I keep seeing Edge mentioned as a worthy alternative, and I just don't get it.
First, all Chromium-based browsers will eventually block uBlock Origin for the sole reason that they can't maintain Manifest v2 on their own, and they all rely on Chrome's Web Store anyway. This won't happen immediately because Manifest v2 will probably stick around for longer because of enterprise users, but the writing is on the wall.
Then there's the fact that Edge is just Microsoft's spyware, being worse in my book than Google's Chrome. And people forget that Microsoft is also an advertising company. Even if that's not their main revenue source, they also hate your ad-blockers.
In the EU, when you open Edge for the first time, they ask you to agree to sharing your personal data with the entire advertising industry, via an IAB dialog. And there's no way to workaround it, you have to answer it (with the rejection being an agreement to “legitimate interest” claims, which are BS). Google's Chrome does not do this, and searching on google.com only asks for sharing of data with Google itself.
Edge also exposes an advertising ID, meant for Bing's Ads, much like what Chrome does for Google. And in true Microsoft spirit, it also has telemetry, which you can't turn off.
Edge doesn't end-to-end encrypt your synchronized data. Compared with Chrome, which at least supports an “encryption passphrase” that does e2e encryption. Don't get me wrong, Chrome is also cursed because with a passphrase, they don't synchronize all your history. And also, they keep turning on that option for sharing your browsing history with Google, for the purpose of improving search. But in terms of what browser is more adversarial towards users, Edge is worse, IMO.
And Edge is hard-coded to use Bing. It's harder to use Edge without Bing or Microsoft's online services, than it is to use Chrome without Google. Personally, I don't want my browser to tie me to certain online services.
Seriously, Edge is just Microsoft's spyware and a piece of crap. Other Chromium alternatives, like Vivaldi or Brave, are better, firstly because they aren't so adversarial. Or if you're on macOS, give Arc a try.
People who don't see the problem with Edge must all be domain joined or on Pro for Workstations / Enterprise. Supposedly the browser doesn't annoy "confirmed" business customers as much.
I recently switched to the RC Insider ring just to get the EU digital markets update, which lets you uninstall Edge.
Because it started doing incredibly creepy stuff.
* Keeps asking me every day if I want to keep my new tab extension. No way to set a blank page either. If you don't use an extension, it's "Microsoft Home" (which doesn't even let you properly set your own background, and keeps showing me squids, no thanks). Despite me clicking no every time, it still occasionally disables it. I think there may be a timeout, and then the disabled plugin syncs everywhere.
* Asked me if it could shouldersurf my Kagi searches and scrape them to improve Bing. If I was Kagi, I'd think about blocking the Edge user agent.
* Upon clicking "no" on the point above, it changed my search engine to Bing.
* Edge also has a feature to regularly scrape other Browsers for their history to submit to Microsoft. Given every other Edge feature did not respect my consent in an honestly gaslighting fashion, I don't feel confident any browsing data on a Windows machine is private unless you install the above Release Candidate and set your Region to EU to uninstall Edge.
>to get the EU digital markets update, which lets you uninstall Edge.
Again — as a former anti-EU person — I am reminded why I am now pro-EU. While nowhere perfect it is much better than not having an EU and way, way better than the US.
> I don't feel confident any browsing data on a Windows machine is private unless you install the above Release Candidate and set your Region to EU to uninstall Edge.
You are still coping thinking you can somehow outplay Microsoft. You can't. Stop using software made by obviously hostile entities.
You know, people say to fear AI, and maybe yes, maybe no.
But I know one thing.
Fear Microsoft.
Decades of Microsoft breaking the law, anticompetitive behavior, and just acting like scum.
And openai took their money. Openai is in bed with them. To me, this means openai's intentions are clear.
Because only scum, take money, and partner with scum.
Yeah I don't understand Microsoft trying to push Edge so much and more so, people actually falling for it.
They're admitting that they are unable to build a good browser themselves, then they basically rip off chrome and skin it up a bit and we're supposed to think it's amazing?? And then they start adding all this scamware like the "shopping assistant" and "buy now pay later" scams. Google doesn't even go that far and they do most of the work making this browser. I didn't even know it was so difficult to get away from Bing as I only use it at work.
I see why business admins love it so much, because it is of course well supported by their management ecosystem. Also, Microsoft lobbied the top brass at companies like crazy to make it the default browser and gain marketshare. Even every call sharing a screen with a MS consultant resulted in "Why are you not on Edge yet??" :( It's like they get paid per conversion or something.
Edit: PS I hate both Chrome and Edge for their privacy invasion (as you mentioned) but if I would use either I would use the real thing and not the knockoff.
I disagree with this decision by Arc, and had the same reaction you did, but I just want to note that I'm very glad I gave it another shot months later – it really is a fantastic browser, much better than FF or Chrome.
I understand why you feel this way, but this seems to be the trend for all the latest generation of "polished" software and I think they do this so they can retain users. (Another example that comes to mind is Warp, the terminal written in Rust.)
To be fair, as an Arc user, by logging in, I can keep my tabs synced perfectly across my personal and work laptops, which is worth it for me.
> Then there's the fact that Edge is just Microsoft's spyware, being worse in my book than Google's Chrome. And people forget that Microsoft is also an advertising company. Even if that's not their main revenue source, they also hate your ad-blockers.
People forget that Mozilla is also almost exclusively funded by the advertisement industry. They have also experimented with including ads directly in the browser on multiple occasions. Including ones force pushed though a back door (experiments).
> And in true Microsoft spirit, it also has telemetry, which you can't turn off.
While you can turn of Telemetry in Firefox it is on by default and new channels are being added all the time which are again on by default.
Mozilla is controlled opposition with the emphasis being on controlled with opposition being more of a formality.
The code for manifest v2 is really very simple (when you know that functionality for manifest v3 must remain available) - maintenance of it as an unmerged patch would be pretty straightforward.
I suspect such a patch could be just 10's of lines of code - you're simply changing the condition list under which a web request can be blocking or not.
I thought the accepted solution was to just add Blocking WebRequest to the Manifest v3 implementation, which should be simpler than maintaining the entire v2 specification.
I see some hope in Vivaldi. Even though chromium based, I don't see them getting more and more intrusive into your life and machine like the other big tech are doing. Plus it is also open source now[1], so no different than firefox, etc. even in that sense.
The other place I see some hope left is the "ungoogled" chromium browser. Though the amount of hooves you need to jump in order to get a stable release (corresponding to official chrome) on a windows or mac is preposterous, you eventually do get a portable, non-intrusive and much kosher version of chrome browser which isn't bad.
The problem with these Chromium based browsers is that this is helping strangle the only real alternative to Chrome. You might not sell your soul to Google, but you still help Google keep their stranglehold on web standards, etc. Of course, a single person is always irrelevant in the big picture, but combined Vivaldi, Brave, etc. are helping strangle Firefox and helping prop up Google's heavy hand on web standards.
I found Edge to be useful for Enterprise/Business environment. My previous job uses Office 365 E3 (and their email server) and entrenched with them for various external services such as MS Authenticator for SSO. It is easier use Edge for SSO since I don't need to keep typing out the complex password for my job. Whenever the password prompt show up in Edge, I click my work email account and it automatically log me in. I have one desktop and one laptop for remote work, it simpler with SharePoint/OneDrive to keep my work data synced between both computer. Edge have their uses in Enterprise/Business setting.
