8 ms·

No not even close by every single possible measure. I was there, I suffered through it, Google would have to make TONS of hostile moves for that fact to change

No not even close by every single possible measure. I was there, I suffered through it, Google would have to make TONS of hostile moves for that fact to change. I have no interest in the arguments of a closed source subscription service that wants me to switch to the bundled browser of the wealthiest company on earth's most popular consumer OS, lecturing me about using the 4th wealthiest company on earth's browser that I freely installed. The most important one from an anti-trust perspective, every device I've ever had Chrome on I've had to seek out and install/make default Chrome, that includes my mobile devices which used the manufactures browser by default. If I want to use chromium I can, Safari has been VERY late in implementing certain industry spec standards (SSE's, web sockets, IndexedDB API, animations, relative color syntax, container queries, a bunch of <video> stuff, flexbox, the list goes on and on.)

lxgr 2y ago
> using the 4th wealthiest company on earth's browser that I freely installed. 99% of the time I use Chrome it's because some site does not support Firefox (and that often includes Google sites/apps). (The 1% are for APIs that Firefox, consciously or out of resource constraints, does not support.) In what sense am I "freely installing" Chrome in this situation? Just today I had a family member reach out to me, unable to use government e-signing on their phone after I'd switched their default browser to Firefox (they were getting tons of ads in mobile Chrome, which does not support plugins and accordingly also no ad blockers). Turns out they support only IE/Edge, Safari, and of course Chrome... > every device I've ever had Chrome on I've had to seek out and install/make default Chrome My Pixel came with Chrome preinstalled, as far as I remember. (I don't recall if there was a browser selection screen.) Sure, that's a Google phone, but then again Windows is a Microsoft operating system. > the arguments of a closed source subscription service that wants me to switch to the bundled browser of the wealthiest company on earth's most popular consumer OS Oh, I'd also not advise anyone to switch to Safari. Apple absolutely would pull exactly the same or worse as Google if they could, I have no illusions about that. I can't wait for the day they're finally forced to actually allow alternative browser engines on iOS and switch to Firefox everywhere.
- pphysch 2y ago
  The onus is on the app developer to make sure their app runs on a variety of platforms. It's not Chrome's fault for third party developers being lazy and not supporting Firefox.
  - lxgr 2y ago
    >It's not Chrome's fault for third party developers being lazy and not supporting Firefox. What if it's Google themselves? From my original post: > [...] and that often includes Google sites/apps
    - fellowniusmonk 2y ago
      [Citation Needed] What google site or service requires Chrome?
      - nasmorn 2y ago
        Meet is as shitty on Safari as Google feels they can get away with
      - lxgr 2y ago
        "AI overview" (which I happen to find really useful) was only available on Chrome and Safari for at least a few months. Sure, it's a lab experiment or whatever, but these are just words, and the effect is that I have to use a different browser to be able to use them, for absolutely no technical reason. (The LLM is running on Google's servers and provides plaintext. I think Firefox could handle that.) Just visit this on Firefox if you want to see for yourself, including a big "install Chrome" call to action: https://labs.google.com/search/install https://labs.google.com/search/install
        Kiro 2y ago
        Doesn't really support your statement then.
      - 2y ago
yoavm 2y ago
> Google would have to make TONS of hostile moves for that fact to change I think the biggest issue with IE6 was not the hostile moves Microosft did, it is that it didn't do anything. The browser was just frozen. That's why it was relatively easy for Firefox to take a marketshare. Frankly, with some of the APIs Google are adding to Chrome, I'd rather they'd do a little less.
- ajross 2y ago
