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People here seem to be underestimating the advantages that Google gets just because of Chrome: - When you sign in to Google, you sign in browser-wide. Google n

People here seem to be underestimating the advantages that Google gets just because of Chrome: - When you sign in to Google, you sign in browser-wide. Google now gets all of your browsing data, perfect for advertising. (If you ever doubt it, go check out Google Takeout. You'll be shocked at the amount of data you see there.) - They have special APIs and features that they get to use, and nobody else. Only because they own Chrome. [1] - They get to move forward with enabling and pushing features that allow for more advertising: see Manifest v3, FLoC. - Google specifically serves a worse version of Search on Firefox for Mobile. You have to get an extension to get the full experience. This isn't an isolated attempt. You can see more of the same thing with Android. - AOSP (the open source counterpart of Android) is now unusable. It doesn't ship with most essential apps, including a Phone app. In previous versions of Android, all of these were a part of AOSP. - Most third party launchers/stores struggle to implement features because they are only available for Google themselves. - The signing in with Google thing from above continues here too: you sign in to Google system-wide. [1]: https://x.com/lcasdev/status/1810696257137959018 https://x.com/lcasdev/status/1810696257137959018

jansan 2y ago
I sincerely doubt that forcing Google to spin off Chrome is the only or best solution for this.
- simiones 2y ago
  What other solution do you have in mind? Legislation about architecture decisions taken in software products seems preferable? In principle there is nothing wrong for example with a shared account for multiple products from the same company, many even prefer it. The problem only appears when this gets concentrated into too much power and can be leveraged in ways that distort the market and hurt consumers.
  - nzach 2y ago
    > Legislation about architecture decisions taken in software products seems preferable? To me this option seems more practical. And we already have some precedence for this kind of solution. For aviation we have entities like EASA issuing standards like ED-109 and for healthcare we have the HL7 organization issuing the HL7 standard. Another example in the healthcare industry is the DICOM standard created by the NEMA organization. This is not a new idea. I'm not arguing this approach is without problems. But we are already doing this for some pretty important topics, and I don't see why we couldn't use the same strategy for an "open web standard" that all browsers have to implement.
    - dartos 2y ago
      The UNIX standard was made in part because the government wanted an operating system standard, right? Seems reasonable they’d push for a browser standard as well…. Even though we kind of have one.
      - nzach 2y ago
        Yes, Chrome is the de facto standard for the open web. And everyone agrees this is too much power for a single company to have. But most people seem to think that just removing Chrome from Google would fix this issue. People seem to forget that Chrome isn't the only tool Google can use to steer the web standard in a particular way. The Google crawler is probably an even more effective tool in shaping the web standard. "To be indexed by Google your page needs to comply with these requirements" puts A LOT of pressure in everyone working in the web. This is why I think creating and enforcing a web standard is the only practical solution to this problem.
      - dboreham 2y ago
        > The UNIX standard was made in part because the government > wanted an operating system standard, right? Wrong? Or at least where's the citation to back this up? "UNIX Standard" presumably means POSIX which was a work of the IEEE, not a government body. If some government had something to do with making it happen, I'm not aware of that. At the time (1988) UNIX wasn't used much outside of academia and niche industries.
jajko 2y ago
How far can one go from 'don't be evil', right. And that's one aspect of one product. Company-wide list would be probably impressive in the worst way possible
- ENGNR 2y ago
  Don't be evil was only the wifi password
  - water9 2y ago
    They changed it to make it longer.its now “Dont Forget To Be Evil”
    - IX-103 2y ago
      No, they just corrected the punctuation. It's now "Don't. Be evil!" Reflecting their inability to do almost anything, and their lack of morals when they do.
    - whiplash451 2y ago
      It is still missing a special character
rfoo 2y ago
> If you ever doubt it, go check out Google Takeout. You'll be shocked at the amount of data you see there. I sign in browser-wide and I do takeouts regularly. I don't see my browsing data. > It doesn't ship with most essential apps, including a Phone app. In previous versions of Android, all of these were a part of AOSP. And back when they were part of AOSP I never saw these example apps in the wild. Every vendor ships their own phone app. Every single one. There's some "hey we compile a extremely old and vulnerable version of AOSP"-style Android distributions, mainly advertised for builtin su/Magisk or "degoogle", which did use these example apps, though. I agree with other critics, they are toxic.
- atahanacar 2y ago
  You've disabled the option to see it. Your data is still being collected.
  - rfoo 2y ago
    Yeah, I really wish there is a working option to make me see it, then. I always enable every data collection option in my privacy page, because even if I don't they get the data anyway, so why bother? I do see my entire Google Search history since 2006.
  - didntcheck 2y ago
