
Goodbye, EdgeHTML - __michaelg
https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2018/12/06/goodbye-edge/
======
davidp
Seriously, switch to Firefox. It's good again, and prioritizes privacy.[0]
After Chrome's forced-sign-in debacle [1] I switched away from Chrome on all
my platforms (Windows, Linux, Android) and haven't missed a thing.

[0]: [https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/11/firefox-sync-
privacy/](https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/11/firefox-sync-privacy/) [1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18055161](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18055161)

~~~
kossTKR
Too bad it completely kills your CPU on a Mac.

I tried switching completely a month ago for the third time.

Sadly absolutely nothing has happened in a 5 year time-span. The performance
on my high-spec i7 Macbook Pro is abysmal. ( same across several company
Macbooks ) The fans speed up constantly like they have done it for years. It's
completely unusable for "professional" work or just regular multi tab browsing
and drains the battery in no time.

Safari, Chrome, Opera, whatever, doesn't have these problems. I actually
haven't experienced an application that feels so sluggish and unoptimised in
OSX as Firefox. Something is seriously wrong and the dev group must not be
prioritising it?

I checked their subreddit and loads of people are fleeing the Mac version,
even on the newest nightly builds of quantum - seriously what the hell is
going on? Why hasn't "the bug" or whatever been found or defined in clear
termes in over 5 years?

The day the app works without serious CPU issues i will uninstall Chrome and
go to Firefox, but the handling of this problem makes me worried about the dev
groups competence.

When i talked to devs in the subreddit many of them were like "Hey, that
sounds weird, should be better in the new nightly, are you sure it's not ..."
\- an absurd answer in the light of the constant stream of people saying this
for years and years - even in this thread i see multiple people saying it's
useless on OSX.

To the dev group: Get a Macbook (many devs use them), open Firefox, identify
the problem - should have happened 5+ years ago.

~~~
1ris
I have no idea what you people are doing. I use FF with my mid spec, 4th
generation i5 with 500+ tabs and haven't experienced any of your problems.

~~~
hellofunk
I’m curious, how is it manageable to have a browser open with 500 tabs? How do
you even navigate between the tabs or know what’s on those tabs?

~~~
konart
I'm a different person, but usually have hundreds of tabs too.

I'm using Tridactyl for navigation, so i just press 'b' (:buffer) and start
typing tab title or whatever. In a moment I'm on the tab that I needed.

There are a few handfull addons for tab management available.

>know what’s on those tabs?

I was the one who opened them, of course I know what's on those tabs.

~~~
wastedhours
> I was the one who opened them, of course I know what's on those tabs.

I rarely have more than 10 open at a time and sometimes completely forget
what's there or why I opened it - I find uber-tabbing impressive and baffling
in equal measure.

If you know what you're looking for, what does having it open (but probably
knocked out of memory?) have over using search/URL autosuggest? Just a
workflow thing, or is it faster?

~~~
konart
>Just a workflow thing, or is it faster?

I think of my tabs as my documents (the ones I'm working with today, this hour
or even this very moment).

I prefer keeping those documents on my table, because this saves me some
time\effort and just more convenient (subjectvly). So active tabs are the
documents right in front of me and knocked out of memory ones are the ones I'm
going to work with soon or needed for some sort of reference waiting their
time in some sort of document organizer.

>I rarely have more than 10 open at a time and sometimes completely forget
what's there or why I opened it

Well, I just have good memory :D It's part of the way schooling goes here in
Russia I guess and maybe the upbringing. Memory training was just another
daily routine. Sometimes it's really hard for me to believe that some people
can't remember the plot or the characters from the book they read a year ago,
while I still can quote a book I read 15 year ago.

In the end I guess everything goes down to what kind of processes influenced
your brain development or something like that.

------
turblety
I really wish Mozilla would work on making their Gecko engine (or whatever
backend they use now) more usable to external developers. WebKit always seems
very easy for developers to integrate into their apps.

Whether you think it's a good or bad move, Electron has made building cross
platform desktop applications a lot easier. It's a shame it must use Chromium
and V8.

In fairness Mozilla used to have XUL [1] until it was stopped [2], presumably
because not enough people were using it?

1\. [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Mozilla/Tech/XUL](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Mozilla/Tech/XUL) 2\.
[https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebExtensions/FAQ#Doesn.E2.80.99t_F...](https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebExtensions/FAQ#Doesn.E2.80.99t_Firefox_use_XUL_internally.3F)

~~~
pseudalopex
> Electron has made building cross platform desktop applications a lot easier

For people who have web development experience, yes.

~~~
derefr
It's made building cross-platform desktop applications _that are just wrappers
for existing web-apps_ down-right trivial (and no web-dev experience required
there.)

And that case applies more often than you'd think. For example, the Spotify
app, the Slack app†, the various Facebook Messenger "clients", etc.

† the Slack app is built with
[http://macgapproject.github.io/](http://macgapproject.github.io/), but it's
pretty much the same thing.

~~~
AlexCoventry
I don't understand why the slack app exists. Why would I want to run another
browser for a chat application?

~~~
rntksi
I've noticed most people in my organisation hate the idea of having work chat
in a browser tab. They really liked having a separate app.

~~~
tatami
It doesn't help that the Windows default (not sure about Macintosh) is to
group icons in the task bar, so your separate Browser window for chat makes
you two-click to switch between browsing and chat.

~~~
skrebbel
> (not sure about Macintosh)

The macOS default is to have no taskbar at all, just a bunch of icons without
text or context.

------
adontz
I am Firefox user for more than 15 years. I personally would prefer Firefox
codebase to be adopted. I think Mozilla is the only big organization left who
is pro-customer.

But let's be realistic, people want things to "just work". People in general
are not bothered by privacy or security, but if funny cat picture can't load
that's huge problem. People in general were moving from IE because it's shitty
laggish software, not because it was not secure or was sending telemetry. So
adopting Blink/WebKit is right business decision, because it makes customers
happy, because a lot of sites are developed with only Chrome in mind.
Bootstrap and friends support Firefox, it's true, but many actual sites with
custom non-framework HTML/CSS do not. Some bugs are negligible, some are not.
But what is 0.5% of all web sites for Microsoft? A huge deal, let's accept
this.

Google Chrome has enterprise version which already supports Active Directory
Group Policy, so corporate customers will be happy too.

What can Firefox offer today? Frameworks support Firefox and Firefox supports
standards well. I genuinely believe that google Chrome in 2020 will be like
IE6 in 2010 and rust based codebase will be superior by all means, easier to
maintain and faster to execute. But I am very naive and optimistic about
Firefox, because I simply love this browser.

~~~
mixmastamyk
> Mozilla… pro-customer.

Microsoft arguably isn't, they still like to force the customer to do things
beneficial to itself, and collect lots of telemetry.

------
babuskov
If anyone told me a decade ago that a day will come when I will feel sorry for
Microsoft browser technology going away...

~~~
kevmo
It's too bad Microsoft didn't get broken up in the 90s. We'd probably have
more browser options.

~~~
acjohnson55
It's too bad Google isn't being broken up now.

~~~
kevmo
This is why I'm already on board for Bernie Sanders 2020. I don't think any
other contender out there is going to stand up to these giant companies, which
is what our economy desperately needs.

~~~
oxymoron
”This is why I’m already on board for Barack Obama 2008.”

But the tech industry is a key contributor for any democratic contender, so I
don’t expect much progress here. Might still be the right choice though, but I
don’t think this is the issue where you should turn your hopes on the
democrats.

~~~
kevmo
Bernie Sanders is not a Democrat.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Bernie Sanders is not a Democrat.

Bernie Sanders is occasionally a Democrat; particularly, he was when running
for President in 2016 and almost certainly will be if he runs for President in
2020; as a Senator he is “merely” an independent who caucuses with the
Democrats, doesn't have the Democratic Party support candidates against him,
and is the Democratic caucus’s ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee.

~~~
int_19h
I think the important part is that he doesn't have personal connections either
directly with the industry lobbyists, or with prominent Dem leadership figures
who do. So he can afford to ignore the lobbying.

~~~
dragonwriter
> I think the important part is that he doesn't have personal connections
> either directly with the industry lobbyists, or with prominent Dem
> leadership figures who do.

No, he didn't get to be the ranking member of the Banking Committee without
personal connections with just about every Dem leadership figure that matters,
especially in the Senate.

Now, he might have the moral fortitude to stand up for his public values
_despite_ such connections, but denying that they exist is ludicrous.

------
AaronFriel
I'm wondering how, logistically, this make sense.

Does Microsoft adopt Chromium/Blink for embedding in UWP apps and Electron?
That will reduce memory and storage requirements for the latter, but greatly
increases the attack surface of the former.

Microsoft is also taking on an _enormous_ maintenance burden in integrating it
with their own sandboxing and protection mechanisms. I'm in disbelief that the
ongoing cost of maintaining this fork and tying themselves to Chromium will be
worth it.

And the incentive for Google to now embed more and more ChromeOS/mobile device
management into Chromium. For example: Google intends to ship an alternative
credential provider for Windows 10 through Chrome. Microsoft will have to
painstakingly isolate every feature like that which Google adds, and adopt an
aggressive posture of doing code reviews of Chromium.

I'm not sure how, given that they are such strong competitors/adversaries,
this can work out.

~~~
stupidcar
Nowadays most enterprise and bespoke intranet apps are targeting Chrome as a
platform, not "the web". It's a re-run of the IE6 situation in the late 90s /
early 2000s, except this time Microsoft is the victim, not the beneficiary.

Whereas it used to be that big IT departments would nix the installation of
any 3rd party browser, nowadays almost all accept the use of Chrome. And if
you're selling an app into a big company, you always tell them to use Chrome,
and never advertise IE/Edge support except as a last resort.

If Microsoft want to sell their cloud services into these companies, they need
to support Chrome-based apps. Edge won't do. As such, they have little choice
but to fork it and build their own browser, tied into their services. I'm sure
they recognise the potential problems and downsides, but consider it the least
worst option at this point.

