Firefox user since before it was called Firefox.
Firebird gang
There’s a Phoenix metaphor here somewhere
Mozilla browser was great.
Netscape was amazing
I remember using Netscape to search the web with Altavista way back in the day.
Google accounts for some 80%+ of Mozilla’s revenue. Firefox struck a different kind of deal with the devil than chromium browsers, but Google is the one pulling the strings.
Do you have any examples of how google is pulling the strings at Mozilla ?
For an example, Mozilla being forced to use Google Location Services as default even though Mozilla has its own. I am also a Firefox user but it always makes me wonder what other TnCs forced on Mozilla as part of the search deal.
go to about:config and type “google”
Sshhhhhh you’ll destroy the narrative!
What narrative? Firefox is the only browser google doesn’t fully control. It’s the only choice if you don’t support the google monopoly.
Well, there’s Safari but that’s for apple only, and technically they don’t really control chromium-based browsers - they’d have to do yet another cycle of EEE to actually kill of competition. And firefox can survive without google for a while by downsizing massively and focusing on chinese market as they still have that baidu deal AFAIK.
But overall, yes, Google has in fact cemented themselves as the middlemen for all things internet, on both mobile and desktop.
For default search.
I’m sure you’re aware Firefox isn’t in the search market. They are in the browser market and need to fund browser development. They’ve used Yahoo in the past and will go with whatever deal gives the best value. They could go with Bing if they wanted.
Funding from them does not mean control, and your insinuation is misleading and false.
Bit of a weird thought, but I wonder also if they see Mozilla as a sort of controlled opposition too? As in, keep Firefox around so they don’t get in trouble over antitrust or something like that?
Mozilla.org is the corpse of Netscape that Google keeps animated so that it looks like they have competition when they really don’t.
The existence of Firefox is something they can point to to say they’re not a monopoly. The fact that 80% of the revenue Firefox receives is from Google means that Google effectively controls them. Mozilla has to weigh every decision against the risk that it will cause Google to withdraw their funding. That severely restricts the choices they’re willing to consider.
Firefox is only 5% of browsers, so it really doesn’t matter to Google if that 5% of users considers using a different search engine. Because of the Firefox user base, many of them will have already switched search engines, and because Google is such a dominant player, many others would switch back to Google if the browser used a different default. So, maybe 10% of that 5% would permanently switch search engines if Google stopped paying. Is that really worth billions per year? Probably not. But, pretending like you have competitors in the browser space and using that to push back on antitrust, that’s definitely worth billions per year.
Google makes something like $100 Billion a year in search ad revenue. 5% of that is $5 Billion.
It’s odd that people think Google is incredibly worried about having too large of a market share in the browser market (which they don’t make any money from) yet their 92% market share in searches is not concerning at all in terms of the potential for regulation.
The truth is nobody does anti-trust anymore (though they definitely should) and the big corporations aren’t worried at all about it. Google makes Chrome, Android, and pays Mozilla because they want to maintain dominance in the search market. Which is the thing they make money form. What they pay Mozilla is a drop in the bucket compared to what they pay Apple to be the default search engine on their devices.
Google doesn’t directly make money from their browser, but controlling their browser means they lock in the thing that drives their revenues. They can always test it out against all their ads and make sure it works, putting out a fix if it ever doesn’t. We’ve also seen recently how they’re trying to make it so people can’t run ad blockers, something they could only consider if they lock down the entire browser market.
I disagree.
Google doesn’t “control” mozilla in that way.
They can always test it out against all their ads and make sure it works, putting out a fix if it ever doesn’t.
They could do this even if they weren’t funding mozilla. Ad’s aren’t exactly reliant on bleeding edge web standards anyway. You’re thinking about tracking tech, which they don’t have any input in for firefox.
We’ve also seen recently how they’re trying to make it so people can’t run ad blockers
Well yes, and mozilla was quite vocal in their opposition, demonstrating that Google doesn’t have much control over them.
Could you expand on this
Google pays Mozilla in exchange for google being Firefox’s default search engine
Yeah that’s hardly a game changer.
I see that as an okay compromise. Anyone who cares will also know how to change it easily.
And I actually wouldn’t have a problem with using google for searches if it weren’t for the fact they constantly do the captcha thing when I’m connecting via VPN. Captchas for a simple google search.
I’m not against google making money off of a good product, but they’ve enshittified it too much to be considered good now.
Bruh, I just checked google.com again after a long time… Damn, I forgot that it was so annoying. Have been using ddg for years — no problem.
Stop using public VPN, problem solved.
A lot of people don’t bother with changing defaults and corpos like Google, Microsoft, and the likes are well aware of this which is why Google pays Mozilla hundreds of millions of dollars per year to be the default search engine.
I understand the compromise at the surface level but the implications just result in Google gaining more power and data, making it harder for “alternatives” to replace it over time which puts us all in an a bad situation when they decide to pull shit like WEI.