For personal use, I rarely use Edge. I only uses them for websites that have an issue with my Firefox with uBO and strict CORS. I avoid Chrome like it is a plague.
I use Firefox for Zoom and when I encounter a website that misbehaves on Safari (and for a couple of things that I need to use that are wholly separate from the rest of my browsing experience).
Otherwise, I use Safari.
The original article's assertion that Safari does not respect your privacy is so far from the truth that the rest of the article is questionable.
Some of the edge features make no sense. I will use it for xbox cloud gaming and it will tell me there are coupons available for the xbox cloud gaming website (there aren’t, its through game pass a flat monthly rate).
> First, all Chromium-based browsers will eventually block uBlock Origin for the sole reason that they can't maintain Manifest v2 on their own
I haven't found a need for uBlock Origin with Brave's built-in ad blocking. And the effective ad blocking is really the main reason I use Brave. I just disable all the token / wallet nonsense.
As is Brave, Opera and DDG (based on edge). I have said before that I suspect the minor chromium forks such as these will end up having to fork when google does commit fully to manifest v3, as they'll have no way to remain privacy focused if they try to keep using the mainline codebase; if they all work together on a manifest v2 chromium fork for them each to base their browsers on then it probably won't be that hard for them.
"Legitimate interest" is a different basis from "consent." It doesn't matter whether you agree to it or not, you aren't empowering anything that wasn't already going to happen.
You are empowering them by continuing to use the service/application after they have quite clearly told you that they are going to try to work around the law against your interests.
It's the same Chromium, it can't be more resource-efficient. It did have some tricks, but “energy saver” and “memory saver” modes have been added to Chromium.
>Edge also exposes an advertising ID, meant for Bing's Ads, much like what Chrome does for Google. And in true Microsoft spirit, it also has telemetry, which you can't turn off.
Answering the question 'what is the motivation for Microsoft to pay for Edge development?' also answers the question 'why is Edge not an acceptable alternative to Chrome?'
well i guess you can say spyware but piece of crap is probably not accurate. i mean its got the most features by far and seemingly has the most resources and manpower being dedicated for development and upgrade. crap is not so accurate.
also because a company uses a lot of tracking on their product doesnt make them an AD company lol.
or how the most popular browser privacy test is run by a brave employee.. hmm guess which browser scores the highest and a favorable testing environment with the settings
https://privacytests.org/ he eventually disclosed his employer in the back area of that website somewhere so thats better i guess.
another one is how certain settings on brave search always reverts back on. or just one the send analytics one. if you use search on a different browser not their own. and etc.
and firefox is funded in large part by google.. do you really think they dont share information?
honestly acting like your browser is superior because no tracking is so silly lol. just use whatever browser you want and tune settings to your liking. harden if you must and move on. is it that much of a hassel? would you rather pay subscription for no tracking?
youll never not be tracked by ads on a free model its too much incentive and the internet is too controlled. you know when you use these product you pay with your privacy and ads its honestly a great deal. at least for me and probably most of the users. imagine paying monthly for edge having time limit package tiers, having to buy packs of google searches, websites have a entrance fee if they dont sell products.
btw im on thorium on linux i dont have a edge/microsoft bias. nor am i some shill for big companies i tend to use alternatives. but im not a sucker anymore for the illusion of privacy nor am i a big company fear monger.
> In the EU, when you open Edge for the first time, they ask you to agree to sharing your personal data with the entire advertising industry, via an IAB dialog.
I didn't know that.
I do know that the GDPR requires user consent to be revocable....
>Then there's the fact that Edge is just Microsoft's spyware, being worse in my book than Google's Chrome.
Out of curiosity, is there any objective proof that Microsoft-Edge is worse for privacy than Google-Chrome, or is it just a subjective "Google=Good Microsoft=Bad" feeling?
FWIW I got annoyed with chrome's distracting home screen, and pondered how long it would take for a 10+ year chrome user to switch to firefox. The answer (on macOS) was 5 minutes. I was shocked how easy it was (and, frankly, how similar it was). When you first open firefox, it gives options to import all your chrome settings (including saved passwords etc). Super cool.
After working for a year in 3DSMax, back in the day, someone asked me to show them something in Lightwave. I couldn't find my way about anything.
There is also a far far bigger difference between IDEs than between browsers even if compare only the big names. Compare Visual Studio, IntelliJ and Eclipse.
All the browsers are same.
They were all the same for 10 years. Single window or MDI. Then Opera came with tabs, then everyone got tabs. That's it.
Basically, if we accept the notion that it's hard for someone to switch from Chrome to Firefox we accept the notion that it's hard to move anyone from any ecosystem just on the grounds of them not wanting to touch their muscle memory even a bit. You get to the same option in three to four clicks through different menues. Is it that hard?
I don't use 3D modeling software, but I use a browser for like... 95% of my day. Any minor UX differences are going to be like nails on a chalkboard, given that.
It's no wonder why people don't want to switch, really.
All Chromium-based browsers have a feature that I can't get through my day without. I can write click on any website and say "translate this page into English".
I use this feature around 20 times a day, sometimes more. It's painstaking to do this in Firefox, even with extensions.
Once every year or two I try switching to Firefox, then I remember this is the reason why I don't use it and I go back to Chrome.
The day they add this feature is the day I will switch to Firefox.
It's amusing to me how similar this comment is to the ones I heard in the mid to late 2000s from Internet Explorer users expressing surprise at just how easy to was to switch. :)
I don't understand why people switch browsers. I have many browsers installed on my machine. For browsing I use a heavily modificated firefox. It would be difficult to use this browser for banking or even booking a plane ticket (plane booking websites can be quite fragile!).
Use a browser for browsing, e.g. firefox with a tons of plus is, from ublock, noscript and a dozen others and use a main browser like chrome for banking and some other stuff. Don't use a minor browser (opera, vivaldi etc.) for banking.
I find it annoying how I need a separate window for each profile in Chrome, I like that I can have one window and some windows are in the work container and some are not. You do need the (official) containers extension though.
You don't need profiles in Firefox, there's a much better solution called Container Tabs. If you're using profiles to keep things like work and play separate, check it out and thank me later ;)
You can set up specific domains to open up in specific tab containers. Obviously for sites that you have never visited before this complicates things unless you have the default tab container be your “throwaway” or not personally identifying profile.
The experience there isn’t perfect and requires some effort to setup but how is that different than getting certain sites to open in specific chrome profiles automatically?
> FWIW I got annoyed with chrome's distracting home screen
On macos, the Google and Firefox home screens are virtually identical: Big "Firefox" or "Google" title, seach bar, short cuts / recently used. Google is actually less distracting since it never changes.
I've been using "New Tab Redirect" [0] on Chrome and "New Tab Override" [1] on Firefox for many years. They load a custom start page [2] I host locally which also pulls in some issues from Jira.
Also "Keep One Pin Tab" [3] on Chrome to prevent that closing the last tab closes the browser. The same on Firefox but there I don't know what setting I'm using to make it behave that way (update: browser.tabs.closeWindowWithLastTab -> false).
Is anyone else having issues logging in, via username & password, to OpenAI.com with Firefox? That is the only reason I'm launching Chrome these days, OpenAI's login gives an error saying I refreshed while logging in, don't do that and try again... in a loop.
You are annoyed with chrome's distracting home screen that shows your most visited sites but you are not annoyed with firefox's distracting home screen that shows your most visited sites plus some ads?