~~~
iamstef
history doesn't repeat itself but it does rhyme...

------
nightski
It makes me wonder if at any point in the process Microsoft approached Firefox
over integrating their rendering engine vs. Chromium and if so, what the
factors were in making their final decision.

I also wonder if instead of "ceding" control to Google, Microsoft intends to
start being a major contributor to Chromium, so much so that it almost becomes
a joint effort vs. Google dominance.

~~~
cududa
Everyone seems to be missing that this is Microsoft’s tacit recognition that
Electron is the future of apps. Electron has abysmal performance and doesn’t
work on ARM. This is them fixing fundamental chromium issues, to improve
Electron performance and give themselves a further wedge beyond TypeScript

~~~
untog
Look at VS Code: Electron doesn't have abysmal performance. It's just what
people do with it that causes problems.

~~~
WorldMaker
VS Code is a possible sign for why Microsoft leading Electron on all fronts
(from taking over GitHub, to collaborating much more directly on Chromium)
might be good for computers. If the average Electron app starts to act more
like VS Code, that's good for everybody.

~~~
setquk
Wonder if office will go in that direction too.

~~~
berbec
[https://react-etc.net/entry/microsoft-office-rewrite-to-
reac...](https://react-etc.net/entry/microsoft-office-rewrite-to-react-js-
nears-completion)

~~~
setquk
Damn that’s amazing. Thanks for the link.

I can’t wait never to touch VSTO again.

------
jchw
I still think this is a bit melodramatic. I'm biased but all the same,
Microsoft having major foothold in Chromium seems like a good thing. EdgeHTML
didn't really do any good for us because barely anyone used it anyways. It
would've been a bigger loss had there been substantial market share, but from
my understanding Edge barely took off even with very aggressive behavior to
push it on us. (My default browser has been reset to edge nearly every major
Windows update. Windows also resets "corrupt" file associations - magically,
those "corrupt" file associations work without issue if I just forcibly
uninstall the app it wants to reset them to.)

~~~
tyler_larson
>> This may sound melodramatic...

Yeah. A bit.

Thing is, Blink is not Chromium, Chromium is not Chrome, neither of them is
Google, and BSD-3-clause is a pretty damn solid bulwark against the
monopolization of the "control of fundamental online infrastructure", were
that to ever become a concern again.

And the other bit is that the building blocks that make up Chromium power a
lot of technology that is totally independent of anything under Google's
influence, including NodeJS, Cloudflare's Workers, Microsoft's VS Code, and
Amazon's Firecracker. They use it because it's solid, well-engineered tech.
And even though Google wrote it, Google can't control it or stop you from
using it against them. Microsoft isn't ceding anything at all to Google,
Google's not in control of anything here.

The uncomfortable truth is that the role of neither Gecko nor Firefox nor
Mozilla is particularly critical in terms of protecting the free and open
Internet. What prevents Google from going all IE6 with Chrome isn't Mozilla,
it's Chromium. If IE had been a BSD-licensed open-source project since 1995,
then all the BS we endured in 2002 could never have happened; explorerium
would have been trivially forked to create a sensible competitor with no
switching cost.

Google tied their own hands from the very beginning, and by ensuring Chromium
doesn't lag behind, they're keeping their hands tied. Almost as if they were
doing it on purpose. In fact, the fact that Microsoft is switching to Chromium
locks both tech giants into an intriguing sort of bargain. Each can benefit
from the other's work as long as neither strays too far from the open source
codebase, as long as they both push their changes into the open. So you end up
with a reasonable guarantee that the future of the Internet stays independent;
not because of a nonprofit competitor with a strongly-worded manifesto, but
because none of the the main players can afford to make it closed.

------
function_seven
I use Firefox exclusively and am not happy with how the browser market is
shaping up.

For all of you that have a "last 10%" problem with Firefox (i.e. "I'd use
Firefox if only it had _X_ or _Y_ feature"), please consider if that's worth
contributing to the monoculture of rendering engines, and worth extending
Google's monopoly on Internet standards.

~~~
Klonoar
I mean, it kind of is?

You have to understand that there's making a stand on what's right, and then
choosing to focus on the rest of your life... which, in this case, means not
being annoyed by a browser that isn't keeping up. Firefox is great, many of us
have loved it since Firefox 2 (or even before!) but you don't get significant
increases in users by being the "more greater good" option. You get them by
keeping up in the race. A browser is a tool and I want it to feel like it
belongs, let me move, and then get the hell out of my way.

Every single time I use FF on Mac there is something weird or buggy about it,
and this holds true even if I install it on a freshly bought unpolluted
MacBook Pro. The UI stands out like a sore thumb, and it doesn't feel like it
belongs.

I'll continue using Safari.

~~~
function_seven
I think Safari is another good choice. It's not Chromium or Blink-based, and
so represents more diversity.

I get what you're saying, and I don't mean to be sanctimonious. But there are
lots of aspects in life where I trade annoyance for doing what I think is
right in the larger scheme of things. I recycle aluminum cans even when it
would be easier to chuck them in the nearest bin. I used to toss cigarette
butts out the window instead of having them stink up the car's ashtray.

Yeah, my examples might seem a bit dramatic compared to one's choice of
browser. Look at them as analogies and not comparable badness.

For me, it's worth whatever edge cases annoy me to know that I'm not working
for Google for free. Their incentives don't align with mine. For the most
part, Mozilla's do.

If Mozilla falls, then we're right back to where we were in 2001. A single
company dictating the standards of the web. That horrifies me.

~~~
Klonoar
Thanks for the response. :)

Only thing I wanna nitpick... it's not _quite_ back to 2001. In 2001, we had
IE6 that plagued the web and held it back. It was a different situation for
two specific reasons, one of which is commonly discussed and one of which
isn't.

1) Chromium is open source, Trident (IE6) was not. It's much more difficult to
be stagnant for this reason alone. Anyone not liking the direction Google
steers the project in can fork it and do their own version (e.g, the de-
Googled Chromium builds out there). Trident (IE6) never had this, it was the
definition of vendor lock-in.

2) It's easy to forget how different the environment was back then. The
desktop still reigned king, and mobile devices weren't even really close to
what we think of them as now. Companies were different as a result; Microsoft
outright didn't give a shit about the web, and thus you saw IE6 languish. It
was good enough for them so they didn't have to care. Google, on the other
hand... literally wants to own the web, for better or for worse. It's in their
best interests to keep Chromium healthy.

I really should just do this as a blog post...

~~~
pythonaut_16
I agree. Two other points:

1) While more sites might be targeting Chrome now, the browsers and standards
are generally more inter-operable now than they were in IE6 days. jQuery came
from a time where each browser supported drastically different APIs. These
days Chrome and Firefox generally support 80-90% of the same APIs, with
generally only a few cutting edge features and edge cases differeing.

2) Microsoft adopting Chromium as its core is in direct contrast to IE6 days.
There are now two big players building on Chromium instead of one. That could
have never happened with proprietary IE6. Now there are two hands on the wheel
of Chromium, so to speak. And if Google won't play ball with Microsoft, like
you said, Microsoft can fork Chromium, but I imagine both Google and Microsoft
want to avoid that if possible.

------
jaredcwhite
If NetMarketShare can be believed, the #2 browser across desktop, mobile, and
tablets is Safari which uses WebKit.

[https://netmarketshare.com/browser-market-
share.aspx?options...](https://netmarketshare.com/browser-market-
share.aspx?options=%7B%22filter%22%3A%7B%22%24and%22%3A%5B%7B%22deviceType%22%3A%7B%22%24in%22%3A%5B%22Tablet%22%2C%22Desktop%2Flaptop%22%2C%22Mobile%22%5D%7D%7D%5D%7D%2C%22dateLabel%22%3A%22Trend%22%2C%22attributes%22%3A%22share%22%2C%22group%22%3A%22browser%22%2C%22sort%22%3A%7B%22share%22%3A-1%7D%2C%22id%22%3A%22browsersDesktop%22%2C%22dateInterval%22%3A%22Monthly%22%2C%22dateStart%22%3A%222017-12%22%2C%22dateEnd%22%3A%222018-11%22%2C%22segments%22%3A%22-1000%22%7D)

Not much has changed in the past year, with Safari holding steady at around
19% and Chrome going from 60% to 63%. Firefox is baring holding on to its 5%.

So while it's concerning to see MS embrace the Chromium engine from the
standpoint of adding fuel to the Google fire, I don't see this having any real
effect in the near term on the browser market nor the development of new web
technologies. Firefox is certainly right to promote its excellent Quantum-
based browser these days, but honestly I only see Firefox as being relevant on
Windows. On the Mac, Safari is an excellent browser and one I use personally
as well as for web development, and iOS doesn't allow any engine other than
WebKit to be used. And with Android, Google has the upper hand on that
platform.

In summary, as much as I want to cheer for Firefox and the Gecko Quantum
engine from a philosophical standpoint, the only real competition to Chrome
and Chromium right now is Safari and Webkit. Let's just hope Apple continues
to put adequate resources into the development of its browser and keeps pace
with Chrome.

~~~
Sylos
The problem is that WebKit isn't really a competitor to Blink:

1) It holds this marketshare mostly because of the forced monopoly on iOS.
It's not technologically particularly far ahead or even has a browser
implementing it with good marketing.

2) It exists on platforms other than macOS and iOS, but it is being optimized
specifically for those platforms and only there can kind of compete with the
other browsers. So, if you're not on macOS/iOS, it is hardly a competitor that
you could choose from.

