The only difference is that Google has endlessly more clout and depth than AOL and my fear is that where AOL failed, Google may succeed.

With Firefox succumbing this week, this is pretty horrible.

I’m not a Richard Stallman type, but I think it’s come to the point where if you have even the slightest pretense of being a “free web” person, using Chrome or a Chromium-based browser has become unconscionable. This company is playing embrace extend extinguish to a T and they are nearing the end game.

I switched to Firefox this year and so can you! Just download it, install it, and then clear your Chrome history so it doesn’t feel like home anymore. Firefox is really nice and I was surprised that I don’t miss Chrome at all (except for the developer tools color picker).

> I’m not a Richard Stallman type, but I think it’s come to the point where if you have even the slightest pretense of being a “free web” person, using Chrome or a Chromium-based browser has become unconscionable.

Thanks for phrasing it like this - I'm also not a Richard Stallman type but it's hard to disagree with this statement. Just downloaded Firefox and made the switch.

Great to hear.

Clearing my history/sessions in Chrome was an important factor in adoption for me as well. It helps that when you start typing in that search bar, it doesn’t feel familiar. Took a few weeks but did eventually stop looking to Chrome. Now I just use it for testing/Android debugging.

I have this shell script as `chrome-new` in my path for testing in Chrome and the rare site that is broken in Firefox. It gives me a totally clean profile each time to minimize the amount of Google spying that goes on and reduce my tendency to use the browser for anything but the current task. Sadly despite --no-make-default-browser, it still asks me with an infobar every time I start it.

    #!/bin/sh
    test -e "$(which chromium)" && CHROME="chromium"
    test -e "$(which google-chrome)" && CHROME="google-chrome"
    test -e "$(which google-chrome-dev)" && CHROME="google-chrome-dev"
    TMPDIR=`mktemp -d /dev/shm/chrome-XXXXX`
    $CHROME --user-data-dir=$TMPDIR --no-first-run --no-make-default-browser "$@"
    rm -rf $TMPDIR

Don't you get the same thing using Guest Mode?

AFAIK guest mode acts like incognito when it comes to storage behavior (changes stay in-memory and are not persisted to disk, and therefore available storage is noticeably lower than with a regular profile), so it will trigger incognito mode detection scripts on some times.

That's awesome thanks for sharing.

I've been using Firefox/Safari on my personal devices for a couple years now, but as a web developer I unfortunately can't not use Chrome at work because of its dev tools. I try to test on other browsers when I have time - I've always made a point to push for supporting at least Firefox, as an organization - but when I'm iterating I really just need the Chrome tools. Firefox's tools always remained one or two steps behind, and now that they fired their dev tools team I assume they won't even be doing that, soon.

The same goes for Google Search/DuckDuckGo. I use the latter on my personal devices, but when I'm tracking down a problem at work I just need the thing that's going to work the best.

I agree about DDG, but not dev tools.

I used to think they weren’t as good, but they are good. And I think I’m a pretty serious dev tools user.

BUT, if you want to keep using Chrome dev tools that doesn’t mean you can’t switch to FF. Just de-personalize Chrome (clear you history, sessions, settings etc) and then you’ll stop using it. Say you’re developing and open a new tab to search something on SO: you won’t be logged in on SO. Same goes with any site. So you’ll instantly realize you’re using Chrome to browse and hop over to FF instead.

Seems like a lot of work but it’s not. Maybe I drank the kool aid but I now feel naked browsing with Chrome and try to avoid it as much as possible. I think the important thing is to stop using Chrome for personal browsing.

I disagree about DDG :). For work-related searches I'm really satisfied with the results and I find answers quickly. I would even go as far as to say that it works better for me than Google's search. I experienced it the other way around. When using DDG for personal use or results about local things I often tend to use the Google bang as Google has the better localized results.

I use Firefox as my daily drive, and I still don't get what's so special about Chrome's dev tools, I test on Chrome and open the dev tools but I prefer Firefox overall. It's a damn shame they fired the Dev Tools team however, that is not a visionary move on Mozilla's part.

Depending on your IDE, you can make it just open Chrome when you boot up web projects. That's what I do, but I do normal browsing on Firefox, it helps keep distractions away even. Leaving Chrome with only work related things.

