mozilla decided to abandon it. I don't see a plausible scenario to recover the market share in this situation?
- freediver 4y ago
  > I think Firefox will unlikely gain the traction again even if we can bring those big techs to a fair playground Probably true, as long as it depends on the same big tech for revenue.
- orev 4y ago
  Servo was not abandoned, it was setup to act as a proving ground for various techniques, and the things that worked out well were integrated into Firefox. The group was disbanded because they accomplished their initial goals.
  - summerlight 4y ago
    And most of its developers got laid off. At the moment, Mozilla told that they need to "put a crisper focus on new product development and go to market activities" because "economic conditions resulting from the global pandemic have significantly impacted our revenue". I don't think it has achieved its original goal and gracefully disbanded, unless I see any strong evidence that the decision was primarily and independently driven by the Servo/Rust engineering leaders.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  See my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32959277 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32959277 - Firefox is not failing because of anti-competitiveness, it's failing because in its default configuration it's not bringing much to the table for the average user compared to Chrome or Edge.
iepathos 4y ago
I'm on a macbook currently using firefox for my default browser, haven't been forced to use safari. On my windows rig I use chrome, haven't been forced to use edge. This is provably false. Haven't been forced to use any specific browser across various operating systems and hardware.
- celsoazevedo 4y ago
  I don't know if something changed recently, but Microsoft deserves some criticism: - https://www.howtogeek.com/744102/windows-11-makes-it-hard-to-change-your-default-web-browser/ https://www.howtogeek.com/744102/windows-11-makes-it-hard-to... - https://www.howtogeek.com/768727/microsoft-calls-firefoxs-browser-workaround-improper-will-block-it/ https://www.howtogeek.com/768727/microsoft-calls-firefoxs-br... On macOS it's easy to change this, but things like the "tips" notification it displays after a major update still opens on Safari, ignoring your setting.
- iggldiggl 4y ago
  There are a few places in Windows where Microsoft does force links to open Edge instead of whatever your default browser is. Depending on your usage patterns I guess it is possible to never stumble across those places [1], but they do indeed exist [2]. [1] E.g. I've only really encountered them in one place so far, and it's easily possible to avoid that place, too. [2] That one place I certainly know of is the lock screen in case you've kept the default "Show random pretty pictures" setting turned on.
- WaitWaitWha 4y ago
  Set Firefox as your default browser on Windows. Save a file with the extension .htm. It defaults to Edge, no matter what.
speeder 4y ago
One of the things that piss me off is that sometimes even forks are not accepted. For example Formula 1 TV doesn't work on my SmartTV or on some of my browsers despite them being forks of Chrome, where it works just fine. Not only that, it used to work there in the past, what happened is now it actively detects if the browser is a real Google Chrome from Google (not a recompiled version), and refuse to work otherwise, even if technically it could work just fine.
- 0x457 4y ago
  F1 TV probably doesn't work for another reason, it's most likely missing the right DRM module.
  - speeder 4y ago
    I thought it was that and installed the DRM needed (widevine) on other browsers. Unless the browser is basically official Chrome or official Firefox (and even then it fails often on Firefox) it just barfs.
- phist_mcgee 4y ago
  You're lucky you even get Formula 1 TV. In australia, you are forced to purchase a streaming package from Foxtel (Australian version of sky).
neals 4y ago
Mozilla should totally build an OS / laptop and do the same
- bogomipz 4y ago
  They did. It was called Firefox OS. They killed it in 2015/16. See: https://killedbymozilla.com/ https://killedbymozilla.com/
twirlock 4y ago
graiz 4y ago
Google Chrome gained dominance and was not the default on Windows or Mac. Firefox is an Ok product but isn't super compelling for a typical user.
- adminu 4y ago
  Sorry, but comparing Mozilla to the company that offers the about most visited website ever isn't exactly fair. Google had a lot of opportunities to push Chrome and they did. Doesn't really say a lot about product quality imho
- 323 4y ago
  And HN played an important role. 10-12 years ago, when Chrome appeared, HN was full of posts like "I switched my parents computer to Chrome", "I convinced my company to switch to Chrome", ...
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  Mozilla and its defenders love bashing others about anti-competitiveness but the truth is that their product, in its default configuration, doesn't bring much to the table for the typical user. Back when Firefox did actually bring much to the table compared to the incumbent, it gained respectable marketshare: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32959277 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32959277
bogomipz 4y ago
>"Mozilla, the non-profit proprietor of the Firefox browser, has accused Google, Microsoft, and Apple of "self preferencing" and nudging consumers towards using their own browsers." Is it not odd that that Mozilla is taking a stand against tech giants abusing their position when the giant with largest share of the browser market is the same company that pays them hundreds of millions a dollar a year to be the default search engine on Firefox.[1] Don't they basically survive on this Google money? Don't they basically promote Google with this arrangement? [1] https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/14/mozilla_google_search/ https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/14/mozilla_google_search...
Mikeb85 4y ago
Does Linux force you to use Firefox? Every distro I know has it by default. Yet the first thing I do on a new install is install Chrome... And of course everyone does the same on Windows. Only Edge has started to slightly change that trend, and that's with some very aggressive tactics by MS.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
  I'm not nagged about my browser choice on Linux. Other browsers are found easily on the package manager.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  I hate to be pedantic, but Linux doesn't 'force' you to do anything. By default, it doesn't even have the dependencies required to render HTML. Linux is just a kernel, and various maintainers package it into software distributions. The main problem with including Chrome/Chromium/Ungoogled Chromium is the license. Mozilla's MPL is straightforward and compatible with most FOSS licenses. As I understand it, Chromium's codebase is still a melange of different licenses (and some proprietary code) that is generally unfit for packaging with other free software. Most repositories will still have it on-hand though, since it would be pretty silly to prevent you from using the browser you want. If you'd rather avoid Firefox altogether, run archinstall and add chromium to your extra packages field. Many build-it-yourself distros like NixOS exclude browsers altogether.
lostgame 4y ago
At least on iOS/iPadOS, this is inequitably true. It’s impossible to argue Apple doesn’t have monopoly control over web rendering on these platforms.
guywithahat 4y ago
Mozilla should build a better browser and fix their marketing if they want to gain back market share. Other browsers have managed to find ways to gain market share. I mean Brave has grown extremely rapidly headed by the ousted Mozilla CEO during Mozilla's decline
- notriddle 4y ago
  Brave has so few users that Wikimedia doesn’t even list them on the summary table. They get more hits from Apple Mail. https://analytics.wikimedia.org/dashboards/browsers/#all-sites-by-browser/browser-family-and-major-tabular-view https://analytics.wikimedia.org/dashboards/browsers/#all-sit... Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1102/ https://xkcd.com/1102/
  - lbwtaylor 4y ago
    My understanding is that Brave uses Chrome user agents for privacy.
    - guywithahat 4y ago
      Yeah this is the correct answer. They're a privacy focused browser, which includes not collecting specific user data or letting other people collect user data. So if you send a request to their browser asking what it is, it'll tell you it's google chrome and not Brave
  - NayamAmarshe 4y ago
    Brave has 55 million MAU. That is huge for a browser that's just 3 years old.
    - deleted 4y ago
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iammjm 4y ago
They all do push their respective browsers but I wouldn’t say they ‘force’ them. All my devices are Apple devices and I use Edge on all of them, so…
frankjr 4y ago
And yet Brave has been "Growing 2x for the Fifth Year in a Row". Mozilla should stop whining and focus on building a browser that regular non technical people also want to use. How can I recommend Firefox to a family member when it absolutely chokes on 4k videos on YouTube and makes the laptop sound like a rocket lifting off (macOS, older intel MBP, Chromium based browsers work without a hitch and barely spin fans)? https://brave.com/2021-recap https://brave.com/2021-recap
