People choose firefox over IE because firefox was better. People choose chrome over firefox and IE because chrome is better.
Want to beat google? create better. Not negativity.
Not sure this is necessarily the case - Google cross-promoted Chrome extremely heavily across all its web properties, ran massive ad campaigns, and contractually obligated Android vendors to preinstall and use Chrome as the default on their handsets. Mozilla, lacking the power or money to do any of these things, wouldn't be able to compete on these fronts, regardless of who built the better product.
Firefox was over reliant on plug-ins, gave plug-ins too much power and the plug-in as well as firefox update mechanisms were messy.
Chrome did more out of the box than firefox reducing the need for plug-ins, sandboxed plug-ins from destroying general browser performance and most importantly realised that updating was not a user concern and performed updates silently.
There were also other innovations that Chrome did first that put them ahead of the field (I particularly remember their genius tab closing behaviour).
_That's_ why they "won" not because of fucking adverts.
Of course they "won" (or their "win" achieved its current magnitude) because of adverts. It's naive to say otherwise. The technical innovations put them ahead of the curve for a brief period of time. Firefox reacted quite quickly (and was accused of blindly copying Chrome for it), and today there really is little to differentiate the two browsers in terms of performance. That's been the case for a while now. The difference is in google leveraging both its own platform as well as buying billboards and TV ad space for Chrome. That's unprecedented. If you don't think that's having an effect you're essentially saying the people who decided to finance that ad push are idiots.
Despite that, Firefox still leads in market share in Germany (though with current trends that will change this year).
The flaw with this notion, is that neither Firefox nor Opera beat IE.
Chrome did.
Most of the people who argue things like this seem to agree that Firefox and Opera were superior browsers to IE. If that was the case, why hadn't they eaten IE's market share long before Chrome was ever produced?
Could it be that Chrome being widely advertised on the most visited site on the internet helped?
For reference, most of the surveys listed by Wikipedia[0] (not including that one, for some reason), list Firefox at about 30% in that period. I assume that the stats in your link comes from visitors to their own site, which given the focus (web development) seems like it could easily be biased towards more technical users (and thus over-represent Firefox compared to wider surveys).
The point I'm making is that despite FF being a better alternative for years, it didn't actually crush IE's market share. Chrome did, and I'd put that down to marketing more than quality (as evidenced by quality not being enough for Firefox or Opera).
> _That's_ why they "won" not because of fucking adverts.
Given that Opera was basically "Chrome without Google marketing" I heavily doubt that. (The first version of Chrome was such a blatant Opera clone, it was just funny)
that's a fair point, I more wish to counter the idea that Firefox was a better or even equal product at the time. Chrome was a clearly superior product to Firefox.
Fully accepted. Firefox got comfortable in its position when IE was 'defeated', same as IE before. They had "won", so no reason to innovate anymore. Maybe Chrome was a much needed "kick in the ass". I checked Firefox again a few days ago and it seems to be faster than I remember it, which gives me at least hope that they haven't given up yet.
I actually use firefox at home, but for watching twitch streams I have to open chrome because firefox just fucking crawls if I've got a stream in another tab.
No idea why. Chrome seems to cope fine so I just use it for that. Since I want my stream in a separate window on my other screen anyway it works out pretty well.
Might be that it falls back to software rendering on your system and therefore stresses out the CPU. Try updating your graphics card driver, if it's not up-to-date.
For me it was; I guess I was a relatively early adopter, and Chrome was just so much faster and less bloated than the competition at the time. Clean UI (and it's still clean, they're keeping that promise), superior performance, frequent updates, superior built-in developer tools, etc.
IDK if that caused it to grow to become the biggest browser, but it sold it for me.
yeah, an update or two back on Android, Google Home App now opens link cards in some stripped down version of Chrome despite the fact that Firefox is set as the default browser on my phone.
Should I remind you that the article we're looking at is not about the convenience of a speedy browser, but the political choice of a browser that is not tied to a global company (or not much tied, I dunno for sure).
I know this sounds like RMS but with a problem the size of Google, then things gets political.
True. But also the pendulum of which is better (Firefox vs Chrome) has swung back and forth a couple of times since Chrome first came out and overtook FF. At this point though most people are just using whichever was best N years ago, and haven't thought to compare recently.
Yeah, you still regularly see people claiming that Chrome's JavaScript engine is so much better than the competition, when in reality things have been neck-on-neck for years already. I think last time Chrome really had a major advantage was in 2012.
Similarly, Opera. People will still tell you with absolute confidence that Opera is terrible compared to Chrome. It's been a Chrome-clone since 2013. You'd think people would fact-check their opinions somewhen within almost 4 years, but unfortunately they don't.
Better can mean more than just "faster" or "more responsive". This post argues that Firefox is better in that it does not lock you in in the long term.
Since it is not as visible as responsiveness, it is useful to have these discussions so people can decide what really is the "best" browser to them with full knowledge.
Your "suddenly" did not come out of thin air, it happenned after regulation.
