zlacker

>Firefox is a perfectly viable alternative to Chrome that very few people use.

The problem is that it isn't.

Do you know why Firefox managed to usurp IE6 in the first place? Because it won the adoption and appeal of tech enthusiasts and professionals. Mom and pop (read: the general population) switched to Firefox from IE6 because their tech nerd kids installed it for them, and the enterprise largely moved off of IE6 dependence because the general population moved off.

But the Firefox today is not the Firefox that defeated IE6. Mozilla steadily eroded and destroyed every single thing tech enthusiasts and professionals loved about Firefox, to the point it practically became just a Chrome ripoff. At that point, why bother? Chrome's right there, the real deal.

Not to mention Mozilla happily takes money from Google with no shame at all so their CEO can get her fat paychecks.

Firefox is not a viable alternative, Firefox is literally controlled opposition to pedantically argue Chrome is not a monopoly. Not even the Intel and AMD x86 duopoly is this blatant.

>>Dalewy+(OP)
Firefox did not defeat IE6. That was Chrome. Firefox has basically been a fringe browser since Netscape imploded.

The original reason Google started the Chrome project was that the stagnation of IE6 was a barrier to implementing the web software they wanted to build. At least that's what they told us.

>>SoftTa+76
No, it was Firefox that defeated IE6. Chrome came and defeated Firefox; Firefox's reign was rather shortlived.

It seems this particular moment in history has been either forgotten or rewritten, judging from this thread and another one from yesterday.

>>Dalewy+m6
This is true. As someone who had a work time card I could fill out on Solaris using Firefox. This the new time card website came out that was “ie” only and we had to log onto a virtual NT server do our time card. Ugh. It was a nightmare. Then slowly Firefox came back. It was short lived majority but I still use it. I rather like it.

>>Dalewy+(OP)
Nope firefox still runs gecko.

It's a small difference, perhaps, but its "my" browser in a way chrome will never be. Blink sucks.

Also, not a clue what you are on about - I don't have an issue with firefox. Chrome is basically for dealing with google stuff, and for the rest of the web I don't care about them.

>>acomje+u8
The "death knoll" was dev tools for chrome - they hired the firefox guy who was doing better work, then you couldn't lift an arm without hitting some web dev thinking they were cool for using chrome.

Firefox got better dev tools and mozilla did random crap for a bit, meanwhile brain-dead devs insisted on continuing to use chrome. When the devs supported it, they started favoring the googlified things.

Honestly it's a terrible browser - we are back to the bad old IE days (almost).

>>smaude+Lf
Which Google stuff requires Chrome? I run even Google sites on Firefox and they seem to run fine.

>>sanxiy+Vp
I've ironically found it's the not Google stuff that only accepts Chrome. Online banking is by far the most prominent of them.

>>sanxiy+Vp
Sometimes Drive stops working for me, trying to download something results in a redirection loop. Clearing the cache sometimes fixes it. I suspect the Firefox anti tracking settings but I haven't bothered to test it.