3) Chrome's Blink engine was forked from WebKit, so they are actually very
similar in a lot of ways. A Blink-WebKit-duopoly would still have many of the
disadvantages of a monopoly, like security vulnerabilities being shared and
certain innovations being harder, because they have the same architecture.

------
jeffdavis
Today I am happy to be a monthly contributor to Mozilla.

* Mozilla stands up for privacy, user control, and open standards

* They back it up with high quality technical products like firefox

* They built rust, a language I love

Seriously: if you want to buy happiness then supporting an organization like
Mozilla is about the most efficient way possible

~~~
idoubtit
* Google stands up for privacy^W, user control, and open standards like HTTP2

* They back it up with high quality technical products like Chromium

* They built Go, a language I love

I could have written the same with Microsoft/VSCode/C# and Apple/Safari/Swift.

Seriously: Mozilla is good, but they're not saints, they're not totally
different from other companies. They sometimes erred, even on the privacy of
their users, which is their strong point. They are a commercial entity that
sells services. It's easier to to keep enforcing a "Don't be evil" policy when
you're not powerful enough to be evil.

~~~
luislezcair
Mozilla is a non-profit

~~~
thekyle
Mozilla is both a non-profit and a for-profit

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation)

~~~
Sylos
And the Mozilla Corporation is a 100% subsidiary of the non-profit Mozilla
Foundation. That means their only stakeholder that they could pay out their
profits to, is the Foundation, which can't take the money, because it's a non-
profit. The Corporation can only really save up the money to reinvest it
later.

The Mozilla Foundation's legally-binding mission statement is therefore also
effectively enforced for the Corporation. The Foundation could throw out the
CEO of the Corporation and in general gets to decide what happens in the
Corporation, which they're legally bound to tell to follow the Foundation's
mission statement, i.e. making the web a healthier place, improving privacy
etc.

As a result, the only profit-motive that exists in the Corporation is that the
employees want to keep their job.

~~~
nnethercote
That's an excellent explanation.

A small correction: if I recall correctly, the Corporation is legally allowed
to give some money to the Foundation, and it does so. But the allowed amount
is quite small -- maybe a couple a million a year? I don't remember exactly --
and only a tiny fraction of the Corporation's profits.

~~~
Sylos
Yeah, I simplified there. I remembered it being a really insignificant amount
that they're limited to, and then more importantly, it's still a non-profit.
If they take the money, they're just as well forced to reinvest it into their
mission statement.

------
IvanK_net
I don't think that Edge switching to Chromium means, that Edge will become "a
slave" of Google.

Until now, Chromium has been strongly driven by one huge player: Google. Now,
it can become driven by two huge players. It can erase the monopoly of Google
over Chromium. Or if they have too many disputes, Microsoft can "fork"
Chromium (like Google "forked" WebKit into Blink) and make their own, even
better Chromium (Microsoft does have enough money and smart people to do so).
The Edge could even beat Chrome, and be a new open-source multi-platform
browser, which improves much faster than Chrome.

~~~
gsnedders
The Edge team is a fraction of the size of the Chrome team.

~~~
lostmsu
Are these numbers publicly available?

~~~
gsnedders
No. Even from git history, it's hard to actually quantify for Chromium, as
most Google contributors use chromium.org emails, which obscures affiliation.
The MS numbers are even less public.

------
SEJeff
Kind of surprised that Microsoft is doing this. The Trident rendering engine
is actually really good, and does a better job with the ACID 2 test than
Chrome does today.

While I agree with the overall content of this post, it seems dire to the
point of hyperbole. Chromium is OSS, and Microsoft has both the incentive and
engineering to fork it should Google not ultimately work together with them on
it. It is somewhat ironic how Mozilla was basically founded due to Microsoft's
monopoly on the browser market and when they (Mozilla) succeeded in breaking
that monopoly, they give rise to a new competitor (Chrome / Chromium), which
mostly does them in (Do them in being defined as steals most of their
userbase).

I only really care that the web stays relatively open and vendor neutral,
something Mozilla overall has been a real champion of. Microsoft using an open
source standards compliant rendering engine is sort of a step in the right
direction from where we were 10 years ago even if that rendering engine is
primarily maintained by Google.

------
StillBored
Well, I guess i'm going to miss edge, it wasn't a bad browser. it definitely
felt faster than firefox...

OTOH, Microsoft did this to themselves. Back when MS actually tried to create
a user friendly OS and listened to their users. IE was supported across the
entire line of supported OSes. But then under Balmer, they started to use IE
and directX (and a few other things) as hammers to force people to upgrade to
more recent versions of windows. Combined with a string of moves which pissed
of their users and developers has resulted in far more reticence to upgrade
windows versions than happened in the win 2.x->windows ME cycle.

Now their applications are suffering because windows 10 is still less than 50%
of the windows userbase. So, basically 50+% of windows users can't actually
run edge. Similarly with games, A developer that exclusively targets directX
12 cuts out 50% of the windows market share (and a similar share of the game
console market).

OTOH, both firefox and chrome work just fine on windows7/8, and somehow so
does vulkan, meaning that a brand new game could just target that and gain the
entire supported windows ecosystem, much of the mobile, and game machine
markets.

Basically there is a layer of management at MS that needs to be fired, because
they still think its the 1990's and MS can force any old crap on their user-
base and they will suck it up. After all, what are the alternatives (this is
sorta still true, both linux and macos are still subpar experiences too)?

------
kanon
EdgeHTML felt really great. It was the UX that made me hate Edge. As if they
thought I was 65+ years old.

Chrome's UX is much better imo, but based on rendering engine I wouldn't have
cared much.

I just hope they don't think it was their engine that made me (and probably
others) switch.

~~~
Sylos
> As if they thought I was 65+ years old.

I think, it was rather that they thought you were using a touchscreen...

------
Quekid5
Well, I'm kind of saddened that even more control is going to Google, but
_realistically_ Edge was never _really_ competitive in terms of support for
standards[1].

EDIT: typo: Microsoft -> Google. Not sure what happened there :).

[1] Yes, this is a _very_ vague concept these days. Google has, what 80%+
market share? They have a lot of people who can influence standards, and the
cognitive biases of those people could mean that we end up in a new MSIE6
situation[2]. Anyway, I can certainly understand their fast growth when the
browser came out, but these days I don't see much difference between Chromium
and Firefox and it seems likely that Firefox is on my side when it comes to
privacy. (I realize that I'm a very atypical user, perhaps not in this venue,
but certainly in terms of general browser markets.)

[2] Through no fault of their own! It's just a combination of
institutional/organizational pressure, market forces, etc. This is why I think
it's also unfair to foist "securing the freedom of the web" upon Firefox.
Firefox is an important piece of the puzzle, but ultimately they are _in_ the
market and that's not an objective place to evaluate strategy from.

~~~
cududa
What do you mean “even more control” what part of tech does Microsoft
realistically control now, given the prevalence of cross platform apps and the
web being the dominant platform.

This seems like some late 90’s derived sentiment

~~~
Quekid5
Yeah, sorry that was a disastrous typo -- see my edit :/

------
BoumTAC
Honestly I want to move to firefox but there is still so many things wrong.
It's a lot better but after trying to migrate for 30min I already find 2 basic
missing features from chrome.

The first one is the tab research feature. It available for many years in
chrome I don't understand why it's still missing in firefox. I can't type "yo
[hit tab] my video" to find a video on youtube.

And the second feature missing is the search highlight in the scrollbar. It's
a mandatory feature for my when searching on a long page (like this one for
example) to search for "firefox" and find in the scrollbar everywhere it is.
It's a feature available in chrome for the beginning I think.

~~~
eCa
> The first one is the tab research feature. It available for many years in
> chrome I don't understand why it's still missing in firefox. I can't type
> "yo [hit tab] my video" to find a video on youtube.

If I understand you correctly: In firefox you set this up by 1) Create a
bookmark 2) Edit it, and a) insert %s where you want "my video" to go, and b)
give it a keyword, e.g. "yo".

Now you can use it by typing "yo my video" (no tabbing).

It's been in Firefox since circa 2006.

(To continue the example, the url for the youtube bookmark should be:
[https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%s](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%s)
)

~~~
fireattack
I use Fx as my main browser, but the quick search feature in Fx is miles
behind Chrome's.

1\. In chrome, you don't need to manually add anything; you don't need to
assign a keyword that you have to memorize. All the websites that you frequent
that support OpenSearch will be automatically added by Chrome and you use
their domain as keyword. I can now type en + tab to search on Wikipedia, as
well as hundreds of other websites (no exaggeration) without manually
configuring anything.

And on top of that, if you want to manually add anything (maybe it doesn't
have OpenSearch), or assign a different keyword like Fx, you can still do that
in chrome://settings/searchEngines, like Firefox.

2\. Chrome's quick search supports auto completion. Firefox's doesn't.

It was not a big problem for me before the change of the Search Bar in Fx,
since you can very easily add OpenSearch engines there and get auto completion
too. But the new "One Click" makes it very hard to use (particularly the auto
completion part). Now I have straight up given up search bar.

~~~
pseudalopex
You can add OpenSearch engines from the "..." menu in the address bar, but it
doesn't show an indicator like the search bar.

Suggestions for keyword searches will be fixed in the next release.[1]

[1]
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1496814](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1496814)

~~~
fireattack
Thanks for the reply!

Unfortunately it doesn't fix the problem that I have to add keywords for all
of them manually

------
firefoxd
There was a great comment i read here yesterday. Developers build stuff on
chrome because the console is amazing. So if the user uses chrome, there's a
guarantee the website will work.

