Pretty much, and I think this highlights just how important it is to have at least two independently developed browser engines. If Chromium becomes the only game in town that would effectively let Google, which makes most of its revenue from ads, decide how we access the internet. That would be an absolutely terrible scenario to be in.
We can only hope normal people start using firefox again and ditch the piece of cold garbage that is chrome/ium. Though i doubt most people nowadays will even think about switching browsers (like how windows still has like 75+% of market share despite its quality freefalling since win10 and the most user hostile stuff being added)
If experience gets bad enough then people will look for alternatives. IE was something like 90% of the market share at one point and then it lost it fairly rapidly.
Not sure if software enshittification really makes people switch. I wish they would but I’m not convinced. I’d say the windows freefall started after windows 7:
8 was universally agreed to be complete horseshit because they were trying to make it work for both, touch and keyboard/mouse, which obviously failed.
10 felt like a sponsored-by-ads freemium cheap spyware, adding even more inconsistencies with these different system settings windows, adding cortana which literally not a single person on earth wanted to use but was hard to disable/remove and embracing the microsoft store which is the most cursed shithole of all (including google playstore which is already bad enough).
11 Is just like 10 but takes away essential settings, making every professional users workflow 40% slower for no reason.
Win7 also had issues, but it felt much more usable for professional use. Also much less bloated with bullcrap nobody ever asked for (preinstalled candycrush anyone?). So for me that was clearly peak windows. Obviously, every half-decent linux distro was at least as good, many were better even from a pure users perspective. After that, linux desktops got better and windows got worse. Nowadays its no competition if you ask me. But still, few people swicht from the pre-installed OS…
I’m heavily anti-Windows but if I had to pick a release (and have it supported forever) Windows 2000 would be my pick. Pure NT kernel, no 9x bullshit? Sign me up.
Win7 also had issues, but it felt much more usable for professional use
What issues did you have? I remember it only being light on resources, stable, and aesthetically pleasing. The UI introduced snap-to-edge, which was such a game changer at the time and really makes Windows versions before it feel archaic in comparison. It was the last Windows version before the layout of settings stopped making sense.
I’m sure this is just rose-tinted glasses so I might be ignoring some issues, but I can’t recall anything in particular.
Yes I also remember it as pretty awesome! It had some normal windows fails, like the search in explorer searching through many file formats content instead of only just file names (which would be a reasonable default), thus being slow, needing to build a search index (doing heavy work in the background on its own, which is terrible) and making it super weird to navigate the results. And of course windows update, which was always enormously heavy and slow and required reboots. And of course hiding file extensions by default (I think they still do it. Who the fuck is so damn stupid to make this the default?! Heck, I wouldn’t even allow this setting at all).
Thinking of it, these three little examples all stayed the same or got even much worse with later versions (updates!). E.g. in win10 the explorer search is still unusable but they managed to fuck up the start menu search as well (which worked well in win7).
Do everything you can! Switch people’s default search engine in their browser if they won’t switch. I am nearly done coverting my entire office to DDG! Row! Row! Fight the power!
Their ads and search are their bread and butter if I’m not mistaken. So even if all you can do is change their browser’s default engine every little bit helps. I myself have uninstalled chromium browsers and switch to FF/LibreWolf. I still have Google Authenticator but that will take me longer to kick with its 30+ entries. I’d love it if I could find out which services cost them money and heavily use those for the time being.
That is my next move as well as abandoning GPay. My final move will be sorting through the 400+ accounts attached to my gmail and switch that to proton. With my schedule it will take me possibly 2 months to get around to it unfortunately.
Everytime I see someone I know using chrome and getting an ad (because most adblockers in chrome are useless), I try to nudge them to the furry browser
Unfortunately is not that simple, now Google is pushing a new standard web environment called WEI and all browsers will be affected with it. Is not just a matter of free choice.
We’ll see if sites really start forcing this standard, could just turn into a situation where you use Chrome as an app to access specific sites that force it and Firefox for everything else.
