
Chrome Engineer: Firefox Is A Partner, Not A Competitor - eror932
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/chrome_engineer_firefox_is_a_partner_not_a_competi.php#.TvZmEeYkHTU.hackernews
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dmix
Firefox isn't quite on par with Chrome anymore. It still has a lot of benefits
from its legacy advantage in the plugin area.

But I don't think this really matters to the consumer. Firefox has improved
rapidly, mostly as a result of chromes competition. It stagnated for years
until chrome came along.

It's like Android vs iPhone. Competition creates better products.

If there wasn't a good competitor to keep innovation going, it would be just
like Windows in early 2000s.

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mistawobin
I can't speak for the average user, but I would argue that until Chrome gets
the ability to add a separate search bar, it will never be on par with
Firefox. Albeit, Chrome is much faster than Firefox, but without that search
bar I just can't use it fluidly.

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jlarocco
I'm really surprised this is an issue for people.

For as long as I can remember, the first thing I've done when installing a new
browser is remove the search bar and all of the toolbar buttons. Searching
from the address bar is no more or less convenient than from the dedicated
search field, and all of the other actions can be done faster using keyboard
shortcuts or mouse gestures or, in my case, extra mouse buttons.

What's the appeal of having a separate search bar taking up space?

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bzbarsky
> What's the appeal

Not having every url I type in sent to Google is the main appeal.

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jlarocco
Only if you use Google as your main search.

And you can turn it off in any case.

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bzbarsky
The point is that the typical Chrome user is ending up sending all their URLs
to Google, probably without even realizing it.

What fraction of them do you think would be OK with this if it were pointed
out to them? My anecdotal sample suggests about 50% or so.

Violating the privacy of 50% of their users in a way they do not desire by
default is not something Mozilla is likely to do. Google of course considers
this perfectly ok, as expected. They don't believe in this antiquated
"privacy" thing to start with.

As far as "turn it off", you can also switch to using a single combined search
bar in Firefox if you want to mess with the settings. This discussion is about
defaults.

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Kylekramer
Google isn't even Chrome's default browser, technically. They had a ballot
selection box on the first use for awhile.

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bzbarsky
Interesting. That wasn't there last I checked!

But the point remains: they send what you type in the url bar to your default
search engine. This is not behavior many users are OK with once they realize
it's happening.

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eigenvector
Why is this on the front page when the original Google+ post that this article
summarizes is also on the front page?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3389972>

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rdtsc
> the primary goal of Chrome is to make the web advance as much and as quickly
> as possible. That's it.

ok what does that even mean? they are trying to make the "web advance" because
if they won't, the desktop will come back and advance instead? or do they mean
advancing new web standards and features to replace older non-standard
technologies (say like flash)? ( i am not trying to be sarcastic just
wondering the meaning is ).

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jfarmer
Google's business is built on the open web, so they need the open web to
flourish. This requires new standards to compete with Flash and other
proprietary technologies and platforms.

Pushing Chrome is a way for them to advance the state of the art. By building
a genuinely better browser that has enough users it can't be ignored, it puts
pressure on other browser vendors to catch up.

It's like a reverse IE strategy. You'll see Google (and Firefox) pushing for
more technology built into the browser (e.g., BrowserID, canvas, etc.), but
based on open standards.

Anyhow, I think that's what they mean.

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xxiao
Google guys are all with very high IQs, so they think the rest people with
common sense are fools. Chrome vs Firefox, it's obvious the former eats the
latter's lunch, which is fine to me, I use both.

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langsamer
Firefox has become absolute bloatware. Opera is the only browser that is doing
any kind of new innovation.

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eric-hu
I use Firefox for development because of Firebug

I use FF for casual browsing because of Adblock plus

The plugins make the browsing experience for me

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diminish
Yes the same here, Firefox is my main development machine and chrome is
secondary.

I wish a world where firefox+chrome+open source derivatives have >80% usage
share globally.

