Mozilla CEO: Microsoft's Adoption of Chromium Is "Terrible" for the Web

[Megalith]

In a blog post titled “Goodbye, EdgeHTML,” Mozilla CEO Chris Beard shared his thoughts about Microsoft’s decision to adopt Chromium, calling it a “terrible” decision that “gives Google more ability to single-handedly decide what possibilities are available to each one of us.” In light of a growing monopoly, Beard explains that companies such as Mozilla are more important than ever for promoting competition and choice.

From a social, civic and individual empowerment perspective ceding control of fundamental online infrastructure to a single company is terrible. This is why Mozilla exists. We compete with Google not because it’s a good business opportunity. We compete with Google because the health of the internet and online life depend on competition and choice. They depend on consumers being able to decide we want something better and to take action.

 

[Savi]

i bet most still wont use it lol

 

[1_rick]

The thing is, he's not wrong. The last time we had one mega-dominant browser, technology stagnated for years. I don't see this capitulation by MS as a good thing, net, even though it'll make web developers' lives easier.

 

[Dick Johnson]

The thing is, he's not wrong. The last time we had one mega-dominant browser, technology stagnated for years. I don't see this capitulation by MS as a good thing, net, even though it'll make web developers' lives easier.

He's right, but, he's also partly to blame for this problem. Mozilla has spent the past few years destroying everything that made Firefox popular in the first place and driving users away.

 

[Vercinaigh]

He's right, but, he's also partly to blame for this problem. Mozilla has spent the past few years destroying everything that made Firefox popular in the first place and driving users away.

Hardly, they have spent the time fixing long standing issues that require a re-write and re-think of existing systems. It's a hard decision but one that has to be done to eliminate old spaghetti code that limits and bloats your software. Yes this means there is feature regressions for awhile but they are steadily correcting that and using a popular standard doing it, there is -nothing- wrong with that. If not for Vivaldi i'd be using Firefox, and was up until Vivaldi and it's still my back up and been considering going back to it.

 

[Spire3660]

Oh Mozilla, you are jsut as bad. Your browser on android is filled with modals and tips you cant turn off. Your homepage is gross. You do all the same dirty shit everyone else is doing.

 

[spintroniX]

firefox runs way learner on my system than chrome so that's what I use.

Never touched edge, except to download chrome, before I switched to FF.

 

[JargonGR]

Oh Mozilla, you are jsut as bad. Your browser on android is filled with modals and tips you cant turn off. Your homepage is gross. You do all the same dirty shit everyone else is doing.

No they are not and more than 50% of my income comes through web design/development while I deal with all browsers daily. I have yet to find a browser that can handle what Firefox can and reliably. I am using Developer Edition along with the other versions. Chrome (and most Google software) is the worst piece of shit I have ever come across and I really wonder how people use it when everything else (besides Edge) is much better. My two main browsers for heavy use is Firefox & Opera.

Ok I got it out of my chest and yes I am biased.

 

[Dk975]

I use Firefox on windows and Brave on Android.

 

[trparky]

The thing is, he's not wrong. The last time we had one mega-dominant browser, technology stagnated for years. I don't see this capitulation by MS as a good thing, net, even though it'll make web developers' lives easier.

But the difference between then (when Internet Explorer was king) and now (where Chromium leads the browser pack) is that one was closed source and one is open source. Big difference there. People can contribute towards the betterment of Chromium.

 

[OutOfPhase]

FF has really become quite good again, now that they've dropped the "we see no need for multiprocess, or 64 bit native" mindset. Rather than getting randomly updated UIs, they are really making the browser better.

 

[Heavens]

I've been a Chrome user for quite a while ever since I switched from Firefox and Opera before that.
Opera kinda fell apart back in the day, Firefox got really bloaty, hence the switch to Chrome, and now I've switched to Vivaldi for it's customisation options.

While I can see the need for multiple browsers, especially with Googles telemetry craze, I don't really see why they can't all use the same rendering engine.
Hell I've worked on a website redesign about 8 years ago and the customer demanded compatibility with IE7-10, Firefox, Chrome and Safari. It was a nightmare just because every engine has their own quirks when it comes to applying the HTML/CSS standards.
Maybe we'll finally end up with one CSS to rule them all.

Let them compete by making a browser that doesn't track your sleep rythm instead of one that displays websites differently because they have a different interpretation of W3C standards.

 

[PenGunn]

I have Firefox on the left screen and it just does text and pictures. I have Chrome on the left screen and it does video. This has worked really well for quite a few years.

