Former Mozilla CTO: 'Chrome Won' (andreasgal.com) 272
Responding to Firefox marketing head Eric Petitt's blog post from earlier this week, Andreas Gal, former chief technology officer of Mozilla (who spent seven years at the company) offers his insights. Citing latest market share figures, Gal says "it's safe to say that Chrome is eating the browser market, and everyone else except Safari is getting obliterated." From his blog post (edited and condensed for length): With a CEO transition about 3 years ago there was a major strategic shift at Mozilla to re-focus efforts on Firefox and thus the Desktop. Prior to 2014 Mozilla heavily invested in building a Mobile OS to compete with Android: Firefox OS. I started the Firefox OS project and brought it to scale. While we made quite a splash and sold several million devices, in the end we were a bit too late and we didn't manage to catch up with Android's explosive growth. Mozilla's strategic rationale for building Firefox OS was often misunderstood. Mozilla's founding mission was to build the Web by building a browser. [...] Browsers are a commodity product. They all pretty much look the same and feel the same. All browsers work pretty well, and being slightly faster or using slightly less memory is unlikely to sway users. If even Eric -- who heads Mozilla's marketing team -- uses Chrome every day as he mentioned in the first sentence, it's not surprising that almost 65% of desktop users are doing the same. [...] I don't think there will be a new browser war where Firefox or some other competitor re-captures market share from Chrome. It's like launching a new and improved horse in the year 2017. We all drive cars now. Some people still use horses, and there is value to horses, but technology has moved on when it comes to transportation. Does this mean Google owns the Web if they own Chrome? No. Absolutely not. Browsers are what the Web looked like in the first decades of the Internet. Mobile disrupted the Web, but the Web embraced mobile and at the heart of most apps beats a lot of JavaScript and HTTPS and REST these days. The future Web will look yet again completely different. Much will survive, and some parts of it will get disrupted.
Chrome is fastest (Score:4, Insightful)
The other big three were slow by comparison. On speed alone, Chrome won.
Mozilla didn't help themselves by firing their employees for not being PC enough.
Didn't Like Eich (Score:5, Funny)
Mozilla didn't help themselves by firing their employees for not being PC enough.
Maybe it's just me, but every time I see the current Mozilla make a decision, I'm so grateful they immediately ousted Brendan Eich (with his "proven technical and leadership background" bullshit) and appointed the former head of marketing as CEO instead.
Re:Didn't Like Eich (Score:4, Interesting)
I could probably count the number of times I"ve used chrome on one hand.
I don't really know any of my friends that use it either....
Where I work, IE is still the browser of choice for the company....you have to actually get special dispensation for them to allow you to install FF or chrome (usually for testing web apps).
So, in light of my anecdotal experience with it, might I ask those many of you that *do* use chrome as your primary browser.....why?
What benefits does it give over other browsers? I primarily use FF on my windows and Linux boxes...and mostly safari on my OS X boxes.
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I use mainly Chromium these days. It is a far, far better browsing experience than Firefox ever was.
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Can you please elaborate in what ways it is a better browsing experience.
I mean for a browser, you mainly just need to click a link and it takes you to a page..click another...lather, rinse, repeat.
So, what differentiates chrome from other browsers?
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It's almost as customizable as Firefox (though I still miss Tree Style Tabs), but it does not seem to leak memory as badly and the stability is better. I have kids and thus Chromebooks, and the profile syncs well with those as well as my Android phone. It has critical mass and so pretty much every website works with it.
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You can use Vivaldi and get better tab support with the chrome engine underneath
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It's almost as customizable as Firefox (though I still miss Tree Style Tabs), but it does not seem to leak memory as badly and the stability is better.
My experience is different. I use Chrome exclusively at work and am entirely satisfied. Typical use is gmail, slashdot, programming forums, and news sites. I can't remember the last time I restarted it - Probably the last time I had to reboot for patches. Win 7 Pro. At home I use a mix of Chrome, FF, and Opera. Win 10. I tend to leave a YouTube tab open and paused indefinitely. I assumed that Chrome would be ideal for that - It seems like YouTube & Chrome should literally be made for each other. But tha
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This is kinda odd since FireFox is pretty superior to Chrome on the mobile space.
