3 ms·

Faster on one benchmark, but they don't have a consistent history of performance wins. The bigger issue is that nobody is embedding Gecko. Every Electron app is

by tapoxi 3y ago

Faster on one benchmark, but they don't have a consistent history of performance wins. The bigger issue is that nobody is embedding Gecko. Every Electron app is another developer targeting Chrome. Applications that embed a webview? Chrome. Any new web browser that wants to deliver a new experience (like Arc, or even Brave) is built atop Chromium. The problem is that "not pushing hostile web standards" and "more flexible ad blocking" clearly isn't stopping the insane bleeding of the userbase. These are people actively migrating away from Firefox in droves.

ComputerGuru 3y ago
I would argue that Electron webapps shouldn’t really count towards the browser marketshare. If would be nice to have a Firefox version, but it doesn’t matter precisely because the end user is not choosing the browser - the company pushing the product is. And let’s be honest: nerdy HN users aside, Joe Schmoe has no clue Teams is a web app running in an emasculated browser at all.
- dataangel 3y ago
  every time someone uses electron they buy into the chrome ecosystem -- when they run into problems they write mailing list posts or stack overflow questions that other people can read to help them when they have the same problem, and if they actually want to contribute bugfixes or features upstream they go into chrome not firefox. also if they have a webapp version the webapp version that's running in chrome works exactly the same as the same code running in electron without really having to do any separate testing so which browser are they going to push to be used internally?
- lkbm 3y ago
  > I would argue that Electron webapps shouldn’t really count towards the browser marketshare. Perhaps not, but if you're writing your desktop app in Electron, you'll be benchmarking your performance optimizations against the Chrome engine. If that same code is used for your web app, you're optimizing your website for Chrome. Mozilla can pour resources into making Firefox more performance, but the real-world ecosystem will change behavior to improve Chrome's performance on their webapp with little concern as to whether it hurts Firefox's performance. (I assume people use largely the same code between Electron and their webapps, and that optimizations for Electron translate reasonably well to optimizations for Chrome.)
SubiculumCode 3y ago
1. I use firefox in Windows, Linux, and Android. I am NOT suffering. 2. Most people aren't actively choosing their web browser. For example, my wife uses the Samsung web browser on her phone because that is the default. 3. Most people think Google is the internet, can't distinguish between the browser and the google webpage, etc. 4. A dwindling marketshare percentage does not directly imply old userspe are moving from Firefox to another browser, it could imply that new users don't know/use firefox
- fauigerzigerk 3y ago
  >4. A dwindling marketshare percentage does not directly imply old userspe are moving from Firefox to another browser, it could imply that new users don't know/use firefox You're right that it could theoretically mean that, but unfortunately monthly active users have actually fallen by ~20% since 2019 according to Mozilla: https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity
  - WorldMaker 3y ago
    It may also just mean more users are opting out of telemetry. Given Mozilla's privacy focus in their marketing and their UX, it may not be a shock that a large number of users are also opting out of even Mozilla's telemetry.
    - SubiculumCode 3y ago
      I do.
ohgodplsno 3y ago
Keep moving the goalposts, Firefox is going to go real far this way. Google is _forcing_ Chrome, onto everyone. Gecko is fully embeddable on Android, through GeckoView. Nobody uses it, because the default WebView is chrome. androidx.browser is Chrome. And if you want to delegate to the browser while still staying in an app context, the feature is called Chrome Custom Tabs. Everything is made to make people forget about Firefox's existence. Google actively harms Firefox performance on their websites, while happily displaying a "it's better on Chrome" everywhere you browser. They force the WHATWG's hand on 90% of features. There's articles every month on new-obscure-feature-that-is-only-implemented-by-chrome-and-requires-an-army-to-implement, pushed and paid for by Google, which dumbass webshits are going to go and implement because obviously their VC backed startup _really_ needs WebUSB and WebMIDI, as well as Google's shitty, unfinished implementation of WebGPU. Google is a cancer that grows everywhere, killing everything it touches. Firefox smoking a cigarette from time to time is not responsible for that.
- cxr 3y ago
  Google sucks. Your position seems to be, though, that because Google sucks, we can't talk about the self-inflicted wounding of Firefox and other buffoonery that happens under the Mozilla Corp umbrella—since Google sucks so much more. There's a word for that: whataboutism.
  - lostmsu 3y ago
    > self-inflicted wounding of Firefox This makes no sense. The parent argument is that Chrome wins due to aggressive bundling and free ads on Google. Neither of those are self-inflicted wounds. The claim is that Mozilla doesn't actually have self-inflicted wounds.
    - pessimizer 3y ago
      The claim is that we have to blame Firefox's failure on bundling and google.com banners, and can't discuss how hostile and bizarre they've been. We also can't discuss that 80% of their revenue comes from Google, for nothing, and that the other 20% of their revenue is the entire return on 100% of their investment in the browser.

