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Opinion: Chrome is Turning Into the New Internet Explorer 6 (theverge.com)
Tom Warren, writing for The Verge: Chrome now has the type of dominance that Internet Explorer once did, and we're starting to see Google's own apps diverge from supporting web standards much in the same way Microsoft did a decade and a half ago. Whether you blame Google or the often slow moving World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the results have been particularly evident throughout 2017. Google has been at the center of a lot of "works best with Chrome" messages we're starting to see appear on the web. Google Meet, Allo, YouTube TV, Google Earth, and YouTube Studio Beta all block Windows 10's default browser, Microsoft Edge, from accessing them and they all point users to download Chrome instead. Some also block Firefox with messages to download Chrome. Hangouts, Inbox, and AdWords 3 were all in the same boat when they first debuted.
It's led to one developer at Microsoft to describe Google's behavior as a strategic pattern. "When the largest web company in the world blocks out competitors, it smells less like an accident and more like strategy," said a Microsoft developer in a now-deleted tweet. Google also controls the most popular site in the world, and it regularly uses it to push Chrome. If you visit Google.com in a non-Chrome browser you're prompted up to three times if you'd like to download Chrome. Google has also even extended that prompt to take over the entire page at times to really push Chrome in certain regions. Microsoft has been using similar tactics to convince Windows 10 users to stick with Edge. The troubling part for anyone who's invested in an open web is that Google is starting to ignore a principle it championed by making its own services Chrome-only -- even if it's only initially.
It's led to one developer at Microsoft to describe Google's behavior as a strategic pattern. "When the largest web company in the world blocks out competitors, it smells less like an accident and more like strategy," said a Microsoft developer in a now-deleted tweet. Google also controls the most popular site in the world, and it regularly uses it to push Chrome. If you visit Google.com in a non-Chrome browser you're prompted up to three times if you'd like to download Chrome. Google has also even extended that prompt to take over the entire page at times to really push Chrome in certain regions. Microsoft has been using similar tactics to convince Windows 10 users to stick with Edge. The troubling part for anyone who's invested in an open web is that Google is starting to ignore a principle it championed by making its own services Chrome-only -- even if it's only initially.
Chrome is Googles gateway drug, of course they're going to try and get you to use it, and then start getting you to use all other things Google.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Break up google. But most people are not capitalists and would disagree. Let the corporations rule!
If Microsoft wants to complain they might want to fix their crappy browser first. Every time I've tried to use Edge it stutters or freezes.
I haven't used all the obscure Google services that the summary mentions, but so far in all my web travels, I haven't seen anything block Firefox. Can you give a specific example? Link, and I'll click the link in FF.
I think you're probably lying. But maybe not?
Demonstratably false. You have definitely been caught in a lie that you're not going to get out of, because what you said is objectively and provably false for all to see. (I just went to Google home page in Firefox and it didn't happen.) I have change my estimate from "you're probably lying" above, to "you are a proven liar, primarily known for telling lies." I have an increased degree of confidence that the example I requested, is never going to be supplied. Because you're lying, aren't you?
Companies are out to make money and this is a way to make more of it.
Also, FP?
that Firefox 57 just broke a mountain of plugins (mine included) and makes fixing said plugins difficult if not impossible (still wrestling with that).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
This is what we get for doing away with real standardisation and allowing "evergreen" browsers and nonsense like "living standards" to take over.
The only meaningful standards left today, for a lot of practical purposes, are the de facto ones of what works in the browsers your visitors are using right now. Anything else can change tomorrow anyway.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Or Microsoft for that matter. It cost money to develop, test, and maintain multi-browser applications. The companies mentioned do not care about multi browser compatibility. They care about having a way, preferably one way, to deliver their service or product at the lowest cost to them. Consequently, browser vendors do not care about that either.
Wow. One developer at Microsoft puts a negative spin on Google's behavior and sees a bad pattern. Compelling!
Chrome isn't quite IE6 at the height of its power, but its close. On the desktop, Microsoft was actually their main competitor. But then Microsoft launched Edge and it was a crushing blow to Microsoft's market share.
2 Years ago, MS still held an incredible 50% of desktop browser share:
https://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=2&qpcustomd=0&qptimeframe=M&qpsp=201/
Now, they are down to 20%:
https://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=2&qpcustomd=0/
Despite being literally shoved into users faces, the introduction of Edge didn't draw users away from Chrome. No, it seemed to send IE users running to it instead.
Chrome now has a commanding presence on desktop and we've already seen Google start to flex their muscle a bit in the same way Microsoft did when they controlled the world with IE. Make no mistake, Google has nowhere near that level of stranglehold but since the vast majority of browsers are Chrome they are the big dog now and they can get away with a lot biting.
