A busy week for corporate bullshit

After months of keeping low profiles while COVID-19 dominated the headlines, the tech industry has apparently decided to make up for lost time with a one-week barrage of bullshit to close out October. Because who doesn't want to slide into the busiest sales season of the year on a slick of one's own mess, and associated consumer ill will? What do you mean, "Nobody with any sense?"

Anyway, here's a roundup of my favourites from yesterday, complete with pithy snarky commentary.

Remember that Firefox is an option

I consume a fair bit of basically-free online content, and don't have anything against "paying" the creators of that content by having a little advertising accompany it, as long as those ads are not intrusive, or disruptive, or loaded with crypto-jacking (or other) malware. I only went nuclear on online ads because advertisers couldn't get their shit together.

So, when Google announced that their Chrome browser's selective ad-blocking functionality would be rolling out worldwide, I was cautiously optimistic. I was even considering switching back to Chrome from Firefox, just to see what sort of a web browsing experience I could have on Google's browser, now that I didn't have to be running multiple extensions in order to block the bad guys.

And then, Google had to go and break everybody else's ad-blockers. Because of course they did; Google sells advertising, and obviously they want you to stop blocking as many ads as possible. Which sucks; they're basically taking away consumer choice, just to line their own pockets. Even worse, though, Google aren't just breaking ad-blocking extensions; they're breaking a whole bunch of other stuff in the process.

As reported by ZDNet:

A planned update to one of the Google Chrome extensions APIs would kill much more than a few ad blockers, ZDNet has learned, including browser extensions for antivirus products, parental control enforcement, and various privacy-enhancing services.

[...]

The biggest of these categories would be extensions developed by antivirus makers and meant to prevent users from accessing malicious sites and for detecting malware before it's being downloaded.

Yikes.

GDPR?

So, when I logged into Blogger today, I was greeted with this notice:

European Union laws require you to give European Union visitors information about cookies used and data collected on your blog. In many cases, these laws also require you to obtain consent.

Out of courtesy, we have added a notice on your blog to explain Google's use of certain Blogger and Google cookies, including use of Google Analytics and AdSense cookies, and other data collected by Google.

You are responsible for confirming that this notice actually works for your blog, and that it displays. If you employ other cookies, for example by adding third-party features, this notice may not work for you. If you include functionality from other providers there may be extra information collected from your users.

Which is... fine, I guess? The weird part is that I have no idea what the notice says, because I'm in Canada, and the notice doesn't appear for Canadian users. Hopefully the thing is actually working, since I have no way to know; blogger's relevent help page says that it should be active automatically, with no action needed from me, which I find to be somewhat at odds with the notice itself, which says that I'm somehow supposed to be responsible for ensuring that it's working, even though I apparently can't do that from here.

If Blogger's default GDPR notice says anything you object to, please direct those objections to Google, who are entirely responsible for the no-doubt-legalese passages in question. If it's not there at all, please feel free to leave a comment on this blog post or something to let me know.

For the record, I have my browser options set to delete all cookies automatically when Firefox closes (and, yes, I use Firefox -  it's what I'm used to, and Quantum's performance is close enough to Chrome's to be acceptable), and to accept third-party cookies only from sites I've already visited. Since Firefox is also set to clear my history when it closes, and since I also run two ad-blockers (uBlock Origin and AdBlocker Ultimate), I feel pretty okay with the level of data that people can collect about me without my knowledge. I'm probably not doing much to slow the the likes of Facebook with their shadow profiles, but I shouldn't be broadcasting much of anything to the world that I'd rather keep quiet.

Remember... it's not paranoia if they are watching you. And they definitely are watching you. C'est la vie.

Don't call it a comeback

It's a little hard to believe now, but there really was a time when Mozilla's Firefox web browser was revolutionary.

Microsoft, having monopolistically driven their biggest competitor out of business (seriously, they lost the antitrust case after that one), was ruling the roost with Internet Explorer. Crucially, IE hadn't achieved market dominance by being a better product, and it actually wasn't that good; but Microsoft had successfully leveraged desktop OS dominance into a dominant position in the web browser business, and since IE's rendering engine was designed to be incompatible with other browsers, its dominance seemed to have achieved a self-sustaining state, sustained by web designers who were building web pages specifically for IE. The experience sucked, but there were no other options for Windows users, i.e. almost everybody. At one point, IE accounted for 95 percent of browser usage.

