4 ms·

IDK, they're just following what Chrome has been doing forever now, and it has worked there. I guess that really is what the vast majority of normal people want

IDK, they're just following what Chrome has been doing forever now, and it has worked there. I guess that really is what the vast majority of normal people want. And considering how even among my most tech-savy friends and colleagues Chrome appears to be the browser of choice, it seems even these folks don't really care...

yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
That doesn't necessarily follow; a person could easily argue that Chrome won because Google abused its search monopoly to push it, then kept winning because of inertia. Unless your friends specifically prefer Chrome because of UX reasons, it could be unrelated.
- Kye 2y ago
  Firefox certainly didn't help by becoming a bloated mess. Firefox was bad when Chrome came out. All Chrome did was the same thing Firefox did to IE in the same situation: take advantage of complacency. Google's heavy and sometimes ethically questionable promotion of Chrome was an amplifying force, but not sufficient.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
    Yeah, that was always funny to me too... Google built a browser that was actually faster and more secure, and then decided to be anti-competitive instead of just letting it win. Of course, they didn't actually get destroyed in court for it, so I suppose being evil works in this case.
    - palata 2y ago
      > and then decided to be anti-competitive instead of just letting it win Or precisely because it was not enough to have the better product? Don't tell me you believe that the better product usually wins. Marketing wins.
      - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
        Firefox was doing fine beating IE on merit once MS was prevented from behaving anti-competitively.
        dralley 2y ago
        The base of internet users was a lot smaller and more technically-inclined in 2004 than in 2014
        Kye 2y ago
        Was it though? This was well after AOL and the Endless September. There were rows of Complete Idiots Guides and For Dummies books on using the internet in major book stores. You've Got Mail made a quarter billion in the box office a half decade before. This was the time of normies. All the @aol addresses still in use were minted here.
        pseudalopex 2y ago
        You are North American? Most of the world was much less online in 2004.[1] [1] https://ourworldindata.org/internet-history-just-begun https://ourworldindata.org/internet-history-just-begun
        palata 2y ago
        > There were rows of Complete Idiots Guides and For Dummies books Which says that people were trying to learn how to use their computer, right? Nowadays professors need to teach their university students what a file is... I can definitely accept that the users were more technically-inclined in 2004 than in 2014.
        strken 2y ago
        This is a great argument for why the average internet user in 2004 was less technical than in 1994, but it says absolutely nothing about 2014.
  - palata 2y ago
    > Google's heavy and sometimes ethically questionable promotion of Chrome was an amplifying force, but not sufficient. I strongly believe it was sufficient. Which does not mean that Chrome was not better when it came out. But most people really don't want to try new tech: because you were excited by Chrome back then does not mean, by far, that everyone on the planet was.
  - muxator 2y ago
    > Firefox was bad when Chrome came out Funny how different people's experiences can be. When Chrome came out in 2008 I remember trying it just for fun (more than once), and it never clicked with me, so I stayed with Firefox. What was harder for me was keeping with all the unnecessary redesigns, empty eye candy, dumbing down, the Fennec debacle (exensions used to work, then they suddenly stopped for a bunch of years; plus, no keyword search for no reason). By that time staying away from Google had become a goal in itself, but I understand who migrated to chrome. Anyway, I am firmly convinced Chrome won because of Google's abuse of its web search monopoly. The innovations that its team introduced were groundbreaking from a technical point of view, but Firefox was a perfectly capable browser.
- iforgotpassword 2y ago
  > That doesn't necessarily follow; a person could easily argue that Chrome won because Google abused its search monopoly to push it, then kept winning because of inertia. Sure, for the average Joe I might buy this, but also it's the same kind of people who can't tell the difference between the address bar and the search field on the Google homepage, so I'm still kinda skeptical they don't actually refer a UI with as few options and buttons as possible.... > Unless your friends specifically prefer Chrome because of UX reasons, it could be unrelated. ... But I absolutely can't follow you here. What other reasons should there be? That that one or two websites they infrequently visit don't work? If you can't be arsed to just use chrome for these specific occasions and stay with the customizable, powerful alternative for the rest of the time, I don't believe you're someone who'd like a UI with more than three buttons anyways. (And on that note I've yet to encounter a site that doesn't work in Firefox, but maybe that actually is a thing in places other than Europe...)
dagurp 2y ago
Or is it Google deciding for you what you should want?
- squarefoot 2y ago
  Before someone flags the above comment as trolling, read on: "One thing Mozilla does have going for it is a lot of money—more than $1 billion in cash reserves, according to its latest financial statement. The primary source of this capital is Google, which pays Mozilla to be the default search engine on the Firefox home page. Those payments, which started in 2005, have been increasing—up 50% over the past decade, to more than $450 million, even as the total number of Firefox users has plummeted. In 2021 these payments accounted for 83% of Mozilla’s revenue." source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-05-05/why-google-keeps-paying-mozilla-s-firefox-even-as-chrome-dominates https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-05-05/why-go... I read it as: "If Google says jump we jump".
  - pseudalopex 2y ago
    What Google orders do you believe Mozilla followed?
lainga 2y ago
Quickly thumbing through my product book for "gaining market segment by making yourself indistinguishable from competition"
- a0123 2y ago
  Yes, but the current design and direction are very clearly not working. You can hardly blame them for trying to emulate what's currently working for everyone else when everything you've tried so far has led to your downfall.
  - pessimizer 2y ago
    Their downfall came when they changed everything that they were doing, and subsequently nuked every reason why someone would prefer firefox other than that they weren't google. They transformed firefox into wonky chrome, even copying superficial UI stuff. And then got very hostile about any criticism of this project, actively destroying all of the goodwill they built up. That alienation of their stubborn, fanatical base took years to accomplish. People would move back to firefox if it were still anything like firefox.
    - palata 2y ago
      Not that I disagree with the alienation of their fanbase. I personally use Firefox mostly because it is not Google, certainly not because it is Mozilla (and to be fair I like the Firefox Containers). But I am not convinced most people see it like this. Most of the people I know honestly don't make the difference between Firefox and Chrome: they just use what they know. I think Chrome won those people because Google managed to convince them that "Internet == Chrome", not because they consciously chose Chrome as a better alternative.
      - bakugo 2y ago
        > But I am not convinced most people see it like this. Most of the people I know honestly don't make the difference between Firefox and Chrome: they just use what they know. And those people are not Firefox's audience. They don't care about their browser as long as it loads facebook.com, so they're just going to use whatever browser is more popular or pushed harder onto them, which is Chrome. If Firefox positions itself as just a Chrome clone, there's no reason to use it over Chrome. If Firefox wants to survive, it needs to position itself as a niche alternative for people who actually have preferences for what their browser is like, and do not like Chrome. Of course, it won't ever be as popular as Chrome, but that battle was lost a long time ago.
palata 2y ago
IMO the vast majority of users cannot make the difference between Chrome and Firefox. They just use whatever they are used to and like it because they are used to it. Over the years, I have converted people to Firefox, Chrome, Brave, Safari. The only common denominator is that they all strongly prefer the one they use now.

yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago

That doesn't necessarily follow; a person could easily argue that Chrome won because Google abused its search monopoly to push it, then kept winning because of inertia. Unless your friends specifically prefer Chrome because of UX reasons, it could be unrelated.

Kye 2y ago
Firefox certainly didn't help by becoming a bloated mess. Firefox was bad when Chrome came out. All Chrome did was the same thing Firefox did to IE in the same situation: take advantage of complacency. Google's heavy and sometimes ethically questionable promotion of Chrome was an amplifying force, but not sufficient.
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
  Yeah, that was always funny to me too... Google built a browser that was actually faster and more secure, and then decided to be anti-competitive instead of just letting it win. Of course, they didn't actually get destroyed in court for it, so I suppose being evil works in this case.
  - palata 2y ago
    > and then decided to be anti-competitive instead of just letting it win Or precisely because it was not enough to have the better product? Don't tell me you believe that the better product usually wins. Marketing wins.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
      Firefox was doing fine beating IE on merit once MS was prevented from behaving anti-competitively.
      - dralley 2y ago
        The base of internet users was a lot smaller and more technically-inclined in 2004 than in 2014
        Kye 2y ago
        Was it though? This was well after AOL and the Endless September. There were rows of Complete Idiots Guides and For Dummies books on using the internet in major book stores. You've Got Mail made a quarter billion in the box office a half decade before. This was the time of normies. All the @aol addresses still in use were minted here.
        pseudalopex 2y ago
        You are North American? Most of the world was much less online in 2004.[1] [1] https://ourworldindata.org/internet-history-just-begun https://ourworldindata.org/internet-history-just-begun
        palata 2y ago
        > There were rows of Complete Idiots Guides and For Dummies books Which says that people were trying to learn how to use their computer, right? Nowadays professors need to teach their university students what a file is... I can definitely accept that the users were more technically-inclined in 2004 than in 2014.
        strken 2y ago
        This is a great argument for why the average internet user in 2004 was less technical than in 1994, but it says absolutely nothing about 2014.
- palata 2y ago
  > Google's heavy and sometimes ethically questionable promotion of Chrome was an amplifying force, but not sufficient. I strongly believe it was sufficient. Which does not mean that Chrome was not better when it came out. But most people really don't want to try new tech: because you were excited by Chrome back then does not mean, by far, that everyone on the planet was.
- muxator 2y ago
  > Firefox was bad when Chrome came out Funny how different people's experiences can be. When Chrome came out in 2008 I remember trying it just for fun (more than once), and it never clicked with me, so I stayed with Firefox. What was harder for me was keeping with all the unnecessary redesigns, empty eye candy, dumbing down, the Fennec debacle (exensions used to work, then they suddenly stopped for a bunch of years; plus, no keyword search for no reason). By that time staying away from Google had become a goal in itself, but I understand who migrated to chrome. Anyway, I am firmly convinced Chrome won because of Google's abuse of its web search monopoly. The innovations that its team introduced were groundbreaking from a technical point of view, but Firefox was a perfectly capable browser.
iforgotpassword 2y ago
> That doesn't necessarily follow; a person could easily argue that Chrome won because Google abused its search monopoly to push it, then kept winning because of inertia. Sure, for the average Joe I might buy this, but also it's the same kind of people who can't tell the difference between the address bar and the search field on the Google homepage, so I'm still kinda skeptical they don't actually refer a UI with as few options and buttons as possible.... > Unless your friends specifically prefer Chrome because of UX reasons, it could be unrelated. ... But I absolutely can't follow you here. What other reasons should there be? That that one or two websites they infrequently visit don't work? If you can't be arsed to just use chrome for these specific occasions and stay with the customizable, powerful alternative for the rest of the time, I don't believe you're someone who'd like a UI with more than three buttons anyways. (And on that note I've yet to encounter a site that doesn't work in Firefox, but maybe that actually is a thing in places other than Europe...)