It continues to surprise me that people use the home screen, regardless of it being Firefox or Chrome. New window, new tab, I always set that to a blank page, in my mind that should be the default.
I have been a happy Firefox user for 15 years... maybe more.
I have seen people use and complain Internet Explorer in my younger days, from version 6 to 7, etc. Even though I mention Firefox to them, they stay with IE. What amazes me is how quick they transitioned to Google Chrome when it released. This was around 2009.
It amazes me how quick people jump to something especially when it has a big company behind advertising it.
I see this a lot in my career as well (software engineer) - when some cool, flashy new toy comes backed by companies like Microsoft, Google, Sun/Oracle. etc.
Anyway..
I only recently found out there was a thing called hardened firefox. There is me thinking "Oh! This might be worth a look" - and it is basically firefox with private settings enabled, etc, in the config section.
(which is what I have been doing for years. lol)
I just don't understand why people would use Chrome. Most people, I guess, just dont care about their privacy. However, even if you use something else, I would not be surprised in modern Windows listens in on your microphone "for advertising" purposes.
I might not be able to eliminate privacy issues, but if I can reduce the best I can, I will.
Back to browsers - I hear good things about Brave. Not used it, though. Happy with FF.
> It amazes me how quick people jump to something especially when it has a big company behind advertising it.
Because it works. Advertising works. That's the bane of the conflict of interest between companies and users of Ad blockers. We (technical users) cannot complain that companies should not use and abuse Ads, because at the same time we (humanity as a collective) constantly show once and again that Ads do work excellently for their intended purpose.
> We (technical users) cannot complain that companies should not use and abuse Ads, because at the same time we (humanity as a collective) constantly show once and again that Ads do work excellently for their intended purpose.
Just because something works, doesn't mean you should do it. Using a gun or knife to threaten someone with death if they don't hand over their wallet works. Do you think people should complain/do something about it, or should they just let muggers get away with it "because it works"?
> Ads do work excellently for their intended purpose.
But this is the problem, because their intended purpose is not the user experience. A lot of people block the ads because they find them distracting, and actually part of the intended purpose of ads is to distract your attention to them.
There is no "users of Ad blockers" vs "technical users", using an ad blocker is not some sort of purpose of why I use a browser.
Humanity wants everything to work but we don't want to pay for it. I pay for my news but I wonder how soon news websites and related sites will start to block Firefox.
>I just don't understand why people would use Chrome.
Really? That seems hard to believe.
I stuck with FF until around 2016 or so before being compelled to switch. The performance was just very clearly worse than Chrome's at the time. Not sure what the state of things is now.
This is HN, so another huge reason to use Chrome is for the devtools, which I've always had a very good experience with and know pretty well. I've always found other browser devtools miserable to work with in the past, though I admit I haven't invested serious time into learning them.
All that said, the adblocking fiasco may well get me to try out FF again as my daily browser. But personally I had very clear reasons for abandoning it originally, it wasn't just cargo cutting
There was a lot of talk about Firefox having poor performance, but I have never experienced any of it. For daily use Firefox has always been one of the more responsive applications on my PC.
If you experienced poor performance the common explanation at the time was that you either had a profile folder that had accumulated all sorts of stuff that somehow caused a slowdown, or had some unfortunate extensions installed.
Built in translation is a big one that I rarely see mentioned.
I was long time fan of FF while living in Ireland and the UK, but when I moved to Sweden and later Germany I was effectively forced to switch to Chrome.
Being required to interact with websites in other languages regularly meant that FF (circa 2018) was just not an option. The chrome experience for translating webpages was vastly superior to any other browser, which I needed to use 3rd party translating apps to get anywhere. These were clunky, low performance black boxes that I tried to live with and failed.
I see now that other browsers are starting to properly do built-in translation, but Chrome was way ahead for a long time. So for non-English speakers I imagine Chrome was a must use tool for a long time.
> The performance was just very clearly worse than Chrome's at the time.
A lesson of how sometimes "ship it now and improve later" could make huge damage to the reputation of a product.
Lately I've been advocating change to Firefox more than ever. Do you want to guess what's been the reply I've heard back more? "But Firefox is clunky and much slower than Chrome!"
They had a bad experience due to slowness compared to Chrome at the time, and that impression still lives on today, putting an end to any slight possibility of migration. At least until a friend explains the situation as it is nowadays. Thankfully they mostly listened and some agreed to try it.
Devtools on FF are very good. Extremely rarely do I need Chrome, for tools like debugging svg animations. I suspect the overwhelming majority of devtool users don't have to debug svg.
"I stuck with FF until around 2016 or so before being compelled to switch. The performance was just very clearly worse..."
This is a fair point. Personally, I don't recall seeing a big difference between the two. Maybe there was. Perhaps it was not that bad so it wasn't as issue for me.
As for dev tools, I have been happy with Firefox - but then when I am doing web development I am testing on various browsers, anyway. So I use dev tools for all of them.
That was, what, 7 years ago? That's about 5 CPU generations ago. Any performance differences were solved a long time ago, although chrome seems to use a lot more memory last time I looked (I use both on a regular basis). It's worth revisiting tooling once in a while instead of getting stuck in time.
If chrome does it for you for dev tools, then use it for that. No need to use it for general browsing.
Performance? Yeah there was once a time that Chrome was a bit snappier than Firefox, but nothing significant. I think it's mostly the placebo effect of people just thinking they are using a faster/slower browser.
Development of devtools was indeed quite good early on in Chrome. But Firefox already had the Firebug extension, which was basically the first kind of browser devtools as far as I can remember. And then Firefox also eventually implemented the devtools natively, and Firebug eventually disappeared. And that did take some time while Chrome had the devtools already native. But still Firefox with their open plugin system allowed for Firebug to evolve, and Chrome's devtools (and also Firefox's) was for sure inspired by Firebug.
So why do people use Chrome really? Placebo, hype, lack of historical context, and ignorance of privacy, I would say.
I worked with both for years and one of the reason who made me switch from Chrome to Firefox between 2016-2018 was the devtools. I found the Firefox's ones were way better and Mozilla implemented new features way faster than Google for some reasons.
is it possible the devtools experience is one of those things that is largely dependent on where you initially learned it? firefox is my daily driver, and I can't stand chrome devtools anytime I'm forced to use them
> What amazes me is how quick they transitioned to Google Chrome when it released.
When Chrome originally released firefox was better than IE but chrome was head and shoulders above both of them.
Moving to Chrome from firefox at the time was a breath of fresh air. Nowadays there's very little difference, there was a short period of time I found Firefox faster but now I doubt most users would be able to tell the difference in performance
Same here plus you get used to whatever you use in terms of how the commands and extensions and the like work. I've got Chrome, FF, Safari and others and tend to go with Chrome as it's what I'm used to. Also with FF I'm not sure how to translate the text from foreign languages. I tried some extensions but nothing so far works quite like Chrome where you just right click anywhere and click translate.
> What amazes me is how quick they transitioned to Google Chrome when it released. This was around 2009.
The power of endless money for advertising. Some users think it doesn't have that much impact, but being nudged on every other web page to make the switch is much more powerful than that nephew who talks to you about it once.
There is even more powerful marketing tool - preinstalling software. If you can pay to PC or phone makers to have your software preinstalled, then it is difficult to compete with you. It is the most reliable method of marketing.
