[bprasanna]

I don't know whats going wrong with Firefox. Im still an active firefox user. I intentionally avoid Chrome and use it rarely to see if the site which doesn't work in Firefox also doesn't work in Chrome. IMHO Firefox didn't make me feel slow anytime. The whole point of Google Chrome automatically logging-in as Gmail user throughout the browser should have sounded alarm for people who care about privacy. I do agree Google brings latest of web tech to Chrome fast, but that makes other browsers falling behind in terms of features. Catching up wastes lots of time for the other browser makers. IMHO monopoly in browser is not a good idea. We know what a monopolistic attitude brings to plate. Also, when we see new extensions for Chrome with an explicit subject as "extension for Chrome", for Firefox users it feels like being sidestepped. Then it becomes the onus of the Firefox user to see if he/she needs to get in touch the extension developer to see the possibility of portability. A caring developer shouldn't sidestep Firefox or even other browsers per se. If every developer becomes selfish about developing tools/extensions for their own environment, they are blocking the goodness to others.

[TeMPOraL]

> I do agree Google brings latest of web tech to Chrome fast, but that makes other browsers falling behind in terms of features.

Fire and Motion. By being first to add stuff that users (web developers) immediately start expecting from everyone, they ensure everyone else is too busy catching up with them to actually compete. Thus, they secure their leadership position. See: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/01/06/fire-and-motion/.

[blub]

Yes, Google's using all sorts of these tactics against Firefox.

I don't think Ff will survive, too many useful idiots out there to have any hope left.

[sterlind]

It's pretty grim for Ff, but our real doom starts when they pull an Android and bundle lots of non-redistributable components to cut off their real competition, the Chromium clones. It'll be like Play Services in the aftermath of the Kindle Fire all over again, probably under the guise of Flutter and AMP.

[taneq]

Isn't there already something of this sort happening with DRM components? There was a story on here recently about someone whose Chromium-based browser was locked out of the video streaming addons. To be fair, that was more by the video streaming plugin developer than by Google, but it was still an example of undermining the open source portion of the product.

[pritambaral]

> To be fair, that was more by the video streaming plugin developer than by Google

The video streaming plugin was Google Widevine.

[ldng]

Same tatics been used with SPDY / HTTP2 / HTTP3. It leads to a very real competitive advantage for them.

[pjmlp]

Latest example I became aware of, React team speaking with Chrome one for special APIs.

[TeMPOraL]

Wow, that's just insulting. How did we get there?

[pjmlp]

Yep, https://twitter.com/acdlite/status/1089273195281080335

[TeMPOraL]

They do claim it's the Chrome team that reached out to them, though.

[pjmlp]

One way or the other, will we ever see those "improvements" come up in other browsers?

Or it will be like when one reaches YouTube, Hangouts,... with other browsers?

[llaqb]

"The browsers are working to standardise new lower level APIs that frameworks need"

Highlighting "standardise". They are NOT private APIs.

[bzbarsky]

The usual way this works nowadays is that there's a proposal developed with minimal (if any) input from anyone outside Google, often tied to the specific architectures of Chrome and whatever Google app they are trying to improve. Once they publish it, other browsers point out various problems in the proposal, but Google is unwilling to change anything non-cosmetic because "we have put a lot of time into thinking about this and we're sure we're right". Unsurprisingly, the API fails to get adoption in other browsers and web apps unless forced to for web compat reasons.

As part of this process, Google publishes a proposed standards draft that goes nowhere because of the above dynamic plus because it typically doesn't actually match the Chrome implementation. The engineer responsible for the feature gets their bonus, which is tied to shipping the feature (and throwing a standards draft over the wall is a requirement for that; it's better than nothing, but also worse than an actual standard while allowing the engineer and the rest of the Chrome team to feel good about themselves).

Crucially, there are incentives inside Google for shipping features and throwing a standards draft over the wall, but no incentives for actually getting things standardized, adopted in other browsers, addressing feedback on the standards proposal, maintaining the standard, etc. All of this shows in the observed behavior of even well-meaning engineers who have limited time and bonus targets to hit.

There's some movement towards changing the incentive structure. We'll see how it goes. There are definitely _very_ well-meaning people on the Chrome team who are not happy with the state of things and are trying to improve them.

Disclaimer: I work on Firefox and see this play out quite regularly.

[pjmlp]

You mean like they have standardized LE Bluetooth, Local Files, Houdinini, PNaCL, Permissions manifests, WebGL Compute ?

[ldng]

Or like AMP ?

[lol768]

>IMHO Firefox didn't make me feel slow anytime

Agreed, used it since version 2. Been happy with it for over a decade.

It's not been flawless, but I never felt the need to jump ship. Flash used to be pretty slow on Linux and fullscreen video was sometimes a bit unpredictable. Of course, who cares about that now? :P The WebExtension transition was a bit premature in my opinion, but I think we're slowly getting there with new APIs. Prior to that, Firefox had the most rich functionality available to extensions of all browsers - and on mobile it's still better than Chrome.

Recently, it's been getting better. We had Developer Edition (though dev tools were always done pretty well in Firefox - I've been able to take screenshots of DOM elements via GLCI for 7 years, Google only got around to copying this feature in 2017), then Quantum. I'm optimistic about the future of the browser.

[llaqb]

That's like saying "I don't know what's wrong with Windows XP, I intentionally avoid Windows 10 and XP works fine with me".

Right now Firefox has caught up a lot in terms of performance and security, but even now they are still not there.

[jasonvorhe]

It doesn't log you into your Google account, it doesn't enable syncing - it just displays your avatar and account name in the browser as soon as there's a Google Login cookie.

[josteink]

And why is tat a natural thing for a browser to do?

[jhasse]

> I don't know whats going wrong with Firefox.

Pocket integration, advertisement on New Tab page, the Mr. Robot debacle, Google Analytics on extension page, etc.

[richjdsmith]

That's hardly worse than anything done against your privacy in Chrome...

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

Doesn't mean they deserve a free pass.

[jhasse]

With all the other benefits Chrome has over Firefox (e.g. advertisement on google.com), you'll need to be more than only "not as bad as Chrome".

[Scrantonicity]

How about extensions on the Android app, container tabs, better ui, no google integration, built in tracking protection etc

[jhasse]

Doesn't seem to be enough, otherwise market share wouldn't be where it is today.