- rvz 4y ago
  > Mozilla should stop whining and focus on building a browser that regular non technical people also want to use. This, they're right you know. Mozilla has being whining for years despite living off of Google's money and even with that they are still complaining and more websites are continuing to require Chromium browsers over using Firefox for their sites as they know the site breaks with Firefox. That's why little to no one is using it. Like when you have the choice of Linux distros, you have the many choices of Chromium browsers and it seems that Brave is the recommended one.
throw7 4y ago
It's not just apple/google/microsoft, it is a whole lot of companies that state the "recommended"/"supported" browser is chrome. Full stop. This is just something that has slowly/linearly been moving in that direction. Many, many years ago it started with bank's declaring "unsupported" when I'd connect with seamonkey et al. The initial lever was security, now it's purely client/server features that only google engineers can deliver in the next quarter. Chrome™: The way it's meant to be played.
Dalewyn 4y ago
Mozilla can bitch all they want, but as long as they continue to ship a shitty product nobody will heed them attention.
- frou_dh 4y ago
  It's not shitty, it's just not the best in the world. Same way everyone in a sport except the world champion isn't shitty.
nabakin 4y ago
This article is centered around a report from Mozilla without actually linking to it... Here is the original report https://research.mozilla.org/browser-competition/ https://research.mozilla.org/browser-competition/
swiley-gin 4y ago
userbinator 4y ago
For context, these articles form a good background of the ongoing war between Microsoft and Mozilla on this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28510490 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28510490 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29579994 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29579994 They'll always use "security" as an excuse to force you into doing what they want, and this is just another instance of that tactic. Don't be fooled into giving up your freedom. I wish more people would be aware of that.
lemon_bottle 4y ago
Well, a part of Mozilla (the foundation) keeps calling out Apple, Google and other big tech companies for their control, censorship and browser monopolies. However, another part (the corporation) keeps accepting regular pay checks from Google to fund themselves, can't really wrap my head around this "Mozilla Foundation vs Corporation" conundrum!
ls15 4y ago
@EU: there is money laying on the table again
oxff 4y ago
Firefox is so bad I don't really even care.
s_ting765 4y ago
I don't see the problem. Users have gotten used to the nagware in software they use everyday. Am sure Mozilla bundles its own nagware into its browser.
jeppester 4y ago
This claim is so obviously true, that it's hardly a claim. We should treat it like a fact, and talk about what we want to do about it. If we do nothing then these megacorps will use their power to unfairly outcompete or plain buy up all competition but the other megacorps. We can either have a world with maybe 50 gigantic corporations or thousands of smaller, but still large businesses. I personally think the latter would be much better for democracy and distribution of wealth.
codethief 4y ago
> Google’s president of global affairs Kent Walker said that potential antitrust regulations "would impose one set of rules on American companies while giving a pass to foreign companies" and that they "would give the Federal Trade Commission and other government agencies unprecedented power over the design of consumer products". Walker added: "All of this would be a dramatic reversal of the approach that has made the U.S. a global technology leader, and risks ceding America’s technology leadership and threatening our national security, as bipartisan national security experts have warned". What. That must be the most ridiculous excuse I've heard so far.
- ece 4y ago
  Let me translate that: Antitrust regulations "would impose rules that are bad for our bottom line, and would offer consumers choice." "We got so big because of lax regulations and mergers like the Doubleclick merger that weren't stopped, and we still want to keep buying out any potential competitors."
csydas 4y ago
Late to the party but Microsoft's arguments fall flat for me, at least with regards to Apple and Google, moreso Apple but can give Google _some_ credit on this one. Neither "forces" their respective browser in the same way that Microsoft does. Putting iOS aside for a minute to be addressed later, on an Apple device, the number of times you will get a pop-up telling you how insecure and slow and bad other browsers are is practically 0. Apple has the MacOS spam banner, but either they've toned it down or walked it back completely based on my experience purchasing an M1 this year. Never did Apple try to make you use Safari as your PDF reader, it doesn't change or add shortcuts for Safari on updates, it doesn't insert a banner on other apps or locations to tell you to use Safari, changing your default browser is as simple as opening System Preference and searching "default browser", then picking another one, and MacOS doesn't say a word about it. Spotlight is the one place that might surprise people but even it respects changing the default browser and will search on your set one. Google, as annoying as it is, also doesn't seem to care much which browser you use on Android; I don't own a ChromeOS device so no idea what it's like on that, but you're free to install just about anything and set it as default without so much as a hiccup, and similar to Apple, I have not seen it try to set itself via other common OS features. Granted, Google is a dick with Chrome in many other ways (other commenters have already noted how they use their control of the web to force Chrome), but I don't quite put it in the same way. iOS is special I guess in that you can install any browser "skin" you want, but it's webkit underneath. I'm mixed on this as I understand the arguments against this and it's definitely not good on Apple, but at the same time, if you're talking about what browser to use to get the features like sync, iOS lets you do it without a peep from iOS about it and for the grand majority of users, the rendering engine isn't what they care about, it's the other features of the browser which you can happily use. Still not good you can't use another engine, but I would still put it in the "okay, but needs improvement" area. All of this compared to how Microsoft handles Edge on Windows is a pittance. They really want you using Edge for everything, and there are so many system hooks that open Edge without you wanting it to. Changing the default is much more daunting, and it's far too easy to let it get set back (in general I've noticed Windows has some weird stuff about default applications in Win11. It might just be the release we use for our lab environments, but it refuses to let me set notepad++ as default text editor without resorting to the command line, but it could be just a strange situation). I have a hard time seeing this as anything but Microsoft muddying the waters with such arguments and I definitely don't see them as good faith. I suppose it's just good business sense that they don't try to tie Azure features/performance to "best viewed in Edge" as I imagine an exodus towards AWS/GCP, but for the mythical average user, they do a lot to get you onto Edge no matter what you actually want.
grey_earthling 4y ago
The EU's browser ballot was a solution to the wrong problem. The problem wasn't that IE had a monopoly within Windows; it was that Windows had a monopoly on computer OSes. (And Microsoft actively reinforced it by saying that if you sell other OSes on a “PC” they won't let you sell Windows.)
deleted 4y ago
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fattybob 4y ago
Hmm, I’m reading this on my apple iPhone using Orion - not really had any interest in using Mozilla for years ! I use mostly safari in my MacBook, but also use Firefox and chrome at times, safari is weapon of choice there
jcynix 4y ago
If you want to (or have to) use Apple Business Manager (web portal to remotely manage a number of IOS devices) Apple explicitely requires you to either use Safari or Edge, Firefox doesn't work. So much for the web as the "OS agnostic" interface for the 21st century.
- RunSet 4y ago
  Have you tried lying to Apple? https://www.ghacks.net/2022/07/10/apples-business-website-is-blocking-firefox-here-is-how-to-gain-access/ https://www.ghacks.net/2022/07/10/apples-business-website-is...
  - jcynix 4y ago
    Yes, changing the user agent is a possibility. Luckily I do not have to work with Apple's Business Manager any longer.
guilhas 4y ago
I am more worried with the amount of CAPTCHAs I get in FirefoxESR/Windows from Cloudflare or Google, until I change user agent
vegetable 4y ago
I'm not seeing the force here; maybe dark patterns... I seem to remember being able to change default browser on Win 11 to Firefox/chtomium without much hassle. Its just the edge:// links that will still open with edge (understandably). I was even able to uninstall edge altogether with winget.
daoist_shaman 4y ago
I'm going a step further to say that these companies break interoperability between each others browsers and services.

