I'm using firefox for another reason, it is the fastest, most secure, most memory efficient browser out there. Chrome doesn't even compare on benchmarks. They may have had the crown for a tiny split second a few years ago but not anymore firefox closed the distance a while ago and now they're ahead and the gap is growing.
Firefox rocks my world for all those reasons and more.
Hell, I would use it just for the Tree-Style Tabs addon, which isn't available for Chrome.
But I use Chrome at least as often as Firefox for one reason alone: when everything doesn't go smoothly and a page does crash, it doesn't take the whole browser down with it.
When Firefox hangs and/or crashes, it's much more annoying because everything is interrupted to a greater degree.
Chrome: Oops! This tab crashed, just reload it or close it and move on.
Firefox: Firefox has encountered an error and must be closed. Do you wish to debug?
As someone who spends a third of the day on the web professionally, and always has 10-50 tabs open, it matters.
It's already available in Nightly builds just disabled by default. If you'd like to try out a Nightly on Windows without messing with your local copy of Firefox, grab a copy of Firefox Portable Nightly and it'll run with it's own separate profile and Firefox install without affecting your local one: http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable/test#...
Yeah, the tab thing is in progress. The problem is that Chrome was designed from the ground up to be process-per-tab, while Firefox is having to adapt extensive existing code.
Thankfully, plugins made it into their own processes a while ago, which has greatly reduced the number of crashes.
In Firefox Nightly, you can just use File menu > Open e10s Window menu item to open a new e10s without restarting Firefox, but setting the browser.tabs.remote.autostart pref in about:config will enable some extra compatibility code for some add-ons.
Don't forget that Firefox is fully open source. Rendering engine, PDF engine, updater, installer, all of it. Chrome isn't. Chromium is, but it lacks quite a few features of Chrome and Firefox and isn't available in stable builds for Windows or Mac.
Could you name those benchmarks where Chrome "doesn't even compare" to Firefox?
On my x86_64 linux system, Firefox is marginally faster at Mozilla's Kraken benchmark (a few %), and Chrome is much faster at Google's Octane benchmark (30+%).
Firefox? Faster? Tell that to my browser which gets sluggish whenever I have large or complex pages open. Tell that to my browser which slows to a crawl when flash or HTML5 video is loaded. Tell that to my browser which slows every other tab to a crawl when one is slow. Tell that to my browser which allows a single tab to crash the entire show.
There's a reason why I keep going back to Chrome after trying each version of Firefox for a week or two, and it's all related to basic user experience: performance and stability.
I did not switch to Chrome a few years back because it was better, but for because Firefox was worse. If both would've worked fine I of course would've not changed.
I don't know about today, but a few years back starting up Firefox was painfully slow, and when an update arrived it would first nag you about it and then during restart started checking for extension compatibilies. Even using felt sluggish and was temporarily fixed by running the sqlite vacuum in it db.
Chrome for whatever reason had none these issues, and it felt even slightly nicer to use, with usability enhancements all around like more fluid animations in tab moving, and all settings on a nicely laid out web view instead of a tiny modeless window with 10 tabs.
I really hope Firefox can not just catch up, but go past Chrome. Unfortunately the last time I tried it not too long ago, it didn't start but instead wanted to show that it is checking for extension compatibilies. Didn't exactly fill me with excitement.
Just interested, aren't blink/webkit still open? As long as that is true, it seems to me that there is no worries with using chrome. If google starts doing dev behind closed doors, people will just fork blink/webkit and build new browsers. I don't understand the argument that using chrome is anti-open source.
But forking blink/webkit would be a huge undertaking for anyone interested, wouldn't it? I'm not sure if there are that many companies out there who would like to go that route (imagine web browser made by facebook, that would be interesting).
Could you explain how you came to the conclusion that Firefox is the most secure browser? Firefox had the most number of reported security bugs according to Secunia.
Also, until recently Chromes font rendering on my 'high dpi' screen has been almost impossible to look at, and I really like my gesture plugin and the way firefox syncs with mobile firefox.
