9 ms·

Most popular browser missing (Chrome)...

277 points by chrisacky 14y ago

Splines 14y ago
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." Not to say that the people working at FB are stupid, but odds are that someone at FB made this page several years ago and this page has languished on the backburner with no attention since then.
- amitamb 14y ago
  I don't think this page wasn't updated for long time. It has IE logo of IE9+. So it was updated at least after IE9 release and by that time Chrome was major browser. IE9 was released April Last year. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_8 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_8 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_9 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_9
  - Splines 14y ago
    Good point. Still, I argue that FB doesn't have any sort of ulterior motive with not showing a webkit-based browser or what-have-you.
    - weixiyen 14y ago
      On the grounds that they are stupid?
- varenc 14y ago
  Actually the old page (well, one version of it) didn't list IE at all.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
nextparadigms 14y ago
Wow. Are they seriously pulling this one on Google? That seems so low to me.
- altrego99 14y ago
  I don't think it is unfair. The point is you'd always leave out something or the other. The objective is to get the person into a proper browser, without scaring them with way too many options - and not to be fully politically correct.
  - mzarate06 14y ago
    I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, but I will say that I don't look at it from being fair vs. unfair. It's purely silly, based on Microsoft's and IE's browser credentials. IE is arguably the worst browser out there, and has been for some time. To see it first on a list of "we support these browsers" is comical.
    - bradwestness 14y ago
      As is including Firefox and Opera, but not the second most popular browser. Although it's very possible that they decided which browsers to include back in '09 or earlier and just haven't revisited the decision since. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Usage_share_of_web_browsers_(Source_StatCounter).svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Usage_share_of_web_browser...
      - duaneb 14y ago
        That's out of date. Chrome is now the top browser, IIRC.
        zobzu 14y ago
        On ONE stat site. On all others its 2 or 3. It's certainly an important browser market share wise tho.
SeoxyS 14y ago
Don't forget, they're also pulling this on Apple. Chrome and Safari are both missing, even though they're the two most modern browsers available today. All the browsers they're suggesting are way behind WebKit-powered Chrome & Safari in terms of HTML5 support.
- nooooooo 14y ago
  So, how much of the Google kool-aid have you ingested lately?
  - shinratdr 14y ago
    This is HN. If you have evidence to the contrary, present it rather than just making a snarky remark.
  - koeselitz 14y ago
    I think if you drink Google kool-aid and Apple kool-aid at the same time, it balances out.
    - ajross 14y ago
      With the single side effect that you become a WebKit nut, as evidenced above.
      - koeselitz 14y ago
        Wouldn't that mean you're drinking Konqueror kool-aid?
- lucian1900 14y ago
  "All" meaning "one, maybe". Firefox has excellent (and often better than webkit) html5 support, so does Opera. Even IE10 is passable.
- tikhonj 14y ago
  I can see why they wouldn't include Safari--it's not very good for Windows and anybody on Mac OS has it already (and probably up to date?). Chrome, on the other hand, is a great browser on every platform (including Linux!) and automatically updates itself (which means that you only need to get somebody to switch to Chrome once rather than repeatedly like with newer versions of IE). Also, I'm not sure Firefox is actually behind Webkit-based browsers in features and certainly not significantly. I suspect Opera is pretty good as well although I don't use it.
ajross 14y ago
For clarity: the link is to the generic "unsupported browser" landing page. Chrome (and Safari) are definitely "supported" browsers. Facebook just doesn't show their logos or provide a download link to them.
- talmand 14y ago
  Exactly. They can suggest whatever browsers they want. Much like how Google suggests Chrome whenever any page with their logo loads. It's not like Facebook is saying if you aren't using on of these three browsers then we can't help you.
  - mathetic 14y ago
    They explicitly say "You’re using a web browser we don’t support." Even though this does not mean "we can't help you", I think it is close enough.
    - ceejayoz 14y ago
      Yes, but they don't send you to that page on Chrome or Safari.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
    - nerdfiles 14y ago
      The page is STATIC. It isn't being generated based on any logic. So the "you're" bit is vacuous. They don't mean your browser. They don't [functionally] mean any web browser. The page makes a statement, but we need to interpret that statement IRRESPECTIVE of our considerations of how it is generated/produced.
      - atnight 14y ago
        You cannot say that the page is static based on any URI. You have no idea what is being generated or not.
SideSwipe 14y ago
Well they have funding from Microsoft, and Google is now their leading competitor...not like it's unexpected. They probably thought it was funny.
nextstep 14y ago
Wow, Opera over Safari even? It's obvious who Facebook feels is their competition now.
- gokhan 14y ago
  They don't need to promote Safari for Mac users. No one on Windows use safari. Safari does not belong to that page in my opinion.
  - nerdfiles 14y ago
    They don't _need_ to support IE either, by this reasoning...
    - dpark 14y ago
      They might need to support recent versions of IE.
- alanh 14y ago
  Why do you think that Facebook and Apple are rivals?
  - nextstep 14y ago
    Because after talks between Steve Jobs and Zuck (last year, presumably about Facebook integration in Mac OS), Apple decided to go with Twitter integration.
sp332 14y ago
Hey, Opera got mentioned! That never happens :)
- Peteris 14y ago
  In this case all it means is that Facebook thinks it's harmless.
- RandallBrown 14y ago
  We had a similar page on a site I used to work on that mentioned Opera. I believe it was an error message you got when javascript was disabled. What was funny was that we did NOT support Opera. It was brought up every release as a bug, but was always deemed to be a "not fix." I wonder if they ever took care of that.
chrisacky 14y ago