  So, no, the problem with IE was 100% Microsoft's hostile competition tactics. Yes, part of that was trying to deprecate the "world wide web" as a platform, so yes, IE6 got very crufty toward the end of its days. But by that point it was clear it was already dying and IE7 et. al. were introduced late as an attempt to catch up. During the period when the real bullets were flying, IE6 was actually a really great browser, just one that forced you into using a menu of Microsoft technologies because it didn't support the "standard" stuff. Remember that XMLHttpRequest, the basic tool underneath all modern dynamic web UIs, was originally a non-standard Microsoft invention. And yes: eventually this proved unsustainable and innovation in the standards-based browser world eventually proved too fast for MS to keep up, and it lost. But the tool that broke the back of that monopoly absolutely wasn't Firefox. It was Chrome.
  - yoavm 2y ago
    I would say that the 30% market-share Firefox had in 2009 was breaking the monopoly much more than the 3% Chrome had a time. Sure IE6 had many non-standard APIs, but even the fact that all hobbyist browsers back then were implementing tabs and IE6 never had that, speaks to its stagnant development. To be honest I'd prefer some things Google is now pushing through th W3C as standards to be left as Chrome specific APIs and leave the rest of us alone.
- fellowniusmonk 2y ago
  That and browser sniffing to serve intentionally broken CSS on Microsoft's websites to competitors like Opera, I remember this because it directly effected me at the time. I mean at least we still have websites like this from over 20 years ago that still document the bullshit, people who weren't there CANNOT fathom the how despicable they were. https://www.wiumlie.no/2003/2/msn/ https://www.wiumlie.no/2003/2/msn/
pjmlp 2y ago
It definitely is, I was also there, just like everyone was doing IE only sites, not only plenty of people do the same with ChromeOS vision of the Web, they ship Chrome alongside Electron crap. Safari is the last man standing before a ChromeOS world.
- onion2k 2y ago
  Safari is the last man standing before a ChromeOS world. Except it isn't. Maybe I'm being slightly obtuse here, but the world is not "Chrome Vs Safari". It's "Chrome Vs Safari Vs native apps". If Safari dies we'll be in a world of "Chrome Vs native apps", and that is what Apple wants. Browsers represent a way to deliver software to users that's outside of Apple's revenue mechanisms. Apple have every incentive to keep Safari being good-not-great at running web apps, so users prefer the native version (even though most of the time that'll be Electron.)
  - bloppe 2y ago
    Am I the only one left happily using Firefox? You know, the only "major" browser that doesn't seem to have these conflicts of interest?
    - gray_-_wolf 2y ago
      Also happy Firefox user here. Do not worry, there are dozens of us. Dozens!
      - mr_sturd 2y ago
        It's always nice to meet a fellow neverChrome.
    - dudhejffj 2y ago
      I use Firefox Mobile but have long abandoned the desktop offering. The only thing I feel like I get from the desktop version lately is a spiritual victory whereas the mobile browser actually has tangible features I prefer like add-ons and the search bar at the bottom.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
doctorpangloss 2y ago
The audience for computers in 2024 has grown to maybe 1,000x what it was in 2008. Everyone has to rediscover the meaning of being able to choose.
- jgtrosh 2y ago
  https://www.statista.com/statistics/273018/number-of-internet-users-worldwide/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/273018/number-of-interne... maybe 3.7x
  - EasyMark 2y ago
    Yeah no way it’s 1000x lol
deleted 2y ago
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thephyber 2y ago
I think some of the complaints in the article were about websites using User Agent string to detect compatibility, rather than individual feature sniffing. In that small complaint, I would agree. But I think the fault is mostly with the website owners, not with the browser.
- robocat 2y ago
  > rather than individual feature sniffing Feature sniffing generally doesn't work for anything interactive. Many bugs in controls, animation, events are not sniffable. Yet developers still need to deliver workarounds. Feature sniffing works best for static HTML documents - and even then the code to actually do the sniffing can be demonic code (a side-effect or correlation or an obscure discovery). Using just feature sniffing is a great goal but it simply isn't a perfect solution. I do believe us developers should avoid parsing user agents unless there is no other good solution (never a crutch for lazy bad developers). And detecting the browser for obsolete browsers is usually a perfectly fine solution. The bugs won't get fixed and the browser won't change. There are exceptions of course!!!
