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> 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 (an

by 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.
    - thayne 2y ago
      I don't know of anything that is completely broken, but some functionality requiers chrome: On Google Docs, paste as markdown, copy and paste from menus, paste without formatting, etc. only works on chrome. This functionality could be done with standard APIs, but instead google uses a hidden, pre-installed extension to implement it. Offline mode doesn't work on firefox for either gmail or google docs. Google doodles don't show up on Firefox Mobile, unless you spoof a chrome user agent. Youtube has repeatedly had serious performance problems on Firefox.
    - tjpnz 2y ago
      There are less options for screen sharing on Google Meet.
  - spoaceman7777 2y ago
    Are you objecting to single sign on or something? Or some browser extension that is only published for Chrome? What are you talking about?
    - lxgr 2y ago
      Some Google sites explicitly say "install Chrome to use this", e.g. this one: https://labs.google.com/search/install https://labs.google.com/search/install
nightski 2y ago
I don't understand this because I have used Firefox exclusively since it first came out and never run into broken sites. What exactly are these exotic sites you are visiting that break in Firefox? You mentioned an elusive government website but I have used many (IRS, SSA, Edu, etc...)
- rty32 2y ago
  That's a very arrogant attitude. I'll give you one example: I sometimes can't open OpenAI API documentation due to some stupid Cloudflare captcha checks. No, on Firefox, however many times I click that checkbox, I can't go through the verification, just to read some static content. Not even if I disable adblock and tracking protection. I don't even see a checkbox at all on Chrome or Edge.
  - lxgr 2y ago
    Cloudflare captchas are an excellent point. Sure, technically nobody is excluded: Just solve the captcha! Fraud heuristics are only reasonable, right? But it's all fun only as long as your situation occurs within the 90th or 95th percentile of all data labeled "good customer". Good luck if you're out side of that...
    - nerdix 2y ago
      But thats not Chrome's fault. I mostly use Chrome on Linux (fully Google distributed, closed source Chrome...so not Chromium) and I see those cloudflare captchas at a much higher rate than I do when using Windows or macOS.
- poincaredisk 2y ago
  This is also my experience. But to be fair I have a heavily modified privacy-centric Firefox, and I disabled some features in the config, and I disable js and large images and of course tracking/ads by default, and I delete most cookies on browser close, and I run Wayland on Linux so... any breakage is probably on me.
olig15 2y ago
I see this argument a lot. I use Firefox on my Mac, iPhone and my Windows work PC. I can’t remember the last time there was a website that was broken because of Firefox. Do you happen to have any examples? I’m curious to see how broken/what the issues are.
- bityard 2y ago
  Not who you are replying to, but before I switched to Vivaldi (a Chromium fork), I saw lots. Among them: Logging into some of my financial accounts doesn't work on Firefox. Enterprise software and gear like VMware and management UIs of various devices on the network. (They foolishly hard-coded their devices to reject any UserAgent strings that weren't Chrome, IE, or Edge.) Sites that use some kind of poorly-implemented tracking/fingerprinting to make sure you're a human. (I would routinely get stuck in infinite CAPCHA loops even on normal sites.) For a while, Slack video/audio calls did not work on Firefox because Slack chose to use codecs that FF didn't support. Video calls on FF are still hit-and-miss on various platforms, ran into it on Facebook just the other day. These are all just off the top of my head, of course. There are plenty more that I've forgotten.
- zamadatix 2y ago
  I don't use Firefox currently but I did for a couple years recently. For a while Teams was blocked and/or broken in Firefox due to calling features Firefox didn't have at the time. A few sites would silently break, e.g. restaurant online order pages, but work in Chrome. Never really looked into why, it was just annoying and intermittent (might work one month but not the next). YouTube occasionally had some issues. For a while it was on an old version of Polymer that used Shadow DOM V0 (experimental) instead of V1. A good list is here https://webcompat.com/issues?page=1&per_page=100&state=open&stage=all&sort=comments&direction=desc https://webcompat.com/issues?page=1&per_page=100&state=open&... keep in mind some of these are "is extremely slow in Firefox". Sometimes that's just that Firefox didn't have the same set of optimizations (not necessarily even fewer optimizations, just not ones built against) and other times that's deeper seated like the Shaw DOM V0 example where the fallback for the page was to use some older.
- aidenn0 2y ago
nerdix 2y ago
The likely reason why they don't support Firefox is because it has less than 5% marketshare. It isn't a Chrome only site. You said that they support Chrome, IE, Edge (if they support IE then I'd assume that they might also support pre-Chromium Edge), and Safari. That is just the nature of using a niche platform. I primarily use Linux on the desktop. I have to keep a Windows install around for the times that I need to do something that can't be done on Linux. Resources are limited and so high marketshare platforms are prioritized. That's just how it is.
- throwaway2037 2y ago
  > I have to keep a Windows install around for the times that I need to do something that can't be done on Linux. Can you share some examples?