But then came Phoenix. Rising from Netscape's ashes, and bursting with innovative features like tabs and add-ons (yes, really), this early iteration of Firefox was simply better and more useful than Internet Explorer, and quickly converted a multitude of fans... to the tune of 32% of the browser market. Changing web standards, like HTML 4, spelled the end of IE-specific web page designs, and Microsoft was eventually forced to actually improve IE in response. It was too little, too late, though; the revolution had come, Microsoft's stranglehold on the PC web browser market was over, and it was Firefox that fired the first shots.

It would not be Firefox that reaped the revolution's richest rewards, though. Having made their name with breakthrough innovations, Mozilla... kinda stopped innovating. Google, meanwhile, having learned from Firefox's example, was bust building their own, innovative, new web browser. Early Chrome was not as good as the version of Firefox which was available at the time, but Chrome got better, fast, while Firefox stayed more or less the same. And now Chrome is 59.57% of the desktop browser market, and equally dominant on mobile, while Firefox holds only a 12.32% desktop share and 0.56% of the mobile market. Mozilla's former CTO declared the browser wars to be over, and Google to be the winners.

But that was way back in June, and this is August, and apparently Mozilla's current leaders are plotting a comeback, according to this piece on c|net:

Hundreds of Mozilla employees met a very different version of the Firefox mascot this June as they packed into a Hilton conference room in San Francisco for an all-hands meeting.

Gone was the blazing-orange fox snuggling a blue globe, the image that’s represented Mozilla’s scrappy browser since 2003. Instead, Firefox Senior Vice President Mark Mayo opened the event with a drawing of afox in menacing mecha armor, named Mark 57 — the same way ever-improving Iron Man suits are named.

The message isn’t subtle: Firefox 57, a massive overhaul due November 14, is ready for battle. Its main rival is Google’s Chrome, which [...] lured tens of thousands of us away from Firefox after it debuted in 2008.

But Firefox 57 could be the version that gets you thinking about returning — and maybe about saving the web, too. Mozilla began testing Firefox 57 on Wednesday, the culmination of more than a year of engineering work.

[...]

The top priority is speed. We all get subconscious pleasure with a browser that’s fast and smooth at loading websites, clicking buttons and opening and closing tabs. If your browser stutters while scrolling or makes you wait a long time for a page to appear, you’re more likely to dump it. Speed improvements in recent months already have had an effect, Mozilla says, stopping a steady stream of defections from Firefox to other browsers.

It’s too soon to tell how much faster Firefox 57 will be, but in one broad browser test called Speedometer, Firefox performance jumped significantly. Comparing the June 2016 version of Firefox with the version expected this August, Firefox performance increased 38 percent on MacOS and 45 percent on Windows, says Jeff Griffiths, Mozilla’s Firefox browser product leader.

So, that's the hype. Now for the reality check.

I have both Chrome and Firefox installed. So, out of curiosity, I tested both browsers, with the following results.

Google's Chrome:

Mozilla's Firefox:

Now, I'll admit that this is hardly an exhaustive or especially rigorous testing process, but even so... if this is 45% faster than Firefox used to be, then I hate to think how slow it used to be. With this much of a performance gap, Firefox would need to be three times faster to be worth making the switch from Chrome.

Worse yet, Firefox 57 will undermine one key feature that helped put it on the map: extensions. Again, quoting the c|net piece:

But another change in Firefox 57 will break a venerable part of Firefox — the extensions technology that lets you customize the browser. For example, with extensions you can block ads, protect your privacy, download YouTube videos, translate websites and manage passwords. Extensions were a key advantage back when Mozilla first took on IE in 2004, but Mozilla is switching to Web Extensions, a variation of Chrome’s customization technology.

The change paves the way for real improvements like a snappier response when you click your mouse or close a tab. But thousands of extensions will be left behind unless their authors build new versions for Firefox’s new foundation.

“This transition is very painful for extension developers, and many existing extensions won’t take this hurdle,” says Wladimir Palant, a developer with Firefox’s most-used extension, AdBlock Plus. Programmers had to start working with Firefox’s replacement before it was mature enough to use, he says.Google’s Hangouts extension is another casualty.

So, Firefox 57 is unlikely to be significantly faster than Chrome, it will have no mobile presence at all, and not only will it have no features that Chrome lacks (and that people want), Firefox will be actively undermining the one competitive advantage that it does have, namely its large library of available extensions. Instead, they'll allow Firefox to use Chrome's extensions, an obvious concession to Google's dominance in the browser marketplace... but if Chrome's extension library is better than Firefox's, why wouldn't users just stick with Chrome?