    That's unfalsifiable conjecture. I could just as easily assert that dang is building secret dossiers on all of us from our IP-request logs - we just can't see it
pjc50 2y ago
The problem is this: - the browser is undeniably critical as everyone's window through which they view the online world; - the user gains a huge amount of value by a browser being integrated into the OS, webviews in other applications, etc - browsers aren't really a self funding product - having a single for-profit US advertising company control everyone's view of the online world, however slightly (e.g. by obstructing adblockers), is Not Good Splitting it off solves the latter problem but immediately raises the question of how to pay for it. A very artificial arrangement where Google pay "arms length browserco" to maintain Chrome?
- niutech 2y ago
  How does splitting off Chrome as a separate company solve anything? They would still rely on Google for funding (like Mozilla) and being close friends they would do whatever Alphabet tells them to do. A better solution is to implement a bill like DMA in the EU to enforce competition among web browser vendors and fight monopolies.
  - verve_rat 2y ago
    But now Bing would have a chance of becoming the default search engine of the most used browser in the world. That's the difference.
    - crazygringo 2y ago
      Bing is already the default search engine on the default browser of the most used OS in the world. If they're not competing well, then that's entirely their fault. Microsoft is not at any kind of disadvantage here.
      - bee_rider 2y ago
        I don’t think Bing is the default search engine for Android’s browser. I could be wrong though. Is it? That would be a surprisingly fair-minded move of Google.
Timber-6539 2y ago
Everything here you accuse Google of doing, Apple is running circles on. Ultimately, if this case goes through Google are right about one thing. The UX on Chrome is going to take a steep nose dive.
- jimjambw 2y ago
  In what way?
  - Timber-6539 2y ago
    Who is going to provide a competitive browser for the price of $0 other than Google?
    - water9 2y ago
      Microsoft could end up buying it
      - Timber-6539 2y ago
        A far worse monopoly than Google is going to solve your monopoly problem?
      - scarface_74 2y ago
        And do what with it? They already are using Chromium for Edge. They would still need to monetize it.
    - kmeisthax 2y ago
      Before Google, there were multiple competing browsers based on different technology, all of which were either offered for free or explicitly licensed as FOSS. Google used Chrome to put the web on an upgrade treadmill. The only way to keep your own code up-to-date with what websites expected was to either commit unending amounts of resources to the problem (Google), do the bare minimum to keep websites working as your resources are stretched thin (Safari, arguably Firefox), or just ship modified versions of Chrome so that it's easier to merge in new features (Edge, Opera, Brave, Vivaldi, etc).
DanielVZ 2y ago
I know this is anecdotal and that I should look further into this but I recently had to switch to chromium because google suite products were slightly unusable in firefox: youtube used way more CPU than it should’ve (maybe this is due to codecs but I was not able to solve it), google sheets crashed constantly, google meet slowed my laptop to a halt and I couldn’t even share my screen, and for some reason google calendar would suddenly start to hog CPU and RAM randomly. Since I switched to chromium everything is smoother and I just can’t believe chromium per se is just this better than Firefox.
- bayindirh 2y ago
  I'll ask what extensions you use on your Firefox, because I regularly use Google Meet on an 2014 MacBook Pro with latest Firefox, and it doesn't even make the fans spin, plus all the goodies like environmental noise cancellation is there. Meet team also recently ported some of the Chrome only features back to Firefox, due to some fear, I guess... The YouTube videos in higher bitrates (like 4K) is generally due to Firefox's ability to hardware accelerate things, and there's a bit of difference there, yes. But on Linux and macOS (moreso in sequoia), I see no extreme CPU use. Just testing it on Firefox 132.02 on Debian Testing with Radeon 550 with open drivers, While I see a spike in CPU load, there's definitely some GPU load is also being produced, pointing to at least some GPU acceleration. On the other hand, Intel N100 with on board graphics can visibly struggle at 4K as far as I can tell. That one runs Firefox ESR though, I need to retest. I don't use WASM based Google Workspace tools (docs, sheets, etc.) heavily, but they don't crash when we use it on other pepople's documents that we collaborate on.
- loloquwowndueo 2y ago
  You can use chrome only for those google things where Firefox is crippled on purpose, and use Firefox for everything else.
- rgreekguy 2y ago
  Teams was acting up on Firefox the other day, too. It wouldn't have Q&A and whatever button is to the left of it enabled. "Not supported in your browser", or something.
- 2y ago
mrkramer 2y ago
Google realized if they don't control the search distribution they gonna lose out sooner or later; which is kinda contradictory for them if they claim Google is the best search out there and that they are constantly improving it and that's why(they say), people choose it over other alternatives. But tbh distribution of your product/s is crucial. Just look at Microsoft and their internet strategy, they chose the other route; push their internet browser(IE) down their massive distribution pipe called Windows and then introducing their search engine to this massive userbase. Fortunately this didn't work out for them but unfortunately that worked out for Google. And now Google essentially controls the Web in the more than half of the world.
- Loic 2y ago