dagurp 2y ago

Or is it Google deciding for you what you should want?

squarefoot 2y ago
Before someone flags the above comment as trolling, read on: "One thing Mozilla does have going for it is a lot of money—more than $1 billion in cash reserves, according to its latest financial statement. The primary source of this capital is Google, which pays Mozilla to be the default search engine on the Firefox home page. Those payments, which started in 2005, have been increasing—up 50% over the past decade, to more than $450 million, even as the total number of Firefox users has plummeted. In 2021 these payments accounted for 83% of Mozilla’s revenue." source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-05-05/why-google-keeps-paying-mozilla-s-firefox-even-as-chrome-dominates https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-05-05/why-go... I read it as: "If Google says jump we jump".
- pseudalopex 2y ago
  What Google orders do you believe Mozilla followed?

lainga 2y ago

Quickly thumbing through my product book for "gaining market segment by making yourself indistinguishable from competition"

a0123 2y ago
Yes, but the current design and direction are very clearly not working. You can hardly blame them for trying to emulate what's currently working for everyone else when everything you've tried so far has led to your downfall.
- pessimizer 2y ago
  Their downfall came when they changed everything that they were doing, and subsequently nuked every reason why someone would prefer firefox other than that they weren't google. They transformed firefox into wonky chrome, even copying superficial UI stuff. And then got very hostile about any criticism of this project, actively destroying all of the goodwill they built up. That alienation of their stubborn, fanatical base took years to accomplish. People would move back to firefox if it were still anything like firefox.
  - palata 2y ago
    Not that I disagree with the alienation of their fanbase. I personally use Firefox mostly because it is not Google, certainly not because it is Mozilla (and to be fair I like the Firefox Containers). But I am not convinced most people see it like this. Most of the people I know honestly don't make the difference between Firefox and Chrome: they just use what they know. I think Chrome won those people because Google managed to convince them that "Internet == Chrome", not because they consciously chose Chrome as a better alternative.
    - bakugo 2y ago
      > But I am not convinced most people see it like this. Most of the people I know honestly don't make the difference between Firefox and Chrome: they just use what they know. And those people are not Firefox's audience. They don't care about their browser as long as it loads facebook.com, so they're just going to use whatever browser is more popular or pushed harder onto them, which is Chrome. If Firefox positions itself as just a Chrome clone, there's no reason to use it over Chrome. If Firefox wants to survive, it needs to position itself as a niche alternative for people who actually have preferences for what their browser is like, and do not like Chrome. Of course, it won't ever be as popular as Chrome, but that battle was lost a long time ago.

palata 2y ago

IMO the vast majority of users cannot make the difference between Chrome and Firefox. They just use whatever they are used to and like it because they are used to it. Over the years, I have converted people to Firefox, Chrome, Brave, Safari. The only common denominator is that they all strongly prefer the one they use now.