510 points by mikece 4y ago

I can't use Firefox with reddit; but that's probably reddit with any browser! I can't even report how bad reddit is to reddit.

guilhas 4y ago
I mostly use old.reddit.com It loads 10x more information 10x faster

daviddever23box 4y ago

...and so did Mozilla, when FirefoxOS was a thing. Gecko is still the default engine for KaiOS. Are we in browser-whining season again? (Typing this from Firefox on macOS.)

croes 4y ago
There is a difference if Apple, MS and Google do something and if much smaller companies do the same.
VWWHFSfQ 4y ago
Were there any other browsers even available on FirefoxOS?
- fabrice_d 4y ago
  You could develop a different browser, but not change the underlying runtime. But asking from a web based OS to be able to run a different web runtime is a bit like expecting that you can provide your own SurfaceFlinger on Android or the equivalent on iOS; there are reasonable limits to what can be swapped out by a 3rd party app.
- MacsHeadroom 4y ago
  The Browser was the OS, much like ChromeOS (only even more so). Everything was run through the browser engine. This is a silly comparison.
anvic 4y ago
For Mozilla it always is browser-whining season but it never is browser-improving season.

arnvald 4y ago

They're right, recently I've installed some Windows update for my parents and I had to reject like 5 suggested changes - installing Office trial, switching default browser to Edge yet again, and more. But this goes way beyond the browsers - I've never explicitly installed Keychain on my iphone and yet it shows as an option next to 1password every time I fill in a password field. Google calendar asks me to install an app every time I open a web version on my phone, my work laptop has 1 active notification in system settings for a year because I didn't enable iCloud backup. I'm not sure what's the solution here. I stick to the apps I use because I know what I'm doing, but so many users will just click "yes" when shown a pop-up. On the other hand, the built-in integrations provide value (e.g. it's better that people use and save random passwords in Keychain than using the same one everywhere). I feel it's always a cat-and-mouse game where the big tech is punished after they've already gained a lot, so they win anyway.

weikju 4y ago
Regarding keychain for password filling, you can choose to disable it in the settings -> passwords -> options. It’s selected by default but if you tap it it will deselect it.
- Wowfunhappy 4y ago
  It would be nice if it disabled itself when another password manager is installed...
  - birdyrooster 4y ago
    Many of us use more than one (especially shared use with work) and the default behavior seems correct.
    - themadturk 4y ago
      I actually use both Keychain and LastPass. They are more or less in synch. I need LastPass (or at least another non-Keychain alternative) because I don't just work in the Apple ecosystem, but I use Keychain as well because it is very convenient when I'm on an Apple device.

neogodless 4y ago

It drives me nuts that a fresh install of Android apps defaults them all to "in-app" browsing instead of my default browser. And you have to go to each app and turn it off in a different place. Wish I could just override all of them and "open every web page in My. Default. Browser."

