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Firefox wants to level the browser playing field with Microsoft, Google, and Apple

Mozilla alleges tech giants' bias against Firefox

Mozilla has published a list of ways big tech gatekeepers prevent independent browsers — such as its browser, Firefox — from flourishing on their platforms.

In a recent blog post, Mozilla expressed concerns about how tech companies like Apple, Google, and Microsoft use tactics to ensure users pick their browsers instead of independent options like Firefox.

It goes on to state that companies do this in several ways, such as "making it harder for a user to download and use a different browser, ignoring or resetting a user's default browser preference, restricting capabilities to the first-party browser, or requiring the use of the first-party browser engine for third-party browsers."

To shed light on the issue, the company has published a new issue tracker documenting how it views Firefox as being disadvantaged.

Apple has, by far, the most issues as Mozilla sees it, with ten individual complaints being listed, compared to Microsoft and Google's three each. Included in its list of issues, Mozilla cites Firefox's inability to "programmatically set itself as the default [browser]", import browsing information like history, bookmarked sites, and cookies, and read Messages data as major concerns.

Mozilla may claim the most individual issues against Apple, but Google's Chrome has the largest worldwide share by far. Chrome holds more than three times the marker share that Safari has, across Mac, iPad, and iPhone.

Mozilla also calls on other browser vendors and non-browser groups to publish their concerns similarly.

The browser developer's indexing comes at a time when big tech faces increased scrutiny over alleged gatekeeping practices. Recently, European media and technology companies have signed a letter stating that tech giants have neglected their obligations to comply with the EU's Digital Markets Act.

After more than four years of investigations, the Department of Justice is preparing to sue Apple for alleged anticompetitive behavior, potentially in the next few months.

In an attempt to assuage concerns and comply with regulations, Apple announced plans to open up its onboard iPhone NFC technology to third-party mobile payment providers, allowing them to offer their services across the EU.



18 Comments

gatorguy 14 Years · 24653 comments

Mozilla has published a list of ways big tech gatekeepers prevent independent browsers -- such as its browser, Firefox -- from flourishing on their platforms.
Mozilla alleges tech giants' bias against Firefox


To shed light on the issue, the company has published a new issue tracker documenting how it views Firefox as being disadvantaged.

Apple has, by far, the most issues as Mozilla sees it, with ten individual complaints being listed, compared to Microsoft and Google's three each. Included in its list of issues, Mozilla cites Firefox's inability to "programmatically set itself as the default [browser]", import browsing information like history, bookmarked sites, and cookies, and read Messages data as major concerns.

Mozilla may claim the most individual issues against Apple, but Google's Chrome has the largest worldwide share by far. Chrome holds more than three times the marker share that Safari has, across Mac, iPad, and iPhone.Read on AppleInsider

So again, Apple is too small and weak to be required to face the same regulation as the other techs? That seems to be a theme lately when Apple deals with regulators or competition authorities.

lowededwookie 17 Years · 1183 comments

Firefox is a has-been browser that has failed due to its own incompetence.

Its own code is hugely buggy, insecure, and resource intensive which is why Apple forced WebKit engines only on iOS devices.

Firefox had its time years ago.

Hell, even Opera ditched its own engine for Chromium as did Microsoft. Not that I think Chromium is better. I refuse to use Chrome and Google is not making me desire it with the stupid systems being implemented. But I’d prefer a Chromium browser to a Mozilla engined browser any day.

3 Likes · 0 Dislikes
mike1 11 Years · 3447 comments

Web browsing is such basic functionality these days, it really should just be part of the OS of choice. Google would disagree, of course.
I switched to Firefox on my work PC when Apple discontinued Safari for PCs, because IE (at the time) sucked. My new PC has Edge which I am getting used to and never bothered to download Firefox. As someone mentioned above, it is a resource hog. Another gripe is that whenever they do one of their silly updates, every site thinks I am using a new device and wants me to re-authenticate. So annoying.

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ranson 16 Years · 91 comments

Firefox is a has-been browser that has failed due to its own incompetence.

Its own code is hugely buggy, insecure, and resource intensive which is why Apple forced WebKit engines only on iOS devices.

Firefox had its time years ago.

Hell, even Opera ditched its own engine for Chromium as did Microsoft. Not that I think Chromium is better. I refuse to use Chrome and Google is not making me desire it with the stupid systems being implemented. But I’d prefer a Chromium browser to a Mozilla engined browser any day.

This is a really hot take, and I'm not sure what the point is of bashing an open source browser that is being maintained and improved by a community of volunteers.

It is unfortunate that more mainstream users (including myself) do not use Firefox, because it is actually a decent browser that is quite privacy-conscious.

"Hugely buggy" is certainly untrue - it objectively has about as many bugs and vulnerabilities as chrome and safari - measured by outstanding bug reports + cadence of issues fixed.

"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. In fact, Safari could arguably be the _least_ secure, since it cannot currently be patched without a Apple issuing a new minor or bugfix OS release, whereas the others only require an update to the browser application itself. Meaning that actively exploited vulnerabilities can linger longer on Apple devices due to the time it takes them to publish an OS release and the time it takes most users to patch an OS versus getting automated app updates overnight while charging the device. And on iOS, since all browsers must use the OS-provided webkit library, that makes all browsers on iOS inherently more insecure than those browsers's releases on other platforms - and the browser maker can't even do anything about it (!!!). What Apple is doing with webkit lock-in on iOS should be illegal (and someday will be).

There was definitely a time where the quality/performance of FF was suspect. But over the last 5 or so years, they have largely rejoined the pack in those matters. It certainly hurt them at the time. But Mozilla's contention now (about which they are correct) is that, despite having a comparable browser to the rest of the pack, the largest forces in desktop and mobile OSes are making it increasingly harder for users to choose a browser other than one offered by the OS maker. That is exactly what got Microsoft in trouble in the late 90's over Internet Explorer, which cost them billions in antitrust fines.

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tht 24 Years · 5734 comments

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.

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