lowededwookie

tht said:

Sigh. If the government wants to regulate something, they should regulate the open standards that businesses should use. Since it is a "standard" any browser maker can implement them.

As it stands, Google is doing the typical network effect of getting website developers to design their websites for Chrome, not a standard. Since websites work best with Chrome, Chrome will be used more, thereby giving Google a rather huge hand in how the web works.

By  website developers to design to a an open published standard, it levels the playing field and all web browsers should be able to render websites identically.

There's a lot of turtles on top of each other here too. Web data brokers, ad APIs, tracker APIs, who knows what else, are all designed to work best with this or that browser. It's all part of the network effect. This stuff has to be open and standardized so any web browser can implement. Websites surely will have preference with Google as search result placements and ad space money is on the line, and will do a lot to optimize the solution that makes the most money, which is probably Chrome since Google has so much control over the ad placement money.

If someone is penalised, it should be the entities who are trying to break the government approved web standards.

ranson said:

"Insecure" is patently false. In fact, a quick stroll over to any browser-related forum on ArsTechnica - a community of the most technical folks on the internet - shows that a measurable portion of the community has consciously switched from Chrome to Firefox in the last year - _because_ it is viewed by them as more secure and private. Firefox is the preferred browser of most Linux users. 

You’re confusing security and privacy. They are different but not mutually exclusive.

Privacy is part of security but security includes a lot more. Yes Mozilla is more private but it’s not more secure than other browsers.

Mozilla might be the default browser on Linux but that doesn’t mean it’s the most used. Edge is the default browser on Windows but Chrome is the most used. Safari is the default on Macs but Chrome is the most used.

I’m not ragging on an open source browser because it’s open source. I’m ragging on it because in my experience it’s the worst performing browser I’ve used on multiple platforms. I just don’t get its appeal. Sure, it was great when it had Netscape’s cash funding it but those days are well and truly behind it.

But if you love it then all the power to you good sir. I’m not going to go against that view.