  - thephyber 2y ago
    > And detecting the browser for obsolete browsers is usually a perfectly fine solution. But there are a long tail of user agents and the average web developer does a terrible job at identifying those in the long tail. My password manager on iOS uses the newest Safari engine, but all websites think it is an outdated/obsolete browser because it uses a user agent string they don't recognize. Also, my bank doesn’t use highly interactive features you mention. It’s almost exclusively links, forms and a little validation JavaScript. Feature sniffing would have been a much better experience.
Aloisius 2y ago
Safari hasn't actually been particular far behind implementing industry standards. As far as I can tell, it's more that people seem to believe that Google dictates industry standards and base everything on when Chrome supports it as opposed to when it actually gets standardized. SSE's W3C draft standard in 2012. Supported in Safari in 2010. web sockets This one is true. IETF standard 2011. Supported fully in Safari 2013. IndexedDB API W3C recommended standard in 2015. Supported in Safari in 2014. animations If we're talking the Web Animations API, it hasn't been standardized yet (W3C working draft) and level 2 isn't even that far. relative color syntax Not standardized yet. It's currently a W3C working draft. container queries Not standardized yet. It's currently a W3C working draft. a bunch of <video> stuff Need specifics. flexbox W3C candidate recommendation 2018. Supported in Safari 2013.
- afavour 2y ago
  I feel like you’re putting the cart before the horse there. The W3C takes existing implementations into account before issuing a recommendation.
- fellowniusmonk 2y ago
  This is very misleading, compare implementation timelines between browsers and you'll see that Safari has implemented many of these things year(s) after chromium, firefox and even opera. This of course was because they have tried as much as possible to push people to closed source/walled garden apps.
  - Aloisius 2y ago
    I'd argue calling non-standard chrome/firefox/opera features "standards" is misleading.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - burnerthrow008 2y ago
      +1, and I'd argue that calling non-standard chrome features "standards" is what makes it the new IE.
lenerdenator 2y ago
Regardless of all of that, monocultures are bad. Monocultures that allow for one company to make it hard to avoid advertising and data tracking on the web are even worse.
sureIy 2y ago
Safari was late until a couple of years ago when they started implementing new features more aggressively. Now it's always Firefox. Just check how long it took them to add support for the :has() selector and RegEx Lookbehind. We're years into "manifest v3" and background workers are nowhere to be found.
- troupo 2y ago
  Funnily enough it was Firefox who figured out a workable algorithm for :has IIRC
  - sureIy 2y ago
    Absolutely not. Firefox has mindbogglingly bad performance with :has() even if their superficial tests tell you otherwise. I experienced minute-long lockups just because I used :has() on a large element like body. Chrome and Safari had no issues with those selectors.
    - troupo 2y ago
      I stand corrected. It was the absolute legends at Igalia. See links and explainer here: https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/528 https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/528
nox101 2y ago
Another piece of evidence is Google tries at nearly every turn to help people write portable code, use best practices like feature detection instead of browser version sniffing, etc... They run https://web.dev/ https://web.dev/ and the founded baseline https://web.dev/baseline https://web.dev/baseline and the web platform dashboard https://web.dev/blog/web-platform-dashboard https://web.dev/blog/web-platform-dashboard MS in their IE days did the exact opposite, trying to make as many proprietary IE only features as possible.
tclancy 2y ago
Of course it is. None of that is relevant, my younger coworkers only qa in Chrome so it’s IE 5.5 all over again.
soperj 2y ago
Can you actually now? Or is Chromium still webkit under the hood because Apple?
turnsout 2y ago
Just because Chrome implements a feature and then rams it through a W3C committee does not make it a “standard” that Apple must support on day 1. The arrogance of the Chrome crowd is astonishing.

