[dcow]

Yes, it obviously works well. I use it occasionally too. The question is why, culturally, there hasn’t been the same push towards something else when all the reasons we migrated off IE now apply to Chrome. Maybe Google permanently won the “browser placement on the internet’s homepage” game?

[JohnBooty]

I'm saying all of this as a FF diehard since before it was named FF... right up until today. I'll use FF until they pry it from my fingers.

Back in the IE6 vs. FF days... IE was inferior in every way. IE was crashy, had no tabs, pathetic/hostile developer tools, insecure, poor support for open web standards, etc.

But today?

The difference is that Chrome is really good, with great developer tools. It's a great user experience.

FF only really wins in terms of better extension API (allowing things like uBlock Origin) and the "moral superiority" of not being created by an advertising company, and serving as a bulwark against a browser engine monoculture. And among real privacy diehards, they're probably using something like PiHole which makes uBO perhaps superfluous for them.

But it doesn't out that even developers who should know better apparently DGAF about those things.

[crtasm]

There's a huge amount of ads/annoyances/3rd party embeds/etc. you can't block just using DNS. PiHole complements uBO but isn't a replacement for it.

[tim333]

Yeah that's mostly my thinking, IE6 was a pain in the neck that deserved to die. (no 8 on this list https://www.pcworld.com/article/535838/worst_products_ever.h...)

Chrome is fine.

Firefox is kind of mixed. I use it sometimes. One of the things everyone recommended was tree style tabs so I got those and was kind of amazed that to make them look ok you are supposed to get some custom css in your editor and send it to some obscure folder deep in the file system. And now the appearance has changed because some update worked differently with the hacked together css? That seems kind of clunky. Though maybe I'm doing it wrong.

The containers thing is cool.

[JohnBooty]

How do you feel about Google effectively controlling the web, since they control the browser with overwhelming market share?

Is that a factor, or...?

[tim333]

From the browser point of view I don't really worry. I do have various other browsers and such like if Google were to be annoying. Their browser share has dropped from a peak around 90% to more like 67% I think.

I am a bit wary about their dominant position in advertising, though people still google stuff and see google ads if they use other browsers.

[JohnBooty]

    Their browser share has dropped from a peak around 90% to more like 67% I think.

Those browsers gaining market share are based on Google's engine, though.

That still gives Google de facto control of the web, or at the very least control of web standards.

Those companies building atop Chromium can maintain their own forks of the core rendering engine, but that is a very heavy burden indeed, and Google can always decide to move off of Chromium onto their own private fork and leave everybody else on their own.