 

[Biznatch]

No they are not and more than 50% of my income comes through web design/development while I deal with all browsers daily. I have yet to find a browser that can handle what Firefox can and reliably. I am using Developer Edition along with the other versions. Chrome (and most Google software) is the worst piece of shit I have ever come across and I really wonder how people use it when everything else (besides Edge) is much better. My two main browsers for heavy use is Firefox & Opera.

Ok I got it out of my chest and yes I am biased.

I've heard from web devs that edge is by far the easiest to program for at this point. Work with multiple teams and chrome/safari are their most hated browsers.

 

[fjmccloud]

Hardly, they have spent the time fixing long standing issues that require a re-write and re-think of existing systems. It's a hard decision but one that has to be done to eliminate old spaghetti code that limits and bloats your software.

If I had a nickel every time someone said that! Heck, they promised that when gecko was new, too! I challenge you to look at source code tarball sizes and show me this reduction in code.

firefox-2.0.0.14-source.tar.bz2 is 36632 KB
firefox-48.8.0esr.source.tar.xz is 180888 KB
firefox-52.9.0esr.source.tar.xz is 209070 KB firefox-60.3.0esr.source.tar.xz is 262052 KB

The trend is clear.
They also promise me every new pile of bits is somehow more "secure' than the last pile of bits, despite adding more bits at the same time. And changing the user interface without my consent. (...or, in the case of linux, the font rendering, which might be harfbuzz's fault but I'm not sure. It's not enough to turn off anti-aliasing and cleartype. I wish I could also turn off sub-pixel positioning. This seems to be unique to firefox. I just want clean pixels.)

I'm not touching quantum. Ever.
The "our way or the highway" approach to software design is really getting tiresome.

 

[dgz]

If I had a nickel every time someone said that! Heck, they promised that when gecko was new, too! I challenge you to look at source code tarball sizes and show me this reduction in code.

firefox-2.0.0.14-source.tar.bz2 is 36632 KB
firefox-48.8.0esr.source.tar.xz is 180888 KB
firefox-52.9.0esr.source.tar.xz is 209070 KB firefox-60.3.0esr.source.tar.xz is 262052 KB

The trend is clear.
They also promise me every new pile of bits is somehow more "secure' than the last pile of bits, despite adding more bits at the same time. And changing the user interface without my consent. (...or, in the case of linux, the font rendering, which might be harfbuzz's fault but I'm not sure. It's not enough to turn off anti-aliasing and cleartype. I wish I could also turn off sub-pixel positioning. This seems to be unique to firefox. I just want clean pixels.)

I'm not touching quantum. Ever.
The "our way or the highway" approach to software design is really getting tiresome.

Quantum is by far the best browser out there. I prefer chromium's dev tools better but that's entirely due to a few arbitrary decisions on Mozilla's part, not technical merits. Firefox IS by far the fastest and most efficient web browser at the moment.

What would you recommend?

 

[seanreisk]

"One browser to rule them all ...
One search engine to find them ...
One renderer to display them all, and in the darkness ... "


[Frodo]: "And what?! And in the darkness what?"

[Gandalf]: "I can't read it - the words are behind a graphic, or something, the top of the letters are cut off."

[Frodo]: "View the Source!"

[Gandalf]: "I did, vile hobbit, it's all UNICODE, the developer used some elven UTF that no one has seen for 2,000 years."

 

[toast0]

Quantum is by far the best browser out there. I prefer chromium's dev tools better but that's entirely due to a few arbitrary decisions on Mozilla's part, not technical merits. Firefox IS by far the fastest and most efficient web browser at the moment.

What would you recommend?

w3m is still fast and efficient. It's hard to use on the modern web though.

 

[illli]

It is never a good thing when one (insert whatever) controls 50%+ of the market.

 

[viper1152012]

Although edge isnt loved, I'm not a coder and I don't build web pages for a living.

I use edge for some stuff and chrome for other stuff.

I like my edge landing page and chromed.

But Mozilla and Google did this to themselves.

You can't expect Microsoft to put up with their shit ALL the TIME and not want to throw in the towel.

I say with a heavy heart bye edge.

Now Google and Mozilla can whip out the tape measure and MS can get back to leasing them server space.

