I'm also at corporate and they are really integrated with Edge. But it doesn't mean I can't do my work in Firefox (Which I currently use)
What do you mean by forced? What happens if you don't log in? What happens if you try to log in in firefox?
Edit: Ah I missed this from your original comment:
> Chrome is mandated at many companies because of its GSuite integration/ Context Aware Access.
You might be right, I'm too lazy to try this in Firefox.
1. The Endpoint Verification extension is used to ensure that the browser/ system is compliant before connecting to certain services such as any SSO.
2. Internal tools were tested with Chrome and to ensure that users were using an up to date tool they were gated on the user agent.
Chrome offers a host of endpoint management integrations that make it a far better choice for Enterprise than Mozilla. Mozilla could very easily build a management portal for Firefox or, even better, build an integration with various SSO providers.
Whereas Chrome really only integrates with GSuite Firefox could support Okta, O365, GSuite, and more, making it the de-facto corporate browser.
This isn't even complicated, this is one of many ideas I have that are easily within their ability, are taken straight from the Chrome playbook, leverages their singular asset, and their major competitive advantage (that they are "open").
Mozilla's CEO has to be fired. The incompetence and mismanagement is obscene.
Companies with application allow-lists simply don't allow non-Chrome browsers for use on their endpoints. That's the easiest way.
Companies without allow-lists may still block Firefox in other ways, though none quite as effective as above. Still, the block is usually on the endpoint, occasionally the proxy.
Using Firefox for anything was literally painful.
I fail to see how your proposal would end differently.
Plenty of people have to use Windows at work, it doesn't mean that MacOS (or Ubuntu) is a failure, or that they lack focus, or that this would change if alternatives just went to implement what you need.
The truth is that Google has built a formidable moat around their browser, and even if Mozilla put it as their one mission to catch up, they wouldn't be able to. Also, the first second that Firefox became a credible threat to Google would be the time that Google would drop all the money that they put into Mozilla.
Funny, I had to use Ubuntu 22.04 at my previous backend job and hated every minute of it thanks to snap, gnome, apt, wayland, hibernate, touchpad, and other issues that made me pull my hair out and loose several work hours in tinkering just to attempt to fix them so I can be productive at work. Maybe I was also horribly unlucky, who knows, but IMHO Ubuntu has went from the go-to to being the worst possible Linux distro. I was daily driving Ubuntu 10.XX in college and it wasn't this bad.
I get Canonical wants Ubuntu as the competitor for Windows, and they can can cry "wagh! Microsoft monopoly! wagh!" as much as they want, but Ubuntu aint it chief. Linux Mint and others could do it better if they had Canonical's pockets.
Similar for Firefox. Basic stuff that's standard in Chrome and Edge, like translation (I live in an EU country who's language I don't fully master) or spell-check, need to be downloaded as extensions/plugins in Firefox, and separate for each language, and the end quality of the Firefox spellcheck still sucks majorly compared to what Chrome has out of the box.
I get it, we should support Ubuntu and Firefox because freedom and all that, but I can't when the quality of the products and consumer experience is abysmal compared to the paid competition.
> I get it, we should support (...) because freedom and all that, but I can't when the quality (...) is abysmal compared to the paid competition.
Why not? Supporting open alternatives does not mean you exclusively need to use them.
Second, You really don't get it, do you? They will not spend money on anything that might actually threaten Google's dominance. They get 30M to play with AI is because they don't get to spend anything on making Firefox a strong alternative for Chrome. If they did, Google will take all their money away and then it's game over for them.
Google does not pay Apple for "access to the user base". Google pays Apple so that Apple does not try to get into the search engine space and compete with Google.
They also pay Mozilla as a way to keep controlled opposition and a (relatively) inexpensive way of avoid threats of lawsuits like the one that MS had in the past. But they don't need to. If Mozilla for any reason decided to stop conforming to this game and went on to actually fight against Google, Google would drop them in a heartbeat. And who would Mozilla go for, Bing? DDG?
> If they did, Google will take all their money away and then it's game over for them.
Because of the position they put themselves in. Also you underestimate how much cash they have.
Chrome gets put on corporate machines because the IT people use Chrome. None of these people seem to regard ad blocking as an internal security feature yet.
In general I agree with you though, my above example likely only exists because there's another huge corporation involved.
For new businesses trying to edge a way in the market, yeah good luck unless you've got something novel.
It is not realistic advise to expect Firefox to do what Chrome does.