The FOSS community is big enough that most things will have a non fucked foss counterpart if that happens. Of course hopefully that doesn’t need to happen
Maybe a new form to navigate the web will emerge from the FOSS community. I really hope all of us join this to support the new web that we need to make to fight back the big tech greed. Some through code expertise and others through money donates to support the projects that we love. But I don’t want to be much idealistic about the future. I’ m just dreaming high
If and only “if” this split occur. Unfortunately only few tech conscious people about the importance of free internet as a whole and privacy will adhere to it. Will not be a big movement to harm the core of the big tech.
My perspective on this is that it’s about sustainability as opposed to trying to compete with big tech in a zero sum game. For example, Mastodon or Lemmy aren’t able to compete with commercial platforms in terms of users, but that doesn’t mean they’re not viable communities. I can see a future where there’s a niche open internet that exists independently of the commercial one and I think that would be fine. As long as there are enough people to do development on platforms and browsers and to produce content, that’s all that really matters. In fact, a split might even be better because then we wouldn’t have companies interfering with how the network operates.
I’ve tried firefox but there’s one main issue that I haven’t been able to find a way around. I have a macbook from work and am able to switch between full screen applications with control+left/right arrows or swipe gestures which I use all the time. When I open Firefox in full screen, it seems to lock itself as the full screen application. Anyone know if there’s a way to prevent that? It’s really annoying and just messes with my entire workflow. It’s literally the only reason I haven’t made the switch yet.
Is this something that will only affect Google Chrome or other chromium based browsers immediately? I’m on Firefox already but the change isn’t so appealing to friends who are on Google Chrome.
The concern with WEI proposal is that it’s going to be server enforced. Basically, the server will require browsers to be signed and will refuse to talk to ones it doesn’t recognize the signature for. This will mean that you’ll only be able to talk to such servers using a browser that’s approved by whoever distributes these certs. This is a great explanation of the whole scheme.
My theory is that they have been “inbreeding” too much by only hiring friends and family. This creates a cesspool instead of a talent pool. Try getting into one of these companies without an in… It’s not easy.
I think it’s a little more straightforward: we’re at the tail end of a tech bubble. All these companies have been riding a COVID-19 wave and are reaching the end of it. They’ve been laying off staff as well as burning their customer good-will for extra revenue.
The “we’ll figure it out later” mentality that plagued the entirety of the ad-supported internet during the last two decades is finally coming to it’s natural conclusion. Some companies have decided to tackle the issue by progressively getting away from ads (See X/Twitter, YouTube Premium), others are trying to hold for dear life and doing one last, giant push to try to make it work (Google, also YouTube somewhat). The next few years will decide what the future of the web looks like
I’ve started to reconsider how I do things online. For such a long time it’s been the norm to expect things for free (gratis), and users became the product. If the choice now is being bombarded with ads or paying for a service, I’d rather pay a reasonable price. If I want online storage to keep my files backed up and available, then a small sum is acceptable to me. The important thing is to choose providers who believe in the open spirit of the internet, using free software, respecting privacy. I’ve submitted a couple of patches to the operating system I use. Etc. I want the internet to be a cooperative, friendly place.
My guess is they’re not self destructing. They’re pissing off parts of the user base to profit more from the rest of the user base. I’d guess it’s all calculated and profitable. Except whatever twitter is doing that’s just a mess
Nah. Those who installed adblocker did this for a reason. They’ll put up with it for maybe a week at max before they get annoyed by the full-Screen hot singles in their area in tab 69 that plays music.
I switched to apple years ago because I wanted to know why I hate it so much and use Firefox ever since.
I usually don’t give a fuck about ads, but they’ve gotten increasingly annoying lately. Used to be that the popular websites were classier and less intrusive with their ads, that’s why they were popular. Now the biggest websites (most obviously YouTube) are the ones with the craziest most intrusive ads.
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