Yes, firebug started it all, but chrome is killing it right now. Mozilla, why
don't you start copying the chrome console already.

~~~
starik36
What exactly is missing in Firefox DevTools? If anything, they are superior.

I've switched over to Firefox DevTools for 2 reasons:

1\. The box model is on the right instead of on the bottom, so I can mess with
it and immediately see results in the Inspector styles window and the browser.
[https://i.imgur.com/KfxmRQT.png](https://i.imgur.com/KfxmRQT.png)

2\. I can click on the Event bubble next to the element to see events that are
bound to it and go to it if I choose so.
[https://i.imgur.com/UWiMttX.png](https://i.imgur.com/UWiMttX.png)

~~~
frankietwenty9
Can't resize columns in 'network' tab

Step, Step Into, Resume.. use different function keys than I'm used to on
Linux.

Edit + Resend doesn't work for me on Linux. It works on Windows for me.

Copying headers doesn't work well for me on Linux. I have to click 'Raw
Headers' to copy a header. Works fine on Windows.

Chrome is still faster than Firefox.

I prefer chrome and Edge's download monitor.

I prefer Firefox's proxy controls.

------
djmashko2
If I'm using Safari as my default browser, does it make sense to switch to
Firefox just to support them? Interesting that Safari is not coming up in any
of these articles as a third competitor, but maybe the fact that it's limited
to Mac means it has very small market share.

~~~
fooey
Safari is awful on the scale of being a 2nd tier browser like IE. It's the
browser people use because they don't know any better, or because they don't
have any choice.

Safari isn't a competitor with Chrome, Firefox, or Edge

~~~
kaixi
Safari is the best choice if you care about battery life. I literally get 2
extra hours of battery life when using Safari on macOS vs using Chrome.

What's incredible is that Chrome uses more CPU on Youtube than Safari. When
playing the SAME video side by side.

~~~
eppsilon
Maybe something to do with hardware accelerated h.264 decoding? (Assuming
YouTube serves VP8-encoded videos to Chrome users and h.264 ones to Safari
users.)

------
adetrest
Switched to ff when quantum came out, never looked back. It's really fast!

And I absolutely love how the dev tools show which elements are grid and flex
box containers with a little pill in the DOM explorer.

I don't see a single good reason to switch back to chrome/chromium

------
jrochkind1
In case you hadn't yet seen the (4-hour-old) news this is responding to, like
i hadn't:

[https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsofts-edge-to-morph-
into-...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsofts-edge-to-morph-into-a-
chromium-based-cross-platform-browser/)

------
tarruda
One feature I miss in mainstream browsers like Chrome is the ability to
completely disable tabs, leaving the window manager in control of browser
windows. This is very valuable for advanced users of tiling WM that seek to
automate as much of their workflow as possible.

I've tried a couple of extensions that "pull" tabs out of the parent window,
but it never worked perfectly.

If Firefox had native support for this (apparently simple) feature, I believe
it would gain the preference of many users of tiling window managers.

~~~
chrisseaton
I don’t get it - why do you need to disable the tabs? I’d you don’t want any
tabs, then just don’t open any.

~~~
tarruda
I still want to open multiple websites in the same browser session, I just
don't want them all to live in the same OS-level window so I can use my window
manager and scripts to reorganize and quickly switch between them

~~~
chrisseaton
Right, so don’t open pages in new tabs, open them in new windows instead?
Literally don’t don’t click ‘open in new tab’ and you won’t get a new tab.
Click ‘open in new window’ instead.

------
otterley
Doesn't Mozilla get the lion's share of its funding from Google? I'm a bit
puzzled as to how they can avoid a conflict of interest if this remains true.

~~~
carapace
Mozilla gets the bulk of their money from Google.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#Google](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#Google)

------
iscrewyou
I moved to Chrome when Firefox was bloating up and slowing down (2008?). Now
I’ve started using Firefox again because Chrome (and Google) seems to be
serving itself but not the customer. Firefox now does what I intend it to do.

------
mongol
It is not good news, but I don't think it is that bad. Microsoft is big enough
to assert influence over the direction in ways other contributors cannot. It
might even make Microsoft more relevant in the web space, and for the future
of the web it could be a good thing (while certainly it was very bad in the
Balmer era)

------
sbisson
As much as Mozilla would have liked Edge to replace EdgeHTML with its
rendering engine, the odds on that happening would have been a lot higher if
Mozilla was at a different point in its engineering cycle: it's in the middle
of an ambitious rewrite of its own rendering engine, in a new language...

With Servo only just in developer preview, it's not going to be fit for
Microsoft's enterprise customer needs for another couple of years, and taking
a dependency on Rust would have been hard for Microsoft as it has its own
languages that serve much the same purpose.

Choosing a mature browser platform written on C and C++ makes a lot of sense
when thought of in those terms.

------
chrisfinazzo
Do the Mozilla folks not realize that WebKit still exists? Even as a fork of
WebKit, I'd have to imagine they've diverged significantly in the last 4
years.

Fears of a monoculture are legitimate, but still overblown at this point.

------
purple_ducks
What percentage of Mozilla revenues are spent on Firefox development?

~~~
bzbarsky
Per [https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2017/mozilla-
fdn-201...](https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2017/mozilla-fdn-2017-fs-
short-form-final-0927.pdf) the breakdown seems to be as follows, rounding to
the nearest percentage point:

50% directly spent on Firefox development.

12% spent on marketing (for comparison, rumor has it that Chrome's marketing
spend is comparable to Mozilla's total revenue).

13% general and administrative expenses (this includes things like leases on
office space, as far as I can tell from the usual definition of this
category).

9% (of revenue; it's 36% of profit) income taxes. Which Mozilla apparently
pays, unlike some other tech corporations.

16% money going into the rainy-day fund.

Disclaimer: I work for Mozilla; pardon my snark about taxes. It's a sore
point.

~~~
ksec
Why do they pay tax when they are from what I know partly non profits?

~~~
bzbarsky
The Mozilla Foundation is a nonprofit. It is involved in a number of efforts,
including policy advocacy, but does not itself develop a web browser. When
people make donations to "Mozilla", those go to the Foundation.

The Mozilla Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Foundation. It is
_not_ a nonprofit and develops a web browser as well as most other software
you would associate with "Mozilla". It pays dividends to the Foundation which
the Foundation uses, alongside donations, to fund its work. The Corporation
pays taxes on its profits, like any other corporation that is not explicitly a
nonprofit. Note that I am explicitly not using "for-profit" to describe the
Corporation, because profit is not the Corporation's goal. Again, the only
shareholder in the Corporation is the Foundation, though they do have separate
boards and somewhat separate governance.

~~~
jannes
And why do they need to be a corporation in the first place? Can't the
foundation develop the web browser?

~~~
bzbarsky
I don't know the legal details, but I think there are constraints on how much
revenue a nonprofit can receive from non-donation sources. So back when the
initial search deal with Google was signed that created the initial funding
stream for developing Firefox, the Foundation could not have signed it itself.
Again, this is my best guess about an area way outside my expertise; you'd
really want to talk to a lawyer specializing in this area for details.

------
nashashmi
So much wasted energy:
[https://github.com/Microsoft/ChakraCore](https://github.com/Microsoft/ChakraCore)

RIP!

~~~
gchucky
Apparently ChakraCore will continue development for "various non-Edge
uses".[1] Curious what that actually means..

[1]
[https://twitter.com/bterlson/status/1070754781822574592](https://twitter.com/bterlson/status/1070754781822574592)

~~~
nashashmi
Funny, reminds me of the Trident engine (IE on Windows) and the Tarzan Engine
(IE on Mac). Long after IE on Mac was abandoned, Tarzan continued to be
developed for some reason. And then it actually had a use again when MS office
on Mac was created.

------
Angostura
I await the response from the Safari team with interest

------
alexiacob
History seems to repeat itself. This reminds me of the times when a company
was the ONLY one competing with Windows. All other companies were already on
the windows boat or have plans in place to go follow that route. That company
was Sun. Now it looks like the ONLY company that stands against (read competes
with)Chromium is Mozilla. You have to pick a side

------
bithavoc
With Edge using Chromium, is data still going to Google like this blog posts
says?

Chromium is the open source version minus the proprietary services and
codecs[0].

What am I missing?

[0] [https://www.howtogeek.com/202825/what’s-the-difference-
betwe...](https://www.howtogeek.com/202825/what’s-the-difference-between-
chromium-and-chrome/)

~~~
mrschwabe
Not exactly a direct answer, because it is unclear to what degree MS will
fork/adapt Chromium for their own, but there is a project called Ungoogled-
Chromium which I recommend that does exactly the name implies - evidently
there is a need for this because there are a number of services and data
exchanges with Google servers in stock Chromium.

------
krylon
Given that Microsoft used IE to push Netscape out of business, Microsoft
adopting Chromium over their own rendering engine that they themselves had
written to replace IE's old engine, the irony is so delicious I will feed off
it for the rest of the year.

Personally, though, I've been a Firefox person since the times when it was
still called Firebird, so I'll stick with my favorite browser mostly through
inertia. Nobody has given me a good reason to use another browser, except when
I want to watch Netflix or Amazon Prime Video on GNU/Linux, that seems to work
better with Chromium.

And let us not forget the outliers like dillo, which has a terrible rendering
engine and no Javascript[1], but it is _FAST_ as lightning, and you can keep
50 tabs open, the browser _still_ just uses about 100MB of RAM. Whereas
Firefox, on my work laptop, can easily top 2GB of RAM.

[1] Some may consider this a feature - it certainly means you do not need an
ad blocker in dillo. ;-)

------
taeric
I'll confess that hearing MS is giving up on their own browser engine is
incredibly surprising to me. I also share Mozilla's concern, but I think I'm
past the despair point in feeling there is anything we can do about it. If
anything, I'm more convinced that the writing is on the wall for most sites
supporting Firefox.

------
ethanpil
I don't understand why Microsoft didn't partner with Firefox instead.

Strategically it would have been a super win - lots of good will value to
gain, a way to keep themselves and others less reliant on Google, and perhaps
even push/use Firefox as a poster child GitHub partner for further value. What
gives?