  > Fortunately this didn't work out for them but unfortunately that worked out for Google. No, Google was better, then they used Chrome as an extremely powerful moat to protect their situation. Google at first was like magic compared to the Altavista of the time.
  - mrkramer 2y ago
    Yes but without Chrome, Google wouldn't have 90% search market share that they have today. They are completely dominating the WWW industry.
    - jervant 2y ago
      Surely making deals with companies like Apple and Mozilla to be the default search engine was a big part of building that market share. How many iPhone users bother to set a different search engine in Safari?
      - attendant3446 2y ago
        How easy is it to set a different search engine in Safari (apart from a very few predefined options)? =)
    - 2y ago
madeofpalk 2y ago
I don't disagree, but I'm also not sure what the alternative is. Who's going to buy Chrome that also doesn't suffer from the same anti-trust problems? Who would want to buy Chrome? Who would want to fund Chrome? What browser would Android ship? In one view I kind of like the idea that Google would have to shop around and 'buy' a browser for its OS (competition good!), but also that seems ridiculous and easy to fall right back into the same trap.
- timeon 2y ago
  > Who would want to buy Chrome? Who would want to fund Chrome? This is interesting question especially when companies are usually just use Chromium instead of creating new browser (not even making hard fork of Chromium).
- snapcaster 2y ago
  Open source browsers already exist though
  - PaulHoule 2y ago
    Many forks of Chromium, yes. Most if the rest of them pass the “open source” test but would struggle on the “browser” side.
    - niutech 2y ago
      Zen Browser, Floorp, Mullvad Browser, Pale Moon, Epiphany aren't "browsers"?
      - tinytuna 2y ago
        Mullvad Browser is basically Tor Browser without the onion network which is itself based off Firefox
      - neodymiumphish 2y ago
        Don’t forget the most well-funded alternative, Edge!
judge2020 2y ago
> - When you sign in to Google, you sign in browser-wide. Google now gets all of your browsing data, perfect for advertising. (If you ever doubt it, go check out Google Takeout. You'll be shocked at the amount of data you see there.) I have yet to see evidence that Google uses browser sync data for advertising. Go do something in chrome (look for cruises maybe), then delete the activity from myactivity.google.com, then wipe and reinstall chrome. You will see that you aren’t advertised based on that activity yet it’s still in your chrome history.
- asadotzler 2y ago
  >I have yet to see evidence that Google uses browser sync data for advertising. Then you probably don't get out much: https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/31/24167119/google-search-algorithm-documents-leak-seo-chrome-clicks https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/31/24167119/google-search-al... Another major point highlighted by Fishkin and King relates to how Google may use Chrome data in its search rankings. Google Search representatives have said that they don’t use anything from Chrome for ranking, but the leaked documents suggest that may not be true. One section, for example, lists “chrome_trans_clicks” as informing which links from a domain appear below the main webpage in search results. Fishkin interprets it as meaning Google “uses the number of clicks on pages in Chrome browsers and uses that to determine the most popular/important URLs on a site, which go into the calculation of which to include in the sitelinks feature.”
  - judge2020 2y ago
    It sounds like that might be talking about the hyperlink `ping` param: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/HTMLAnchorElement/ping https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/HTMLAnchorE... It could be marked as chrome because Firefox doesn’t support it (without a default-off config value) and Safari technically implemented it at a later date than Chrome, with non-chromium Edge supporting it years after chrome. This would indicate Google is using chrome to tell it when (via its support of the ping property) but wouldn’t indicate they are decrypting and analyzing chrome sync data.
blcArmadillo 2y ago
> - AOSP (the open source counterpart of Android) is now unusable. It doesn't ship with most essential apps, including a Phone app. In previous versions of Android, all of these were a part of AOSP. This particular example is a bit misleading as those apps are still available; they're just unbundled from the system image: https://source.android.com/docs/automotive/unbundled_apps/release_notes https://source.android.com/docs/automotive/unbundled_apps/re...
- zinekeller 2y ago
  Your comment unfortunately implies that Google still maintains them, which is farthest from the truth (as this document shows, it is only maintained for automotive use - it is not usable on a regular phone).
  - Ferret7446 2y ago
    Why is Google obligated to maintain them? It's open source so other people can and should do so.
esrauch 2y ago
> Google specifically serves a worse version of Search on Firefox for Mobile. I don't think Google owning Chrome is really a factor here, but just a raw traffic question where FF Mobile has basically zero uptake. The experience they serve on FF Mobile is just the "we arent subscribed to validating that all of our shiniest JS works with this version of this browser". The extension spoofs the user agent and arbitrary obscure features that only trigger on specific queries may be broken. Google does do the effort of validating on other browsers where the traffic threshold is higher, including Firefox on Desktop. If they didn't own Chrome nor Firefox they still wouldn't really have incentive to spend more time supporting the tiny fraction of users.