Original poster here. I came across this when one of my friends accounts was clearly compromised. They posted one of those "OMG! LOOK AT WHO VIEWS YOUR ACCOUNTS!" on lots of friends walls. I wanted to check out what this link actually did, so I did a simple: wget www.facebook.com/?redirect=somebadlink.com > site.txt But the wget failed because of the lack of a supported user agent, and Facebook instead served me up this page. I really just had a little chuckle to myself, because, while this is extremely passive aggressive, it's not really hard to expect otherwise. I would do exactly the same if I were Facebook. ------------- I'm just suprised that they don't link to either webkit based browsers (Chrome/Safari). You can only assume that when one of your biggest threats is Google (and MS own 1.5%~) you probably aren't going to send more users to Google's way. All in all, it just made me laugh, since if you are going to suggest a modern browser, you surely can't ever give props to Internet Explorer ahead of any webkit based browser? IE is still struggling to implement the most basic HTML5 features.
- getsat 14y ago
  curl -I -A "Firefox" "www.facebook.com/?redirect=somebadlink.com" | grep Location
- reinhardt 14y ago
  Seriously? Not really hard to expect otherwise? I guess it's ok then for Google to drop FB from its search results, after all it's one of its biggest threats, right?
  - duaneb 14y ago
    It's not the same at all - an equivalence would be if facebook didn't support Chrome at all and made people choose another browser.
    - zobzu 14y ago
      Ahah yeah. That's true. All in all this is bad for the open web (both ways). At least, there's no Facebook browser yet. But hey, it might happen as well. They both want control over the net. Complete control. Client, servers, data.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
aneth 14y ago
Who the hell cares? Take a deep breath of chill the fuck out and don't read so much into things. I doubt they spent much time debating which browsers to add here, or that this came out of a strategy meeting with Zuckerberg. I wouldn't be surprised if this was designed before Chrome was popular (perhaps with some styling fixes since then). Even if they did exclude Chrome intentionally, they are entitled to promote whichever browsers they want to promote for whichever reasonable non-evil reasons they want.
- patrickaljord 14y ago
  Was it designed before Safari too? This is really pathetic. Nothing to get mad at but still ridiculous from Facebook.
  - aneth 14y ago
    "really pathetic"? I'm going to assume you've never done anything so pathetic in your life as to leave a web page with something less than the latest, greatest, most open sourcey, freedom-loving information.
    - RegEx 14y ago
      Damn, you take things really personally.
      - jsprinkles 14y ago
        How is that him taking it personally, exactly? He's just giving an opinion, quite colorfully.
        aneth 14y ago
        Thank you. I'd like to agree :) Nothing personal about it.
      - AznHisoka 14y ago
        What an oxymoron. This is a FORUM. People are supposed to voice their opinions.
mynameishere 14y ago
And here's how you'd actually induce this error, I suspect: http://imgur.com/hRqkB http://imgur.com/hRqkB ...so really, who is seeing this page who isn't aware of Chrome and Safari?
- alanh 14y ago
  Um… Internet Explorer 6 users, whom are almost certainly the intended audience.
dm8 14y ago
For clarity - they should add logos of all supported browsers and versions too. I guess they don't support IE5. On a side note: Netflix doesn't support Chrome on new video player. Yesterday I was watching movie on Chrome and I was dumbfounded when I was given notification that this is not supported browser.
hsparikh 14y ago
FWIW, I haven't been able to load my facebook newsfeed on Chrome for the last 3-4 days.
- evan_ 14y ago
  disable your extensions. It's working just fine in chrome for me.
  - hsparikh 14y ago
    i have been using a variety of extensions (bitly, etc.) for awhile now and have never had an issue like this before. I can log into fb, but nothing shows up on the initial page.
    - cbr 14y ago
      Clear your cookies, or just your Facebook ones.
    - evan_ 14y ago
      try it anyway- extensions update automatically in the background. I've definitely had issues with buggy extensions breaking sites.
alanh 14y ago
Almost more interesting than the omission of a browser from a vehemently self-declared rival is the omission of Flock & RockMelt, in my opinion. (They are, of course, browsers with “built-in social” & Facebook integration.)
- bradwestness 14y ago
  Well, Flock is discontinued and both are really just re-skinned versions of Firefox.
  - alanh 14y ago
    That’s not even true — RockMelt is WebKit-based. And obviously, it’s not the browser engine that is relevant, but rather the Facebook integration…
ralfd 14y ago
hacker news is jumping the shark.
redemade 14y ago
opera? wtf
brudgers 14y ago
Google and Facebook compete for advertising dollars. Chrome provides Google with user telemetry. The reasoning behind Facebook's selection of options is no different than the reason Google's search results pages lack "Like" buttons.
zerostar07 14y ago
Same reason why facebook does not allow AdSense.
mratzloff 14y ago
Cool! I just downloaded IE 9 for Mac. Since they recommended it to me and all. Also of note: all of those links are nofollowed. God forbid Facebook properly links to something it's explicitly, you know, linking to.
aninteger 14y ago
There's a subreddit on reddit about First World Problems. This doesn't even seem like it would qualify for that. Sorry, I just don't get why this was voted up or is that important.
- esolyt 14y ago
  The fact that Chrome is not there implies a possible animosity towards Google, which makes this interesting.
neya 14y ago
I'm sure facebook has done this on purpose, because they've gone an extra mile to include Opera (though an excellent browser, it has a quite low market share), but not Chrome.
bonch 14y ago
Most popular browser according to what?
greyfade 14y ago
My question is, why do they have this page at all in the first place? If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. If there's a known-bad client, it seems reasonable to me to show a notification of that fact on the "front" page. (Not being a Facebook user, I don't know how they might set it up.)
WimLeers 14y ago
I've worked at Facebook (internship). They use Chrome/Chromium extensively for development. My guess is that this is just not a high-priority thing to change. One of Facebook's mantras is "Focus on Impact" (others: "Move Fast", "Be Bold" …). This is not high impact. There's even proof that they collaborate quite nicely: less than two weeks ago, Facebook engineers went to talk to Chrome DevTools engineers. Goal: improve Chrome's timeline to improve Facebook's Timeline, and vice versa. Source: https://plus.google.com/113127438179392830442/posts/Kgk78sixgYp https://plus.google.com/113127438179392830442/posts/Kgk78six....