~~~
romanovcode
Electron and web-based desktop uis.

------
supernintendo
As an aside, does Apple or Google ever contribute to KHTML? Safari and Chrome
would not exist without it and yet the last stable release was in 2014. Seems
like yet another case of large corporations taking advantage of free software
while giving little to nothing back to the community.

~~~
joshtynjala
WebKit and Chromium are both still open source. While they may not be porting
commits back to KHTML specifically, they are certainly making all of their
enhancements available for free to the community. Personally, I wouldn't call
that little to nothing.

------
simonh
I am worried about Chromium gaining too much control over de facto browser
standards, but bear in mind Chrome started as a fork of WebKit. There’s
nothing to stop MS diverging the code base and making it distinctly their own.

I wonder if this is about Microsoft making a cross platform browser?

------
PinkMilkshake
If it ever got to the point where Google had achieved complete domination of
the web, do we just leave?

I'm curious as to what point we say screw it and create a new web. Is that
even an option? Is it even plausible or desirable?

~~~
baroffoos
The regular user will not leave but I have seen an increase in power users
leaving mainstream teach. There seems to be people turning to gopher for a
kind of fun and exclusive web free from corporations.

------
Daegalus
I tried switching to Firefox twice after Quantum came out. I LOVE LOVE
container tabs (which chrome had them, not just profiles).

Only reason I came back is their Android browser kinda sucks. Addons
constantly crash in the mobile browser, and its not integrated well with the
password manager APIs and other stuff. It was a pain in the ass to use.

Their auto-fill sucks compared to Google's and just overall if I take out
container tabs, Firefox just doesn't work for me like Chrome does. So I
switched back, installed SessionBox, and while not perfect, gets close to
container tabs.

------
NightlyDev
This sucks, competition is nice.

I'd rather want safari gone, cause safari on iOS is a shitshow with no
competition.

Safari on iOS gives me the IE6 feeling, it's so insanely bad and bug filled.
Like, it sometimes fail to render pages properly if hardware acceleration is
used, and sometimes one have to restart the browser just to get the keyboard
working, or the ability to click any link.

iOS Safari must die, especially if we continue like this with no other allowed
engine on iOS. Either other engines must be allowed or iOS might as well die
and the web would be better off.

------
cbsmith
I find it very curious that this is being characterized as Microsoft giving
control to Google. Chromium is open source; Microsoft isn't ceding any control
of what goes into their browser.

------
soheil
I never fully understood the primary differences between Chrome and Chromium.
One is open source and supported by Google and the other owned by Google,
there are other small differences that I’m aware of, but can someone please
list the significant differences and why it’s not a good argument (if not) to
support Chromium without fear of Google’s monopoly? Or is it the case that
Google has enough influence on Chromium’s direction to render that an unviable
alternative?

~~~
Ndymium
Chromium is the open source project that Chrome the proprietary browser is
built on. Chrome is basically Chromium + some proprietary bits, Google
branding, and Google features.

Chromium, while being open source, is a project run by Google, so they have
the final word on what is included in the code. They don't just have enough
influence, they control it.

------
jeffmcmahan
I switched months ago. No regrets, as a full time js/web developer, the dev
tools are good enough. Not better than Chrome, but good enough. You can do the
right thing.

------
nuguy
I’m telling all of you, we need a new internet protocol. 90 percent of what’s
done on the web is looking at pictures, videos, music and text. Just bake
those things and a few others into a bare-bones protocol. No need for js. This
way security would be astronomically better and it would lower the bar for
browser writers, allowing more browser publishers to compete, which would
result in better browsers that align with the needs and thoughts of the
people.

------
AngeloAnolin
I like FF stance especially with regards to privacy. It has significantly
better as I am using it more and more on a personal level.

At work it's a different story though as our organization is heavily baked
into Google's productivity suite (Gmail, Docs, Sheets, etc.) and of course,
Google _will_ always recommend using Chrome.

FF is far from perfect, and I see a lot of constructive comments here which,
if taken by FF, can really improve a lot of aspect in their product.

------
klodolph
I think “inside baseball” is autological. I had to look it up.

------
Myrmornis
Has anyone noticed chrome making annoying changes to keyboard shortcuts in the
URL bar recently? When I do command-l to put focus in the URL bar I expect to
be able to use arrow keys to move around the selected URL to edit it, but
google seems to have broken that recently. Similarly, with focus in the URL
bar I expect to be able to do <RET> to reload a page, but instead I have to
hit <RET> 3 times nowadays for it to reload the page.

------
babahoyo
It's crazy that microsoft got sued for anti-trust because explorer dominated
so much of the market, and now they are ceding space so google can do the
same.

------
skrebbel
Does anyone know why Microsoft chose to partner with their arch rival and not
with Mozilla?

Even if Chromium is a bit easier to put a new skin around, that's a few
developer years, nothing for MS. But strategically, handing it all over to
Google, just like they did in the mobile OS space, what? How does that make
any sense? Especially now that Firefox became an _excellent_ browser again?

------
kumarvvr
Firefox is very good now. It used to have terrible performance, but after they
have made changes to their core, it's much better.

------
a_imho
_By adopting Chromium, Microsoft hands over control of even more of online
life to Google._

Bit rich coming from an organization funded by Google.

------
sxp62000
The first time I switched from IE to Firefox, and then later from Firefox to
Chrome, were all because of speed. The latest Firefox releases do feel faster
than Chrome, but it's not a huge difference. Security is important but I don't
know if it's a "visible" enough feature to get people to switch to Firefox.

------
bluepnume
As someone who deals with a lot of browser features which are already a little
quirky, like iframes, popups, and cross-window messaging -- I've found Edge
makes little to no improvement on IE. The number of corner cases the browser
fails to support is astonishing. So I'm absolutely glad to see it being
dropped.

------
PurpleRamen
Browser Civil War in 3-5 years?

Microsoft as a big enterprise will likely push their charm to improve things
in chromium. And Google as another big enterprise with good control over
chromium till now will proably not like all their changes. So how good is the
chance for some friction and later an open conflict of interessts to appear?

------
qwerty456127
It seems they're not joking, Firefox feels faster than it was some months ago
when I've last tried it.

------
schappim
>> This may sound melodramatic, but it’s not. The “browser engines” — Chromium
from Google and Gecko Quantum from Mozilla — are “inside baseball” pieces of
software that actually determine a great deal of what each of us can do
online.

I thought that Chrome's rendering engine was Blink, a fork of Webkit.

------
mohsen1
Isn't it better for everyone that Microsoft is now working on an OSS browser
engine?

[https://github.com/MicrosoftEdge/MSEdge/blob/master/README.m...](https://github.com/MicrosoftEdge/MSEdge/blob/master/README.md)

~~~
jansan
Wow, this is interesting. Thank you!

------
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.

------
rock_artist
Firefox is important for internet democracy. I use FF as I prefer that my
explicit browsing habits wouldn't also be affiliated with Google that already
got enough data on me...

It is improving.. Yet, pure performance, both EdgeHTML and Chromium outperform
on many of my devices.

------
crispytx
Microsoft is still going to make a browser though aren't they? If there's
something that they don't like in chromium they can just change it as it's
open source. Doesn't sound like a big deal to me. But that's just my opinion,
man.

------
wvenable
Edge had so little marketshare that this decision, in terms of the web, makes
almost no difference at all. I realized recently that I never even bothered to
test my sites on Edge; it wasn't even a conscious decision, I simply forgot it
even existed.

------
gadders
Offtopic, but the on Chrome 67.0.3396.62 the whole first screen of that web
page is one third massive header, and two thirds white space with just
"moz://a" in it. You have to scroll to see any content.

You'd expect a slightly more usable design.

------
danielor
This is an interesting moment. The browser wars appear to be over and there is
a victor! We have a new tech monopoly. We shall see how enduring it is. My
sense is that in 20 years something new will be allowing us to browse through
humanities info.

------
xte
> The interests of Microsoft’s shareholders may well be served by giving up on
> the freedom and choice that the internet once offered us.

No, when you give power without backup (FOSS licenses for instance) you'll be
hurt, even sooner than later. Microsoft have a sole interest if it want to
compete with Google: keep the desktop up instead of putting anything in the
cloud (Google is far superior technically and as per reputation in that) and
offer technically superior products. Like offer Firefox bundled and contribute
to it, since is a FOSS project not held by a single and competing company.

While Microsoft product and reputation are worse Microsoft is still there on
most desktop so it have power and interest to react. Try to evolve play the
Google game (like in-Windows ads, Office365 etc) is lost at start.

> Google is a fierce competitor with highly talented employees and a
> monopolistic hold on unique assets.

IMO it _has_ , right now and not from today Google product are crappy as
Microsoft one, people (not only geeks and tech savvy users) start to notice
more everyday. Especially on mobile crap. Google of course have the excuse to
blame OEMs (with good reasons) but many start to notice that they are not the
sole guilty. So Google is still a prominent company in technical terms, but
it's a dead one whose big body keep moving a bit due to the fact that death
was never instantaneous for such size animals.

BTW Mozilla foundation IMO should do different things than complain Microsoft
decision, one is looking at Firefox and Firefox users especially when many say
"hey, you go in a wrong direction". A thing should be remembered tech savvy
users may say things that does not interest vast majority of your users
_today_ but quality _always_ win in the long run so if tech savvy user say a
thing does not work it may work today and tomorrow but it will crush after.
And the more it last the more hard will be the crush.