This is baseless FUD; any serious objections he might have are only hinted at: "things I can't talk about". If everyone switched to Chrome, at worst Chrome would get complacent, as IE did, and at best, it would continue to be a great browser.
> This is baseless FUD; any serious objections he might have are only hinted at: "things I can't talk about"
The author is Robert O'Callahan, who is a Distinguished Engineer at Mozilla and a 15-year veteran of browser development. He's not just some random blogger spouting off.
Being a distinguished engineer at Mozilla doesn't necessarily make one far more qualified to understand the vast array of potential implications of Google gaining monopoly power in a variety of web sectors.
No, but it might. I'm sure the author has spent vastly more time looking at web standards and trends than I have and as such, his opinion should carry more weight than your average person.
You've simply pulled out a variation on the old "correlation does not imply causation" retort.
No, I pulled a more wordy version of "that's an appeal to authority fallacy". And I believe my point still stands. The author is speaking of issues that are several orders of magnitude of complexity above "writing amazing web software at Mozilla" and also impacted by a variety of fields that are very different than software engineering. Thus he is only marginally more informed than your average HN user.
It also gives him an ulterior motive. I am happy to hear what he has to say, but "just trust me" is not convincing.
To be clear, I am not accusing him of dishonesty, but I don't trust him to be impartial. People have a tendency to overvalue the thing they are working on.
It might be a little fud. But its also a little true. Google is becoming everything online. They even want to be your internet service provider some day. All that control in all aspects of the internet could be abused quite easily.
IE only got complacent because hundreds of millions of users switched to Firefox over the years, and then the same thing with Chrome. It took them almost a decade and 50% of market share to start caring about their browser again.
I've been using Firefox as my primary browser since it was called Firebird, and I have to say that I'm on the cusp of switching away from it. It seems like every time I update, the UI breaks. With the latest update, for some reason my address bar is gigantic:
It also enabled address bar autocomplete, which I did not previously have enabled.
The previous update, Firefox 29, came with Australis, which left me with a completely unusable configuration and required me to fiddle with yet another "classic restorer" style addon. I now use:
* "Classic theme restorer" to gut Australis
* "oldbar" to get rid of the AwesomeBar
* "Old default image style" to restore the old style for displaying raw images.
* "Switch to tab no more" to cut off yet another head of the hydra that is AwesomeBar
* "Undo close tab replacement" to restore the Recently closed tabs menu.
All to fight back against UI-breaking new features. I also had to muddle around with browser.urlbar settings in about:config to restore some kind of sane behavior to the address bar after AwesomeBar was introduced.
But what can I do? I obviously need security updates and the latest support for web standards, so I can't ignore new versions. But I'm tired of fighting a browser that I no longer recognize.
What's wrong with the AwesomeBar? Every time the Firefox team has come out with a new feature, I've been excited about it, and it's improved my workflow.
Awesomebar is awesome. Every time I need to revisit a site, I can type a few words that remind of me of the page and awesome bar just reads my mind and brings me there.
It's completely useless to most if not all pentadactyl and vimperator users, and actually interfered with my configuration of the former. Now no addon icons can be added to pentadactyl's statusline (well they can be, but they reset every time you start the browser).
First of all, it wasn't so much a specific reason why Australis is bad as it was an example of how it broke existing addons. I'm sure there are plenty of others.
Second, both projects have been in active development for years so I'd imagine their userbases are substantial. Pentadactyl has about 20k downloads for release 1.0 alone, probably closer to 100k for all versions. Certainly not the majority of FF users but hardly ignorable either.
I used Firefox (more specifically Iceweasel) as my sole browser from roughly version 3 until somewhere in the late twenties.
Recently I started using Chromium off and on because FF just seems to be so damn slow if I have more than four tabs open. Reddit + RES is so slow that it's completely unusable. I'm talking a several second delay between each keystroke and the character appearing in the input boxes.
Also, FF's sync is quite a pain to set up, especially if you don't have another device with you.