Even if you're convinced that Webkit is strictly speaking better than anything else, it's not like people don't have Webkit alternatives. In Windows-land, I've found that having Chromium installed is most likely an incidence of malware, as there are any number of pre-fucked Chrome-alikes, but there's always Vivaldi or Opera, which are both completely functional and IMO indistinguishable from Chrome.
Ironically, now that Edge has some level of Add-in support and there's both "mainstream" Chrome-like Firefox and Greybeard "Pry my addons from my cold, dead hands" Palemoon, it's not like there aren't any non-Webkit alternatives out in the world, either. It is a bit of a shame that for most web developers "mobile web" = Webkit, but that's also somewhat reasonable given the prevalence of Apple and Google devices.
I suppose the question comes down to whether the value of the actual Google services integration (profile sync, better Youtube experience, cloud print, desktop sharing) is worth ceding control of the whole browsing experience to Google. I don't really use any of that stuff so I can't say, but no, letting a giant ad company control my internet experience really isn't any better than when we were pissed a Microsoft for trying to do the same thing. I'm not really seeing how Google got to this point on the desktop. Firefox and Safari were never THAT bad. Is it really just a matter of marketing?
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
""When the largest web company in the world blocks out competitors, it smells less like an accident and more like strategy," said a Microsoft developer"
As they say - What goes around, comes around.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Sure you can install Chrome, Firefox, Opera or whatever on macOS, but on iOS even the other browsers are just a GUI attached on top of Safari, i.e. WebKit.
#DeleteFacebook
Google has been at the center of a lot of "works best with Chrome" messages we're starting to see appear on the web.
This is one of the (lesser) reasons I still use Firefox. Already been down this road once with Microsoft. Don't need to do it again with Google. Nothing particularly against Chrome but any particular browser getting too much market share is a bad thing.
On the other hand I haven't really seen any sites yet that actually require Chrome. Back in the day when IE6 was dominant it actually got kind of hard at times to use the web without resorting to IE6 now and then.
So embrace, extend, extinguish seems to be a Google strategy now. And a Microsoft employee is complaining? Oh, the irony!
It's also been horribly unstable for me since the 57 update. Not a crash for years before. Practically a daily occurrence when 57 first came out.
Works fine for me. Hasn't crashed once yet on me (and hasn't in years before that) and it's considerably faster than previous versions. I've run it on Windows, Macs and Linux on somewhere north of 20 machines. Color me dubious.
So far, Firefox 57 is somewhere around Windows 10 on the scale of new versions I don't want anywhere near my machines, but given security risks, staying on an older version is not practical in the long term.
Vague and unsupported assertions of instability from an Anonymous Coward. Very believable.
XUL and a non-Chrome UI already exists. It's called Palemoon. It has drawbacks of its own but if those are things you want, it's out there.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
that Firefox 57 just broke a mountain of plugins (mine included) and makes fixing said plugins difficult if not impossible (still wrestling with that).
Every plug in that I use still works fine and seemed to make the transition without any issue. Your mileage may very of course.
I was a web developer in the IE6 days. We're nowhere near where we were then. A few Google specific sites blocking Edge is hardly the horribleness that was IE6. With IE6, many, many, many companies thought of it as a software platform to develop software on. You also essentially HAD to have workarounds for IE6 because it didn't support standards.
I'm not in love with Google, and they can most certainly do wrong. But we aren't anywhere near what IE6 was, and I don't see the same thing happening with Chrome.
Also, Google's business model isn't the same as MS's. MS sees the web as a threat to its business model. The web IS Google's business model. They don't really have a huge interest in you using Chrome, they just want the web to grow in popularity. If other browsers adopt the same web standards, that's good for Google, not bad.
Now, that's not to say Chrome's popularity isn't an issue. We need more diversity and less centralization. But for a variety of reasons I find it hard for the same IE6 situation to repeat itself. The world in 2018 isn't the same at it was in 2002.
Google Meet, Allo, YouTube TV, Google Earth, and YouTube Studio Beta all block Windows 10's default browser, Microsoft Edge, from accessing them and they all point users to download Chrome instead.
I imagine this is an attempt to provide an easily understandable alternative for non-technical users should detection of necessary video codecs or JavaScript APIs fail. Though not as far behind standards as IE was during the IE 6-8 era, Edge is also perceived as lagging, as is Firefox ESR at times. What is a web application supposed to do when a necessary component of the web platform is missing? Is it recommended, for example, to implement an entire video codec in JavaScript as a polyfill?