> I just don't understand why people would use Chrome
Because lots of people who build websites only test them in Chrome. I use Firefox as my main browser, but there are times when I'm forced to open Chrome to do something (e.g. buy visitor parking permits from my local council) even with uBlock Origin disabled. As a non-technical user, if that happens to you even once, what motivation would there be for you to go back? As far as those users are concerned "Chrome works, but Firefox doesn't".
"Because lots of people who build websites only test them in Chrome.."
Well I am not one of those people. Back in the late '00s I was testing in IE6, 7 and maybe 8 as well as Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Opera.
I remember, back then, my boss telling me to "only worry about IE" when writing a demo web application. One day I came in and my boss slaps a peice of paper down at my desk, wondering why a customer saw this on their screen. At first I was like "WTF" as it was a bunch of rectangles scattered around. The penny dropped and tried it in firefox.. same result. It was at this point I started to care about ALL main browers regardless of what anyone told me.
It is not as bad today, but my mind set is no different.
I'm using Safari for day-to-day browsing (because I like its UI and iPhone sync) and I use Chrome for development. Firefox developer tools are not as convenient to me and Firefox does not support WebUSB which I need for some tasks. Also I always found Firefox filled with little irritating bugs when I tried to switch to it.
That said, I'm not convinced by this flashmob against Chrome. I like Google direction and Google philosophy behind Chrome, including its position on adblockers. So I hardly have any reason to switch to Firefox. Chromium is open source, Firefox is financed by Google, so it's hard for me to be convinced that Chrome somehow is bad. Especially when Firefox makes one bad move after another bad move (integrating weird third-party services within Browser, like Pocket or VPN or whatever).
And, yeah, I don't care about my privacy that much, especially not on the level to actively fight for it. I care about security, and that's about it.
Most people don't need features like WebUSB support.
But I do believe people want uBlock to intercept http requests before rendering the web page. And from my understanding this has always been supported in Firefox, but never in Chrome.
I have used Firefox forever, I never switched to Chrome as it knew it never was fully open-source. The point of open source is that you're able to build the thing from sources with the exact functionality as in binary file they release.
The web is extremly important for everyone, and it is important that we still build an open web for everyone. When people use projects like Chrome, they let Google decide the direction of the web, just like Microsoft did with IE.
That Firefox was sometimes slower than Chrome and sometimes lacked features has never been a big productivy hit for me. Neither has web pages that didn't work in Firefox. In the worst cases I just need to start Chromium. I lose max 1 minute. That is nothing to sacrifice for keeping the web open.
I've been a melancholic Firefox user since it was called Netscape...
Tried Brave on my phone, but it managed to generate 90mb of network traffic in 10min where another browser takes 5mb. No idea what it did, I instantly lost trust.
Started using Firefox when it was called Phoenix, then it was renamed Firebird, then again to Firefox. It does exactly what I want from a browser, not more not less.
Also FF long time user. Ime FF is pretty much fine nowadays. It used to have problems, but it got a huge leap in performance around 2017 when they improved multithreading support. Since then it is pretty much fine, aside from the occasional awkward unsupporting webpage.
What I do not understand is not why people do not use FF, it is why people use Chrome instead of Chromium, Brave or some other chromium-based browser that is not google or MS. Surely it is not that much more effort to install one of these than chrome.
A decade or so ago when Chrome was first released there were good reasons to switch to it. It was better than Firefox in almost every way, especially speed.
Today that's no longer the case, but there also isn't a huge reason to switch to Firefox. They're all kind of the same, especially to the average user who doesn't strongly care about privacy.
>What amazes me is how quick they transitioned to Google Chrome when it released
I'm not sure how old you were at the time but do you really remember that history well and did you compare the two browsers yourself at the time? I was a die hard Firefox user from the beginning until Chrome came out. I remember trying Chrome for the first time and being amazed at how much faster it was. Not just a little faster, way faster and how it could handle more tabs without slowing down. It was so far superior performance wise and that is what got me and many others to switch.
I moved to Chrome on first release not because of blind, trend-following foolishness, but because it performed significantly better than Firefox. It also didn't have the bug of occasionally losing things I told it to grab into the clipboard.
Poor performance is also what drove me back to Firefox. It still has the clipboard bug, however.
"I moved to Chrome on first release not because of blind, trend-following foolishness, but because it performed significantly better than Firefox..."
This is fine. My comment is not aimed at everyone who switched -- though I am likely still referring to the majority of people.
I do remember the ACID test being the main selling point of Chrome over the other browers. Yes, from memory, I do believe Chrome was faster. My attitude to this, however, was that it was new and eventually, would be adding new features, etc.
I understand that there are people out there who switched for other reasons.
If we are talking about a paid service (like slack), not supporting firefox imo means it is a bad product. A service for which one pays for should not force them use a specific browser. This is essentially an argument of not using slack, not firefox.
I'm one of those who used Internet Explorer 5.0 and was there to complain about Internet Explorer in general. I'm not sure why you are amazed with Chrome transition, but let me give insights from experience.
We had Firefox 0.3 which was very, very slow browser but still much better than Internet Explorer. There was a lot of mental gymnastics involved to get pages display at least similar for both browsers.
When Chrome 1 was released, it was absolutely awesome. Minimal interface. Focused on browsing. Incredibly fast, it just executed JS stupidly quick and we could create web app interfaces that didn't lag
You can still download Chrome 1 and see what it's about. It was basically what users wanted: supports more CSS features than other browsers, starts fast, executes JS fast, provides adequate developer console, renders pages correctly.
It took all of us by storm because it was genuinely good software. That era was the era of good software, not spam advertising.
Today, in 2023. this is not true any more and you are entirely correct when asking why people would use Chrome. Answer is: laziness, lack of info, apathy, lack of knowledge.
But it's worth pointing out that Chrome and Chromium are developed by Google. The whole point of using Chromium as a browser developer (Brave, Edge, Opera, ...) is to have Google own and take care of all the difficult bits, drive the technical roadmap, and decide on what is and isn't going to be in the next version. So, you don't gain much by switching to those as the teams behind those Chromium based alternatives don't actually develop most of the browser and you are not really cutting loose from Google. Brave does a little more than others but still.
Sticking with Chrome/Chromium is a bit of a form of Stockholm syndrome. People keep convincing themselves it isn't that bad and that the ads are fine and not that intrusive and that Google means well. Etc.
Firefox is technically independent; not financially. It and Safari are the only non Chromium based browsers left in addition to a small number of early stage attempts to implement a browser that don't look like they are going to be a credible alternative any time soon. Google is paying both Apple and Mozilla to be the default search engine in their browser. And unlike Mozilla, Apple isn't exactly dependent on charity and also getting a lot more from Google than Mozilla because they have hundreds of millions of iphone users. Browser real estate is valuable; especially on mobile.
But we live in a weird world where we are dependent on a single company financing the development of essentially all browsers that are commonly used through advertising. I don't think it's particularly healthy and especially the Apple deal smells like a classic anti competitive move that ought to trigger some legal action. It would be nice to see the search and browser markets open up a bit. Especially on mobile. Especially on IOS where Apple enforces a Safari monopoly. Every other browser has to use the Safari rendering engine.
> It would be nice to see the search and browser markets open up a bit. Especially on mobile. Especially on IOS where Apple enforces a Safari monopoly. Every other browser has to use the Safari rendering engine.
Do that and Chrome becomes the monopoly everywhere.