I fear the recent UI changes may have been the last nail in the coffin for me. I had a very nice setup using pentadactyl with some select add-on icons on the statusline. Now, that isn't possible. I have to choose between a superfluous navigation bar or no icons.
You could try "Reset Firefox". No guarantees, but it fixes a lot of performance problems like the ones you're seeing, while preserving history, passwords, bookmarks, cookies, etc. See https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/reset-firefox-easily-fi... for details.
Iceweasel is probably your issue. I don't use the Debian hack of firefox and have no problems, >50 tabs open all the time. Also, looks like the last release of pentadactyl was March 15, that is old by Internet standards. I don't think firefox is the issue here.
This may sound like heresy, but I think Internet Explorer has the right balance between tab space and the URL bar. It's not perfect, but it is smaller than in Firefox and Chrome, while still being usable.
I'm waiting for a complete "Sane" plugin in Firefox that has all the modifications you mentioned rolled into one.
I'm not denying any of your other issues with the browser, but
> With the latest update, for some reason my address bar is gigantic
For some reason? What would you expect if you have UI-altering addons installed (Classic theme restorer and oldbar), which might or might not work correctly under the most recent version of the broswer?
Someone in the comments worries that recent firefox versions are not entirely compatible with pentadactyl. But they are forced into enabling the awesomebar (which, admittedly, is useless when using 5dactyl) only because 5dactyl doesn't restore addon icons on browser restart, which is a bug in the addon, not firefox (sorry if I misunderstood the issue, but that's the way it looked to me).
If you are using some UI altering addon (which I understand the need to and also do), you should be aware this kind of behavior can happen, and that it is not entirely the browser's fault.
Looking at the version history of the theme, it looks like the author has been heroically trying to shield users from changes. I'd be pretty annoyed if I had written some addon in the distant past and were forced to make fixes because the Firefox devs broke something that should have been stable 20 versions ago. Firefox's main selling point (in my opinion) is its vast library of high-quality addons and themes. They should be doing everything possible to preserve backward-compatibility, not breaking large swaths of their library.
I just wish they'd focus more on producing a great browser and less on random, wacky, side projects. Not that the side projects aren't interesting, but the browser is what I care about. Even this person, who is associated with Mozilla can't say anything more positive than "[w]e have a good browser...".
That said, he's right... `sudo apt-get install firefox`.
There are halo benefits to the side projects as well. Some experimental or otherwise "daring" functionality in a side project can become invaluable within the browser core at a future date. It's a bit like an external stimulus triggering a random mutation that proves to be beneficial.
Ex: Popup blocking required modification to the browser before it became a vital core feature.
> So if you want an Internet --- which means, in many ways, a world --- that isn't controlled by Google, you must stop using Chrome now and encourage others to do the same. If you don't, and Google wins, then in years to come you'll wish you had a choice and have only yourself to blame for spurning it now.
I sympathize with the general sentiment of the article, but this is just hyperbole. I used Firefox when it was the best browser (for me), and I'm using Chrome now because it's the best browser.
Chrome is not a superficially better browser—as a web developer I can attest that Chrome beats out Firefox in myriad ways. Candy has no value other than flavor, and is actually bad for you. The advent of Google's release of Chrome (and the collaboration between Google and Apple engineers on WebKit) has launched the web forward at a speed that Firefox has been struggling to keep up with. That INCLUDES security and openness, not just new prefixed CSS properties.
The browser war was Firefox's to lose, and they dropped the ball. They weren't ready for Chrome, and have yet to catch up.
We shouldn't-- but I think the grandparent post is saying that "switch from Chrome to Firefox so as not to support Google" is not an entirely valid argument given the funding situation. Simply put, if you think "this is Google-related" is a reason to switch away from something, then maybe it becomes relevant that Google is funding a big portion of alternative sources?
Obviously there are a few issues with the argument, but I think it brings up an important point.. and demands that the anti-Chrome/pro-Firefox argument matures a bit more.
