
Mozilla is deeply concerned about Microsoft killing EdgeHTML - _hztt
https://thenextweb.com/tech/2018/12/07/mozilla-is-deeply-concerned-about-microsoft-killing-edgehtml/
======
yalogin
I really hope Firefox takes a bigger share of the market now that google has
its reputation dinged a bit. The internet needs it and the world deserves a
browser that can be configured to honor user privacy. Google got the market
share purely based on its good reputation and sure also with a good product
but mainly because of its reputation it was given a chance. Now it’s time for
that share to go down.

~~~
chrissam
> Google got the market share purely based on its good reputation and sure
> also with a good product but mainly because of its reputation it was given a
> chance.

The exact opposite is true.

Google's market share came, first and foremost, from having the best product
in each space it dominates: search, browser, email.

The people primarily concerned about "reputation" are a vocal minority. That
doesn't mean they're wrong -- but when we're talking about the browser choice
of millions of people it's definitely wrong to suppose that reputation is the
key factor.

~~~
irrational
I use Firefox as my primary browser. I've tried to get my wife and children to
use it, but they always default to using Chrome. Why? Because it is Google's
browser and they use Google for so many other things. They can't see anything
that Firefox does better than Chrome, so why should they use it?

~~~
Majestic121
One can use Google products on Firefox without any issue afaik, so I'm a bit
surprised that someone would switch back to Chrome for this.

~~~
irrational
Oh, I know. Firefox is about all I use. But they didn't switch back to Chrome,
they just were never really willing to try Firefox.

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petilon
If Microsoft can get people to stop downloading Chrome on Windows then the new
Edge may soon have higher market share than Chrome. At that point Microsoft
can wrest control of Chromium from Google just like Google wrested control of
Webkit from Apple, by forking it.

~~~
h1d
How do you even do that without getting sued?

~~~
Majestic121
Make Edge good enough so that people don't bother downloading Chrome/Firefox

------
detaro
this article reports that Mozilla published a blog post. Please submit the
blog post instead in such cases. Also, that blog post already has a 1000+
point, 600+ comments discussion on HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18622516](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18622516)

~~~
falcolas
And has been flagged off the front page, rendering it effectively invisible.

~~~
detaro
That an article from yesterday is on page two isn't exactly surprising, and
far from "effectively invisible".

------
CivBase
Edge was doomed from the start because it didn't do enough to distinguish
itself from the much maligned IE. Microsoft should have at least changed the
logo.

As for the future, Firefox is at a huge disadvantage here. Performance...
reputation... stability... those are important metrics, but Google has a big
advantage when it comes to mindshare.

When people buy an Android phone, it ships with Chrome. When people go to
google.com, they are prompted to install Chrome. When people go to work, their
IT department often supports Chrome as the primary browser - especially if
their company uses the Google suite.

When the average person thinks of a browser, they think of Chrome.

For better or worse, I think Microsoft is the only organization who can
reasonably compete with Google on that playing field.

~~~
lostmsu
Apple!

------
ken
Side note: it strikes me just how different these organizations are at
communications.

There was a rumor about Edge, and a couple days later Microsoft posted a
statement saying what they were doing, and why. Mozilla posted a statement
saying why they were concerned about this. You may not like or agree with
them, but it's not hard to see where they stand.

There were rumors about Google's chat systems, and a few days later they
posted a 600-word statement addressing it, and still nobody seems to have a
clear idea what the heck is going on there.

------
deckar01
> If it becomes less attractive for web developers to write code that works
> across browsers, consumers could ultimately be persuaded to leave Firefox.

Developers already hate supporting multiple browsers. I can understand
adopting new ECMAScript and CSS features at different paces, but having
fundamentally different default DOM styling is just annoying. CSS rules
interacting different between browsers is maddening. I would be perfectly fine
with an open source core that all browsers used. Python provides a reference
implementation for its spec, and still has a healthy (I think) ecosystem of
alternate implementations.

------
Waterluvian
Literally the only two reasons I don't use Firefox on mobile is the lack of
home button and no pull down to refresh.

It's not that Firefox is wrong to not include these UI features, it's that
I've spent years and years browsing a certain way and now it feels _really_
weird to suddenly have to do it differently.

Maybe Firefox needs to shamelessly clone Chrome's UI. Maybe when launching for
the first time it asks if you want to default to Chrome Style or Firefox
Style.

What I think Mozilla cannot do is hope people kind of just tolerate how weird
it feels for a few weeks.

