Top all-time · #2294
Andreas Gal
Personal blog · andreasgal.comwebbusinessstartups
Andreas Gal's personal blog at andreasgal.com covers web, business and startups. Since 2008, 32 different Hacker News readers have linked it 42 times, most often “Chrome Won”. The last post was in 2017, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (22) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Andreas Gal's posts on Mozilla and Firefox strategy, including the 'Chrome won' post on browser market share, and his PDF.js and OpenH264 posts. Commenters mostly cite them as sources.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 22 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Entrepreneur. Technologist. Former CTO Mozilla, CEO Silk Labs. Now
Most-linked posts?
- Chrome Won5 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2017-05-25
- Pdf.js: Rendering PDF with HTML5 and JavaScript5 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2011-06-16
- Oracle sinks its claws into Android3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2016-01-05
- OpenH264 Now in Firefox3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2014-10-14
- /2015/03/30/data-is-at-the-heart-of-search-but-who-has-access-to-it/2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2017-01-11
- Firefox marketshare revisited2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-07-19
- Brendan is back to save the Web2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-01-20
- UC_I prof behind Tracemonkey describes trace trees2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2008-08-23
- Technical Leadership at Mozilla2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-04-24
What Hacker News says?
I don't know what you're trying to defend here, high ranked people from mozilla admitted themselves they made bad decision and wasted money and time and developers on the wrong things instead of focusing on their core product[1]. They've also been criticized for years for their business model being too dependent on a single income source contrary to their values. They did nothing about it until it became clear that…
Comment linking /2017/05/25/chrome-won/
on “It’s time to give Firefox another chance”Submitted Chrome Won as a story · 466 points
HN discussionI dunno about all that :-) MITI is Mozilla trying to keep the internet credible as a source of news and information. This is in keeping with Mozilla's core principles. Give the blog post a careful read, as it might change your mind: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/08/08/mozilla-information... Re: Cliqz, working with a search-oriented company might be a way that Mozilla can help avoid monopolies in search. The goa…
Comment linking /2015/03/30/data-is-at-the-heart-of-search-but-who-has-access-to-it/
on “Firefox Send: Private, Encrypted File Sharing”Submitted Firefox marketshare revisited as a story · 390 points
HN discussionhttp://andreasgal.com/2014/10/14/openh264-now-in-firefox/
Comment linking /2014/10/14/openh264-now-in-firefox/
on “Chromium unconditionally downloads binary blob”Submitted Reconciling Mozilla’s Mission and the W3C EME as a story · 186 points
HN discussionAlmost 5 years ago, the ex-CTO of Mozilla blogged this: https://andreasgal.com/2017/05/25/chrome-won/ ...and apparently, the conclusions still haven't landed. Firefox lost because it has no reach. They lost on mobile and they don't have billion user properties to push their browser in the way Google has. Any and all discussions about Firefox UI choices, its engine, whatever...are completely irrelevant if you have ne…
Comment linking /2017/05/25/chrome-won/
on “Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?”Submitted Pdf.js: Rendering PDF with HTML5 and JavaScript as a story · 167 points
HN discussionFirefox uses compartments per domain instead, which is a great alternative to process per tab: "Some readers might wonder how compartments compare to per-tab processes as they are used by Google Chrome and Internet Explorer. Compartments are similar in many ways, but also very different. Both processes and compartments shield JavaScript objects against each other. The most important distinction is that processes off…
Comment linking /2010/10/13/compartments/
on “Yahoo Starts Prompting Chrome Users to “Upgrade” to Firefox”Submitted VP8 and H.264 to both become mandatory for WebRTC as a story · 147 points
HN discussionThis is excellent for security. In the same way that Mozilla's PDF.js does PDF rendering in-browser and in-sandbox, doing SWF rendering in-browser and in-sandbox makes the security nightmare that is Flash go away. ADDED: Mozilla blogging about security benefits of PDF.js, which apply here too to http://andreasgal.com/2011/06/15/pdf-js/
Comment linking /2011/06/15/pdf-js/
on “HTML5 Flash Player (Shumway) lands in Mozilla”Submitted Data is at the heart of search, but who has access to it? as a story · 105 points