by lxgr 2y ago

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.
  - thayne 2y ago
    I don't know of anything that is completely broken, but some functionality requiers chrome: On Google Docs, paste as markdown, copy and paste from menus, paste without formatting, etc. only works on chrome. This functionality could be done with standard APIs, but instead google uses a hidden, pre-installed extension to implement it. Offline mode doesn't work on firefox for either gmail or google docs. Google doodles don't show up on Firefox Mobile, unless you spoof a chrome user agent. Youtube has repeatedly had serious performance problems on Firefox.
  - tjpnz 2y ago
    There are less options for screen sharing on Google Meet.
- spoaceman7777 2y ago
  Are you objecting to single sign on or something? Or some browser extension that is only published for Chrome? What are you talking about?
  - lxgr 2y ago
    Some Google sites explicitly say "install Chrome to use this", e.g. this one: https://labs.google.com/search/install https://labs.google.com/search/install

nightski 2y ago

I don't understand this because I have used Firefox exclusively since it first came out and never run into broken sites. What exactly are these exotic sites you are visiting that break in Firefox? You mentioned an elusive government website but I have used many (IRS, SSA, Edu, etc...)

rty32 2y ago
That's a very arrogant attitude. I'll give you one example: I sometimes can't open OpenAI API documentation due to some stupid Cloudflare captcha checks. No, on Firefox, however many times I click that checkbox, I can't go through the verification, just to read some static content. Not even if I disable adblock and tracking protection. I don't even see a checkbox at all on Chrome or Edge.
- lxgr 2y ago
  Cloudflare captchas are an excellent point. Sure, technically nobody is excluded: Just solve the captcha! Fraud heuristics are only reasonable, right? But it's all fun only as long as your situation occurs within the 90th or 95th percentile of all data labeled "good customer". Good luck if you're out side of that...
  - nerdix 2y ago
    But thats not Chrome's fault. I mostly use Chrome on Linux (fully Google distributed, closed source Chrome...so not Chromium) and I see those cloudflare captchas at a much higher rate than I do when using Windows or macOS.
poincaredisk 2y ago
This is also my experience. But to be fair I have a heavily modified privacy-centric Firefox, and I disabled some features in the config, and I disable js and large images and of course tracking/ads by default, and I delete most cookies on browser close, and I run Wayland on Linux so... any breakage is probably on me.

olig15 2y ago

I see this argument a lot. I use Firefox on my Mac, iPhone and my Windows work PC. I can’t remember the last time there was a website that was broken because of Firefox. Do you happen to have any examples? I’m curious to see how broken/what the issues are.

bityard 2y ago
Not who you are replying to, but before I switched to Vivaldi (a Chromium fork), I saw lots. Among them: Logging into some of my financial accounts doesn't work on Firefox. Enterprise software and gear like VMware and management UIs of various devices on the network. (They foolishly hard-coded their devices to reject any UserAgent strings that weren't Chrome, IE, or Edge.) Sites that use some kind of poorly-implemented tracking/fingerprinting to make sure you're a human. (I would routinely get stuck in infinite CAPCHA loops even on normal sites.) For a while, Slack video/audio calls did not work on Firefox because Slack chose to use codecs that FF didn't support. Video calls on FF are still hit-and-miss on various platforms, ran into it on Facebook just the other day. These are all just off the top of my head, of course. There are plenty more that I've forgotten.
zamadatix 2y ago
I don't use Firefox currently but I did for a couple years recently. For a while Teams was blocked and/or broken in Firefox due to calling features Firefox didn't have at the time. A few sites would silently break, e.g. restaurant online order pages, but work in Chrome. Never really looked into why, it was just annoying and intermittent (might work one month but not the next). YouTube occasionally had some issues. For a while it was on an old version of Polymer that used Shadow DOM V0 (experimental) instead of V1. A good list is here https://webcompat.com/issues?page=1&per_page=100&state=open&stage=all&sort=comments&direction=desc https://webcompat.com/issues?page=1&per_page=100&state=open&... keep in mind some of these are "is extremely slow in Firefox". Sometimes that's just that Firefox didn't have the same set of optimizations (not necessarily even fewer optimizations, just not ones built against) and other times that's deeper seated like the Shaw DOM V0 example where the fallback for the page was to use some older.
aidenn0 2y ago

nerdix 2y ago

The likely reason why they don't support Firefox is because it has less than 5% marketshare. It isn't a Chrome only site. You said that they support Chrome, IE, Edge (if they support IE then I'd assume that they might also support pre-Chromium Edge), and Safari. That is just the nature of using a niche platform. I primarily use Linux on the desktop. I have to keep a Windows install around for the times that I need to do something that can't be done on Linux. Resources are limited and so high marketshare platforms are prioritized. That's just how it is.

throwaway2037 2y ago
> I have to keep a Windows install around for the times that I need to do something that can't be done on Linux. Can you share some examples?