2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
AOSP is so useless that I refuse to even call it an "operating system."
evoke4908 2y ago
Uploads to google drive from Firefox are throttled to 10% of the bandwidth I get using Chrome
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
maeil 2y ago
You missed one: - They get to move forward with enabling and pushing features that allow for more hardware and software lockin to their platform: see unexportable passkeys
vintermann 2y ago
> Google specifically serves a worse version of Search on Firefox for Mobile. Can't say I've noticed that, but YouTube definitively feels like it's getting an especially slow-loading version on Firefox.
chaosharmonic 2y ago
> This isn't an isolated attempt. You can see more of the same thing with Android. Here are more: - (jumping off of your second point...) Play Services does more than just handle stuff you sign into as a user -- it's also a dependency for everything from push notifications to screen casting. This actively poses issues building competing platforms, in that in order to give developers a path to shipping in your ecosystem you have to provide functioning alternatives to all of those ancillary features. The compatibility issue also impacts user adoption, and then the user adoption and the barren marketplace impact each other... Even the combined resources of Amazon and Microsoft weren't enough to overcome this. (Facebook did, but I'm also not sure forking the OS into a separate VR platform is necessarily the same thing.) - It also comes with integrity checking, so even if you do find a good third party image, and sideload Google packages, numerous things won't work unless you take part in a dumb arms race that ironically requires you to also root your device. By which I mean a feature that was originally built for banking applications is now used everywhere from streaming services (as an additional layer of DRM) to gacha games (for anti-cheat). This is actually the entire reason I dropped Pokemon Go, personally. Obligatory link to the excellent Ars piece on this topic: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-on-android-controlling-open-source-by-any-means-necessary/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-on...
- niutech 2y ago
  You can root your Android device and replace Google Play Services with microG (https://microg.org https://microg.org).
  - ycombinatrix 2y ago
    microG doesn't pass all the integrity / attestation checks
    - chaosharmonic 2y ago
      Also how much coverage of the Play APIs does it have in general? I'm aware of it but not really up to date on the state of the project
downrightmike 2y ago
Manifest V3 is just another nail in the coffin.
xnx 2y ago
A browser with a huge userbase would be extremely lucrative for an unscrupulous owner. A new owner could sell full and identifiable clickstream data for all browser activity. A new owner could siphon information from the non-public web for AI training, corporate espionage, or any other purpose.
beanjuiceII 2y ago
I'm happy to give all this to a cohesive experience google provides. There are competitors in this market too, but google was the first and best not sure why they deserve this blatant overstep in abuse of power
askvictor 2y ago
> Google specifically serves a worse version of Search on Firefox for Mobile. You have to get an extension to get the full experience. What's the difference, and where can I find this extension?
- Rebelgecko 2y ago
  On Firefox, the design of the search results page looks about a decade older. Some people would argue that's a good thing :)
  - phito 2y ago
    Also I can't get weather information on Google with Firefox
- rkharsan64 2y ago
  Google Search Fixer. It's a recommended extension for Firefox on Mobile.
iteratethis 2y ago
To add: Google uses Chrome's established user base to bundle other products in the same way Microsoft uses Office subscriptions to push Teams. The most recent example being Gemini now deeply integrated into Chrome. Had Gemini been a stand-alone product, it would have to fight for every user. Now billions of users have it at their fingertips.
dingnuts 2y ago
> Google specifically serves a worse version of Search on Firefox for Mobile. You have to get an extension to get the full experience. Huh, I wonder if this is why I have perceived a drop in quality from Google Search. What a stupid move from them -- not only have I stopped using Google Search and now pay Kagi (yes I know money still flows from Kagi to Google but even still) and have been evangelizing Kagi as well as taking every opportunity to shit on Google Search. Great job G, you made the product worse and made me a customer of someone else
paraknight 2y ago
The APIs thing: it's not just Chrome, but Chromium too. I first noticed this when trying to replicate some of the screen sharing UI (buttons to share different things) from Google Meet, only to find that no non-Google domains have access to those APIs in the Chromium source code. Made a huge deal about it but nobody seemed to care.
- Ferret7446 2y ago
  You could just edit the domain restriction out of the Chromium source, no?
learningstud 2y ago
Yes, Google gains advantages through the Chrome browser so do we as consumers. The competition for Chrome should come from a better Browser not by being forced to sell it. DOJ is wasting time and taxes on this pointless verdict. Even more economic wastes are coming when the selling happens.
- a-loup-e 2y ago
  Thinking things just "should" happen is how we get to this issue in the first place.
shiroiushi 2y ago
>AOSP is now unusable. It doesn't ship with most essential apps, including a Phone app. That's OK: these days, the phone (voice calling) app is only useful for receiving calls from scammers and telemarketers. I wouldn't miss it.

