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This is really good, but needs to be done in parallel with the investigation of how Google destroyed a thriving browser market just as it was recovering from IE

This is really good, but needs to be done in parallel with the investigation of how Google destroyed a thriving browser market just as it was recovering from IE. (Massive ad campaigns, and products that had weird bugs in other browsers for no good reason.)

johnnyanmac 3y ago
I mean, the former is 90% of modern capitalism (even in supposedly democratic "politicss"), and it's very hard to prove the latter due to the nature of code (especially with the spaghettigi and duct tape we call a "programming language"). Like half of Javascript, user-agents were a horribly abused concept that many sites have perverted for various technical and non-technical reasons. "weird bugs in other browsers for no good reason" describes most of the 00's web development environment.
veave 3y ago
"massive ad campaigns" is hardly an antitrust matter. Chrome ate Firefox and IE back in the day because it was monumentally better, technologically speaking.
- Jenk 3y ago
  I would argue it was better but has since degraded. The pivotal point, IMO, was ~6 years after Google's IPO.
- Dalewyn 3y ago
  Chrome when it released was faster than Firefox, but it wasn't "better". It ate far more RAM than either Firefox or IE did (and still does), back when RAM capacities were still practically limited, and Chrome was (and is) rendering the internet in Chrome ways much like IE did in Trident ways and Firefox has in Gecko ways. Chrome also had and still has its own UI paradigms, including no title bar, menu bar, nor status bar, and an omnibar instead of an address bar. What really made Chrome the victor was they kept improving things common people care about, particularly in JavaScript and therefore JavaShit execution, while Mozilla got lazy on "winning" the war and Google dollars and IE was too late in getting back into the game.
  - Rarebox 3y ago
    Back then I remember switching to Chrome for these reasons: 1. Feeling faster than firefox (still does) 2. Process separation for tabs. Firefox used to crash the whole browser, whereas chrome would crash just a single tab. 3. Shipped with support for Flash and PDFs
    - photonerd 3y ago
      Speed is why I use Safari now. It feels like Chrome did compared to FF back in the day. It’s painful using Chrome by comparison. If it wasn’t for Chromes better dev tools I doubt I’d use it much
      - sznio 3y ago
        Only reason Safari feels fast is that it has avoided implementing features. There's still stuff that's been present in Chrome/Firefox for 10 years, but still doesn't work in Safari. Does Google still show the old search results page design to Safari users? It did that for a long time.
        photonerd 3y ago
        Frankly, Safari works. If those features slow down the web then that’s a knock on those features. Plus I’ve yet to see a single one of these supposedly “missing” features actually matter in the real world.
      - Version467 3y ago
        May I recommend Orion? It's based on Safaris engine, but imo improves massively on its ui (for example it comes with a fantastic (opt-in) tree-style tab browser). But most importantly it supports chrome and firefox extensions. Most of them do just work out of the box.
        eitland 3y ago
        Orion is fantastic. I still use Firefox since it is cross browser but if I change to MacBook as my dev machine I might go all in on Orion as well.
- eitland 3y ago