For the desktop I've slowed moved over to Vivaldi, but on my Android device, it's still Firefox.
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It amazes me that anyone possibly can get "used to chrome" on Android.
On the desktop, Chromium (and presumably Chrome) is better than Firefox. I'll admit that.
But on Android, Firefox beats the living shit out of worthless Chrome. Calling Chrome second place is a hateful, mean-spirited insult to the number two. Chrome doesn't let me install extensions like ublock origin and simil
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The phone browsers look nothing at all like their PC counterparts that have the same name. Completely different look and feel and speed. I don't see why liking Chrome or Firefox on a phone says anything at all about liking them on a PC. They certainly don't share the same code. Right now, there are no good browsers on phones, the display is too small and interface too clumsy for something like a web browser.
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At least with Firefox, I can disable all the call-home features. On Chrome? Hahaha! Google's core business is your data. You think they provide Chrome for the sake of having an open Internet? Nope. It's for them to retrieve all the data they can about you and sell it
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> OH NOES! Google knows what webcomics I like!
Google knows a fuck lot more than that.
Google is using the data they have to figure out how best to market to you. Data someone else has about you is not used to help you, it is used to hurt you. If nothing else, think about this: if Google knows it, the US government can request it right now (most Americans are ultimately fine with this- after all, we have a good government right now, that uses this information to fight crime and violence)... but many more
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I keep all the devices segregated, no sharing, no sync, no cloud, no BS. When I'm at home I don't see anything about work, and people who do want to see their work stuff at home need to learn to cut that umbilical cord.
If there's one reason why Firefox is declining it is because they're pissing off their customers with the update speeds. If there's a second reason, it's because they copy Chrome slavishly, as if they can't start developing any features until they see it somewhere else first. I still use i
Re:Didn't Like Eich (Score:4, Insightful)
Those kinds of potentially company-altering decisions should never be made over hurt feelings of some random group.
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by firing their employees for not being PC enough
Did that actually happen? I know they basically badgered Eich out of the company for his failure to adopt Valley Values(tm) in is political activity, but he voluntarily stepped down. Were any employees actually fired?
Re:Chrome is fastest (Score:5, Insightful)
Same goes for every product and service out there. If political and religious views mattered, I'm not sure who I'd buy land from, who I'd have build a house, who I'd buy a house from and, failing all of those things, who I'd rent from, so I'd be homeless. Of course, I'm not sure which appliance manufacturer's name I'd want on the box I'd be sleeping in, so I'd have to get a sleeping bag and, maybe a tent. Not sure who I'd let make those for me though, let alone which store I'd buy them from... or, for that matter, in which bank I'd keep the money used to buy things in the first place, or where I'd work to earn that money.
People who apply artificial importance to the political and religious leanings of others need to be forced to the logical conclusion of their ill-thought-out decision making skills so they can learn why it's a bad idea to let those things matter.
I have a framed copy of the SF Chronicle "LOVE WON" special edition; clearly I do not agree with Eich on that matter, but I'll be damned if he didn't lead a team that made a hell of a good browser. And that's what matters when selecting a browser vendor.
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"I'm pro.gay marriage (but let me immediately make sure to tell everyone that it is actually bad (but no I am totally pro-gay marriage (no homo)))"
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Until there's a new contender coming up with something that the others don't have.
Personally I would like to see a browser with cross-site data access limitations to a greater extent.
Speed differences are inconsequential (Score:2, Insightful)
The other big three were slow by comparison. On speed alone, Chrome won.
They all keep saying this. I use all the major browsers (Edge, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari) with some regularity and I cannot see any meaningful difference in speed between them. I'm sure there are some measurable differences but as an end user they are inconsequential. I use Firefox as my primary go to browser because it's cross platform (rules out Safari and Edge) and it's work flow and options suit me better than Chrome. I don't dislike Chrome but there is no reason for me to switch to it either for
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Or by adding features that the majority did not want.
