This has been happening for god knows how many releases now. Release notes make it seem like it's a minor version update and I'm not sure there were that many changes since they don't and haven't been caring. I will still use Firefox since it's not Chrome, but what people have been saying is true: it's a facade so google does not get sued for antitrust/monopoly.
I don't know how to fix this, but I believe sometime down the road the EU is going to sue Google and also believe Firefox is going to be forked. Can't wait for both of those things to happen.
Out of curiosity: by whom? I don't think this is likely at this point, short of some truly benevolent benefactor pushing tens of millions of dollars per-year into a competing foundation.
None of the "alternative" browser companies today built upon Gecko or forked Firefox itself, because _it's really hard to maintain a browser engine_. Mozilla itself barely manages to keep up, and Apple sort-of-does (and can riff off work on Blink due to WebKit's shared history). This is also why Chrome & Chromium tend to drive de-facto standards (some good, some not so good) with an implementation-first approach.
Building browsers is hard. Really hard, especially as we consume more media and build richer applications on top of the web. Dedicated teams for video & audio, WebRTC, Wasm, CSS, JS itself (huge, let alone the security challenges), etc.
Not even Brave, founded by Mozilla's ex-CTO/CEO forked Firefox. Microsoft Edge switched from homegrown to Chromium.
These two clues should be enough to cement your idea about how hard it is.
Even more important though is that it doesn't matter. You don't have reach. Apple locks you into Safari on mobile and Google pushes Chrome on Android and services having billions of users, like Youtube.
That's Mozilla's real problem. They lack in engineering power but engineering isn't the problem anyway. It's reach.
I think it's less about being hard and more about it being expensive redundent work. You will have to spend a lot of money to essentially make a duplicate version of an existing piece of software which you can use and build upon right now.
True, and if we're honest, the result of this hard work is a negative. Nobody in commercial software development benefits from having multiple slightly different engines. It just means more testing and more bugs, differences in feature support, the like.
> None of the "alternative" browser companies today built upon Gecko or forked Firefox itself, because _it's really hard to maintain a browser engine_.
What we really need isn't a fork.
It's for someone to do the same deal of selling the default search engine to the highest bidder, but then commit to using all of the money for promoting and improving the browser instead of all the non-Firefox things Mozilla does with it.
Then the extent of the fork is to change the browser name and the search engine link and all the improvements go back to upstream Firefox instead of having to maintain an independent one. But when it gets out that someone is doing this, who isn't going to want the one which is actually funding the browser and is otherwise identical?
In time the "fork" could become the dominant contributor to Firefox and just take over. Or convince Mozilla to commit to doing the same thing to make them go away.
> It's for someone to do the same deal of selling the default search engine to the highest bidder, but then commit to using all of the money for promoting and improving the browser instead of all the non-Firefox things Mozilla does with it.
That's a really, really minor part of the costs of Mozilla. Most of the money, by far, is spent paying engineering, design and marketing.
It would be nice if there was some way to know that, but the browser is developed by Mozilla Corporation, which is a subsidiary of Mozilla Foundation and not a public company so as far as I can tell it has no published budget.
Meanwhile, the Mozilla Foundation that does have published financial statements spends millions on all kinds of not-Firefox things. Including the money it gets as donations from people who think they're donating to fund Firefox and the money it gets from the for-profit Mozilla Corporation that actually does develop Firefox and should be using the money for that instead.
Well, last time I checked (which was before the recent layoffs) Mozilla Corp had around 1,000 employees, most of whom were working either on technology or around technology (i.e. I'm including designers, support, end-user research, managers) and a revenue of ~800 M$. I'd be really surprised if the budget per employee (including salary and employer taxes) was below 300 k$ per annum.
That's already close to half of the revenue. I won't try to guesstimate operating costs, but Mozilla needs to rent plenty of cloud computing power for both CI (heck, Mozilla pretty much invented Continuous Integration), Telemetry, Sync, Accounts, MDN, ... Offices in Silicon Valley and around the world (several of which have closed in recent years) can't be cheap, either.
