Microsoft Engineer Causes Online Wrath After Saying Firefox Should Use Chromium
Mozilla should give up on its own browsing engine and switch Firefox to Chromium, a Microsoft engineer said in a series of tweets, as what the company does right now is "building a parallel universe that's used by less than 5 percent."
The message posted by Microsoft Product Manager Kenneth Auchenberg has triggered an almost instant reaction from the user community, with most of the replies pointing out that building alternative products that can compete against Chromium is vital for the health of the browsing ecosystem.
"It's time for @mozilla to get down from their philosophical ivory tower. The web is dominated by Chromium, if they really *cared* about the web they would be contributing instead of building a parallel universe that's used by less than 5%?" he tweeted.
"I couldn't disagree with you more. It precisely *because* Chromium has such a large marketshare that is vital for Mozilla (or anyone else) to battle for diversity. I'm shocked that you think they're not contributing. "Building a parallel universe"? That *is* the contribution," web developer Jeremy Keith responded.
[...] Auchenberg's message has obviously received more acid replies, including this one criticizing Microsoft's recent browser changes. "Just because your employer gave up on its own people and technology doesn't mean that others should follow," Asa Dotzler tweeted.
Also at ZDNet.
Previously: Microsoft Reportedly Building a Chromium-Based Web Browser to Replace Edge, and "Windows Lite" OS
Mozilla CEO Warns Microsoft's Switch to Chromium Will Give More Control of the Web to Google
Related: Is Google Using an "Embrace, Extend..." Strategy?
Google Denies Altering YouTube Code to Break Microsoft Edge
(Score: 5, Funny) by chromas on Monday January 28 2019, @10:48PM (3 children)
Mozilla should switch to EdgeHTML now that Microsoft's done with it.
(Score: 5, Touché) by driverless on Monday January 28 2019, @11:26PM
Well shit, Mozilla have copied everything else in Chrome to the point where it should really be called Chromefox, why stop pretending and just go the whole hog.
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Tuesday January 29 2019, @05:12PM
If Presto was open-sourced I would support further development there. It still is the best behaved browser when memory starved.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @10:37PM
Are you sure they are done? They have been known to fuck the corpse as well.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 28 2019, @10:54PM (6 children)
Is that this is coming from a Microsoft Employee. Why doesn't Microsoft just give up with their own browser already.
(Score: 4, Informative) by arslan on Monday January 28 2019, @11:12PM (3 children)
They did in a way, and they announced that their browser will move to Chromium as the rendering engine. They're just asking Firefox to do the same.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @12:05AM (2 children)
They should donate Edge to apache foundation.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @01:35AM
Or the dumpster.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @02:30AM
Why outsource garbage removal?
Can't they do it themselves?
(Score: 2) by ilsa on Tuesday January 29 2019, @10:11PM (1 child)
They're obviously butthurt for having given up, and instead of acting like adults, they instead taunt in a misguided effort to help themselves feel better.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @10:40PM
Next thing you know they'll be telling out of work Firefox devs to "Learn to Code."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Mykl on Monday January 28 2019, @10:55PM (1 child)
To be fair, this is Microsoft's doctrine. One OS to rule them all, and in the darkness bind them.
Microsoft's perfect world is one in which they can either dominate a particular segment, or purchase the leader to ensure monopoly profits. Too many competitors make competition hard!
It doesn't surprise me that a MS manager would suggest that a product with near ubiquitous market share (e.g. Windows on Desktop) should just be allowed to swallow up everything.
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Tuesday January 29 2019, @01:52PM
> To be fair, this is Microsoft's doctrine. One OS to rule them all, and in the darkness bind them.
Apart from mobile, where they have killed WinPhone due to low market share and now actively support iOS / Android (better than WP) with apps, which to be fair is more or less what they are advising Firefox to do with browser engine.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Snow on Monday January 28 2019, @10:55PM (4 children)
That's like a war criminal telling people they shouldn't steal.
I'm thinking of you ActiveX...
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @12:32AM (3 children)
Not really. If anything, this demonstrates the consistency of Microsoft's position.
Microsoft in the year 2000: "Internet Explorer has 99% market dominance, everybody else should give up and just use it."
Microsoft (or at least an employee) in the year 2019: "Chrome has a 95% market dominance, everybody else should give up and just use it."
They are as wrong now as they were then, but at least nobody can accuse them of hypocrisy.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday January 29 2019, @02:11AM (2 children)
Yeah, if there was never a competing product, we'd all still be cursing IE.
All Firefox has to do is go back to being good.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by Hyper on Tuesday January 29 2019, @02:32AM (1 child)
So, basically, we're screwed unless another browser revolution happens again. This time from Firefox/Chrome to something better.
Those who do not learn from the past?