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I've been a hard core FireFox person until this year, when I gave Vivaldi a try. It's still buggy as hell and there are some annoyances here and there, but it's been way faster and less laggy than FireFox.
I kinda hate that. I Mozilla transition. I remember when it was called Firebird. I really don't want to see it go out this way .. and fuck Google and their dominance over everything.
If you really need Chrome, use Chromium!
Subverted from the inside (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe Chrome is winning because Mozilla/Firefox is basically chromified now. I use it basically for a combination of historical reasons and because it feels like I have more control more easily over the privacy and security settings, but I am very dissatisfied with a lot of things that have come into Firefox, including this rapid-versioning system that they adopted. It's friggin' stupid that they've been copying Chrome so much, and there's not a lot of reason to continue to using Firefox except that I'm used to it.
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Re:Subverted from the inside (Score:4)
I think it's because Mozilla people are using Chrome that they decided to copy everything from Chrome instead of trying to be better or different.
Re:Subverted from the inside (Score:5, Insightful)
Pretty much. What's happening with Firefox is what has been happening with the rest of the tech industry (albeit with a different 'leaders'). Who has been leading design for hardware for quite some time, to the great annoyance of many? Apple. Apple takes away the 3.5mm audio jack, and everyone else thinks it's a grand idea. Same here with browser design -> Google simplifies their design, and Firefox decides "Yeah, let's pitch {popular feature} overboard."
Someone needs to hold a group session at Mozilla, and ask them why Firefox (the browser) was created. Then take a snapshot of the blank stares, and upload it to their front page.
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I use FireFox with NoScript on everything except gmail as my webmail-only browser, so that an accidental click on a link won't take me to some cesspool of malware. (I also use Chrome for a trusted few work sites, and Chrome in Sandboxie for everything else, including being here. All three with AdBlock of course.)
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Firefox on several windows pcs and laptops is great. NoScript, PrivacyBadger, HTTPS Everywhere, Ghostery, Self Destructing Cookies, VideoDownloadHelper, Youtube Video and Audio Download Helper, User Agent Switcher, Colorful Tabs, Perspectives, Password Exporter, browser sync. There are 12 reasons why I cannot even be bothered to try Chrome or anything else other than Firefox. And all the anti-malware measures mean that I barely ever see advertising either which cannot be bad. Note that I download lectures f
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I still use Firefox, mostly when I need to work with resources no longer supported by Chrome. Firefox is reliable, open and backward compatible to larger extent than Chrome. That said, Chrome is my activity center, with integrated mail, calendar, social updates, notes - all synced painlessly from platform to platform.
Re: Subverted from the inside (Score:2)
for me most of the stuff you listed doesn't require HTTP or HTTPS, so it doesn't justify using a web browser, and while Google has provided web-based means for mail, calendar, etc, it's not like these functions are browser-dependent. I can access them with basically any modern-ish browser, why should I use any particular one? Arguably I should use one that isn't Google's so there's enough userbase to keep them from going off into proprietary-land.
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Fewer and fewer options too in Firefox. Though Mozilla's defenders of the realm will claim you can do it all from the obscure hidden settings page. I don't want one size to fit all, and yet everything seems to be moving that way.
Not with all that resource hogging it hasn't (Score:5, Interesting)
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I switched back to Firefox a couple years ago when I decided Google knows enough about me from Gmail. Additionally, I never really believed or got it straight what Chrome is tracking in its users. Firefox is fine, and I dont care anymore which is the fastest browser as they are all roughly the same in real world use.
Google is creepy as hell (Score:2)
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Re:Not with all that resource hogging it hasn't (Score:4, Informative)
My FF laughs at chrome, tabs or not, but I deliberately don't run the latest, while I let chrome update to whatever retardation google wishes. I also mod out my FF (because FF lets you do that shit) so it's not rendering extra garbage. I require that Chrome renders it all, natively, because I keep it around for maximum site compatibility. Chrome is my internet explorer.