Be open, community will help and there is nothing big as internet community,
no company can compete, that's why after years software became open again and
that why companies start to trap FOSS code in proprietary jails knowing well
that they have no other options.

An ancient politician motto: you can make a throne on bayonets but it will
start hurting you when you sit on it. We are citizens, even if only few are
aware more will come the measure the collar tightens and no Google, nor
Microsoft, nor Amazon can exists without consumers. They can try to be as
indispensable as possible and it may work for some times but not forever.

------
skinnyasianboi
The simple design of Chrome on Mac is nice, I'm not a fan of all the lines and
shadows in Firefox, I wish they would change it. But I'm still giving it try
for the next days. On Android Firefox looks pretty sexy.

------
shmerl
Well, MS could choose Gecko/Servo, to balance things out. Kind of surprising
they didn't. At the same time it's probably good. Having MS influencing
Gecko/Servo doesn't sound like a good idea.

------
gronne
The comments to this story is the lowest quality ive seen on HN in a long
time..

------
cft
I wonder how soon we will get to filtering content by the browser from here.

------
eam
I have been using FF for what seems forever, and I have no plans on
stopping... unless they shut it down, finger crossed that that won't happen!
I'm a web developer, and it has always been my go to browser, to me it has
always felt pretty fast and I actually have never had any problems so I am
always baffled how other people always have issues with it, maybe I am just an
edge case. AS of now, it has been my default browser for well over 10 years,
on both mac and window machines. I will continue to be a loyal user as long as
it continues it's current course. I really wish Microsoft had gone with
Quantum Gecko.

------
fibo
Having a competitor is a big value for Google, they are smart enought to
understand they need Firefox. Think about first WebRTC connection or also
WebGL2.

------
xkgt
I don't know about Mozilla licensing terms... Could Microsoft forked Firefox
instead of building its new browser based on Chromium project?

------
pickpuck
Which is better: 1 specification in psuedocode that 4 companies implement
unevenly, or 1 codebase that 4 companies contribute to?

~~~
pcwalton
The former, because I don't have to get the other four companies' permission
to improve infrastructural things that don't affect web compatibility. (For
example, parallel styling and layout, WebRender, etc.)

------
timwaagh
the day that mozilla would say something positive about microsofts browser.
but they are right, its bad for competition.

------
techsin101
Some thoughts..

Chrome Dev tools are way better

Firefox Ui looks like 2008.

Firefox would win more if it continuesd to support unity.

Problem with Firefox is that it sticks to standards too much whereas others
experiment and get cool features which then become part of standards and then
finally Firefox gets them.. meaning in last.

Bookmark manager sucks

File menu and other menus are clunky

They need to redo their logo it also looks like 2008

If Firefox made their motto "get all chrome features 6 months before chrome"
I'll uninstall chrome right now

~~~
maxyme
Firefox Dev tools are better for some things. Things like debugging webgl (you
can live edit shaders!) But I find the UI and icon design difficult to use.

~~~
hoffs
How many people live edit shaders tho

------
quickthrower2
I now use FF at home for one simple reason. Two people at home using two
different Google accounts and need to switch between them. In Chrome it
decides one of those is the 'logged in account' and the name shows in the
browser bar. It is then the default every time you open say a new GMail etc.
That is so annoying. This doesn't seem to happen in Firefox!

~~~
chrisseaton
This is handled at the OS layer with user accounts - can’t you switch users at
the OS level?

~~~
quickthrower2
I could but this ain't a corporate scenario.

~~~
chrisseaton
All major consumer desktop operating systems still have user accounts - you
don't need a corporate system to do it.

You'll probably find that you can permanently log both users in at the same
time, and then switching between them is just a shortcut and takes a fraction
of a second, so it needn't be a burden. You may find it's even faster than
changing the user in Firefox.

That's why it's great to do these things at the OS level - it can be done
efficiently once for every app and not reimplemented lots of times badly like
in Firefox.

------
jniles
I really wonder what it would have been like if MS threw its weight behind
Gecko.

------
nathan_f77
I don't mind being downvoted for this, but Google Chrome is an amazing
browser. It's great as a web developer and also as a user. We've come a long
way from the browser wars in the 1990s. Things have stabilized and become much
better since then, and you don't have to worry about Chrome turning into the
next IE6. Sure, some sites only work in Chrome, but the main problem with IE6
is that it sucked and caused a lot of frustration for web developers. I just
haven't had that experience with Chrome.

Chromium is open source. It's not like Google and Microsoft are conspiring in
secret to build a browser and destroy the competition. It's an open source
project, and there's the W3C and WHATWG. Even if Chrome had 100% market share,
there's nothing stopping people from contributing new suggestions, features
and improvements to Chromium, or getting involved with the W3C.

I used to be a huge fan of open-source software and the Free Software
Foundation, and thought that this anarchist/communist style of project
management was the best way forward. Now I've realized that most open source
projects are poorly organized, suffer from lack of leadership, and have bad UX
and design. The developers are underpaid (or unpaid), unmotivated, and
sometimes end up burning out.

Some of the most successful open source projects are backed by large companies
who can pay the salaries of full-time engineers (Rails, Chromium, React, Red
Hat, etc.) Anyway, I think it's great that Microsoft has decided to adopt
Chromium, and that many Microsoft engineers will be contributing new features
and improvements to the open source engine.

Check out Brave [1] if you want a Chromium-based browser with a focus on
privacy. Or use Firefox. Anyway, I don't think it's the end of the world.

[1] [https://brave.com](https://brave.com)

~~~
romanovcode
Isn't Brave closed-source? How is it possible to be privacy oriented and not
disclose the code

~~~
nathan_f77
No, it's open source: [https://github.com/brave/brave-
browser](https://github.com/brave/brave-browser)

I've never used it because I kind of thought it was a weird cryptocurrency
project. I honestly don't think it provides much value over Chromium + uBlock
+ uMatrix. But it's just another option.

I personally use Google Chrome, because I actually like signing in with my
Google account, and I don't mind the tracking. I already use Google for
everything: Gmail, Google Docs, Calendar, Analytics, AdWords, AdSense,
YouTube, search. And Google Apps for my company. My choice of browser doesn't
make a difference.

------
hoangdt
Why MS not open sources EdgeHTML instead of adopting Chromium? :think:

------
catchmeifyoucan
I'm convinced. I'll use firefox.

------
dzonga
I read this on Firefox.! :)

------
tolmasky
I'm honestly confused at the negative attention this is getting, I can't see
this as being anything other than all positive. This is nothing like when IE
won in the late 90s, there is very little extra "control" this will give
Google over the web, quite the opposite if you ask me.

Think of it this way: do you think it helps or hurts Google to have every
version of Windows come pre-installed with what is essentially already Chrome,
except, of course, it will probably have Bing as its default search engine. Do
you think the odds of people just using Edge to download Chrome and nothing
else go up or down with this move? Do you think it helps or hurts Google to
have most tech people not bother telling their parents to download Chrome
anymore? There is _significantly less control_ from "owning" an engine than
owning an actual browser. I don't think I would have had much of an issue with
the dominance of IE 20 years ago if I knew I could compile and modify (and
release!) IE myself.

This is more akin to most browsers now having a common starting point. The
problem with browsers is that if you truly want to make a new one you need to
somehow replicate the decades of work put into the existing ones. What that
means is that before you can exercise any of your noble
privacy/security/UI/whatever goals, you must first make sure you pass Acid 1
and replicate quirks mode float behavior and etc. etc. etc. This is a non-
starter. But now, Microsoft can launch from Chromium's _current position_ and
have a browser that can actually compete with Chrome. It's as if they've taken
"engine correctness" off the table, and can compete on cool features or "we
won't track you" or _anything else_. Websites will work in Edge by default, so
if you like that one new feature in Edge, you can feel OK switching to it
without compromising devtools/rendering/speed/etc.

Now I know that the initial response to this is "but Google will call the
shots!". Not if the way this has gone down _every other time_ has anything to
do with it. Google's Chromium started as KHTML. When Apple based WebKit off of
KHTML, the KHTML team had very little say in anything and they eventually
forked of course. Then Google based Chromium off of Apple's WebKit, and once
again, there was very little "control" Apple could exercise here. Sure, they
remained one monolithic project for a while (despite having different JS
engines which just goes to show that even without forking you can still have
differentiation), but inevitably, Chromium was also forked from WebKit into
Blink.

And there should be no reason to think the same won't happen here, and it's a
good thing! Microsoft in the past couple of years has demonstrated amazing OS
culture. I can't wait to see what the same company that gave us VSCode is able
to build _on top of Blink_ , and eventually _separate from Blink_. Ironically
enough, the worst thing that could have happened to Google's search dominance
is have Blink win the "browser engine wars": we all agree Blink is the way to
go now, so we can all start shipping browsers that at minimum are just as
good, and won't auto-log you in, or have their engine set to default, or etc.
etc. etc.

------
jillesvangurp
I use Firefox but I disagree with them that MS switching to chrome is a bad
thing.

It eliminates from the equation a browser implementation that never really was
that popular and at best sort of did what other browsers did without actually
doing much different.

You have to ask what the point for MS would be to continue to fund that. It
wasn't buying them much positive differentiation. They had a little, mainly in
the form of some performance benefits. But mostly people ended up using Chrome
or Firefox, even on Windows 10. Mostly it was differentiating negatively for
them in the sense that it had its own sets of unintentional compatibility bugs
that most web developers did not prioritize working around.

Several years into the windows 10, it's been largely a success for MS. Edge is
the exception however. They made a few strategic mistakes with it (still under
Balmer), the primary one being to make it windows 10 only. This made some
sense when the plan still was windows 10 on every device but that went out of
the window when Satya Nadella unceremoniously killed off windows phone. So
while windows did well, Edge did not. Worse, MS now had to support pretty much
everything they did on Android, IOS, and Mac OS as well. So, having their own
browser engine just made that more complicated for them without offering any
benefit. Porting it to other platforms would have been a serious investment,
without any clear benefits or a path to success.