I also seem to remember that Mozilla had marketing campaigns that cost dozens of millions of dollars. Pretty cheap in comparison to what e.g. Google can afford, but less so for a smaller company.
I realize that there's lots of guesses here, but I believe that my earlier claim makes definite sense.
> short of some truly benevolent benefactor pushing tens of millions of dollars per-year into a competing foundation.
TBH, there's no shortage of new billionaires that could do this. If they committed to it hard, they might be able to get it to break even after a while. Google pretends that default search engine rights on firefox are worth half a billion per year. They have to be worth some fraction of that.
Why can't they just make a combined reason notes with both of those. Casual readers don't need to scroll to the bottom and understand everything and it makes updates look more meaty.
Casual readers not confronted with a wall of text also don't feel compelled to accidentally drown in scrolling through all of it just in case there was a juicy morsel buried somewhere down below. Both approaches have pros/cons.
If only the web had some kind of technology to make more content appear when clicking on things... Almost as if they were linked, somehow. Then we'd need some kind of program to browse that content by clicking on stuff.
- antitrust abuse, in that Google is cross-subsidising spending billions of dollars per year on a free browser, pulled from revenues from their dominant market position on search advertising (and then setting the default search engine to re-inforce that dominant search position)
- dark patterns where Google both sneakily installs Chrome with lots of other programs even if the user doesn't want it, as well as popping up banners on Google properties that suggests that your computer doesn't run properly without Chrome (yes MS does it too, and no that doesn't make it right)
- repeated so-called "bugs" where Google 'engineers' slow down Youtube or Gmail massively on rival browsers by exploiting minor differences in Javascript interpretation for plausible deniability
why is sign in to chrome a thing? i have been using firefox for the past 12-15 years exclusively now and i am starting to see coworkers all "signed into their browser". why?
before anyone says syncing, no one uses that. i guarantee that. people either now use "office work" and mobile phone. they do not mix together and no one wants to stay in touch with office notifications from browser.
i do understand this is a thing for some people but why expose EVERYONE to a feature whose only purpose is to collect data on specific people and their browsing habits, bookmarks, passwords, favorites,
Because your personal data and browsing habits can be monetised.
"They" sell it under the guise of conveniently taking your browsing history from one device to another (your PC to your phone and vice versa), but actually the big companies have realised that _knowing your browsing habits_ as intimately as possible means they can profit by targeted advertising and so on.
I think the question was asked from the user's standpoint rather than Google's. In other words: Why, as a user, would I bother signing into my browser?
This would explain why, recently when I opened MS Edge, it sucked up all my bookmarks from Firefox and then signed me in to itself using my Microsoft account - all automatically and without my permission.
arent you assuming everyone will have more than 1 computing device, laptop or desktop or tablet that they want to work on at all times? how many people are those compared to who only have any one of these devices only? who will they sync to ? their phones? why?
You only need to upgrade your PC once to value that sync functionality.
And besides I'm pretty sure most office workers have two devices: work and personal.
Chrome having profiles makes it super easy to just login on the work laptop on a secondary profile, which is preconfigured with login data etc so they're able to do online shopping etc in breaks
slow down and think. i live in a third world country. people use their office devices. they do not have money to own a personal laptop or desktop. that is the sad truth in countries like india, cheap labour remember.
you are thinking tech engineers. i am talking about junior staff, accountants, clerks, secretaries, data entry operators, the backbone of the service industry, all the low paying jobs. the ones who do not get to do wfh because the work they do can't afford home devices.
thousands and thousands of government employees who work at their desks pushing files around and tying stuff.
thousands of call center operators,service tech. all these do not pay enough to afford personal devices.
That's fair, I guess I should've said most office workers in developed nations. Though I do think that caveat is kinda redundant here considering the demographic.
