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Comment by prox | Hacker News Reader

I hope you become a full time user, lets curb the direction Google wants to go in.

Even if the entire HN community would switch to Firefox, it would still be a drop in the ocean to curbing Chrome's market share.

Also Firefox hasn't been doing itself any favors by alienating both the average Joe consumers and the professional devs over the years.

No it wouldn't, that's just pessimism. The entire HN community switching would have massive second-order effects. People would see experts (us) using it, we'd promote it and install it for people, we'd speak positively about it, we'd develop with it, etc. (I won't write the whole list.)

Not only that. Every few weeks I come across a site that works better in Chrome than in FF or has some quirks (Google's spreadsheets are a good example - they feel slower in FF). Although I have no hope of changing the mindset of HNers working at Google, the rest of us could make a difference.

Yeah I hate that. I still have a problem seeing comments on youtube in firefox, even when I'm logged in. Not sure we're going to be able to fix if google targets their properties to only their browser, outside of a lawsuit or gov't action.

I daily drive Firefox for a few years now, including watching youtube - never faced your issue… Maybe a misbehaving extension?

Hmmm. I do have a few going. I'll have to check.

Can’t say I’ve have any issues with comments in YouTube. Not that I spend much time in the comments section but when I do read the comments they always work fine.

Maybe the other commenter is on to something regarding extensions. The only extensions I have are ones to simplify management of containers, plus my password manager.

I also have script blocker NoScript, so I may be being punished.

What a coincidence that Google spreadsheets work better in a Google browser than in another browser.

> People would see experts (us) using it, we'd promote it and install it for people, we'd speak positively about it, we'd develop with it, etc. (I won't write the whole list.)

I wasn't super paying attention at the time, but wasn't that basically how Firefox initially established itself at the expense of Internet Explorer?

Pretty much. People say that tech people switching doesn't do anything, but when tech people switch, semi-technical people get it via osmosis (forum posts for FF the first time, presumably reddit posts today). Suddenly when someone asks their friend that's slightly more technical than them for a recommendation, they get recommended the new thing instead of the old one.

Whole process takes a couple years or so.

Then why is FF marketshare still tanking despite all the techies hyping it?

All the techies aren't hyping it. Most people that I know just use Chrome. My running joke whenever I see someone else using it in a Zoom share or something is "found the other Firefox user!"

Android and to some extent iOS, are the reason.

I remember installing Firefox (I think v0.7) for my mother in law and giving it the IE icon.

I don’t think that’s true. If the entire HN community which I assume includes tons of casual weekly reading non-logged in users, that would be massive. The number of people outside HN who would try out FF again would be a sizable multiple of the HN community.

If everyone thinks negatively, then no change will happen. Keeping reality in perspective is important, but improving things is really important too.

HN community represents a very attractive economic segment. If we switched, advertisers and web designers would pay attention. Firefox would instantly be getting paid for our searches by Google.

Well, on January 2023 when Chrome Manifest V3 is finally deployed and Ublock Origin is killed, I bet many HNers will finally switch:

https://developer.chrome.com/blog/mv2-transition/

Firefox maker, Mozilla, is in the uneasy position of being financially dependent on its search deal with Google, which accounts for the majority of the organization's revenue.

I wonder how Google will be able to twist its arms (and trust me, they will use all their power and abuse their position to attempt it) to either implement V3 or find some other way to kill ad blockers / allow ads on Firefox.

I wonder why they go with Google. Other companies are a much better fit. Time to untangle themselves.

Because money.

They've implemented V3. What they're not doing is removing support for V2, so plugins that want the full access can do so.

Is there a public page/link which mentions that they're not removing V2 support? Please share. Thanks.

All I can find is:

We have not yet set a deprecation date for Manifest v2 but expect it to be supported for at least one year after Manifest v3 becomes stable in the release channel.

https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2021/05/27/manifest-v3-updat...

So they will eventually remove it sooner than later.

On the same page: "We will support blocking webRequest until there’s a better solution which covers all use cases we consider important, since DNR as currently implemented by Chrome does not yet meet the needs of extension developers."

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