Would the following changes have improved the perception of Google's result?
The challenge was that they started following chrome's lead after the exodus of users. The exodus was going to happen regardless.
It is fair to complain that rather than catering to their loyal users, they tried to compete with chrome by being more chrome like, but either way their user share was going to decline.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
By the end of the novel, the directorate of pigs running the old Jones farm had turned into the man they replaced, as the other animals discovered when they peered in on party the pigs threw for their neighbors:
The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
IMHO, it's particularly alarming when the Debian Stable version of Chromium is showing as "no longer supported" by Google Docs. I ran into this warning several times, and it's one of several reasons I had to break my addiction to Google Docs. I can understand Google's desire to add functionality to their Google Docs platform, but to break Docs' functionality in fairly recent versions of their own open-source browser baffles me. There are reasons I don't want to use Chrome, and prefer to use Chromium. When Google slaps limitations on my ability to use W3C standardized browsers and force me to use their non-standard browser, I get the feeling they're only going to do worse in the future - al la Microsoft.
And so, last year I decided to ditch Google Docs and go back to LibreOffice. The most painful aspect of this is the loss of world-wide, easy access to my documents. Leaving the cloud is a hassle, but it's better than vendor lock-in.
My mileage did vary.
Ctrl+Q in Firefox for Linux is mapped to "immediately close all open HTML documents." But it's adjacent to Ctrl+W (close one document) and Ctrl+Tab (switch to next open document in the same window). Some Slashdot users claim that Firefox on some platforms instead binds quit to Ctrl+Shift+Q, but this is still adjacent to Ctrl+Shift+Tab (switch to previous open document in the same window). "Restore Previous Session" restores which documents were open, but it doesn't always restore changes made by scripts to the DOM of those documents, nor data entered into unsubmitted forms in those documents, especially if the form was added to the document by a script. Slashdot D2 comment forms are one example of this, as are comment forms on Explosm.net (the home of the webcomic Cyanide & Happiness).
There used to be an extension called "Keybinder" to disable the Ctrl+Q shortcut for quit. But as described on the README of its GitHub repository, it didn't make the transition because WebExtensions don't support anything analogous to XUL keysets. This is bug 1325692, which was marked "wontfix" for Firefox 57.
The only way Chrome will have IE6 levels of influence is if web developers will have to support its quirks and bugs for a decade, even after new versions of Chrome come out.
It is possible if Google leaves bugs in place in future versions and intentionally starts a process if embrace extend extinguish. It could happen but we are not at IE6 levels of insidiousness.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Perhaps once you're done conflating George Orwell's Animal Farm ("four legs good, two legs bad^W better") with National Lampoon's Animal House ("Toga! Toga! Toga!"), you could add in Nintendo's Animal Crossing for good measure.
Several business applications support certain features in Chrome and not Firefox, or have Chrome extensions but not Firefox extensions.
I thought the WebExtensions transition was intended to let Chrome extension developers upload their extensions to addons.mozilla.org nearly unchanged. If a particular extension's publisher has stated its business decision to deliberately make it exclusive to Chrome Web Store, please name and shame.
Which is why I've stuck to Firefox. I do have to disable a ton of stuff now with Firefox. Unfortunately everything is going to shit even if I'm still on the lesser shitty software.
They've been inventing new "standards" for years that only work in Chrome.
The problem is they arnt web standards. They are just whatever Google cooked up last week, and will probably be rewritten or dropped entirely a year from then. They are simply trying to change the language of the web fast enough that noone else can afford to keep up.
This is definitely not the same, Chrome will work with standards compliant sites, while IE6 would not.
I've not a fan of any single entity doing their own thing. Firefox is doing this and has killed of many of the plugins that made the browser great. There's another side to this however also Firefox related. Chrome has support for lossy image formats that support transparency. However because of it not making the standard Firefox refuses to use it. If you're stuck with Firefox or have to support it for some reason then you either have to use huge amounts of bandwidth for graphics with transparency or you need horrible hacks.
This "new API, which Mozilla gave more then a year's notice of," launched without counterparts to several categories of functionality present in the old API. This was despite extension developers giving Mozilla "more then a year's notice of" the fact that these categories of functionality were missing in the new API.
Need a specific example? Let me know when the request for a way to rebind shortcuts becomes RESOLVED FIXED or even ASSIGNED. Right now, it's marked as "NEW" which means "will not be worked on by staff".
IE6 levels of influence
IE6 levels of insidiousness.
Do you know what these words actually mean, or are you some sort of parrot?
if web developers will have to support its quirks and bugs for a decade, even after new versions of Chrome come out.