Seriously, with this as the pitch, how is Firefox supposed to mount any kind of a comeback?

Sorry, Firefox fans, but their former CTO was right. Barring some sort of miracle, the browser wars really are over, Google Chrome really has won, and neither Mozilla's Firefox nor Microsoft's Edge have any chance of changing the browser landscape.

In other news, Edge is still losing to Chrome.

Windows 10 isn't the only Microsoft product struggling to increase its market share - the Edge browser, which comes bundled with the OS, is also stagnant, according to stats from both NetMarketShare and StatCounter.

From NeoWin:

It has been almost two years since the release of Windows 10, which came with Microsoft Edge by default, but it appears that the browser just isn't gaining traction among users. As Neowin's Senior Editor Andy Weir pointed out, there are a number of features missing from the browser, one of them being extensive support for extensions.

According to NetMarketShare, Microsoft Edge only commands a market share of 5.65% - which is an increase of only 0.02 percentage points compared to last month. It is interesting to see that the browser was at 5.09% exactly one year ago, which means that it only grew by 0.56% year-over-year. On the other hand, Google Chrome has continued its dominance with a market share of 59.49%. As a point of reference, this is a sizeable growth of 10.84 percentage points year-over-year.

Meanwhile, Internet Explorer fell to 16.84%, while Mozilla Firefox and Apple's Safari grew to 12.02% and 3.72% respectively. The "Other" section also showed a slight increase, and climbed to 2.29%.

Data from another firm, StatCounter, depicts an even more depressing situation for Microsoft. According to the report, Edge sits at 3.89%, however, this is an increase of 0.15 percentage points compared to the previous month. That said, when viewed in a broader perspective, this is still a minor 1.14 percentage points year-over-year growth.

Chrome is the king of all browsers according to these statistics as well, with a market share of 63.21% - a decrease of 0.14 percentage points compared to last month. Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari command 14%, 9.28%, and 5.16% respectively.

It probably shouldn't be a surprise that Edge isn't thriving, since it's exclusive to Windows 10 which has also stalled, but it's important to note that these numbers are only for desktop browsers. Chrome has 55.55% of the mobile market, too, a market where both IE and Edge don't even register. Safari is the the #2 mobile browser, at 33.17%, followed by the built-in Android browser (5.40%), and Opera Mini (3.18%), with every other browser failing to reach even 1.00% share.

It's nice to see Firefox regaining some lost ground, though. I've been giving Firefox another try lately, myself, and have been pleasantly surprised by how quickly it starts, and by how much it's improved. I don't know that I'd describe it as better than Chrome, but it's definitely as good as, and will import your bookmarks and such from Chrome as well, making switching a snap, and choosing between the two basically a coin flip decision. Edge can't say the same; two years after launching, Edge is still suffering from a poverty of quality extensions, and from Microsoft's determination to push their Bing search platform as the default search choice on both Bing and Cortana. And it shows; even the "Other" category is growing more quickly than Edge.

Microsoft's strategy seems to rely heavily on monopolistic tactics: giving Windows 10 away for free was supposed to garner a dominant share of the OS market, and bundling Edge with the OS would have leveraged that into browser dominance, too, driving adoption of Bing in the process, and effectively stealing the core of Google's business out from underneath them. It's a strategy that Microsoft have employed before, effectively killing Netscape's Navigator (and resulting in a costly antitrust suit in the process), but things seem to be playing out very differently this time. The market is speaking; whether Microsoft are listening is anyone's guess.

No, Win7 users of Google's Chrome browser do not need to switch to Win10

Users of Windows XP or Windows Vista, however, may want to give Firefox another try.

From Digitaltrends:

Many reasons exist to upgrade to Windows 10, and for Windows XP and Vista users — which according to some data represent a bit more than 10 percent of all PC users — perhaps the biggest reason is for the night-and-day differences in support and security that Windows 10 provides. Google just offered another reason update to Windows, specifically that Gmail will reduce support for Windows XP and Vista, as Google announced on the G Suite blog.

While those users will still be able to access their Gmail messages, they will be doing so with the much less robust HTML version as early as December. The Windows version is actually a secondary cause of the reduction in functionality. More specifically, Google will be shifting all users running Chrome Browser v53 or below and it just so happens that the latest Chrome version supported on Windows XP and Vista is v49.

[...]

Google’s specific statement regarding the reduced functionality is as follows: “Gmail will continue to function on Chrome Browser v53 and below through the end of the year. Users who remain on Chrome v53 and below could be redirected to the basic HTML version of Gmail as early as Dec 2017.”