Some of it may just be familiarity, but it always seems like there are little things that aren't all the way there. Some of the CSS property selectors aren't as rich, last I checked the profiling tools weren't as powerful, that kind of stuff. Things you could live without, but I feel a certain amount of responsibility when I'm on the clock to not hamper my productivity by using a tool that isn't the best one available.

Some things this is still true, other things I don't think I could go back to chrome devel tools, it just feels weak and old by comparison now.

> I unfortunately can't not use Chrome at work because of its dev tools

Why? I’m a full time developer at a Fortune 100 company and I have no issues just using the Firefox dev tools. I literally never use the Chrome dev tools. Though, this might soon change now that Mozilla has laid off the dev tool team.

Did they really fire their devtools team?? I'm sorry, I missed that earlier.

You should share how Safari and Firefox handle URLs, rather than feeding into everyone's reactions

Consider also changing your default search to StartPage or Duck Duck Go

Yes. For sure. Sadly I find myself g!-ing all the time but good to at least try them first. Sometimes I g! and go back, which always feels serendipitous.

"With Firefox succumbing this week..."

Firefox succumbed to what? Genuinely curious, i had not heard this.

There were a large number of layoffs at Mozilla, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24120336 .

And strategic re-orientation as I understood it.

Same way you strategically deprive someone from food and they reorient to a coffin user.

Explanation: Google undermined FireFox, both through ads, then through a series of incompatibilities.

And they did the same to Edge, which is using Chromium.

Given the caliber of the talent that was let go, this re-orientation sounds more like a lobotomy.

That's exactly what any CEO or "Downsizing Consultant" would say. That may be an OK situation for a corporate company, but for a non-profit foundation like Mozilla, its unhealthy and rings some disaster bells.

Too many overpaid people who had little interest in building a web browser.

Color picker seems to work great in the CSS Properties at least :D

Works great but Chrome’s lets you change HSL and other modes. I like the ability to tweak luminance or saturation right in the browser.

I’ll add my voice to that, I’ve been using Firefox as primary dev browser for a couple of years now and it’s a perfectly cromulent choice. I don’t miss Chrome one iota, far from it; when firing up Chrome to investigate browser-specific issues it seems alien now.

My level of respect for origin was similarly the tie-breaker when choosing between Vue, Angular, and React.

Its the opposite. They are on a down slope to irrelevance.

All these moves just turns up the temperature of the innovation cauldron, speeding up the pace of whatever will replace them.

More clout and depth has nothing to do with longevity. See every Empire that has evaporated in History.

Google will fail faster than it took most empires too for 2 reasons

1. Things move much faster these days. The time between rise and fall keeps shrinking for large orgs struggling to cope with the furious pace of change.

2. Complexity of playing empire defense grows exponentially with scale. You can't find enough skilled people quick enough. You cant solve increasingly complex issues with just your cash hoard. You can't escape increasing internal politics that slows the speed of innovation within. You can't escape external actors mistrusting every small move made etc etc etc.

So they will keep making such moves. And there is a way to speed up their decline - Encourage them and praise them for whatever they come up with.

Chrome sucks and hasn’t gotten the love it used to

The problem is that there are simply no good free browsers that are not Chromium-based or Firefox. It doesn't seem viable or worthwhile to write a web rendering engine from the ground up. We're heading rapidly towards a Blink/Webkit monoculture.

Why exclude FF? It’s good.

Currently. Though Mozilla is giving no clear plans on continuing the projects importance. If anything it seems Mozilla is planning for an eventual sunset. Hoping to have revenue alternatives for when Firefox is irrelevant and they stop supporting it.

Firing a team building a meaningful advancement in Firefox's tech stack is a big signal, imo.

Is it possible that if Mozilla folded or stopped supporting Firefox that the open-source community would continue to support it?

Possible, but not to a sufficient extent to keep up with the ever changing needs.

Yeah that was devastating this week but maybe it can somehow reverse itself, I don’t know.

Why would we want a continuation of what isn’t working.

Let it die, rebuild from the ruins.