lxgr 2y ago

> using the 4th wealthiest company on earth's browser that I freely installed. 99% of the time I use Chrome it's because some site does not support Firefox (and that often includes Google sites/apps). (The 1% are for APIs that Firefox, consciously or out of resource constraints, does not support.) In what sense am I "freely installing" Chrome in this situation? Just today I had a family member reach out to me, unable to use government e-signing on their phone after I'd switched their default browser to Firefox (they were getting tons of ads in mobile Chrome, which does not support plugins and accordingly also no ad blockers). Turns out they support only IE/Edge, Safari, and of course Chrome... > every device I've ever had Chrome on I've had to seek out and install/make default Chrome My Pixel came with Chrome preinstalled, as far as I remember. (I don't recall if there was a browser selection screen.) Sure, that's a Google phone, but then again Windows is a Microsoft operating system. > the arguments of a closed source subscription service that wants me to switch to the bundled browser of the wealthiest company on earth's most popular consumer OS Oh, I'd also not advise anyone to switch to Safari. Apple absolutely would pull exactly the same or worse as Google if they could, I have no illusions about that. I can't wait for the day they're finally forced to actually allow alternative browser engines on iOS and switch to Firefox everywhere.

pphysch 2y ago
The onus is on the app developer to make sure their app runs on a variety of platforms. It's not Chrome's fault for third party developers being lazy and not supporting Firefox.
- lxgr 2y ago
  >It's not Chrome's fault for third party developers being lazy and not supporting Firefox. What if it's Google themselves? From my original post: > [...] and that often includes Google sites/apps
  - fellowniusmonk 2y ago
    [Citation Needed] What google site or service requires Chrome?
    - nasmorn 2y ago
      Meet is as shitty on Safari as Google feels they can get away with
    - lxgr 2y ago
      "AI overview" (which I happen to find really useful) was only available on Chrome and Safari for at least a few months. Sure, it's a lab experiment or whatever, but these are just words, and the effect is that I have to use a different browser to be able to use them, for absolutely no technical reason. (The LLM is running on Google's servers and provides plaintext. I think Firefox could handle that.) Just visit this on Firefox if you want to see for yourself, including a big "install Chrome" call to action: https://labs.google.com/search/install https://labs.google.com/search/install
      - Kiro 2y ago
        Doesn't really support your statement then.
    - 2y ago

yoavm 2y ago

> Google would have to make TONS of hostile moves for that fact to change I think the biggest issue with IE6 was not the hostile moves Microosft did, it is that it didn't do anything. The browser was just frozen. That's why it was relatively easy for Firefox to take a marketshare. Frankly, with some of the APIs Google are adding to Chrome, I'd rather they'd do a little less.

ajross 2y ago
So, no, the problem with IE was 100% Microsoft's hostile competition tactics. Yes, part of that was trying to deprecate the "world wide web" as a platform, so yes, IE6 got very crufty toward the end of its days. But by that point it was clear it was already dying and IE7 et. al. were introduced late as an attempt to catch up. During the period when the real bullets were flying, IE6 was actually a really great browser, just one that forced you into using a menu of Microsoft technologies because it didn't support the "standard" stuff. Remember that XMLHttpRequest, the basic tool underneath all modern dynamic web UIs, was originally a non-standard Microsoft invention. And yes: eventually this proved unsustainable and innovation in the standards-based browser world eventually proved too fast for MS to keep up, and it lost. But the tool that broke the back of that monopoly absolutely wasn't Firefox. It was Chrome.
- yoavm 2y ago
  I would say that the 30% market-share Firefox had in 2009 was breaking the monopoly much more than the 3% Chrome had a time. Sure IE6 had many non-standard APIs, but even the fact that all hobbyist browsers back then were implementing tabs and IE6 never had that, speaks to its stagnant development. To be honest I'd prefer some things Google is now pushing through th W3C as standards to be left as Chrome specific APIs and leave the rest of us alone.
fellowniusmonk 2y ago
That and browser sniffing to serve intentionally broken CSS on Microsoft's websites to competitors like Opera, I remember this because it directly effected me at the time. I mean at least we still have websites like this from over 20 years ago that still document the bullshit, people who weren't there CANNOT fathom the how despicable they were. https://www.wiumlie.no/2003/2/msn/ https://www.wiumlie.no/2003/2/msn/

pjmlp 2y ago

It definitely is, I was also there, just like everyone was doing IE only sites, not only plenty of people do the same with ChromeOS vision of the Web, they ship Chrome alongside Electron crap. Safari is the last man standing before a ChromeOS world.

onion2k 2y ago
Safari is the last man standing before a ChromeOS world. Except it isn't. Maybe I'm being slightly obtuse here, but the world is not "Chrome Vs Safari". It's "Chrome Vs Safari Vs native apps". If Safari dies we'll be in a world of "Chrome Vs native apps", and that is what Apple wants. Browsers represent a way to deliver software to users that's outside of Apple's revenue mechanisms. Apple have every incentive to keep Safari being good-not-great at running web apps, so users prefer the native version (even though most of the time that'll be Electron.)
- bloppe 2y ago
  Am I the only one left happily using Firefox? You know, the only "major" browser that doesn't seem to have these conflicts of interest?
  - gray_-_wolf 2y ago
    Also happy Firefox user here. Do not worry, there are dozens of us. Dozens!
    - mr_sturd 2y ago
      It's always nice to meet a fellow neverChrome.
  - dudhejffj 2y ago
    I use Firefox Mobile but have long abandoned the desktop offering. The only thing I feel like I get from the desktop version lately is a spiritual victory whereas the mobile browser actually has tangible features I prefer like add-ons and the search bar at the bottom.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

doctorpangloss 2y ago

The audience for computers in 2024 has grown to maybe 1,000x what it was in 2008. Everyone has to rediscover the meaning of being able to choose.

jgtrosh 2y ago
https://www.statista.com/statistics/273018/number-of-internet-users-worldwide/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/273018/number-of-interne... maybe 3.7x
- EasyMark 2y ago
  Yeah no way it’s 1000x lol

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

thephyber 2y ago

I think some of the complaints in the article were about websites using User Agent string to detect compatibility, rather than individual feature sniffing. In that small complaint, I would agree. But I think the fault is mostly with the website owners, not with the browser.

