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Comment by dmitryminkovsky | Hacker News Reader

The only difference is that Google has endlessly more clout and depth than AOL and my fear is that where AOL failed, Google may succeed.

With Firefox succumbing this week, this is pretty horrible.

I’m not a Richard Stallman type, but I think it’s come to the point where if you have even the slightest pretense of being a “free web” person, using Chrome or a Chromium-based browser has become unconscionable. This company is playing embrace extend extinguish to a T and they are nearing the end game.

I switched to Firefox this year and so can you! Just download it, install it, and then clear your Chrome history so it doesn’t feel like home anymore. Firefox is really nice and I was surprised that I don’t miss Chrome at all (except for the developer tools color picker).

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> I’m not a Richard Stallman type, but I think it’s come to the point where if you have even the slightest pretense of being a “free web” person, using Chrome or a Chromium-based browser has become unconscionable.

Thanks for phrasing it like this - I'm also not a Richard Stallman type but it's hard to disagree with this statement. Just downloaded Firefox and made the switch.

Great to hear.

Clearing my history/sessions in Chrome was an important factor in adoption for me as well. It helps that when you start typing in that search bar, it doesn’t feel familiar. Took a few weeks but did eventually stop looking to Chrome. Now I just use it for testing/Android debugging.

I have this shell script as `chrome-new` in my path for testing in Chrome and the rare site that is broken in Firefox. It gives me a totally clean profile each time to minimize the amount of Google spying that goes on and reduce my tendency to use the browser for anything but the current task. Sadly despite --no-make-default-browser, it still asks me with an infobar every time I start it.

    #!/bin/sh
    test -e "$(which chromium)" && CHROME="chromium"
    test -e "$(which google-chrome)" && CHROME="google-chrome"
    test -e "$(which google-chrome-dev)" && CHROME="google-chrome-dev"
    TMPDIR=`mktemp -d /dev/shm/chrome-XXXXX`
    $CHROME --user-data-dir=$TMPDIR --no-first-run --no-make-default-browser "$@"
    rm -rf $TMPDIR

That's awesome thanks for sharing.

Don't you get the same thing using Guest Mode?

AFAIK guest mode acts like incognito when it comes to storage behavior (changes stay in-memory and are not persisted to disk, and therefore available storage is noticeably lower than with a regular profile), so it will trigger incognito mode detection scripts on some times.

I've been using Firefox/Safari on my personal devices for a couple years now, but as a web developer I unfortunately can't not use Chrome at work because of its dev tools. I try to test on other browsers when I have time - I've always made a point to push for supporting at least Firefox, as an organization - but when I'm iterating I really just need the Chrome tools. Firefox's tools always remained one or two steps behind, and now that they fired their dev tools team I assume they won't even be doing that, soon.

The same goes for Google Search/DuckDuckGo. I use the latter on my personal devices, but when I'm tracking down a problem at work I just need the thing that's going to work the best.

I agree about DDG, but not dev tools.

I used to think they weren’t as good, but they are good. And I think I’m a pretty serious dev tools user.

BUT, if you want to keep using Chrome dev tools that doesn’t mean you can’t switch to FF. Just de-personalize Chrome (clear you history, sessions, settings etc) and then you’ll stop using it. Say you’re developing and open a new tab to search something on SO: you won’t be logged in on SO. Same goes with any site. So you’ll instantly realize you’re using Chrome to browse and hop over to FF instead.

Seems like a lot of work but it’s not. Maybe I drank the kool aid but I now feel naked browsing with Chrome and try to avoid it as much as possible. I think the important thing is to stop using Chrome for personal browsing.

I disagree about DDG :). For work-related searches I'm really satisfied with the results and I find answers quickly. I would even go as far as to say that it works better for me than Google's search. I experienced it the other way around. When using DDG for personal use or results about local things I often tend to use the Google bang as Google has the better localized results.

You should share how Safari and Firefox handle URLs, rather than feeding into everyone's reactions

I use Firefox as my daily drive, and I still don't get what's so special about Chrome's dev tools, I test on Chrome and open the dev tools but I prefer Firefox overall. It's a damn shame they fired the Dev Tools team however, that is not a visionary move on Mozilla's part.

Depending on your IDE, you can make it just open Chrome when you boot up web projects. That's what I do, but I do normal browsing on Firefox, it helps keep distractions away even. Leaving Chrome with only work related things.

Some of it may just be familiarity, but it always seems like there are little things that aren't all the way there. Some of the CSS property selectors aren't as rich, last I checked the profiling tools weren't as powerful, that kind of stuff. Things you could live without, but I feel a certain amount of responsibility when I'm on the clock to not hamper my productivity by using a tool that isn't the best one available.