by tapoxi 3y ago

ComputerGuru 3y ago

I would argue that Electron webapps shouldn’t really count towards the browser marketshare. If would be nice to have a Firefox version, but it doesn’t matter precisely because the end user is not choosing the browser - the company pushing the product is. And let’s be honest: nerdy HN users aside, Joe Schmoe has no clue Teams is a web app running in an emasculated browser at all.

dataangel 3y ago
every time someone uses electron they buy into the chrome ecosystem -- when they run into problems they write mailing list posts or stack overflow questions that other people can read to help them when they have the same problem, and if they actually want to contribute bugfixes or features upstream they go into chrome not firefox. also if they have a webapp version the webapp version that's running in chrome works exactly the same as the same code running in electron without really having to do any separate testing so which browser are they going to push to be used internally?
lkbm 3y ago
> I would argue that Electron webapps shouldn’t really count towards the browser marketshare. Perhaps not, but if you're writing your desktop app in Electron, you'll be benchmarking your performance optimizations against the Chrome engine. If that same code is used for your web app, you're optimizing your website for Chrome. Mozilla can pour resources into making Firefox more performance, but the real-world ecosystem will change behavior to improve Chrome's performance on their webapp with little concern as to whether it hurts Firefox's performance. (I assume people use largely the same code between Electron and their webapps, and that optimizations for Electron translate reasonably well to optimizations for Chrome.)

SubiculumCode 3y ago

1. I use firefox in Windows, Linux, and Android. I am NOT suffering. 2. Most people aren't actively choosing their web browser. For example, my wife uses the Samsung web browser on her phone because that is the default. 3. Most people think Google is the internet, can't distinguish between the browser and the google webpage, etc. 4. A dwindling marketshare percentage does not directly imply old userspe are moving from Firefox to another browser, it could imply that new users don't know/use firefox

fauigerzigerk 3y ago
>4. A dwindling marketshare percentage does not directly imply old userspe are moving from Firefox to another browser, it could imply that new users don't know/use firefox You're right that it could theoretically mean that, but unfortunately monthly active users have actually fallen by ~20% since 2019 according to Mozilla: https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity
- WorldMaker 3y ago
  It may also just mean more users are opting out of telemetry. Given Mozilla's privacy focus in their marketing and their UX, it may not be a shock that a large number of users are also opting out of even Mozilla's telemetry.
  - SubiculumCode 3y ago
    I do.

ohgodplsno 3y ago

Keep moving the goalposts, Firefox is going to go real far this way. Google is _forcing_ Chrome, onto everyone. Gecko is fully embeddable on Android, through GeckoView. Nobody uses it, because the default WebView is chrome. androidx.browser is Chrome. And if you want to delegate to the browser while still staying in an app context, the feature is called Chrome Custom Tabs. Everything is made to make people forget about Firefox's existence. Google actively harms Firefox performance on their websites, while happily displaying a "it's better on Chrome" everywhere you browser. They force the WHATWG's hand on 90% of features. There's articles every month on new-obscure-feature-that-is-only-implemented-by-chrome-and-requires-an-army-to-implement, pushed and paid for by Google, which dumbass webshits are going to go and implement because obviously their VC backed startup _really_ needs WebUSB and WebMIDI, as well as Google's shitty, unfinished implementation of WebGPU. Google is a cancer that grows everywhere, killing everything it touches. Firefox smoking a cigarette from time to time is not responsible for that.

cxr 3y ago
Google sucks. Your position seems to be, though, that because Google sucks, we can't talk about the self-inflicted wounding of Firefox and other buffoonery that happens under the Mozilla Corp umbrella—since Google sucks so much more. There's a word for that: whataboutism.
- lostmsu 3y ago
  > self-inflicted wounding of Firefox This makes no sense. The parent argument is that Chrome wins due to aggressive bundling and free ads on Google. Neither of those are self-inflicted wounds. The claim is that Mozilla doesn't actually have self-inflicted wounds.
  - pessimizer 3y ago
    The claim is that we have to blame Firefox's failure on bundling and google.com banners, and can't discuss how hostile and bizarre they've been. We also can't discuss that 80% of their revenue comes from Google, for nothing, and that the other 20% of their revenue is the entire return on 100% of their investment in the browser.