

Microsoft As The Firefox Savior? - tilt
http://parislemon.com/post/13698115578/microsoft-as-the-firefox-savior

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asadotzler
Mozilla and Firefox don't require a savior. With hundreds of millions of
users, any search service would be happy to pay for Firefox's search traffic.

Ex. Opera has about 1/10th the usage of Firefox and it has a lucrative deal
with Google (and Bing and others) that put about $50M in its coffers every
year. Search traffic is valuable, both at small scales like Opera and at large
scales like Firefox.

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Synaesthesia
I wouldn't quite write Firefox off yet. They're iterating faster and making
some good improvements to the browser. Personally I use Chrome & Safari, but
my mom uses Firefox, and I've certainly noticed the speed improvements going
from version 4 to 8. They've reduced the bloat too, we're on 2gb RAM, and the
number of tabs we have open sometimes is astonishing, and it's always
responsive these days. What do you guys experience?

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billpatrianakos
I prefer Chrome and Safari because I'm a Webkit fan. But I got my dad on
Firefox and he loves it. Inertia will keep him there just like inertia kept
him on IE until I pushed FF on him. Firefox is decently speedy and I even
prefer it to Safari in terms of speed (though I haven't used Safari5 much at
all so I cant really compare that version).

Chrome does a better job with lots of tabs. Firefox definitely slows down with
each tab. I absolutely love the way each tab in Chrome is its own separate
process. Why doesn't Firefox follow their lead?

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azakai
> Chrome does a better job with lots of tabs. Firefox definitely slows down
> with each tab. I absolutely love the way each tab in Chrome is its own
> separate process. Why doesn't Firefox follow their lead?

Many people report the opposite, that Chrome does poorly with hundreds of
tabs. The reason is that there is a tradeoff: Running tabs in separate
processes as Chrome does takes more memory, but it does help with
responsiveness. So whether Firefox or Chrome ends up 'faster' really depends
on the number of tabs (and which web pages they are on), and how much memory
you have. There is no perfect approach that is fast on everything.

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billpatrianakos
You're very right. I suppose Chrome _feels_ faster and that often counts more
than facts. I still love the separate processes. Really cool idea, I think.
Everyone's mileage will vary when it comes to this I suppose.

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gcp
I don't see anything new here, the potential of a MS-Firefox partnership has
been brought up many times, with the pros or cons for all parties.

Then there's some claims that Firefox _and_ Chrome are bloated, to which I can
only say: you _are_ aware that current webpages are more complex than those of
5 years ago, are you? I strongly suspect both browsers have gotten
significantly _faster_ over the years in relevant benchmarks.

If the author had done some basic research, he could have avoided this:

 _But Marco is right, the real key going forward is mobile. And Mozilla is
going to have a very hard time competing there simply because they do not
control their own platform. Firefox Phone, anyone?_

This effort already exists for some months: <https://wiki.mozilla.org/B2G>

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lftl
_Then Firefox too became bloated. And it slowed down. I started using
Mozilla’s Camino (their Mac-focused browser) as a result. Then Chrome arrived,
in a similar way to the way that Firefox had. It was refreshingly fast…_

This quote made me laugh, because Firefox was forked from Mozilla because
Mozilla was too bloated. It just seems like a perpetual cycle.

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indy
Accusing Chrome of becoming bloated seems harsh, technologies like SPDY and V8
have improved the browsing experience and isn't it a main priority of the
Chrome team to never increase the start-up time?

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nuttendorfer
This doesn't change the fact that more and more features get tacked onto a
browser which have nothing to do with browsers. Chrome didn't have much
useless features a year ago, but now Google is trying to make it into a
platform.

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indy
Which non-browser features have been tacked onto Chrome?

That's a genuine question, the only thing I can think of is the 'Apps'
dashboard with a link to the Chrome Web Store, apart from that Chrome seems to
consist of just the essential elements of a browser.

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berkut
Chrome native client, Flash plugin (built in), PDF browser. The PDF browser is
the only one useful to me, and it's been broken in Linux for the last 3
versions of Chrome...

Some of the newer WebKit features are getting bloated as well, and are built-
in even if you don't need them - e.g. the new Javascript de-obsfucation
feature in the developer tools.

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elgoato
Don't know about you but I prefer my plugins to be auto-updated to the latest,
safest versions. Last I checked the non-bundled Flash still had to be manually
updated from time to time by the user. The built in Flash/PDF is updated with
Chrome. You might not think this is useful, but just wait till you click on a
link and get pwned. Even if you don't, because you're on Linux, what about
your parents?

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msteinert
Homer: Mr. Mayor, I hate to break it to you, but this browser is infested with
Flash.

Helen: Think of the parents!

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adotify
Until webkit introduce a better debugging tool than it currently has, i dont
think any web developer is going to stop using firefox and firebug as their
main development browser.

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stuartmemo
I hear this all the time, yet not one person can tell me precisely what Chrome
is lacking when it comes to dev tools. What is it you're missing? Anyone?

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Zakuzaa
I remember Mozilla people saying something like this few years ago - "We put
Google Search as default not because Google funds us, but because it's best
for our users."

But now that Bing is equally good (kind of), I think they can really consider
it if need be and still manage to not seen as selling out its users.

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gkoberger
Google search has mind share, which (unfortunately) is more important than
actual search accuracy.

