<story><title>Why I&apos;m switching back to Firefox</title><url>http://www.campaul.net/blog/2013/03/10/why-im-switching-back-to-firefox/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hosay123</author><text>Just to add, users rarely choose their software at all. If we&apos;re talking about the unwashed masses here, then the primary reason Chrome, Internet Explorer, or Safari are popular at all is almost entirely due to placement.&lt;p&gt;Joe consumer, comprising an ever increasing majority of the Internet population, simply doesn&apos;t care about which browser she is using. More often it is a result of what randomly got installed as the default through their last foray of random clicking and purchases. As a result, Chrome&apos;s regular placement on the Google homepage (and IE&apos;s default-installation) give it obvious &quot;competitive&quot; edges.&lt;p&gt;Of course when discussing browser market share this is rarely mentioned, instead popularity is usually attributed to fractional nanosecond differences in rendering time and so on that 99% of users never notice, and simply won&apos;t care about even if you told them.&lt;p&gt;(Edit: there is another reason to appreciate Mozilla in here, in that their efforts seem less focused on branding and positioning than they are much more so on function and vision. Mozilla&apos;s endgame shares a certain utilitarian theme compatible with what the masses seem to expect from technology (it&apos;s a &quot;computer&quot; with the &quot;Internet&quot; on it, not a &quot;Chromebook&quot; with &quot;Google&quot; on it), than does just about every other company in this space who are using their platforms to sell people more shit they don&apos;t need)</text></item><item><author>stroboskop</author><text>The post is spot on. Firefox is a great browser, but reading the OP&apos;s last paragraphs, users rarely choose software for quality &lt;i&gt;alone&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;The most popular alternatives to Firefox are Google&apos;s Chrome and Microsoft&apos;s Internet Explorer. I doubt these alternative browsers would exist if they were not useful for Google&apos;s and Microsofts main businesses. These companies produce web browsers to support their main products/services. The rationale behind AOL Explorer (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_Browser&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_Browser&lt;/a&gt;) was similar. In settings like those privacy and other interests of web users are easily sacrificed.&lt;p&gt;Out of all the big browsers, Mozilla Firefox comes closest to being a web browser for the sake of web browsing.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Justsignedup</author><text>Well said. in 2008 i was a big advocate for firefox. Yet my clients knew about chrome and wanted to use it. But nobody aside from technies stuck with it. My wife still uses FF exclusively.&lt;p&gt;However chrome became stable. And then it built on it -- multi processing made one site not crash the browser. Startup speeds were fast, etc. Eventually I switched. It was a minimalistic interface that I could teach to my grandparents. And performance was ALWAYS great.&lt;p&gt;So the question remains: Switch back to FF? I vote no, until they finally implement what IE has done since IE9 -- multi processing, or solve the damn problem in other ways. Also chrome&apos;s sandbox is pretty much unbypassed except for a couple of times in pwn2own (all the exploits are already patched)&lt;p&gt;Mozilla focusing on the user while google on profit is a point, but it is not a selling point. Show me features. So far chrome&apos;s porn mode has been an innovator in the space, and firefox had to hack that mode on to their browser. So from an objective perspective... idk.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why I&apos;m switching back to Firefox</title><url>http://www.campaul.net/blog/2013/03/10/why-im-switching-back-to-firefox/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hosay123</author><text>Just to add, users rarely choose their software at all. If we&apos;re talking about the unwashed masses here, then the primary reason Chrome, Internet Explorer, or Safari are popular at all is almost entirely due to placement.&lt;p&gt;Joe consumer, comprising an ever increasing majority of the Internet population, simply doesn&apos;t care about which browser she is using. More often it is a result of what randomly got installed as the default through their last foray of random clicking and purchases. As a result, Chrome&apos;s regular placement on the Google homepage (and IE&apos;s default-installation) give it obvious &quot;competitive&quot; edges.&lt;p&gt;Of course when discussing browser market share this is rarely mentioned, instead popularity is usually attributed to fractional nanosecond differences in rendering time and so on that 99% of users never notice, and simply won&apos;t care about even if you told them.&lt;p&gt;(Edit: there is another reason to appreciate Mozilla in here, in that their efforts seem less focused on branding and positioning than they are much more so on function and vision. Mozilla&apos;s endgame shares a certain utilitarian theme compatible with what the masses seem to expect from technology (it&apos;s a &quot;computer&quot; with the &quot;Internet&quot; on it, not a &quot;Chromebook&quot; with &quot;Google&quot; on it), than does just about every other company in this space who are using their platforms to sell people more shit they don&apos;t need)</text></item><item><author>stroboskop</author><text>The post is spot on. Firefox is a great browser, but reading the OP&apos;s last paragraphs, users rarely choose software for quality &lt;i&gt;alone&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;The most popular alternatives to Firefox are Google&apos;s Chrome and Microsoft&apos;s Internet Explorer. I doubt these alternative browsers would exist if they were not useful for Google&apos;s and Microsofts main businesses. These companies produce web browsers to support their main products/services. The rationale behind AOL Explorer (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_Browser&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_Browser&lt;/a&gt;) was similar. In settings like those privacy and other interests of web users are easily sacrificed.&lt;p&gt;Out of all the big browsers, Mozilla Firefox comes closest to being a web browser for the sake of web browsing.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ferongr</author><text>When it comes to Chrome, in many cases it&apos;s not even conscious or explicit user choice. Chrome is aggressively pushed as opt-out shovelware with installers of unrelated software (e.g. CCleaner) and is set up as the default browser if the user doesn&apos;t deselect the options.</text></comment>