Arguably, already at the time you could have questioned the logic of putting
vast resources into duplicating the efforts of several open source browser
engines with the explicit goal to do exactly the same functionally. IMHO it
was largely the not invented here syndrome that drove Balmer/MS to do this.
The new found pragmatism under Nadella produces different decisions. So, they
keep the UI but they swap out the internals for of the shelf OSS that works
perfectly fine. Happy users, happy developers, less cost. Not the hardest
decision he's had to take I imagine.

As to Firefox, they have an ongoing project to re-implement their engine in
Rust that is producing clear benefits in addressing pain points in their old
implementation that are also common to other C++ based implementations.
They've been doing a great job staying on top of web standards and are a good
contributor to them, often pioneering features such as wasm or webauthn in
Firefox first. So, their implementation and focus on privacy adds value and
they have lots of users that appreciate what they do and how they do it.

I get their frustration that Google is gaining more power here where MS used
to provide some independent voice in e.g. standards committees. But lets be
fair here, MS wasn't doing a whole lot on that front and was basically just
struggling to keep up without adding much value. Few web developers will mourn
the need of having to deal with Edge specific rendering issues. Most users
won't be able tell the difference. And having MS scrutinize what Google does
with Chromium and kicking their ass in the standards bodies might help in
keeping them honest.

------
Karunamon
_Firefox once again holds its own when it comes to speed and performance. Try
Firefox as your default browser for a week and then decide._

Challenge accepted.

A week later, after having set Firefox to default on my systems and working
with it, I decided that:

* There's still no good replacement for DownThemAll or Tree Style Tabs (the gimped, non-feature-complete alternatives to those are not acceptable alternatives),

* That the unfixed dupe SSL cert problem that makes Firefox unusable at work is going on a decade old and has no movement on it,

* That Mozilla deciding what I can install in the browser is an infringement on my freedoms as a user in a much more real way than philosophical concerns about licensing (no, running a fork of the browser is not an acceptable alternative)

* That they keep making extremely questionable decisions regarding privacy, telemetry, and overall user control over those things,

And overall:

* That Mozilla's stated commitment to empowering the user cannot be trusted inasmuch as it applies to people with strong computer literacy.

\--

So for now, I stay on Chrome. Your choice of web browser comes to to
functional concerns, not the kind of political wankery that this blog post
represents. With that in mind, why would I choose something that's basically
Chrome that offers maybe one or two useful additional features, but is
basically worse in every other way?

Speaking of which:

> _That’s what happened when Microsoft had a monopoly on browsers in the early
> 2000s before Firefox was released. And it could happen again._

This is bald faced fearmongering, edging dangerously close to maliciously
lying. The main problem with IE6 of the day is that it is closed source and
very difficult to interoperate with, given its rather special take on web
standards.

Chromium is open source and can be forked given the will to do so - which
_will_ happen should this doomsday scenario they're predicting come about.
Hell, Firefox was responsible for ultimately unseating IE as the browser of
choice a long while ago, and they did not have this advantage.

Say what you want about Google/Chrome(ium)'s motivations, but I see very
little in the way of things they do that go out of their way to make my life
miserable. They're hardly perfect or blameless, but at the end of the day,
I've spent a lot more time cursing at Firefox than Chrome.

What it boils down to is that firefox is dead to me until they are cured of
the dread GNOME disease of deciding they know better than the people who use
their software what the people who use their software want and need. You know,
_priorities_. Like making the actual browser better, rather than shoveling in
crapware like [https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/price-
wise](https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/price-wise) and ancillary,
niche garbage like WebVR. There are a hell of a lot of questionable resource
allocation decisions being made here.

I'm looking at Vivaldi with a great amount of hope:

> _Your browser matters._ _Take control with Vivaldi._ _We live in our
> browsers. Choose one that has the features you need, a style that fits and
> values you can stand by._

This is a philosophy that is a breath of fresh air to me.

~~~
Chlorus
> * That the unfixed dupe SSL cert problem that makes Firefox unusable at work
> is going on a decade old and has no movement on it,

What problem is that? I haven't encountered that, but I really don't use FX
that much.

>. Like making the actual browser better, rather than shoveling in crapware
like [https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/price-
wise](https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/price-wise) and ancillary,
niche garbage like WebVR

Nah, I'm sure their priorities are in the right place /s - they sent me a
newsletter message for a concert they're hosting for some reason because I'm
on the MDN mailing list: [https://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/concerts/?utm_campaign...](https://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/concerts/?utm_campaign=livenation-
engagement&utm_content=wlcfx&utm_medium=email&utm_source=mozilla.org&utm_term=concert)

~~~
Karunamon
The dupe SSL problem is this bug:
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=435013](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=435013)

In short, a number of poorly-behaved devices reuse the same self-signed SSL
certificate, primarily consumer routers and enterprise out-of-band management
apps like iDRAC and iLO (and apparently a number of firewalls, judging by the
comments on that tracker). Once you've hit a site that presents a cert,
Firefox will flat out disallow you from visiting a different site that
presents the same (non-wildcard) cert, with no opportunity for override.

The only way to work around this is to nuke your cert DB outright and restart
the browser, or to run a command with the cert's fingerprint as an argument to
remove it, and restart the browser. The simple option would be a button to
just kill the offending cert, which I personally suggested last year (third
comment from the bottom) and didn't even get a reply to.

Meanwhile, Chrome, IE, and Edge don't have this problem.

This has been going on for 12 fucking years. Apparently WebVR and shopping
plugins are more important than basic usability.

Yeah, I got that concert email too. What the actual fuck is this company even
doing anymore?

------
vtesucks
I don't want to digress from the discussion but can a typographical expert
comment on what are the legibility benefits of wide vs slender fonts? How much
or how little does the width matter? What other factors are there?

I ask because the "goodbye" headline uses a wide font.

------
vtesucks
What happens to chakra?

------
Slashbot
Goodbye, Firefox (TLRD I switched to Vivaldi.com for a far better browser)

------
Slashbot
Goodbye, Firefox (TLRD I switched to Vivaldi.com for a far better browser)

I switched to using [https://Vivaldi.com](https://Vivaldi.com) last year after
going through a whole bunch of web browsers to find a adequate replacement for
my once favorite pre quantum Firefox browser with 70+ core xul based addons...
The best I could find was Vivaldi, it's chromium engine based however the
developers behind it have really taken to providing power user features and a
good level of customization for the front end ... adding at least some of the
features Firefox addons used to be able to provide. Not to mention it still
allows me to use the garbage chrome store extensions, which while they will
never compare to the old Firefox addons, it's at least better than scrap like
dummIEs browser, flOpera, and defaulty chrome goolag Garbage and of course
whatever fail Mozilla work on.

Seriously Mozilla have been making themselves irrelevant, for at least a
decade since Firefox 4.0 they have been adding allowing retards to add crap
features, mess around the frontend gui while not actually improving anything
just causing more work for addon developers and the those who make good theme.
The only good thing they did was push the standards for website rendering. Now
they have self lobotomized the best product they had by cutting off the addons
that kept it being the browser power users and influential users would
recommend out to the less techie friends and family who now all just use
chrome crap. Firefox(quanturd) has now become what might aswel be a chrome
clone that while practically falling to it's knees in supporting and copying
all the same crap Goolag does... so basically a whole lot of developer time is
wasting just making their version of the same shit, instead of ever getting
around to developing useful features for end users. .. at this point MS is
smart for just using the chromium backend, ofc MS are even more rubbish these
days and will never improve the front end user experience and features even
with more time to spend on those areas and they'll probably not update the
chromium source thus dragging things behind again.

And starting with the garbage web extensions api, that was the death nail for
Firefox the moment they thought throwing technology like XUL out, that had
allowed third party addon developer to create vastly more powerful addons for
the Firefox web browser (NOT every other mediocre noob garbage browser, which
is the goal of web extensions, when the best addon you can mak for your
preferred browser could be ported to other crap browsers and is also limited
by such a poor and limited api as implemented and agreed on by a consortium of
morons with agendas of the company they work for ie Goolag, crApple or
MicroSuck..) than are possible for Chrome, not to mention the customization
and power user features that came with that addon support. These new employeed
dolts that started infesting the Moztard organization threw it all away to
level the play ground with all the other rubbish browsers like Chrome and
Edge, etc..

So now they find themselves competing with zero advantage, and they have such
morons working at this place that they don't even bother to implement the best
power user addons in the actual browser that they broke.. Which is funny
because if they did that, I wouldn't be using Vivaldi.. To this day many addon
developers behind very popular addons like TabMixPlus are still trying to get
these retards at Mozilla to actually improve the web extension crap format to
not only fix bugs but improve on the api's that would help them re-implement
the addon that made Firefox any good in the first place... check this thread
[https://tabmixplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=19942](https://tabmixplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=19942)
.. it's a been a whole year, meanwhile Vivaldi practically just implemented
most the features that TMP added for Firefox directly into Vivaldi options..
wtf have Mozilla done, nothing like that, they might aswel be the same idiots
that work at goolag on chrome with its garbage user interface and feature
standards.

Stupidity doesn't even begin to describe Mozilla, I have nothing but contempt
for the organization for what they have done and the kind of morons they have
working at the place. And it is sad because as a power user and someone who
used to recommend Firefox as I really do miss having a web browser that had
70+ core addons that all went to making my browser highly customizable so I
could have it looking and working the way I wanted, while providing a great
experience and interaction with the web that was vastly superior to anything
else on the market. Not anymore though, since Quantum wreck came out last
year. And now he legacy browser of Firefox that supported all those vastly
better xul based addons has ceased to get the updates required to render sites
properly, performance issues have increased more bugs and for years Mozilla
have been messing with frontend css changes etc and breaking customization for
there own crappy visual design and garbage inferior features.