jansan 2y ago

I sincerely doubt that forcing Google to spin off Chrome is the only or best solution for this.

simiones 2y ago
What other solution do you have in mind? Legislation about architecture decisions taken in software products seems preferable? In principle there is nothing wrong for example with a shared account for multiple products from the same company, many even prefer it. The problem only appears when this gets concentrated into too much power and can be leveraged in ways that distort the market and hurt consumers.
- nzach 2y ago
  > Legislation about architecture decisions taken in software products seems preferable? To me this option seems more practical. And we already have some precedence for this kind of solution. For aviation we have entities like EASA issuing standards like ED-109 and for healthcare we have the HL7 organization issuing the HL7 standard. Another example in the healthcare industry is the DICOM standard created by the NEMA organization. This is not a new idea. I'm not arguing this approach is without problems. But we are already doing this for some pretty important topics, and I don't see why we couldn't use the same strategy for an "open web standard" that all browsers have to implement.
  - dartos 2y ago
    The UNIX standard was made in part because the government wanted an operating system standard, right? Seems reasonable they’d push for a browser standard as well…. Even though we kind of have one.
    - nzach 2y ago
      Yes, Chrome is the de facto standard for the open web. And everyone agrees this is too much power for a single company to have. But most people seem to think that just removing Chrome from Google would fix this issue. People seem to forget that Chrome isn't the only tool Google can use to steer the web standard in a particular way. The Google crawler is probably an even more effective tool in shaping the web standard. "To be indexed by Google your page needs to comply with these requirements" puts A LOT of pressure in everyone working in the web. This is why I think creating and enforcing a web standard is the only practical solution to this problem.
    - dboreham 2y ago
      > The UNIX standard was made in part because the government > wanted an operating system standard, right? Wrong? Or at least where's the citation to back this up? "UNIX Standard" presumably means POSIX which was a work of the IEEE, not a government body. If some government had something to do with making it happen, I'm not aware of that. At the time (1988) UNIX wasn't used much outside of academia and niche industries.

jajko 2y ago

How far can one go from 'don't be evil', right. And that's one aspect of one product. Company-wide list would be probably impressive in the worst way possible

ENGNR 2y ago
Don't be evil was only the wifi password
- water9 2y ago
  They changed it to make it longer.its now “Dont Forget To Be Evil”
  - IX-103 2y ago
    No, they just corrected the punctuation. It's now "Don't. Be evil!" Reflecting their inability to do almost anything, and their lack of morals when they do.
  - whiplash451 2y ago
    It is still missing a special character

rfoo 2y ago

> If you ever doubt it, go check out Google Takeout. You'll be shocked at the amount of data you see there. I sign in browser-wide and I do takeouts regularly. I don't see my browsing data. > It doesn't ship with most essential apps, including a Phone app. In previous versions of Android, all of these were a part of AOSP. And back when they were part of AOSP I never saw these example apps in the wild. Every vendor ships their own phone app. Every single one. There's some "hey we compile a extremely old and vulnerable version of AOSP"-style Android distributions, mainly advertised for builtin su/Magisk or "degoogle", which did use these example apps, though. I agree with other critics, they are toxic.

atahanacar 2y ago
You've disabled the option to see it. Your data is still being collected.
- rfoo 2y ago
  Yeah, I really wish there is a working option to make me see it, then. I always enable every data collection option in my privacy page, because even if I don't they get the data anyway, so why bother? I do see my entire Google Search history since 2006.
- didntcheck 2y ago
  That's unfalsifiable conjecture. I could just as easily assert that dang is building secret dossiers on all of us from our IP-request logs - we just can't see it

pjc50 2y ago

The problem is this: - the browser is undeniably critical as everyone's window through which they view the online world; - the user gains a huge amount of value by a browser being integrated into the OS, webviews in other applications, etc - browsers aren't really a self funding product - having a single for-profit US advertising company control everyone's view of the online world, however slightly (e.g. by obstructing adblockers), is Not Good Splitting it off solves the latter problem but immediately raises the question of how to pay for it. A very artificial arrangement where Google pay "arms length browserco" to maintain Chrome?

