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Former Mozilla CTO: 'Chrome Won' (andreasgal.com)
Responding to Firefox marketing head Eric Petitt's blog post from earlier this week, Andreas Gal, former chief technology officer of Mozilla (who spent seven years at the company) offers his insights. Citing latest market share figures, Gal says "it's safe to say that Chrome is eating the browser market, and everyone else except Safari is getting obliterated." From his blog post (edited and condensed for length): With a CEO transition about 3 years ago there was a major strategic shift at Mozilla to re-focus efforts on Firefox and thus the Desktop. Prior to 2014 Mozilla heavily invested in building a Mobile OS to compete with Android: Firefox OS. I started the Firefox OS project and brought it to scale. While we made quite a splash and sold several million devices, in the end we were a bit too late and we didn't manage to catch up with Android's explosive growth. Mozilla's strategic rationale for building Firefox OS was often misunderstood. Mozilla's founding mission was to build the Web by building a browser. [...] Browsers are a commodity product. They all pretty much look the same and feel the same. All browsers work pretty well, and being slightly faster or using slightly less memory is unlikely to sway users. If even Eric -- who heads Mozilla's marketing team -- uses Chrome every day as he mentioned in the first sentence, it's not surprising that almost 65% of desktop users are doing the same. [...] I don't think there will be a new browser war where Firefox or some other competitor re-captures market share from Chrome. It's like launching a new and improved horse in the year 2017. We all drive cars now. Some people still use horses, and there is value to horses, but technology has moved on when it comes to transportation. Does this mean Google owns the Web if they own Chrome? No. Absolutely not. Browsers are what the Web looked like in the first decades of the Internet. Mobile disrupted the Web, but the Web embraced mobile and at the heart of most apps beats a lot of JavaScript and HTTPS and REST these days. The future Web will look yet again completely different. Much will survive, and some parts of it will get disrupted.
Firefox is a complete disaster and waaaaaaaaaaaaay slower than Chrome when using multiple tabs.
I don't see how this comment make any sense. I've seen mentions about Firefox using less RAM and well.. Yeah, it wasn't ABLE to use more RAM. Not really a feature, still slow and disturbing as fuck. Edge isn't good for multiple tabs either.
Chrome or possibly Vivaldi (also based on Chrome.)
I use mainly Chromium these days. It is a far, far better browsing experience than Firefox ever was.
My FF laughs at chrome, tabs or not, but I deliberately don't run the latest, while I let chrome update to whatever retardation google wishes. I also mod out my FF (because FF lets you do that shit) so it's not rendering extra garbage. I require that Chrome renders it all, natively, because I keep it around for maximum site compatibility. Chrome is my internet explorer.
I keep hearing "chrome faster lol" but I greet it with an expectant gesture in my hands and face, only to get a blank one in return.
If your substantiation is "a friend/some guy said so" then all that says about chrome's strengths is they're like apple's.
Firefox gets proxying and name resolution right, vs. Chrome which has a security problem in that regard.
Firefox maintains it's own certificate store, which might be considered a "con", until you need it and then you're thankful.
Firefox about:config, uh... can you say VERY customizable unlike Chrome.
Firefox gets a 66% on CSS3, where latest Chrome still below 60%. Not that either is "great", and I disagree with some of Mozilla's direction and interpretation of CSS3 (btw, Edge only tries to handle 42% of CSS3).
When Chome first came out it touted its "security", but in many ways it's a lie. Mozilla was asleep, but woke up a couple of years ago and IMHO, seems to be much more active about making their browser better than Chrome (reminds me of builders that walk away from projects).
If this is a speed race, Edge is a lot faster. So... let's just say this isn't about speed.... ok? I could care less about a browser that is fast vs one that works right and is trying to keep up with new standards.
I mean, maybe we agree with Google Chrome and hates OCSP direct checking. But the answer isn't to pull the feature (what they did). Firefox does both OCSP stapling (configurable folks!!) and old school OCSP direct checking, again, configurable. Much better and more flexible than Chrome.
There are a lot more useful extensions for Firefox than Chrome. More themes, just more everything.
With regards to the original post, sounds like old sour grapes to me. Maybe I'm wrong and Firefox devs don't give a rip (which is sort of what he implies), but seems to me that Firefox is moving forward at a good pace, and Chrome is stuck the mud.
With regards to Safari. Use webkit, so 60% on CSS3, but what I really don't like is how Apple has locked down browsing in IOS devices. Sure you can download Chrome, but ultimately it's a wrapper around the webkit that comes with Safari. Ditto btw for Firefox on IOS (yep, Firefox is really more like Chome on IOS).
I have to use them all. And sometimes Chrome works better than Firefox, but more often, I find Firefox does a better job. The great thing about Chrome is that it eliminated (practically speaking) the bad standards that made people afraid to use Firefox.
To Chome's credit, it does a better job at HTML5 (html5test says 518/555 vs 471 for Firefox, 415 Safari, Safari-or-Chome-or-Firefox-on-IOS). Chrome does slightly better on Acid3 testing vs. Firefox (noting that the evil Safari gets a perfect Acid3 score... so maybe this isn't a great test).
Again, I have to use them all, but Firefox is my main browser, just for its flexibility and better understanding of security in some areas. It would be sad to see it go away.
Versions used: Chrome 58.0.3019.110, Firefox 53.0.3
OH NOES! Google knows what webcomics I like! I don't give a shit if Google has my data. I like my sites syncing between all the different devices I use.