Microsoft Dev Implores Mozilla to Surrender and Bring Firefox to Chromium
hothardware.com
hothardware.com
My opinion: No, of course we shouldn't have only one browser base to work with.
Even more opinion: Chrome's extensions are consistently worse than FF's (can you even get a decent vim extension like we had with vimperator and does it even have tab groups + tab containers?) and FF quantum seems faster to me than any Chrome I've run.
In my opinion, the web standards have moved way too slowly and that is directly the fault of Mozilla, who won't let us have things like WebSQL due to their ridiculous insistence on having 2 independent implementations (as if we don't already have that for SQL and, as if there has to be 2 implementations of oxygen for air to be breathable...)
I don't trust Mozilla to do the right thing here or ever anyway. They're allegedly a group that fights for merit, freedom and openness but they consistently work against those things by rejecting the best ideas and by selling their users out to marketers. Honestly, I trust them less than Google or Microsoft and since I don't like anything about Firefox anyway, I simply ignore it and build all my apps to target Chrome. And that's the same thing that a lot of people are doing, which is why web devs keep using things like WebSQL in their projects.
That's an interesting view on the problem.
If you recall, WebSQL not only didn't have two independent implementations, but it also didn't have specs (if you want to check, you can read the proposal here https://dev.w3.org/html5/webdatabase/ and realize that it's missing all the important stuff such as what queries do).
WebSQL was a nice hack/proof of concept by the Google team, but it was formulated in such a way that pretty much guaranteed that you would eventually lose data and/or that your programs would break. That's the reason for which specs are needed, rather than just an implementation. Having two independent implementations is the only way known to humanity to ensure that the specs are useful.
> I don't trust Mozilla to do the right thing here or ever anyway. They're allegedly a group that fights for merit, freedom and openness but they consistently work against those things by rejecting the best ideas and by selling their users out to marketers. Honestly, I trust them less than Google or Microsoft
That's a shame. I don't think that anybody claims that Mozilla has always made the right choices – starting with Mozilla itself. However, Mozilla has consistently attempted to fight for the users of the internet. I don't remember the word "merit" ever being mentioned, though.
While Google (and recently Microsoft) have better PR teams (and lots of money to pay for them), their track record is not even close to being as good as Mozilla's.
> and since I don't like anything about Firefox anyway, I simply ignore it and build all my apps to target Chrome.
This is certainly your right. But this is also a way to ensure that Google can make all decisions for the web, without having to go through standards. You may have already witnessed APIs that work only for Google properties. I may be wrong, but I suspect that it's only going to get worse.
Just FYI, Qutebrowser[1] is a wonderful Vim-like chromium browser inspired by vimperator, VimFX, and the like. It is not extensible, unfortunately, and the web's worst websites will break its functionality. But it has Adblock built-in, and running in Firejail[2] it's about as secure as a browser can be.
Currently I use Tridactyl for FF, which is decent. There are some annoyances and it seems to me to have some performance issues (using it on BitBucket's pages seems to be particularly bad sometimes...?) but it's good enough and certainly better than I've had in Chrome.
On top of that, my qutebrowser usage had to be complemented because of the other extensions like tab containers and tab groups. I use tab containers for when I want to sandbox certain tabs into their own little bubbles which is particularly useful for work (logging in on two completely separate sessions alongside eachother, for example).
At least tech wise. It is hard to compete in market share with Google's internal Chrome promotion on google.com.
Not surprised if EU will intervene in some point on Chrome choke push.
But Clippy can die, alongside Cortana, Siri, Alexa and Bixby. When your junk is outperformed by a text keyword search, something is very wrong.
Damn. This is like some dude arguing that Washington should have surrendered after losing Philadelphia and Germantown. I mean, winter in Valley Forge?
Which is not to say that there's any hope, in this case.
IE was closed source and proprietary; Chromium is open source and not proprietary. IE was closely integrated with Windows; Chromium is OS agnostic. IE developer tools were completely insufficient or even non-existent; Chromium developer tools are accepted as setting the bar / standard.
Note that I am not advocating for Firefox to adopt Chromium, only that the common argument against that decision seems tired and outdated.
As long is a cocacola/pepsi thing, the web MUST collaborate and hear at least 2 strong opinions.
However, Chromium is just as much a strategic asset for Google. If Google were to decide to have APIs that work only for Google properties (hint: they already do), they can introduce them in Chromium and none of the Chromium-based browsers can reasonably decide to go in a different direction.
Now, if you recall, Google/Alphabet has interests in many pies around the world. It's not very hard to imagine how Google/Alphabet could introduce APIs that would let them leverage their web monopoly towards other fields. Think credit cards, banking, shopping, wearables, DRMs, cars, ...
Again, just as in the Microsoft era, I don't know that Google will do that. But just as in the Microsoft era, it's a question of how much power you are willing to put in the hands of a single monopoly.
You could make this argument for any piece of software, then you realize that each software solves a different problem, including technically & philosophically.
I want more than one multiplatform browser. And I am delighted with Firefox.
Chromium and chrome are pretty user hostile and are continuing to get worse. Chromium is also (IMO) significantly more difficult to compile than Firefox. In addition to all that Firefox is honestly more performant than chromium. It’s not the fastest browser but chrome/chromium are just so slow.
I wonder if Microsoft just wants one company to be in charge of the web and they really don’t care who. Do open standards really bother them that much?
That's a terrifying thought. I remember a time when FF was widely considered the worst open browser to build and embed, which is why Apple went with KHTML when creating WebKit.
If things got so bad on the Chromium side, I wonder if it's time for Mozilla to put some effort again in making Gecko easily-embeddable...?