niutech 2y ago
How does splitting off Chrome as a separate company solve anything? They would still rely on Google for funding (like Mozilla) and being close friends they would do whatever Alphabet tells them to do. A better solution is to implement a bill like DMA in the EU to enforce competition among web browser vendors and fight monopolies.
- verve_rat 2y ago
  But now Bing would have a chance of becoming the default search engine of the most used browser in the world. That's the difference.
  - crazygringo 2y ago
    Bing is already the default search engine on the default browser of the most used OS in the world. If they're not competing well, then that's entirely their fault. Microsoft is not at any kind of disadvantage here.
    - bee_rider 2y ago
      I don’t think Bing is the default search engine for Android’s browser. I could be wrong though. Is it? That would be a surprisingly fair-minded move of Google.

Timber-6539 2y ago

Everything here you accuse Google of doing, Apple is running circles on. Ultimately, if this case goes through Google are right about one thing. The UX on Chrome is going to take a steep nose dive.

jimjambw 2y ago
In what way?
- Timber-6539 2y ago
  Who is going to provide a competitive browser for the price of $0 other than Google?
  - water9 2y ago
    Microsoft could end up buying it
    - Timber-6539 2y ago
      A far worse monopoly than Google is going to solve your monopoly problem?
    - scarface_74 2y ago
      And do what with it? They already are using Chromium for Edge. They would still need to monetize it.
  - kmeisthax 2y ago
    Before Google, there were multiple competing browsers based on different technology, all of which were either offered for free or explicitly licensed as FOSS. Google used Chrome to put the web on an upgrade treadmill. The only way to keep your own code up-to-date with what websites expected was to either commit unending amounts of resources to the problem (Google), do the bare minimum to keep websites working as your resources are stretched thin (Safari, arguably Firefox), or just ship modified versions of Chrome so that it's easier to merge in new features (Edge, Opera, Brave, Vivaldi, etc).

DanielVZ 2y ago

I know this is anecdotal and that I should look further into this but I recently had to switch to chromium because google suite products were slightly unusable in firefox: youtube used way more CPU than it should’ve (maybe this is due to codecs but I was not able to solve it), google sheets crashed constantly, google meet slowed my laptop to a halt and I couldn’t even share my screen, and for some reason google calendar would suddenly start to hog CPU and RAM randomly. Since I switched to chromium everything is smoother and I just can’t believe chromium per se is just this better than Firefox.

bayindirh 2y ago
I'll ask what extensions you use on your Firefox, because I regularly use Google Meet on an 2014 MacBook Pro with latest Firefox, and it doesn't even make the fans spin, plus all the goodies like environmental noise cancellation is there. Meet team also recently ported some of the Chrome only features back to Firefox, due to some fear, I guess... The YouTube videos in higher bitrates (like 4K) is generally due to Firefox's ability to hardware accelerate things, and there's a bit of difference there, yes. But on Linux and macOS (moreso in sequoia), I see no extreme CPU use. Just testing it on Firefox 132.02 on Debian Testing with Radeon 550 with open drivers, While I see a spike in CPU load, there's definitely some GPU load is also being produced, pointing to at least some GPU acceleration. On the other hand, Intel N100 with on board graphics can visibly struggle at 4K as far as I can tell. That one runs Firefox ESR though, I need to retest. I don't use WASM based Google Workspace tools (docs, sheets, etc.) heavily, but they don't crash when we use it on other pepople's documents that we collaborate on.
loloquwowndueo 2y ago
You can use chrome only for those google things where Firefox is crippled on purpose, and use Firefox for everything else.
rgreekguy 2y ago
Teams was acting up on Firefox the other day, too. It wouldn't have Q&A and whatever button is to the left of it enabled. "Not supported in your browser", or something.
2y ago

mrkramer 2y ago

Google realized if they don't control the search distribution they gonna lose out sooner or later; which is kinda contradictory for them if they claim Google is the best search out there and that they are constantly improving it and that's why(they say), people choose it over other alternatives. But tbh distribution of your product/s is crucial. Just look at Microsoft and their internet strategy, they chose the other route; push their internet browser(IE) down their massive distribution pipe called Windows and then introducing their search engine to this massive userbase. Fortunately this didn't work out for them but unfortunately that worked out for Google. And now Google essentially controls the Web in the more than half of the world.