Do you live in some sort of weird reality where people can't update their software? You certainly are not present in this one.
There's a difference.
Internet Explorer back then, locked you into a shit ton of closed source proprietary secret poorly documented stuff (embed OLE objects/ActiveX extensions night mare).
There was no sane way to make a web app specifically made for IE to run on anything else except the specific version of IE that it was made for.
Google Chrome mostly relies on open standard. Take another browser that complies with the same open standard, and you can more or less access the same web apps.
Chrome's source code is even accessible. When in doubt you can check how they've implemented some non-compliant stuff.
In practice, very few web apps run in Chrome but completely fail in Firefox, despite both using entirely different engines.
Yes, a lot of web apps fail in Microsoft Edge /Internet Explorer or in Safari, but has more to do with those being bullshit browser which aren't up to date with standard (microsoft's stuff even more so) than Chrome being a proprietary target.
And then, there's the whole anti-trust / profit angle.
Back during the internet explorer scandals, Microsoft was profitting from selling software. By making sure that as many websites and webapps only work exclusively with IE, Microsoft made sure that people desperately need to buy Windows from them in order to get the bundled in Internet Explorer.
Nowadays, Google doesn't profit at all from Chrome. Their hugest profit driver is matching *results* (though not the search results themselves in Google.com, mind you. But matching ads to serve best to end users. And matching content to keep youtube users hooked while they play ads. etc.)
They don't give a shit if you use their browser. They want to use *a* browser, *any* browser, might as well be Firefox if not Chrome (which they *also* finance - Google is pouring money and financing what some could wrongly consider their "main competition").
As long as you end up using this browser to go online, where they can thrown ads at you and sell your eyeballs to the highest bidding advertiser, and where they can monetize the shit out of all the online behaviour data they can gather about you.
Chrome isn't a product on which Google is making money (directly).
Chrome is just one of the possible tools that make their actual business (profiting of users going online) possible.
You can hardly suing them for antitrust violations, Chrome is free (i.e.: "gratis" as in beer) as well as major part free software (i.e.: "libre" as in freedom to look into it and build your own browser).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
why does xul have to be brought back? I'm genuinely curious.
How could you start an antitrust suit on the grounds of Google Chrome ?
Google Chrome is given away for free (unlike the IE counter example, which was only available to those people who did buy Windows from Microsoft).
the source code of most of the parts (all the important one) is available to anyone (so anybody can re-implement a chrome-clone on their system of choice).
Google doesn't make a single penny directly out of Chrome.
In fact they don't even need you to use their browser, they just want you to use any browser. Mozilla Firefox could also do the trick (and that's why they are donating money into its development too).
Google doesn't give a shit about which browser, as long as you use *A* browser, and go online, where THEN in turn they can earn a ton of money thanks to their very lucrative ads business.
But the browser that you chose to actually bring you to these ads is completely irrelevant to their business plan.
The fact that you can one for free from Google (and another one for free by Mozilla, partly paid by Google's money too) is only a bonus.
(But a bonus which worth for them to invest into : the more free and easy solutions to go on line, the more eyeballs for them to sell to advertisers).
---
Note that, with a few exceptions (Google is licensing some parts commercially to big manufacturer - mainly the Google Services, and access to Google Play), the same logic also applies to Android (of which a good chunk is available with the source in clear) and which (can be) given away for free (at least AOSP part).
They don't profit from Android (much - there are still the licenses), they profit from people going online (again to be subjected to ads) and coming to pay apps from their Play store.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I assume the logic is that if a web platform feature is at Candidate Recommendation status at the start of beta, it's likely to be at least a Proposed Recommendation once beta ends.
You can no longer access the file system. Instead plugins get a 'virtual' file system to store files. My GM scripts were written with multiple files using include directives to reference the local directory, and since I can't just copy the files over they don't work. I'm stuck putting everything in one ginormous file.
:(...
As for my own plugin, it uses FFMPEG to do conversions, which again is damn near impossible without file system access. And that's before I get into making it all play nice in the new multi-threaded plugin world
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I just opened Edge for the 2nd time on my Windows 10 install... and none of those blocked use of them. They all recommended Chrome "a fast, secure browser" but none of them said "No entry!" to me.
I guess some of the confusion about the meaning of "free market" comes from the habit of some right-libertarians to confuse it with "unregulated market" when they fail to see monopolist practice as private coercion.
We recently had a product forced on us by our state government that they had written by and outside contractor. Everything works fine in Firefox with a user agent switcher, but otherwise you are blocked with the message "Google Chrome is the only supported browser..." I get the feeling it's people who can't be bothered to test their code in anything other than Chrome.