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arpitnext
Firefox is too slow, and it is getting slower with every release. Mozilla
should stop using Gecko, and switch to WebKit ...... or should release a
WebKit version.

I believe that there is still huge scope for a better browser. Chrome is
Google's browser - and open community cant trust Big G. Chromium has a big
minus point: no auto-update. You need to download and install newer versions
manually.

I want a fast browser (may be WebKit + V8) developed by any non-profit and
reputed organization like Mozilla.

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gkoberger
Switching to Webkit isn't going to speed Firefox up. Gecko is very fast,
especially now. As is SpiderMonkey. Firefox's biggest enemy when it comes to
speed is add-ons -- which ironically is one of its best features.

Also, Chrome does definitely auto-update. It does it better than Firefox does
(and I'm saying that as a Mozilla employee).

Give Firefox 8 (or 9 or 10 or 11, if you're into betas or nightlies) another
chance, with a clean profile. I think you'll find it to be incredibly fast.

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arpitnext
yeah, I use nightly as my default browser. It is faster than the Fx8, but not
as the Chrome - even without add-ons.

I agree that add-ons are slowing down Firefox. I expect Jetpacks to overcome
this problem, but it seems that add-on devs are not much happy with
jetpacks/addon sdk.

>> Also, Chrome does definitely auto-update

I am talking about _Chromium_ here

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billpatrianakos
This isnt going to happen. Search is too important to Google to let go in
Firefox. Remember, Google is not a browser maker (well, technically it is I
guess), its focus is on search. Chrome is the unofficial child of Googlebot
and the reason it exists is to help them dominate search. It wouldn't make
sense for Google not to renew with Mozilla because that would be a gift to
Miscrosoft's Bing.

As far as bloat goes, well addons account for a lot of bad performance and we
have to remember that Firefox is old and there are people who have been using
it for ages. Those people are carrying a lot of baggage in the form of old
browser profiles, the user database, maybe even years worth of cookies and
history. Setting up a totally fresh Firefox install would speed things up for
many.

But I can't be a Mozilla apologist. I switched to Chrome but use FF for
testing. I've found that FF _is_ what I wouldn't exactly call "slow" but just
"less fast" than Chrome.

It seems most software ends up bloated. Anyone who codes knows that code is
never finished. There's always that temptation to add more and more to a
project. Security updates and under the hood stuff is boring. New features are
sexy! Sex sells. I recently created my own little web dev boilerplate and the
first version was a nice starting point. Then I had this urge to add stuff
until it was no longer a boilerplate but pretty much an entire website minus
content. Ridiculous. It sucks but it's reality and we need to control that
impulse to constantly add where no additions are needed.

Edit: spelling.

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randomdata
> Chrome is the unofficial child of Googlebot and the reason it exists is to
> help them dominate search.

Technically Google is in the business of advertising. They don't really care
how you see the ads, so long as advertisers remain happy. Search just happens
to be a good way to present those ads.

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billpatrianakos
Okay that's fair. I stand corrected. Even so, it's still to their benefit to
make sure people are directed to where their ads are (google.com) and that
means renewing with Firefox in the context of this discussion. They must be
first in search for their ad network to be so lucrative.

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wavephorm
Mozilla is in trouble if the PC and the entire "desktop computing" model
continues to be sidelined in favor of mobile devices and natural UI's. Of the
three mobile devices I own (phone, tablet, ipod) on none of them do I need to
go to www.Google.com to find information, nor I do use any Firefox browser.
What happens to Firefox when I no longer need a laptop or desktop computer of
any kind? The quality of the browser and the team, the philosophy, and
goodwill is meaningless if their product isn't on the devices I'm using.

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billpatrianakos
Mobile is huge but the desktop isn't going anywhere any time soon. That's
apples and oranges. The dust will settle and desktop and mobile will find
their place as tools and nothing more. A lot of people talk about the death of
desktop computing and that's just bull. Furthermore, Firefox is on mobile
already. They don't need their own platform to survive. Firefox stands for
something that differentiates it from the other browser makers. There will
always be a market for what Mozilla offers and it isn't going away any time
soon. People that are concerned about privacy will ditch Chrome, people who
enjoy a fast browser that renders pages as they were meant to be will ditch
IE, and as for Safari... well I'm not sure if anyone really uses it all that
much (it's a great browser but to me it just collects dust).

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wavephorm
Sure, buy that huge desktop computer, and 27" monitor, mouse, ergonomic
keyboard, swivel chair.... to watch youtube videos and use Facebook.

Nope. The desktop computer is dead. Home users will go tablet.

Enterprise users don't use Firefox today, and they probaby won't tomrrow
unless something drastic happens.

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billpatrianakos
I still disagree. The home desktop will sharply decline and I agree that the
way people use computers these days don't warrant the full desktop experience
but we're overlooking a few things that mobile devices including tablets won't
be able to replace for quite some time because of UI restrictions alone.

People will still need to do word processing at home. Yes, tablets do an
awesome job, you can get wireless keyboards etc. but there will still be users
who feel more comfortable with the desktop. That's an edge case so I'll go on.

Movie editing. I don't think the iPad can replace iMovie and won't for some
time. I'm sure they can come close but then people still want to burn to DVD.
Same with photo editing.

And there's a lot more I think we're overlooking. There's no doubt that
desktops are on the decline but their not going the way of the mainframe.
They'll find their place and that place won't be as prominent as it is but I
really doubt it'll be obsolete for home users at least not in the next 5
years.