 

[Vercinaigh]

If I had a nickel every time someone said that! Heck, they promised that when gecko was new, too! I challenge you to look at source code tarball sizes and show me this reduction in code.

firefox-2.0.0.14-source.tar.bz2 is 36632 KB
firefox-48.8.0esr.source.tar.xz is 180888 KB
firefox-52.9.0esr.source.tar.xz is 209070 KB firefox-60.3.0esr.source.tar.xz is 262052 KB

The trend is clear.
They also promise me every new pile of bits is somehow more "secure' than the last pile of bits, despite adding more bits at the same time. And changing the user interface without my consent. (...or, in the case of linux, the font rendering, which might be harfbuzz's fault but I'm not sure. It's not enough to turn off anti-aliasing and cleartype. I wish I could also turn off sub-pixel positioning. This seems to be unique to firefox. I just want clean pixels.)

I'm not touching quantum. Ever.
The "our way or the highway" approach to software design is really getting tiresome.

Dribble, bigger file size doesn't mean slower, it means bigger file size. you just don't like that your little world changed, it's okay, go use chrome so they can do the same for the same reason, or opera so the same can happen there, or better yet, wow us with your own browser where you never redo anything ever, let us know how that actually works out for you. Also nobody said anything about reduction, said re-write and rethink, I challenge you to prove that wrong. You can't, just stop, you look really silly right now. Anyone who has done long term significant projects knows that re works are not only common, but a necessity to stay relevant as the science of programming progresses and there is better and smarter, faster ways to do things, or worse, hardware or operating systems depreciate old ways of doing things. You just sound like a upset child who got his milk bottle taken and is looking for the dog to blame.

 

[Laowai]

The thing is, he's not wrong. The last time we had one mega-dominant browser, technology stagnated for years. I don't see this capitulation by MS as a good thing, net, even though it'll make web developers' lives easier.

Don't worry about that. Google will continually seek out/develop/employ the latest and greatest tech designed to track your every thought and sell them to the highest bidder(s).

 

[MMitch]

Main complaint with Edge is/was that every major windows updates, favorites are gone and settings are back to default. Fooled me 3 times before I gave up, back to Chrome with FF as backup. I did like the black loading page in between pages that Edge provided though.

 

[earnolmartin]

As much as I hate IE and Edge (and never use them), at least it was a third option (different engine). The major players are only Firefox and Chrome today. The problem with everyone using the Chrome engine is that Google forces and makes up new standards and restrictions all the time. Apps are constantly broken by their new standards, and there's little common sense left at Google. With only two major players at the table, the balance is lost. Google will continue to make things worse for everyone while collecting more and more data. Mozilla is usually left to implement the crap that Google decides but users do NOT want.

The world is getting worse day by day.

 

[mbelue]

If Microsoft has chosen Firefox and it's new core for IE 3.0 he wouldn't be crying.
Sounds like the girl at the prom no one wantsw to dance with.
Microsoft chose a market leader the decision has nothing to do with good code.

Since when had Microsoft given a shit about good code?

 

[Shoganai]

Chrome is cancer. I have no idea why Microsoft is adopting this garbage.

 

[steakman1971]

In Microsoft's defense, this was a good business decision. They were spending money on a product very few people were using. Why not just cauterize the wound and accept that people are not going to switch?
Of course, you can argue about their choice all you want. I am not really a web developer so can't make too many qualified remarks.

 

[trparky]

Chrome is cancer.

Google Chrome may be like cancer but the open source Chromium Project isn't. Look at Vivaldi, it's probably the best browser out there based upon Chromium.

 

[Bowman15]

It is never a good thing when one (insert whatever) controls 50%+ of the market.

This. It doesn't matter how bad you think other browsers are but when you tie in the most market share for browser and search it's not a good thing. I use Firefox as my main browser but maybe Opera can make a comeback?

Knowing MS history on browsers they will find some way to screw it up and tie it into the OS.

 

[StoleMyOwnCar]

Hardly, they have spent the time fixing long standing issues that require a re-write and re-think of existing systems. It's a hard decision but one that has to be done to eliminate old spaghetti code that limits and bloats your software. Yes this means there is feature regressions for awhile but they are steadily correcting that and using a popular standard doing it, there is -nothing- wrong with that. If not for Vivaldi i'd be using Firefox, and was up until Vivaldi and it's still my back up and been considering going back to it.

My problem with it is how they keep getting closer and closer to Chrome's model on their own. Constantly bugging me about updates (with a freaking notification) or just doing them behind my back (which I'm wary about applying because they always broke extensions in the past if I wasn't careful). Swapping their layout to copy Chrome's (and becoming more and more difficult to switch back). Taking out my downloads window in favor of some annoying button I have to click when I want to view all of them. Defaulting history display to an annoying side panel that's even worse than how Chrome does it right now. Not firefox's fault but I also hate how Adblock/Ublock don't just give me an option to easily look at page sources and whatnot and block elements properly with complex CSS rules. Now I have to do it manually.