yrro 4y ago
But how else could they inject their JavaScript into the pages you read so that they can capture every page you view, every link you click & every key you press?
lol768 4y ago
If apps are written correctly, they can use the Custom Tabs protocol with your default browser (which can be Firefox, as it has support). You'll get the same embedded browser experience, support for add-ons and ability to pop out the site into a separate 'window'/activity. Of course, many apps don't properly do this and end up hardcoding references to Chrome...
- agluszak 4y ago
  > Of course, many apps don't properly do this and end up hardcoding references to Chrome... I think what OP is referring to is this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32415470 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32415470
Rapzid 4y ago
Yeah it's bad "Why am I not logged in?".
jlokier 4y ago
I've set my default browser on Android to Firefox Focus, and found that many "in-app" sessions appear to be running an in-app variant of Firefox Focus. It's not quite the same as running actual Firefox Focus, but there's a drop-down menu option to let you switch to launching the in-app page in proper Firefox Focus. That's almost instant and appears to preserve the page state. So between that and the way cookies always seem to be reset in in-app sessions, which is great, that's why I think the in-app sessions are using Firefox Focus.

bombcar 4y ago

Google Chrome is highly successful on Mac and Windows so it’s clear that Microsoft and apple aren’t forcing that hard. Mozilla is just not doing so hot.

phpisthebest 4y ago
Reskinned Chrome is the default on windows
- nijave 4y ago
  And macOS (Safari uses WebKit, if that's the criteria)
  - lol768 4y ago
    Edgium is much closer to Chrom(ium) than Safari/WebKit, I'd say. If Safari used Blink and V8 I'd agree with you
  - saghm 4y ago
    Google swapped Chrome from WebKit to Blink (i.e. they forked WebKit) years ago. WebKit is essentially only used by Safari now; Edge does not use it.
dralley 4y ago
Google Chrome: * Got years of free advertising real estate on the most visited website on the internet, but hid the ads if you were using Chrome already * Payed the likes of AVG, Avast, Adobe, Oracle and others to have their own software installers automatically install Chrome and make it the default browser unless you uncheck the boxes * Repeatedly leveraged nonstandard and Chrome-specific APIs (Polymer v0) on their websites which caused other browsers to need slow and clunky polyfills.
- mhermher 4y ago
  Your second point is such a lost gem of history. I still remember it well and remember how upset it made me. But it seems the world has forgotten, and just assumes that Chrome just meteorically shot up in usage just on its merit. Did you just update Java? Looks like a new browser you've never used is your default now.

g_p 4y ago

One of the next frontiers as a barrier to browser switching will be "software"-backed WebAuthn/FIDO2/"passkeys". If you look at the APIs available on MacOS/iOS at present [0], and how WebAuthn works, you need to "trust" the client-side software to correctly identify the site origin (i.e. protocol, domain, port) and pass it to a physical security key. In the case of a software token, you need to restrict which app(s) can pass this information through to the system carrying out authentication. The end result right now, as I can see it, is that if you sign up to a website using a "passkey" via Safari (for example), there is no real supported workflow that isn't site-specific, for migrating to a new browser - you are effectively beholden to Apple's keychain for getting you back into that site. If you want to enrol a new device (say an Android phone using its own software implementation of WebAuthn), you would need to find a way to sign into your old account (which requires your MacOS/iOS passkey to log in), then enrol your Android device (which is a separate physical device). You'll likely get stuck here. An expert user could add a physical FIDO2 token to their account from the old device (Safari), and use that as the authenticator to log in on the new device, but this is significant friction for a non-technical user. While moving users away from passwords might make sense, I do think we'll see these "passwordless" authentication mechanisms become the next major point of friction in user browser choice. Even if you can implement WebAuthn in your rival browser, unless you get access to the system key store, you won't be able to let users sign in. That will prevent them switching. [0] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/supporting-associated-domains https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/supporting-a...

dont__panic 4y ago
Is there any chance that third party password managers like Bitwarden and 1Password will be able to implement add-ons and apps that replace this functionality, and that could open up migration paths? Or is the passkey future even worse than I feared?
- thewebcount 4y ago
  This has existed for years. I use 1Password for all my passwords and it shows up as an option when entering or creating a password in any browser on iOS. Furthermore, all browser can access the keychain if the user authorizes it.

ram4jesus 4y ago

The most recent W11 update turned on hypervisor on my machine, which I had off to be able to use Bluestacks 5. That config being on/off probably does not make that much money - yet Msoft decided to mess with my settings (not the first time this has happened in W11 and, were I to bet, not the last time either). Why wouldn't Msoft NOT force Edge as the default browser; a company could fill their coffers hugely if they had a lot of browser market share.

pjmlp 4y ago
Since Windows 10 plenty of security features rely on Windows actually running as a guest OS on Hyper V, like secure kernel and device guard, hence turning on the hypervisor.
- iggldiggl 4y ago
  Last time I tried it, it also broke hybrid sleep, or possibly actually any kind of hibernate-to-disk at all. Is that still the case?
- userbinator 4y ago
  Securing the software against you, to be fair.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    Against the anti-virus that granny downloaded from pop-up on the browser telling her that Microsoft support found a virus.
    - userbinator 4y ago
      What a bunch of corpo-authoritarian BS... Keep the sheeple dumb and dumber, and two generations later they'll be even more subservient and docile, pleading to be milked incessantly for $$$ all of their life instead of actually learning and exercising critical thinking, and thus possibly turning on your efforts to milk them. You can only learn if you make mistakes. They want to "protect" you so they try to stop you from making mistakes, and in the process, take away your ability and will to have individual agency. Fortunately, people are starting to realise the truth.

somenameforme 4y ago

Without commenting on the claims, it's interesting to consider how times have changed. Microsoft originally lost an antitrust lawsuit [1] over little more than tying Internet Explorer into their OS and not readily including alternatives. They not only lost that case, but the initial judgement was that the company was to be broken up. Microsoft started spending dramatically more money on "lobbying" following that. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....

