I believe that Mozilla is technologically superior to Google and Microsoft. Mozilla managed to create a great community around firefox and rust, they keep their development processes open and they are moving reasonably fast with a steady pace without breaking things. Google and MS will not be able to keep up with Mozilla, after the major parts of firefox will be reimplemented in rust.
The only thing Mozilla needs to break a dominance of Google and MS is a some significant shift on the market of browsers, when abilities to adapt will be more valuable than ability to ship a specific browser to all users of Windows and Android. IT moves fast, so in decade or so a shift like that will happen almost inevitable.
Not happy with Microsoft handing more control of the web to Google, he now wants Mozilla to do the same.
If you're reading this Kenneth: Fuck you very much. You're a modern-era collaborator, in the WW2 sense of the word. And yes, I mean that Google are 'the enemy' and you're doing active harm by working with them.
How unbelievably short-sighted. This is how you end up with the situation that happened with Internet Explorer in the 90s most of the 2000s. (Of course, I'll readily admit Chromium is far better than IE, but the comparison still holds.)
It's not in the best interest of the users or developers for there to be a single web browser. Chromium is not the world wide web.
I've seen several articles like this lately and it surprises me that developers aren't aware of the fields in which Mozilla is leading the charge. WebAssembly, for example, is seeing a large portion of development coming from Mozilla.
Is Mozilla perfect? Of course not. I could list probably a dozen mistakes and missteps they've made just off the top of my head. But I'm not advocating for everyone to switch to Firefox.
I simply prefer options and competition in the browser space. In fact, I wish there were more meaningful browser alternatives out there instead of just a bunch of different GUI wrappers around Chromium.
> I'll readily admit Chromium is far better than IE
This is the part that's often forgotten. IE is how we got XHR. You could even argue IE is how we got `box-sizing: border-box;` (which is essentially IE's legacy box model).
IE was once considered better than Netscape (the only real competitor at the time).
The more we approach a monoculture, the more innovation stagnates. It was a serious, possibly fatal blow already when Microsoft threw in the towel. If safari and firefox were to follow suit, we'd enter a dark age.
Personally, I think FF and Gecko are superior to Chrome in most ways. Better and more powerful add-ons, less memory usage, and faster performance. Before quantum, FF kind of sucked, but now it’s amazing. Also I haven’t noticed many situations in which a site doesn’t work under FF.
In regards to his arguments about fragmentation, you could just as easily conclude that MS shouldn’t make Windows anymore. Also, monocultures are bad for everyone: true innovation always occurs through fierce competition.
With how much we depend on the web, we cannot just have one browser engine. Plus firefox despite not having the fancy budget of Google & Microsoft, they are delivering a kick ass product.
Plus with HTML5 & open standards, multiple engines MUST not be an issue at all.
Ofcourse, I don't need to convince why monopoly is bad in this forum.
I like to think about this like the Linux kernel. If everyone worked on the same core, then the browser would be better and safer. My job when writing client side code would be far simpler too!
Why does it actually matter what Web browser most people use? In absolute terms there are probably more Firefox users now than there ever were. Who cares about the percentages?
In the early 2000s IE6 "dominated". I think we all agree that was awful, with many websites out there only built for and tested with IE. We Firefox users got through that. We'll get through this too.
If developers rely on 'features' added just to Chromium, without any kind of standards involved (i.e. imagine if Chrome said they're going to ship a Dart VM in chromium) then users of every other browser are shit out of luck.
1) Standards are meaningless if there is effectively one rendering engine.
2) Why would Mozilla want to mimick Google’s account integrations? I switched to FF and miss nothing about Google accounts.
3) Firefox extensions already work on Android. Do they not on iOS? FF and all other browsers are just Safari on iOS due to Apple restrictions, so maybe extension support is impossible.
Standards are dead the moment there is one rendering engine. It doesn't matter what W3C says it only matters whst Chromium does. That was the status quo we had with IE6.
That's the point of having multiple browsers. You took one of the strongest arguments against a browser engine monoculture and made it into an argument in favour of browser monoculture? We've ALREADY HAD browser monoculture and it resultee in the death of standards.
[+] [-] ordu|7 years ago|reply
The only thing Mozilla needs to break a dominance of Google and MS is a some significant shift on the market of browsers, when abilities to adapt will be more valuable than ability to ship a specific browser to all users of Windows and Android. IT moves fast, so in decade or so a shift like that will happen almost inevitable.
[+] [-] stephenr|7 years ago|reply
If you're reading this Kenneth: Fuck you very much. You're a modern-era collaborator, in the WW2 sense of the word. And yes, I mean that Google are 'the enemy' and you're doing active harm by working with them.
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Lowkeyloki|7 years ago|reply
It's not in the best interest of the users or developers for there to be a single web browser. Chromium is not the world wide web.
I've seen several articles like this lately and it surprises me that developers aren't aware of the fields in which Mozilla is leading the charge. WebAssembly, for example, is seeing a large portion of development coming from Mozilla.
Is Mozilla perfect? Of course not. I could list probably a dozen mistakes and missteps they've made just off the top of my head. But I'm not advocating for everyone to switch to Firefox.
I simply prefer options and competition in the browser space. In fact, I wish there were more meaningful browser alternatives out there instead of just a bunch of different GUI wrappers around Chromium.
[+] [-] stephenr|7 years ago|reply
This is the part that's often forgotten. IE is how we got XHR. You could even argue IE is how we got `box-sizing: border-box;` (which is essentially IE's legacy box model).
IE was once considered better than Netscape (the only real competitor at the time).
[+] [-] kstenerud|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] verdverm|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mruts|7 years ago|reply
In regards to his arguments about fragmentation, you could just as easily conclude that MS shouldn’t make Windows anymore. Also, monocultures are bad for everyone: true innovation always occurs through fierce competition.
[+] [-] srndh|7 years ago|reply
Plus with HTML5 & open standards, multiple engines MUST not be an issue at all.
Ofcourse, I don't need to convince why monopoly is bad in this forum.
[+] [-] TheOperator|7 years ago|reply
How brain dead is microsoft collectively to not realise that we already faced the perils of a browser monoculture and it was terrible?
[+] [-] kerng|7 years ago|reply
I think Mozilla is awesome and Firefox will one day win back the web.
[+] [-] verdverm|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stephenr|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] black-tea|7 years ago|reply
In the early 2000s IE6 "dominated". I think we all agree that was awful, with many websites out there only built for and tested with IE. We Firefox users got through that. We'll get through this too.
[+] [-] stephenr|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mariushn|7 years ago|reply
If switching to Chromium, Mozilla could focus on
* standards
* Mozilla accounts integration instead of Google (including extensions store)
* important features such as enabling extensions on mobile
[+] [-] smt88|7 years ago|reply
2) Why would Mozilla want to mimick Google’s account integrations? I switched to FF and miss nothing about Google accounts.
3) Firefox extensions already work on Android. Do they not on iOS? FF and all other browsers are just Safari on iOS due to Apple restrictions, so maybe extension support is impossible.
[+] [-] stephenr|7 years ago|reply
According to https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/list, there are 60K+ open issues against Chromium, so maybe Google should drop it in favour of Mozilla's engine then?
[+] [-] TheOperator|7 years ago|reply
That's the point of having multiple browsers. You took one of the strongest arguments against a browser engine monoculture and made it into an argument in favour of browser monoculture? We've ALREADY HAD browser monoculture and it resultee in the death of standards.
[+] [-] mruts|7 years ago|reply