History repeats.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Freeman on Tuesday January 29 2019, @05:34PM
Best we can hope for is that every single person that used Chrome with Ad-blockers, switches to Firefox when ad-blockers are removed from Chrome. That will provide an extra boost to Firefox and it's usage. Which could eventually turn into a whole lot more people on Firefox. I wouldn't necessarily hold my breath though. I added uBlock Origins to my mother-in-law's computer, to help cut down on the stream of calls I kept getting. Not too long ago, she told me to turn it off. So, she can use a toolbar thing that tracks her usage, where she buys things, etc. In order to receive / build up credit to get coupons or something like that. I don't know exactly, my mind was still trying to catch up to the insanity. I tried in vain to get her to turn it off only on the sites she wanted, but she insisted on the removal of the thing that was keeping the internet from giving her computer the equivalent of Ebola.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 28 2019, @11:04PM (1 child)
This guy owns Google shares in his 401k.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @12:05AM
If you own any index funds you do too.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Monday January 28 2019, @11:06PM
just arrogance.
Microsoft employee drinks koolaid, spouts arrogant nonsense; promotion expected soon.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 4, Interesting) by insanumingenium on Monday January 28 2019, @11:09PM (14 children)
Is there any documentation on that 5% claim? I haven't seen anything that puts Firefox that low yet...
(Score: 2) by Apparition on Monday January 28 2019, @11:13PM (13 children)
Agreed. The last figure I read indicated Firefox usage hovering around 10%.
(Score: 4, Informative) by isostatic on Monday January 28 2019, @11:27PM (12 children)
Wikmedia is 5.8%, how depressing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Summary_tables [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @02:14AM (3 children)
That's what happens when you crib your competitive strategy from the Democrats. The developers of Firefox more or less committed institutional suicide. They kept making Fx more and more like Chrome and making changes that none of their users were pushing for while ignoring things that the users were demanding. Shockingly this has worked out about as well as when Coca Cola decided that it needed to appeal to the Pepsi buyers and released New Coke without considering the fact that they had people already sold on the current product line.
If they keep making the browser more and more chrome like, then why bother sticking with the imitator?
(Score: 2) by RedIsNotGreen on Tuesday January 29 2019, @02:46AM
How could they not, when Google provided/provides most of the funding for Mozilla Foundation?
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday January 29 2019, @10:43AM (1 child)
> while ignoring things that the users were demanding.
Do you have a good list of "changes that the users were demanding"? Do mozilla (maybe they published something)?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @02:47PM
As you should know
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Hyper on Tuesday January 29 2019, @02:42AM
Yet for some sites, banks specifically, it is the only browser that always works.
Firefox is not dead yet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @02:45AM (1 child)
Even Safari is beating the pants off FF.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Tuesday January 29 2019, @04:06PM
Apple WebKit is beating Firefox's engine* because Apple WebKit is the only browser engine that can officially** execute at all on an iPhone or iPad.
* The featured article is about usage share of browser engines. By this metric, Firefox for iOS and Chrome for iOS both count as Safari.
** In theory, it's possible to port a different browser engine for users of Cydia Impactor. But as far as I'm aware, the effort would be largely wasted because the fraction of iOS users willing to install Cydia Impactor just to run a browser that uses a different engine is vanishingly small.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Tuesday January 29 2019, @02:47AM (4 children)
It fares a little better when mobile is taken out of the picture. Closer to 9%.
Ironically, mobile is where I am using Firefox 100% of the time. It works well there for me.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Tuesday January 29 2019, @04:10PM
With 63 percent of website visits and 49 percent of web screen time now coming from mobile,[1] how exactly is taking "mobile [...] out of the picture" honest?
[1] "Mobile vs Desktop Usage in 2018: Mobile takes the lead" by Eric Enge [stonetemple.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @04:54PM (2 children)
i have chrome and firefox on mobile just because switching browser doesn't kill youtube. ^_^
opening a new tab in firefox and switching to it kills (mutes) the already open youtube ... opening in chromium does not.
st0pid but true.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @04:56PM
idiot! why did you tell them? the morons will now make a API to allow firefox to tell chrome it has a youtube open so chrome can force the youtube in firefox to shut down when chrome is in the foreground and firefox is "minimized"!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @07:52PM
Install NewPipe [schabi.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 28 2019, @11:16PM (4 children)
Its just painful to use them.
(Score: 2) by Hyper on Tuesday January 29 2019, @02:36AM (3 children)
Try Edge. Just once. It makes Chrome look good.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @04:10PM
All the more reason to not use either. i wish I was wealthy because then I'd just stop working in IT. all this shit is depressing that so many people are ok with privacy violations and tracking and all that crap
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Pino P on Tuesday January 29 2019, @04:13PM (1 child)
What in particular makes Edge worth $199.99 for a Windows 10 Pro license, plus the cost of a RAM upgrade to run Edge in Windows in a VM without thrashing swap?
