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Comment by zztop44 | Hacker News Reader

If Google does actually force through changes that meaningfully degrade adblocking effectiveness in Chrome, that could ironically be just the thing to motivate a critical mass of users to migrate to Firefox/some other alternative.

Firefox won when it was significantly better than IE in ways that lots of people actually cared about (it had tabs). Then Chrome won when it was significantly than Firefox in ways lots of people cared about (it was fast and if a tab crashed the whole browser didn’t crash with it).

For a long time, no browser has been significantly better than Chrome in ways lots of people care about. I don’t know if Manifest v3 is as bad as everyone says, but if it is, that might open up a big enough point of difference.

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> Then Chrome won when it was significantly than Firefox in ways lots of people cared about (it was fast and if a tab crashed the whole browser didn’t crash with it).

Firefox shill here. I believe Chrome won because 1) Firefox had long been struggling with RAM consumption and stability 2) Chrome's onboarding was closer to effortless 3) It was relentlessly marketed/placed to saturation.

Chrome had it's own RAM issues but #3 outweighed that. Any lock-in Chrome now has is due to A) #3, B) a better sync process that's integrated with Gmail and C) better corporate deployment (Gmail+Chrome).

I've had my corp customers on Chrome over Firefox by about 4 to 1. I'm not happy about that but I have to prioritize their experience.

However, Firefox has drastically improved in stability (as has Chrome). Chrome is getting less friendly. Where syncing isn't used, I see paths to swap users over the next year or so.

I agree that Chrome’s lock-in now is around syncing/integration. And, of course, the marketing.

Firefox is now totally competitive on speed/stability. But it’s not a significantly better browsing experience, which is what it would need to be in order to overcome inertia and get people to switch.

PS: My memory is that Firefox’s RAM issues were pretty awful when Chrome launched (if you had many tabs open it was only a matter of time until the browser crashed). Chrome was a significant improvement in that regard (and Google’s reputation was very good at the time, which probably helped).

> I believe Chrome won because

4) Chrome was faster, more responsive, and more stable than Firefox since its inception. Firefox reached parity *9* years later, with Firefox Quantum.

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