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posted by martyb on Monday January 28 2019, @10:38PM   Printer-friendly
from the remember-when-browser-war-was-IE-vs-Netscape? dept.

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


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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by insanumingenium on Monday January 28 2019, @11:09PM (14 children)

    by insanumingenium (4824) on Monday January 28 2019, @11:09PM (#793284) Journal

    Is there any documentation on that 5% claim? I haven't seen anything that puts Firefox that low yet...

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  • (Score: 2) by Apparition on Monday January 28 2019, @11:13PM (13 children)

    by Apparition (6835) on Monday January 28 2019, @11:13PM (#793288) Journal

    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)

      by isostatic (365) on Monday January 28 2019, @11:27PM (#793300) Journal

      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)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @02:14AM (#793368)

        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

          by RedIsNotGreen (2191) on Tuesday January 29 2019, @02:46AM (#793390) Homepage Journal

          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)

          by PiMuNu (3823) on Tuesday January 29 2019, @10:43AM (#793480)

          > 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

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @02:47PM (#793556)

            As you should know

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Hyper on Tuesday January 29 2019, @02:42AM

        by Hyper (1525) on Tuesday January 29 2019, @02:42AM (#793387) Journal

        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)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @02:45AM (#793389)

        Even Safari is beating the pants off FF.

        • (Score: 2) by Pino P on Tuesday January 29 2019, @04:06PM

          by Pino P (4721) on Tuesday January 29 2019, @04:06PM (#793591) Journal

          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)

        by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Tuesday January 29 2019, @02:47AM (#793392) Journal

        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

          by Pino P (4721) on Tuesday January 29 2019, @04:10PM (#793592) Journal

          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)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @04:54PM (#793615)

          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

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @04:56PM (#793616)

            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

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @07:52PM (#793702)

            Install NewPipe [schabi.org]