That’s a good point, though I still think the average person is already entrenched in Google. Being the default on an alternative browser isn’t really going to make the difference to the average, uncaring individual.
In a perfect world it wouldn’t be necessary but on the bright side Google search is already doing enough itself to make the average person want to try something else.
Firefox died long ago.
It was an engine fight, and Mozilla decided not to participate.
Am I crazy for using Opera? I switched from chrome 3 years ago and have enjoyed everything about Opera even their “gamer” browser OperaGX is just a great experience.
You should try Vivaldi. It was made by the founder of Opera and is actually really very good.
Opera is worse than Chrome for privacy.
I haven’t used Opera in a long time, but I used it heavily 20 years ago. Back then you had to pay for it or there was a big ad banner on the toolbar.
It certainly wasn’t always Chromium based, Chrome didn’t come along until 2009 or something. Not sure when that change happened.
If I had to go back to that job I was doing (Internet Help desk) again, I’d consider Opera again. It was fast at navigating an intranet site where all the images were cached locally, but the killer feature for me was the back/forward. If you went back, all the stuff you typed in the form was still there. So you could resubmit it if the session had timed out or there was an issue.
I still use mouse gestures (an Opera thing) via extensions with whatever browser I have used since.
Yea Opera used to be dope but that was a looong time ago
It went downhill when Opera was sold to China and original devs created Vivaldi instead.
The company’s history is not that great, they’ve done some shady shit before. Vivaldi is where the original opera folks are at now.
Yeah, as a long standing fan of Opera - fuck Opera of today and their Chinese overlords.
Well shit…
Whats that squirrel??
Duck duck go browser is also very good.
Didn’t they allow Microsoft telemetry through the tracking protection since they rely on Microsoft for all sorts of stuff despite their “avoid big tech” advertising? There’s so many better options, like Librewolf, Mullvad, Orion, Mull, even Brave if you really want a Chromium browser.
Pretty sure that’s chromium too. I’d rather just use Chrome though. I’m pretty sure duck duck go sells user data. At least with Google they tell you what they use your data for instead of acting like they are saving the world.
Their entire business model is just reading Google’s TOS and finding some small detail to make a big deal out of that really means nothing.
Duckduckgo doesn’t have anywhere near the capacity to collect data that google does, and their ads are keyword based, rather than being influenced by other data. Their search engine is really the only thing I’d recommend using however since their add-on and browser don’t offer anything that others don’t.
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It breaks every site and is the bane of companies existence lol.
Huh? Why?
Because of all their “anti tracking” stuff just borks scripts that aren’t nefarious but necessary for sites to function. Its a pain when customers use it and think that our site is broken when it’s just duck duck go
Wait STEAM AND DISCORD ARE CHROMIUM?
Visual studio code is chromium.
dies
Anything that uses the electron framework uses chromium.
Although in the case of steam they are using the Chromium Embedded Framework(CEF) to embed the steam store into their interface, as well as to power the steam overlays browser.
The worst part is, the CEF really is the only way to implement browsers inside other interfaces. OBS uses it too for it’s browser source. There really isn’t any alternatives - if only FF could create it’s own Firefox Embedded Framework to compete, but that’s probably not in the cards due to costs. Mozilla is a not for profit relying on donations and grants.
And electron is a method for creating desktop app interfaces using website code, it’s used for the interfaces of Discord, slack, teams, Streamlabs (yeah they ripped out the OBS Qt interface and replaced it with electron), and sooo many other modern applications that it’s hard to make track of. And it uses essentially the same thing as CEF at its heart.
Basically any website can be wrapped in an electron wrapper to produce a standalone desktop app.
Yeah, but Google putting their fuckery in it is the issue.
Yeah, just wrappers. Steam wasn’t untill fairly recently, but they were slowly switching to it for some time.
Not a good idea if Google be pulling some shit
Yeah, it’s weird for them to rely on Google considering how hard Valve has worked to make Steam independent from MS.
I don’t think it’s too weird. So many apps today are just Chromium wrappers. It’s just easier to use a premade base, plus you don’t have to develop the web and desktop version independently, they can literally be the same code.
While that’s fairly typical and good practice in dev circles, we’re talking about a company that’s single handedly elevated an entire OS to prevent a big company taking too much power. I think the key here is they don’t really compete with Google.
Chromium isn’t technically Google
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I mean what would stop a company from doing that? I get why they don’t, because a lot of changes and fixes get implemented into the code from various companies/individuals, but if you had enough manpower and money, it could be done.
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Still serves googles goal of control over the internet.
It’s maintained by Google, which is pretty much the same thing - in the end, they get to decide what features get implemented and what doesn’t make the cut. Sure we can fork it, and we can make our own, but in the end as long as their code is the main base, they have a lot of control over all the different forks, as usually the forks will have to keep rebasing their code off of new updates to stay as secure and up to date as possible.