I suppose the question comes down to whether the value of the actual Google services integration (profile sync, better Youtube experience, cloud print, desktop sharing) is worth ceding control of the whole browsing experience to Google. I don't really use any of that stuff so I can't say, but no, letting a giant ad company control my internet experience really isn't any better than when we were pissed a Microsoft for trying to do the same thing. I'm not really seeing how Google got to this point on the desktop. Firefox and Safari were never THAT bad. Is it really just a matter of marketing?
First let me say that I am no fan of Google's products outside of search and maps. I simply don't like their tracking. But I can certainly see how they got to where they are. They tackled and conquered amazing problems with their products. Earth, maps/streetview, search, android/play, docs, and drive just to name a few. And Chrome. They took the browser market. I think that they did all of these things with good ol' engineering. They raised the bar, and not through promises but by delivering products. Yeah, some of their products are killed or die off, but the ones that work are great.
But to your question, I think that they work really hard at making things work together in the Google ecosystem. Just the other day I was helping my daughter use a sync app to get pictures from her phone to her computer. But I had synced her Camera folder on her phone, and she needed a pic she had created using the google collage app (which I didn't even know existed). I just had her log into her computer with her google account, went to photos, and there it was. THAT is why Google is where they are. They make things work easily together - and that is very hard to do. In school the kids all use gmail/drive/docs, it just simplifies things. My daughter in 7th grade works on team presentations with other kids using drive.
But... as much as Google impresses me from an engineering perspective, I do everything I can to not be their product. I run linux, I use palemoon and I make sure I am logged out of my google account. I turn off my location on my phone. They keep trying to creep in though. I just found out that "ok google" is enabled on my phone now, even though it was previously disabled. Worse yet - I have gone into the google app and disabled it, but it is still active! The only way I was able to disable it was because I use Nova Launcher, and it had an option to turn it off which worked. These kinds of things, along with many others, make me very leery of Google. I think their interpretation of 'evil' is different than mine.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Users will get tired of being locked out of the next new thing and switch to Chrome. Don't think Google doesn't know this. Also there's no reason why anyone wouldn't develop according to the standard in the first place, what's the point of making it only work in Chrome during dev and then rewrite stuff so that it works for all? The only point is to get people to change to Chrome.
Some also block Firefox with messages to download Chrome.
Not if you're on Linux. They seem to only bully MS users. They know GNU/Linux users know better.
My experience differs from yours on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, Firefox 57.0.3 (64-bit), visiting https://www.google.com/earth/
Hangouts is one of those obviously-silly-on-the-face-of-it services for people who don't realize that users can already communicate with one another using standard protocols and therefore nobody needs another fucking "chat website."
Sometimes these FCWs, such as Hangouts, Skype, Slack, and Discord, fill perceived functionality gaps in Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and other standard chat protocols. For example, how can one set up a SIP call over IRC? Or view messages sent to you or to a group while you were offline or were using a different device? Or attach files when both sides are behind a firewall?
I've actually reported bugs on websites only to have the webmasters report back that "they only support Chrome" or that "Chrome is the best browser". Since then I've stopped using Chrome completely - if a website doesn't work properly with other browsers I just don't go back. Mostly I've been using Firefox, and am very happy with it overall.
They are starting to tighten their grip to the point where systems are starting to slip through their fingers.
Google's new strategy has definitely been walled-garden - for example look at the youtube vs amazon fire tv debacle.
They're starting to use the systems they already inhabit as leverage to wall people in.
You must be a Gnome developer. "It works for me therefore it's definitely you, not the software".
Nope. Not a developer at all nor any interest in becoming one. Actually I'm an industrial engineer as well as an accountant by trade. But I have been a user of literally every major browser since Mosaic back in 1993. I've used Firefox as my primary browser since its release. If something meaningfully better came along I'm not brand loyal but I regard Chrome (and Safari and Edge) as fine but not any better.
That said you have to be able to replicate a problem to fix it. I have no doubt that some installations of Firefox will have issues but there are enough trolls that I don't take the word of some random AC on slashdot about it. If he really has a problem then report it to Mozilla rather than bitching here where nobody really cares.
Anyway, why is this even surprising, it's clearly a major change for 57, there's going to be problems along the line. Problems can be fixed, but denying that anyone has them is not going to help.
Anonymous, undetailed, and unsupported claims of "massive instability" on slashdot is worse than useless. It is pure unadulterated FUD probably meant to troll.
You just described IE6 (which was free)
Nope.
it only works on microsoft windows.
it's only a free bonus for people who have already shelled out money to microsoft.
By making people dependent on IE, Microsoft makes sure to increase the sales of Windows.