dont__panic 4y ago
Amazing that 20 years on, the USA has essentially given up on anti-trust tech regulation. Facebook acquired and repeatedly copied its closest competitors, no problem. Adobe buys up its competitors, no problem. Google aggressively pushes Chrome and fails to makes its own websites fully compatible with competitors, carry on. Apple refuses to give users the freedom to run their own apps on their purchased phones, no biggie. Was there some kind of official policy shift, or did the government just give up?
- neogodless 4y ago
  I certainly don't know for sure, but one theory would be the 2010 Citizens United ruling. https://www.history.com/topics/united-states-constitution/citizens-united https://www.history.com/topics/united-states-constitution/ci...
- smoldesu 4y ago
  My guess is that the government realized that FAANG makes for better bedfellows than sworn enemies. They can wave economic incentives in front of their face in exchange for international power beyond what other countries can offer. Having Google, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft under your thumb gives you control over ~80% of the internet and <95% of all PII. There is obviously a domestic interest in controlling that, so it would make sense that our intelligence agencies trade surveillance capabilities for SEC mulligans. That also explains our bipartisan indifference towards real data regulation and privacy legislation.

challenger-derp 4y ago

Firefox has some really good privacy features built-in (some aren't enabled by default and requires minor configuration by users). In contrast, some big tech firms (you know who they are) that have a business model that involves profiting off of users' data are inherently deterred from delivering really good privacy features.

Nextgrid 4y ago
Firefox's built-in privacy features are meaningless as long as it has single-digit marketshare and the user-agent itself sticks out like a sore thumb. Furthermore, the only real way to make a difference by actually blocking malicious domains and resources - uBlock Origin - still isn't bundled by default despite being permissively licensed and Firefox having a way to install extensions at first run (that's how Pocket is distributed - it's not built into the browser, instead it's an extension automatically downloaded on first run).

andy_xor_andrew 4y ago

Does Firefox have a future? I'm writing this from Firefox, having used it ever since the days when Firefox releases used to have launch parties, and tabs was the revolutionary killer feature. Let me rephrase the question: does Gecko/Spidermonkey have a future? I think it's clear the Firefox branding will live on, since it is Mozilla's crown jewel. But in today's landscape, you can target WebKit (Apple) and V8/Blink (Chrome) and you've surely covered 98% of all use cases. Surely these competing engines have far, far more resources pouring into them than Mozilla can afford. Since the balance of power has shifted towards the owners of these huge players, how can Mozilla keep its browser engine competitive, given that all these new features (such as wasm) surely require massive investment? I know these questions have been asked already a million times, but it keeps me wondering. Will Firefox eventually need to become a fork of Chromium like everyone else, just to keep pace? Can Mozilla keep its entire browser stack afloat in these shifting currents? (pardon the gross metaphor)

Snitch-Thursday 4y ago
Maybe it's just the contrarian streak in me, but Firefox being on Gecko is why I haven't left. There must be more than just one browser engine to rule them all! We got rid of our trident just to get blinkered. Firefox moving to Blink means I'm just hopping over to whoever has the slickest Chromium clone right now.
spideymans 4y ago
>Does Firefox have a future? Well, mobile is the future of computing. Does Firefox have a future on mobile? I think the answer is clearly no. Firefox will be relevant only until the Desktop PC paradigm fades into obscurity. Eventually Chrome and Safari will join Firefox in obscurity, as more content moves behind apps and walled gardens, and as the desktop paradigm falls into disuse. Give it 10 years.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Their soul will live on as Web widgets.
- butterNaN 4y ago

giobox 4y ago

Is their Google search deal (~$400m a year) that expires next year being renewed? If not, might explain some of the desire to bite the hand that has fed it for so long.

fariszr 4y ago
If google cuts funding from Mozilla, its probably an existential threat for them, it's really their main income, anything else is tiny and won't be enough. But in the same time, brave seem to be growing quickly, pushing privacy by default, and doing more impactful things for Digital Privacy, on probably a much smaller budget...
siquick 4y ago
You have to wonder what Mozilla are doing with $400m a year.
- boomboomsubban 4y ago
  Building and maintaining a full browser isn't cheap, if it were there'd be more browser engines.
  - userbinator 4y ago
    There is some hope... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32809126 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32809126 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30853392 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30853392 In other words, I don't think Mozilla is making good use of that money at all.
- guywithahat 4y ago
  They've put improving their browser on hold to focus on their new passion: fighting decentralized software https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/fellow-research-decentralized-web-hate/ https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/fellow-research-decen...
  - 4y ago

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bearjaws 4y ago

On Android all Google apps default to opening in Chrome with no option to change it, even if you change the default URL configuration that only seems to work outside of Gmail / News Feed. This also applies to their search widget, which you cannot remove at all. Incredibly frustrating end user experience when I have everything in FireFox, and Adblock too.

px43 4y ago
I have the default browser on my Pixel 5a set to Brave, and everything opens in Brave. I have the Google news feed disabled, but links from gmail and the search window all open Brave as expected.
- saghm 4y ago
  My default browser on my phone is Firefox, and even when I open articles from the news feed in the Google App, they open from Firefox as well. I guess it's possible that this could vary by phone, but I've never had an issue with an Android phone using my non-default browser when opening a link from an app in years.

kitsunesoba 4y ago

While Google, Microsoft, and Apple clearly factor into the equation here (especially Google — when Chrome first came out the marketing for it was a real force to contend with, and they've aggressively pushed Chrome ever since), the other big thing is that Mozilla ceased to be a leader. They started chasing Chrome and put Firefox on the back burner, and now they're reaping what they've sown. I am a huge proponent of web engine diversity, but Mozilla is going to have to do some serious self-reflection and enact major changes internally to have a fighting chance. As things stand, even if regulation limiting MS/Google/Apple's abilities to self-promote went into place it will make precious little difference because Firefox gives few reasons for non-technical users to switch to it. As big of a splash as Manifest V3 has been, it's ultimately a storm in a teacup that only a portion of technical users know and care about.