Not that I’m in favour of the way Apple does things on mobile, but break the Chrome monopoly elsewhere first, then go after Safari.
The article is bollocks. Recommending Pale Moon in 2023 is plain irresponsible. No process isolation/sandboxing for tabs/websites/addons, playing constant catch-up with Firefox on implementing security fixes/mitigations (made more difficult by how far back the fork has happened), disregarding all the optimizations that brought Firefox closer to being on par with Chrome (which translates to higher power usage).
In my opinion Pale Moon should never be recommended as an alternative to Chrome for the average person; it should be seen as a specialized tool for people who are willing to trade away security and performance for customization. If you don't have customization needs that are this specific, using it is a net loss.
The reason for the article is not to give a good recommendation to people but to promote Tuta (looks like an ad campaign that started about 2 weeks ago: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=tuta.com).
Great point. I think this brings up the question of ethics in advertising - how far are you willing to mislead your audience in order to support your claim? It's likely that Tuta didn't even mean to intentionally mislead (10 is a nice round number, so why not throw in something completely random), but they should be held to a higher standard, considering they're speaking from a position of authority.
Going a bit offtopic, in my opinion this supports the argument that users should in general be free to block ads, on the basis of being able to filter the content they consume, based on the credibility of the source. Establishing the credibility of the advertiser seems impossible even for the websites (ad network: "just load this 10mb JS from our CDN"), so blocking ads entirely (or allowing them selectively) seems like a reasonable recourse.
Just came to comment this. Didn't they have a breach or something? Was also on hackernews. Pretty pathetic article, no idea why this content lands here. @dang any insights if this is authentic?
Mozilla get a lot of funding directly from Google for making Google the default search site [0]. Seems to me that this may be a problem going forward if Mozilla continue to allow ad blockers in Firefox.
Yes, attacking the source of revenue that sustains a project is always a sensitive prospect.
But then again, what's the alternative for Mozilla? In case of YouTube Premium we've clearly seen that even HN software engineers, demanding six figure pay, will refuse to pay other software companies a few bucks for their engineering work.
Where does Mozilla find funding to sustain itself elsewhere?
If I were running Mozilla I would be aggressively investing the Google money until it's at a point where the interest on that investment is enough to sustain the entire operation.
The problem is, Mozilla is full of NGO types who don't care about the browser, and use the money stream to fund pet projects. If the spigot gets shut off, they don't care, they'll jump ship to some other non profit and will keep "making the world a better place" there. Meanwhile the entire internet will be worse off because of it.
Even at a 5% interest rate, the $500M that Google has given Mozilla over the years would be returning $25M p.a. That can fund quite a few six figure salaries, indefinitely, while maintaining independence.
Free YouTube: You can watch with ads and you are tracked.
YouTube Premium: You can watch without ads but you're still tracked.
YouTube with an Ad Blocker: You can watch without ads and without being tracked.
Google's largest chunk of revenue comes from ads. Being tracked simply means you'll be shown targeted ads in other areas apart from YouTube if you pay them. They shouldn't charge you and still sell your data.
I'm not a 6 figure HN/SV engineer, don't live in the US.
But that's not the problem. YouTube premium simply isn't worth €168/year to me (I don't use it enough) and they'll still track me anyway wherever other people are using google analytics. I have a newspaper subscription to support local journalism and it is the same deal: the site is full of ads and just as bad as the free stuff, except I can see all the articles.
What? We're not refusing to "pay other software companies a few bucks for their engineering work", we refuse to give in to the extortion attempts of a greedy multi-billion dollar company.
I have and will keep financially supporting software I find useful. However, I do agree that it's questionable whether you can easily replace Google as a source of funding.
It's already a problem. You can see that they're already scared to piss off their sugar daddy
You have an official "Facebook Container", but of course no official "Google Container" ... even though Google is the one that does actual tracking across the whole internet and has JS/fonts/etc. on nearly ever webpage
There are official "anything" containers so that's really not a problem.
The facebook container was just a way of introducing people to the container concept, and they can move to the generic Multi-Account Containers so they can really separate everything including Google.
They're also really nifty to log in to multiple microsoft tenants which are really a pain in the ** to deal with otherwise.
The curse of the default tells us that this will never be a problem. Do you honestly believe that 99% of the Android Firefox users spend time to change the settings on the browser? (change to DDG, block all 3rd party cookies, etc.)
I did a quick search on DDG but no meaningful results came up with search engine for firefox on android. Gut feeling tells me 'minimal'. People do like their google remembering stuff. Convenience is the enemy of security (privacy in this case).
To be an Android Firefox user, you already went to the trouble of installing an alternative browser on Android. The motivations to switch browsers might as well be the same as those which will push you to switch search engines.
I would totally expect a reasonable number of Android Firefox users, of all apps, to change at least the search engine.
DDG search (same setup, in Android Firefox) is quite slower for me than Google search, it needs a few good seconds to bring the search results. No idea why this might be.
The concern is that google basically funds firefox, and can choose to revoke that funding at the most inconvenient time for mozilla, risking bankruptcy. Companies ebb and flow on cash flow, and a unexpected drop at the exact wrong moment can cripple even the most well funded ones.
Firefox is essentially a dead fish in the sea. Depending on source, Firefox sits at 3-8 % market share. They are much more likely to lose funding because of irrelevancy than some users using AdBlock.
3-8% of the Internet users is 400 million users. I wouldn't call that "dead in the sea". Even 1% of the Internet users is a very significant amount of users. Why obsess with market share? At some point all browsers raised from 0% market share. Choose whatever fits your needs.
Very fast. Zero telemetry. Lightweight, natively built with WebKit, made for you and your Mac. Industry-leading battery life, privacy respecting by design, and native support for web extensions.
Orion offers native support for many Firefox and Chrome browser extensions allowing access to the world's largest eco-system of browser extensions. Even UBlock Origin.
Not that you need it, since Orion has been engineered from ground up as a truly privacy-respecting zero telemetry browser.
Your private information will never leave Orion by default, and to protect your privacy on the web, Orion comes with industry-leading anti-tracking technology as well as a powerful built-in ad-blocker.
Also has tree style tab browsing built in! Though I’ve found it doesn’t work 100% with all Chrome extensions; seems like it might be an MV3 issue, as it’s popped up more recently.
I switched to Google Chrome when it came out (14 years ago according to Wikipedia) and to Chromium when I got sufficiently annoyed by Google. In August I switched back to Firefox. Here are some thoughts:
- the experience is 90% the same.
- Sync between Android app and desktop is just as flawless (that one made me switch back to Chromium on my first try a few years ago)
- Theming is nicer
- switching between home and work profile is great with the profile switcher extension
- Firefox seems less well integrated into many websites. I keep entering my credit card info on many sites, because the option to use saved cards either does not appear or does not work. Same is true for suggesting passwords. So I use keepass' for both now (which might be good)
-the developer tools are a little annoying. I use them mainly for Web scraping and sometimes I give up and copy the curl call from Chromium because the formatting is nicer and the network tab looks cleaner
I won't switch back to Chrome and miss it less and less. Only during black Friday and when I taught my webscraping course I missed Chromium a little.
Readit News
First, all Chromium-based browsers will eventually block uBlock Origin for the sole reason that they can't maintain Manifest v2 on their own, and they all rely on Chrome's Web Store anyway. This won't happen immediately because Manifest v2 will probably stick around for longer because of enterprise users, but the writing is on the wall.
