[1vuio0pswjnm7]

"If there are browser features that users want (like tabs) or webs standards that enable Cool Stuff (like modern JS) then users will go out of their way to install browser that support them."

Pretty sure that tabs were introduced by a software developer without any prior request from any user.

Same goes for "Cool Stuff". Few users even know what JS means, except that if they do not use it or disable it, they will constantly be met with pages instructing them, even commanding them, to enable it or use a browser that supports it. These were introduced by software developers on their own initiative. Users will go out of their way to try to make stuff work. If a page instructs them to install some software, then, generally, they will follow the instructioins.

Once users become familiar with something then they will expect it. That is quite different from users asking for something that does not exist. (Usually such requests for features are never filled as they would go against advertisers' interests in web browsers. Users want a web free of ads. Software developers depend on a web full ads. In this regard, users do not get what they want. Software developers do.)

Users have little control over web browsers. Software developers at the advertising companies, e.g., Google, and their business partners, e.g. Mozilla, have the control. The companies serve their own interests and the interests of their customers who purchase online advertising service. Those customers are advertisers, not users.

For example, browsers like Firefox and Chrome have at times hidden the full URL from the user in the address bar. No user ever requested that. Nor were any users asked if they wanted it. Chrome introduced a feature called FLoC. No user ever requested that. Nor was any user asked if they wanted it. The list of "features" like this is ridiculously long.

Users do not get features because they "want" them. They get the features that software developers decide to give them, without prior consultation.

Whether they want the features or not, they generally are stuck with them.

[Gormo]

> Pretty sure that tabs were introduced by a software developer without any prior request from any user.

I'm sure many, many features were introduced by software developers without any prior request from users. Users then selected what software to use based on which of those features they like the best.

This is how most product design works -- features are developed prior to being marketed, and users subsequently validate them or not -- which is analogous to how new biological phenotypes develop from random genetic mutations prior to being filtered through selection pressures.

> Few users even know what JS means, except that if they do not use it or disable it, they will constantly be met with pages instructing them, even commanding them, to enable it or use a browser that supports it. These were introduced by software developers on their own initiative.

And then users validated those introductions of new features and they became standard. This happened with JavaScript, because JavaScript enabled websites to do things users wanted to do. Conversely, the market didn't largely validate Web VBScript, Java applets, and a wide variety of other now-forgotten solutions for adding dynamic content to websites.

> Software developers at the advertising companies, e.g., Google, and their business partners, e.g. Mozilla, have the control.

No, that's very, very incorrect. Vendors can only introduce products and features -- whether or not they stick around and develop further is up to the market, via the complex interplay of end users and site authors.

[bigfudge]

Chromes replacement of Firefox had more to do with aggressive marketing and deliberate poor performance of their web properties like gmail on non-Google browsers. Not sure how much consumer self direction was involved.

[sdwr]

As a user at the time, Chrome just looked better than FF. It was fresh and clean. The logo was brighter, the UI was rounder and clearer.

FF looked like a Windows 98 settings menu by comparison. Tiny, fiddly, cramped controls.

[paulryanrogers]

Also a user at the time. Chrome was barren, empty, and used too much memory. It used tricks to feel faster yet wasn't significantly better for the sites I used. Chrome was also less customizable.

[Gormo]

> Not sure how much consumer self direction was involved.

It was entirely consumer self-direction, as neither browser was preinstalled by default on any platform, and all usage of either was initiated by a deliberate end-user choice.

"Aggressive marketing" indeed only has its effect through "consumer self-direction" as its whole purpose is to persuade end users to make a purposeful decision.

[hobs]

There were huge campaigns where google was paying per install, many of these installs were surreptitious. When you create standards that only play well in your garden then the only people making decisions are you and the devs writing them, the users either play along or cant use CORPORATE_WEB_APP - hence why IE is STILL around today.

[Talanes]

You can do all that, but if you have a noticeable gap in parity on features that users actually care you'll just be the secondary utility browser. Like Internet Explorer traditionally was.

[Gormo]

And yet the current dominance of Chrome, having decisively displaced IE in all use cases except entrenched legacy ones with high switching costs, conclusively disproves the very point you are making: nearly everyone did switch away from IE despite Microsoft doing the exact things you are describing.

[hobs]

The monopoly of Chrome over the marketplace suggests you are wrong, with enough money to move around you can implement AMP for instance, nobody wanted it but everyone wanted the money, so they played along.

[Gormo]

> The monopoly of Chrome over the marketplace suggests you are wrong

It would seem to suggest the exact opposite, since the "monopoly" (sic; actually dominance in a competitive space) you are referring to is the product entirely of user adoption at scale.