HN discussionThis is more than a hypothetical concern, too: back in 2011 a number of ISPs came under fire for hijaacking certain search keywords[1], Comcast has injected ads into hotspot traffic[2], and Andreas Gal has alleged that smaller search engines were buying aggregate Google search result data from ISPs trying to improve their result quality[3]. All of that is impossible with HTTPS. 1. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/…
Comment linking /2015/03/30/data-is-at-the-heart-of-search-but-who-has-access-to-it/
on “HTTPS on NYTimes.com”Submitted Andreas Gal is leaving Mozilla as a story · 62 points
HN discussionHere's a blog post by the authors (members of Mozilla's graphics and JavaScript teams) explaining the motivation and direction of the project: http://andreasgal.com/2011/06/15/pdf-js/
Comment linking /2011/06/15/pdf-js/
on “PDF Reader in JavaScript”Submitted Oracle sinks its claws into Android as a story · 58 points
HN discussionSure, we don't want any single entity--including ourselves--to monopolize the foundations of the Web. To allow that would diminish the Web's power as a democratized public resource. But let's not kid ourselves: Mozilla hasn't been able to unilaterally kill things for years. We finally caved on H.264 in 2014, acceding to a patent-encumbered Web: https://andreasgal.com/2014/10/14/openh264-now-in-firefox/ The following…
Comment linking /2014/10/14/openh264-now-in-firefox/
on “KV Storage, the Web's First Built-In Module”Submitted Brendan is back to save the Web as a story · 17 points
HN discussionIt means exactly what it say on the tin. This isn't a hypothetical, either, but a class of behaviour which has happened repeatedly in the past. Here are a few examples of things which the FCC & FTC eventually stopped; there's zero reason to believe that this behaviour won't resume as soon as it's safe to accept that money. Large ISPs like Verizon altered HTTP traffic to inject a unique identifier which linked all of…
Comment linking /2015/03/30/data-is-at-the-heart-of-search-but-who-has-access-to-it/
on “The Turds Who Voted to Sell Out Your Online Privacy Get Their Faces Plastered”Submitted 10 Years of Firefox as a story · 7 points
HN discussionIt's interesting that these recent posts from the FF top ranks don't address this bundling issue. It seems as though the world is moving to an 'appliance' plus app-store model. In that world the browser is part of the appliance and considered part of the purchase by the consumer. In that world, the only way for FF to have a presence is via hardware partnerships. Yet another FF alumni alludes to the threat in a comme…
Comment linking /2017/05/25/chrome-won/
on “Browse Against the Machine”Submitted Why the Web is going to win Mobile as a story · 7 points
HN discussionIf you run a JavaScript error collector or use CSP on a public site you’ll find this all over the world. Mobile ISPs inject horrible 90s JavaScript which recompresses images (see e.g. https://calendar.perfplanet.com/2013/mobile-isp-image-recomp... ). Many ISPs - both mobile and wired - inject code to send messages about your account. ISPs like Comcast have tried objecting ads: https://www.infoworld.com/article/29258…
Comment linking /2015/03/30/data-is-at-the-heart-of-search-but-who-has-access-to-it/
on “Bypassing Browser Security Warnings with Pseudo Password Fields”Submitted Brendan is back to save the Web as a story · 4 points
HN discussionIts a response to earlier article http://andreasgal.com/2016/01/05/oracle-sinks-its-claws-into... by former Mozilla CTO.
Comment linking /2016/01/05/oracle-sinks-its-claws-into-android/
on “Sun, Oracle, Android, Google, Mozilla and JDK Copyleft FUD”Submitted UC_I prof behind Tracemonkey describes trace trees as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSome quotes to quickly understand what is going on. Andreas Gal, Former CTO of Mozilla, wrote yesterday: "... a curious event got my attention: A commit appeared in the Android code base that indicates that Google is abandoning its own re-implementation of Java in favor of Oracle’s original Java implementation. I’ll try to explain why I think this is a huge change and will have far-reaching implications for Android…
Comment linking /2016/01/05/oracle-sinks-its-claws-into-android/
on “Sun, Oracle, Android, Google, Mozilla and JDK Copyleft FUD”Submitted Yahoo and Mozilla Form Strategic Partnership as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI appreciate your thoughtful reply! One (of the many i'm sure) problems here you defined are: "...who would love to have a way to embed interactive graphs and tables into your papers to make them more understandable for the reader..." The solution however may not necessarily be a private 'reader', 'player', or 'binary'. Though the 'format' may be 'open' this single implementation isn't. You bring up Adobe which isn'…
Comment linking /2011/06/15/pdf-js/
on “Computable Document Format”Submitted OpenH264 Now in Firefox as a story · 3 points
HN discussion
