Mozilla Attributes Firefox’s Fate on Google’s Lock-In Methods

The web is a big and competitive place, the slightest slip and you lose your place. That is what happened with Firefox and Internet Explorer, they failed to keep up and Chrome won. Now Mozilla is accusing Google of using anticompetitive practices that led to Firefox’s untimely end and claims it limited user choice as well.

Mozilla vs. Google: Anticompetitive Practices or Out of Date Features?

Mozilla has now released a paper that seeks to detail how Google, Apple, and Microsoft have used their user power to favor their own ecosystem of applications for almost everything including data share, and therefore their browser. After all, Google created the Chrome browser and Android, Apple created Safari and macOS/iOS, while Microsoft created Windows and Edge.

To differing degrees, all of them have persuaded users to their browsers and have purposely made switching to another browser difficult via strong integration and a train of alerts to impede conversion.

Accessing Google from a non-Chrome browser will urge you to download Chrome, and if you’re on Windows, you’re probably already aware of Microsoft’s incessant pleadings to use Edge. These efforts are effective to some degree and provide an unfair edge against third parties such as Mozilla, who do not have that type of clout with users.

It’s unclear if this is the whole tale of how Firefox fell out of favor as one of the top browsers, but Mozilla does have a point: anticompetitive behaviors are prevalent in the browser sector and have gotten more problematic. While everyone seems to be happy with Chrome, the established market may be quite unfriendly to new entrants. It’s difficult to regulate the web but a collective effort by tech companies can make a change hence we urge tech cooperations to give the smaller tech establishments a chance to grow.