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @05:01PM
stress testing the HDD or SSD?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Monday January 28 2019, @11:19PM (1 child)
So following that logic, why did Microsoft not replace their rendering engine with Gecko back when Firefox was the number one browser?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2, Informative) by shrewdsheep on Tuesday January 29 2019, @09:18AM
I am not aware that Firefox ever was the number one browser.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday January 28 2019, @11:24PM (4 children)
... because they each run completely different code.
In the early days of personal computing there were a whole bunch of different personal computers. Altair kits, the Apple II, the Commodore Pet, Radio Shack TRS and the list goes on.
While we all knew that there _could_ be viruses, it was not until after the IBM PC and the Apple Macintosh wiped out all the others that I ever saw on myself.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @02:17AM (2 children)
On the other hand, you never would have had things like Pixar animated movie, games like Overwatch, or indeed pretty much any software over the past 20 years including but not limited to the Internet as a whole.
The same fragmentation which makes it "too hard and cost ineffective" to have viruses ALSO makes it "too hard and cost ineffective" to make complicated software.
Let's not pretend that market consolidation had no benefits to it.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by ChrisMaple on Tuesday January 29 2019, @02:38AM (1 child)
Compilers and system-specific standard libraries are why the same code runs on different hardware and different operating systems. Take a game or video rendering code and recompile it: mirabile dictu it runs on a different system.
One of the reasons for not running interpreted languages is that it makes more types of systems vulnerable to a single piece of attack code.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Tuesday January 29 2019, @04:43PM
Let the record state that these computers use 8-bit microprocessors in the 6502 and 8080 families. So do the Nintendo Entertainment System, Game Boy, Game Gear, ZX Spectrum, and MSX.
Albeit unplayably slowly. C compiled for 8-bit processors has slowdown compared to hand-coded assembly language for these processors. This is caused in large part by a mismatch between their machine model with that expected by the C language.
C expects the processor to be able to load, add, and store 16-bit quantities quickly. This isn't true of 8-bit processors, which is why they're called 8-bit. Because all are promoted to int, and int must be at least 16 bits, an 8-bit processor has to add two int values by loading the least significant byte of both values, adding them, storing the result, loading the most significant byte of both values, adding them with carry, and storing the result.
C expects processor registers to be wide enough to hold a pointer, which isn't true of the 6502. Instead, the 6502 has to store pointers on zero page. Where a C program would use an array of structs, a 6502 assembly program is more likely to use a structure of arrays, with different fields (and even different bytes of each field) in parallel arrays.
Struct access in C and Pascal also expects the CPU's load and store instructions to be able to add a constant offset to a pointer, which isn't true of the 8080. Instead, 8080 has to explicitly add the offset to a struct's field, and keeping a pointer to one struct's base and a pointer to a field already hog four out of the CPU's seven 8-bit registers: base in DE and field in HL. If you're dealing with two structs, storing the base of one in BC and the base of the other in DE, you'll spill so many registers to RAM that you'll spend more time shuffling data in and out of registers than doing work. I trace this to the 8080's heritage as a refactor of the Intel 8008, a processor invented to run a reprogrammable dumb terminal, and dumb terminals rarely if ever deal with collections of structs. Zilog introduced new registers IX and IY on its 8080 clone specifically to hold struct base pointers, but that doesn't help users of Altair or Game Boy, whose processors lack IX and IY registers.
It may turn out possible for a Sufficiently Smart Compiler™ to work around these deficiencies. But nobody in the 2010s appears to have enough money to improve cc65, SDCC, or other compilers that target 6502 or 8080 to be anywhere near competitive with assembly language. That's why I've written the 8-bit games in my GitHub account [github.com] in assembly language.
Further reading about the difficulties of shoehorning C into 8080 family processors:
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @11:27AM
by the way, does EMACS have an html wysiwyg mode?
I remember that the LaTeX mode was pretty spectacular, and firefox has been annoying lately.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by insanumingenium on Monday January 28 2019, @11:37PM
It is just surreal watching people respond "remember when IE6 broke the web for their Microsoft's gain" and a Microsoft employee unironically states open source makes it different this time. Not only does history repeat, it gets weirder each time.
He also lists a bunch of projects he is implying have a single implementation each, not the least of which being TCP and C++. So the guy is CLEARLY out of touch with the world I live in.
