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Who has been mismanaged for at least a decade and depends on Google to pay their bills.. I'm a FF user since the early 00's and Firefox will mostly not go away

• bee_rider 3y ago
  I hear Firefox is mismanaged all the time, but it seems to be a perfectly fine browser for the most part. I hear all about sites that won’t render in comments on this website, but they must all be internal tools or something because I never encounter them.
  • MildRant 3y ago
    I sparingly run into sites that don't render properly on Firefox but they do exist. As an example, Ticketmaster's account page has problems on Firefox that I don't get on Chromium.
    • bee_rider 3y ago
      Firefox is helping you, Ticketmaster is evil.
      • lxgr 3y ago
        Maybe so, but asking somebody to not go to shows of their favorite bands anymore as a form of protest against Ticketmaster and/or Google is a bit much. Unfortunately, some venues seem to be Ticketmaster only at this point. Sometimes you’ve got to choose your battles.
        • martin8412 3y ago
          Yes, because the ones who owns the venues also own Ticketmaster. Live Nation is the name.
        • prmoustache 3y ago
          I never used ticketmaster and it is not a monopoly. Choose the right company to sell you tickets.
          • lxgr 3y ago
            Surely you've been to shows at every possible venue to be able to extrapolate that bold of a claim from your personal experience?
            • prmoustache 3y ago
              No but appart from festivals (which were not relying on ticket master) I haven't seen tickets sold by only one company. Usually there are different ones and also some plain old in person in ticket office of department stores.
              • MildRant 3y ago
                There are venues that are Ticketmaster specific because Ticketmaster's parent company owns the venue and some acts just use Ticketmaster because they are the most popular ticketing service. If I want to go to UFC 292 for example, I have to get my tickets through Ticketmaster. UFC isn't using some service that shows up on indiehacker
                • prmoustache 3y ago
                  A fraction of a fraction of a fraction of all tickets/venues available. So hard to boycott.
          • yencabulator 3y ago
            Ticketmaster is the only company selling tickets to several venues, there is no choice of who to buy from available there. The only choice is to boycott your favorite artist because their record label made a deal with the wrong company. That's too many layers of indirection, for many fans.
    • pzo 3y ago
      I have the same - not sure if its related to many privacy plugins in my Firefox but e.g. google maps still doesn't render as sharp as in Chromium browsers - seems like using rasterized tiles.
    • everdrive 3y ago
      This is going to be a problem which compounds more as Google gains more ground. “Oh, I love internet freedom, but I really need to visit website X.” As more and more websites adopt Chrome’s standards, Chrome will be the only browser that works.
  • wsgeorge 3y ago
    Some Google services I regularly depend on (like YouTube and Google Meet) don't work as well on Firefox as they do on Chrome, in ways that actually matter. Besides that I think most websites work fine.
    • kristiandupont 3y ago
      What's wrong with Youtube? I haven't noticed anything.
      • wsgeorge 3y ago
        TBF YouTube has gotten better (see sibling comment), but Google Meet is really what matters here for me. There's also offline mode in Google Docs, which I use regularly because I'm not guaranteed a good-enough connection wherever I go. Firefox does some things better (like PiP video playback on most websites, like YouTube!) but others are so poorly done (like Profiles) compared to Chrome that it overall makes Chrome my first choice browser.
        • mort96 3y ago
          I never used Firefox profiles, but Firefox container tabs work really well IMO. I much prefer them to Chrome's profiles for managing work vs personal logins.
    • amjd 3y ago
      I haven't noticed any issues on YouTube after subscribing. Before that it used to glitch once in a while possibly to penalize the ad blocking. But that may have been the behaviour in Chrome too for all I know. Google Meet does have some key features missing on Firefox such as blurring / changing video background.
    • coffeefirst 3y ago
      Yes. Google uses chrome-only APIs in a few of its own products and falls back not so gracefully. Which sort of underscores the monopoly point. There’s no universal free/cheap alternative to Meet, further entrenching Chromium.
  • gamache 3y ago
    The Mozilla Foundation is arguably mismanaged. Firefox does ok, but could go further if the Foundation invested more in FF development and less on… other things.
  • oxygen_crisis 3y ago
    I'm surprised not to see more love for Librewolf here on HN. It's just the latest Firefox release, recompiled without all the Mozilla telemetry, and with all the settings flipped to more secure/private defaults so all the tracking features are opt-in instead of opt-out.
    • jwells89 3y ago
      Honestly I think the name of the project might be limiting its adoption. It’s sometimes annoying for the more technically inclined among us, but branding matters a lot. You need a name that’s snappy and memorable, which “Librewolf” is not. Firefox is actually a pretty good example of good branding. It’s short, rolls off the tongue, has pleasant alliteration, and evokes mental imagery.