I keep hearing "chrome faster lol" but I greet it with an expectant gesture in my hands and face, only to get a blank one in return.
If your substantiation is "a friend/some guy said so" then all that says about chrome's strengths is they're like apple's.
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Way slower? I see no slowdowns at all, except sometimes when the link is slow. If they link is good and solid there's no need for it to be faster. I also use noscript so maybe that's the reason.
Re:Not with all that resource hogging it hasn't (Score:5, Insightful)
It depends. On a system with low ram amount, firefox is better and chrome will make the whole system go nuts due to memory pressure.
On a system with plenty of ram, chrome will fly relative to firefox, as firefox will bottleneck itself a lot.
It won because you let it. (Score:5, Insightful)
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I didn't know that Eric S. Raymond was involved in the Mozilla Foundation.
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Re: It won because you let it. (Score:2)
*grin* sorry, just couldn't help myself.
Plugin author here (Score:5, Interesting)
Plugins make that worse by occasionally holding up the UI to do their stuff. It's all very minimal, but if you install 2, 3, 5+ plugins it quickly gets to be a problem.
Chrome handles this by preempting your plugin all the time. That means your plugin's written from the ground up to deal with that and it makes plugin development a real pain. FF is doing that now and just about anything more complicated than a theme is gonna need full re-writes to work. I've been putting off that re-write because work life kinda kicked me in the rear for a while but eventually I'll need to do it.
Re:Plugin author here (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder how many plugins are installed to replace stuff that used to be there until some Uxtard removed them?
What users want (Score:2)
Simple. A browser that does what they want. And they don't give a fuck if it renders the webpage 0.2 seconds faster or whether it uses more or less ram.
What people want from a browser is rather little. "Render the webpage" sums it up for a sizable portion of the user base already. Some more consider certain ad-blocking plugins crucial.
The handful of people that actually have any kind of requirement above and beyond that simply don't count.
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The handful of people that actually have any kind of requirement above and beyond that simply don't count.
Exactly. I use firefox for firebug and pocket. I use chrome for hangouts because google dropped support for firefox. For general browsing, I have no preference. Generally people will use the stock browser unless there is some plugin or feature they want.
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Simple. A browser that does what [the users] want.
What if what some users want is the exact opposite of what other users want?
And they don't give a fuck if it renders the webpage 0.2 seconds faster or whether it uses more or less ram.
What people want from a browser is rather little. "Render the webpage" sums it up for a sizable portion of the user base already. Some more consider certain ad-blocking plugins crucial.
The handful of people that actually have any kind of requirement above and beyond that simply don't count.
Oh, so it's not what "users" want, it's what you want.
I use firefox to browse, chrome only for Hangouts (Score:3, Interesting)
And Chrome slows down my fairly beefy machine when it loads and spawns off a half dozen processes that I have to kill manually at least once a week when performance gets really bad.
Firefox also runs out of control every 2-3 days and starts to thrash disk, cpu and memory but at least it's easy to kill. Lately, it screws up on youtube videos and they get stuttery but keep playing after it dies.
I'd like a browser that didn't impact performance so badly.
I prefer the noscript plugins on firefox. Does chrome have something similar to no-script? I hate intrusive and popup ads.
Genius (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Genius (Score:5, Insightful)
Yup. Firefox management is clearly clueless. They have no idea at all why people were using FireFox in the first place, so thay started stripping away the things that attracted people to it.
Here's a hint: if you start making your browser look like your competitor's (which until recently was their main sponsor; no conflict of interest there) then obviously all browsers start to look te same.
Here's what we want in a browser:
- Lean: make it modular, allow the user to install extra plugins at install time
- Mean: i.e. reasonably fast (10% slower than Chrome in some dumb benchmark doesn't mean a thing and is totally OK), and with reasonable memory consumption.
- Safe: make sure your sandbox works. It's 2017 and some sites still manage to hijack my pages and redirect to web shit. Flash is still allowed to popup extra pages.
- Private: don't collect or send out anything without permission.
- Customizable: put the user back in control. We want to be able to put our buttons where we like them, have our tabs above or below, have square tabs our round ones. One UI (Chrome) does not fit all.