It's pretty good, albeit much less good since the old XPCOM extension support went away. (My position is that XPCOM compatibility could have been maintained in a multi-process world through better dynamic object proxying.) But as Mozilla's money dries up, so will Gecko, Servo, and a bunch of other fascinating projects. It's sad. But the web won't stop evolving, so we're going to end up a webkit-only world.

I use Firefox for casual browsing but heavy workloads need a better browser. So I have to use Chromium.

Firefox is a much more performant browser for actually rendering heavy pages.

I have 18 windows open in Firefox vs chromium that say otherwise. Why would I lie lol.

Chrome has a more responsive UI, but as for actually rendering and laying out pages, Firefox is usually much faster.

I've actually checked with both browsers open side-by-side while developing my own webapps.

What's worse, Chrome is super buggy and will often randomly crash on complex CSS or too many table rows, etc.

That's great, I'll tell Firefox that,maybe it will pep up.

And what about memory requirements? Also there are no addons in mobile Chrome!! Big issue for me.

I have 64GB of RAM because I know the workload is memory hungry. But still, I have enough left over: https://imgur.com/a/Q25P7vJ

The comparison to AOL was my first thought also.

Basically, Google have lived long enough to see themselves become the villain.

They became the villain when they started deliberately positioning the ads on their search results screen to trick people. Which I'm sure makes them lots and lots of money but is definitely evil.

Google is many different companies and products, and some of them I'm so grateful for. They provide a simple product that does something magically better than the competition, don't screw with the recipe. I give them my data because I like the service.

But the company-wide decision to manipulate the URL as a business strategy drains all my enthusiasm. The "U" is really important! The URL is basically a filename that you use to access the data store called the Internet. Don't take it away from me by the brute force of market dominance. I need to be sure of where I'm addressing my packets. Don't tamper with that essential construct.

I use both browsers, but without Firefox, I'd be lost in the wilderness. With its recent layoffs I'm worried about the web.

Is it really a company-wide strategy to manipulate the URL? The Chrome change was based on user studies that showed that people do not understand URLs.

The days of URLs as a data access key are gone. So many other things (cookies, etc) go into controlling what pages show that what was originally a 1:1 mapping between URL and content is now a many to many mapping. I'm not saying that's how it should be, but that's the web we live in now.

Doesn't matter if they understand it or not. It's the one and only barrier between you and malicious actors, or you and a monopolist. And oh look there's Google, attacking the one thing that protects the world from their ownership of the web.

People might not understand how a seat belt works, it's still there and we still use them.

Do you happen to have a link to those studies?

> I give them my data because I like the service.

They take your data and everyone's regardless of if you want them too. That you don't mind hardly makes that better.

> The comparison to AOL was my first thought also

It doesn't really make sense, though. The AOL thing was always things like "visit AOL keyword lord of the rings" at the end of trailers, and that would take you to the marketing site.

If Chrome wanted to do that, in the example gif the keyword wouldn't be just "en.wikipedia.org" for the URL article, it would be something like "wikipedia URL" that would bring you back to the page you're on through a google search.

It isn't that Google built a faithful recreation of AOL's mechanism. The claim is that Google is in a very similar ecosystem position with very similar incentives to attempt to Own All The Traffic.

I realize hindsight bias is at work, but I think I preferred Microsoft playing the Shitbag Monopolist role. They weren't passive aggressive about it, at least.

I'd say that it's just as common to hear "google Our Brand" as "www.brand.com" at the end of television adverts now. That's entirely anecdotal, but Google (or other search engines, but basically Google) has been for a long time the way to access sites.

I see people every day searching for a brand and clicking rather than appending ".com". It's more convenient. If Google can profit off laziness, they will.

I tend to search the brandname if I'm not sure about what the domain is. There's quite a few Dutch brands that are either on .nl or .com. Or their brand is already in use by another company, so they've got some extra text in theirs. Or their name has a & in it and they might use "n" "en" or "and" in their actual domain.

Google doesn't like you using the term "google <something>" because that opens the door towards a genericized trademark (like xerox or cellophane), but plenty of advertisers buy keywords or a phrase on Google and then use terms like "search for <keyword or phrase> to find out more" in their radio/TV/outdoor ads.