As a Windows 7 user who's currently running Chrome v56, I can say categorically that this does not affect users of Win7 and up (unlike some reports that you may have seen), so 47.2% of Windows users will not be affected by this. Chrome, however, currently runs on 57.9% of all PCs, so there's definitely some significant portion of PC's Chrome user base that will be affected by this. It will be interesting to see whether those users stick with Chrome and accept the reduced Gmail functionality, or switch to Firefox to get a better experience.

The odds of them dumping Gmail, naturally, I rate at basically zero. Switching your email address is such a pain in the ass to do, I can't imagine that anyone will bother with it, especially since the main cloud-based email alternative is probably Hotmail, which Microsoft is presumably keen to marry to both Bing and Edge.

Reminder: Microsoft are still dicks, and Windows 10 is still annoying

From TrustedReviews:

Windows 10 has effectively become that annoying vegan friend who judges you when you order a burger and tells you the harrowing story about how it came to your plate.

As part of a new series of Windows 10 tips, Chrome and Firefox browser users are being informed ‘you know what, actually, Edge is far safer for you.’

As spotted by illCodeYouABrain on Reddit, Users are seeing a pop-up on the Edge icon saying “Microsoft Edge is safer than Firefox. It blocks 21% more socially engineered malware.”

It then offers a link to do “learn more,” which in this instance is Microsoft’s “you should really educate yourself about the issues.”
...
If you don’t want to hear Microsoft’s ‘annoying vegan friend’ act, the firm told VentureBeat that tips can be easily switched off in system settings.
...
Or you could listen to Microsoft, which has gleaned that 21% safer figure from a report it commissioned NSS Labs to create.

I'm genuinely puzzled by this one. Not because I expected Microsoft to learn anything from the GWX backlash that has 48% of all PC users sticking with Windows 7, but simply because I can't figure out who the target audience is, here.

People who are tech-savvy enough to still be using other browsers aren't going to fall for this; all Redmond is accomplishing is to irritate them. Meanwhile, everybody who lacks the technical savvy to know better is probably already using Edge, just as they were probably using IE before being switched to Windows 10. Who is this for?

Also, didn't Microsoft already try this same tactic, with zero results? I'm pretty sure they did, before trying outright bribery to try (and fail) to lure users to their new browser. What makes them think they'll get better results this time?

Also, commissioning a dubious report that you then cite in propaganda? That's lying with statistics, again, and they aren't even trying to be subtle about it.

Also, how exactly is Edge supposed to be protecting users from social engineering? The whole point of social engineering is that it relies on bad habits on the part of users to bypass the systems that would otherwise protect them.

The single biggest problem with this approach, though, is that it does nothing to address the issues with Edge that sent people back to Chrome, Firefox, et al. Edge didn't support extensions out of the box, and doesn't have any extensions available to download now that Redmond finally have added this critical feature of modern browsers, because there are no users of Edge. Software developers don't develop for users that don't exist.

Which is why users of Chrome outnumber users of Edge by 10 to 1, and why Edge only grew its browser share by 0.1% last month. So, yeah, I understand why they're desperate; they're losing, and they're out of ideas. Desperation isn't attractive, though; I don't they're going to catch any more fish this time around, using this same rancid bait.

Chrome crushes Edge while IE and Firefox fade

How's that for a hype title?

From HotHardware.com:

Despite all the effort Microsoft is expending in getting Internet users to try out and stick with its Edge browser, Chrome continues to the popular choice. Even worse for Microsoft, Chrome's popularity is growing—it now accounts for more than half of all desktop browser usage and has nearly double the market share of Edge and Internet Explorer combined.

Market research firm Net Applications has Chrome sitting pretty with a 54.99 percent share of the desktop browser market, up from 31.12 percent at this moment a year ago, while Internet Explorer and Edge combine for 28.39 percent and Firefox stuck at around 11 percent. Even more interesting is that when Windows 10 launched to the public at the end of July 2015, Chrome had a 27.82 percent share of the market while Internet Explorer still dominated the landscape with a 54 percent share. Now the script has flipped.

Well, I guess we now know why Microsoft has switched from soft bribery to something a little more in-users'-faces. Seriously, is any part of their Windows 10 strategy going to plan, or is it a total fiasco? Because if there is some of part of this strategy that's actually working as intended, I'd really be interested to know which part.

Edge browser adds features while losing users to Chrome, while Chrome gets battery boost

Here are two stories which are probably related.

