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Firefox Marketing Head Expresses Concerns Over Google's Apparent 'Only Be On Chrome' Push (medium.com)

Posted by msmash on from the interesting-perspective dept.

Eric Petitt, head up Firefox marketing, writing in a blog: I use Chrome every day. Works fine. Easy to use. There are multiple things that bug me about the Chrome product, for sure, but I'm OK with Chrome. I just don't like only being on Chrome. And that's what Chrome wants. It wants you to only use Chrome. Chrome is not evil, it's just too big for its britches. Its influence on the internet economy and individuals is out of balance. Chrome, with 4 times the market share of its nearest competitor (Firefox), is an eight-lane highway to the largest advertising company in the world. Google built it to maximize revenue from your searches and deliver display ads on millions of websites. To monetize every... single... click. And today, there exists no meaningful safety valve on its market dominance. Beyond Google, the web looks more and more like a feudal system, where the geography of the web has been partitioned off by the Frightful Five. Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon are our lord and protectors, exacting a royal sum for our online behaviors. We're the serfs and tenants, providing homage inside their walled fortresses. Noble upstarts are erased or subsumed under their existing order. (Footnote: Petitt has made it clear that the aforementioned views are his own, and not those of Mozilla.)

4 of 189 comments (clear)

  1. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  2. Firefox really has improved a lot... by pogopop77 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It wasn't too long ago that Firefox was viewed as an amazing browser (ob: https://xkcd.com/198/ ), far better than the alternatives, and FOSS to boot. But like it's predecessors, it got slow, bloated, and bogged down in trying to implement features too far outside the core mission of a browser. Chrome came along and snatched the performance crown and mindshare. If you have already conceded that Google is allowed to harvest all your data in exchange for free products/services, then by all means keep using Chrome. However, if you value your privacy, it is time to give Firefox another chance. It really has improved a lot in the last couple of years in terms of stability and performance, to the point where it meets or exceeds Chrome in every aspect. Give Firefox an honest chance, you might switch back.

  3. Re:Oh deary deary me. by G00F · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Read through this bug on adding concurrency to Firefox to get a good feeling why Mozilla lost so much browser market share:
            https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/s...

    After reading, what I get is the devs saying procceses/threads as dictated wont solve the problems being described. And that they will work to solve them a different way.

    --
    The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive
  4. Re:ONly Only Only by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Wait, let me get this straight. This guy heads Firefox Marketing, but uses chrome all day... and writes an article about using chrome all day. And he doesn't see the obvious?

    My Gawd, the people at Firefox are stone-cold fucking stupid. I sill use it.. .but with Jackwagons like this Jackwagon, I guess it is doomed. Wow.

    I also guess this is why the people at Firefox keep adding and taking away stuff people really do care about. They don't actually use the product they make. Wow, again. ~