- Extensible: decent plugins support is a must. OK if the current plugin system is problematic, overhaul it. But it should be powerful enough, not this watered down crap that has been proposed.
- User in control: we want to control whether videos auto-play when we open a page, or even if the video can start preloading (which is currently decided by the web page, meaning GBs of traffic whenever you open certain sites). Add in a decent script blocker, add blocker from the start.
Task a small core team with a 10M/y budget to make that, and people will come back to FF in droves. Code name Phoenix.
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> Yup, that was intentional. I started using FF when it was
> still called Phoenix 0.3, and each release was like a
> Christmas present full of wonderful new and useful features.
The name was changed because of legal/trademark threats from Phoenix, the BIOS company. Mozilla first used "Firebird" for a while, only to find out that there was already a database called Firebird... oops... https://firebirdsql.org/ [firebirdsql.org] They eventually switched the name to Firefox.
Chromium's memory issues... (Score:3)
I used Chromium for a while on my (Lubuntu) laptop, only to notice that it had what appeared to be memory leaks in it -- gradually escalating RAM usage until it blew up the entire system, if I didn't kill the process once in a while and restart it.
Now I'm using Opera which doesn't do this, but seems just as fast.
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I used Chromium for a while on my (Lubuntu) laptop, only to notice that it had what appeared to be memory leaks in it -- gradually escalating RAM usage until it blew up the entire system, if I didn't kill the process once in a while and restart it.
Now I'm using Opera which doesn't do this, but seems just as fast.
Those aren't memory leaks. That's memory use. Memory is there to be used. If you have 16 gigs of RAM and freak out any time your system goes over 2 gigs then you're doing it wrong.
People bitching that their web browser, one of the heaviest parts of your systems that you probably use as much or more than anything else, uses a couple gigs of cheap as fuck memory really is ridiculous.
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2 gigs for text in a window parsed by a browser that's more complex than the kernel of the OS you're using. Look dipshit, I know you can't put 1+1 together and come up with 2 but most people are intelligent enough to realize that a browser which can pull down a multi-megabit web page and parse + display it instantly will have a significant amount of over head. Memory is cheap. Buy some. If you can't afford it, you're a McDonalds burger flipping scrub that should probably get some job skills before posting o
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Stuck using unsupported versions of Chrome (Score:2, Interesting)
Duh (Score:5, Interesting)
It won because you became Chrome Junior with the "australis" interface. That and you cared more about adding video chat than stability or speed.
Re:Duh (Score:5, Insightful)
This. I ditched Firefox for SeaMonkey and PM when they fucked up the interface. Chrome didn't win, they shot their users in the face.
uses Chrome (Score:3)
How does he still have a job there?
Re:uses Chrome (Score:5, Funny)
He doesn't use it to browse the web. He uses it for inspiration.
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He doesn't use it to browse the web. He uses it for inspiration.
Actually, he does use FireFox, but it looks so much like Chrome nowadays that he couldn't tell the difference.
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Firefox is just a skin for Chrome. Or is it Chrome is a skin for Firefox? I can't tell.
Why I use Firefox (Score:2)
I use Firefox because I can have it both on PC and phone, with synced passwords and history, and with an ad-blocker (u-block) on both.
Chrome didn't allow ad blockers on phone last time I checked. Has it changed?
i think we know why Firefox lost (Score:3)
Chrome hasn't "Won" (Score:5, Interesting)
Chrome is number one right now.
There was a point where
- Lynx was the most popular browser
- Then it was Netscape
- IE was the most popular browser for a while
- I believe Mozilla was the most popular browser for a year or so
- Now we have Chrome as the most used browser
What is the most popular browser going forwards hasn't been determined yet. Saying "Chrome has won" means that you've given up trying to compete.
Give us a reason to go to Firefox rather than Chrome and then you'll "win", for a while, at least.
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You're right, Lynx was never very popular, but it was the most widely used.
