I think its crazy to pick your browser based on these kind of hoped-for second order effects.
TL;DR: it doesn't suffice to fork the client, you have to fork the entire web.
Just because I disagree that things are worse that doesn’t mean that I like the status quo either. Which is why I use Firefox (well, one of the many reasons. But a pretty big reason).
I remember writing my own web browser around 1999 (give or take a couple years). Just a toy thing but born out of frustration with Internet Explorer, or Internet Exploiter as I used to call it. That was a massive undertaking. But these days if Google do stagnate Chrome then it’s still possible to fork Chromium and push it in a different direction. Not to mention we also have WebKit, kHTML and Gecko too. That alone makes this situation better than it was when Microsoft owned the web. Add to that, Chome doesn’t come pre-installed on as many computers as IE did (lots if you count Android but at least Apple hardware ship something else. Opinions of Safari aside).
This doesn’t mean we should be complacent nor assume Google doesn’t still have a stranglehold but it does mean the GPs point is inaccurate.
Chrome on the other hand is not a hedge, it’s a key strategic interest for Google. It’s a great product from the users perspective, free, fast, leading experience. That’s likely not to falter.
Firefox is a great counterbalance but don’t expect it to lead with average consumers any time soon. From what I can tell it’s playing catch up on core features and it’s innovating in areas where more techno-literate users might care.
From our perspective that’s true. But it also worked fine for a great many non-technical people.
> That was also a time when the web was younger and users were more techno-literate.
That’s not true. By the time IE6 arrived most offices had either dedicated internet terminals or their workstations were connected to the internet. U.K. libraries had been providing internet access for years already, several years of kids would have used the internet at college, and dial up was already common in homes.
I remember this well because I managed network infrastructure for schools and offices in the late 90s and early 00s.
> I’d argue that IE was a hedge against the web displacing the OS. After it succeeded in killing off Netscape there wasn’t much to hedge against
No need to argue there, Microsoft have admitted that themselves. But the motives behind IE don’t alter the point we are discussing (though still interesting).
> Chrome on the other hand is not a hedge, it’s a key strategic interest for Google
The two point aren’t mutually exclusive: It’s a hedge against users not consuming Google’s advertising.
Much like how IE was a core strategy for Microsoft as well as a hedge to keep people on Windows.
> It’s a great product from the users perspective, free, fast, leading experience
So was internet explorer. It was developers that hated IE, not your average desktop user.
IE was faster than FF, free (unlike Opera) and compatible with more sites too (if just because web developers didn’t have much other choice than to support IE).
> Firefox is a great counterbalance but don’t expect it to lead with average consumers any time soon
I don’t ever expect it to lead again. And it’s also worth noting it took years to displace IE last time around so why would anyone expect it to happen quickly this time?
> From what I can tell it’s playing catch up on core features and it’s innovating in areas where more techno-literate users might care.
Funny enough this is similar to Netscape back when IE first started to take the edge (back in the IE 3 and 4 days when IE was actually a good browser).
What people sometimes forget is that IE didn’t just dominate because it was installed on every Windows desktop. While that certainly helped (as well as being the reason it remained dominant after it stagnated), it had already largely beaten the competition by the time IE 4 was released. IE was, for a while, genuinely the best browser.
So the situation then and now isn’t that different.