It may be better in the shorter term, but using yet another Chromium based browser doesn't really improve the current situation with Google's browser monopoly. I'm personally using Firefox Nightly, and so far it has served me well.
>but using yet another Chromium based browser doesn't really improve the current situation with Google's browser monopoly.
Not everyone wants to be a martyr/activist to change their habits and experience in order to support a political cause they don't really understand.
Most people just want the best, frictionless and most familiar experience to the product they already know and love, which often means a slick and shiny product from a monopolistic anti-consumer company.
>Most people just want the best, frictionless and most familiar experience
Every time there's a thread about browsers, at least one commenter presents themselves as a self-appointed representative of "the users" and declares what the users really want.
And it's not that these self-appointed representatives are wrong, necessarily, but they tend to say one of two things: either The People want serious privacy and FOSS commitments and no AI, or they want everything smooth and don't care about privacy. And whichever one it is, it's the most obvious thing in the world, according to the person saying it.
>presents themselves as a self-appointed representative and declares what the users really want
Since you're making rude false accusations like that, let me ask you, are you saying most people DON'T want "the best, frictionless and most familiar experience"?
Because I never met anyone who said they wanted a slower jankier less intuitive product than what they used before.
So how was my statement wrong when I said what people want?
>either The People want serious privacy and FOSS commitments
Most people don't care about privacy and FOSS, otherwise Google wouldn't be one of the most valuable companies in the world with some of the most popular products.
To clarify, by "most people" I mean most people in absolute terms, like the ones you when you touch grass, not just those from your HN/tech bubble, those are not "most people".
One person's "rude" is another person's request to tether claims to objective reality in some tractable way, even if it's just a report of plausible enough anecdotal experience.
>Because I never met anyone who said they wanted a slower jankier less intuitive product than what they used before.
Well someone's having big feelings, but this is a straw man, speed and privacy don't have to be mutually exclusive and in practice they aren't for the most part. Users who are casual enough that ad tech telemetry and privacy are mysterious words to them are also not people who are going to note the 0.1% difference in performance that you claim they're prioritizing. Belligerently repeating a just so story based on a flawed framing of trade-offs faced by users doesn't make it more true.
>Most people don't care about privacy and FOSS
Again, this is a just so story, and I think it's just something weird about the vernacular of HN that people are comfortable making claims like this or thinking they can be leveraged to make authoritative judgments. But one person's trust me bro is as good as anothers, and I don't even think it's right that people really are trading privacy for performance and any sort of margin that significant enough to really be noticed. And frankly, if they do notice a performance difference, it's probably because they don't have ad block and if they don't have ad block it's probably because they're using Chrome.
Google actually maintains their market share through a combination of strong user experience and an utterly dominant position as a distributor. Chrome is the default browser on over a billion devices and is advertised and deeply integrated into the ecosystem of the world's most used website. I've said it a million times but if it was just about the inherent quality of the product then Opera would have conquered the world back in 2012.
This mechanism is well understood pretty much anytime software monopolies face legal scrutiny. Microsoft wanted people to believe that Internet explorer was just that much better than the competition, and Google probably wanted the world to believe its search was so much better, which is why it had to be the default option for Apple devices in Europe. But if that was an organic manifestation of consumer preference, it wouldn't have to be maintained with billion dollar arrangements, or hostile ecosystem lockout that came under legal scrutiny.
>One person's "rude" is another person's request
You can also make requests without being a dick and calling people "self appointed X" just because their viewpoint doesn't match yours. Conversation work better that way.
mjorgers · · focus · HN ↗
PorciiVorbesc · · focus · HN ↗
Not everyone wants to be a martyr/activist to change their habits and experience in order to support a political cause they don't really understand.
Most people just want the best, frictionless and most familiar experience to the product they already know and love, which often means a slick and shiny product from a monopolistic anti-consumer company.
glenstein · · focus · HN ↗
Every time there's a thread about browsers, at least one commenter presents themselves as a self-appointed representative of "the users" and declares what the users really want.
And it's not that these self-appointed representatives are wrong, necessarily, but they tend to say one of two things: either The People want serious privacy and FOSS commitments and no AI, or they want everything smooth and don't care about privacy. And whichever one it is, it's the most obvious thing in the world, according to the person saying it.
PorciiVorbesc · · focus · HN ↗
Since you're making rude false accusations like that, let me ask you, are you saying most people DON'T want "the best, frictionless and most familiar experience"?
Because I never met anyone who said they wanted a slower jankier less intuitive product than what they used before.
So how was my statement wrong when I said what people want?
>either The People want serious privacy and FOSS commitments
Most people don't care about privacy and FOSS, otherwise Google wouldn't be one of the most valuable companies in the world with some of the most popular products.
To clarify, by "most people" I mean most people in absolute terms, like the ones you when you touch grass, not just those from your HN/tech bubble, those are not "most people".
glenstein · · focus · HN ↗
>Because I never met anyone who said they wanted a slower jankier less intuitive product than what they used before.
Well someone's having big feelings, but this is a straw man, speed and privacy don't have to be mutually exclusive and in practice they aren't for the most part. Users who are casual enough that ad tech telemetry and privacy are mysterious words to them are also not people who are going to note the 0.1% difference in performance that you claim they're prioritizing. Belligerently repeating a just so story based on a flawed framing of trade-offs faced by users doesn't make it more true.
>Most people don't care about privacy and FOSS
Again, this is a just so story, and I think it's just something weird about the vernacular of HN that people are comfortable making claims like this or thinking they can be leveraged to make authoritative judgments. But one person's trust me bro is as good as anothers, and I don't even think it's right that people really are trading privacy for performance and any sort of margin that significant enough to really be noticed. And frankly, if they do notice a performance difference, it's probably because they don't have ad block and if they don't have ad block it's probably because they're using Chrome.
Google actually maintains their market share through a combination of strong user experience and an utterly dominant position as a distributor. Chrome is the default browser on over a billion devices and is advertised and deeply integrated into the ecosystem of the world's most used website. I've said it a million times but if it was just about the inherent quality of the product then Opera would have conquered the world back in 2012.
This mechanism is well understood pretty much anytime software monopolies face legal scrutiny. Microsoft wanted people to believe that Internet explorer was just that much better than the competition, and Google probably wanted the world to believe its search was so much better, which is why it had to be the default option for Apple devices in Europe. But if that was an organic manifestation of consumer preference, it wouldn't have to be maintained with billion dollar arrangements, or hostile ecosystem lockout that came under legal scrutiny.
PorciiVorbesc · · focus · HN ↗
You can also make requests without being a dick and calling people "self appointed X" just because their viewpoint doesn't match yours. Conversation work better that way.