First, from MSPowerUser:

Microsoft’s Edge browser has gained many new features with the release of the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, including extension support, support for notifications, swipe to navigate, and much more. But it seems even the newer revamped version of Microsoft’s Edge browser couldn’t prevent the Redmond giant from losing browser share, as the combined user share of Edge and Internet Explorer fell 2.15% in August, ending the month with 32.54% according to Internet analytics vendor Net Applications. August marked the fourth month in the last six where the combined browser share dropped more than 2 points, and the second highest decline in the past 11 years. In the past six months, IE has lost more than 12 percentage points of its user share, and since the first of the year, 16 percentage points.

Google’s Chrome browser continues to benefit most from Microsoft’s decline, gaining another 3.02% in August to take a total of 53.97% of user share. Ever since Microsoft made the decision to end support for older browsers in January (all before IE11 and Edge), and gave users the option to either upgrade to the latest browsers or switch completely, they have experienced an unprecedented decline, with many users choosing to jump ship and board the competition.

Edge was missing several crucial features of modern browsers when Windows 10 launched, and ended up trying to sell itself on superior battery performance when new users didn't take to the browser. This was only a couple of months ago, and included anti-Chrome propaganda in Windows itself, warning users again Chrome because of its battery performance, which was supposedly much, much worse than Edge's. Several months on, though. it's pretty clear that features won out: Chrome had them, Edge didn't, and users are voting with their feet.

So it's probably not good news for Microsoft that Chrome is improving its battery performance, too.

From ZDNet:

Back in June, Microsoft hit out against Google by publishing test results which claimed that its Edge browser had the edge over Chrome when it came to power-saving on portable systems. Google has now responded by introducing new power consumption enhancements to the Windows version of its browser.
According to Google, the Chrome 53 release contains numerous CPU and GPU power consumption enhancements for video playback, along with other "big" performance and power improvements.
Google hasn't as yet published any test results to back up these claims, and I'm not expecting that Chrome will have closed the gap with Edge in one leap, but it's good that Google is addressing these issues.

The biggest loser in all of this may be Mozilla, whose Firefox browser has lost another 0.4% of the browser market, dropping to 7.69% (from a July 2006 peak of 25.1%). With Safari well back of Firefox, and Opera well back of Safari, it certainly looks like the fight for browser dominance is a two-horse race between Google and Microsoft, and Microsoft's recent efforts to attract people to Edge/Bing are either having no effect at all, or are actually hurting Edge's adoption rate by drawing attention to the popularity of both Chrome and Google.

After all, if people have to be bribed to use your product, how good can the product be? Also, the bribes themselves were pretty pathetic.

The Edge browser was supposed to be one of Windows 10's selling points: a truly modern browser that could finally outperform competing products like Chrome, and which was only available in Windows 10. But, like so many of Microsoft's claims about Windows 10, their claims about Edge have also proved to be more hype than substance, with the actual experience of using the product turning out to be mostly sub-par. Even as Microsoft slowly add modern browser features like extension support to Edge, Google are busy polishing their Chrome to be an even better browser, which makes luring users away from Chrome even harder... or, at best, not any easier, especially after making a lacklustre first impression.

First impressions... it turns out they really do matter.

Firefox tops Microsoft's browser in market share

I thought that this had happened a while ago, but apparently I was thinking of Chrome, which still holds 60% of the browser market share. IE & Edge, together, held the #2 spot, though, until five minutes ago:

Firefox has gingerly pulled ahead of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Edge browsers for the first time across the globe.

Mozilla’s Firefox grabbed 15.6 percent of worldwide desktop browser usage in April, according to the latest numbers from Web analytics outfit StatCounter.

However, neither browser threatens the market leader—Google’s Chrome continues to command two thirds of the market.

StatCounter, which analysed data from three million websites, found that Firefox’s worldwide desktop browser usage last month was 0.1 percent ahead of the combined share of Internet Explorer and Edge at 15.5 percent.

[...]

“Microsoft might have expected a boost to its overall browser share as the result of the launch of the Windows 10 with Edge but it hasn’t happened to date,” said StatCounter chief Aodhan Cullen.

This probably has very little to do with the quality or features of Edge, which, by all accounts, is essentially as good as Chrome or Firefox. But Edge isn't a better browser than Chrome or Firefox, and apparently it's not shiny enough to sell the new OS, because even with since Microsoft having stopped supporting IE, and everybody now having to switch their browsers, the trend so far is one of people switching to Edge's competitors, rather than switching to Windows 10.

GG, Microsoft. GG.