Comment by jimnotgym
1 year ago
Before Edge, everyone had to install Chrome because the web wouldn't work with IE. It is still the case that some major sites don't work with Firefox either. Edge is as close to a de-Googled Chrome as you can get to work properly. Unfortunately de-Googling meant re-Microsofting
> Unfortunately de-Googling meant re-Microsofting
That's an understatement. Microsoft Edge is, in fact, a more privacy invasive browser than Chrome. And that was a pretty high bar.
In the EU, straight from the get-go, Edge presents users with the IAB interstitial, informing them that Edge is going to share their data with the entire advertising industry. Note that Chrome doesn't do this, as Google only wants you to share data with them, and it's not the browser that asks for consent. Edge's IAB interstitial is filled with dark patterns as well, such as legitimate interests being unlawfully declared.
Edge is also filled with Microsoft's telemetry, which you can't turn off. Every browser instance, of course, comes with a unique ID that's reported to Bing Ads. Using Edge without Bing is fairly difficult. And end-to-end encryption for its synchronization feature isn't supported.
I entirely understand why people want to degoogleify, but picking Bing in that process is fairly stupid.
The web wouldn’t work with IE just because Microsoft had this unique strategy of deviating from standards, having non-working APIs and providing an awful experience to developers. It’s unique.
Firefox compliance is another story, but very mild compared to IE. Chrome also had to deal with compatibility issues when Firefox was the leader, but Mozilla relinquished their leadership position because it was very important to them to fire their CEO / original writer of Javascript for ideological reasons - he had given $1000 to an anti-abortion NGO, which is an unacceptable thoughtcrime. Then they spent their time politicking and not enough coding.
Sounds like the history of browsers is just made of strategic mistakes.
> he had given $1000 to an anti-abortion NGO
That's not what he did. He donated for California's Prop 8, which opposed same-sex marriage, in 2008. I'm personally not judging, as many US progressives have forgotten that during those days, even Obama opposed same-sex marriage. But it's important to get the facts straight, even when being sarcastic.
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> Then they spent their time politicking and not enough coding.
Mozilla's management certainly is guilty of blunders, but I'm pretty sure the developers who have worked on Mozilla don't feel like they've spent time “politicking”.
The failure of Firefox in the marketplace starts from the fact that it's pretty hard to compete with a browser that's funded with more than 1 billion $ per year. And people may not remember much about the launch of Chrome, but it was literally years ahead of its competition. Have a look at its famous comic book, with which it was announced, describing its design and philosophy, and count the years it took for the competition to catch up (across the board, including Safari): https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/
I mean, sure, you can blame that on politics, but I don't think anyone was able to stop the decline and when Brendan Eich resigned, people were already talking about Chrome's hegemony and Firefox dying.
> And people may not remember much about the launch of Chrome
And remember -- the original browser engine that Chrome (+ Safari) came from was KHTML + KJS from the KDE folks, which was doing pretty good at the time considering the development resources available to it
Using your money to help pass a law that binds every person in your state is not a “thoughtcrime”.
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Yeah, I really feel like Brenden pretty much screwed over the entire browser scene by going all political and not doing his heavy lifting of reading the mid 00s political zeitgeist better. Feels like he doomed us all to live under Google's boot for his poorly timed performative activism.
> It is still the case that some major sites don't work with Firefox either.
This comment keeps popping up. Every time I ask the commenter to show me some sites that dont work with Firefox. Nobody has ever shown me one. I think people are stuck in the past here, Firefox has been absolutely fine for about 10 years now.
I have yet to find an actual web site that breaks with Firefox and works with Chrome.
Closest would be Google's Android Flash Tool that uses WebUSB to image an Android phone. But that is more like a browser extensions versus a HTML5 application.
I have had numerous experiences with ZScaler, corporate man-in-the service, breaking web sites with Firefox. I need to use Chromium to upload to Virus Total. ZScaler even likes to brake web sites on Chromium and requires multiple reloads with minutes or hours between refresh.
Microsoft services with ZScaler break easily with Firefox and Chromium but work fine with Edge or MS Teams. Don't know if this intent to push users to Edge or just a correlation with ZScaler.
ZScaler developers, thanks for making my work life living hell with 30s or more latency and lack of ability to properly connect to web services and handle cross-VM HTTP testing.
Ok, I tried to sign up for a Reddit account and it failed over and over on Firefox. Same computer, Chrome worked first time. I guess Reddit wanted to fingerprint my browser in a way that Firefox wouldn't allow.
This is not the only case btw, just a nice clearcut one
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