Roc's point is specifically about Chrome, and letting a single player control how people access the Web. Using Firefox with DuckDuckGo, or Bing, or whatever search engine you prefer is still better than using Chrome.
Yes, it does. Does this invalidate Robert's comments? If anything, I'd say it strengthens them.
"Employee of company A praises company B (from which company A gets most of their revenue)" is not a noteworthy story. But change "praises" to "criticizes" and it's entirely different.
Can you imagine what will happen to Mozilla if Google stops the contract?
IMO, it is just a strategy of Google. First make the Mozilla heavily dependent on it and later ditch so the Firefox can easily die
Firefox would probably take some pay cut and switch to bing. I bet Google is quite happy as is: the search engine is 80% of their commercial needs with a browser, so they're just outsourcing another IE competitor. Also, I bet they don't view this so ruthlessly -- else they wouldn't be as committed elsewhere with OSS projects and the releasing the Chromium version of their browser.
If Firefox switched its default search engine from Google to Bing, I wonder how many Firefox users would even notice? Power users would complain for a day, then just switch their search settings back to Google. But I think switching to Bing (or Yahoo) would restore some healthy competition to the web.
I think half of the comments on this thread are missing the point - to paraphrase Richard Stallman, the link is arguing from freedom, not convenience. Responding with "but Chrome is better" may be true or it may be false, but in both cases it is irrelevant.
I have been a Firefox user from 0.93 or so, except for a year or so of Chrome usage on a USB disk when Firefox really was performing too badly in that case—but once that was fixed I gladly moved back to Firefox. I see how people use Chrome and wonder how they can possibly stand it, especially if they end up with more than twenty tabs in a window… Firefox is certainly way better for tab management for me. I use Firefox both because I believe it is the best browser for me and for philosophical reasons. (I also have approved of almost every change to Firefox that I’ve seen; 4 was a great thing, Australis was a great thing, &c.)
I have also been gravely concerned, as the author is, by what I see at Google. Five years ago, had there been Google offices in Melbourne, I would have enjoyed working for them. In the three years since then I steadily became opposed to Google and I do not believe that I would be willing to be employed by them; they are now pushing the Chrome brand far too far, using a very significant marketing budget on it purely to get people to use it, and from their other web properties pushing Chrome constantly, almost always to my mind deceptively and far too often outright lying. Telling people to upgrade from IE6 was entirely understandable, and I could even forgive that they will push their own browser rather than merely pushing for a newer browser of whichever brand. But if I’m using Firefox, why would you go pestering me to “upgrade” to this browser with claims of its being faster which are simply not true? Four years ago they were true, to be sure; Firefox was slower than Chrome. But that has long since been fixed and the two are competitive now, Chrome winning in some areas, Firefox winning in others. (Of course, I believe Firefox to be winning in more, but that can immediately be discounted as a biased and unreasoned view.)
I look at what punishment Microsoft got for its anticompetitive behaviour and I wonder how long it can be before Google is dealt with. Because as it is, they’re just as great a threat as Microsoft ever was to the web, if not greater.
"I look at what punishment Microsoft got for its anticompetitive behaviour and I wonder how long it can be before Google is dealt with."
That's a good point. The article says that Google is "writing contracts with Android OEMs forcing them to make Chrome the default browser". When Microsoft was doing that a while back with Internet Explorer, they were sued by the government and forced to unbundle IE from Windows.
It wasn't the bundling that was the problem, its the fact that the bundling was a mechanism for leveraging their desktop OS monopoly to displace competition in a different market. You can't leverage a monopoly when you don't have a monopoly to leverage.
Im sad to say there is only one reason left that I continue to use firefox as my main browser- The most excellent security addon, noscript, by Giorgio Maone. (and before you say chrome can block javascript- understand noscript does much, much more than just block JS)
If he was to port that to chrome, I would be gone in a heartbeat. Chrome is (from my experiences browsing the web with both browsers), a better browser in almost every sense of the word. Faster updates, Feels much faster browsing and overall just a more enjoyable user experience.
