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Comment by dlcarrier

1 year ago

Last time the DOJ declared a web browser monopoly, they lost the case on appeal, then the web browser does on its own.

The problem isn't within Google. They aren't doing anything substantial to lock users into Chrome. The problem is unforced errors on the part of both Apple and Mozilla creating awful web browsers that aren't worth using.

> The problem isn't within Google. They aren't doing anything substantial to lock users into Chrome.

I feel this is meant to trigger people into reacting and causing a flame war.

Google has been making its own web properties work well on Google Chrome while making them perform poorer or make them break on other browsers. Google Chrome optimizes for Google, not the web, and certainly not “the open web”.

Safari and Firefox are capable web browsers. Where do people get this outlandish take from?

  • Capable is a interesting word choice. Capable means something meets a bare minimum for success. A and B are great. C is fantastic. D is arguably first class. E is capable. When making a free choice, I want the best one, so any lackluster review feels like one of those southern backhanded compliments, getting the message across without insulting it in polite company. Capable perfectly describes my feelings towards Firefox and Safari.

  • Can't speak for Safari, but Firefox has never been anything but a dumpster fire for me. Constant reminders about updates and a UI that slows my computer to a crawl no matter what I do. Yes, I open many tabs and don't use a turbocharged laptop, but the same applies to my Chrome use with next to no problems, so really, fuck you Firefox for not adjusting after decades, as per possible user needs. Chrome seems to manage it, so why can't the Mozilla people with their own expertise and funds?

    Many new versions and updates of FF that I've tried have claimed to be much smoother and more efficient, only for the exact same shit to start happening across the years and multiple laptops used.

    • When was the last time you tried? I have a 2012 Mac mini that runs it like a champ and has done so for a very long time. I only have a handful of plugins but uBlock Origin is one of them.

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You're so close to getting it. Indeed, the problem with monopolies is they make it difficult to create effective competitors. And that's precisely why they're not allowed to do those things and why Google is in the position it's in for doing those kinds of things.

> The problem is unforced errors on the part of both Apple and Mozilla creating awful web browsers that aren't worth using.

This feels like quite an exaggeration. I’ve used Chromium-derived browsers only sparingly in the past decade, with Safari and Firefox instead getting the bulk of my usage depending on the platform.

Generally if something doesn’t work under those browsers, the top two causes are unnecessary user agent sniffing with the site working fine once I pretend to be Chrome or the dev simply not testing against anything but Chrome. It’s been vanishingly rare that the browsers themselves were the cause of an issue.

Not used Firefox in ages, but what’s the matter with Safari? It sips battery and cpu cycles on my macs.

  • None. Safari is the best browser I’ve used by a long margin.

    • Safari is really good.

      But I have to admit extensions are really lacking, both the infrastructure for installing them and which extensions are available.

      I now use Orion which is based on Safari but has native vertical tabs (although not native vertical hierarchical tabs, or support for dumping them as markdown).

  • On the developer side I've always found Safari messy to support with out of date APIs

    Feels like Apple doesn't really care about it

Well, last time, the presidential election changed executive support as well. That would make this significant since it’s a new Justice Dept.

  • This suit began under the last Trump administration. If there was a Google-friendly administration, it was Obama's.

    What's disappointing to Google is that all of their kowtowing to the Biden administration's "content shaping" ended up worth nothing in the end. Harris would have rewarded them for that help, but Trump of course hates them for it because it was largely directed at him.

    • This is plain nonsense. Trump got bad search result because he's literally terrible and wholly unqualified to be president.