On the other hand if that had stopped google from having a browser they push into total dominance with the help of sleazy methods, maybe that would have been better overall.
I still prefer a open source chromium base vs a proprietary IE (or whatever else) Web Engine dominating.
(Fixing IE6 issues was no fun)
Also I do believe, the main reason chrome got dominance is simply because it got better from a technical POV.
I started webdev on FF with firebug. But at some point chrome just got faster with superior dev tools. And their dev tools kept improving while FF stagnated and rather started and maintained u related social campaigns and otherwise engaged with shady tracking as well.
> I still prefer a open source chromium base vs a proprietary IE (or whatever else) Web Engine dominating.
Okay but that's not the tradeoff I was suggesting for consideration. Ideally nothing would have dominated, but if something was going to win I don't think it would have been IE retaking all of firefox's ground. And while I liked Opera at the time, that takeover is even less likely.
> Also I do believe, the main reason chrome got dominance is simply because it got better from a technical POV.
Partly it was technical prowess. But google pushing it on their web pages and paying to put an "install chrome" checkbox into the installers of unrelated programs was a big factor in chrome not just spreading but taking over.
> And their dev tools kept improving while FF stagnated and rather started and maintained u related social campaigns and otherwise engaged with shady tracking as well.
Since when you don't touch Firefox or try the dev tools ?
I use FF for browsing, but every time I think of starting dev tools, maybe even just to have a look at some sites source code .. I quickly close them again and open chrome instead.
I wouldn't know where to start, to list all the things I miss in FF dev tools.
The only interesting thing for me they had, the 3D visualizer of the dom tree, they stopped years ago.
> they push into total dominance with the help of sleazy methods
Ah, yes. The famously sleazy "automatic security updates" and "performance."
It is amazing how people forget what the internet was like before Chrome. You could choose between IE, Firefox, or (shudder) Opera. IE was awful, Opera was weird, and the only thing that Firefox did better than customization was crash.
Now everyone uses Chrome/WebKit, because it just works. Mozilla abandoning Servo is awful, but considering that Servo was indirectly funded by Google in the first place... well, it's really hard to look at what Google has done to browsing and say that we're worse off than we were before.
We might not have had Mozilla/Phoenix/Firefox in the first place if so either, who I'd like to think been a net-positive for the web since inception. At least I remember being saved by Firefox when the options were pretty much Internet Explorer or Opera on a Windows machine.