By making people dependent on Chrome, Google is supposed to profit how ?
and Microsoft (which bailed out Apple).
Which served them in proving that they are not covering 100% of the market of selling operating systems on personal computers.
"Look there's also Apple selling OSes ! They are still alive".
Google is selling what again ? Mozilla is selling what ?
They aren't covering 100% of sales and profit in a market, they don't sell anything and don't profit there.
Google profits by selling eyeballs =yours (and apps).
Their browser (and smartphone) business is entirely accessory.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
It seems that companies, be they Microsoft (with it's multiple prompts and begging to keep you using Edge), Google (with it's reported prompts of "hey want to try chrome?"), or Amazon ("I see you're not subscribed to Amazon Prime, are you sure you want to place this order without it? Come on, just subscribe to Prime already and give us your money") can get away with just about anything they want to as long as they leave a way out in place.
Amazon's though is the one that really sickens me since it's a direct attempt to try and get $80+ dollars of my money the instant I'm not paying very careful attention while placing an order. Also their automatic selection of "Standard $20+ Shipping" instead of "Free Shipping" even when an order is eligible for Free Shipping. Much as I try to avoid shopping there these days they really do have something of a minor monopoly on the largest selection of assorted stuff with the best prices, even if it's from third party listings.
Thank you for a very well-written post that summarizes my own standpoint on Google's product and services. They have earned their position by decades of hard work, yet the signs of stagnation are starting to seep out. Just the other day my mother (who is by no means a tech-head) remarked how hard it was to find relevant search results. Not because she was not signed into Google, quite the opposite. There was simply too much advertisement-related content in the results.
I think we have had a bubble in on-line advertisement for a while now, fueled by people doing more and more shopping online. Youtube is filled with useless product "reviews" which is little more than some unboxing and casual observations. Sooner or later I think advertisers will start reconsidering the return on investment, at which point Google will be forced to monetize their trove of personal data in less ethical ways.
There are many things that are way different then back in the IE days, the most important perhaps being that unlike IE the essential parts of Chrome are FOSS. There are quite a few feasible Chrome clones out there - commercial and enthusiast/FOSS and Chrome is way closer to web standards that IE ever was. Google would be very stupid to turn Chrome into something proprietary.
Google wants the Web to remain free. They just want everyone to use Google, that's all.
The danger with Google isn't Chrome but that they potentially have the power to hijack the web. For ordinary people who can't tell the difference they bascially have already, with their search engine. However, as soon as they attempt lock-in, people would notice and streat clear. The choice to rely on Google ranking for you business is nearly without alternatives for many people, but still no one forces you to do it,
I see some dangers lurking but Chrome turning proprietary and locking others out sure isn't one of them. At least not yet.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Yeah, there are similarities but it is actually completely different, both in philosophy and magnitude.
First, besides a few bleeding edge web apps (pun not intended), the vast majority of websites work on any recent browser. The situation is much better in that regard than it was before. In fact most headaches come more from compatibility between different versions within the same family rather than between the latest version of different families.
And unlike Microsoft in the IE6 days, Google actually wants other browsers to be compatible. Google doesn't make money off Chrome, they make money when you use their online services, they are perfectly happy to have Firefox users too, they even pay good money to Mozilla for it.
Microsoft was in the opposite situation: they make money by selling you the browser (as a component of Windows), they broke compatibility deliberately so that you needed to pay for Windows/IE in order to access a significant part of the web.
The reason Google makes Chrome is to push standards. When they want to add a feature that is advantageous to them (ex: lowers their bandwidth requirements) they don't have to beg standards governing bodies and other browsers developers. They just implement it in Chrome and encourage others to do the same.
is chrome that shit lol? I use firefox btw.
It's time the EU put's a stop to this..
Everything has a lifespan... in the early to mid-90s Microsoft was still dominated by geeks with a driving desire to innovate. Once the power shifted to accountants, marketers and HR, it became just another big company, squelching even its own innovations if they competed with existing profit centers. Google is very likely to undergo this same, extremely common metamorphosis, if it hasn't already.
Isn't it a shame that I have to have three browsers, Chrome, FireFox and Edge to do the job of one browser that I can simply change the user agent in a single browser to do the job?
In css/html support alone Edge seems to be about 3 years behind. There are so many css3 properties that have been mainstream for ages except for Edge. I think developers and companies have just gotten tired of waiting for Microsoft to support modern features. MS can't set the pace anymore, so they're crying about the competition being ahead.
Mind you, this is as close to parity with the current state of web standards MS have been in a good 15 years, so it seems a bit harsh to start snubbing them now.
