Microsoft Guy: Mozilla Should Give Up on Firefox and Go with Chromium Too

Megalith

Megalith

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When Microsoft announced it would scrap Edge's EdgeHTML rendering engine for Chromium in December, Mozilla CEO Chris Beard was quick to call it a horrible idea that gave Google more power, reducing competition and choice. Microsoft Program Manager Kenneth Auchenberg has now chimed in with what he believes is the harsh reality: “The web is dominated by Chromium, if they really *cared* about the web they would be contributing instead of building a parallel universe that's used by less than 5%?”

If Chromium had near-monopoly market share, developers would only need to build their sites and apps to work with Chromium, he said, projecting a return to the pre-Firefox 2000s when Microsoft's Internet Explorer had a monopoly on browsers. Few people agreed with Auchenberg, including engineers from both Mozilla and Chromium. Long-serving Mozillian Asa Dotzler was not impressed. "Just because your employer gave up on its own people and technology doesn't mean that others should follow," Dotzler replied to Auchenberg.
 
I switched back to Firefox about 6 months ago. No regrets here.
I've never done much web development. I do recall having to detect if a browser was IE in the past for what I think was JavaScript code - I'm going back in time 12+ years ago, so my memory is a bit hazy. It was related to some ajax calls we were working on. Anyway, it did cost the company time and effort to support multiple platforms.
Still, I like having another platform that can innovate without being constrained by Google.
 
Akin to agricultural monoculture--one virus/disease can wipe out the whole thing--so much easier to hack into the databases and create chaos and confusion. Nah, keep Firefox as a variable just in case.
 
Google is going to become the monopoly of the internet. Like how cable companies control TV
By the time it happens, it'll be too late to do anything about it
 
Now is an operating system/software giant Mircosoft actually kissing Sauron Google's ass?

I'll keep Mozilla-based browsers on my PC.

And I'm glad that there's no Edge on Windows 10 LTSB.
 
I could swear this exact "news" was covered a week ago already. Well maybe it was somewhere else.
 
Didn't Microsoft once say something very similar, for a similar reason (i.e. share percentage), about Linux? Hmmm...
 
The problem is that current browsers have all but given up on standards compliance. This is why web developers need per browser CSS style sheets.

If the browser makers - all of them - were doing their shit right, CSS style sheets for browser compatibility would not be needed. Any standards compatible browser would render the same webpage the same no matter what.

So, the problem is not that Mozilla is "creating an alternate universe for the 5%", the problem is that all browsers have strayed away from standards compliance.
 
Yeah, I trust everything MS says.
Be sure it will end well ;)
 
Don't know too much about Chromium yet, but Chrome has become a hot mess imho, privacy issues aside.

I'll stick with Firefox for now thank you.

I'll research and fiddle with something Chromium based at a later date.
 
If Chromium had near-monopoly market share, developers would only need to build their sites and apps to work with Chromium,
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Soooo .. IE6? That didn't work out well. Once Chrome came onto the scene and IE started to lose it's marketshare, the web became inherently broken because Chrome did things to the accepted standard, IE didn't. Remnants of this still exist in most websites, just view-source and you'll see the if-IE code block. This is also why EdgeHTML has faultered, because it's a ground-up build from scratch of the standards and was falling behind implementation (view caniuse to see this). The original IE code base was so non-standard compliant, they couldn't even fork it to make the new browser as it was developmentally cheaper to start from scratch.

That's the problem with consolidating into one browser, they can start to take liberties with the accepted standard and make their own. It'll work now, but it'll break things when the market changes.
 
Things like this make me wish I could remove Edge. If I wanted to use Chrome, I would use Chrome but, I do not.
 
That's nice, except that I had Opera (Chromium based) bork on two key websites for me lately (one a banking website, the other my cell phone provider).
Firefox worked out of the box.

Still, as a general comment, a sad state of affairs that users are required to keep multiple browsers around to deal with various incompatibilities.
 
Chromium sucks dick. I’ve been a user of Opera for probably a decade now. As soon as they switched to being chromium based it was an immediate and noticeable decline of performance and functionality. Good on Mozilla for still doing their own thing. It’s the backup browser I use.
 
Nolan7689 said:
Chromium sucks dick. I’ve been a user of Opera for probably a decade now. As soon as they switched to being chromium based it was an immediate and noticeable decline of performance and functionality. Good on Mozilla for still doing their own thing. It’s the backup browser I use.
Click to expand...

I agree. I used to use Opera as well back when they had the tab stacking feature. It went to shit after switching to chromium. I will stick with Firefox.
 
Microsoft of all people should know that without healthy competition, the dominant product will either stagnate, or easily move in directions the market doesn't actually care for.

It's more work to support two or more similar products, but whatever. I'd rather support chrome and Firefox than have chrome be the next IE, complete with Google losing interest, putting the team in support mode and not doing anything interesting for years and years. It's also nice to have options when one browser doesn't work for some reason, I can try another.
 
I have been running Firefox since somewhere around version 2 or 3 and I don't plan on changing anytime soon. I do miss my old legacy Firefox add-ons but other than that, I haven't had any issues with it. There is just no reason to go to another browser as Firefox does everything I need a browser to do. I advise that the Firefox devs not drink the Google cool-aid.

I do find it kind of funny that I am the one who approves access rights to use Chrome at my company (150k+ people) and I don't even use it, not even at work. I use IE for ~95% of my work use (Firefox for the rest, most of our business sites were designed to work in IE) but 100% Firefox at home.
 
I wonder if Google let MS get their fingers in the data mining pie in exchange for this cuckery.
 
5150Joker said:
I wonder if Google let MS get their fingers in the data mining pie in exchange for this cuckery.
Click to expand...

They just forked the windows 10 data collection straight to google so they can use googles stuff to save a few employees and a couple of bucks. MS is going to end up with no technology of their own.
 
MV75 said:
They just forked the windows 10 data collection straight to google so they can use googles stuff to save a few employees and a couple of bucks. MS is going to end up with no technology of their own.
Click to expand...

What do you expect when they've already outsourced The CEO job.
 
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You wouldn't post something like that on Twitter unless you were looking for a fight. Or had really poor judgement.
 
Chrome has gotten just as bad as Edge lately. Its a giant resource hog and it getting slower every new iteration.
 
With Google quietly planning to bork their browser plugin landscape, a lot of devs (like moi) are concerned about future compatibility of hardware devices accessed from within the sandbox like fingerprint scanners and signature pads. Heck, at work we are still supporting IE8 because an old financial system used by a partner company uses embedded ActiveX controls.

There are things like local websockets and Firebreath that will carry the burden in the short term, but suffice to say that Google is trying to destroy the entire business web application model that has been evolving globally for two decades while Mozilla has been a stalwart devops ally. I hope they remain so.

I can only deduce that Google wants to kill the PC entirely.
 
while i do use chrome just for the convenience factor, i personally wouldn't want to see firefox bend the knee to google and move to chromium.. we need to make sure there's competition in the browser market.
 
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