As an example of a rare counterpoint, Zotero, a citation manager, continues to be based on the Firefox platform [1]. Thunderbird is another non-browser application built upon the Firefox codebase.
The article doesn't really say anything new, but _why_ are most browser forks of Chrome instead of Firefox? Is chrome just that much easier to fork? I remember there used to be Camino for mac that was killed and rolled into firefox, and even to this day firefox support on mac is poor. The lack of a firefox equivalent to Electron also hurts things, even though it seemed firefox was ahead of the curve with XUL.
I'd wager it's due to someone complaining about firefox (its always bills, you notice? The same reason IE6 stuck around for...), without fail, everytime the word "Firefox" is mentioned anywhere.
And then we get anecdotes like "gmail and YouTube are buggy"
Oh, really? That's so weird that a multinational would hamstring a competitor that doesn't feed their shareholders more value.
To be fair, I recall some ex-Mozilla developer claiming that the Firefox codebase is indeed full of technical debt (over 20 years) and pretty hard to modernize
If anything this article understates how ubiquitous Chrome is. Tons of Android apps use Webview, which is Chrome in disguise.
That said, it also overstates the importance of Google's particular flavor of Chrome. Chromium is open-source and other Chromium-based browsers do not need to comply with Google's DRM etc.
Chrome removed manifest v2. It's also missing from Chromium, which means that many other browsers now have to decide to maintain that version manually, or remove it. It is being removed from Edge, a big competitor, just because maintaining it is too much work. Removing V2 and adding V3 does a lot of damage to the users, in favor of adding power to Google's Ad services.
Don't hold your breath. Chrome's speed and feature-richness comes from large, specialized development teams. You can't aspire to top that on a whim. And then there are such trifles as dev tools to take care of.
It's a nice touch that the article tells you you're browsing it with a blink-based browser, it's the first time I've seen fingerprinting used to enhance an explanation
Imagine every website had a widget on the side giving an EXAMPLE of how your data will be used. Like "You have been marked with liking chocolate velvet cakes. This data can and will be used against you in the court of the next website you go to"
I am personally fine with advertisements curated to me. I intentionally interact with Instagram ads that I like to affect the algorithm, even if I don't care for the product at that moment. However, with request fingerprinting [0] and the like, the targeting can go far beyond the web surfer's awareness and desires.
Imagine the horror of not having to sift through tens of ads just to read a single paragraph of text, and not being constantly nagged by full screen popup video ads...
> The best bet would be using Firefox or something based on it. Firefox is free, open source, available on most platforms, and Mozilla has largely shown a commitment to both the user and the web.
Given the downward trajectory of Mozilla, including re. the commitment to the user, why would this help? How would it change anything at the Mozilla corporate to make this bet the best?
Author here. I'm sorry if you're experiencing some scroll shenanigans, but it isn't related to my website.
The only scroll-related things that would be different on my site are disabling overscroll to prevent that annoying bounce effect which shows unintended areas when reaching the end of a scrollable area and my custom scroll indicator (https://vale.rocks/posts/the-implementation-of-this-site#scr...), which has no impact on scroll behaviour.
The Web is now ChromeOS, and everyone shipping Chrome only because it is easier, it is too complicated to do cross-browser development, yeedah yeadah..., are only repeating the IE 6 siren song.
Also take a minute to appreciate shipping Electron garbage for helping Chrome's hegemony.
Unfortunately Firefox is no real competition either. Most of their revenue comes from Google, ostensibly for making Google the default search engine but, in reality, probably to allow Google to avoid antitrust lawsuits by claiming they have a real competitor.
I do like diversity and I hope there's always be competing browser engines but folks, Chrome is really not a bad browser and Google engineers do an amazing job with it.
Just because currently it has a monopoly does not mean it's a bad product.
It doesn't matter how "good" Chrome is or will be when it's your only option (if you're not on an Apple device). Like the author states in this essay, I'm not comfortable with a browser that gives a single company complete control over Web standards and the Internet.
no, it means that it contributes to a worsening of the environment that it runs in - the web.
By making the product - the browser - the best that they can (without damaging their core businesses) Google achieves dominance to worsen the web as a whole.
I've been using Safari+Firefox for a good decade now. Just out of spite.
I was there when IE6 was the only browser that mattered, I'm doing all I can to prevent that from happening again.
I do use Chrome for webdev, the tooling is massively better than in Safari and FF. But I very rarely use it to open anything past localhost or the internal test servers.
The article really should be "Everything Is Chrome + Safari", the "Firefox on the brink?"[1] article even shows that Safari has ~37% market share (Although the underlying site[2] currently shows me ~34%.)
I’ve been using Firefox for nearly 20 years. Lately I’ve noticed more and more websites that don’t work with it. Usually I can just ignore the bugs or avoid the site, but sometimes it’s something that I have to do (like pay a bill) and so I have no choice but to keep a Chromium install around as well.
I really hate having to double-fist browsers, but I’m too stubborn to switch to a Chromium-based browser full time. I’ll use Firefox or any other alternative for as long as the web remains usable on them.
I think it's our duty to use Firefox as much as possible, and only launch Chromium for the odd task where Firefox fails. This is the only way to fight the browser monopoly. We have to generate as much Firefox activity as possible, so that websites have to take it seriously as a platform and continue to develop against it.
> Usually I can just ignore the bugs or avoid the site, but sometimes it’s something that I have to do (like pay a bill) and so I have no choice but to keep a Chromium install around as well.
It's very odd, because recently I've had more of the opposite, where Edge (Chromium based) doesn't work, but Firefox does: on the sites where I pay my water and gas bills. Not that sites don't break on Firefox either, I've had that too, it's just odd that sometimes the mainstream browser doesn't work (wonder if it's an extension issue).
In my twenty years of using Firefox on every computing device I have ever owned, I have NOT ONCE encountered a website that didn't work on Firefox, including purchases and bill paying.
Even our internal only app that is used for internal management stuff only breaks in tiny and unimportant ways (ie a raw data viewer doesn't load), and probably just needs a polyfill.
I've noticed that some sites are buggy on Firefox (hello YouTube) but I don't think I've ever had to actually switch to Chrome to do anything. Maybe it helps that I mostly use electrical invoicing, so I don't really need to use a browser to pay my bills.
People use different sites, so I believe it, especially "local" ones of zero interest to people in other countries.
That said, I've not used chrome on personal machines as a default browser for many years, and at work I also avoid it.
I don't remember when I last stumbled over a page that didn't work in Firefox... which then worked in any other Browser and was not broken per se. Or they didn't work with Firefox + UBlock Origin, which is fair as Chrome just blocks less.
Some sites block by user agent, you may just need to use an extension to spoof it and the site should work.
Some browsers like Vivaldi do that by default.
Though, this sucks, but it's better than the alternative.
Yes, let's point to an industry with arguably the lowest barrier to entry as basis of good faith comparison to implicitly deny the existence of consolidation[1]. /s
As an example of a rare counterpoint, Zotero, a citation manager, continues to be based on the Firefox platform [1]. Thunderbird is another non-browser application built upon the Firefox codebase.
[1]: https://www.zotero.org/support/dev/zotero_7_for_developers