Then there's the fact that Edge is just Microsoft's spyware, being worse in my book than Google's Chrome. And people forget that Microsoft is also an advertising company. Even if that's not their main revenue source, they also hate your ad-blockers.
In the EU, when you open Edge for the first time, they ask you to agree to sharing your personal data with the entire advertising industry, via an IAB dialog. And there's no way to workaround it, you have to answer it (with the rejection being an agreement to “legitimate interest” claims, which are BS). Google's Chrome does not do this, and searching on google.com only asks for sharing of data with Google itself.
Edge also exposes an advertising ID, meant for Bing's Ads, much like what Chrome does for Google. And in true Microsoft spirit, it also has telemetry, which you can't turn off.
Edge doesn't end-to-end encrypt your synchronized data. Compared with Chrome, which at least supports an “encryption passphrase” that does e2e encryption. Don't get me wrong, Chrome is also cursed because with a passphrase, they don't synchronize all your history. And also, they keep turning on that option for sharing your browsing history with Google, for the purpose of improving search. But in terms of what browser is more adversarial towards users, Edge is worse, IMO.
And Edge is hard-coded to use Bing. It's harder to use Edge without Bing or Microsoft's online services, than it is to use Chrome without Google. Personally, I don't want my browser to tie me to certain online services.
Seriously, Edge is just Microsoft's spyware and a piece of crap. Other Chromium alternatives, like Vivaldi or Brave, are better, firstly because they aren't so adversarial. Or if you're on macOS, give Arc a try.
I recently switched to the RC Insider ring just to get the EU digital markets update, which lets you uninstall Edge.
Because it started doing incredibly creepy stuff.
* Keeps asking me every day if I want to keep my new tab extension. No way to set a blank page either. If you don't use an extension, it's "Microsoft Home" (which doesn't even let you properly set your own background, and keeps showing me squids, no thanks). Despite me clicking no every time, it still occasionally disables it. I think there may be a timeout, and then the disabled plugin syncs everywhere.
* Asked me if it could shouldersurf my Kagi searches and scrape them to improve Bing. If I was Kagi, I'd think about blocking the Edge user agent.
* Upon clicking "no" on the point above, it changed my search engine to Bing.
* Edge also has a feature to regularly scrape other Browsers for their history to submit to Microsoft. Given every other Edge feature did not respect my consent in an honestly gaslighting fashion, I don't feel confident any browsing data on a Windows machine is private unless you install the above Release Candidate and set your Region to EU to uninstall Edge.
Here's the guide I followed. Just set your region to Ireland or something: https://www.partitionwizard.com/news/uninstall-microsoft-edg...
Again — as a former anti-EU person — I am reminded why I am now pro-EU. While nowhere perfect it is much better than not having an EU and way, way better than the US.
You are still coping thinking you can somehow outplay Microsoft. You can't. Stop using software made by obviously hostile entities.
Fear Microsoft.
Decades of Microsoft breaking the law, anticompetitive behavior, and just acting like scum. And openai took their money. Openai is in bed with them. To me, this means openai's intentions are clear.
Because only scum, take money, and partner with scum.
They're admitting that they are unable to build a good browser themselves, then they basically rip off chrome and skin it up a bit and we're supposed to think it's amazing?? And then they start adding all this scamware like the "shopping assistant" and "buy now pay later" scams. Google doesn't even go that far and they do most of the work making this browser. I didn't even know it was so difficult to get away from Bing as I only use it at work.
I see why business admins love it so much, because it is of course well supported by their management ecosystem. Also, Microsoft lobbied the top brass at companies like crazy to make it the default browser and gain marketshare. Even every call sharing a screen with a MS consultant resulted in "Why are you not on Edge yet??" :( It's like they get paid per conversion or something.
Edit: PS I hate both Chrome and Edge for their privacy invasion (as you mentioned) but if I would use either I would use the real thing and not the knockoff.
So you are not a fan of Brave either? A lesser Devil is still a Devil, after all.
Tried it and immediately deleted the app again. Seriously, asking users to create an account which isn't skippable is just plain dumb?
To be fair, as an Arc user, by logging in, I can keep my tabs synced perfectly across my personal and work laptops, which is worth it for me.
I can list many things I dislike about Firefox, and I understand if people don't like it. But overall, yes, it's a good alternative for most people.
> Then there's the fact that Edge is just Microsoft's spyware, being worse in my book than Google's Chrome. And people forget that Microsoft is also an advertising company. Even if that's not their main revenue source, they also hate your ad-blockers.
People forget that Mozilla is also almost exclusively funded by the advertisement industry. They have also experimented with including ads directly in the browser on multiple occasions. Including ones force pushed though a back door (experiments).
> And in true Microsoft spirit, it also has telemetry, which you can't turn off.
While you can turn of Telemetry in Firefox it is on by default and new channels are being added all the time which are again on by default.
Mozilla is controlled opposition with the emphasis being on controlled with opposition being more of a formality.
The code for manifest v2 is really very simple (when you know that functionality for manifest v3 must remain available) - maintenance of it as an unmerged patch would be pretty straightforward.
I suspect such a patch could be just 10's of lines of code - you're simply changing the condition list under which a web request can be blocking or not.
The other place I see some hope left is the "ungoogled" chromium browser. Though the amount of hooves you need to jump in order to get a stable release (corresponding to official chrome) on a windows or mac is preposterous, you eventually do get a portable, non-intrusive and much kosher version of chrome browser which isn't bad.
[1] https://vivaldi.com/source/
For personal use, I rarely use Edge. I only uses them for websites that have an issue with my Firefox with uBO and strict CORS. I avoid Chrome like it is a plague.
I use Chrome only for Google Meet & the like.
I use Firefox for Zoom and when I encounter a website that misbehaves on Safari (and for a couple of things that I need to use that are wholly separate from the rest of my browsing experience).
Otherwise, I use Safari.
The original article's assertion that Safari does not respect your privacy is so far from the truth that the rest of the article is questionable.
Bing (now Copilot) acts like a premium version of ChatGPT in Edge. It is context aware, and gives you access to GPT4 (not turbo), for free.
Edge is also very tied in with Live services, which if you primarily use those, it gives you the most bang for your buck there.
It also has some nifty features that are a mixed bag compared to other browsers, but may be missing from Chrome or Firefox.
I haven't found a need for uBlock Origin with Brave's built-in ad blocking. And the effective ad blocking is really the main reason I use Brave. I just disable all the token / wallet nonsense.
Answering the question 'what is the motivation for Microsoft to pay for Edge development?' also answers the question 'why is Edge not an acceptable alternative to Chrome?'
also because a company uses a lot of tracking on their product doesnt make them an AD company lol.
but lets not get it twisted every browser is technically spyware thats the business of web browsers... i mean brave is to me the most deceitful. for one a VPN that installs background processes for windows users even if you dont want it. reinstalls on updates. and you know how much brave loves to force those background updaters on you. https://www.ghacks.net/2023/10/18/brave-is-installing-vpn-se...https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/33726
or how the most popular browser privacy test is run by a brave employee.. hmm guess which browser scores the highest and a favorable testing environment with the settings https://privacytests.org/ he eventually disclosed his employer in the back area of that website somewhere so thats better i guess.
another one is how certain settings on brave search always reverts back on. or just one the send analytics one. if you use search on a different browser not their own. and etc.
and firefox is funded in large part by google.. do you really think they dont share information?
honestly acting like your browser is superior because no tracking is so silly lol. just use whatever browser you want and tune settings to your liking. harden if you must and move on. is it that much of a hassel? would you rather pay subscription for no tracking? youll never not be tracked by ads on a free model its too much incentive and the internet is too controlled. you know when you use these product you pay with your privacy and ads its honestly a great deal. at least for me and probably most of the users. imagine paying monthly for edge having time limit package tiers, having to buy packs of google searches, websites have a entrance fee if they dont sell products.
btw im on thorium on linux i dont have a edge/microsoft bias. nor am i some shill for big companies i tend to use alternatives. but im not a sucker anymore for the illusion of privacy nor am i a big company fear monger.
oh ya also who said they are banning ubo?