It probably doesn’t matter for what they do. There isn’t really much need for an ad blocker on a browser that’s going to a store page which is essentially an ad for a product in and of itself. A steam user actually wants that store page to load, why would there be a need for a store page?
And they could transition to something else if Google does something that affects them.
So that’s why it runs worse now.
It all makes sense
Yep, just like slack, spotify, and anything else looking fancy while wasting few gigs of ram to just open. They’re built on electron, which is practically chrome without tabs.
I wish they could bring back mozilla prism. Like all this electron web app shit is popular, so we don’t we use the faster and more efficient browser engine and use gecko!
Speaking of Mozilla, the project they dropped and fired all of their employees working on it all while giving CEO a million dollar raise, the same one that provided most of the performance improvements in the Quantum update, Servo is targetting being an embedded solution. https://floss.social/@servo/110780173168763670
Nice, I didn’t know Servo was still being developed!
This whole Chromium fiasco is partially Mozilla’s fault, they let Google grab the embedded browser monopoly by making Firefox hard to componentize and letting Electron take all the market share. No competition.
Do I still use chromium when I visit the steam website via firefox?
No, its the steam app that runs on Chromium.
There’s also Arc for Mac. Nice but still too chromeish for me. Thank god there’s Safari
Safari might have better performance than others but I feel like the UI is pretty clunky, and as a développer, god I HATE safari and all their differences with every other major browser.
A developer friend told me the same… it’s a shame because it’s so handy with continuity between devices and all. Probably I’m just used to it
There’s Orion browser, which is made by the Kagi search people. It is based on Safari, has vertical tabs, has built in ad blocking, and supports Chrome and Firefox extensions so you can install uBO. It doesn’t fix the developer issues, but you might like it better than Safari, and it’s not Chromium based like Arc browser.
Real talk, if even Steam is Chromium-based, how can I escape? Is there a non- or less-evil, but similar launcher? I’m trying to shift away, but it’s really difficult since everyone I know uses at least one, usually many of those programs.
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I’ve been using Bromite too.
Can anyone suggest a site to sideload firefox? Very unsure about what’s trustworthy any more.
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Thanks for the info.
Android, correct. And I avoid g! so I don’t have a g! play acct. I do have F-droid so I will check out those you suggest.
I really like Mull and it’s on FDroid I’m pretty sure. It’s a good Firefox fork.
If you use Firefox nightly (and maybe some of the other beta branches too, I’m not sure), there’s a way to get any extension, they just might not work properly. I haven’t really had issues with nightly, despite it being such a bleeding-edge build - although I would recommend keeping a backup browser since sometimes it decides to just stop working
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I hate everything you said here.
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You can install any extension you want on the Dev version and some forks like mull by setting a custom extension collection. It’s a bit of a pain but it works.
Safari still uses the WebKit engine… right?
Google Chrome used to use WebKit before switching to their own weird engine that a whole bunch of other browsers now use.
Maybe apple will re-launch safari on windows, now that google is being a dickhead.
Mozilla doesn’t make it as easy to use the Firefox / Gecko engine in other projects, which doesn’t help for adoption.
I’m way out of the loop, but is the issue that they actively make it difficult to use the rendering engine or is it that the cost to modularize it isn’t worth the payoff to Firefox itself? A subtle but important distinction IMO. I always felt it was the second, but maybe I was being dense?
They don’t try to make it difficult, but they make code changes that make it clear they have no concern for anyone who might be trying to use the engine anywhere other than in a retail build of Firefox, without providing things like deprecation warnings or upgrade paths.
Back in the days it was possible to use Firefox engine to create apps. It was called XUL. Heck, Firefox itself was just a XUL app! But then they decided it wasn’t worth it for whatever reason and now their engine is tightly integrated.
I believe it might be still possible with UXP - a hard fork made for Pale Moon project.
Pale Moon is based on a derivative of the Gecko rendering engine (Goanna) and builds on a hard fork of the Mozilla code (mozilla-central) called UXP, a XUL-focused application platform that provides the underpinnings of several XUL applications including Pale Moon. This means that the core rendering functions for Pale Moon may differ from Firefox (and other browsers) and websites may display slightly different in this browser.
Firefox is kept alive by Google default search money AFAIK otherwise why don’t they sue google for showing different search results page in firefox
It’s sad. Google basically owns the internet
I don’t believe this has been the case for years?
It’s still the case, at least for Firefox on Android
They do have an extension that forces the new search results page, but I’ve noticed it freezes the browser if I tap on an image result, so I have it disabled.
I completely forgot I had added that extension (back when Google actually looked ugly on Firefox on Android without it) just disabled and oh my god not only does it not freeze it actually feels usable again (I hate the weird AI suggested tabs at the top in the chromium UI).
Ah yeah, seems not in every country! Had to go through 2017 bloomberg articles to find out lol
Steam is chromium, in every device/OS?