Loic 2y ago
> Fortunately this didn't work out for them but unfortunately that worked out for Google. No, Google was better, then they used Chrome as an extremely powerful moat to protect their situation. Google at first was like magic compared to the Altavista of the time.
- mrkramer 2y ago
  Yes but without Chrome, Google wouldn't have 90% search market share that they have today. They are completely dominating the WWW industry.
  - jervant 2y ago
    Surely making deals with companies like Apple and Mozilla to be the default search engine was a big part of building that market share. How many iPhone users bother to set a different search engine in Safari?
    - attendant3446 2y ago
      How easy is it to set a different search engine in Safari (apart from a very few predefined options)? =)
  - 2y ago

madeofpalk 2y ago

I don't disagree, but I'm also not sure what the alternative is. Who's going to buy Chrome that also doesn't suffer from the same anti-trust problems? Who would want to buy Chrome? Who would want to fund Chrome? What browser would Android ship? In one view I kind of like the idea that Google would have to shop around and 'buy' a browser for its OS (competition good!), but also that seems ridiculous and easy to fall right back into the same trap.

timeon 2y ago
> Who would want to buy Chrome? Who would want to fund Chrome? This is interesting question especially when companies are usually just use Chromium instead of creating new browser (not even making hard fork of Chromium).
snapcaster 2y ago
Open source browsers already exist though
- PaulHoule 2y ago
  Many forks of Chromium, yes. Most if the rest of them pass the “open source” test but would struggle on the “browser” side.
  - niutech 2y ago
    Zen Browser, Floorp, Mullvad Browser, Pale Moon, Epiphany aren't "browsers"?
    - tinytuna 2y ago
      Mullvad Browser is basically Tor Browser without the onion network which is itself based off Firefox
    - neodymiumphish 2y ago
      Don’t forget the most well-funded alternative, Edge!

judge2020 2y ago

> - When you sign in to Google, you sign in browser-wide. Google now gets all of your browsing data, perfect for advertising. (If you ever doubt it, go check out Google Takeout. You'll be shocked at the amount of data you see there.) I have yet to see evidence that Google uses browser sync data for advertising. Go do something in chrome (look for cruises maybe), then delete the activity from myactivity.google.com, then wipe and reinstall chrome. You will see that you aren’t advertised based on that activity yet it’s still in your chrome history.

asadotzler 2y ago
>I have yet to see evidence that Google uses browser sync data for advertising. Then you probably don't get out much: https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/31/24167119/google-search-algorithm-documents-leak-seo-chrome-clicks https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/31/24167119/google-search-al... Another major point highlighted by Fishkin and King relates to how Google may use Chrome data in its search rankings. Google Search representatives have said that they don’t use anything from Chrome for ranking, but the leaked documents suggest that may not be true. One section, for example, lists “chrome_trans_clicks” as informing which links from a domain appear below the main webpage in search results. Fishkin interprets it as meaning Google “uses the number of clicks on pages in Chrome browsers and uses that to determine the most popular/important URLs on a site, which go into the calculation of which to include in the sitelinks feature.”
- judge2020 2y ago
  It sounds like that might be talking about the hyperlink `ping` param: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/HTMLAnchorElement/ping https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/HTMLAnchorE... It could be marked as chrome because Firefox doesn’t support it (without a default-off config value) and Safari technically implemented it at a later date than Chrome, with non-chromium Edge supporting it years after chrome. This would indicate Google is using chrome to tell it when (via its support of the ping property) but wouldn’t indicate they are decrypting and analyzing chrome sync data.

blcArmadillo 2y ago

> - AOSP (the open source counterpart of Android) is now unusable. It doesn't ship with most essential apps, including a Phone app. In previous versions of Android, all of these were a part of AOSP. This particular example is a bit misleading as those apps are still available; they're just unbundled from the system image: https://source.android.com/docs/automotive/unbundled_apps/release_notes https://source.android.com/docs/automotive/unbundled_apps/re...

zinekeller 2y ago
Your comment unfortunately implies that Google still maintains them, which is farthest from the truth (as this document shows, it is only maintained for automotive use - it is not usable on a regular phone).
- Ferret7446 2y ago
  Why is Google obligated to maintain them? It's open source so other people can and should do so.

esrauch 2y ago

> Google specifically serves a worse version of Search on Firefox for Mobile. I don't think Google owning Chrome is really a factor here, but just a raw traffic question where FF Mobile has basically zero uptake. The experience they serve on FF Mobile is just the "we arent subscribed to validating that all of our shiniest JS works with this version of this browser". The extension spoofs the user agent and arbitrary obscure features that only trigger on specific queries may be broken. Google does do the effort of validating on other browsers where the traffic threshold is higher, including Firefox on Desktop. If they didn't own Chrome nor Firefox they still wouldn't really have incentive to spend more time supporting the tiny fraction of users.