Yes I sync bookmarks between my desktop, laptop and phone by signing into Firefox. I also am able to see open tabs on other devices in a pinch. It's damn useful.
you are a minority out of around 4 billion humans who are online. majority of the 4 billion only have at best a single device, many times shared between users.
All good points, but I think it's also important to remember that we felt very differently about Google when Chrome came out. On top of search, they'd given us gmail, maps and earth and a bunch of other stuff that was amazing at the time and free.
There was a feeling that Google just "got it" when it came to the web, so a lot of people didn't need much convincing to try Chrome.
It was a good browser, too- fast, (mostly) standards-compliant and it came with fully featured dev tools back when IE and FF didn't even ship with them.
I don't like what Google has become, but it was a very different company back then.
> but for almost the entire decade prior Firefox was unstable trash.
I don't think it was any more unstable than other browsers at the time, however they were the ones who introduced session restore to combat crashing. It's funny how a mitigation to crashing evolved into a must have feature.
I've been using it since it was called Phoenix and trash is the last word I'd use to describe it.
The thing I've never understood about Opera is - what were they missing? They pioneered a ton of features that are now ubiquitous, like tabs and "speed dial," but somehow never managed to gain much market share. Why not?
well it was commercial software.. first trialware, then it showed ads, and so on. i guess for a long time it couldnt be given away freely as it was developed by a small company.
not being open source also hampered true cross platform, for example on openbsd it could be run only under linux emulation.
> but for almost the entire decade prior Firefox was unstable trash.
People say this all the time.
Personally I didn't like Chrome for UX and technical reasons even back when Google were nice so I have used Firefox from 2005 until now, across mostly Windows and Linux but also Mac from 2009 to 2012, often having a few hundred tabs open.
I cannot say that your statement is false for everyone but I can say that it is definitely not true for everyone.
How about offering a good search engine? A good e-mail service? A good product. That never existed?
It seems we explain all things in terms of wars among browsers when actually when Chrome came out (at first, when no market share) it was really fast and lean and they are well-known by their search engine.
The problems I have with Google are more sort of privacy stuff. But they also have their own merits. I myself am not using Chrome anymore based on privacy concerns.
In part, at least, by relentlessly promoting Chrome on their (hugely popular) web properties, as well as other advertising channels.
Was it legitimate for them to use their dominance of online search to aggressively push their web browser? I'm no expert, but some people may think that was improper.
I think there are two different things here being discussed.
> In part, at least, by relentlessly promoting Chrome on their (hugely popular) web properties, as well as other advertising channels.
It is their property, of course they can use it to promote their stuff.
The other topic is how much they are doing without user consent. That would definitely could incur in privacy violations. But promoting my stuff in my own places? That is not a reason to complain.
>It is their property, of course they can use it to promote their stuff.
Luckily for consumers and small and medium-sized businesses Microsoft vs Eu and Microsoft vs US tells a different story about the legality of using a monopoly in one area to push for monopoly in other areas.
I'd not invest significant shares of my money into either MS or Google before we see the end of this, then maybe there is a chance to pick up some at a more realistic price.
As the saying goes: the wheels of justice grinds slowly.
You as a consumer have the power of where to put your money.
If you think a company is creating monopolies just use an alternative. If you keep using the one from the big company, you should wonder why as well. Maybe they are offering something better than the alternatives and I do not think someone should be entitled to force all the other consumers have inferior or more expensive products because a third party decides that they are too big.
By this reasoning, what you are saying is that we have to stop companies making better products for the people on the basis that they are too big. The dynamics of competition tells us that when IBM existed, it appeared Microsoft, when Microsoft and IBM existed, it appeared Google, Apple came back, Facebook appeared. If big companies had absolute power then this would not happen.
More companies will be born, the same way Zara was born in Spain from a guy sewing at his own home.
