No they didn't. Firefox unseated Internet Explorer. Chrome then got big by putting its installer right on the Google homepage and harassing users to install it. And they had it bundled with other software, and would install as a user so that locked down computers could still run it. They absolutely did not win by embracing open standards.
People forget that Sundar Pichai's entire claim to success at Google was injecting the Google Toolbar into the Adobe Reader installer which would hijack your search and browsing data on IE, and the launch of Chrome, which was then also injected into the Adobe Reader installer, occurred because Google was concerned IE might block or limit their toolbar.
People absolutely did like Google at the time, but the majority of its growth is actually shoveling hijackers into other software installs just like BonzaiBuddy.
I recommended everyone to use Chrome simply because Microsoft couldn't be bothered to provide built in PDF viewing and creation.
There was a good, long period where Microsoft just decided to let the market run amok with malware for critical software, instead of providing something like Preview on macOS. As a result, the safest option for most lay people was to use Chrome, where they could quickly and easily view, and most important, save pdfs of websites, receipts, etc.
Then, once MacBook Airs were solidified + iPhone, I started recommending people use macOS simply because Preview could edit PDFs and easily allow signing them.
I haven't used Windows in a very long time, so I assume it's still the same situation.
Yeah I remember when Windows lacked every basic utility that Mac OS had. The most common malware was PDF readers, because a very common search was "how to open pdf." Same with zip.
Chrome and v8 was just stupidly faster than any other browser and JS stack at the time when I first adoped it. It was a lot buggier in many other ways and many sites just didn't work quite right at the time, but the tradeoff on performance in the early days was very much worth it.
Chrome has gone off doing their own standards to some extent, but you're forgetting what it was like when Internet Explorer dominated. You basically couldn't use the web without IE because they broke so many standards and implemented them in closed source. Then there was ActiveX on top, straight up Windows binaries in web. And besides there being a dominant engine, only one browser could use that engine. Trading that for Chrome dominance was at least a step up.
I use Firefox right now. Occasionally I need to open a site in Chrome instead, but it's rare.
> Firefox usage share grew to a peak of 32.21% in November 2009, with Firefox 3.5 overtaking Internet Explorer 7, although not all versions of Internet Explorer as a whole;
Firefox was the browser that embraced open standards and was unseating IE. And ActiveX was used for corporate stuff, not general web sites, so the main reason it died was that Microsoft gave up.
I just got a Docusign and it didn't work in Firefox, I had to use Chrome. That's a huge blow right there. (I sent negative feedback about this to Docusign.)
Lots of supposedly technically advanced users switched to Chrome en masse and promoted it on every occasion they could, because it was so much faster, simpler, safer, etc etc. Don't excuse useful idiots from their share of the blame. People warned about dangers of Chrome's growing domination for about as long as I can remember, back to at least 2012, only to be dismissed as paranoid.
Check out this list. This guy is at the junk yard all the time. It's possible he isn't checking newer cars for high miles, but notice how all these mega high mile cars are from the 80s and 90s.
And related to the article, note the 500,000 mile Ford Econoline.
> It's possible he isn't checking newer cars for high miles
I read a few of the articles, he states the problem is that cars starting in the late 90's have digital LCD odometers that can't be easily read on a dead car
The only time this happens to me is when there is a drain on the battery over a long time, or when you have two cells that don't have matching voltage and the lower one gets over-discharged. I've never had one go bad from sitting in a drawer or a box.
I hate going there. It's so crowded, the lines are massive, and all so you can save like $200 at the end of the year on some groceries. The other problem is that you end up impulse buying well over $200 worth of stuff you wouldn't have purchased if you just went to the regular grocery store. Oh but you have to go to the grocery store anyways after your 2 hour long Costco trip, because the shit they had last week is gone now. But hey at least you waited in line for another 40 minutes to save $3.00 on your tank of gas you bought while you were there.
I have friends who have membership to Costco, Sam's and BJs. And when they need to buy stuff they go to nearest market from home (none of above 3). Despite working from home forever, they just don't have time to go to these warehouse stores.
My takeaway is at certain income level and lifestyle, one can have all memberships but don't find use of any.
Of course, the emissions testing is a state issue. Even the federal regulations say that federal government vehicles have to be tested in the state they are stationed in.
No, we don't, or shouldn't ask people to check the URL itself, because of homonym attacks are a thing. Goal is to make sure that your credentials can't be compromised by surfing the wrong website (e.g. by using Passkeys instead of passwords).
IDK about how you scan them, but when I scan one with my camera, I see the top domain part (e.g. it would show 'ycombinator.com' for a link to this page) and have to tap that to open the link. So, that not only satisfies the "can look at" part, but also neutralizes some of the deceptive URL tricks like the ol' `google.com-secure-signin.php-sfd7sdfj.xyz/login.html`.
Oh wait, never mind. I guess I won't be signing up for electricity, then?
Also, the vast majority of people don't know that google.com and loginto-google.com aren't the same website, or that google.com.securesigning.net isn't real Google.
If your device gets busted by opening a URL, without any further confirmation or user interaction, your browser/camera app/third party app is broken.
The user doesn't need to know the exact URL to confirm an interaction they've just started.
The point of the confirmation is 10% account creation and 90% confirming that the user knows their own email address and can type it in correctly. That's actually more challenging to the wider audience than you might think.
> Oh wait, never mind. I guess I won't be signing up for electricity, then?
You ~~will~~ should be picking up your phone and calling the electrical company to confirm and to tell them their links are nonsense. Couldn't bother with AI agent on phone, or 60 min waiting queue to a human? Fuck it, don't pay the bill, figure it out later.
This advice sounds like nonsense. CS has neither knowledge of what layers of enterpriseware has wrapped their links, nor the domains that software uses, nor any control over those decisions by software engineering or marketing (or perhaps even more removed, some third-party electricity account management platform that they buy as a service).
You certainly could operate on policies like this, but I think most people prefer to spend their time differently instead of arguing with strangers who don't have any way to solve your problem.
Their customer support people don't know what I mean and they especially don't have any power to change this.
The problem isn't paying the bills (I can't recall the last time I ever needed to do that manually), the problem is that pretty much every service uses trackers and shorteners. The only way to opt out is to opt out of society.
Maybe I should, but this "read the link before you click" advice isn't just geared towards hardcore privacy advocates. It hasn't worked in ages. It also doesn't help that companies like Outlook rewrite links to make them redirect through their malware scanners as well.
reply