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In the modern age where "Web Standards" is just a synonym for "Chrome's Feature Set", Mozilla serves one purpose and one purpose alone: they are to be dangled a
by Devasta 3y ago
In the modern age where "Web Standards" is just a synonym for "Chrome's Feature Set", Mozilla serves one purpose and one purpose alone: they are to be dangled about like Weekend At Bernies so that Google can pretend they dont have a monopoly on browsers.
I expect even that will become untenable soon: when other engines finally appear on iOS in the next few years we'll start seeing websites blocking any non-chrome browsers (and probably some of the reskins too) and then Mozilla won't even be useful as a fig leaf.
Its an awful state of affairs, and I don't see any way out of it for them.
- p-e-w 3y agoSafari's market share dwarfs that of Firefox, and has for a long time. If there is indeed such a "fig leaf", it's Apple, not Mozilla.
- chiefalchemist 3y agoApple acquires Mozilla? Eventually?
- Dah00n 3y agoThat would mean the death of Firefox. Apple is the exact opposite of what Mozilla is or tries to be.
- eastbound 3y agoEconomically, Mozilla is a subsidiary of Google. Honestly, they keep arguing it is not the case, but they excellently serve as non-threatening competition.
- hollander 3y agoWhy would they?
- chiefalchemist 3y agoWhy not? Stranger things have happened.
- 5- 3y agomost of that market share will go away the moment google is allowed to push chrome on ios.
- nfriedly 3y agoI don't know, defaults are pretty powerful. There's already a Chrome-branded Safari wrapper on iOS; but my guess is that the majority of iOS users use "regular" Safari and will continue to because it's the default.
- bratwurst3000 3y agoI don’t think they will. Safari doesn’t have good plugins. That’s a big point. Using plugins.
- nfriedly 3y agoI'm mostly a Firefox on Android user, does Chrome on Android have plugins now? I know it didn't for a while.
- danarmak 3y agoI assume you mean extensions, not plugins. No, Chrome doesn't support extensions on android, but some Chromium reskins do. That said, the most important extension usecase is adblocking, and with Manifest v4 and FLoC/Topics and SafetyNet/remote attestation, well...
- bad_user 3y agoChrome's adblocking capabilities, introduced in Manifest v3, are (1) inspired by Safari and (2) more capable than what Safari provides. You can track this uBlock Origin Lite issue: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/issues/52 https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/issues/52
- oktoberpaard 3y ago
- cmcaleer 3y agoIn terms of desktop market share it's about equal. https://analytics.wikimedia.org/dashboards/browsers/#desktop-site-by-browser https://analytics.wikimedia.org/dashboards/browsers/#desktop...
- Devasta 3y agoDoes Safari work on Windows or Android? Safaris market share is because other browser engines are restricted. The second Chrome becomes available on iOS Google search, maps, YouTube, everything will have "Works best in Chrome" plastered everywhere.
- pjmlp 3y agoJust as info for the young folks, Safari had a Windows version until 2012.
- frizlab 3y agoOne of the main reasons why I’m fiercely _against_ the possibility of having alternate rendering engines on iOS.
- 5- 3y ago- don't fight evil with evil - two wrongs don't make a right - can't put out fire with more fire etc. sorry for the lazy response, but too many exactly fitting idioms to resist.
- olavfosse 3y agoPutting out fire with more fire works very well: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_burn https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_burn
- Ensorceled 3y agoThe idiom is literally “fight fire with fire” Also, “the enemy of my enemy, is my friend”
- Sindisil 3y agoMaxim 29. The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy. No more. No less.
- stjohnswarts 3y agoThat doesn't mean what they're doing isn't to your advantage.
- marcosdumay 3y ago> “the enemy of my enemy, is my friend” That one basically never leads to anything good.
- Ensorceled 3y agoWell, none of these are “words to live by” so you’re not wrong.
- jqpabc123 3y agoSorry, this was the common excuse for years. It just doesn't fly any more now that FireFox market share has shrunk to irrelevance. By every available statistic, Chrome has more than 80 percent of the "free market" --- i.e. the market outside of Apple's walled garden where it has only recently become a realistic option.
- jacquesm 3y agoNo, it works just fine like that. The ideal outcome is for FireFox to continue to exist with a very small marketshare. That's enough for the FigLeaf function and not enough for Google to worry about killing it off any further. And contrary to the other time when a monopolist kept their competition alive I don't think this one is going to end with FireFox reversing its fate and ending up with market dominance after a surprise success.
- eastbound 3y agoIt only exists because people with an ideal keep trying to stay as users. Ideals die hard, so the long trail will be long, but Firefox is effectively as niche as Linux on the desktop.
- jacquesm 3y agoFortunately for me I have both FF and Linux on the desktop. Now that they've finally fixed web midi even that reason to have Chrome has gone away.
- jqpabc123 3y agoI suspect that most remaining FF users are running it on Linux desktop.
- pseudalopex 3y agoMost Firefox requests to Wikimedia sites say Windows.[1] [1] https://analytics.wikimedia.org/dashboards/browsers/#all-sites-by-os-and-browser/os-browser-family-and-major-hierarchical-view https://analytics.wikimedia.org/dashboards/browsers/#all-sit...