Some things this is still true, other things I don't think I could go back to chrome devel tools, it just feels weak and old by comparison now.

> I unfortunately can't not use Chrome at work because of its dev tools

Why? I’m a full time developer at a Fortune 100 company and I have no issues just using the Firefox dev tools. I literally never use the Chrome dev tools. Though, this might soon change now that Mozilla has laid off the dev tool team.

Did they really fire their devtools team?? I'm sorry, I missed that earlier.

Consider also changing your default search to StartPage or Duck Duck Go

Yes. For sure. Sadly I find myself g!-ing all the time but good to at least try them first. Sometimes I g! and go back, which always feels serendipitous.

"With Firefox succumbing this week..."

Firefox succumbed to what? Genuinely curious, i had not heard this.

There were a large number of layoffs at Mozilla, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24120336 .

And strategic re-orientation as I understood it.

Same way you strategically deprive someone from food and they reorient to a coffin user.

Explanation: Google undermined FireFox, both through ads, then through a series of incompatibilities.

And they did the same to Edge, which is using Chromium.

That's exactly what any CEO or "Downsizing Consultant" would say. That may be an OK situation for a corporate company, but for a non-profit foundation like Mozilla, its unhealthy and rings some disaster bells.

Given the caliber of the talent that was let go, this re-orientation sounds more like a lobotomy.

Too many overpaid people who had little interest in building a web browser.

Color picker seems to work great in the CSS Properties at least :D

Works great but Chrome’s lets you change HSL and other modes. I like the ability to tweak luminance or saturation right in the browser.

I’ll add my voice to that, I’ve been using Firefox as primary dev browser for a couple of years now and it’s a perfectly cromulent choice. I don’t miss Chrome one iota, far from it; when firing up Chrome to investigate browser-specific issues it seems alien now.

My level of respect for origin was similarly the tie-breaker when choosing between Vue, Angular, and React.

Its the opposite. They are on a down slope to irrelevance.

All these moves just turns up the temperature of the innovation cauldron, speeding up the pace of whatever will replace them.

More clout and depth has nothing to do with longevity. See every Empire that has evaporated in History.

Google will fail faster than it took most empires too for 2 reasons

1. Things move much faster these days. The time between rise and fall keeps shrinking for large orgs struggling to cope with the furious pace of change.

2. Complexity of playing empire defense grows exponentially with scale. You can't find enough skilled people quick enough. You cant solve increasingly complex issues with just your cash hoard. You can't escape increasing internal politics that slows the speed of innovation within. You can't escape external actors mistrusting every small move made etc etc etc.

So they will keep making such moves. And there is a way to speed up their decline - Encourage them and praise them for whatever they come up with.

Chrome sucks and hasn’t gotten the love it used to

The problem is that there are simply no good free browsers that are not Chromium-based or Firefox. It doesn't seem viable or worthwhile to write a web rendering engine from the ground up. We're heading rapidly towards a Blink/Webkit monoculture.

Why exclude FF? It’s good.

Currently. Though Mozilla is giving no clear plans on continuing the projects importance. If anything it seems Mozilla is planning for an eventual sunset. Hoping to have revenue alternatives for when Firefox is irrelevant and they stop supporting it.

Firing a team building a meaningful advancement in Firefox's tech stack is a big signal, imo.

Yeah that was devastating this week but maybe it can somehow reverse itself, I don’t know.

Why would we want a continuation of what isn’t working.

Let it die, rebuild from the ruins.

Is it possible that if Mozilla folded or stopped supporting Firefox that the open-source community would continue to support it?

Possible, but not to a sufficient extent to keep up with the ever changing needs.

It's pretty good, albeit much less good since the old XPCOM extension support went away. (My position is that XPCOM compatibility could have been maintained in a multi-process world through better dynamic object proxying.) But as Mozilla's money dries up, so will Gecko, Servo, and a bunch of other fascinating projects. It's sad. But the web won't stop evolving, so we're going to end up a webkit-only world.

I use Firefox for casual browsing but heavy workloads need a better browser. So I have to use Chromium.

Firefox is a much more performant browser for actually rendering heavy pages.

I have 18 windows open in Firefox vs chromium that say otherwise. Why would I lie lol.

And what about memory requirements? Also there are no addons in mobile Chrome!! Big issue for me.

I have 64GB of RAM because I know the workload is memory hungry. But still, I have enough left over: https://imgur.com/a/Q25P7vJ

Chrome has a more responsive UI, but as for actually rendering and laying out pages, Firefox is usually much faster.

I've actually checked with both browsers open side-by-side while developing my own webapps.

What's worse, Chrome is super buggy and will often randomly crash on complex CSS or too many table rows, etc.

That's great, I'll tell Firefox that,maybe it will pep up.

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