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Comment by redder23 | Hacker News Reader

The irony of them going after M$ when Google funded them while totally using all their monopoly power to get everyone to move over to Chrome with ads on Google itself that Google pays for to be the default in Firefox. And they succeeded. Firefox has lost so hard because of Google, and they are going after M$. I mean, I do think they are right, it's just the irony. Google never needed deceptive tactics. They just spammed their ads on Google that said "get the new fast Browser" they did not even say "faster" they just spammed everyone for years and all the idiots went for it.

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> and all the idiots went for it

At the time a lot of people who transitioned to Chrome were still on IE7. They weren't future Firefox users. And Chrome was far faster and slicker when it come out than IE7, and a bit more than Firefox. It wasn't just advertising. It was better on a lot of useful metrics.

> Firefox has lost so hard because of

I feel that it is the users that are losing, not FF. It's like the meme "those who know/those who don't". People still (and forever will) trade safety/security/privacy/rights for some convenience. I expect nothing better/less from Google or Microsoft. I don't expect people to "wake up" and see what they are giving up/away.

They say that you can't save someone who doesn't want to be saved. I think that by know every person online has come across on some article that states/warns about Chrome, Edge, Google ads/tracking, etc.

We will not save those who don't want to be saved.

True, all the normie idiots do not give a flying fuck about privacy, and they do not even think of it as "trading" it for something, they just give it away without even thinking about it. Germans are a little different and in general a bit more privacy minded, that is why Firefox still has more market share in Germany than in other places.

https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/germ... https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/us

So that is PARTLY the reason, partly is because Google had search dominance of like 95% if something across the west, and they used it to push their Browser soooooo hard, I remember the times because I still used Google at the time. The amount of times I thought to myself "no I do not use your fucking spyware browser" I think they even used anti-AdBlock measures to push you the Chrome ads through adblockers. I was using Firefox and made a conscious decision to do so. Google was funding it, but its goals were noble, it was never actually that much slower than Chrome. I think there were times, long ago, where Mozilla actually advertised with speed and benchmarks and Firefox was faster at some point, I could be wrong. Today Blink for sure is a tiny bit faster, but I really not care, on a Desktop gaming rig you do not feel any difference.

Sorry but this is a weird post. Google did much more than self advertise. Its spread pattern was typical for what we've been calling malware. You could barely remove it. No, uninstaller did not clean house at all.

Adobe Flash used to bundle Chrome. And Chrome used to bundle Flash. Average people just click [Next] reflexively without reading and a whole bunch of potentially unwanted software is installed.

Not to mention Chrome was bundled into every random software installer, everything from MP3 players to torrent clients. You had to be vigilant, one misclick in a series of "next" buttons and congrats, you've got Chrome installed.

Paying to be a default search engine seems way more ethical in comparison.

Does Google use deceptive tactics to prevent you from installing another browser in Android or Chrome?

I don't know if they lost though, since they had no way to monetize and I doubt people (non-tech) would pay for a browser when so many free alternatives are available. They lost installs but gained money.

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