I'm very much aware of shared libraries. But I was under the impression that compilers could not perform link-time or whole-program optimization across a .so or .dll boundary. I was also under the impression that application submission policies on iOS, Windows Store (UWP), and game consoles required applications to be "self-contained", not linking to any .so or .dll files that do not ship with the operating system. (For example, see Apple's App Store Review Guidelines 2.5.2 beginning "Apps should be self-contained in their bundles".) The easiest way I know to ensure whole-program optimization and self-containment of executable code is to link the application statically, except for libraries that ship with the operating system.
With JavaScript outside Greasemonkey, it's also a good practice to combine multiple scripts into one file to reduce HTTP request round trips and the likelihood of dependency race conditions.
Hmm... I have a mess 'o' browsers on my system. Only on Opera did I get a pop-up (in the upper right) with an invitation to download Chrome. And only once. So I wonder what browser the individual was using when receiving the multiple Chrome come-ons?
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
So, checking https://earth.google.com/web with Brave 0.19.123, FF 57 and Edge 38 I get three quite different behaviours: On Brave, I get a partially rendered intro screen that is basically freezes during load. This is probably because Brave 38 still has a few bugs and kinks in it's rendering and JS engines and can't handle the non-standard JS and CSS that google is using for this "new and improved" version of Earth.
On Edge, you see this message: "Oh no! The new Google Earth isn't supported by your browser yet. Try this link in Chrome instead. If you don't have Chrome installed, download it here."
On FF57 you see the message: "Google Chrome is required to run the new Google Earth. Please try this link in Chrome. Learn more. ".
Interesting that they singled out MS for a pretty missleading message... as if to imply that Edge is lagging behind in dev but for FF they're just saying you must have Chrome - because of course the new version of Earth ignores web standards which Edge actually does a pretty good job of adhering to. This is pretty damn evil of them. I mean, I get that it's a competitive expression but still... if I were MS I'd sue. We all need to fight this sort of behvior by just not using non-compliant web apps. I for one will not ever be looking at Earth in Chrome because this sort of shit just should not stand. Ditto for *anything* that can only be viewed in Chrome. Shame on you google.
Apis in xul which mozilla refuses to implement in the replacement. Without these api functionality is reduced and many useful extensions are impossible to port over.
and in general you can and do run JavaScript exactly as it's written unless maybe you want to run it through an optimizer or obfuscator (and these are scripts I wrote for work, so that would be kinda pointless). And besides, GM doesn't do compilation, the javascript engine built into FF does. Have you just never written a web app or script? But even then don't you distribute stuff as libraries? When I install a large program like, say, Office it doesn't come as a monolithic exe...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
However for everybody elses matter, DOD should step in and make short process.
I've used Chrome for quite a few years. I had Firefox installed, but it was pathetically slow, and used an unreasonable amount of memory with even a few tabs only. I heard good things about Firefox 57, so I updated and gave it a try. It seems that almost every complaint I had against Firefox was fixed in that upgrade. It is fast, and I can open a lot of tabs without my system grinding to a halt. The other thing that keeps bouncing me away from Chrome is that it doesn't work for my main news homepage, ustart.org (it makes all the headlines disappear if I scroll down). I changed to ustart.org when google got rid of their homepage function. I like having a large page with headlines from a wide variety of sources...I don't like newsfeeds because I don't like an algorithm deciding what I will read. When I use Firefox, I feel better about it than with Chrome, since Firefox is more closely allied with my vision of a free and open internet.
So, if you don't like the google browser monopoly, jump over to Firefox. It is arguably a better browser anyways.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
I also switched to FF QUANTUM mainly because i want to get out of Google lock-in to keep my things more private.
I started using:
FF Quantum
FF Focus on my mobile devices
Mega.nz for storage
Wire / Signal for messaging
Here we go maps
Duckgogo as search engine
I hope that we will have an independent mobile OS one day. Android with google account is getting out of hands and without google it does not work very well.
We developers always HATED developing for Internet Explorer. If your site worked in IE8, it broke when IE 9 came out, and then IE 10, 11, and Edge. Now, if you want to support IE, you have to SEPARATELY support each individual version you care about. With Chrome, you could write your code once, and it would pretty much keep working through each new release of the browser.
This pattern FINALLY started to loosen Microsoft's stranglehold on the Enterprise. Business users hated it that they were stuck on, say, IE8 because their enterprise software wouldn't work on any later browsers. Then security issues made it worse--vulnerabilities in older browsers couldn't be eliminated by upgrading. Switching to Chrome, which did a better job of maintaining compatibility, became more and more attractive to big businesses. Once on Chrome, the switch literally saved them tons of money.