This guy is acting a clown, is there some reason I am not aware of I should take him seriously? I don't tend to follow who's who, but I don't think I have heard this guy's name before, is there any reason to think his opinion is worth the electrons rerouted to view it? What does he manage for Microsoft? Hopefully not Edge, though that might explain a lot with their recent surrender. Cause so far this just looks like slightly more geeky than normal clickbait.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @12:04AM (1 child)
Why am I not surprised that Microsoft only supports diversity when it comes to hiring practices. Here, I thought diversity was this wonderful ideology that makes all aspects of life and all things great because reasons. That's what the TV and news tell me every day.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @11:59AM
Diversity helps alot, Micro$oft is wrong here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland) [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @12:07AM (1 child)
Think about this. Now that MS will be shipping it by default would you *bother* to install chrome on windows?
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Tuesday January 29 2019, @04:48PM
Someone would use Chrome in order to use an extension that is available for Chrome and not available for Edge.
Last I checked, the Edge extension repository was more "curated" than Chrome Web Store. It cost more for a developer to obtain and maintain an account on Microsoft's store than on Google's, and there was no guarantee that Microsoft would choose to carry your extension even if it met all guidelines. Has this changed in the past year? If so, where was this change announced?
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by J_Darnley on Tuesday January 29 2019, @12:15AM (1 child)
Mozilla will do that. They already copy chrome on everything else so they will copy the rendering engine.
(Score: 1, Troll) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday January 29 2019, @02:05AM
And Kenneth will say, "oh, see that, they took my advice!" And folks will see that the Mozilla did what Kenneth told them to do. Everyone will see that Kenneth is a High I. Q. Person. Very smart!
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @01:13AM (5 children)
Thousands of children are being killed in Yemen by U.S.-supplied bombs, and you are outraged about a tweet regarding browser choices?
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @01:16AM
I'm outraged about whataboutism.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @01:18AM
(Score: 2, Touché) by jbruchon on Tuesday January 29 2019, @02:54AM
Because I, an individual U.S. citizen representing approximately 0.000000304878% of the U.S. population, with no wealth whom no one knows nor gives two-fifths of a crap about, can do something about something some very wealthy and powerful bureaucrats somewhere decided. Oh, and that somehow has anything at all to do with web browser engines. Yup, we got some flawless logic up in this bitch.
You may as well have said that Grimace's left testicle is provably lavender and that the bastards who proclaim it possesses a mauve hue are blaspheming mightily by doing so. It would still be totally irrelevant and stupid, but at least it would have been amusing. Be a jester instead of a jackass.
I'm just here to listen to the latest song about butts.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @12:02PM
It's not about web browsers but the rendering engine, get your shit together man!
That being said, nice snipe. Agree with you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @08:48PM
Fallacy of relative privation (also known as "appeal to worse problems" or "not as bad as") – dismissing an argument or complaint due to the existence of more important problems in the world, regardless of whether those problems bear relevance to the initial argument. First World problems are a subset of this fallacy.[94]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday January 29 2019, @01:46AM (1 child)
Nothing more. This arrogant shitstain believes, if only subconsciously maybe, that Chromium *is* an MS product now. So of course its superior. So of course the opposition should switch. So of course MS can then eat it alive.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @12:07PM
Or then he just loves the idea of any evil megacorp dominating the shit out of some sector of life, be it Microsoft or Google.
"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever." -- George Orwell (in Nineteen Eighty-Four)
(Score: 2) by eravnrekaree on Tuesday January 29 2019, @02:03PM (2 children)
Chromium is open source, so if you used Chromiums code, in your own browser, you can patch the code, remove or add anything you want, basically you can do anything at all you want, your not really under the control of Google, since you can modify the code as you need to. In reality, it would have no effect on the ability of a browser to control the features, it would still have the same amount of control as if it were using its own engine. If Mozilla did switch, it could patch the chromium code base however it needed to. You can argue it would be more efficient, since the energy requires to reimplement things in many different browser engines could instead be used to bug check and QA chromium.
(Score: 2) by stormreaver on Tuesday January 29 2019, @03:58PM (1 child)
It seems that many people are conflating Chromium and Blink. While Microsoft is desperately in need of a whole new browser, and therefore Chromium is a good move, Firefox already has a good browser and a good renderer. The only issues is that Blink is more compatible with HTML 5 than Gecko is.
I still use Firefox for most of my browsing, though, and only use Chrome when Firefox whigs out (such as when no amount of editing the address bar will make Firefox go to AT&T's payment portal). Having a single, freely available Web renderer used, contributed to, and bug-fixed by everyone has substantial benefits, though.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @04:15PM
im one of many people--but what's Blink?
i conflated chromium with chrome and that it was a google product and so by default it just exists to violate your privacy and try to sell you shit you can't afford or already bought.
and that of course its a perfect match for windows 10 because that's what that os does, in addition to enforcing restrictions requiring always on hardware and stuff like that.
but when we have to subscribe to windows 10 with their desktops as a service offering that'll start making the rounds soon, only criminals will have freedom. regular people will be able to use whatever browser microsoft includes, because there wont be a choice to change it.