  Who else has been allowed to advertise on the front page of Google? None as far as I am aware of. Not even - again AFAIK - disaster relief after the biggest disasters we have seen after Google was founded. I'd argue that is quite clearly the same league as Microsoft pre-installing Media Player and Internet Explorer: taking advantage of a niche that they completely dominates and abusing it to wedge their way into another ecosystem and then completely dominating that too.
  - formerly_proven 3y ago
    When you try to change the default browser on Windows (a setting ignored by some Microsoft apps, which will always use Edge btw.), you can't just change it, you get a pop-up going like: You SURE you wanna do that? Edge is better you know. And more secure. And shit. [ BIG BLUE CONTINUE WITH EDGE BUTTON ] Arial, 6pt grey on white, "Use my choice" link Edit: You also can't move or remove the Edge symbol from your desktop without admin privileges. So for a normal, unprivileged user there's just two things you can't remove from your desktop, recycle bin and Edge.
    - flangola7 3y ago
      What does that have to do with Chrome?
      - n6h6 3y ago
        Nothing, but it has to do with Microsoft, which the comment they were replying to talks about in its latter half.
  - manuelabeledo 3y ago
    Are you complaining about Google advertising its own products on their own websites?
    - jowea 3y ago
      If Microsoft could get in trouble for bundling its own product (IE) on its own OS (Windows) then IMHO this can in fact be seen as abusing monopolistic market power in the search market to benefit in the browser market.
- pyrale 3y ago
  > Chrome ate Firefox and IE back in the day because it was monumentally better, technologically speaking. The difference between Firefox and IE was orders of magnitude larger than the difference between Chrome and Firefox. The explosive growth from Chrome can't be explained just by it being better than competition, or Firefox would have replaced IE in 6 months earlier. The real explanation is that Chrome benefited from immeasurable (can't really calculate the cost of chrome being advertised prominently on every Google property) amounts of advertising.
  - disgruntledphd2 3y ago
    Chrome had an ad on the Google homepage! (which is not for sale). And at the top of basically every search in FF, they recommended Chrome.
  - simula67 3y ago
    > The difference between Firefox and IE was orders of magnitude larger than the difference between Chrome and Firefox I don't think so. When Chrome came out it was much better than competition too[1]. I don't know if Firefox was that much better than Internet Explorer. It is also possible that Chrome rode the wave of Firefox i.e, Firefox got people thinking about improved browsing experience by switching from Internet Explorer. Then Chrome came along and picked up many new users who may have otherwise gotten picked up by Firefox. [1] https://youtu.be/LRmrMiOWdfc https://youtu.be/LRmrMiOWdfc
  - Quarrelsome 3y ago
    I think you're forgetting some of the key benefits: * auto-updates when firefox was still: HELLO WEDNESDAY'S VERSION HAS DROPPED WOULD U LIKE TO DOWNLOAD IT? * tabs were isolated per process where an entire Firefox session could still get taken down by one tab not responding * That super sexy tab handling code where the resizing happened when you clicked away meaning you could close multiple tabs by simply clicking a lot (which you couldn't in Firefox because it was resizing them all the time).
    - pyrale 3y ago
      You seem to be missing the point. My point is that being incredibly more advanced than the incumbent browser was simply not enough to have a great adoption, as evidenced by FF or Opera's market progression before Chrome's introduction. People who make that claim in 2023 simply ignore how important Google's advertising was in securing Chrome's position.