Microsoft was not broken down or fined to oblivion, but they did change their behavior a lot when they started hitting regulatory boundaries. Internet Explorer was practically put into maintenance mode for many years when it became clear that Microsoft would not be allowed to own the web like they owned the PC.
We cannot know the outcome of an alternative history where Microsoft was given free hand to leverage the stranglehold on the web a fully enforced Internet Explorer (e.g. enforced like Safari in iOS?) could have developed. For all we know the outcome might even be Microsoft driven phones in every pocket, with everybody else unable to innovate on their own because they would be completely preoccupied with chasing compatibility with an ever-changing "Microsoft Html".
Apple and Google are far, far worse than Microsoft ever had been and I'd take a Microsoft monopoly any day of the week over those two.
You can't do shit these days without having to deal with Apple's ridiculously selfish and tyrannical business model or Google's all-knowing, ever watchful gaze.
> You can't do shit these days without having to deal with Apple's ridiculously selfish and tyrannical business model
Actually I do shit every day these days without coming into contact with Apple's selfish and tyrannical business model. So do millions of other people. iOS developer is a choice, not a sentence. If you don't like it, don't do it. There are tons of other things to do.
OK, but we're on HN and we're talking about building software and/or webpages... So let me rephrase - you can't make software and/or a webpage without having to deal with Apple and Google in some way. You're either going to have to put it in the app store and do some advertising with Google or you're going to have to make that webpage work with crappy Safari or make it AMP compliant or something else in order to get ahead. Of course you don't HAVE to do that stuff, but then you'll just get left behind. Seeya!
I was expecting some details about why these business models are far, far worse.
> So let me rephrase - you can't make software and/or a webpage without having to deal with Apple and Google in some way.
If you exclude extra-vague words "is some way", yes you can. Of corse, you'd come into contact with software made by these companies from time to time, but that software would be just like any other you use, regardless of their business model.
> You're either going to have to put it in the app store
No I don't. I've been gainfully employed as a software developer for more than 2 decades now and never put anything in any app store.
> you're going to have to make that webpage work with crappy Safari
I've not have to deal with browser compat issues for many years now, but if they exist I'm pretty sure that a) there are toolkits to deal with them, and b) that has nothing to do with business model, every browser has its quirks, including Firefox (in fact, last 2 times I had to deal with browser compat issues the Firefox was the problem and it worked fine in Chrome and Safari - of course, nobody cared about IE).
Pretty sure I mentioned those in my initial complaint.
> If you exclude extra-vague words...
OK, is "the only search engine that matters" too vague? How about "the only app store that makes money"?
If you just want to build some software, then fine: you don't have to deal with Apple or Google if you don't want to. If you want to be successful and make money though? You're going to have to deal with one of them whether you like it or not.
At the very least, you need Google to search and you need Google to help people find your product. Good luck getting customers if Google removes your pages from their results.
This is a pretty naive view that ignores market effects. You can get away with reasoning like this when you're talking about userbases on the order of 100000, but not when literally dozens or hundreds of millions of people use your software.
I think it can start with developers choosing firefox over chrome. Hackers were the first people to try out linux, when it was sub-par, didnt have most drivers. If not for those initial few foragers, we would still be stuck with Windows for most of our computing. Change in this space hardly ever starts because someone made the most consumer friendly, best performing piece of software. Change starts by the way of foragers who become contributors that leads to improved performance.
This is how I feel also. I want to use Firefox but Chrome just works better. Mostly things actually sync properly with Chrome. Tabs, settings, extensions, etc. I was a Firefox user since the Phoenix days but switched to Chrome exactly a year ago as Firefox just wasn't meeting all my needs. Want me to switch back? Then fix things like sync and transparent restore of the user profile on a new install, etc.
I think we've seen throughout societal history that if you want to affect change you have to do it through the path of least resistance for consumers; this means creating a better browser experience that people use not because they want to revolt, but because they gain utility from doing so.
Can I ask something? For me Firefox IS better. Chrome on Android doesnt seem to support extensions (so no uBlock), doesn't have reader view, and would highly prefer it if I signed in. Orfox and Firefox both do not have these issues.
Even on desktop, I prefer Firefox (although mostly due to higher familiarity with it). Does Chrome really have some killer feature that I'm not seeing? I can't seem to figure out where exactly Firefox lacks.
It was too slow and sluggish for too long. I just fired it up, and although that is not the case any more, at the end of the day... it is useful to just be mainstream when mainstream is good. https://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qpr...
As Fifer says, it's a popularity issue. As a web dev, for me, it's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem that relies on who is the majority that I need to support — and that's where all my energy and time go. As a result, it becomes my browser of choice because I have to test in it so much. I also prefer the dev tools.
For me, knowing that Firefox doesn't spy on me is an enormous advantage. I don't care about a tiny speed difference or reliability. All browsers are mostly equal when it comes to what I do with them. But the spying stuff, naaahh, that's completely different.