2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago

AOSP is so useless that I refuse to even call it an "operating system."

evoke4908 2y ago

Uploads to google drive from Firefox are throttled to 10% of the bandwidth I get using Chrome

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

maeil 2y ago

You missed one: - They get to move forward with enabling and pushing features that allow for more hardware and software lockin to their platform: see unexportable passkeys

vintermann 2y ago

> Google specifically serves a worse version of Search on Firefox for Mobile. Can't say I've noticed that, but YouTube definitively feels like it's getting an especially slow-loading version on Firefox.

chaosharmonic 2y ago

> This isn't an isolated attempt. You can see more of the same thing with Android. Here are more: - (jumping off of your second point...) Play Services does more than just handle stuff you sign into as a user -- it's also a dependency for everything from push notifications to screen casting. This actively poses issues building competing platforms, in that in order to give developers a path to shipping in your ecosystem you have to provide functioning alternatives to all of those ancillary features. The compatibility issue also impacts user adoption, and then the user adoption and the barren marketplace impact each other... Even the combined resources of Amazon and Microsoft weren't enough to overcome this. (Facebook did, but I'm also not sure forking the OS into a separate VR platform is necessarily the same thing.) - It also comes with integrity checking, so even if you do find a good third party image, and sideload Google packages, numerous things won't work unless you take part in a dumb arms race that ironically requires you to also root your device. By which I mean a feature that was originally built for banking applications is now used everywhere from streaming services (as an additional layer of DRM) to gacha games (for anti-cheat). This is actually the entire reason I dropped Pokemon Go, personally. Obligatory link to the excellent Ars piece on this topic: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-on-android-controlling-open-source-by-any-means-necessary/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-on...

niutech 2y ago
You can root your Android device and replace Google Play Services with microG (https://microg.org https://microg.org).
- ycombinatrix 2y ago
  microG doesn't pass all the integrity / attestation checks
  - chaosharmonic 2y ago
    Also how much coverage of the Play APIs does it have in general? I'm aware of it but not really up to date on the state of the project

downrightmike 2y ago

Manifest V3 is just another nail in the coffin.

xnx 2y ago

A browser with a huge userbase would be extremely lucrative for an unscrupulous owner. A new owner could sell full and identifiable clickstream data for all browser activity. A new owner could siphon information from the non-public web for AI training, corporate espionage, or any other purpose.

beanjuiceII 2y ago

I'm happy to give all this to a cohesive experience google provides. There are competitors in this market too, but google was the first and best not sure why they deserve this blatant overstep in abuse of power

askvictor 2y ago

> Google specifically serves a worse version of Search on Firefox for Mobile. You have to get an extension to get the full experience. What's the difference, and where can I find this extension?

Rebelgecko 2y ago
On Firefox, the design of the search results page looks about a decade older. Some people would argue that's a good thing :)
- phito 2y ago
  Also I can't get weather information on Google with Firefox
rkharsan64 2y ago
Google Search Fixer. It's a recommended extension for Firefox on Mobile.

iteratethis 2y ago

To add: Google uses Chrome's established user base to bundle other products in the same way Microsoft uses Office subscriptions to push Teams. The most recent example being Gemini now deeply integrated into Chrome. Had Gemini been a stand-alone product, it would have to fight for every user. Now billions of users have it at their fingertips.

dingnuts 2y ago

> Google specifically serves a worse version of Search on Firefox for Mobile. You have to get an extension to get the full experience. Huh, I wonder if this is why I have perceived a drop in quality from Google Search. What a stupid move from them -- not only have I stopped using Google Search and now pay Kagi (yes I know money still flows from Kagi to Google but even still) and have been evangelizing Kagi as well as taking every opportunity to shit on Google Search. Great job G, you made the product worse and made me a customer of someone else

paraknight 2y ago

The APIs thing: it's not just Chrome, but Chromium too. I first noticed this when trying to replicate some of the screen sharing UI (buttons to share different things) from Google Meet, only to find that no non-Google domains have access to those APIs in the Chromium source code. Made a huge deal about it but nobody seemed to care.

Ferret7446 2y ago
You could just edit the domain restriction out of the Chromium source, no?

learningstud 2y ago

Yes, Google gains advantages through the Chrome browser so do we as consumers. The competition for Chrome should come from a better Browser not by being forced to sell it. DOJ is wasting time and taxes on this pointless verdict. Even more economic wastes are coming when the selling happens.

a-loup-e 2y ago
Thinking things just "should" happen is how we get to this issue in the first place.

shiroiushi 2y ago

>AOSP is now unusable. It doesn't ship with most essential apps, including a Phone app. That's OK: these days, the phone (voice calling) app is only useful for receiving calls from scammers and telemarketers. I wouldn't miss it.