If firefox wants to stay relevant, they will have a real battle on their hands.
This latest design update firefox did is especially infuriating. The steps firefox was making me take to revert my experience to what I knew was insulting. I understand you want me to use this new interface, but you are going to hardcode it so much that I have to read a 3 page doc and install random addons to revert it? This mentality seems to plague mozilla. A bunch of FOSS guys get to decide what the rest of end up with every release.
I also use Firefox as my primary browser (with NoScript), but when I need to use Chrome, I find that the NotScripts[1] extension provides much of the same functionality.
Agree. NoScript is fantastic and under-appreciated. Also agree on how FF updates tend to be infuriating.
I'd really love to see FF do something really smart with certificate management. E.g. like Certificate Patrol but more advanced. That would be a major security improvement over what's out there.
Also a very happy user of Aurora, the new dev tool features in r33 are making Firefox yet more wonderful to browse/work with. I was using Chrome exclusively for years until I began to realize the general ramifications of giving in to an 'all Google' internet. My only issue with Firefox is the still seemingly slower JS engine. I still feel SpiderMonkey isn't still as fast as V8.
There are always going to be people that use a particular browser for a particular reason and it's that competition that encourages the organization behind the browser to improve.
Instead of using baseless FUD to try and win people over to your browser, work on making it the best from a usability and performance standpoint so people move over to it naturally. That's what Chrome did to me when it came out and what keeps me using it today.
Sure, competition is good, but Google vs. Mozilla isn't a fair fight. Google has more resources. As long as Google improves Chrome enough to keep users, they can simultaneously do things that are not good for the Web as a whole. They can, on average, get away with it if people don't complain or switch away due to the parts that are unsavory.
The article does not lay out a watertight argument, but I see what it is trying to say: pay attention to more than just the obvious features of a browser -- also pay attention to its implications in the market.
Smart people realize that it is not in your self-interest to simply buy the best (cheapest or fastest) product or service, if defined narrowly. If you care about reliability, longevity, and service, sometimes you pay more or accept some idiosyncrasies, because your goal is to support an organization that behaves in a way that you like.
It is naive to think that "choosing the best browser" is simply a matter of the browser itself. There is a bigger story, and if you don't at least recognize this, it might be time to take the blinders off.
I'm not sure it's baseless. Mozilla's hand was recently forced on H.264, and the Chrome team is strong-arming Web Components through while explicitly disregarding standards bodies. Not to mention their own promise to avoid unprefixed, non-standard platform features in Blink.
"Chrome will be shipping Shadow DOM publicly (in conjunction with Moz) in the very near future. Whatever API gets shipped will be frozen almost immediately. If you want to suggest name changes, as we brainstormed a bit at the f2f, do so RIGHT NOW or forever hold your peace."
A bigger takeaway from this blog may be the centralization of information (regardless of the company that does it). I'd be less worried about my browser of choice, and more about my ability to retain ownership of my data.
FWIW, I've started self-hosting as much as possible of my 'critical' items, be it at home, or on a VPS. You don't need vast amounts of bandwidth, and it's become much easier to setup over time (OpenVPN, OwnCloud, gitlab, or even just using a NAS with such features).
Items that you want to share are a slightly different matter (size, bandwidth, server security, etc), but in general I dislike putting my entire life on social media anyway.
> And he affected my framing of the problem deeply – I remember one day a couple of years back when we were talking about some market share point, thinking about how incredibly, insanely competitive the browser technology landscape was – and he said to me: “Look, this is the world we wanted. And this is the world we made.” Wow. Exactly right. He taught me so much about how enormous an impact a group of dedicated people can make.
Chose it years ago and was never really taken by Chrome, I usually install it to test against from time to time but I spend 95% of my browsing time within Nightly (daily browser for 9 years now!)
I switched to Chromium back when they first started with the fast release system and kept breaking my plugins. I've thought about switching back but need Chromium's ability to run newer versions of Flash. So I want to run both, but I have a large bookmark collection I use all the time and have found no good way to either keep the 2 browsers bookmarks in sync or an external bookmark management program.
