yes, the web itself is dying with the centralisation of services on top of the blazing dumpster fire that is the current browser ecosystem. So many aspects of the first generation internet have been lost, even the basic concept of it being a massively distributed, hyperlinked collection of pages is just FAANG serving occasional content to break up the adverts. All wrapped up in their own delivery apps that can punish non-compliance with obscurity.
this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2024
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I think the author understates how much better Chrome was than everything else from the time it launched to the time Firefox went multiprocess. It was about a five year period.
Now I think most people just see no reason to switch. Better adblocking might motivate a few.
Yep. I actually switched to chrome back then specifically because it was faster than Firefox (which I had been using), and each tab was its own process so if one bogged down, timed out, or crashed I could just close it without losing everything. And then they made it a bloated mess and I went back to Firefox when they got their act together and opening the browser didn't tank ram usage. There was a point where people switched to chrome because there were benefits. And now the whole browser infrastructure is just kind of garbage because Google investors need more money.
And then they made it a bloated mess and I went back to Firefox when they got their act together and opening the browser didn't tank ram usage
I don't think it was being turned into a bloated mess, as much as that it always was pretty slow, until Google started investing a lot in JS performance with the release of Chrome, and showed how fast it could be.
(Well, and as a result, websites started becoming more demanding, which did make browsers that didn't keep up slow down more.)
Compared to the resources it used to take chrome is absolutely a resource hog and that's why I describe it as bloated. I wasn't describing Firefox as bloated. But I agree with you that it was slow and a bit clunky back then which is part of the reason I moved away from it.
Oh sorry, yeah I misread (and almost did it again just now) - I thought you mentioned that they made Firefox a bloated mess back when you switched to Chrome. Apologies!
No worries. No it just got slow and I had problems with crashing but that could even have been windows at the time (the problems with freezing were definitely probably related to the Internet quality).
I honestly don't know too terribly many people who don't use Firefox (at least in my personal life).
You just don’t know non technically oriented people on corporate America. People are rawdogging Edge without Adblock, at the behest of their own IT departments. It’s appalling and insane.
That's totally fair. I'm the person a lot of friends and family come to for tech advice so I recommend Firefox a lot.
I’m doing my part as well, but it’s tiring sometimes.
I mean I bet many people I know use edge as its the default in windows but like my wife and I and most tech people I know use firefox.
I have to use edge at work. So do all my coworkers. Some of our front end software requires it. But at home most of my fellow techs use Firefox. And pretty much all my family and friends use Firefox. So I guess it depends on what circles you run in.
oh I use edge at work to but I sorta don't count that. Its like if I drove a bus for a living and my home car was a prius and someone asked me what I drive I would say prius and not like bus or a bus and a prius.
I do most of my computer interaction at work. But I wouldn't use edge (or any other chromium based browser) if I didn't have to. So I guess that's fair.
This is too simplistic, isn't it? At work maybe we have no choice. My AdBlock is still working on YT. So I don't need to bail on Chrome yet. (I did, but I didn't need to.)
What happens as the ad blockers get worse, as Google disables more and more functionality? This will be the fun time. It's not hard to switch browsers, after all. And people know this. So of course they don't worry about it.
It's not hard to switch browsers, after all. And people know this. So of course they don't worry about it.
I think the author is lamenting this attitude: it's not hard to switch browsers, as long as those alternatives exist and remain viable. That gets less and less likely as fewer and fewer people use the alternatives.