Osmose 4y ago
The quality of Firefox has nothing to do with the anti-competitive actions of platforms. This affects Vivaldi, Brave, and all the 3rd-party web browsers (or the platform browsers on other platforms, e.g. Chrome on Windows). Mozilla doesn't make this argument because their browser share is lower than it used to be, but because diversity, not domination, is the goal.
- shultays 4y ago
  How come Chrome towers over Edge then?
  - fabrice_d 4y ago
    A marketing budget in the billions (including shady bundling deals), and free Chrome advertising on top web properties helps quite a bit.
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  I would say that diversity without significant numbers, at least when it comes to web engines, is meaningless. If Firefox remains at ~2% marketshare, web developers will pay it no more regard than they do now. It needs to be more popular so proper support for it can't be shrugged off, and so Mozilla has a stronger hand at the web standards table to stop Google from railroading whatever they please through.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

falcolas 4y ago

While Mozilla uses that same force with Pocket, their VPN, ads on the home screen, “experiments”, Google search, etc.

smm11 4y ago

Brave and Duck Duck Go on my S21 phone. Edge on Windows 10 and Mac. I have Firefox on all, but it's secondary, and launched rarely. It just doesn't work as well.

ravenstine 4y ago

What exactly are these companies supposed to do? Web access really is the meat behind modern OS usage. Say what you want about Microsoft, but that's exactly what they realized when they began shipping Internet Explorer with Windows (and got into hot water over it). Safari can't be deleted from iOS, but aspects of Safari are integral to the OS. As long as someone can use another web browser for actual web browsing, as opposed to something that an app might use as a web view, I really don't see what the big deal is. Not being able to delete apps sucks, but this goes beyond browsers, and is hardly the worst thing any of these companies are up to. Should there be an initiative to create a standard pluggable API for web views that operating systems comply with? Oh boy, let's create yet another worthless committee! Maybe Mozilla can knock off the grandstanding, the money wasting, the back patting, and just work on making a competitive browser. Also completely remove Pocket and anything else like it.

JadoJodo 4y ago
> and just work on making a competitive browser. I think the issue here is that Mazilla feels that they do. The problem for the average user is not “Do I want to use a Porsche (Chrome) or a Mercedes (Firefox)?”. It’s “Which icon is the one that makes The Internet open up and show me all the things I want to see?” They don’t care beyond that.
yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
> What exactly are these companies supposed to do? Web access really is the meat behind modern OS usage. I mean, Europe used to mandate a selection screen on first boot that would just ask the user what browser to install; that seems pretty reasonable. Failing that, they could let the user actually change their default browser without harassing them or resetting it constantly (Windows) or allow people to actually use other browser engines at all (iOS). > just work on making a competitive browser They did. But it's hard to get people to switch when the OS vendor makes it artificially hard to switch.
- honkler 4y ago
  they should first try to retain their users, before dreaming of switching others.

pipeline_peak 4y ago

Unpin Edge from taskbar, restart your pc and tell me that isn’t one of the most annoying things MS has done since the Balmer era.

summerlight 4y ago

Unfortunately in the current landscape, I think Firefox will unlikely gain the traction again even if we can bring those big techs to a fair playground. Browser development becomes an extremely complex, expensive project that requires at least hundreds of engineering headcounts and Mozilla cannot simply afford it. Worse, Servo was a kind of big bet to change the equation from the ground but Mozilla decided to abandon it. I don't see a plausible scenario to recover the market share in this situation?

freediver 4y ago
> I think Firefox will unlikely gain the traction again even if we can bring those big techs to a fair playground Probably true, as long as it depends on the same big tech for revenue.
orev 4y ago
Servo was not abandoned, it was setup to act as a proving ground for various techniques, and the things that worked out well were integrated into Firefox. The group was disbanded because they accomplished their initial goals.
- summerlight 4y ago
  And most of its developers got laid off. At the moment, Mozilla told that they need to "put a crisper focus on new product development and go to market activities" because "economic conditions resulting from the global pandemic have significantly impacted our revenue". I don't think it has achieved its original goal and gracefully disbanded, unless I see any strong evidence that the decision was primarily and independently driven by the Servo/Rust engineering leaders.
Nextgrid 4y ago
See my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32959277 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32959277 - Firefox is not failing because of anti-competitiveness, it's failing because in its default configuration it's not bringing much to the table for the average user compared to Chrome or Edge.

iepathos 4y ago

I'm on a macbook currently using firefox for my default browser, haven't been forced to use safari. On my windows rig I use chrome, haven't been forced to use edge. This is provably false. Haven't been forced to use any specific browser across various operating systems and hardware.

celsoazevedo 4y ago
I don't know if something changed recently, but Microsoft deserves some criticism: - https://www.howtogeek.com/744102/windows-11-makes-it-hard-to-change-your-default-web-browser/ https://www.howtogeek.com/744102/windows-11-makes-it-hard-to... - https://www.howtogeek.com/768727/microsoft-calls-firefoxs-browser-workaround-improper-will-block-it/ https://www.howtogeek.com/768727/microsoft-calls-firefoxs-br... On macOS it's easy to change this, but things like the "tips" notification it displays after a major update still opens on Safari, ignoring your setting.
iggldiggl 4y ago
There are a few places in Windows where Microsoft does force links to open Edge instead of whatever your default browser is. Depending on your usage patterns I guess it is possible to never stumble across those places [1], but they do indeed exist [2]. [1] E.g. I've only really encountered them in one place so far, and it's easily possible to avoid that place, too. [2] That one place I certainly know of is the lock screen in case you've kept the default "Show random pretty pictures" setting turned on.
WaitWaitWha 4y ago
Set Firefox as your default browser on Windows. Save a file with the extension .htm. It defaults to Edge, no matter what.

speeder 4y ago

One of the things that piss me off is that sometimes even forks are not accepted. For example Formula 1 TV doesn't work on my SmartTV or on some of my browsers despite them being forks of Chrome, where it works just fine. Not only that, it used to work there in the past, what happened is now it actively detects if the browser is a real Google Chrome from Google (not a recompiled version), and refuse to work otherwise, even if technically it could work just fine.