Firefox at first felt like the browser I always wanted. Everything was super customizeable. Tailored to every specification that I wanted. Then I try updating it because my version is so horribly outdated that web sites with new features start running like crap. I find that half my extensions (or more) have been taken away and it just looked like a Chrome ripoff to me. I mean I used to have the tabs on bottom at one point, and I always liked them below the search bar to begin with. I could keep going on and on.

Stuff like that just annoyed me. I can understand refactoring, but I don't see how this dude could possibly be railing on about Chrome gaining that much traction when they keep copying them more and more to begin with. Because of Google's ecosystem, Chrome also has a huge leg up in many places of convenience. It would remember my information for easy billing entry (a scary thought, but ultimately sped up checkouts quite a bit). I could right click to translate pages from other languages with one click. Firefox has many translate extensions and most of them suck. And I'm sure you can get an extension for the former, but really do you want to trust financial information to an extension author? I found Chrome to just be much faster to browse on, for the most part.

The problem here is Firefox doesn't have anything to set itself apart anymore. Even if it did, it's not fighting Chrome. It's fighting Google and its ecosystem. Firefox's ecosystem is better extensions, but extensions seem to become more and more limited in what they can do, and eventually you just end up with Chrome's neutered versions anyway. At that point, why bother?

I switched back to Firefox anyway. Yeah it's more annoying to use and especially more annoying to check out at stores, but I had to ultimately accept that some things were just meant to be harder if I had other things I cared about, like my privacy. Most people don't care (enough) about that though, and technical specs don't really matter to them.

 

[Calavaro]

Am I the only one that uses Firefox, Opera, Chrome AND Edge on a daily basis?

I do different things in different browser. Basically I let them handle the thing they are good at, and I keep Edge around since some legacy corporate logins STILL wont work on anything but MS stuff.

 

[cyberguyz]

Mozilla's execs are really crying in their beer over this one. I prefer FF over Chrome but just barely. There are things I don't like about both browsers. I hate Edge and IE as they are now though. If M$ can make edge at least as good as Chrome, I would prolly give it a shot to see if it fixes some of Chromes shortcomings.

 

[BloodyIron]

Long since switched to Vivaldi because of Google's ineptitude to fix the "ctrl + shift + q" shortcut. (quit all windows without user prompt).

 

[1_rick]

Main complaint with Edge is/was that every major windows updates, favorites are gone and settings are back to default. Fooled me 3 times before I gave up, back to Chrome with FF as backup. I did like the black loading page in between pages that Edge provided though.

Funky. I don't recall ever seeing that, and I've been in the developer preview program the entire time.

 

[1_rick]

The problem with everyone using the Chrome engine is that Google forces and makes up new standards and restrictions all the time.

Embrace, extend, extinguish, anyone?

 

[ManofGod]

Embrace, extend, extinguish, anyone?

Nope, not this time. (They have nothing to replace it with if they do that.) Also, how come Edge is the only browser that automatically loads the pages and refreshes them when you first open the browser?

Edit: Oops, I was thinking of Microsoft themselves, never mind, carry on.

 

[1_rick]

Edit: Oops, I was thinking of Microsoft themselves

Hah, yeah, I was thinking of Google this time--who already does crap like breaking existing functionality on a whim (so much for the Esc key's "stop everything" functionality, just as one example.)

 

[MMitch]

Funky. I don't recall ever seeing that, and I've been in the developer preview program the entire time.

Check on google, I'm far from alone and the fixes are a joke at best most of the time... Anyway, I just gave up.

 

[1_rick]

Check on google, I'm far from alone and the fixes are a joke at best most of the time... Anyway, I just gave up.

Nah, it's not that I don't believe, you, just that I never saw it. That doesn't mean it doesn't happen but obviously it's not normal. Just out of curiosity did you ever try formatting the drive & starting fresh to see if the problem went away?

 

[MMitch]

Nah, it's not that I don't believe, you, just that I never saw it. That doesn't mean it doesn't happen but obviously it's not normal. Just out of curiosity did you ever try formatting the drive & starting fresh to see if the problem went away?

Well short answer no. Re-imaging for such trivial thing is out of the equation. I mean, I won't lose an evening to use Edge lol, I'll use whatever works until a major update bork my install.