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Comment by rhn_mk1 | Hacker News Reader

The situation differs. IE lost because it stagnated, as Microsoft didn't care about the Web.

Google cares about the Web, and they not only keep developing Chrome, they also keep developing Web standards, meaning that any competitor has a lot of keeping up to do just to stay in one place.

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Not just that but Firefox has become stagnant when it comes to a lot of interesting Web standards. WebUSB, WebSerial etc... are the ones where people are really pushing the web and Mozilla refuses to implement them.

https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/#webusb

You make it sound like Mozilla is pushing back for no reason. They have pretty valid security and privacy concerns.

Their reasons to push against WebUSB are, imo, valid. There are legitimate concerns and a high level of complexity to allow such low level USB access in the web browser.

Their reasons to push against WebSerial are not as valid and that would still cover most use cases without the downsides and complexity of the full WebUSB.

For some of them, they do. But they could have implemented some of them behind a feature flag/cli flag or so? They did this for things that were bigger security headaches. That way they'd collect all the real world issues and iterate on their solutions for their privacy concerns. Right now, it is just one more reason why Chrome taking over their market share.

It is not like the use cases for connecting devices and use them via. the Web Platform will suddenly disappear if they don't support it.

Another difference. Because Google is on the Ads business, they won't incentivize anti-ad/privacy behaviour. Firefox has that edge, at the very minimum.

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