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<p>Supposedly today we have a lot of browsers to choose from - Google Chrome, Safari, Microsoft Edge, Firefox, Brave, Opera, Vivaldi, etc.
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Having choices is a good thing, right? Nobody wants to relive the time of almost complete Internet Explorer domination again.
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Unfortunately our choices are significantly fewer than they seem to be at first glance, as Chrome and Safari (thanks to the iPhone) totally dominate
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the browser landscape in terms of usage and almost all browsers these days are built on top of <a href="https://www.chromium.org/Home">Chromium</a>, Google’s open-source browser project.
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Funny enough even Edge is built on top of Chromium today, despite the bitter rivalry between Google and Microsoft. What’s also funny is that
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Chrome and Safari control about 85% of the browser market share today, and Microsoft’s Edge commands only about 4%:</p>
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<div height="400" id="all-browser-ww-monthly-202010-202110" style="width: 600px; height: 400px;" width="600"></div>
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<p>Source: <a href="https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share">StatCounter Global Stats - Browser Market Share</a></p>
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<p>Of course, basing their products on Chromium makes a lot of sense for browser vendors - it’s significantly cheaper for them not to have to invest in their own engine, participate
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in discussions about web standards and not have to deal with compatibility complaints. A long time ago I was an Opera user for a while and despite loving
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the browser overall, I was often frustrated that some sites were broken with it, simply because few developers would bother to support a niche browser.
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Now when Opera is based on Chromium that’s a problem that solves itself and Opera’s team can focus solely on their browser’s UI/UX. Let Google do all the
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heavy lifting for them…</p>
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<p>In the mean time every competitor that Google converts to Chromium strengthens
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their position and increases the influence they have over the future of web
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standards. Even today they can do pretty much everything they want to, but things
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can get even worse if they get to 95%+ of Chromium market share. At the height of
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its power (2002-2004) Internet Explorer held about 95% of the browser market. What a
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“wonderful” time that was!</p>
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<p>Here’s where we are today:</p>
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<table>
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<thead>
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<tr>
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<th>Browser</th>
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<th>Based on Chromium</th>
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<th>Open-source</th>
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<th>Market Share (desktop + mobile)</th>
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</tr>
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</thead>
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<tbody>
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<tr>
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<td>Chrome</td>
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<td>Yes</td>
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<td>No</td>
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<td>64.7%</td>
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</tr>
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<tr>
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<td>Chromium</td>
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<td>Yes</td>
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<td>Yes</td>
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<td>-</td>
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</tr>
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<tr>
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<td>Edge</td>
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<td>Yes</td>
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<td>No</td>
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<td>4.0%</td>
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</tr>
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<tr>
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<td>Brave</td>
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<td>Yes</td>
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<td>Yes</td>
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<td>-</td>
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</tr>
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<tr>
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<td>Vivaldi</td>
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<td>Yes</td>
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<td>No</td>
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<td>-</td>
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</tr>
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<tr>
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<td>Opera</td>
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<td>Yes</td>
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<td>No</td>
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<td>2.4%</td>
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</tr>
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<tr>
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<td>Safari</td>
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<td>No</td>
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<td>No</td>
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<td>19.0%</td>
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</tr>
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<tr>
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<td>Firefox</td>
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<td>No</td>
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<td>Yes</td>
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<td>3.7%</td>
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</tr>
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</tbody>
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</table>
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<p>I don’t know about you, but I find the list above quite depressing. We’re
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essentially left with only two major open-source browsers (Chromium and
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Firefox), and knowing that one of them is controlled by Google makes it clear
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that it’s not the typical bazaar-like OSS project. We’ve gotten to the point
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that Chromium-based browsers are so common that developers just stopped to bother
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supporting other browsers. Last week I saw one site that directly didn’t support
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Firefox (it displayed a message I should switch to Chrome) and another where the
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sign in was broken on Firefox, but worked on Chrome-like browsers. Soon Google
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are going to be in complete control of web standards, unless something
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drastically changes. Do you want the future of browsing to lie solely in the
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hands of the biggest advertising business on Earth? I’m pretty sure that I
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don’t.</p>
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<p>One can argue that Safari is an alternative to Chrome, given the popularity of
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Apple’s devices and the massive resources of the company. I guess I can agree to
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some extent, but from my perspective Apple is just another company that’s more
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focused on advancing their own agenda than the well-being of their users or open
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web standards. I do give them a lot of credit for helping rid the world of
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Flash, though.</p>
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<p>For me Firefox is the only alternative to a complete Chrome hegemony in the sense that:</p>
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<ul>
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<li>it’s open-source in the real sense (a project that’s truly community-driven)</li>
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<li>it has a great track record of fighting for its users and for a better
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Internet. Chrome started with a great narrative when it was facing an uphill
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battle with Internet Explorer, but it has almost become the tyrant it sought
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to displace. I wonder if every revolution is doomed to finish like this.</li>
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<li>it’s home to the last major rendering engine, that’s not derived from WebKit (namely Gecko/Quantum)<sup id="fnref:1"><a class="footnote" href="https://batsov.com/articles/2021/11/28/firefox-is-the-only-alternative/#fn:1" rel="footnote">1</a></sup></li>
