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Comment by ohthehugemanate | Hacker News Reader

> I tried to switch from Chrome to Firefox but I had a terrible experience using Hangouts

So, you're saying Google's anti-competitive tactic of degrading and not supporting other browsers worked on you. Did you know there's a name for that tactic? Embrace Extend Extinguish.

Did you consider using another, more neutral video conference system?

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This.

I use FF for normal browsing and Chrome for Google based stuff that requires an account, like Gmail, YouTube, Docs, etc. Besides not having ANY performance issues with FF I think it is good practice to separate most of your accounts from normal surfing.

Just today I ran into a weird bug in Google Drive's document editor where selecting 'paste without formatting' from the context menu resulted in a pop-up saying 'These actions are unavailable via the Edit menu, but you can still use: Ctrl+C Ctrl+V Ctrl+X'.

In Chrome: no problem at all.

This is not a weird bug. It’s Google tailoring their products for their own browser and ignoring the others (Safari has the same “issue”). It’s their prerogative to do so, but I think they’re risking getting hit by antitrust for these kinds of antics in the future.

I ran into the same issue and had the same thoughts. The ironic part is Hangouts might be extinguishing Firefox, but it's also extinguishing itself. Google doesn't maintain it, it's running on autopilot and will likely be shutdown in 2019.

Well they won't have a choice soon, Hangouts is extinguishing next year.

> Did you consider using another, more neutral video conference system?

We pay for G Suite so I don't expect to pay for another service. I love Zoom btw.

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