Telling someone that because they are "too big" they cannot make better products makes no sense to me, since you just said you support consumers. Me too, that is why I won't force inferior products on them.
The reasons should be something else like agreeing prices among companies or similar stuff. But even that could make some small company emerge if the prices are artificially puffed up, because it makes them less competitive. It is a business chance for someone else in that case.
> If you think a company is creating monopolies just use an alternative.
I do. I've used Firefox as my main browser since well over a decade ago.
> If you keep using the one from the big company, you should wonder why as well.
Again, I never use it. I tried it back when it was new but it wasn't that much faster and the extensions were subpar.
Later the reasons expanded as K didn't want to deal with Google.
> Maybe they are offering something better than the alternatives and I do not think someone should be entitled to force all the other consumers have inferior or more expensive products because a third party decides that they are too big.
If this was all then they should probably go free even if no one liked them. I think I am fair enough to judge them that way.
However they, like Microsoft before (and after) them use their monopoly in one space to chase monopolies in other space.
> By this reasoning, what you are saying is that we have to stop companies making better products for the people on the basis that they are too big.
When I said "you" I meant people who complain in general terms about these companies yet they still have a choice and use stuff from companies they hate.
I am just trying to make my point that a superior product is good for the consumer and there are rules that can hurt you as a consumer that are apparwntly good.
Nothing can replace good judgement and information.
I find natural companies trying to reinvest. That creates employments anyway.
I prefer that there are more services providers as opposed to a big one but that is not a reason to stop them if they offer the best alternative. After all, smaller companies have always emerged when the big ones were there already. That shows that being big does not mean you can beat everyone at everything at all.
Google may just have more resources to throw at the problem. And not to forget, a few of the most-viewed pages on the internet, each of which will show you a popup suggesting that you switch to the browser that Google's sites are really made for.
Ads on the google search page and youtube help quite a bit, but once they became a large presence in the browser market it was just a case of relentlessly adding and changing features non stop, force your opponents to have to develop at a frantic pace just to keep pace with you.
> Though I do not like monopolies, how did Google reach this position? Is there any kind of abuse going on? Or it is just a better product?
tl;dr REST, competition, the shift to devices, and explosion in "web apps". The market for webapps in the 90s/00s was tiny compared to today.
A brief history of web browsing from the 90s to now:
NCSA Mosaic came along. It was alright. Then Netscape Navigator came along and it ended up a bloated mess.
In the meantime, AOL appeared, and home computer users started connecting to the internet for the first time.
Then IE6 became an awful entrenched thing, and it was "ok". It gave us XMLHttpRequest [1] which gave us REST, but apart from that, it was barely updated apart from security fixes because of 'reasons', not limited to: "part of the OS", enterprise paying customers encourage MS to make it stay the same otherwise breaking poorly written web apps. Search 'box model'.
In the meantime, Firefox appeared and was progressing, but made little headway against IE. It was faster than NN, but not exceptionally so.
Vista came along, then Windows 7, along with IE 7. And Apple with Safari. Finally, there's some competition - Firefox, Opera, Chrome, and IE. Things like JQuery, CSS Zen Garden appeared along with w3c compliance scoring, and finally IE started dropping market share. Legacy "this site works best in IE6" apps and sites started becoming irrelevant to most people other than enterprise companies.
Newer sites and web apps started appearing and flipped it "we don't support IE any more", or in some cases showed a degraded site (IIRC there were ecommerce companies that actively charged you more if you surfed to their site using IE in the User-Agent string).
Chrome in 2010 was a far faster, better browser than IE bundled with Windows.
Chrome on Android, obviously now accounts for a huge percentage of online browsing.
I figured. My first draft of that comment was "you probably meant", but decided it would be better to do it without making inferences about your state of mind ;)
I don't know how to fix this, but I believe sometime down the road the EU is going to sue Google and also believe Firefox is going to be forked. Can't wait for both of those things to happen.