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Comment by sumeno | Hacker News Reader

A Firefox that doesn't keep up with new features gradually becomes more and more useless as websites use the new features.

You may want the web to stay the same but it isn't going to

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New features are not cost-free. They translate to increased code size, increased browser build time and decreased performance. At some point the maintenance burden becomes too high, even for Google. I don't think they have an interest in endlessly adding new features.

That hasn't stopped anyone yet, and even if it did, it will apply to all browsers.

It has stopped everyone except for Google and arguably Apple (I mean Apple is a bit of a weird case because they only have to support their platform really, and everyone kind of expects Safari on iOS to be a little restricted anyway).

Yeah, this is a worry. Google or someone will just come up with some not needed but slightly better (from a mere feature perspective, not from a privacy one) thing, that websites will use. Lets say a new codec or protocol for something like ... VR in the browser! or similar stuff. That thing will be somehow easier to use with Chrome and they will call it a "standard". Then people will try to use those websites using it and ... Oh? You use FF? Too bad! It doesn't work there! But you could use this "modern" and "secure" browser, _made by Google_! (and half-informed people online will claim FF doesn't implement the "standard") ... and tada, the badly informed user switches away. Not to forget, when they install Chrome, they probably are asked to make it their default browser.

It is all quite dystopian and depressing to think about.

It's not only about big thingys. It's any small difference in behavior where some developer tests only on the browser with 90% usage* and ignores the small niche of Firefox users, leaving them accidentally with a broken site. Some CSS property, some JS API whatever.

*) The stats are somewhat wrong, I guess there are more Firefox users with different privacy blockers than Chrome, thus hiding from Google analytics and similar, which people use for stats in higher percentage

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