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Comment by supremesaboteur | Hacker News Reader

> You don’t have to be that old to remember the dark days when Internet Explorer strangled the web by its utter domination.

It is not the same thing. Chromium ( upon which Chrome is based ) is open source. If Google abuses their power it is easier to correct course by forking. In fact, many browsers like Opera, Brave, Vivaldi, Yandex etc are already based on Chromium

> By balancing the browsers, choosing to use not just what’s convenient but what’s lesser used, you can make the business case for monopoly plays a bad deal.

Pass. People should use the best software they can get their hands on

> good folks at Firefox deserve your usage just as much

So contrary to popular opinion on HN, Firefox is not as good as Chrome. However, we must still use it. Consider it an act of charity

I don't think so. Mozilla must earn their user base by making a good browser and marketing it well

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>> good folks at Firefox deserve your usage just as much

>So contrary to popular opinion on HN, Firefox is not as good as Chrome. However, we must still use it. Consider it an act of charity

>I don't think so. Mozilla must earn their user base by making a good browser and marketing it well

Firefox don’t need anyone to use it as an act of charity.

But you need to stop the underhanded FUD.

Talking like Chrome is somehow better than all other browsers is just as dumb as saying that x model of y car brand is best...

Best for what? A lot of people love Chrome, Mac, Mercedes.

Sure they are good but I dont want any of them.

- I want my tabs to be vertical and automatically nested,

- my browser to support 100s of tabs and real extensions,

- my computer to have different window management and different menus than what is available on Mac OS

- my car to have a handbraķe.

Going on about how chrome is the best browser is only slightly more mature IMO than me as a kid going on about how x was the beat car (just because my dad had one).

In this case it is even worse as people read it everywhere and start thinking it is true.

The car analogy starts to fall apart when you are talking about something that continues to get updates. Sure, they release new versions of cars usually every year, but you are buying an entirely new car, not really updating your old one.

It also starts to fall apart when talking about price. You can talk about browsers costing time, effort, privacy, etc, but this isn't the same as talking about thousands of actual dollars.

> real extensions

Unless I'm mistaken, I don't believe Firefox is going to have those for too much longer: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2015/08/21/the-future-of-dev...

As far as I am aware they are still going to have more extension points than Chrome.

E.g. it seems the vertical tabs extension I use will still work.

> It is not the same thing. Chromium ( upon which Chrome is based ) is open source. If Google abuses their power it is easier to correct course by forking. In fact, many browsers like Opera, Brave, Vivaldi, Yandex etc are already based on Chromium

Even though that's all true, standardizing on a single base implementation for rendering and Javascript rutime is not good for the web.

Why not? I'd argue that a single open source standard would spur development of new features, performance enhancements, and bug fixes at an incredibly fast rate.

>> It is not the same thing.

There are a lot of similarities. The number of websites (especially ones created by Google), that don't work in other browsers, is increasing.

Example one: Google Meet

Honks me off on a daily basis. :(

> If Google abuses their power it is easier to correct course by forking.

I don't agree with this line of reasoning, the inertia and established name of the browser would be a huge factor in this.

And it's not just about Google. For example, we have DirectTV that will be limiting streaming only to Chrome.

https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/7/15758274/directv-now-googl...

This encourages a mono culture no amount of forking Chromium can help against.

It's not just about preventing Google from doing "evil". It's about preventing hindering the growth of the web which will happen with a browser mono culture.

> If Google abuses their power it is easier to correct course by forking

Just like when Microsoft abused their position people immediately switched to non-IE browsers and IE was never heard of again, right?

I am so disappointed that Opera went to Chromiums webkit/blink engine. I loved the presto Opera browser and used it as my primary for everything. Until it became just a different skin over chrome. I wish there still existed a variety of different browsers, but these days it's still down to only three or four, everything else is just rescinded or slightly changed but still using someone else's render.

>If Google abuses their power it is easier to correct course by forking. In fact, many browsers like Opera, Brave, Vivaldi, Yandex etc are already based on Chromium

Will you be able to use DirectTV with those alternative chromium based browsers? I don't know... but I'd guess no.

I was not impressed with the recent google earth (chrome only)... and now here we are with DirectTV.

"Mozilla must earn their user base by making a good browser and marketing it well"

They are just as evil as Google at this point. They pretend they are not, but even Apple respects users more.

Can you elaborate?

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