0x457 4y ago
F1 TV probably doesn't work for another reason, it's most likely missing the right DRM module.
- speeder 4y ago
  I thought it was that and installed the DRM needed (widevine) on other browsers. Unless the browser is basically official Chrome or official Firefox (and even then it fails often on Firefox) it just barfs.
phist_mcgee 4y ago
You're lucky you even get Formula 1 TV. In australia, you are forced to purchase a streaming package from Foxtel (Australian version of sky).

neals 4y ago

Mozilla should totally build an OS / laptop and do the same

bogomipz 4y ago
They did. It was called Firefox OS. They killed it in 2015/16. See: https://killedbymozilla.com/ https://killedbymozilla.com/

twirlock 4y ago

graiz 4y ago

Google Chrome gained dominance and was not the default on Windows or Mac. Firefox is an Ok product but isn't super compelling for a typical user.

adminu 4y ago
Sorry, but comparing Mozilla to the company that offers the about most visited website ever isn't exactly fair. Google had a lot of opportunities to push Chrome and they did. Doesn't really say a lot about product quality imho
323 4y ago
And HN played an important role. 10-12 years ago, when Chrome appeared, HN was full of posts like "I switched my parents computer to Chrome", "I convinced my company to switch to Chrome", ...
Nextgrid 4y ago
Mozilla and its defenders love bashing others about anti-competitiveness but the truth is that their product, in its default configuration, doesn't bring much to the table for the typical user. Back when Firefox did actually bring much to the table compared to the incumbent, it gained respectable marketshare: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32959277 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32959277

bogomipz 4y ago

>"Mozilla, the non-profit proprietor of the Firefox browser, has accused Google, Microsoft, and Apple of "self preferencing" and nudging consumers towards using their own browsers." Is it not odd that that Mozilla is taking a stand against tech giants abusing their position when the giant with largest share of the browser market is the same company that pays them hundreds of millions a dollar a year to be the default search engine on Firefox.[1] Don't they basically survive on this Google money? Don't they basically promote Google with this arrangement? [1] https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/14/mozilla_google_search/ https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/14/mozilla_google_search...

Mikeb85 4y ago

Does Linux force you to use Firefox? Every distro I know has it by default. Yet the first thing I do on a new install is install Chrome... And of course everyone does the same on Windows. Only Edge has started to slightly change that trend, and that's with some very aggressive tactics by MS.

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
I'm not nagged about my browser choice on Linux. Other browsers are found easily on the package manager.
smoldesu 4y ago
I hate to be pedantic, but Linux doesn't 'force' you to do anything. By default, it doesn't even have the dependencies required to render HTML. Linux is just a kernel, and various maintainers package it into software distributions. The main problem with including Chrome/Chromium/Ungoogled Chromium is the license. Mozilla's MPL is straightforward and compatible with most FOSS licenses. As I understand it, Chromium's codebase is still a melange of different licenses (and some proprietary code) that is generally unfit for packaging with other free software. Most repositories will still have it on-hand though, since it would be pretty silly to prevent you from using the browser you want. If you'd rather avoid Firefox altogether, run archinstall and add chromium to your extra packages field. Many build-it-yourself distros like NixOS exclude browsers altogether.

lostgame 4y ago

At least on iOS/iPadOS, this is inequitably true. It’s impossible to argue Apple doesn’t have monopoly control over web rendering on these platforms.

guywithahat 4y ago

Mozilla should build a better browser and fix their marketing if they want to gain back market share. Other browsers have managed to find ways to gain market share. I mean Brave has grown extremely rapidly headed by the ousted Mozilla CEO during Mozilla's decline

notriddle 4y ago
Brave has so few users that Wikimedia doesn’t even list them on the summary table. They get more hits from Apple Mail. https://analytics.wikimedia.org/dashboards/browsers/#all-sites-by-browser/browser-family-and-major-tabular-view https://analytics.wikimedia.org/dashboards/browsers/#all-sit... Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1102/ https://xkcd.com/1102/
- lbwtaylor 4y ago
  My understanding is that Brave uses Chrome user agents for privacy.
  - guywithahat 4y ago
    Yeah this is the correct answer. They're a privacy focused browser, which includes not collecting specific user data or letting other people collect user data. So if you send a request to their browser asking what it is, it'll tell you it's google chrome and not Brave
- NayamAmarshe 4y ago
  Brave has 55 million MAU. That is huge for a browser that's just 3 years old.
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iammjm 4y ago

They all do push their respective browsers but I wouldn’t say they ‘force’ them. All my devices are Apple devices and I use Edge on all of them, so…

frankjr 4y ago

And yet Brave has been "Growing 2x for the Fifth Year in a Row". Mozilla should stop whining and focus on building a browser that regular non technical people also want to use. How can I recommend Firefox to a family member when it absolutely chokes on 4k videos on YouTube and makes the laptop sound like a rocket lifting off (macOS, older intel MBP, Chromium based browsers work without a hitch and barely spin fans)? https://brave.com/2021-recap https://brave.com/2021-recap

rvz 4y ago
> Mozilla should stop whining and focus on building a browser that regular non technical people also want to use. This, they're right you know. Mozilla has being whining for years despite living off of Google's money and even with that they are still complaining and more websites are continuing to require Chromium browsers over using Firefox for their sites as they know the site breaks with Firefox. That's why little to no one is using it. Like when you have the choice of Linux distros, you have the many choices of Chromium browsers and it seems that Brave is the recommended one.

throw7 4y ago

It's not just apple/google/microsoft, it is a whole lot of companies that state the "recommended"/"supported" browser is chrome. Full stop. This is just something that has slowly/linearly been moving in that direction. Many, many years ago it started with bank's declaring "unsupported" when I'd connect with seamonkey et al. The initial lever was security, now it's purely client/server features that only google engineers can deliver in the next quarter. Chrome™: The way it's meant to be played.