~~~
warent
I use Firefox but agree with you there are some features it really bothers me
that it doesn't have. For example, Chrome is actually easier to develop with
because you can Shift+Right-click the refresh button to bring up a context
menu for "Clear Cache + Hard Reload." In Firefox if you want to clear the
cache to a certain page, you have to navigate through several windows and make
like 10+ clicks. It's little things like this that put me off of Firefox, but
times like that I just grit my teeth and still use it anyway just because at
least I'm not selling my web browsing to a big business.

~~~
detaro
Huh? You press Ctrl-Shift-E to open the dev tools to network monitor, if you
don't already have it set click the checkbox for "Disable cache" (maybe
there's a shortcut for that too) and press F5 to reload the page.

~~~
Waterluvian
So the deal is that you're not wrong. It's only sliiightly less convenient.
But I think there's real, meaningful cost in things just being different.
Shamelessly clone everything about the chrome UI and I'd gladly switch.

I should still try to switch again... But why does it have to be so
uncomfortable? Every modern car has all the same controls in the same places.
Why not browsers?

~~~
detaro
And I always find Chrome dev tools annoying because they don't have that easy-
to-reach cache checkbox... It's difficult if there's no clear "right answer".

------
h1d
So, if Google does "evil" and tries to dry up Mozilla by cutting the funding,
that just pretty much means Chrome all over and the rest Safari?

------
shireboy
I agree with the general concern that lack of competition could hurt
innovation in this space. But I think we should all pause to soak in the irony
here. Anybody with memory of the Great Browser Wars between FF and IE has to
be wondering what timeline we're in where FireFox is _opposed_ to Microsoft
shutting down IE...

------
ris
I may have missed the boat here but is there any word on the possibility of
Microsoft open-sourcing EdgeHTML?

~~~
h1d
Why do you want that? What would MS get other than small amount of people
feeling better just because?

~~~
ris
I would class a number of Microsoft's releases of source under that category.

------
dbllxr
Sometimes I wish there were only one browser. At lease we don't have to write
as much CSS and code to support different rendering mechanisms.

Whenever someone complains about having to support different browsers, or a
page says "this feature is best viewed / only available in browser X", I don't
blame them! Would it be really bad if all browsers adopted the same engine and
built their features on top of it? I also believe collectively we can make
that engine even better.

(off topic) This made me think of logs.. there are so many different
standards/formats out there, making log collection and parsing a nightmare. I
think logging is something that's truly been cursed by its diversity, and
something, if we worked together to standardize, would make this world a
better place.

I think we could all benefit from more things being standardized, such as a
social network protocol, a standard for self-driving cars so they are able to
communicate and coordinate among each other, a browser engine like Chromium
etc. Wishful thinking?

------
kerng
Microsoft should make Firefox the default browser and open source Edge - that
would be awesome.

------
jakoblorz
What if the narrative behind Microsoft's decision is not to build a better
browser but to hurt Google from a regulatory view? I mean they maneuvered
Google into an obvious and significant monopoly position, similar to the one
Microsoft found itself before the uprise of Google.

~~~
SamWhited
Chrome was already in this position; an extra 4% market share (or whatever
Edge was at, it doesn't really matter) is negligible.

------
3KQgt0Cl
Mozilla's Firefox should Integrate the Basic Attention Token (BAT) and/or even
Ripple's Coil for user incentive and compete directly with the Brave browser.

They also should ditch Google on everything (which is not the case right now).

Firefox relies on Google (and others), that's bad on its own.

They should:

\- Disable google safebrowsing

Google safebrowsing can detect pishing and malware but it also sends
informations to google together with an unique id called wrkey.

\- Disable malware scan

The malware scan sends an unique identifier for each downloaded file to
Google.

\- Disable DNS over HTTPS

DNS over HTTP (DoH), aka. Trusted Recursive Resolver (TRR), uses a server run
by Cloudfare to resolve hostnames, even when the system uses another (normal)
DNS server.

\- Disable about:addons' Get Add-ons panel

The start page with recommended addons uses google analytics.

