alt Hacker News> It might be hard to believe for my younger readers, but Mozilla took on Internet Explorer that was just as entrenched as Chrome is now, and they kicked proverbial posterior! They did because they offered a better browser that respected the people who used it, and gave them agency in their browsing experience.
That is revisionist history. Firefox succeeded because MS was sitting on their hands with IE, and it was stagnating. Firefox didnt do the opposite of what IE - you could argue Mozilla was doing what MS should have been.
It wasnt about "respecting users", or "agency" but simply implemented standards properly.
And that's going to be a hard problem with Chrome because you're up against a browser that is moving very, very, fast.
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I'd also point out that IE won the title from Netscape in the first place, which was the basis for the Mozilla software set (that later spun off into firefox).
Mozilla didn't "take on" IE. Mozilla reclaimed their lost browser position. IE kicked the proverbial posterior of Netscape which both Netscape and Mozilla struggled to reclaim right up until the release of Firefox.
This just reminded me of the time I thought Firefox was cooked when tabs were finally added in IE7. The idea that IE was ever suddenly going to have a huge resurgence is amusing in hindsight, but it really felt like we were stuck with it for a while there.
It wasnt about "respecting users", or "agency" but simply implemented standards properly.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape:
In November 2007, IE had 77.4% of the browser market, Firefox 16.0%, and Netscape 0.6%I started using Firefox with version 1.5, as did many of my friends, and we were doing it because it was flat out better. We did not care about 'stagnating' or standards.
Firefox succeeded because it had tabs and supported extensions. Literally the only reasons IMO.
builds on your point but from what I remember actually having tabs was a really big deal too
Firefox was seriously a better browser, not just "implements standards better". It ran faster, it had tabs (wow!) and at one point it got Firebug which let you have a console INSIDE the browser that showed information you could print with `console.log`, I kid you not.
It was a better browser through and through, maybe because MS slept on IE or maybe not, but in the end it isn't revisionist to say they beat MS's proverbial posterior because the browser was better.