It looks as if they misused the community's products and trust to build their monopoly and then kick us out once it's gotten hard enough to compete.

Perhaps this is a good thing in the long run, because now people will finally have to switch and maybe contribute to improving Firefox.

I am hopeful, but also I must say in my opinion Firefox is nowhere near Chrome when comparing performance, developer tooling and quality.

I have the opposite experience. I use FF on all my computers and mobile, and when I sit behind some other dev's Chrome the tools are simply atrocious. Maybe it's not the quality that is different, but the way we use the tools? I might have "aligned" myself with FF, as you (and many others) have with Chrome.

I mean if I press Cmd+P to look up a source file and Firefox doesn't suggest the source mapped one before the ES5 compiled one, it's already beyond me how I should ever seriously work with that tooling. It's just a matter of speed and convenience. But my workflows of course might differ from what others do.

With quality I was referring to the actual code quality of Firefox, not so much the interface. See my post below about DOM events changing order when debugging. My instinct just tells me that something is deeply wrong under the hood if something like this can even happen.

One basic feature that is missing for e.g. is that one cannot open a file using the syntax filename:line:column in the source editor. You will need to navigate the line number manually after opening the file.

Personally I like SeaMonkey as it is community build Mozilla. Many of the "features" have settings in preferences.

It seems to me that the Mozilla Foundation is pushing the project in some weird spots(DoH) and while not ad revenue based, they do take money from companies.

Notice the Search Provides list? Who uses Ebay as their primary search provides? Heck who wants to search from the URL bar.

Otter-Browser is making great strides and I use it on untrusted sites. Please make the browser simple and not hide settings in about:config.

Me? I love this feature.

You've gone too far.

F6 + query + Enter ftw. D: It's how I've always done it.

potential "10,000,000+ users" pissed at Google is the reason, but why if we made it look like extension author was dodgy/to blame? ... :(

because they weren't dominant in the market, and it was a feature the market leading browers supported

now they are dominant they can throw their weight around

Yeah, that feature is a must. /s

Saying "quality" doesn't actually mean anything. What exactly is "quality" in this case?

If I place a breakpoint in a DOM mutation listener, I would like to have the same order of DOM events as if I wouldn't have placed it there.

Firefox lets you do that on Android and obviously it hasn't been removed from the Play Store. Do you remember any specifics?

Though it's currently available on the Android app store, and the reason it was briefly removed was because it included built-in background YouTube video playback, not ad-blocking.

Of course, you could always get the app from another store.

- Kiwi Browser (Play Store): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kiwibrowse...

- Kiwi Browser (XDA): https://labs.xda-developers.com/store/app/com.kiwibrowser.br...

Oh, so being anti-competitive as their native youtube app will NOT let you play in the background unless you pay for it. Bingo.

Third-party apps for streaming services aren't meant to be a competitive market. At least with YouTube you can still download third-party apps elsewhere, such as youtube-dl for desktops or NewPipe on F-Droid, even if apps that violate YouTube's TOS are removed from Google's own app stores.

Blocking it on Spotify is fine. If they merged with... let's say Medium, and now blocked articles about such apps, that would be a problem.

Youtube's TOS should not get special treatment in unrelated products.

They're dealt with in the same way, by getting legitimate app stores such as Apple's to take down the pirate apps: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/ne...

Spotify has also threatened to ban users caught using these third-party apps: https://torrentfreak.com/spotify-emails-warning-to-pirates-u...

At least YouTube doesn't go that far.

> If they merged with... let's say Medium, and now blocked articles about such apps, that would be a problem.

Writing about piracy, as TorrentFreak or a Medium blog might do, is not the same as piracy itself. The former is journalism, protected by free speech; the latter is not.

Detecting and blocking those apps from accessing the Spotify servers.

> They're dealt with in the same way, by getting legitimate app stores such as Apple's to take down the pirate apps

Those are modified versions of the official app, violating its copyright. That's not the same thing as blocking a third-party app because it doesn't work the way Spotify likes.

In other words, the app itself is being pirated. That's a completely separate issue from "Spotify Premium features for free".

> Writing about piracy, as TorrentFreak or a Medium blog might do, is not the same as piracy itself. The former is journalism, protected by free speech; the latter is not.

Sure. I thought you were talking about third party apps, since your second paragraph was about third party apps... A pirated official app is piracy itself. A third party app is not piracy.

I'd rather YouTube use legal means to remove offending apps from app stores, rather than technical means that would interfere with apps outside of app stores as well. I like having youtube-dl available, thanks.

I think you're missing what the argument is.

Youtube blocking something that violates Youtube TOS: completely fine

One part of a massive conglomerate company blocking something because it violates the TOS of an unrelated part: anti-competitive

> I'd rather YouTube use legal means to remove offending apps from app stores, rather than technical means that would interfere with apps outside of app stores as well. I like having youtube-dl available, thanks.

Youtube isn't using legal means, in general. They get apps taken down that don't do anything illegal. So the distinction does matter.

And what does it matter how the company is organized? YouTube is in fact a direct subsidiary of Google, not just a sibling company under Alphabet, but so what? Would calling it "Google Video" make a difference?

The problem with the earlier hypothetical example (of Spotify acquiring Medium and blocking articles about apps that violate Spotify's ToS) was not cooperation between Spotify and Medium, but issues regarding free speech, insofar as that applies to a private platform.

The analogous situation with YouTube would be content on Google platforms discussing third-party YouTube apps... and in fact, there are plenty of videos on YouTube itself discussing youtube-dl or apps such as NewPipe.

> Youtube isn't using legal means, in general.

That's semantics. Call it technical vs. non-technical means, then, or whatever.

The problem with that line of ideological reasoning is that it implies YouTube should use technical means, such as locking down its API, rather than just booting offending apps off the company's own app stores. The end result would be worse for users.

The fact remains that Google was acting as a total monopoly when this decision was made.