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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?"
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?
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/
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.
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.
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".
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 ]
That's a feature, not a bug. If you want the new stuff, check out Fedora and Ubuntu.
How could you start an antitrust suit on the grounds of Google Chrome ?
They are modifying their websites to discourage or prevent the use of competing browser software.
Google Chrome is given away for free
The price of the product isn't actually relevant. Internet Explorer was given away "for free" too, but you paid for the OS.
In the case of Google Chrome: when you use the browser it feeds Google information about you, so in a sense Google
receives OTHER compensation than direct payment, but there's still a payment for the product in the form of lost privacy and
Ad Dollars gained from more-effective targeting; ALSO Chrome feeds into OTHER Google services by incorporating them directly.
Google doesn't make a single penny directly out of Chrome.
False. As explained Chrome has integrated Google products such as Search defaulting to Google's service, which Google is paid ad dollars for.
Chrome is able to track your browsing and what you type into the Title bar and share valuable info with Google that makes it DIFFICULT for other Ad agencies to compete with Google.
Google doesn't give a shit about which browser, as long as you use *A* browser, and go online,
Clearly that is false, otherwise Google would not be so often prompting users to use Chrome or making websites say they Work better in Chrome, or blocking access to Edge users and sometimes FF users, As explained in the original article.
Google profits from Chrome domination by intensive tracking data gathering, which they convert to ad revenue. So no, they're not profiting directly from Chrome, but they are profiting indirectly, through ad revenue and Chrome-only products (Chrome is the only browser compatible with Chromecast, for instance).
Eat the rich.