277 points by chrisacky 14y ago

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." Not to say that the people working at FB are stupid, but odds are that someone at FB made this page several years ago and this page has languished on the backburner with no attention since then.

amitamb 14y ago
I don't think this page wasn't updated for long time. It has IE logo of IE9+. So it was updated at least after IE9 release and by that time Chrome was major browser. IE9 was released April Last year. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_8 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_8 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_9 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_9
- Splines 14y ago
  Good point. Still, I argue that FB doesn't have any sort of ulterior motive with not showing a webkit-based browser or what-have-you.
  - weixiyen 14y ago
    On the grounds that they are stupid?
varenc 14y ago
Actually the old page (well, one version of it) didn't list IE at all.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

nextparadigms 14y ago

Wow. Are they seriously pulling this one on Google? That seems so low to me.

altrego99 14y ago
I don't think it is unfair. The point is you'd always leave out something or the other. The objective is to get the person into a proper browser, without scaring them with way too many options - and not to be fully politically correct.
- mzarate06 14y ago
  I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, but I will say that I don't look at it from being fair vs. unfair. It's purely silly, based on Microsoft's and IE's browser credentials. IE is arguably the worst browser out there, and has been for some time. To see it first on a list of "we support these browsers" is comical.
  - bradwestness 14y ago
    As is including Firefox and Opera, but not the second most popular browser. Although it's very possible that they decided which browsers to include back in '09 or earlier and just haven't revisited the decision since. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Usage_share_of_web_browsers_(Source_StatCounter).svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Usage_share_of_web_browser...
    - duaneb 14y ago
      That's out of date. Chrome is now the top browser, IIRC.
      - zobzu 14y ago
        On ONE stat site. On all others its 2 or 3. It's certainly an important browser market share wise tho.