Switched to Vivaldi (Score:4, Insightful)
I tried the Vivaldi browser last week and I have to say that I am enjoying it more than Chrome. It's Blink based so it uses the same engine as Chrome as well as the same extensions. What I notice is that it starts faster and pages load faster. I've also wondered if Google spied on my web usage and by using Vivaldi I no longer worry about that.
As for Firefox, I still use it when I want to test my work against many browsers but I don't use it directly for anything more than that. It's a venerable browser but its day as passed.
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Vivaldi is still Chrome.
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It may use the same rendering engine, but the UI and reporting is totally different. Who knows what Chrome is tracking from you.
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Replying from Vivaldi.
Nothing more to add that you didn't already say, except "me too."
Game Over Man! (Score:2)
It is a Car Analogy (Score:2)
But people still use Chrome???
He's not going to even bother competing with Chrome because he wants to take on Android?!!! Is that what he's saying?!
Any investors in Mozilla should be pulling their money ASAP
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Chrome has better under the hood tech (Score:3)
Chrome had better under the hood technology, better written code, fewer memory leaks. Chrome had sandboxing long before Firefox did (it does not have it yet really). Firefox was too busy adding crap like Pocket than to care about the quality of the core product.
On the other hand, the chrome user interface is HORRIBLE. What Firefox should have done was keep its old UI and add sandboxing and fix the memory leaks and bugs. This would have differentiated itself in UI but would have matched Chrome in relaibility and security. Instead they ignored the need for sandboxing and copied what is bad about chrome, the UI,.
Some have switched to Firefox clones however these clones copy all of Firefox's underlying technical problems like lack of a sandboxing. Given what a mess the web is today and the danger of bugs in browser code, sandboxing is a MUST in any serious web browser. This means multiprocess so that the kernel attack surface can be reduced and customized for the browser sand box process. Another advantage of multiprocess is it can clear any memory leaks when a tab is closed without having to close other tabs. The memory usage is not really greater because of the use of shared libraries.
Why chrome won. (Score:2)
First it plays flash pages without Flash having to be downloaded, same goes for a lot of other crud. the user can download one thing and then surf almost 99% of the intar-woobs.
But it's the ONLY browser that works with youtube perfectly and all other google products (funny that eh?) so it increases adoption even faster.
Lastly, Firefox told a LOT of users "we dont want you" by dropping the 32 bit builds and there are a LOT of 32 bit windows machines out there, hell you can buy brand new 32 bit windows 10
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Firefox ignored users, tried to be an tech driver (Score:2)
Love firefox, still use it sometimes. But I switched to google because it fixed issues firefox had, and icing on the cake, android.
I felt firefox spent too much time on everything other than the browser, but then it had the best dev tools built in so I kept using it.
I didnt want firefox os, but I still use Thunderbird.
Firefox memories.
Firefox wasn't multi threaded enough so 1 tab would pause the entire browser.
Browser would crash and you would lose all your work
Each new version broke plugins
Firefox saving p
Users lose (Score:3)
If Mozilla throws in the towel, all users lose.
I'm using Firefox right now. (Score:2)
In fact the organization I'm a sysadmin at doesn't allow Chrome on systems without valid reason usually someone has to work with a website that is Google browser only.
I find it disturbing that in this day and age we once again have website that only work with one browser - it reminds me of the bad-old-day of corporate Internet Explorer only websites.
a mostly spineless essay (Score:4)
When 10% of the population uses a product in a serious way, it is usually viable to support a substantial niche of demanding users.
When 90% of a population uses a product on a daily basis, in a myriad of subtle ways the ecosystem begins to pander to the careless and barely invested.
What needed to be discussed here was the collapse of Firefox's plug-in ecosystem. For one thing, it stopped being cool to start new projects, so it started to become a legacy ecosystem, and many of the original plug-in developers (most of whom started young) were getting older and moving on in life.
Plus there was a financial incentive for the Anarchy Syndicate to treat the entire plug-in ecosystem as a threat vector, the policing of which creates a permanent burden.