When Micro$oft did this, there was general rage here.
But Google does it, and it's ok? /., you simply must get over your corporate bias. Net Neutrality was recently bribed away (citation? please ask, you'll prove the point even more), and still you act this naive and outdated?
Don't. Be evil.
Why is your personal, anecdotal experience more valid than mine?
If there was any evidence of widespread instability in Firefox it would become news and it hasn't. I would believe someone who claimed to have problems with a specific machine since that would be reasonable. My own experience with Firefox directly contradicts any assertion of general instability.
You are totally correct.
Developing web-apps NOW compared to say, 1999 - is a completely different, and far more pleasant experience, and this is almost wholly because of MDN and Google's contributions to the open standards.
Microsoft has made huge strides here, because they were dragged kicking and screaming; BY THE COURTS (and were honestly only let-off, on a political changing of administrations, the case was dropped AFTER they were found guilty - in the PENALTY phase).
The list of things you had to keep in your brain, back then, was about 10% "how to do cool stuff" and 90% "stuff you can't do, because Microsoft says, and because everybody uses IE". Now the list of things you need to keep in your brain is about 20% "how to get awesome and cool features to work nominally or at least fail gracefully on all browsers, because not everyone does everything exactly the same way", and 80% "how to get awesome and cool features to just plain work anywhere"
That's seriously life doing front-end web now, and we unfortunately do not have a free-market to thank for that.
I assume that Google, at some point, may need to be reigned in - on the browser side. But I don't know how or why because they aren't as blatantly violating antitrust law like Microsoft was. (and was found to be violating it IN COURT).
If google had succeeded with Google+ and was dominating like FB; and using that for platform lock-in, I think it would be a different story though.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Hard to create potentially new standards if you're shackled by the old ones. Chrome has had many transient features that have come and gone, with the ones that stood the test of time tend to turn into new standards.
literally runs on all platforms
Does an application developed in Xamarin Forms work on a Chromebook?
Besides, use of Xamarin Forms requires not only the annual subscription for Xamarin Forms but also the annual subscription for a software publisher certificate on each platform. A web application requires only a domain ($15/year), a TLS certificate (without charge through Let's Encrypt), and web hosting, which you need anyway to promote your native application and to distribute it on platforms without an App Store (Windows desktop, AOSP, and X11/Linux if your application is not free software).
The problem with Edge isn't Chrome. It's the fact that it's terrible. There are some (mostly proprietary) sites that only work with Internet Explorer. One would imagine that using Edge would suffice. No luck. Only Internet Explorer works. They're not even compatible with their own junk.
Chrome is a choice, unlike Edge or Internet Exploiter. You aren't required to use Google Maps. It's the best choice, but there are others. But it works best with Chrome. You don't have to use Google Earth. Or Hangouts.
Chrome (unfortunately) doesn't reset itself to be the default browser every month or so, unlike Edge.
The only thing Microsoft browsers are good for is downloading Chrome and/or Firefox.
I see your point in general, but I'd like to point out that the noscript web in 2018 is not quite the web circa 1997. A lot of things that used to require script no longer do, thanks to improvements in HTML and CSS. For example, show/hide buttons don't require script if a page can style the sibling of a checkbox or radio button. The same is true of animated transitions, as well as styling a page differently for different viewport sizes. HTML5 also includes declarative form input validation attributes that reduce the need for script when pre-validating user input before submission to a server that performs authoritative validation. These include required, pattern, min, max, and step.
Whatever happened to "Do No Harm"? I guess that's just something Google said when it was trying to win us over. Now that they have us....
Slashdot does indeed degrade gracefully.
In Chrome or Firefox, when I middle-click "Reply to This", it bypasses the AJAX-based inline reply form of D2, instead opening a stand-alone reply form in a new window. It contains the (read-only) text of the parent comment, a text input labeled "Subject", a text area labeled "Comment", a checkbox labeled "No Karma Bonus", a checkbox labeled "Post Anonymously", a select element for changing how HTML is interpreted, and submit buttons labeled "Preview" and "Submit". (If script is enabled, it also contains a button labeled "Quote" that copies your comment into the text area labeled "Comment".) Each preview reloads the parent comment and the form. I just entered this very comment into this stand-alone reply form, which dates from the D1 (pre-AJAX) era and which still works.
Rehash, the fork of Slash used on SoylentNews, handles it differently. It has no inline reply form; "Reply to This" instead leads to the D1 reply form. Once I have previewed and submitted the comment, the discussion reloads, scrolled to the fragment identifier of my new comment.
At least with Chrome, I could always use it on Linux for just those rare occasions needed.