- cmcaleer 3y agoThat's not true, Mozilla also exist to pay Mitchell Baker and her cronies fat salaries. In 2020, she got paid $3MM. In 2021, after an incredible year which saw Firefox's market share fall even further, she of course got a raise to $5MM for her brave decision to lay off 250 people in Aug 2020. I hope she gets a massive bonus for 2023, given that her leadership has allowed Microsoft Edge to flip Firefox most days according to the stats, and she still has a quarter to let Safari consistently flip Firefox too! It is obscene. She wants to be paid according to what she alleges her market value is, but she does not have the accountability of a publicly traded company's CEO. Firefox needs a radical culture change and it needs to happen 8 years ago. I have no hope it will happen, as it exists to siphon money from suckers who pay donations that barely pay Mitchell's salary (total annual donations barely cover this expense![1]) and the board does not give a shit about what Firefox's core audience cares about. The grift will continue until Mitchell and co decide enough is enough and flee the sinking ship. Whoever inherits it and the massively bloated outgoing expenses will probably be fucked, regardless of who they are or how good their intentions are. Firefox is massively behind, web devs are not incentivised to accommodate for the single-digit percent of Firefox users, and things are only going to continue to get worse. [1] Yes Mitchell is paid by the corporation as opposed to the non-profit and donations go to the non-profit, but ultimately money that could have gone to the non-profit went to Mitchell's bank account Stats from https://analytics.wikimedia.org/dashboards/browsers/#desktop-site-by-browser https://analytics.wikimedia.org/dashboards/browsers/#desktop...
- maverick74 3y agoThats not all!!! I was really amazed with this post I found here the other day: https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4387539/firefox-money-investigating-the-bizarre-finances-of-mozilla https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4387539/firefox-money-invest... maybe they should think better where they put their money!!! If servo ever gets into a decent independent browser I will let go of Firefox the second its released!!! I do not support a donation-based tech company spending money in other places not related to tech!
- phero_cnstrcts 3y agoWow. If that’s all true then that’s really disconcerting but hardly surprising in this corrupt-to-bone world. Every single choice we have to make boils down to taking the lesser evil.
- wodenokoto 3y agoYou’re very behind the times if you think it is Firefox that is between Chrome and complete browser dominance. That spot has been filled by safari on the iPhone a long time ago. Firefox is my favorite desktop browser, but the desktop market is not the big deal when it comes to browsers. Even edge has higher usage than Firefox across devices. https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share
- Devasta 3y agoThats only because of the restriction on Webkit only on iOS. That wall is collapsing and with it anything that keeps Safari in the game.
- pjmlp 3y agoBy then anyone doing web development can rename their CVs entries from Web Developer into ChromeOS Developer.
- philistine 3y agoThe reality is different from what Google says to the regulators. That’s the Weekend at Bernie’s stuff that is happening.
- Semaphor 3y agoLuckily, in Germany FF still has over 10% of the total market, and almost 20% on Desktop.
- pjmlp 3y agoIt might be, however in most projects it no longer makes into the browser matrix for project delivery acceptance.
- extraduder_ire 3y ago> we'll start seeing websites blocking any non-chrome browsers (and probably some of the reskins too) and then Mozilla won't even be useful as a fig leaf. Thankfully, browser extensions can quite easily make firefox pretend to be whatever browser you want.
- devit 3y agoThey could drop Gecko and switch to Blink/Chromium. Then Firefox would be guaranteed to be strictly better than Chrome, since the baseline is the same and they can put in all the features that Google doesn't want because they would reduce their ad income, such as great ad-blocking support. This might result in losing Google's search engine deal, but they can probably make a similar deal with an LLM-based search engine and even if the money might be less they don't need that much if they are only maintaining a fork and not the whole engine.
- SergeAx 3y agoI'm not getting it: why would websites block browsers?
- jandrese 3y agoIn the old days there were plenty of websites designed only for IE6, and a few that refused to load if they detected any other browser string. It doesn’t make much sense today, Firefox loads sites developed for Chrome just fine. There is no ActiveX like “embrace and extend” coming from the Google camp quite yet.
- paulryanrogers 3y agoI'd argue the rapid pace of new Chrome-only APIs is effectively EEE. Web developers can't wait to use new features, so once features land in Chrome they'll get used. Then folks not using Chrome find more friction until they eventually give up and switch.
- postalrat 3y agoCan you think of any real life examples of websites that use Chrome only apis and don't work in Firefox?
- paulryanrogers 3y agoJust this week: - Snyk - Fastly's support site - background blur on Meet and Zoom
- xctr94 3y agoI don’t have a list of examples, but this is historically a problem for the web. I’ve sat in a couple of Ecmascript events where maintainers complain about Google implementing features before approval. Sometimes Chrome ships stage 2 features because (apparently) Google engineers don’t want to respect due process. It’s known, we just put up with it. I also blame developers working on non-standardized features. You should work with the ES that is official and current, not the one Google is forcing on other vendors. Apologies for not listing all the times this happened, but I think too many.