"... add more tiny annoyances on its properties to make Firefox seem buggy citing tangential things like "web standards" or "pushing the web forward" and other euphemisms that companies like Google use to crush competition."

I must say, it's great to see this brought to light in HN comments. It may be a small minority of users, but clearly some can see through this nonsense.

Although, having been a web user before there was Google, I think it is more than just Google that created this atmosphere where some browser is portrayed as being inferior to another. I think it started before Google.

Think about the influence of web developers. In the earlier days of the web, they wanted to make money by making websites. To sell those services they needed the web to have more than just basic functionality. They wanted complex browsers loaded with features that could "wow" the user, which enabled marketing and ideally commercial transactions over the web. Why would any web developer be interested in a browser that is not optimised for marketing?

Then think about the growth of websites. Today, every company has one, every organization has one. No web developer has to convince anyone anymore that they "need a website". Web developers today probably have better employment prospects than ever before. Many website owners want to make money directly or indirectly from their websites. Often they are sold on the promise of a return from advertising. Would those websites be interested in "supporting" browsers that are not optimised for web marketing?

We could create a browser for users that had all the features users needed to retrieve and view information and various media types, but which lacked features that enable easy web marketing, ads, tracking, etc. A browser that catered to users' interests above all others. This is possible. However, what would web developers and commercial websites think of such a browser?

Perhaps they would not be interested in designing websites that "worked" with such a browser. For one, they would probably argue that the market share of such a browser is too low to warrant their attention. I have seen this argument made many times on HN.

The point of this comment, which I am probably not getting across very well, is to suggest that developers themsleves are in the best position to control the market share of browsers, not users:

I have used command line TCP/HTTP clients and text-only browser for many years to retrieve information from the web. It has always worked flawlessly for my purposes and continues to do so. One of the amusing side effects of accessing websites this way is that I see all manner of messaging from web developers on websites that tries to persuade users to use one browser or another, and to make sure some browser feature is enabled. Much of it has become increasingly didactic. Developers increasingly are not asking users to comply, they are telling them they "must" do something, or else.

The vast majority of web users follow those instructions. If they are told to use some browser or else a website "will not work", then they will comply. Truthfully, it is almost always still possible to retrieve the information without the preferred browser or without the "necessary" feature. However, most users will follow the path of least resistance. They will do as the web developers tell them to do.

Users cannot be expected to simply switch to some other browser that better protects their interests. Not without cooperation from web developers and their clients, website owners.