So yeah [http://i.imgur.com/481pHyo.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/481pHyo.jpg)
...farewell Firefox (that was an old screen of Firefox, FF versions onwards
Moztard broke more of the interface I gave up maintaining any sense of a good
theme and more addons started breaking).. Firefox you were once the best, now
you are shit, to all those at Mozilla go fuck yourselves. You cater to
mediocrity and noobs, you deserve to disappear, followed by the rest that
follow and set your direction into oblivion.

------
Mistri
shots fired

------
trevyn
I still see zero benefit to me, _today_ , to use Firefox.

~~~
mtrpcic
What are the benefits, _today_, to use Chrome?

~~~
trevyn
It’s a known quantity — it’s what I’m currently using, and it works.

~~~
omnimus
Well lets not act like Firefox is not known. Its been pioneering browser for
years and it's in no way inferior to chrome. It's also indepedent and you dont
have to send all your data to google when you use it.

~~~
vrazj
It is slower than Chrome. That's enough to me not to consider Firefox, given
that speed is everything I care about.

~~~
omnimus
I wish people would try current version of Firefox.

------
wybiral
When I first got a Windows 10 machine I used edge long enough to download
Chrome anyway.

The real question in my mind is: how will Mozilla differentiate in such a way
that it even makes sense for users to support a different browser platform?

------
IvanK_net
Mozilla. What a great, open and free place, where you can't write your opinion
under articles.

~~~
stefs
i feel like it's quite sensible today to offload comments to the various
platforms that exist mostly to provide comments on articles. i, for one,
usually go for the HN comments even before reading the websites own.

~~~
IvanK_net
You can write comments at
[https://chromereleases.googleblog.com/](https://chromereleases.googleblog.com/)

------
dman
Firefox lost me with the whole XUL fiasco. Breaking peoples workflows before
they had a credible alternative lined up was highly unprofessional. I was an
enthusiastic Firefox user until the XUL retirement.

~~~
scrollaway
Dropping XUL was necessary and if anything, should have been done earlier. I
disagree they didn't "have a credible alternative lined up".

Are you upset over extensions breaking? There was a _long_ , extremely long
deprecation period and afaik Mozilla helped addon authors move over. They had
to make the cut at some point, tbh.

~~~
dman
I wrote some extensions myself over the years, all my time writing those
extensions went down the drain.

~~~
scrollaway
I'm sorry you feel that way. I've written Firefox extensions as well. Also,
I've written software using GTK2, Python 2.4, Django 0.9, a bazillion JS
libraries that no longer exist. I've written code for games that have shut
down. I've written code that I backed up on CD roms that are no longer
readable. Hell I've written plenty of code that never even worked in the first
place.

I don't feel like any of this time went "down the drain". Why do you? Software
doesn't usually last forever.

~~~
dman
I would not have minded at all if the replacement was equivalent but it is
not. I believe Firefox with XUL was a completely different product (closer to
Emacs in terms of viewing extensibility as a goal), Firefox with the new
extensions is just much lesser ambitious.

------
travisgriggs
As a side question, can anyone speak to what the organizational protocol of
Mozilla looks like these days. Has that too changed in the last few years?

I liked Firefox, but when the drama around Brendan Eich blew up, I was
disgusted and walked away. Have they gone back to just working together to
build a good browser? Or does it still come with a “must think a certain way”
subtext?

(FWIW, I want everyone to be able to code; I don’t care who/what/how you look
like or sleep with or swear commitment to).

------
epx
IE deserves to die. It was responsible by the Middle Ages of Internet in the
2000s. Many corp systems still work solely on IE8 or IE6.

~~~
blattimwind
Chrome deserves to die. It is responsible for the Second Middle Ages of
Internet in the 2010s. Many webscale system still work solely on Chrome 167 or
Chrome 168.

------
tinix
We only support webkit based browsers for our web application. Multiple
fortune 500 companies use it, meaning they are using neither IE/Edge nor
Firefox... nuff said.

I'm guessing the people complaining here haven't tried to embed Gecko vs
Webkit. Webkit is far superior, it's the leading browser engine world-wide,
and it would be really strange for Microsoft to choose Gecko over Webkit, as a
result.

Also, Microsoft would be unable to provide a browser for iOS if they went with
Gecko. Why would they try to standardize around a browser engine that is
supported across less platforms than Webkit?

Webkit's API for engine embedding is far superior to Gecko[0], and that's
coming from Mozilla directly.

> The “browser engines” — Chromium from Google and Gecko Quantum from Mozilla

Huh? Sorry Mozilla, but you have to know that "Chromium" is not the engine,
it's Blink, Google's fork of Webkit. Chromium is an application that
encapsulates Blink, just like Firefox is an application that encapsulates
Gecko.

Anyway, the complaining from Mozilla is hilarious anyway... Do they seriously
want Microsoft influencing them? C'mon... They are just butthurt because
Webkit has way more market share than Gecko, and even more so now that
Microsoft is abandoning EdgeHTML.

[0] [https://www.quora.com/Will-Firefox-ever-drop-its-Gecko-
layou...](https://www.quora.com/Will-Firefox-ever-drop-its-Gecko-layout-
engine-to-adopt-WebKit-What-political-mechanisms-are-keeping-Mozilla-from-
embracing-such-a-widely-supported-rendering-engine-Is-it-their-escalation-of-
commitment-with-Gecko)

------
stdplaceholder
I’m a Mozilla contributor and user; my name is chiseled in stone on their
monument. I’m also a a Xoogler and a Chrome user. I think this screed is
pretty ridiculous. Microsoft polluting the web with an inferior browser engine
is not helping anyone. For the users it is better that they join another,
superior browser effort. But what’s reall absurd here is the tone. Is this
really an official Mozilla press release? It seems like they’re just trying
too hard to make everyone forget that they get 99% of their money from Google.

------
javajosh
You know why I don't use Firefox? There is only one reason, and its lack of
integrated translation. Chrome has it, Firefox does not, and if you travel, or
live in a place where you don't fully understand the language, then this tool
is a lifesaver. The thing is, I don't see how Moz could even start to build
this feature. It's an example of synergy with Google's other products,
especially search and communication service, that would be impossible to
reproduce without exploding Mozilla's portfolio far beyond it's budget. Maybe
Google will open-source it's translation software and data corpus, LOL?

~~~
nwah1
Microsoft also has world-class translation services. Mozilla could partner
with them just for this. That would be a good idea, I think. Surprised they
haven't come up with something.

There's also various open source projects tackling this problem, which aren't
as advanced, but are always improving.

------
MistahKoala
"If you care about about what’s happening with online life today, take another
look at Firefox. It’s radically better than it was 18 months ago"

Except it's not 'radically better' if you rely on extensions killed by Quantum
and are unlikely to be updated because Firefox has such a small user base now.

I want to go back to Firefox and give it a try, but sending a load of
extensions to their deaths has made that significantly harder. I'm not up for
spending hours finding little hacks and half-baked work-arounds, either.

~~~
robto
I guess I don't really understand this. Even without the old extension apis,
it's still more powerful than anything Chrome has to offer. You don't get the
access you want, so you go to something with even less access?

~~~
MistahKoala
This is the kind of HN response I was expecting (along with the downvotes);
everyone who isn't a dev or engineer is wrong/irrational in their choices and
experiences.

I had some useful extensions that worked with old Firefox. Then new Firefox
came along and killed off some of them, so I had even fewer useful extensions.
Meanwhile, Chrome has many more useful extensions and hasn't killed off any of
them. Chrome fits my workflow, Firefox doesn't/can't. Yet this is somehow
understood as me wanting 'less'. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

------
everydaypanos
Seems so sad that Mozilla is literally begging people to give Firefox a try.
Even if someone believes that the browser Game of Thrones seems to go to
Google, I cannot see how anyone would settle for the second-best choice
especially when everything is FREE..

They plainly admit that Firefox can just hold it’s own and it is still NOT the
fastest and best browser experience out there.

When I launch Chrome I just get this feeling that it is a super lightweight
desktop app that manages a ton of tabs efficiently.

~~~
ohithereyou
Sample size of one:

i7 laptop, 16 GB of RAM, nothing else running

Chrome: ~45 seconds to become usable, blank white window appears at 5 seconds
into that wait time and just sits there

Firefox: ~10 seconds to become usable

~~~
thesandlord
Are you using an SSD? What extensions are both browsers running? Did you do a
fresh reboot? This seems pretty slow for both.

~~~
ohithereyou
Yes, I am using an SSD. No extensions in either browser.

------
wyqydsyq
What a load of sensationalist FUD.

MS are going to be using Chromium, the open-source project along with it's
Blink and V8 rendering and JS engines as the basis for their next default
browser. They are not planning to install Google Chrome as the default
browser.

Microsoft choosing to use one open-source project over another to fork their
next browser from does not threaten the health or diversity of the internet.
It isn't giving Google any additional control or power over the internet,
because Chromium is an open-source project and any integrations to Google's
own services exists only in Google Chrome.

Basically this article is just Mozilla whinging because their project wasn't
chosen and pushing FUD about the health and balance of the internet being
threatened as a result.

In reality Google does not gain any "power" from this, unless you count the
couple of contributions Microsoft have submitted to the Chromium project
(which again, is open-source) as an increase in "power", by which logic
Mozilla should already have more "power" because they have been receiving
decades of contributions as a result of being the default browser in most
Linux distributions (leading hackers to write Firefox contributions and addons
instead of for Chromium for example).

