Also, Bing advertises on Google too. And Google has basically paid for (and continues to pay for) Firefox's development.
If there's someone to hate here, it certainly isn't Google.
Being Free Software really isn't a concern to most people. Try being a small company that tries to block aggression from Google or Microsoft. Will it matter that Chrome is free? It's not like you can go in and say, "Here I changed Chrome. All users now use this version." For 99.999% of users free software is meaningless.
What would make Chrome much more interesting is if they gave maintanance of it over to a standards body or even a university. At this point "free software" is just nice window dressing.
You can also advertise it on Google as much as you want; they sell ads to pretty much everyone (including themselves).
In the end, I don't feel like Google is wronging me.
Something Mozilla has been doing for 12 years.
> And they have an entire team dedicated to building the > testing infrastructure
As does every browser developer.
> so they can do things like testing Flash against every > possible input
http://www.squarefree.com/2010/07/14/fuzzing-talk-at-the-moz...
Jesse and company have been writing lots of other fuzzers that aren't public yet as well...
Seriously, what you described above (pre-checkin code review and fuzz-testing) are all standard industry practices for web browsers and have been for years.
What do you think the "r=" lines are?
This certainly seems like an improvement to me.
It's almost ridiculous how lucky we are to in fact have three major market-share holders with largely compatible platforms competing for our attention.
They may have redeemed themselves recently but I wouldn't care to look, Chrome picked up where Mozilla left off. Chrome is a fantastic browser and I never have issue with it. Firefox 4 and 5 used to crash at least once per day. If it wasn't crashing then the ram usage was spiralling out of control.
I would rather put my trust in Google than Microsoft, I believe that Google have the interest of a faster more up to date web than Microsoft do and I go with their values.
As someone who is deeply concerned with Google's dominance of the Web (and increasingly mobile), I would dearly love for you to list out your reasons for trusting them, so that I can change my mind. In the meantime I'll stick to Firefox, loss of mojo or otherwise.
>I would rather put my trust in Google than Microsoft, I believe that Google have the interest of a faster more up to date web than Microsoft do and I go with their values.
Not I trust Google over every company in the world. And I state my reasons for trusting Google over Microsoft. Because I think they are more in tune with the values of what I think the web should be about.
Yes I also think the more domineering companies are the most innovative. Do you think if WebOS was so innovative and fantastic HP would have canned it? Would HP (or google) be anywhere near the level of phone we have today if it wasn't for the iPhone?
You're right in that it has a lot to do with marketing and Google would not have got Chrome to where it is today without their ability to market it but if it was crap then there would have been no uptake? They don't get a 25% browser share from developing something that doesn't work?
Look at Google Wave, massive marketing, everyone looked forward to it and it was rubbish. It's not all about marketing or love for a brand. It's a mixture of everything. I also don't start dismissing a companies products because they are getting too big, I don't want the next best thing, I was the best tool for the job. Regardless of who it is (within realms of common sense)
"They may have redeemed themselves recently but I wouldn't care to look"
These two sentences feel contradictory to me. If you want Firefox to win, at least give it a try once every few versions.
I would have loved Firefox to come out on top as for me they changed the web when they introduced tabs but they have been slow on innovation since. I feel Chrome gave them a kick and they responded, companies shouldn't operate like that, innovation should continue regardless.
I say I wouldn't care to look because I have moved on, Chrome goes above and beyond what I want from a browser, speed and stability. If Chrome starts to go in the direction of how Firefox went I would have no issue in trying another browser. I don't have time for allegiance to a browser, I just need it to work.
In the past month, Google has advertised on the new tab page for their chrome book using a mechanism for emergency updates (in some cases people can't close the ad), and started a fight in the chromium community about supporting Dart directly. Neither one is a major offence but both exhibit they have their own interests at heart.
Spdy is another good example. (I like Spdy, and I think its a good idea, but...) SPDY™ is trademarked to Google. It currently has no rfc. (Just a mostly empty draft. http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-agl-tls-nextprotoneg-00.htm... ) It was developed internally and not opened to comments. They control the largest implementations both server and client side. And while they're selling it as a way for everyone to make the web faster, they still have full control. (Apache support is here, nginx doesn't support it, Amazon uses it heavily for the kindle fire.)
While they do move faster than MS, they also seem to have an habit of working on something internally, then one day they announce the feature in Chrome, dump a library to the other browsers and expect them to just integrate it. And since they control the biggest websites, there's immediately an unfair pressure; "Oh, you don't want to use SPDY? Well, then your browser will be slower on Google sites than Chrome" (they don't say - or probably even think - that, of course, but it's true)
Mozilla talks a lot about their development and seems to be more interested in a better web, and not just a better browser.
They are not forcing SPDY on people but I am looking forward to an integration into IIS when it does happen.
They have created something in a hope that it does standardise the way we make web requests.
Microsoft actually did this without telling anyone years ago, at least google is open about it.
http://osdir.com/ml/mozilla.devel.netlib/2003-01/msg00018.ht...
Despite your sentiment, this is still moving the web forward. We all benefit from browsers built by vendors that have a genuine passion for the web. I'd argue that most believe Chrome is built from such passion more so than IE.
Since you brought up Firefox - I've always been on their side, up until I started living w/pain due to their decision to drop support for WebSQLDatabase. I'm now rooting for Chrome!