robocat 2y ago
> rather than individual feature sniffing Feature sniffing generally doesn't work for anything interactive. Many bugs in controls, animation, events are not sniffable. Yet developers still need to deliver workarounds. Feature sniffing works best for static HTML documents - and even then the code to actually do the sniffing can be demonic code (a side-effect or correlation or an obscure discovery). Using just feature sniffing is a great goal but it simply isn't a perfect solution. I do believe us developers should avoid parsing user agents unless there is no other good solution (never a crutch for lazy bad developers). And detecting the browser for obsolete browsers is usually a perfectly fine solution. The bugs won't get fixed and the browser won't change. There are exceptions of course!!!
- thephyber 2y ago
  > And detecting the browser for obsolete browsers is usually a perfectly fine solution. But there are a long tail of user agents and the average web developer does a terrible job at identifying those in the long tail. My password manager on iOS uses the newest Safari engine, but all websites think it is an outdated/obsolete browser because it uses a user agent string they don't recognize. Also, my bank doesn’t use highly interactive features you mention. It’s almost exclusively links, forms and a little validation JavaScript. Feature sniffing would have been a much better experience.

Aloisius 2y ago

Safari hasn't actually been particular far behind implementing industry standards. As far as I can tell, it's more that people seem to believe that Google dictates industry standards and base everything on when Chrome supports it as opposed to when it actually gets standardized. SSE's W3C draft standard in 2012. Supported in Safari in 2010. web sockets This one is true. IETF standard 2011. Supported fully in Safari 2013. IndexedDB API W3C recommended standard in 2015. Supported in Safari in 2014. animations If we're talking the Web Animations API, it hasn't been standardized yet (W3C working draft) and level 2 isn't even that far. relative color syntax Not standardized yet. It's currently a W3C working draft. container queries Not standardized yet. It's currently a W3C working draft. a bunch of <video> stuff Need specifics. flexbox W3C candidate recommendation 2018. Supported in Safari 2013.

afavour 2y ago
I feel like you’re putting the cart before the horse there. The W3C takes existing implementations into account before issuing a recommendation.
fellowniusmonk 2y ago
This is very misleading, compare implementation timelines between browsers and you'll see that Safari has implemented many of these things year(s) after chromium, firefox and even opera. This of course was because they have tried as much as possible to push people to closed source/walled garden apps.
- Aloisius 2y ago
  I'd argue calling non-standard chrome/firefox/opera features "standards" is misleading.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - burnerthrow008 2y ago
    +1, and I'd argue that calling non-standard chrome features "standards" is what makes it the new IE.

lenerdenator 2y ago

Regardless of all of that, monocultures are bad. Monocultures that allow for one company to make it hard to avoid advertising and data tracking on the web are even worse.

sureIy 2y ago

Safari was late until a couple of years ago when they started implementing new features more aggressively. Now it's always Firefox. Just check how long it took them to add support for the :has() selector and RegEx Lookbehind. We're years into "manifest v3" and background workers are nowhere to be found.

troupo 2y ago
Funnily enough it was Firefox who figured out a workable algorithm for :has IIRC
- sureIy 2y ago
  Absolutely not. Firefox has mindbogglingly bad performance with :has() even if their superficial tests tell you otherwise. I experienced minute-long lockups just because I used :has() on a large element like body. Chrome and Safari had no issues with those selectors.
  - troupo 2y ago
    I stand corrected. It was the absolute legends at Igalia. See links and explainer here: https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/528 https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/528

nox101 2y ago

Another piece of evidence is Google tries at nearly every turn to help people write portable code, use best practices like feature detection instead of browser version sniffing, etc... They run https://web.dev/ https://web.dev/ and the founded baseline https://web.dev/baseline https://web.dev/baseline and the web platform dashboard https://web.dev/blog/web-platform-dashboard https://web.dev/blog/web-platform-dashboard MS in their IE days did the exact opposite, trying to make as many proprietary IE only features as possible.

tclancy 2y ago

Of course it is. None of that is relevant, my younger coworkers only qa in Chrome so it’s IE 5.5 all over again.

soperj 2y ago

Can you actually now? Or is Chromium still webkit under the hood because Apple?

turnsout 2y ago

Just because Chrome implements a feature and then rams it through a W3C committee does not make it a “standard” that Apple must support on day 1. The arrogance of the Chrome crowd is astonishing.