As Mozilla began to flee the policing burden, two things happened: it shifted a huge maintenance burden on their already tired plug-in developers to adapt to a succession of ever-more-restrictive APIs (more work, less reward), and its last important differentiation from Chrome starting spiralling down the drain pipe.
So Andreas Gal comes along and wants to put Firefox OS on his resume, and doesn't invest hardly a thought in their dangerously eroding extension ecology.
Or maybe he had a plan for Firefox OS to somehow make experimentation and customization sexy again?
If so, you certainly wouldn't know it from this lame essay.
Luis Miguel bails out of the Firefox WebExtensions scene [fasezero.com] — 29 January 2017
Luis deserved a better answer from Captain Capsize.
Agreed, sort of (Score:3)
Does this mean Google owns the Web if they own Chrome? No. Absolutely not.
Google already owns the web to a large extent, and that was in the cards before Chrome came on the scene. As for Chrome, it's not designed to "own the web", it's designed as part of a strategy to "own the filters" that stand between Google and their produc... err, I mean their users.
Ads for Chrome everywhere Google (Score:2)
We the geeks may discuss which one's better all day but ask to the millions of Joe Users that use Chrome why they use it and then you'll be getting somewhere. Don't forget that the common users vastly outnumber the geeks.
Why I use Firefox (Score:5, Informative)
Firefox maintains it's own certificate store, which might be considered a "con", until you need it and then you're thankful.
Firefox about:config, uh... can you say VERY customizable unlike Chrome.
Firefox gets a 66% on CSS3, where latest Chrome still below 60%. Not that either is "great", and I disagree with some of Mozilla's direction and interpretation of CSS3 (btw, Edge only tries to handle 42% of CSS3).
When Chome first came out it touted its "security", but in many ways it's a lie. Mozilla was asleep, but woke up a couple of years ago and IMHO, seems to be much more active about making their browser better than Chrome (reminds me of builders that walk away from projects).
If this is a speed race, Edge is a lot faster. So... let's just say this isn't about speed.... ok? I could care less about a browser that is fast vs one that works right and is trying to keep up with new standards.
I mean, maybe we agree with Google Chrome and hates OCSP direct checking. But the answer isn't to pull the feature (what they did). Firefox does both OCSP stapling (configurable folks!!) and old school OCSP direct checking, again, configurable. Much better and more flexible than Chrome.
There are a lot more useful extensions for Firefox than Chrome. More themes, just more everything.
With regards to the original post, sounds like old sour grapes to me. Maybe I'm wrong and Firefox devs don't give a rip (which is sort of what he implies), but seems to me that Firefox is moving forward at a good pace, and Chrome is stuck the mud.
With regards to Safari. Use webkit, so 60% on CSS3, but what I really don't like is how Apple has locked down browsing in IOS devices. Sure you can download Chrome, but ultimately it's a wrapper around the webkit that comes with Safari. Ditto btw for Firefox on IOS (yep, Firefox is really more like Chome on IOS).
I have to use them all. And sometimes Chrome works better than Firefox, but more often, I find Firefox does a better job. The great thing about Chrome is that it eliminated (practically speaking) the bad standards that made people afraid to use Firefox.
To Chome's credit, it does a better job at HTML5 (html5test says 518/555 vs 471 for Firefox, 415 Safari, Safari-or-Chome-or-Firefox-on-IOS). Chrome does slightly better on Acid3 testing vs. Firefox (noting that the evil Safari gets a perfect Acid3 score... so maybe this isn't a great test).
Again, I have to use them all, but Firefox is my main browser, just for its flexibility and better understanding of security in some areas. It would be sad to see it go away.
Versions used: Chrome 58.0.3019.110, Firefox 53.0.3
Here's the problem (Score:3)
FIrst they are missidentifying their target audiance.
1. They are competing with products that people use that don't even know what a web browser is. You can't Win against bundled browers. They need to cater to those who know what browers are and don't want what comes bundled.
2. Also, they are chasing features brought forth by their competators, which causes 2 problems. Some of those features are not wanted by their users. And why would someone leave chrome to have a chrome like experiance?