I'm not sure if it's entirely laziness. Unless given a URI through some other medium, you can't expect to find a business by simply appending .com, .org, .net. there are only so many viable names in this structure and collisions are inevitable.

At one time, there were less organizations online but now, almost every single business, large or small, has a web presence over viable domain name scarcity.

As such, discovery service online is a necessity. Google and other search engines fill that void. Now should they completely replace domains? Probably not, at least not yet, but some other addressing scheme needs to exist if we want to be less reliant on services like Google. Personally, I just use other search engines. If I'm not finding results I fall back to Google.

The thing you mentioned doesn't like it's too far fetched for the next step :-)

I dunno, AOL was extremely successful and people loved it. I'm not ashamed to say I liked it, having everything in the same window. Google could only hope to achieve that fluidity. Messaging, Email, and web all in one workspace.

AOL really only declined because of the rise in high speed internet, and their awful business model and practices.

The market also offered better services eventually and AOL simply couldn't keep up in every area. It slowly chipped away at their user base. Messaging was one of their killer features and apps like ICQ slowly ate them up while AOL tried to ride the same strategy of being everything to everyone into the future. I do agree it was a great experience for what it was, back in the day.

AOL bought ICQ in the very early days of messaging.

AOL had a particular mismanagement problem that Google doesn't have.

AOL didn't lack depth: they literally had email (@aol.com), social media (AIM), video-calling (Vonage), cloud filesharing (Xdrive) and so much more.

Ultimately, they failed because (1) they were overvalued to begin with and (2) had a bad innovation model (top-down) that led them to (a) over-commit to online ads and (b) under-commit to broadband.

Google is sustainable & mature, and it has a distributed innovation model that will avoid the particular mistakes of AOL.

Google is reacting to the Walled Garden trend, not driving it.

> Google is reacting to the Walled Garden trend, not driving it.

I could follow you right up to that bit.

Yea, actually fair, bit of a non-sequitur.

I meant to say that Google is well-positioned to take advantage of being a Walled Garden, and is doing so now because the model is being built out out elsewhere, both domestically (Apple, Amazon) and abroad (WeChat, Jio).

Facebook and Apple have been driving those trends for well over a decade.

Do you or anyone else have a video or screenshots of what you're talking about? Or is there a specific name of the product where AOL was doing this?

Instead of browsing via URL, companies could buy "AOL keywords". A user could just put in a keyword, like "dog food", and AOL would send them to a particular dog food page. In the days before good search engines, this was very convenient even though it was obviously pay-to-play.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1npzZu83AfU

"Hi, I'm Sheriff Harry S. Truman for America Online"

When dial up Internet was a thing, AOL was the leader in that universe. It was basically one of the earliest walled gardens out there. They had their own chat, email, etc. You accessed it all through their desktop client. You never had to leave the AOL application to experience "the internet". They of course were still providing general Internet access, so you could still fire up Netscape [and earlier browsers] and cruise to whatever websites you wanted. The Internet eventually eclipsed what AOL could offer for most people and their premium price and sometimes dodgy Internet service eventually fell by the wayside to a more open Internet experience for most users.

Edit: AIM was a really popular messaging client for years after the fall of AOL as a premiere dial up Internet service.

To amplify that a bit, AOL started out as a pre-Internet online service, competing with the likes of Prodigy and Compuserve. It wasn't until 1993 ("Eternal September") that they opened up Internet access to their users.

Movie trailers often had them, sometimes long after AOL had declined in relative popularity. An example I mentioned in another comment was at the end of one of the lord of the rings trailers:

https://youtu.be/V75dMMIW2B4?t=143

I have no idea how popular they ever were, but I'm sure there's a large segment of people that find it easier to remember and to type in "Lord of the Rings" into their computer than "www.lordoftherings.net".

This is off-topic slippery-slope hysterics that have nothing to do with the story

It seems like we've reached that already. I've seen TV ads where they just say "Search for $KEYWORD" instead of a URL (admittedly that's more average-user friendly than making them input dots and slashes). Or posters that have [f]/someFacebookPageName or [i]/instagramUsername with the icons to indicate Facebook/Instagram.