SeoxyS 14y ago

Don't forget, they're also pulling this on Apple. Chrome and Safari are both missing, even though they're the two most modern browsers available today. All the browsers they're suggesting are way behind WebKit-powered Chrome & Safari in terms of HTML5 support.

nooooooo 14y ago
So, how much of the Google kool-aid have you ingested lately?
- shinratdr 14y ago
  This is HN. If you have evidence to the contrary, present it rather than just making a snarky remark.
- koeselitz 14y ago
  I think if you drink Google kool-aid and Apple kool-aid at the same time, it balances out.
  - ajross 14y ago
    With the single side effect that you become a WebKit nut, as evidenced above.
    - koeselitz 14y ago
      Wouldn't that mean you're drinking Konqueror kool-aid?
lucian1900 14y ago
"All" meaning "one, maybe". Firefox has excellent (and often better than webkit) html5 support, so does Opera. Even IE10 is passable.
tikhonj 14y ago
I can see why they wouldn't include Safari--it's not very good for Windows and anybody on Mac OS has it already (and probably up to date?). Chrome, on the other hand, is a great browser on every platform (including Linux!) and automatically updates itself (which means that you only need to get somebody to switch to Chrome once rather than repeatedly like with newer versions of IE). Also, I'm not sure Firefox is actually behind Webkit-based browsers in features and certainly not significantly. I suspect Opera is pretty good as well although I don't use it.

ajross 14y ago

For clarity: the link is to the generic "unsupported browser" landing page. Chrome (and Safari) are definitely "supported" browsers. Facebook just doesn't show their logos or provide a download link to them.

talmand 14y ago
Exactly. They can suggest whatever browsers they want. Much like how Google suggests Chrome whenever any page with their logo loads. It's not like Facebook is saying if you aren't using on of these three browsers then we can't help you.
- mathetic 14y ago
  They explicitly say "You’re using a web browser we don’t support." Even though this does not mean "we can't help you", I think it is close enough.
  - ceejayoz 14y ago
    Yes, but they don't send you to that page on Chrome or Safari.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - nerdfiles 14y ago
    The page is STATIC. It isn't being generated based on any logic. So the "you're" bit is vacuous. They don't mean your browser. They don't [functionally] mean any web browser. The page makes a statement, but we need to interpret that statement IRRESPECTIVE of our considerations of how it is generated/produced.
    - atnight 14y ago
      You cannot say that the page is static based on any URI. You have no idea what is being generated or not.

SideSwipe 14y ago

Well they have funding from Microsoft, and Google is now their leading competitor...not like it's unexpected. They probably thought it was funny.

nextstep 14y ago

Wow, Opera over Safari even? It's obvious who Facebook feels is their competition now.

gokhan 14y ago
They don't need to promote Safari for Mac users. No one on Windows use safari. Safari does not belong to that page in my opinion.
- nerdfiles 14y ago
  They don't _need_ to support IE either, by this reasoning...
  - dpark 14y ago
    They might need to support recent versions of IE.
alanh 14y ago
Why do you think that Facebook and Apple are rivals?
- nextstep 14y ago
  Because after talks between Steve Jobs and Zuck (last year, presumably about Facebook integration in Mac OS), Apple decided to go with Twitter integration.

sp332 14y ago

Hey, Opera got mentioned! That never happens :)

Peteris 14y ago
In this case all it means is that Facebook thinks it's harmless.
RandallBrown 14y ago
We had a similar page on a site I used to work on that mentioned Opera. I believe it was an error message you got when javascript was disabled. What was funny was that we did NOT support Opera. It was brought up every release as a bug, but was always deemed to be a "not fix." I wonder if they ever took care of that.

chrisacky 14y ago

Original poster here. I came across this when one of my friends accounts was clearly compromised. They posted one of those "OMG! LOOK AT WHO VIEWS YOUR ACCOUNTS!" on lots of friends walls. I wanted to check out what this link actually did, so I did a simple: wget www.facebook.com/?redirect=somebadlink.com > site.txt But the wget failed because of the lack of a supported user agent, and Facebook instead served me up this page. I really just had a little chuckle to myself, because, while this is extremely passive aggressive, it's not really hard to expect otherwise. I would do exactly the same if I were Facebook. ------------- I'm just suprised that they don't link to either webkit based browsers (Chrome/Safari). You can only assume that when one of your biggest threats is Google (and MS own 1.5%~) you probably aren't going to send more users to Google's way. All in all, it just made me laugh, since if you are going to suggest a modern browser, you surely can't ever give props to Internet Explorer ahead of any webkit based browser? IE is still struggling to implement the most basic HTML5 features.