Yes, they had a lot of users for a while, and they lost a bunch. But what was it that got them users? It was a webbroser that was lean, secure, privacy, and enabled the user to be in control. And of course the Add-ons(which further gave control)
What are some of the most popular addons, or mroe importantly, what do the most popular addons do, that firefox should look to grab hold of? ... Well enablign security and privacy and control of the browser.
Ublock Orgin, Disconnect, and a host of others all blocking malicious content(and some adds), then Noscript, umatrix furthering that control. And of course add block and flash block stuff.
It's all about not letting random sites control their web experiance, browsers and PC.
* The multi threads/procceses, there is a need, but would have liked a see it by say window not per tab, or nearly random groups of tabs. Or how about the ability to see what's consuming the resources and be able to do something about it.
* There's no way I can have my family browse the web like I do(with noscript, etc) but Generic options for not loading untrusted 3rd party scripts(matching the cookies options) with say a choice of community "whitelists". There's still problems of popups/unders and other forms of hijacking a browser and this, or other ideas can go a long way to fix that. Or even intergrate what EFF Privacy Badger does. Not killing online adds, but force them to behave.
* How about options to make the PC look more generic, like Returning a more generic answers to fonts, window/screen, etc.
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Since I don't have mod points today, I'll just say, "well said" instead.
This is a problem with more than just Firefox. Gnome suffers from this also. They keep chasing the mythical new user, rather than working for their existing solid user base. They are not gaining new users and they have alienated a lot of their existing users. I'm not even sure why Gnome would care about new users honestly.. is it ego? Maybe it's the dream of world domination. I don't know. The reality is these "new users" don't rea
Defeatist... (Score:2)
Well, he's the former CTO, so he's free to say whatever he wants... but I personally feel way less tied to Chrome in comparison to other services like how I feel tied to Facebook, Gmail or YouTube.
I'm willing to give Firefox and Opera another try, and I feel the browser market has always been mostly about inertia... IE stayed in the top for the longest time only because it was already there. From what I heard coming from Mac users, this is basically also the case for Safari.
IE lost it's position because of
Servo (Score:5, Interesting)
If Servo becomes the main engine, I could see firefox reclaiming the throne
Mozilla didn't win, Firefox lost (Score:5, Insightful)
Firefox was once far larger than Chrome, at one point they had a third of the market.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/w... [wikimedia.org]
Than Firefox decided to get on a rapid release calendar. Users and businesses asked them to go back to a standard release cycle. People told Mozilla that the rapid release cycle made maintenance too cumbersome. Damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead! The switch to a rapid release cycle started in May of 2011.
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Rapid... [mozilla.org]
You can actually see the impact this decision had by looking at historical browser trends. The previous slow decline in browser share transitioned into a 1% loss in one month - their quickest loss ever. Within 6 months Chrome overtook Firefox in browser share and never looked back.
The result of the rapid release cycle was a disastrous impact, if you updated it you broke something, if you didn't update other things broke. Packaging, deploying, extensions, patching and testing became a nightmare for the enterprise. Requests for support for the enterprise were blown off by offering extended support release - which completely missed the point. The result was IT departments chose to use browsers that were willing to offer real enterprise support.
The cries of users fell on deaf ears - all that mattered was making developers happy. Chrome didn't win, Firefox committed suicide through hubris.
Monoculture (Score:3)
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Want to keep Firefox competitive, allow XUL extensions
Compartmentalised rendering or XUL, pick one. If you pick compartmentalisation, people complain that you've broken their plugins. If you pick XUL, people complain that a bug exploited in a one tab allowed an attacker to compromise your entire browser and get at all of the credentials that the browser can access.
and Windows XP,
So, you want an insecure browser running on an insecure (i.e. known vulnerabilities, being exploited in the wild, no patches available) OS?
Re:Keeping up the fight (Score:4, Insightful)
After that, work on nothing but bugfixes, performance improvement and, most importantly, proper multi-process support and Chrome will soon become that quaint browser that ships with Chromebooks (before Crouton and Firefox are installed) and Android devices (before Firefox is installed).
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