\- Disable check for captive portal.

By default, Firefox checks for the presence of a captive portal on every
startup. This involves traffic to Akamai.

\- Disable Block Referer Always

Send referer only on the same domain Spoof referer (send the same url) Trim
referer to the domain name Allow real referer when clicking a link Always
allow real referer Firefox tells a website, from which site you're coming (the
so called referer). You can find more detailed settings in this ghacks article
or install the RefControl extension for per domain settings.

\- Disable WebGL

Disable the WebGL function, to prevent fingerprinting with WebGL. Another
issue is, that websites can (ab)use the full power of the graphics card. WebGL
is part of some fingerprinting scripts used in the wild. Some interactive
websites will not work, which are mostly games.

\- Disable WebRTC

Disable the WebRTC function, which gives away your local ips. Some addons like
uBlock origin provide settings to prevent WebRTC from exposing local ips
without disabling WebRTC.

\- Disable the clipboardevents.

Disable that websites can get notifications if you copy, paste, or cut
something from a web page, and it lets them know which part of the page had
been selected.

\- Disable Search Suggestions

Firefox suggests search terms in the search field. This will send everything
typed or pasted in the search field to the chosen search engine, even when you
did not press enter.

\- Disable Search Keyword

When you mistype some url, Firefox starts a search even from urlbar. This
feature is useful for quick searching, but may harm your privacy, when it's
unintended.

\- Explicitly disable Greasemonkey user tracking

Greasemonkey has a (currently opt-in) function to submit user stats. This
explicitely disables it, in case that it will get opt-out in the future.

\- Enable Do-not-Track

With the do not track feature, you tell websites, that you do not want to be
tracked. Most websites ignore this, so you need other privacy options as well.

\- Enable Mozilla Trackingprotection

Firefox has a builtin tracking protection, which blocks a list of known
tracking sites.

\- Disable Browser Pings

Firefox sends "ping" requests, when a website requests to be informed when a
user clicks on a link.

\- Disable Beacons

The Beacon feature allows websites to send tracking data after you left the
website.

\- Disable the Battery API

Firefox allows websites to read the charge level of the battery. This may be
used for fingerprinting.

\- Disable media device queries

Prevent websites from accessing information about webcam and microphone
(possible fingerprinting).

\- Disable form autofill

Automatically filled form fields are used for fingerprinting. This setting
disables automatic form filling until you click on the field.

\- Disable webaudio API

Disable webaudio API to prevent browser fingerprinting. See Mozilla Bug
#1288359

\- Disable video statistics

Prevent websites from measuring video performance (possible fingerprinting).
See Mozilla Bug 654550.

\- Show Punycode.

This helps to protect against possible character spoofing.

\- Install CanvasBlocker extension.

Blocks the JS-API for the <canvas> element to prevent Canvas-Fingerprinting.

\- Install Google Redirects Fixer & Tracking Remover extension.

Rewrites URLs from the google result pages to from redirect urls with tracking
to direct links.

\- Install the HTTPS Everywhere extension.

HTTPS Everywhere is a Firefox extension that enables HTTPS encryption
automatically on sites that support it.

\- Install the Privacy Badger extension.

The Privacy Badger addon automatically detects trackers and blocks them. You
can manually block and unblock urls as well.

\- Install the Cookie Autodelete extension.

The extension allows you to automatically delete the cookies of a site when
you close the tab.

\- Install uMatrix extension.

A content blocker for advanced users, which blocks requests to thirdparty
domains. Big privacy gain, but you will need to configure exception rules for
many sites.

Source: [https://ffprofile.com/#](https://ffprofile.com/#)

------
MaupitiBlue
I just looked at the Mozilla “About” page and noticed they have a huge
executive team will little to no programming experience, and instead seemed to
be more suited for HR roles. Why?

Is Firefox a significantly more complex project than the Linux kernel that
this sort of overhead is necessary?

~~~
Jonnax
Where can Firefox generate money to fund it's development?

That's a big question for Mozilla. Because they rely on click revenue for
having Google as a default search engine

Enterprises put millions of dollars into Linux because it has utility for
them.

Almost nobody is doing the same for Mozilla.

Also just because someone isn't a programmer doesn't mean they are useless.