I didn't know that.
I do know that the GDPR requires user consent to be revocable....
Out of curiosity, is there any objective proof that Microsoft-Edge is worse for privacy than Google-Chrome, or is it just a subjective "Google=Good Microsoft=Bad" feeling?
It's easy people. Switch to Firefox today.
After working for a year in 3DSMax, back in the day, someone asked me to show them something in Lightwave. I couldn't find my way about anything.
There is also a far far bigger difference between IDEs than between browsers even if compare only the big names. Compare Visual Studio, IntelliJ and Eclipse.
All the browsers are same. They were all the same for 10 years. Single window or MDI. Then Opera came with tabs, then everyone got tabs. That's it.
Basically, if we accept the notion that it's hard for someone to switch from Chrome to Firefox we accept the notion that it's hard to move anyone from any ecosystem just on the grounds of them not wanting to touch their muscle memory even a bit. You get to the same option in three to four clicks through different menues. Is it that hard?
It's no wonder why people don't want to switch, really.
I use this feature around 20 times a day, sometimes more. It's painstaking to do this in Firefox, even with extensions.
Once every year or two I try switching to Firefox, then I remember this is the reason why I don't use it and I go back to Chrome.
The day they add this feature is the day I will switch to Firefox.
plus ça change!
Use a browser for browsing, e.g. firefox with a tons of plus is, from ublock, noscript and a dozen others and use a main browser like chrome for banking and some other stuff. Don't use a minor browser (opera, vivaldi etc.) for banking.
I could never find a way to open in the correct profile from external applications.
The experience there isn’t perfect and requires some effort to setup but how is that different than getting certain sites to open in specific chrome profiles automatically?
On macos, the Google and Firefox home screens are virtually identical: Big "Firefox" or "Google" title, seach bar, short cuts / recently used. Google is actually less distracting since it never changes.
Also "Keep One Pin Tab" [3] on Chrome to prevent that closing the last tab closes the browser. The same on Firefox but there I don't know what setting I'm using to make it behave that way (update: browser.tabs.closeWindowWithLastTab -> false).
[0] https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/new-tab-redirect/ic...
[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/new-tab-overr...
[2] https://imgur.com/610mVyy
[3] https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/keep-one-pinned-tab...
I am on Mac, however. It looks like from the other comments, windows builds somehow have ads.
Deleted Comment
I have seen people use and complain Internet Explorer in my younger days, from version 6 to 7, etc. Even though I mention Firefox to them, they stay with IE. What amazes me is how quick they transitioned to Google Chrome when it released. This was around 2009.
It amazes me how quick people jump to something especially when it has a big company behind advertising it.
I see this a lot in my career as well (software engineer) - when some cool, flashy new toy comes backed by companies like Microsoft, Google, Sun/Oracle. etc.
Anyway.. I only recently found out there was a thing called hardened firefox. There is me thinking "Oh! This might be worth a look" - and it is basically firefox with private settings enabled, etc, in the config section.
(which is what I have been doing for years. lol)
I just don't understand why people would use Chrome. Most people, I guess, just dont care about their privacy. However, even if you use something else, I would not be surprised in modern Windows listens in on your microphone "for advertising" purposes.
I might not be able to eliminate privacy issues, but if I can reduce the best I can, I will.
Back to browsers - I hear good things about Brave. Not used it, though. Happy with FF.
Because it works. Advertising works. That's the bane of the conflict of interest between companies and users of Ad blockers. We (technical users) cannot complain that companies should not use and abuse Ads, because at the same time we (humanity as a collective) constantly show once and again that Ads do work excellently for their intended purpose.
Just because something works, doesn't mean you should do it. Using a gun or knife to threaten someone with death if they don't hand over their wallet works. Do you think people should complain/do something about it, or should they just let muggers get away with it "because it works"?
But this is the problem, because their intended purpose is not the user experience. A lot of people block the ads because they find them distracting, and actually part of the intended purpose of ads is to distract your attention to them.
There is no "users of Ad blockers" vs "technical users", using an ad blocker is not some sort of purpose of why I use a browser.
Advertising spend should be regulated.
Really? That seems hard to believe.
I stuck with FF until around 2016 or so before being compelled to switch. The performance was just very clearly worse than Chrome's at the time. Not sure what the state of things is now.
This is HN, so another huge reason to use Chrome is for the devtools, which I've always had a very good experience with and know pretty well. I've always found other browser devtools miserable to work with in the past, though I admit I haven't invested serious time into learning them.
All that said, the adblocking fiasco may well get me to try out FF again as my daily browser. But personally I had very clear reasons for abandoning it originally, it wasn't just cargo cutting
If you experienced poor performance the common explanation at the time was that you either had a profile folder that had accumulated all sorts of stuff that somehow caused a slowdown, or had some unfortunate extensions installed.
I was long time fan of FF while living in Ireland and the UK, but when I moved to Sweden and later Germany I was effectively forced to switch to Chrome.
Being required to interact with websites in other languages regularly meant that FF (circa 2018) was just not an option. The chrome experience for translating webpages was vastly superior to any other browser, which I needed to use 3rd party translating apps to get anywhere. These were clunky, low performance black boxes that I tried to live with and failed.
I see now that other browsers are starting to properly do built-in translation, but Chrome was way ahead for a long time. So for non-English speakers I imagine Chrome was a must use tool for a long time.
A lesson of how sometimes "ship it now and improve later" could make huge damage to the reputation of a product.
Lately I've been advocating change to Firefox more than ever. Do you want to guess what's been the reply I've heard back more? "But Firefox is clunky and much slower than Chrome!"
They had a bad experience due to slowness compared to Chrome at the time, and that impression still lives on today, putting an end to any slight possibility of migration. At least until a friend explains the situation as it is nowadays. Thankfully they mostly listened and some agreed to try it.
This is a fair point. Personally, I don't recall seeing a big difference between the two. Maybe there was. Perhaps it was not that bad so it wasn't as issue for me.
As for dev tools, I have been happy with Firefox - but then when I am doing web development I am testing on various browsers, anyway. So I use dev tools for all of them.
If chrome does it for you for dev tools, then use it for that. No need to use it for general browsing.
Development of devtools was indeed quite good early on in Chrome. But Firefox already had the Firebug extension, which was basically the first kind of browser devtools as far as I can remember. And then Firefox also eventually implemented the devtools natively, and Firebug eventually disappeared. And that did take some time while Chrome had the devtools already native. But still Firefox with their open plugin system allowed for Firebug to evolve, and Chrome's devtools (and also Firefox's) was for sure inspired by Firebug.
So why do people use Chrome really? Placebo, hype, lack of historical context, and ignorance of privacy, I would say.
