Huge if true: If you show people articles saying that Firefox is faster than Chrome, they'll believe it
- Reference: 1615498337
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/03/11/mozilla_google_speed/
- Source link:
In a research paper released on Wednesday, current and former researchers from the public benefit company, with the help of a Cornell academic, describe their effort to understand why Google's Chrome browser is so widely used "given that the performance of various browsers is rated as similar by industry reviewers."
[1]
In [2]their paper titled, "'This Browser is Lightning Fast': The Effects of Message Content on Perceived Performance," Jess Hohenstein from Cornell, and Mozillans present and past Bill Selman, Gemma Petrie, Jofish Kaye, and Rebecca Weiss ask, "why is one browser experiencing much wider usage than others?"
Chrome has about 64 per cent of the global browser market share across all platforms, according to [3]Stat Counter . And the second-place position of Apple's Safari, at roughly 19 per cent of the market, is due in large part to the restrictions Apple places on iOS browsers. Firefox currently has almost four per cent of the global browser market, about a third of a percentage point more than Microsoft's Edge.
[4]
[5]Fedora's Chromium maintainer suggests switching to Firefox as Google yanks features in favour of Chrome
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[7]Firefox maker Mozilla axes a quarter of its workforce, blames coronavirus, vows to 'develop new revenue streams'
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Rather than looking into Google's faster release cadence for Chrome, which forced Mozilla to accelerate its Firefox release schedule in 2011, the larger number of features in Chrome releases, organizational turmoil and missteps, talent departures and layoffs, Google's ability to promote Chrome on its search page, or corporate resource disparity, Mozilla's user-experience researchers decided to test various hypotheses about how people respond to "priming."
Priming, the paper explains, is a psychological phenomenon whereby people use the most immediately accessible information to make decisions. The researchers' supposition is that recent media exposure about a specific subject can alter people's judgements and opinions about that topic.
"We believe that previous research presents an opportunity to investigate the ability to contend with a dominant brand by priming users with messages about another brand to change their perceptions regarding performance," the paper explains.
To test their hypotheses, they looked at how 1,495 people perceived the performance of Firefox and Chrome, with and without reading a browser-related article beforehand.
Participants were shown one of three articles from popular news websites, about either self-driving cars, Firefox's user interface, or Firefox performance.
Mozilla Firefox keeps cookies kosher with quarantine scheme, 86s third-party cookies in new browser build [10]READ MORE
Going into the test, people overall tended to view Chrome as faster than Firefox (~39 per cent to ~31 per cent). While the researchers noted that many participants brought their own strong brand preferences, priming participants had an effect that overcame the inertia of that affinity.
"When respondents read one of the priming articles, we saw a prevalence of the priming effect over brand preferences, providing support for the hypothesis that Firefox is faster after reading about Firefox improvements," the researchers said.
The UX boffins note that given Google's advertising market power, its coverage in the media, and its constant marketing messaging about Chrome's speed, they're not surprised that people assume Chrome is the fastest browser by default. But they claim that users who have been primed with an article about Mozilla Firefox are more likely to rate it as faster.
"This finding suggests that engaging with the media to present software as high-performing is an important step in influencing users’ perceptions of that browser," they conclude.
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Marketing matters, apparently. ®
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[1] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YEqhCemeQdF3iOBC1IzWqgAAAAA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[2] https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.06181
[3] https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YEqhCemeQdF3iOBC1IzWqgAAAAA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] http://www.theregister.com/2021/01/25/use_firefox_fedora_chromium_maintainer/
[6] http://www.theregister.com/2020/10/21/mozilla_google_antitrust/
[7] http://www.theregister.com/2020/08/11/mozilla_staff_layoffs_products_revenue/
[8] http://www.theregister.com/2021/02/08/rust_language_foundation/
[9] http://www.theregister.com/2021/01/26/mozilla_web_docs/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2021/02/24/firefox_cookies_86/
[11] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YEqhCemeQdF3iOBC1IzWqgAAAAA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[12] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
XX is faster than Yy ?
The relative performance of a browser isn't really a deciding factor though, is it? People tend to chose browsers for reasons other than their "speed".
If you told me Opera is faster than Brave, I might well believe you. But I also wouldn't really care.
Most people get a phone, never change the ringtone and use the browser that's already installed. Most won't even know you can choose another one; it's just "the internet app". They'll install the same one on their laptop etc because they know it.
When the majority of people were using their PCs to get on the web (or the "internet") they used Internet Explorer, again because it was there.
If you say the same thing over and over again
people will eventually assume it's true.
I have doubts Firefox can make their message as ubiquitous as Google can though
Speed means nothing
It's affected by the number of add-ons installed and the web sites that you visit ... how long does it take to get through the CAPTCHA? Is browser speed significant when all you are trying to do is click on all the squares with a mosquito in them?
Re: Speed means nothing
"Is browser speed significant when all you are trying to do is click on all the squares with a mosquito in them?"
Of course. You see, if you run the captcha system and slow it down or even break it from time to time when it runs on the browsers you don't make, then you either drive people to your browser where you can collect all their data or at least you get more captchas done which means more free training for the AI department. Just be careful not to break it too much so you remain the primary captcha provider for lots of sites which have an email address field you can scrape.
Major media
Firefox, Edge, Brave, Opera, etc. are at a major disadvantage.
Articles about their new releases tend to show up only in the technical press.
Chrome and Safari show up on major media outlets that non-technical people (i.e.most people) access.
For the mass market, Chrome is news, Firefox isn't.
Interesting but....
These are vaguely interesting findings but so much can effect the speed a page renders from the system and how it is loaded to the time of day / network congestion so it is absolutely not a factor in me choosing a browser.
Security and privacy are though. I would be interested in this same experiment being performed looking at privacy vs spyware and tracking and see what the perception in the market is as for me that is Googles Achilles heel. Whilst they are at heart an advertising company there is always going to be a tussle internally between those trying to to build security and privacy and those trying to spy as they are despite what Facebook seems to be constantly saying mutually exclusive.
It's not Google
So it must be good