People want to believe that being a service is an implementation detail, but the fact is that it isn't. There is no way for something to find out if the implementation of a contract is a service and therefore "must" be accessed by using getService() instead of createInstance(). Someone suggested using nsIClassInfo, but the catch 22 is that to use classinfo you need a class which means either calling getService() or createInstance() -- and in today's world if you call the wrong one, bad things will happen. I'll attach a discussion, some ideas and other stuff later, for the time being I just need this bug so I can reference it elsewhere.

*** Bug 181511 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 181508 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 181506 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 181504 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 181502 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 181493 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 181495 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 181497 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 181499 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

blame me for all the duplicates (timeless most likely got bitten by bug 177326).