I'm just surprised people use Chrome at all. Google has proven over and over they can't be trusted and will exploit you every chance they get.

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e40 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Because some things only work in Chrome. It's a fact. It's terrible.

We're the frogs being boiled, over the last decade. People sounded the alarms, but they were looked at like they had tin foil on their heads. Now, it's clear they were right.

I'm speaking generally, of course. I use Firefox for all my personal stuff, except for those situations where it doesn't work.

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tcp_handshaker 3 hours ago | parent [-]

>> Because some things only work in Chrome.

What things? Looks like an urban myth.

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JoshTriplett 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I'm aware of a few things, myself:

1) Google properties

1a) Chromecast

2) a few web-based games that were really pushing the envelope on web APIs and didn't bother testing on Firefox

3) WebUSB, commonly used for some things like keyboard customization apps

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StilesCrisis an hour ago | parent [-]

Which Google properties are Chrome only? I'm not doubting you but the major ones (search, mail, maps, ads) are extremely cross-platform.

	▲	JoshTriplett 7 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		In the past there were features that didn't work at all; I used to hit those regularly. Device setup flows, AV features, etc. These days, it's never "this doesn't work on other browsers". It's always "this is worse on other browsers", whether because they don't test it or because they don't care.

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cwillu 26 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The driver and store signup/portal for doordash returns a 403 forbidden on firefox.

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nmeagent an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I've run into a few restaurant sites whose ordering pages just do not work properly (or at all) in Firefox. Also webgl2 performance is unfortunately still much better in Chrome vs Firefox; as an example, FoundryVTT (virtual tabletop software) works fine in Firefox but is a stuttery mess IME (though it has improved slightly in the last few years).

	▲	mvdtnz an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I'd bet my bottom dollar those websites still work in Edge, Chromium and Brave. The alternative to Chrome is not Firefox, it's just Not Chrome.

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hparadiz 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

A lot of IT now curates the extensions for the browsers and doesn't allow extensions not on the whitelist and then they basically just only do that work on Chrome and disable Firefox. It's kinda self defeating in the long run imo but that's the problem in the industry.

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input_sh 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Chrome likes to make up new "standards" and then some websites adopt them immediately.

That said, I can only remember two instances of that slightly inconveniencing me in the past, and both times I was inconvenienced by a Google-run website: once upon a time Google Earth refused to work, and once upon a time I couldn't tweak my Google Meet background. Both are no longer the case.

	▲	StilesCrisis an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Citation needed. I've seen the opposite--unless there's a very specific niche that can't be otherwise solved, there's huge internal resistance to going it alone. The biggest counterexample I can think of: WebUSB was critical to Chromebooks supporting external devices, but I can see why Safari might not want it. It has Firefox support at last, though.

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mrguyorama 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

95% of people who use Chrome have no clue what browser they are using.

They got Chrome when it was bundled with every single installer ever for about a decade (which was so prolific and scummy that Microsoft had to make the "default app" picker system more defensive, because Chrome was abusing it more than microsoft apps were).

When you installed Java, you also got Chrome set as your default browser with no interaction.

Or they one click downloaded it from Google.com because of a giant banner saying "You gotta download chrome"

It's insane to me how rarely people on HN seem to actually know the history of this. Everyone who worked in tech support in the 2010s experienced this.

It was an identical strategy that most spyware and adware used at the time.

	▲	StilesCrisis an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Why would people still be using a computer from 2010? That might have made sense in 2015, but beggars belief in 2026.