Except that Chrome can never turn into a new IE6. It keeps updating automatically, it respects the standards and is nice to use. Oh, and it isn't installed automatically on Windows or Mac. It also is made by a company whose business is based on Internet services - not by a company that used to mainly compete on a completely different area of software business.<p>It's an entirely different thing to just create a great product that people want to use instead of "being forced to" use. Firefox has been dragging itself behind for a long time and was nowhere near enough competitive as a whole package. Quantum has changed things but there are still some rough edges that need polishing (e.g. sometimes it just likes to freeze the tab completely). Chrome's web development tools are IMO top notch and I'd say it is the biggest reason why all the development happens on Chrome.<p>PS. This message is written on Firefox Quantum.
IE 6 was trash because IE won the browser war then went home. Chrome keeps innovating. Personally (and professionally) I use Firefox, but Chrome is great too.
If anything, Safari is the new IE 6. Just like IE 6 in its long twilight, it is the slowest to implement standards by a wide margin. Just like IE 6, it is used by many who essentially can't switch (though in this case due to iOS policy restrictions instead of merely OS defaults). Just like IE 6, there are websites that target it that don't work on standards-compliant browsers — Apple develops sites that work only in Safari (assuming the browser implements HLS instead of implementing it in JavaScript on web standards).<p>That's three for three. Chrome only scores one out of three.
The article doesn't mention my biggest annoyance:<p>"Hangouts video and voice calls don't work in Firefox for now. Google is working to fix this as soon as possible. Until then, use a different supported browser."<p>It's been over a year! They can't really be "working to fix this as soon as possible", can they?<p>I think video might actually be working, but phone calls (via Google Voice or Google Fi) aren't and that is the message I get.
I've seen this with safari/apple videos. "Hey, come watch us demo our latest products....oh, you don't use all our products, I guess we won't show you what's coming"
I've had plenty of sites break in FF because they were only tested in Chrome.<p>In fact, in my own work I have to test Chrome first because I've learned the hard way that Chrome will surprise you with the weirdest bugs.<p>Recently I delved into the rabbit hole that is the Web Audio API. It exists... but apparently it's completely broken because Google shipped a half-assed implementation before the standards were ready.<p>Mozilla hurriedly did the same out of fear of losing market share, and now the spec is an absolute mess. The audio latency is on the order of 500-1000ms on average.<p>A solution to the latency issue was finally hammered out, but now the API is dead in the water and no one is implementing the new spec. Thanks, Google!
One thing people often forget when bagging IE6 is that all browsers were rubbish back then. None followed standards. IE6 was actually a better browser than Netscape and Netscape's next gen browser was too late to be released due to development issues.
I remember how I used to check browser stats every month when FireFox came out. At some point, I don't remember when it didn't matter any more. But, it is interesting to see the trends of past years.
<a href="https://www.w3schools.com/browsers/" rel="nofollow">https://www.w3schools.com/browsers/</a>
I think part of why developers are targeting Chrome first these days is not market share per se, but that the Chrome developer tools are so much better than the equivalent in Firefox, Safari, or Edge.