Chrome Engineer: Firefox Is A Partner, Not A Competitor

[dmix]

Firefox isn't quite on par with Chrome anymore. It still has a lot of benefits from its legacy advantage in the plugin area.

But I don't think this really matters to the consumer. Firefox has improved rapidly, mostly as a result of chromes competition. It stagnated for years until chrome came along.

It's like Android vs iPhone. Competition creates better products.

If there wasn't a good competitor to keep innovation going, it would be just like Windows in early 2000s.

[ootachi]

You really think Firefox was ever going to be in a similar position to Windows? The two situations aren't even remotely comparable.

[mistawobin]

I can't speak for the average user, but I would argue that until Chrome gets the ability to add a separate search bar, it will never be on par with Firefox. Albeit, Chrome is much faster than Firefox, but without that search bar I just can't use it fluidly.

[eigenvector]

Why is this on the front page when the original Google+ post that this article summarizes is also on the front page?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3389972

[rdtsc]

> the primary goal of Chrome is to make the web advance as much and as quickly as possible. That's it.

ok what does that even mean? they are trying to make the "web advance" because if they won't, the desktop will come back and advance instead? or do they mean advancing new web standards and features to replace older non-standard technologies (say like flash)? ( i am not trying to be sarcastic just wondering the meaning is ).

[jfarmer]

Google's business is built on the open web, so they need the open web to flourish. This requires new standards to compete with Flash and other proprietary technologies and platforms.

Pushing Chrome is a way for them to advance the state of the art. By building a genuinely better browser that has enough users it can't be ignored, it puts pressure on other browser vendors to catch up.

It's like a reverse IE strategy. You'll see Google (and Firefox) pushing for more technology built into the browser (e.g., BrowserID, canvas, etc.), but based on open standards.

Anyhow, I think that's what they mean.

[InclinedPlane]

They are trying to advance the state of next generation web standards support as well as rendering and javascript performance.

Google is in the web application business. Their platform is essentially every browser in the world. It behooves them to push browser technology.

And so far they have succeeded. They have spurred Firefox and IE to advance faster than they would have otherwise.

[redthrowaway]

It's very simple: google makes money when people use the Internet. When more people use the Internet, google makes more money. Hence, google wants to make the Internet as good as possible so more people will use it.

[xxiao]

Google guys are all with very high IQs, so they think the rest people with common sense are fools. Chrome vs Firefox, it's obvious the former eats the latter's lunch, which is fine to me, I use both.

[langsamer]

Firefox has become absolute bloatware. Opera is the only browser that is doing any kind of new innovation.

[callumjones]

I would say Chrome is doing some pretty innovative stuff with V8 (and open sourcing it to spawn amazing things like NodeJS) as well as Native Client & VP8/WebM.

[eric-hu]

I use Firefox for development because of Firebug

I use FF for casual browsing because of Adblock plus

The plugins make the browsing experience for me

[akg]

I don't subscribe to the dogma about tools. You should use what ever gets the job done. I personally use Firefox for debugging (I love FireBug). I use Safari for general browsing, mostly because of the integration of Bookmarks and Reading Lists over iCloud. And I dabble in Chrome when I'm using a non-apple machine. I think all tools are good and bad, and picking one side just limits your options for productivity. My 2 cents.