Dalewyn 4y ago

Mozilla can bitch all they want, but as long as they continue to ship a shitty product nobody will heed them attention.

frou_dh 4y ago
It's not shitty, it's just not the best in the world. Same way everyone in a sport except the world champion isn't shitty.

nabakin 4y ago

This article is centered around a report from Mozilla without actually linking to it... Here is the original report https://research.mozilla.org/browser-competition/ https://research.mozilla.org/browser-competition/

swiley-gin 4y ago

userbinator 4y ago

For context, these articles form a good background of the ongoing war between Microsoft and Mozilla on this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28510490 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28510490 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29579994 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29579994 They'll always use "security" as an excuse to force you into doing what they want, and this is just another instance of that tactic. Don't be fooled into giving up your freedom. I wish more people would be aware of that.

lemon_bottle 4y ago

Well, a part of Mozilla (the foundation) keeps calling out Apple, Google and other big tech companies for their control, censorship and browser monopolies. However, another part (the corporation) keeps accepting regular pay checks from Google to fund themselves, can't really wrap my head around this "Mozilla Foundation vs Corporation" conundrum!

ls15 4y ago

@EU: there is money laying on the table again

oxff 4y ago

Firefox is so bad I don't really even care.

s_ting765 4y ago

I don't see the problem. Users have gotten used to the nagware in software they use everyday. Am sure Mozilla bundles its own nagware into its browser.

jeppester 4y ago

This claim is so obviously true, that it's hardly a claim. We should treat it like a fact, and talk about what we want to do about it. If we do nothing then these megacorps will use their power to unfairly outcompete or plain buy up all competition but the other megacorps. We can either have a world with maybe 50 gigantic corporations or thousands of smaller, but still large businesses. I personally think the latter would be much better for democracy and distribution of wealth.

codethief 4y ago

> Google’s president of global affairs Kent Walker said that potential antitrust regulations "would impose one set of rules on American companies while giving a pass to foreign companies" and that they "would give the Federal Trade Commission and other government agencies unprecedented power over the design of consumer products". Walker added: "All of this would be a dramatic reversal of the approach that has made the U.S. a global technology leader, and risks ceding America’s technology leadership and threatening our national security, as bipartisan national security experts have warned". What. That must be the most ridiculous excuse I've heard so far.

ece 4y ago
Let me translate that: Antitrust regulations "would impose rules that are bad for our bottom line, and would offer consumers choice." "We got so big because of lax regulations and mergers like the Doubleclick merger that weren't stopped, and we still want to keep buying out any potential competitors."

csydas 4y ago

Late to the party but Microsoft's arguments fall flat for me, at least with regards to Apple and Google, moreso Apple but can give Google _some_ credit on this one. Neither "forces" their respective browser in the same way that Microsoft does. Putting iOS aside for a minute to be addressed later, on an Apple device, the number of times you will get a pop-up telling you how insecure and slow and bad other browsers are is practically 0. Apple has the MacOS spam banner, but either they've toned it down or walked it back completely based on my experience purchasing an M1 this year. Never did Apple try to make you use Safari as your PDF reader, it doesn't change or add shortcuts for Safari on updates, it doesn't insert a banner on other apps or locations to tell you to use Safari, changing your default browser is as simple as opening System Preference and searching "default browser", then picking another one, and MacOS doesn't say a word about it. Spotlight is the one place that might surprise people but even it respects changing the default browser and will search on your set one. Google, as annoying as it is, also doesn't seem to care much which browser you use on Android; I don't own a ChromeOS device so no idea what it's like on that, but you're free to install just about anything and set it as default without so much as a hiccup, and similar to Apple, I have not seen it try to set itself via other common OS features. Granted, Google is a dick with Chrome in many other ways (other commenters have already noted how they use their control of the web to force Chrome), but I don't quite put it in the same way. iOS is special I guess in that you can install any browser "skin" you want, but it's webkit underneath. I'm mixed on this as I understand the arguments against this and it's definitely not good on Apple, but at the same time, if you're talking about what browser to use to get the features like sync, iOS lets you do it without a peep from iOS about it and for the grand majority of users, the rendering engine isn't what they care about, it's the other features of the browser which you can happily use. Still not good you can't use another engine, but I would still put it in the "okay, but needs improvement" area. All of this compared to how Microsoft handles Edge on Windows is a pittance. They really want you using Edge for everything, and there are so many system hooks that open Edge without you wanting it to. Changing the default is much more daunting, and it's far too easy to let it get set back (in general I've noticed Windows has some weird stuff about default applications in Win11. It might just be the release we use for our lab environments, but it refuses to let me set notepad++ as default text editor without resorting to the command line, but it could be just a strange situation). I have a hard time seeing this as anything but Microsoft muddying the waters with such arguments and I definitely don't see them as good faith. I suppose it's just good business sense that they don't try to tie Azure features/performance to "best viewed in Edge" as I imagine an exodus towards AWS/GCP, but for the mythical average user, they do a lot to get you onto Edge no matter what you actually want.

grey_earthling 4y ago

The EU's browser ballot was a solution to the wrong problem. The problem wasn't that IE had a monopoly within Windows; it was that Windows had a monopoly on computer OSes. (And Microsoft actively reinforced it by saying that if you sell other OSes on a “PC” they won't let you sell Windows.)

deleted 4y ago

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fattybob 4y ago

Hmm, I’m reading this on my apple iPhone using Orion - not really had any interest in using Mozilla for years ! I use mostly safari in my MacBook, but also use Firefox and chrome at times, safari is weapon of choice there

jcynix 4y ago

If you want to (or have to) use Apple Business Manager (web portal to remotely manage a number of IOS devices) Apple explicitely requires you to either use Safari or Edge, Firefox doesn't work. So much for the web as the "OS agnostic" interface for the 21st century.

RunSet 4y ago
Have you tried lying to Apple? https://www.ghacks.net/2022/07/10/apples-business-website-is-blocking-firefox-here-is-how-to-gain-access/ https://www.ghacks.net/2022/07/10/apples-business-website-is...
- jcynix 4y ago
  Yes, changing the user agent is a possibility. Luckily I do not have to work with Apple's Business Manager any longer.

guilhas 4y ago

I am more worried with the amount of CAPTCHAs I get in FirefoxESR/Windows from Cloudflare or Google, until I change user agent

vegetable 4y ago

I'm not seeing the force here; maybe dark patterns... I seem to remember being able to change default browser on Win 11 to Firefox/chtomium without much hassle. Its just the edge:// links that will still open with edge (understandably). I was even able to uninstall edge altogether with winget.

daoist_shaman 4y ago

I'm going a step further to say that these companies break interoperability between each others browsers and services.