      • HeckFeck 3y ago
        I wonder how those ‘use GNU IceCat’ conversations went, if they ever happened.
      • prox 3y ago
        Unfortunately on the whole techies are absolutely poor at marketing, which is a skill all by itself.
    • replete 3y ago
      It's behind by some weeks on major, contributing new features is difficult because most dev effort seems to be on integrating upstream. It is a great easy path for the less technical to 'more privacy', but pretty much if you are a developer just harden it yourself IMO.
  • xlix 3y ago
    I've been using FF as my default browser on desktop and mobile for at least 4 years. I've had zero issues. In fact, if I need to use their dev tools, I find them superior to chrome. I don't understand the shade Mozilla gets thrown at them.
• gmerc 3y ago
  You’re gonna have to swallow your pride and use the best option here. If you are American you already have lifelong training in this dynamic and you know if you don’t, it just gets so much worse.
• ChatGTP 3y ago
  Who has been mismanaged for at least a decade and depends on Google to pay their bills.. I don't see how this matters, it's an open source project, if people find enough value, it will be forked and improved by community or a new organization will form around it. This is the beauty of open source, you must embrace.
• viraptor 3y ago
  I'm not really seeing the dilemma here. Would you choose a browser from a mismanaged organisation, or a browser from a corp actively subverting the very basic idea of having a web client you can control, which has a chance of forever changing how we get to interact with businesses online? (In likely the worst way possible) Seriously, how is this a question? (Unless you want to go with another independent option, then sure)
• Renaud 3y ago
  None of that should prevent anyone from using Firefox. There are no alternatives, nearly all other browsers are built on Chromium. Making FF more prominent will not give Google more power, it will give Mozilla more power to negotiate better deals with Google and Bing to become the default search engine, because in the world of browsers, that's what pays the bills. Giving more power to Mozilla hinges on them having a larger user-base so their voice is heard on these technical issues. I'm tired of people complaining about how much better they could do "if only" this, or that FF was % slower on some tasks 10 years ago. Firefox is a better alternative. It's the only alternative, and we can make more demand on its direction if we actually use it. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't hold Mozilla to higher standards, but if we keep waiting for them to be perfect before we will consider using and pushing FF, we're just going to lose the only alternative not controlled by Google or Microsoft. It's Firefox here and now. There probably won't be a tomorrow otherwise. Google is making that very clear.
  • lxgr 3y ago
    Exactly. Also, if some anecdata can help change a mind: Firefox is a really good browser these days. I use it quite heavily, and it hasn’t disappointed in the last three or so years since I switched from Chrome. About the only use case I still need Chrome for is for sites requiring experimental web APIs not supported by Firefox, such as Web USB or Web Bluetooth. Site compatibility for everything else, including very heavy web apps, is just fine. History sync is encrypted, which is what made me switch over in the first place (Chrome deactivates history sync when activating end-to-end encryption – go figure…)
    • rkangel 3y ago
      I switched to Firefox for the idealogical reasons above and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was a net improvement. The only site I have compatibility issues with on desktop is MS Teams and even then it's only for voice/video calls, everything else works fine. Firefox Android is a slightly less happy place. The password manager doesn't work very well (am moving away from the built-in one) and I can't log in on Amazon (which is important because I can't buy Kindle books in the app because of the Play Store).
• ddq 3y ago
  Sad that the broader message of this post was ignored in favor of “but you should use Firefox” replies.
• prmoustache 3y ago
  > Who has been mismanaged for at least a decade Do you think Google is better managed?
  • PedroBatista 3y ago
    One has a browser that has +60% market share, the other went from ~55% to 3%. One company dominates "the Web" and pulls these shenanigans all every other year, the other one is totally dependent of the former to pay their bills. So yeah, Google has been better managed than Mozilla. That doesn't invalidate Google's execs are a bunch of lizards on the now common SV ego trip and screw up all the time, but they can and ensure they can continue to do so, Mozilla is not in the same position and part of blame must be attributed to them.
    • prmoustache 3y ago
      Dwindling market share of firefox is pretty much not related to how the mozilla foundation is managed. They had 55% of the market when the only competition was: - ie6 which was a security nightmare for everybody - browsers like Opera developed by very small companies against which competition was more based on merit The only way for Mozilla have been able to maintain its market share against chrome would have to manage to reach both these requirements: - build the #1 smartphone OS in the market in term of market share to have it preinstalled everywhere - build the #1 search engine in term of market share to advertise using it everytime the user search for something. Both feats requiring: - financial means that were out of reach from the Mozilla foundation at any moment in time regardless of its management. - giving up on mozilla ethics and values to be on same level as the definitely evil competitor.