Mozilla drags Microsoft, Google, Apple for obliterating browser choice | Hacker News Reader

Mozilla drags Microsoft, Google, Apple for obliterating browser choice

theregister.com

23 pointsgscott6 comments

This is Mozilla's own fault, in a lot of ways. They could have been building their own Electron clone (and creating tooling around porting existing sites to it), but instead they built Firefox Reality. Mozilla could have built the best Android web browser, with tight integration to the OS, but instead they built their own phone OS.

I'll disagree. I think Mozilla realized the line between the browser and the OS is going to eventually fade to the point of irrelevance and made the smart decision to invest effort into the only solution that makes sense longterm. If the goal isn't to be beholden to the big players then making your own OS is the only way forward for this kind of endeavor since Android is effectively Google anyway. Whether Mozilla has done a good job approaching that strategy or not is an entirely different matter.

> the smart decision to invest effort into the only solution that makes sense longterm

I don't think it was smart at all. Building an OS is such a monumental challenge, and an embedded OS requires hardware support that an org the size of Mozilla was never going to be able to undertake. Anyone who had worked with embedded around the time of BTG immediately wrote it off, and it took a separate company taking tons of money (and relationships) from Google to even get anywhere.

> Android is effectively Google anyway

At least a super stripped down version of android would have had plug in compatibility with BSPs - which is Android's "hidden" strength.

Already discussed: "Mozilla claims Apple, Google and Microsoft force users to use default browsers"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32955971 (492 points | 2 days ago | 338 comments)

"drags" --WTF does that mean in that context?

Remember when El Reg used to be a British website?

Drags? I assume it means "calls out" judging by the page title, but where does "drags" come from? Is this my age showing?

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