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<li>it’s the only major browser that lobbies on behalf of regular users (people like you and me) when it comes
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to implementing new web standards. Everyone should take a moment to visit <a href="https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/">this page</a>, detailing the position of Firefox’s
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developers on numerous specifications submitted to standards bodies like the IETF, W3C, and Ecma TC39. You’ll notice that many of them are considered “harmful”.</li>
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</ul>
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<p>If you’re using Chrome and you don’t realize how gradually the hero has become the villain I don’t blame you. I was one of those people myself. I’ve started using
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Firefox in 2004 a bit before version 1.0 was released. I’ve switched to Chrome in 2009, right after the beta version for Linux was announced. Back then Firefox
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was a huge resource hog and Google were still the company that “does no evil”. It’s almost surreal how things have changed… I never stopped using Firefox completely (it was always my “backup” browser), but for over a decade I was firmly in the Chrome camp. In recent years I’ve been bothered more and more that we’re heading for browser duopoly and
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this made me reconsider my life choices and make Firefox my main browser again. It’s a decision I don’t regret at all, despite the occasional broken sites that
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I encounter. Enduring a bit of pain is the least that we can do to support a good cause. Reporting those breakages to the developers of the respective sites is not
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a bad thing either.</p>
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<p>Don’t get me wrong, though - using Firefox is not painful at all. Quite the
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contrary! Firefox has made a lot of progress in recent years, despite the
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struggles of the Mozilla
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Corporation and the layoffs there. <a href="https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/introducing-firefox-quantum/">Quantum</a>
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was a massive step forward in terms of performance, and recently Firefox also
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got a significant (although somewhat controversial) facelift. Today the browser
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is sleek, fast and resource-efficient. Problems like the ones I outlined above are
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relatively rare. In fact I even had one case where a web application (Fastmail) would get
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stuck on every Chromium browser after a few hours, but would work flawlessly on
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Firefox.</p>
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<p>Sadly, despite all of its improvements Firefox’s share of the desktop browser
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market has been slowly going down from 32% in 2009-2010 to only 8% today.<sup id="fnref:2"><a class="footnote" href="https://batsov.com/articles/2021/11/28/firefox-is-the-only-alternative/#fn:2" rel="footnote">2</a></sup> Clearly, that
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market share was lost solely to Chrome & co.<sup id="fnref:3"><a class="footnote" href="https://batsov.com/articles/2021/11/28/firefox-is-the-only-alternative/#fn:3" rel="footnote">3</a></sup> I can attribute this decline to
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various factors:</p>
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<ul>
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<li>Google’s massive development resources and marketing machine.</li>
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<li>Most people not thinking about the long-term ramifications of ending up in a
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market with a single vendor in it.</li>
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<li>Firefox losing its status of a shiny new thing over the years.</li>
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<li>Mozilla’s inability to capitalize on the popularity of Firefox in the past. I think almost all of their revenue came from a search deal with Google.</li>
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</ul>
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<p>On top of this we have the rise of mobile computing where Google and Apple both
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have their browsers firmly entrenched and competition is virtually
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non-existing. Technically speaking alternatives do exist, but most people don’t
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care about them and simply use whatever default browser came with their
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phone/tablet. I sometimes wonder whether the rise of smartphones contributed to
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Firefox losing traction. Given how convenient it is to sync data automatically
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between all your browsers probably it did.<sup id="fnref:4"><a class="footnote" href="https://batsov.com/articles/2021/11/28/firefox-is-the-only-alternative/#fn:4" rel="footnote">4</a></sup> In the past Microsoft was
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eventually forced to ask people if they want to use a browser other than
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Internet Explorer during Windows’s setup.<sup id="fnref:5"><a class="footnote" href="https://batsov.com/articles/2021/11/28/firefox-is-the-only-alternative/#fn:5" rel="footnote">5</a></sup> I’m not sure if this helped
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Firefox and Chrome grow their market share, but I doubt it hurt. It’d be nice to
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see something similar on the mobile front at some point, but I doubt that will
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happen.</p>
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<p>Notice that I haven’t even mentioned privacy today. Obviously for a proprietary
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browser it’s pretty hard to assess how it (mis)handles your browsing data. I’m
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fairly certain that you can have a privacy-respecting browsing experience based
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on Chromium (we have Brave), but for me that has never been the problem. The
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problem is having real competition and real alternatives. As it stands today we
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have a browser duopoly (Chrome and Safari) and pretty much a monopoly outside of
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Apple’s walled garden. Firefox remains our only real alternative. Remember that
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next time you decide you don’t care about Chrome slowly eating the web.</p>
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<div class="footnotes">
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<ol>
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<li id="fn:1">
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<p>Chrome’s Blink engine was forked from WebKit after Google has some falling out with Apple. Seems companies are really struggling to work together on such supposedly open-source projects. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://batsov.com/articles/2021/11/28/firefox-is-the-only-alternative/#fnref:1">↩</a></p>
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</li>
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<li id="fn:2">
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<p>Its usage on mobile devices is insignificant today. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://batsov.com/articles/2021/11/28/firefox-is-the-only-alternative/#fnref:2">↩</a></p>
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</li>
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<li id="fn:3">
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<p>See <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9pvB4N99sQ">this video</a> that shows nicely the shift in the browser market sentiment. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://batsov.com/articles/2021/11/28/firefox-is-the-only-alternative/#fnref:3">↩</a></p>
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</li>
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<li id="fn:4">
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<p>These days I’m using Firefox on my iOS devices and it works pretty well. Granted, it’s not the real Gecko-based Firefox, but it works just as well as Safari and I find it more convenient to use. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://batsov.com/articles/2021/11/28/firefox-is-the-only-alternative/#fnref:4">↩</a></p>
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</li>
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<li id="fn:5">
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<p>At least in the European Union. See <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/mar/02/microsoft">https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/mar/02/microsoft</a> for more details. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://batsov.com/articles/2021/11/28/firefox-is-the-only-alternative/#fnref:5">↩</a></p>
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</li>
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</ol>
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</div> |