Microsoft Edge Used More Than Firefox | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft Edge Used More Than Firefox

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18 pointssam34523 comments

I'm a long term Firefox user, but I'm losing hope. Google (mis)used its power to push Chrome and Google implements lots of Web APIs while Mozilla polishes Firefox UI. You can see a significant difference in supported APIs here: https://caniuse.com/

I consider Chrome developer tools to be a bit better, and if I remember correctly Mozilla reduced its investment in dev tools.

The privacy story is better in Firefox, but then again it is even better in Brave.

How sad it migt be, but I think Firefox is doomed to be a niche browser :-(

And this makes me very sad, because Firefox is the only browser that uses it's own engines (rendering and JavaScript). The rest are basically just reskinned Chromium. And heavily bloated (Looking at you Brave there, No I don't need a crypto wallet, please keep it away)

My cynical impression has been that Firefox keeps moving stuff around to keep some UX manager occupied (sorry, "for clarity") and dropping power user options bit by bit. I've grown frustrated. If they no longer want to cater to tech savvy power users then frankly there's no one left.

Sure, but what exactly chrome like dev tool are you missing in FF? Recently I was looking for Code Coverage reports, which FF lacks, but still prefer FF over chrome.

I don't mean the dev tools, just regular day-to-day usage browser features. I barely do webdev at all so can't comment there.

I feel as if this situation is akin to Linux and Windows desktop usage. The fact that Linux has a tiny market share on the desktop isn't a reason to not use it, particularly for privacy. You can't match the level of fingerprinting protection brought in by efforts of the Tor uplift project, a significant one being letterboxing among many others. All of which and more can be force enabled in the user.js, that there is no equilivant in Chromium.

If Brave can reach this point it would be great, but then they are still at the whim of Google, who has shown little to no interest with privacy in Chromium. To overcome this they would start needing a team as knowledable as Chromium's and Firefox's to maintain a codebase that has diverged so much from Chromium because of their desire to uphold privacy in the face of fundamental changes Google impose.

At this point I think they'll almost have come full circle with where Mozilla is at, where they are struggling to make enough money from it's users to stay afloat. I think this is why it's so important to support Firefox, in the same way for Linux desktop. There's no telling how long it will take for Brave to reach this point (if they ever do), whereas Firefox is already there now.

Sad indeed. I think Chromium as an engine will always fail its users at some point just because of the dependence on Google. This dependence is strong even with Firefox and it probably already lead to questionable decisions.

Supported APIs are a good metric, but I really ask myself if I want new APIs, since development here is also pushed by Chrome.

Web === ChromeOS when Google is done with it.

The irony is that many that complain, were bitching about Firefox, flamming IE.

Now enjoy ChromeOS that you helped take over the world.

You're right. Pretending that FF and IE were doing a good job would've made for a better web today, and we shouldn't have levelled actual real substantial criticism at them for that reason. Chrome did infinitely better than both for a long time. They built the framework to take over the web by actually doing a good job first, unlike the other two players.

Nope, you got it all backwards, it was you and others not supporting FF and IE that made this happen.

It is just like giving money to Apple and Microsoft, for UNIX and WSL, instead of buying from Linux OEMs, and then complaining about the sore state of GNU/Linux desktop.

Don't complain if the effort to change the status quo isn't taken upon yourself.

I don't think it's comparable. Firefox used to be very popular before Chrome. Linux has never had substantial marketshare. People switched away for a multitude of reasons but very few appear to have been using Firefox because of privacy concerns, only that it was better than IE. If privacy is the best pitch I have to convince the average user to use Firefox instead of Chrome, I'm at the limit of how much I can help Mozilla push their agenda.

I don't deny that. People switched to that which was the best. FF was so horrendously cluttered usability-wise and didn't improve for several years after Chrome came out. It was better than IE at the time, but that didn't take much. I moved to Chrome because it was better out of the box, on day 1. I didn't switch and then Chrome ended up being better down the line. FF and IE never realised that the appearance of speed is as important as actual speed. Nor did they realise that a clean, consistent, intuitive UI is paramount. If you're going to pretend that people should stick with the worse product because a better one might turn out evil down the line then you're fooling yourself. The only thing that had to happen was that FF, IE, or anyone, came by with a better alternative to Chrome. No one did. This is not the fault of the user base.

To be fair: A lot of usage of edge is probably because MS pushed it so hard with so many dark patterns and often repeated resets of the preferred browser. "Did you try the new Edge", "Try Edge!", ...

You mean Chrome, since Microsoft Edge is based on that? Might as well call that a Chrome Distribution with a Microsoft UI, just like Brave, Opera, Vivaldi and other Chrome based browsers.

That pretty much confirms all my suspicions [0] as to who really has the upper 'Edge' of the web. It's really Chrome or WebKit. Firefox has no chance in competing against any of them since Chrome is where the ecosystem is (Electron, Web APIs, Latest features, etc)

Best part? Firefox is becoming irrelevant and Mozilla is kept on life support by Google as the world moves on.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27274861

We always used to joke that Google only kept paying firefox so they could point to someone every time 'monopoly' was brought up.

Now I see just how true it always was. Firefox android has, what, 15 addons now? Absolutely ridiculous. It hangs constantly, they used the dark pattern of exporting bookmarks and whatnot. Just gross now watching it fall so damn far.

If only chrome supported tree-style-tabs. Is there some reason why such an extension is impossible to port to chrome?

(on the other hand, I do think it's important to have a diverse browser ecosystem; else chrome is just the new Internet Explorer 6; and it will all be just a little bit of history repeating)

Firefox still way better for power users, with the amount of plugins and customization available

Also the newest firefox version brings quite a speed improvement

I was a bit worried that there would be only two browsers left, but the data at [0] showed that Samsung Internet (I have never heard of this one) and Opera also have single digit percentages.

https://gs.statcounter.com/

Samsung Internet is an outstanding browser on Android. Pinch to zoom on almost any site, build in QR scanner, but perhaps most importantly, the ability to use an ad block extension.

Firefox does this on Android, too. To enable pinch-to-zoom on all websites, turn on Settings > Accessibility > Zoom on all websites. The QR code scanner is accessible through the Scan option above the address bar. uBlock Origin can be enabled in the Add-ons screen with no further configuration needed.

Samsung Internet and Opera are downstream users of Chromium. They do some work on the UI and sync but that's about it.

There are only 3 "more than a UI change" browsers with any significant usage share now, Chrome, Safari, and Firefox.

I guess it shows the death of the traditional computer(or PC as it's called) and the rise of smartphone.

How does it show that when Edge+Firefox mobile usage share is <1% according to that data source?

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