<story><title>The Firefox Dilemma</title><url>https://blog.tawhidhannan.co.uk/tech-zoomed-out/industry/firefox-dilemma/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>toyg</author><text>I agree, and Chrome did that in one simple way: marketing and monopoly power. They leveraged their position in search and webmail to push people to switch, and hammered the message in mainstream advertising (on buses and newspapers, even in Europe). If they had pushed FF instead of building their own browser, now FF would be in that position - regardless of technical merits (which were minor, and basically boiled down to a single one: process-per-tab, which meant the browser never crashed if a single website misbehaved).&lt;p&gt;FF was not without responsibilities (they got bogged down in backend work on gecko that never really delivered, then got distracted by side bets like FFOS and friends), but without Google&amp;#x27;s other properties and market share, this would never have happened.</text></item><item><author>dTal</author><text>&amp;gt;I think about Chrome’s usurping of Internet Explorer (IE), and I wonder (antitrust and all aside) would Chrome have usurped IE if it wasn’t for IE stagnating? I remember when I was younger and jumped ship to Chrome - personally, it wasn’t about using Chrome because it wasn’t IE, it was about Chrome beating IE in a foot race and offering me a clean user experience.&lt;p&gt;Chrome ate Firefox&amp;#x27;s lunch, not IE&amp;#x27;s. Firefox was the first browser to take a chunk out of IE, in large part because of the stagnation of IE6. People were switching away from IE at a fairly consistent rate.  When Chrome came along, the rate remained the same, but people started switching to Chrome instead of Firefox.&lt;p&gt;This graph shows it clearly (starts a little late to catch Firefox&amp;#x27;s initial bump but you can see the trend): &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;i.imgur.com&amp;#x2F;7bP2pmj.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;i.imgur.com&amp;#x2F;7bP2pmj.png&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kiriakasis</author><text>&amp;gt; which meant the browser never crashed if a single website misbehaved&lt;p&gt;I might have faulty memory, but this is not some minor detail. It is world changing.&lt;p&gt;For young teenager me, Chrome had a vastly better UX than both IE and Firefox when it debuted.&lt;p&gt;(now I prefer Firefox though)</text></comment>
<story><title>The Firefox Dilemma</title><url>https://blog.tawhidhannan.co.uk/tech-zoomed-out/industry/firefox-dilemma/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>toyg</author><text>I agree, and Chrome did that in one simple way: marketing and monopoly power. They leveraged their position in search and webmail to push people to switch, and hammered the message in mainstream advertising (on buses and newspapers, even in Europe). If they had pushed FF instead of building their own browser, now FF would be in that position - regardless of technical merits (which were minor, and basically boiled down to a single one: process-per-tab, which meant the browser never crashed if a single website misbehaved).&lt;p&gt;FF was not without responsibilities (they got bogged down in backend work on gecko that never really delivered, then got distracted by side bets like FFOS and friends), but without Google&amp;#x27;s other properties and market share, this would never have happened.</text></item><item><author>dTal</author><text>&amp;gt;I think about Chrome’s usurping of Internet Explorer (IE), and I wonder (antitrust and all aside) would Chrome have usurped IE if it wasn’t for IE stagnating? I remember when I was younger and jumped ship to Chrome - personally, it wasn’t about using Chrome because it wasn’t IE, it was about Chrome beating IE in a foot race and offering me a clean user experience.&lt;p&gt;Chrome ate Firefox&amp;#x27;s lunch, not IE&amp;#x27;s. Firefox was the first browser to take a chunk out of IE, in large part because of the stagnation of IE6. People were switching away from IE at a fairly consistent rate.  When Chrome came along, the rate remained the same, but people started switching to Chrome instead of Firefox.&lt;p&gt;This graph shows it clearly (starts a little late to catch Firefox&amp;#x27;s initial bump but you can see the trend): &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;i.imgur.com&amp;#x2F;7bP2pmj.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;i.imgur.com&amp;#x2F;7bP2pmj.png&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jcbrand</author><text>&amp;gt; I agree, and Chrome did that in one simple way: marketing and monopoly power.&lt;p&gt;When Chrome came out, it was much faster than Firefox.&lt;p&gt;IIRC, it was also an evergreen browser from the start and you could install plugins without restarting.&lt;p&gt;It was in many ways a superior product.</text></comment>