On the other hand, the continuous own-goals like this leave me unsurprised. It’s like Microsoft wants to create a bad browser.
Also, there's a lack of benign browsers in the market. Even team FF tries to make your mom buy things she doesn't really want or need, with their Firefox Suggest feature.
But I don't think they have anywhere near enough market share yet to start milking it. There is _nothing_ keeping me tied to Edge, and I haven't even really started recommending it to people yet.
In a way them doing it now (compared to later on down the line) is good. They're showing what they were going to do all along.
Not sure if that's macOS / Apple giving some sort of preferential treatment to Safari that other apps don't get, though.
This is slightly ironic, since Chrome exists solely so that Google can more effectively sell ads on every page you visit and track everything you do. I guess sites themselves aren’t technically part of the browser UI though.
No Chrome exists because Google didn't have a desktop OS at the time and they needed a platform. They developed things like V8 to make the browser a better platform for things like Maps.
And FF is an example of a browser that exists solely to sell ads. Mozilla has no other revenue stream. That's why they shove ads into your start screen.
At least Google has some non-ad revenue. Diverse, useful products. And I can trust that my data will only be used to match ads to me via algorithm, they're not going to sell my actual data, unlike most other players out there. And there's no ads in the Google products I pay for. MS puts ads in paid products, Samsung puts ads in paid products, most OEMs actually. Google keeps the ads on their webpages, they don't creep into things you pay for.
You praise them that everything works when you pay for Google, but that is every evil companys dream; make user hostile anti-patterns for free users and get them happy paying customers. The whole Youtube in these days is one the worst websites in the web, because of the systematic addition of user-hostile features for free users. Do you really want to support service like that?
What it comes to FF, there are no really other options to get some revenue from the browser. At least they are now trying with the VPN.
And? Thats far better than what most companies do. Credit card companies for example. There's a whole slew of 'traditional' companies that sell products and STILL sell your information.
I'd rather they have my data and allow me to use it for useful things (contextual search, maps, etc...) and use it to match me ads to make money versus companies like MS that would make me pay for their products, still shove ads in my face, then try to lock me into more products with a bunch of dark patterns, etc...
> The whole Youtube in these days is one the worst websites in the web, because of the systematic addition of user-hostile features for free users. Do you really want to support service like that?
Youtube enables creators in a way nothing before it did. It literally created a new type of publishing. As for ads on free Youtube, it's still far less than all the commercials that permeated cable TV since its inception.
Google is far less hostile to users and creators, free or paid, than cable companies and traditional media companies were for decades.
You reminded me of when they broke Microsoft Edge[0] by adding an empty (useless) div over the video element. IIRC that ruined its hardware acceleration, too.
[0]: https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/19/18148736/google-youtube-...
"Google is still the best search engine" And the same place where you get 1 page of ads for simple search.
Looks you are contradicting...
Right, it's only when you actually make a search, i.e. most users' actual first pages.
Honestly, I don't think this rings true anymore. Google's search quality has significantly dropped. I was astonished when someone brought up Google: there were four(!) ads in the SERP, disguised as organic results.
The actual results, the organic ones, are very similar to DuckDuckGo[0] too. I've been using DDG for a long while now. Great search engine.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/24/22547339/google-chrome-co...
IMO it's going to get pushed back even further. Their FLoC and other tracking-but-not tech is getting pushback, and they're not going to sacrifice revenue for privacy.
seems like google cant win
Let me be very explicit for you: privacy advocates say 3rd party cookies are bad b/c they allow tracking yet the eu blocks google from removing them b/c they think it might hurt their own ad tracking companies.
Let’s not become more dystopian. Google is one of those evil companies that hardly get bad press on HN along with TikTok.
https://www.change.org/p/oracle-corporation-stop-bundling-as...
It seemed such a counterproductive way to popularise a platform, as it immediately shredded their credibility, to seem the same level as that of some random company peddling malware.
I would be amazed if we were talking Firefox, but Google pushes Chrome down your throat pretty hard..
Exactly. IIRC, every time you use Google, Gmail or Youtube, from any non-Chrome browser, you get ads like "Everything works better on Chrome, wanna try it?" shoved in your face every step of the way.
So no surprise Chrome owns the web when Google owns the most visited websites in the world.
IIRC Google intentionally had a weird non-standard <div> placed in Youtube that would break rendering under old non-chromium Edge to hurt user experience and to force Edge users to Chrome which AFAIK was the straw that broke the camel's back and forced Microsoft to throw in the towel and move new Edge onto Chromium as it is today.
Yeah, you're right, they did do that[0]. Just posted about this in another comment.
[0]: https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/19/18148736/google-youtube-...
For elderly non-tech folks like my Dad's close friend, signing into Chrome Profile/Sync (whatever it's now called) is like "signing into the internet". "I can check my e-mail, browse the internet". He doesn't remember a single password, except for Google and Facebook. He doesn't know "what passwords do".
If any other browser opens up for whatever reason (sometimes PDF files open in Edge), he's totally at sea.
Can you blame them? Especially with the whole Bing stealing search results[0] thing -- that really damaged Microsoft's reputation.
[0]: https://searchengineland.com/google-bing-is-cheating-copying...
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29248460 [1]: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
With that I have to open developer tools and disable caching.
I'm also happy to say that the brilliant linux-loving techies in our IT department is planning to replace that web application :-)
Definitely not a problem for the wider web though.