johnnyanmac 3y ago

I mean, the former is 90% of modern capitalism (even in supposedly democratic "politicss"), and it's very hard to prove the latter due to the nature of code (especially with the spaghettigi and duct tape we call a "programming language"). Like half of Javascript, user-agents were a horribly abused concept that many sites have perverted for various technical and non-technical reasons. "weird bugs in other browsers for no good reason" describes most of the 00's web development environment.

veave 3y ago

"massive ad campaigns" is hardly an antitrust matter. Chrome ate Firefox and IE back in the day because it was monumentally better, technologically speaking.

Jenk 3y ago
I would argue it was better but has since degraded. The pivotal point, IMO, was ~6 years after Google's IPO.
Dalewyn 3y ago
Chrome when it released was faster than Firefox, but it wasn't "better". It ate far more RAM than either Firefox or IE did (and still does), back when RAM capacities were still practically limited, and Chrome was (and is) rendering the internet in Chrome ways much like IE did in Trident ways and Firefox has in Gecko ways. Chrome also had and still has its own UI paradigms, including no title bar, menu bar, nor status bar, and an omnibar instead of an address bar. What really made Chrome the victor was they kept improving things common people care about, particularly in JavaScript and therefore JavaShit execution, while Mozilla got lazy on "winning" the war and Google dollars and IE was too late in getting back into the game.
- Rarebox 3y ago
  Back then I remember switching to Chrome for these reasons: 1. Feeling faster than firefox (still does) 2. Process separation for tabs. Firefox used to crash the whole browser, whereas chrome would crash just a single tab. 3. Shipped with support for Flash and PDFs
  - photonerd 3y ago
    Speed is why I use Safari now. It feels like Chrome did compared to FF back in the day. It’s painful using Chrome by comparison. If it wasn’t for Chromes better dev tools I doubt I’d use it much
    - sznio 3y ago
      Only reason Safari feels fast is that it has avoided implementing features. There's still stuff that's been present in Chrome/Firefox for 10 years, but still doesn't work in Safari. Does Google still show the old search results page design to Safari users? It did that for a long time.
      - photonerd 3y ago
        Frankly, Safari works. If those features slow down the web then that’s a knock on those features. Plus I’ve yet to see a single one of these supposedly “missing” features actually matter in the real world.
    - Version467 3y ago
      May I recommend Orion? It's based on Safaris engine, but imo improves massively on its ui (for example it comes with a fantastic (opt-in) tree-style tab browser). But most importantly it supports chrome and firefox extensions. Most of them do just work out of the box.
      - eitland 3y ago
        Orion is fantastic. I still use Firefox since it is cross browser but if I change to MacBook as my dev machine I might go all in on Orion as well.
eitland 3y ago
Who else has been allowed to advertise on the front page of Google? None as far as I am aware of. Not even - again AFAIK - disaster relief after the biggest disasters we have seen after Google was founded. I'd argue that is quite clearly the same league as Microsoft pre-installing Media Player and Internet Explorer: taking advantage of a niche that they completely dominates and abusing it to wedge their way into another ecosystem and then completely dominating that too.
- formerly_proven 3y ago
  When you try to change the default browser on Windows (a setting ignored by some Microsoft apps, which will always use Edge btw.), you can't just change it, you get a pop-up going like: You SURE you wanna do that? Edge is better you know. And more secure. And shit. [ BIG BLUE CONTINUE WITH EDGE BUTTON ] Arial, 6pt grey on white, "Use my choice" link Edit: You also can't move or remove the Edge symbol from your desktop without admin privileges. So for a normal, unprivileged user there's just two things you can't remove from your desktop, recycle bin and Edge.
  - flangola7 3y ago
    What does that have to do with Chrome?
    - n6h6 3y ago
      Nothing, but it has to do with Microsoft, which the comment they were replying to talks about in its latter half.
- manuelabeledo 3y ago
  Are you complaining about Google advertising its own products on their own websites?
  - jowea 3y ago
    If Microsoft could get in trouble for bundling its own product (IE) on its own OS (Windows) then IMHO this can in fact be seen as abusing monopolistic market power in the search market to benefit in the browser market.
pyrale 3y ago
> Chrome ate Firefox and IE back in the day because it was monumentally better, technologically speaking. The difference between Firefox and IE was orders of magnitude larger than the difference between Chrome and Firefox. The explosive growth from Chrome can't be explained just by it being better than competition, or Firefox would have replaced IE in 6 months earlier. The real explanation is that Chrome benefited from immeasurable (can't really calculate the cost of chrome being advertised prominently on every Google property) amounts of advertising.
- disgruntledphd2 3y ago
  Chrome had an ad on the Google homepage! (which is not for sale). And at the top of basically every search in FF, they recommended Chrome.
- simula67 3y ago
  > The difference between Firefox and IE was orders of magnitude larger than the difference between Chrome and Firefox I don't think so. When Chrome came out it was much better than competition too[1]. I don't know if Firefox was that much better than Internet Explorer. It is also possible that Chrome rode the wave of Firefox i.e, Firefox got people thinking about improved browsing experience by switching from Internet Explorer. Then Chrome came along and picked up many new users who may have otherwise gotten picked up by Firefox. [1] https://youtu.be/LRmrMiOWdfc https://youtu.be/LRmrMiOWdfc
- Quarrelsome 3y ago
  I think you're forgetting some of the key benefits: * auto-updates when firefox was still: HELLO WEDNESDAY'S VERSION HAS DROPPED WOULD U LIKE TO DOWNLOAD IT? * tabs were isolated per process where an entire Firefox session could still get taken down by one tab not responding * That super sexy tab handling code where the resizing happened when you clicked away meaning you could close multiple tabs by simply clicking a lot (which you couldn't in Firefox because it was resizing them all the time).
  - pyrale 3y ago
    You seem to be missing the point. My point is that being incredibly more advanced than the incumbent browser was simply not enough to have a great adoption, as evidenced by FF or Opera's market progression before Chrome's introduction. People who make that claim in 2023 simply ignore how important Google's advertising was in securing Chrome's position.