I've finally switched (back) to firefox today.
I switched from firefox to chrome for their superior devtools a few years back, but hopefully firefox has had time to catch up.
Everything old is new again!
replies(4):
I switched from firefox to chrome for their superior devtools a few years back, but hopefully firefox has had time to catch up.
Everything old is new again!
Google is a de facto monopoly. They own the entire web. The gateway, the browser, the protocols, advertising, discovery.
Google is too big.
But, every time Mozilla does something slightly abrasive, HN users pile on about how Mozilla is ruining their privacy-respecting reputation, and then go back to using Chrome... The double-standard is really something else.
Maybe instead of getting someone else to break up Google for us, we could just... stop using their shit? I'm typing this from Firefox, I use Proton Mail (and pay for it!) for email, and I mostly search with DuckDuckGo (I know that's not perfect, either). I certainly don't feel like I'm living like a caveman...
/rant
I don't think the fact that Chrome is (was) better is the question, it's a question of how they got here.
Google took tons of money and threw it into Chrome and therefore developed something better. It's better because Google put more money into it than anyone else would have because, in the absence of considering using it to enshrine their search and ad revenue, it wouldn't make sense.
Isn't this part of the antitrust test?
I wouldn't be surprised if Chrome still performs better on Google-owned web sites, for obvious reasons. But, nobody is really going to notice a difference between Firefox and Chrome when visiting, e.g., your bank's web site.
So, it's been somewhere between six and eight years that Firefox has had comparable performance, comparable web dev tools, and way cooler extensions. I'm sure plenty of people will reply that this isn't true and there was some website just this week that FORCES them to stay with Chrome because they noticed a jitter once, but people on the internet are top-tier experts at rationalizing and I don't buy it.
We could've all jumped on board with Firefox when the e10s project landed, but nobody did because it was just slightly less convenient to switch than to not. I hope it was worth it for them.
Most websites (except for those doing some really fancy stuff with new experimental web apis) tend to work just fine in Firefox. Google's sites are the only ones I regularly encounter that perform terribly and leak memory continuously.
Even once e10s supposedly fixed their problems another 4 years down the road, I didn't see any reason to rush back. I've switched to another Chromium browser, but I'd rather try a new engine entirely like Ladybird than switch back to Mozilla, until they prove they're not going to let the browser stagnate for so long again.
Well, that’s going to be Chrome from now on.
But, even so, you basically admit in the second paragraph that they're probably both fine, but you won't switch back to Mozilla "until they prove they're not going to let the browser stagnate for so long again." What the heck kind of test is that? And how long, exactly, will that take for you? If they "stagnated" for a decade, according to you, is it going to take another decade to prove they won't let it stagnate? Two decades, maybe? What does "stagnate" even mean? To me, it looks like Chrome is stagnating- what have they done lately that's innovative and actually good for users? Breaking a bunch of extensions and removing the ability to block ads? How many years does Chrome have to start behaving itself before you'll switch back to it after all of this? Ah, right- you won't switch away from it; you're probably only concerned about Firefox stagnating.
The truth is that you'll always make an excuse to not switch away from Chrome (and yeah, a browser that uses the Chromium guts is effectively the same thing when it comes to the monopoly on web standards).