[Santosh83]

You can expect to see more and more of this as most of the world converges on the Chromium browser base. There is very little incentive for these companies to test for Firefox. Device users have spoken. They do not bother to change the defaults that come with their devices (Chrome, Edge, Safari) and do not really care about the deeper aspects of privacy or control or FOSS. At most they care about blocking ads, which is not a compelling reason to switch.

[phkahler]

Getting rid of ads IS a compelling reason to switch. People will switch if the default is better. They dont want to get a new browser, pick and install an ad blocker, then configure that stuff.

People will stop at the slightest uncertainty. I bet if there was a one-click to install firefox with ad-blocker and some other stuff enabled by default people would start switching.

Installing, extensions, configuration, those are sysadmin function, not stuff Joe public wants to do no matter how easy the developers think they are.

[sciurus]

Firefox has tracking protection enabled by default. Given the current state of the ad ecosystem, this has the side effect of blocking most ads.

https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/06/04/firefox-now-availab...

[aphextim]

>I bet if there was a one-click to install firefox with ad-blocker and some other stuff enabled by default people would start switching.

Check out Brave, been getting my friends to switch as it has a built in blocker that is even more verbose than ublock. Works on mobile as well which helps them save data and load websites faster.

https://brave.com/

[gorhill]

> has a built in blocker that is even more verbose than ublock

I don't understand this sentence. What does "more verbose" mean?

[aphextim]

I guess what I meant was that it shows you a lot of details of what trackers are being blocked with individual switches for cookies/scripts etc, which is nice for users who may not be as tech literate.

https://imgur.com/a/REAStmy

[falcolas]

Isn't this the same browser that by default allows through certain ads to fund its own development? Or that has replaced ads on web pages with its own approved ads?

[aphextim]

They do allow you to opt in and get up to 5 ads per hour to receive a small amount of cryptocurrency BAT. This is optional however and you are not required to do this.

This happens in the background as you are browsing and it isn't like an ad that pops up or a video you have to watch. They don't interrupt your browsing experience is what I am getting at if you do opt in.

[skykooler]

Which is based on Chromium, and therefore does nothing to help with the Google web monopoly.

[aphextim]

It even has a built in 3 node "Tor" browsing for their private windows if you want.

[crtasm]

Do you just mean standard Tor? I found an announcement saying it was a beta feature, if it's considered stable now that's great.

[aphextim]

Also they do clarify because they are somewhat misleading. On the Tor splash page it states that you can hide your IP from ISP/Employer, however when you read the details about what Tor does they are correct by stating:

>If your employer administers your device they might also keep track of what you do with it. Using Private windows, even with Tor, probably won't stop them from knowing which sites you've visited. Someone else with access to your device could also have installed software which monitors your activity, and Brave can’t protect you from this either.

[aphextim]

You are correct I shouldn't have put it in quotes.

They have a private window, or you can open up a tor private window by hitting shift+alt+N for a new tab with tor.

Info on what their Tor actually does.

https://support.brave.com/hc/en-us/articles/360018121491

Screenshot for posterity.

https://imgur.com/a/HHmA0TX

[userbinator]

I never thought I'd see the day when Microsoft would support the Google monopoly... despite all the hate IE got, at least it was from a company whose primary source of profit wasn't online advertising. To see MS give up on IE, and then Edge, was very disappointing.

[loudmax]

It was from a company whose primary source of profit is vendor lock-in. Poorly supporting or not supporting open standards is SOP for Microsoft.

[userbinator]

Better than advertising and being anti-user. I've long realised that "open" anything doesn't really matter if it works against you. Example: Google trying to standardise how it hides URLs from the user (yes, really. https://url.spec.whatwg.org/#url-rendering ) There's also that whole commotion about including DRM in the HTML spec.

[loudmax]

Lock-in is anti-user.

If you don't like Chrome/Edge, then switch to Firefox. Open standards give you have that freedom.

Unless, of course, you can't switch to Firefox because the set of people you need to work with are communicating using proprietary protocols, eg. Skype. Or developing software you need that only works on proprietary operating systems. Now you're locked in.

[ryandrake]

I remember people saying the same thing about IE6. “Internet Explorer will soon be 95% of the browser market, so there is no reason to develop for any other browser.” This was used to justify IE-only development, further boosting that browser’s share.

User apathy and developer laziness produces this self-reinforcing circle of platform lock-in.

[kerng]

Same was said 20 years ago about Internet Explorer.

Even the arguments and counter-arguments are the same as 20 years ago. Users don't really have a choice anymore, they are quite often being manipulated (forced) to install Chrome.

Just browse the web with Firefox and go to Google sites.

[masklinn]

It's not even that it doesn't work on Firefox, it's that they're UA-filtering: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20818792

[dhimes]

Don't give up. We are exactly the people who can change this.

[SmellyGeekBoy]

The sad thing is that we've lived through all of this with Internet Explorer. I'd be willing to be that we will once more when Chrome stagnates and something bigger and better comes along...

[userbinator]

I'd be willing to be that we will once more when Chrome stagnates and something bigger and better comes along...

IE was overtaken by FF at a time when there was less complexity in browsers and MS wasn't really into the sort of feature-racing that's happening today; Google has already achieved an effective monopoly-by-complexity with its control over web standards and constant churn and feature addition under that "push the web forward" excuse. It has used its resources to make a moving target and keep it moving, making it impossible for others to even try to catch up. MS tried with Edge and gave up.

I really don't like this, because unless the population manages to change its viewpoint completely and think "better" is not "bigger", I highly doubt Chrome will ever "stagnate".

[laumars]

> MS wasn't really into the sort of feature-racing that's happening today;

I agree with your post except for the bit quoted above. At that time Microsoft had already won the browser war and was then using that to lock people into Windows via ActiveX controls and such like. So there was feature-racing -- of sorts. It's just those features all lived outside of the web browser engine

[The_rationalist]

Why would chromium stagnate? Everybody can improve it, even mozilla.

[Santosh83]

And that is truly disturbing, because it is not an implausible future where even Mozilla is finally compelled to rebase Firefox upon yet another Chromium fork, just to stay relevant with the fast-moving, extremely complex web ecosystem. Of course if their market share improves then they'll still be able to exercise relatively significant influence upon the Web's direction, but the big challenge in front of them is expanding their user base. They're in a kind of catch-22 situation I feel... it is going to be difficult to reclaim the slipping ground.

[The_rationalist]

I wish this future for mozilla but I expect them to make that decision when it will be too late for them.