Anyone have a good solution to bookmarks? This would be for Debian.
I haven't used it, but Xmarks Sync is an add-on for Firefox and Chrome that synchronizes your bookmarks. Xmarks Inc also maintains the popular LastPass add-on.
I was using Firefox to keep the web free, but then they agreed to start supporting DRM and I figured out here is no point to do this any more. I use Chrome now.
You shouldn't use a product only because you're worried the competition will do something theoretical; you should use a product that provides you with the best value.
For me, right now, it's Chrome. Before Chrome it was Opera. Mozilla needs to focus on providing better value in their browser rather the current releases which seem to always contain odd half-assed features.
I try to use FF every now and then, but unfortunately, Chrome is just a better browser in every respect, for my needs. My configuration is pretty simple, no flash, no java, no silverlight, no nothing. With FF I always get the feeling like I'm running a single threaded app, and where one tab can interfere with the performance of the other.
I was a huge proponent of Firefox for years (since Netscape 6), version 30 broke it so badly I had to move on to Chrome, two tabs open no plugins and it crashes on a machine with 16Gb of ram if left open over night, and the bug is trivial to reproduce. Updates haven't remedied the situation. When Google no longer monetizes Firefox via paying them to be the default search engine I don't see Firefox staying relevant, it's a shame I miss built in (no plugin needed) tab grouping, I miss having a search box that doesn't tell Google everything I'm typing as I'm typing it, and I certainly miss the smaller memory footprint. I just can't handle the constant crashing, the webpages that render as a completely black box (whether video acceleration is check marked or not) and the continued degradation in performance while they spend developer cycles on things like making it look like Chrome (a move I detested) or removing options power users and professionals use. Most of the time I can use about:config to restore functionality but should I have too? (echos of Gnome).
> two tabs open no plugins and it crashes on a machine with 16Gb of ram if left open over night, and the bug is trivial to reproduce
Keep in mind that whatever the bug is, it's probably only trivial to reproduce for you. If it truly was globally easy to reproduce, it would send the crash stats (https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/products/Firefox) through the roof.
Having said that, it's not good when crashes make your Firefox installation unusable. Firefox has a feature called about:crashes that will provide you with the URLs of your crash reports. Have you considered going to http://support.mozilla.org and reporting this?
Well, afaik they didn't break their bones to do so before. Also, if Google is gone, no matter how small amount MS would offer for defaulting Bing, Mozilla would have no choice but to accept it.
Even if chrome does end up gaining a monopoly on browsers (or google in general is in a monopoly position), eventually they will cease to innovate and will be taken over by the underdog (or the newest/best solution).
Is that true? It seems like an oft-quoted truism that when companies get big, they "turn into Microsoft," or (gasp), "turn into IBM!" This assertion is logically impossible to verify or prove. There have been less than a dozen monolith tech corporations, every one is different, and the world changes every day. Just because Microsoft "stopped innovating" (is that even true?) does not mean that Googe will. That kind of macroscopic extrapolation is predicated on weak logic and completely unreliable.
It remains to be seen, and likely forever will, whether large corporations suffer from some unavoidable, fundamental flaw that prohibits them from innovating. As a casual observer, it seems to me that Google is very aware there is a risk of that, and its executives consistently make moves to mitigate it. They silo small innovation labs like Google X within the company, they fund "moonshots," and they acquire as many innovative small teams as they can. They do all of that with more resources at their disposal than almost any other company in the world. So it stands to reason that if Google is consciously aware of the risk of innovation slowdown ("turning into Microsoft"), and actively throwing more money at avoiding the problem than any other company on the planet, that they have a far better chance of continued innovation than "the underdog."
