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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 capa

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.
    - photonerd 3y ago
      Not gonna lie, a tree-style tab browser sounds like awful UI to me, but… I’m glad you like it. Supporting the insecure bloatware that is Chrome & FF extensions tho? Massive convenience factor, I get it, but… ewwww
- kevingadd 3y ago
  It's funny how massive the impact of "bundle a bunch of proprietary stuff into our open browser" was on the browser wars. Between H264, MP3, Flash and PDF, Firefox never had a chance.
  - Nathan2055 3y ago
    The problem is that there simply wasn't a better option at the time. Ogg Vorbis was a novelty at best, and it was the only decently widely adopted open source competitor for any of the items listed that was available at the time. HTML5 was only just published when Chrome launched. So Flash was at that point the only option available to show a video in the browser (sure, downloading a RealPlayer file was always an option, but it was clunky, creators didn't like people being able to save stuff locally, and was also not open source). Chrome in fact arguably accelerated the process of getting web video open sourced: Google bought On2 in 2010 to get the rights to VP8 (the only decent H.264 competitor available at that point) so they could immediately open source it. The plan was in fact to remove H.264 from Chrome entirely once VP8/VP9 adoption ramped up[1], but that didn’t end up happening. Flash was integrated into Chrome because people were going to use it anyway, and having Google distribute it at least let them both sandbox it and roll out automatic updates (a massive vector for malware at the time was ads pretending to be Flash updates, which worked because people were just that used to constant Flash security patches, most of which required a full reboot to apply; Chrome fixed both of those issues). Apple are the ones who ultimately dealt the death blow to Flash, and it was really just because Adobe could not optimize it for phone CPUs no matter what they tried (even the few Android releases of Flash that we got were practically unusable). That also further accelerated the adoption of open source HTML5 technologies. PDF is an open source format, and has been since 2008. While I don't know if pressure from Google is what did it, that wouldn’t surprise me. Regardless, the Chrome PDF reader, PDFium, is open source[2] and Mozilla's equivalent project from 2011, PDF.js, is also open source.[3] Both of these projects replaced the distinctly closed source Adobe Reader plugin that was formerly mandatory for viewing PDFs in the browser. Chrome is directly responsible for eliminating a lot of proprietary software from mainstream use and replacing it with high-quality open source tools. While they've caused problems in other areas of browser development that are worthy of criticism, Chrome's track record when it comes to open sourcing their tech has been very good. [1]: https://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html https://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-i... [2]: https://github.com/chromium/pdfium https://github.com/chromium/pdfium [3]: https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js
makeitdouble 3y ago
Chrome's crushing advantage is/was perfect Google service support. For a long time Safari has struggled with Google Suite, Youtube support is/was janky on almost every other browser etc. The Edge incident was kind of a perfect illustration of how Google either didn't care or actively threw spikes in rivals' wheels.
refulgentis 3y ago
> Chrome was just like [IE6], rendered whatever it wanted. > JavaShit I don't think the increasingly small # of people who still talk this way about the web appreciate how easily this reads as incorrect extremism.
- Dalewyn 3y ago
  Chrome's throne is reinforced by the combined factors of websites increasingly becoming only compatible with Chrome, and JavaShit increasingly assuming Chrome-levels of execution speed.

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.
  - photonerd 3y ago
    Not gonna lie, a tree-style tab browser sounds like awful UI to me, but… I’m glad you like it. Supporting the insecure bloatware that is Chrome & FF extensions tho? Massive convenience factor, I get it, but… ewwww
kevingadd 3y ago
It's funny how massive the impact of "bundle a bunch of proprietary stuff into our open browser" was on the browser wars. Between H264, MP3, Flash and PDF, Firefox never had a chance.
- Nathan2055 3y ago
  The problem is that there simply wasn't a better option at the time. Ogg Vorbis was a novelty at best, and it was the only decently widely adopted open source competitor for any of the items listed that was available at the time. HTML5 was only just published when Chrome launched. So Flash was at that point the only option available to show a video in the browser (sure, downloading a RealPlayer file was always an option, but it was clunky, creators didn't like people being able to save stuff locally, and was also not open source). Chrome in fact arguably accelerated the process of getting web video open sourced: Google bought On2 in 2010 to get the rights to VP8 (the only decent H.264 competitor available at that point) so they could immediately open source it. The plan was in fact to remove H.264 from Chrome entirely once VP8/VP9 adoption ramped up[1], but that didn’t end up happening. Flash was integrated into Chrome because people were going to use it anyway, and having Google distribute it at least let them both sandbox it and roll out automatic updates (a massive vector for malware at the time was ads pretending to be Flash updates, which worked because people were just that used to constant Flash security patches, most of which required a full reboot to apply; Chrome fixed both of those issues). Apple are the ones who ultimately dealt the death blow to Flash, and it was really just because Adobe could not optimize it for phone CPUs no matter what they tried (even the few Android releases of Flash that we got were practically unusable). That also further accelerated the adoption of open source HTML5 technologies. PDF is an open source format, and has been since 2008. While I don't know if pressure from Google is what did it, that wouldn’t surprise me. Regardless, the Chrome PDF reader, PDFium, is open source[2] and Mozilla's equivalent project from 2011, PDF.js, is also open source.[3] Both of these projects replaced the distinctly closed source Adobe Reader plugin that was formerly mandatory for viewing PDFs in the browser. Chrome is directly responsible for eliminating a lot of proprietary software from mainstream use and replacing it with high-quality open source tools. While they've caused problems in other areas of browser development that are worthy of criticism, Chrome's track record when it comes to open sourcing their tech has been very good. [1]: https://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html https://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-i... [2]: https://github.com/chromium/pdfium https://github.com/chromium/pdfium [3]: https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js

makeitdouble 3y ago

Chrome's crushing advantage is/was perfect Google service support. For a long time Safari has struggled with Google Suite, Youtube support is/was janky on almost every other browser etc. The Edge incident was kind of a perfect illustration of how Google either didn't care or actively threw spikes in rivals' wheels.

refulgentis 3y ago

> Chrome was just like [IE6], rendered whatever it wanted. > JavaShit I don't think the increasingly small # of people who still talk this way about the web appreciate how easily this reads as incorrect extremism.

Dalewyn 3y ago
Chrome's throne is reinforced by the combined factors of websites increasingly becoming only compatible with Chrome, and JavaShit increasingly assuming Chrome-levels of execution speed.