getsat 14y ago
curl -I -A "Firefox" "www.facebook.com/?redirect=somebadlink.com" | grep Location
reinhardt 14y ago
Seriously? Not really hard to expect otherwise? I guess it's ok then for Google to drop FB from its search results, after all it's one of its biggest threats, right?
- duaneb 14y ago
  It's not the same at all - an equivalence would be if facebook didn't support Chrome at all and made people choose another browser.
  - zobzu 14y ago
    Ahah yeah. That's true. All in all this is bad for the open web (both ways). At least, there's no Facebook browser yet. But hey, it might happen as well. They both want control over the net. Complete control. Client, servers, data.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

aneth 14y ago

Who the hell cares? Take a deep breath of chill the fuck out and don't read so much into things. I doubt they spent much time debating which browsers to add here, or that this came out of a strategy meeting with Zuckerberg. I wouldn't be surprised if this was designed before Chrome was popular (perhaps with some styling fixes since then). Even if they did exclude Chrome intentionally, they are entitled to promote whichever browsers they want to promote for whichever reasonable non-evil reasons they want.

patrickaljord 14y ago
Was it designed before Safari too? This is really pathetic. Nothing to get mad at but still ridiculous from Facebook.
- aneth 14y ago
  "really pathetic"? I'm going to assume you've never done anything so pathetic in your life as to leave a web page with something less than the latest, greatest, most open sourcey, freedom-loving information.
  - RegEx 14y ago
    Damn, you take things really personally.
    - jsprinkles 14y ago
      How is that him taking it personally, exactly? He's just giving an opinion, quite colorfully.
      - aneth 14y ago
        Thank you. I'd like to agree :) Nothing personal about it.
    - AznHisoka 14y ago
      What an oxymoron. This is a FORUM. People are supposed to voice their opinions.

mynameishere 14y ago

And here's how you'd actually induce this error, I suspect: http://imgur.com/hRqkB http://imgur.com/hRqkB ...so really, who is seeing this page who isn't aware of Chrome and Safari?

alanh 14y ago
Um… Internet Explorer 6 users, whom are almost certainly the intended audience.

dm8 14y ago

For clarity - they should add logos of all supported browsers and versions too. I guess they don't support IE5. On a side note: Netflix doesn't support Chrome on new video player. Yesterday I was watching movie on Chrome and I was dumbfounded when I was given notification that this is not supported browser.

hsparikh 14y ago

FWIW, I haven't been able to load my facebook newsfeed on Chrome for the last 3-4 days.

evan_ 14y ago
disable your extensions. It's working just fine in chrome for me.
- hsparikh 14y ago
  i have been using a variety of extensions (bitly, etc.) for awhile now and have never had an issue like this before. I can log into fb, but nothing shows up on the initial page.
  - cbr 14y ago
    Clear your cookies, or just your Facebook ones.
  - evan_ 14y ago
    try it anyway- extensions update automatically in the background. I've definitely had issues with buggy extensions breaking sites.

alanh 14y ago

Almost more interesting than the omission of a browser from a vehemently self-declared rival is the omission of Flock & RockMelt, in my opinion. (They are, of course, browsers with “built-in social” & Facebook integration.)

bradwestness 14y ago
Well, Flock is discontinued and both are really just re-skinned versions of Firefox.
- alanh 14y ago
  That’s not even true — RockMelt is WebKit-based. And obviously, it’s not the browser engine that is relevant, but rather the Facebook integration…

ralfd 14y ago

hacker news is jumping the shark.

redemade 14y ago

opera? wtf

brudgers 14y ago

Google and Facebook compete for advertising dollars. Chrome provides Google with user telemetry. The reasoning behind Facebook's selection of options is no different than the reason Google's search results pages lack "Like" buttons.

zerostar07 14y ago

Same reason why facebook does not allow AdSense.

mratzloff 14y ago

Cool! I just downloaded IE 9 for Mac. Since they recommended it to me and all. Also of note: all of those links are nofollowed. God forbid Facebook properly links to something it's explicitly, you know, linking to.

aninteger 14y ago

There's a subreddit on reddit about First World Problems. This doesn't even seem like it would qualify for that. Sorry, I just don't get why this was voted up or is that important.

esolyt 14y ago
The fact that Chrome is not there implies a possible animosity towards Google, which makes this interesting.

neya 14y ago

I'm sure facebook has done this on purpose, because they've gone an extra mile to include Opera (though an excellent browser, it has a quite low market share), but not Chrome.

bonch 14y ago