I think the difference this time is that if Google controls the browser AND the biggest websites, then they'll be more confident introducing features that lock you into that browser (See the offline storage bit mentioned in the article). With those lockin features more common, people will be less willing to support other browsers in the future, because they wont be able to offer those exclusive features. With that large userbase that can use cool features like those, other large websites will take advantage of the proprietary API's (see, the issue with webkit css prefixes right now). Lack of possible support from users means most alternatives wouldn't be able to gain any traction, which is going to discourage any growth in that field.
Google has very deep pockets, and is successfully executing an astonishingly vast integration play. Google can potentially own:
- Your communications (Gmail, Hangouts, Voice)
- Your working data (Drive, Docs)
- Your footprint on the Web (Google Analytics, Ads)
- Your footprint on the Internet (Fiber, Loon)
- Your browser (Chrome)
- Your operating system (ChromeOS, Android, GlassOS)
- Your device (Chromebooks, Glass, Wear, Android phones and tablets)
- Your movements and travel (Maps, Ingress, ITA)
- Your robotic overlords (Boston Dynamics)
Not to mention the upcoming plays for home integration (Nest, Thread), your means of transportation (Android Auto, self-driving cars), and your activity and health data (Fit).
Each vertical success reinforces the Google Platform, and lends momentum to Google's efforts in other verticals. It presents one hell of a barrier for start-ups (unless you fancy share-cropping), decreases consumer choice, and ultimately, that amount of consolidated power just doesn't seem healthy for a functioning market or society.
Edit: All of that, and I somehow forgot YouTube. And G+. But we all forgot G+, right?
I just tried using Firefox again after reading this. I stopped after 2 minutes, when I realised installing the flash plugin was a pain. Apparently Adobe stopped supporting Flash for linux in 2012.
It did. But Microsoft disbanded the IE team after they won that marketshare, which gave other browsers years to catch up.
Things may have looked very different had they continued the heavy development pace after releasing IE6. IE had a fast and modern engine compared to contemporaries when IE6 was first released, but then it went five years without any major updates.
I'm undecided about Google's growing browser control, but in any case I don't see Google making the same mistakes as Microsoft.
Browser share is only part of the puzzle. Microsoft didn't also own several of the most popular sites on the web. See callahad's comment for more detail (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8151400).
Microsoft could afford to get complacent as IE was not their primary driver of profits. Google being an advertising company - it needs to control users through it's browser to gather more data and build algorithms to use that data, which will be eventually sold to advertisers. The two situations are not comparable at all.
IE and Safari are always (for some reasonable definition of always) going to exist. Firefox is the browser whose entire revenue stream is based around hoping Google DOESN'T want a browser monoculture to develop. If Mr. O'Callahan wants to use Firefox as a way to stop Google from taking over the web, there's two things he as a Mozilla coder he could do that would be far more effective than histrionic blog posts that say "other bad things are happening that I can't even talk about" and expect me to be able to fill in the blanks:
1) Build a better browser than Chrome, and
2) Come up with a way to generate revenue that doesn't depend on Google's benevolence towards Firefox.
Mozilla is not interested in enterprise users, so my employer chooses to only use chrome and internet explorer internally, and for supporting internal and external products.
If the first thing you have to say about yourself is that you're "Christian", I don't know that I really care what else you have to say.
Are non Christians suppose to be offended ? Will I be able to ignore the fact that he may be a pro-lifer supporting attacks on abortion clinics? A tea-bagger...
Find it tasteless to present oneself this way, and it seems it's only Anglo-Saxon Christians who choose to do so. As if they're a persecuted minority coming out of the closet.
Did anyone ever see non Christians introducing themselves on their blog by their religion or belive system? Jon Doe, atheist? Jane Doe, Muslim?
I'm not going to switch because of some imaginary ideological reason I couldn't care less about. I'm not going to switch until Firefox is actually better (I use both on a daily basis when developing).
Good. I hope Mozilla goes away. They think everything should be "web". They think everything should be "open". They don't respect native platforms and they want to keep the web duct-taped together the way it is instead of making something better that is actually an application platform. I disagree on all counts.
(Remember folks, don't down-vote just because you disagree! Sorry if it offends your sensibilities :)