When Chrome originally released firefox was better than IE but chrome was head and shoulders above both of them.
Moving to Chrome from firefox at the time was a breath of fresh air. Nowadays there's very little difference, there was a short period of time I found Firefox faster but now I doubt most users would be able to tell the difference in performance
The power of endless money for advertising. Some users think it doesn't have that much impact, but being nudged on every other web page to make the switch is much more powerful than that nephew who talks to you about it once.
Because lots of people who build websites only test them in Chrome. I use Firefox as my main browser, but there are times when I'm forced to open Chrome to do something (e.g. buy visitor parking permits from my local council) even with uBlock Origin disabled. As a non-technical user, if that happens to you even once, what motivation would there be for you to go back? As far as those users are concerned "Chrome works, but Firefox doesn't".
It's an argument, but not a good one. Don't be evil they said...
Well I am not one of those people. Back in the late '00s I was testing in IE6, 7 and maybe 8 as well as Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Opera.
I remember, back then, my boss telling me to "only worry about IE" when writing a demo web application. One day I came in and my boss slaps a peice of paper down at my desk, wondering why a customer saw this on their screen. At first I was like "WTF" as it was a bunch of rectangles scattered around. The penny dropped and tried it in firefox.. same result. It was at this point I started to care about ALL main browers regardless of what anyone told me.
It is not as bad today, but my mind set is no different.
Should not be testing on just one browser.
That said, I'm not convinced by this flashmob against Chrome. I like Google direction and Google philosophy behind Chrome, including its position on adblockers. So I hardly have any reason to switch to Firefox. Chromium is open source, Firefox is financed by Google, so it's hard for me to be convinced that Chrome somehow is bad. Especially when Firefox makes one bad move after another bad move (integrating weird third-party services within Browser, like Pocket or VPN or whatever).
And, yeah, I don't care about my privacy that much, especially not on the level to actively fight for it. I care about security, and that's about it.
But I do believe people want uBlock to intercept http requests before rendering the web page. And from my understanding this has always been supported in Firefox, but never in Chrome.
I have used Firefox forever, I never switched to Chrome as it knew it never was fully open-source. The point of open source is that you're able to build the thing from sources with the exact functionality as in binary file they release.
The web is extremly important for everyone, and it is important that we still build an open web for everyone. When people use projects like Chrome, they let Google decide the direction of the web, just like Microsoft did with IE.
That Firefox was sometimes slower than Chrome and sometimes lacked features has never been a big productivy hit for me. Neither has web pages that didn't work in Firefox. In the worst cases I just need to start Chromium. I lose max 1 minute. That is nothing to sacrifice for keeping the web open.
Tried Brave on my phone, but it managed to generate 90mb of network traffic in 10min where another browser takes 5mb. No idea what it did, I instantly lost trust.
Chrome I only use for debugger.
What I do not understand is not why people do not use FF, it is why people use Chrome instead of Chromium, Brave or some other chromium-based browser that is not google or MS. Surely it is not that much more effort to install one of these than chrome.
Today that's no longer the case, but there also isn't a huge reason to switch to Firefox. They're all kind of the same, especially to the average user who doesn't strongly care about privacy.
I'm not sure how old you were at the time but do you really remember that history well and did you compare the two browsers yourself at the time? I was a die hard Firefox user from the beginning until Chrome came out. I remember trying Chrome for the first time and being amazed at how much faster it was. Not just a little faster, way faster and how it could handle more tabs without slowing down. It was so far superior performance wise and that is what got me and many others to switch.
I can't think of a single way using Chrome and therefore having "less privacy" has affected me negatively.
In fact, having an internet that just works has allowed me to be more productive.
I'd love for someone to articulate how cookies or tracking has actually harmed them in any way.
Poor performance is also what drove me back to Firefox. It still has the clipboard bug, however.
This is fine. My comment is not aimed at everyone who switched -- though I am likely still referring to the majority of people.
I do remember the ACID test being the main selling point of Chrome over the other browers. Yes, from memory, I do believe Chrome was faster. My attitude to this, however, was that it was new and eventually, would be adding new features, etc.
I understand that there are people out there who switched for other reasons.
We had Firefox 0.3 which was very, very slow browser but still much better than Internet Explorer. There was a lot of mental gymnastics involved to get pages display at least similar for both browsers.
When Chrome 1 was released, it was absolutely awesome. Minimal interface. Focused on browsing. Incredibly fast, it just executed JS stupidly quick and we could create web app interfaces that didn't lag
You can still download Chrome 1 and see what it's about. It was basically what users wanted: supports more CSS features than other browsers, starts fast, executes JS fast, provides adequate developer console, renders pages correctly.
It took all of us by storm because it was genuinely good software. That era was the era of good software, not spam advertising.
Today, in 2023. this is not true any more and you are entirely correct when asking why people would use Chrome. Answer is: laziness, lack of info, apathy, lack of knowledge.
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But it's worth pointing out that Chrome and Chromium are developed by Google. The whole point of using Chromium as a browser developer (Brave, Edge, Opera, ...) is to have Google own and take care of all the difficult bits, drive the technical roadmap, and decide on what is and isn't going to be in the next version. So, you don't gain much by switching to those as the teams behind those Chromium based alternatives don't actually develop most of the browser and you are not really cutting loose from Google. Brave does a little more than others but still.
Sticking with Chrome/Chromium is a bit of a form of Stockholm syndrome. People keep convincing themselves it isn't that bad and that the ads are fine and not that intrusive and that Google means well. Etc.
Firefox is technically independent; not financially. It and Safari are the only non Chromium based browsers left in addition to a small number of early stage attempts to implement a browser that don't look like they are going to be a credible alternative any time soon. Google is paying both Apple and Mozilla to be the default search engine in their browser. And unlike Mozilla, Apple isn't exactly dependent on charity and also getting a lot more from Google than Mozilla because they have hundreds of millions of iphone users. Browser real estate is valuable; especially on mobile.
But we live in a weird world where we are dependent on a single company financing the development of essentially all browsers that are commonly used through advertising. I don't think it's particularly healthy and especially the Apple deal smells like a classic anti competitive move that ought to trigger some legal action. It would be nice to see the search and browser markets open up a bit. Especially on mobile. Especially on IOS where Apple enforces a Safari monopoly. Every other browser has to use the Safari rendering engine.
Do that and Chrome becomes the monopoly everywhere.
Not that I’m in favour of the way Apple does things on mobile, but break the Chrome monopoly elsewhere first, then go after Safari.
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In my opinion Pale Moon should never be recommended as an alternative to Chrome for the average person; it should be seen as a specialized tool for people who are willing to trade away security and performance for customization. If you don't have customization needs that are this specific, using it is a net loss.
Going a bit offtopic, in my opinion this supports the argument that users should in general be free to block ads, on the basis of being able to filter the content they consume, based on the credibility of the source. Establishing the credibility of the advertiser seems impossible even for the websites (ad network: "just load this 10mb JS from our CDN"), so blocking ads entirely (or allowing them selectively) seems like a reasonable recourse.
[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-05-05/why-go...
But then again, what's the alternative for Mozilla? In case of YouTube Premium we've clearly seen that even HN software engineers, demanding six figure pay, will refuse to pay other software companies a few bucks for their engineering work.
Where does Mozilla find funding to sustain itself elsewhere?
The problem is, Mozilla is full of NGO types who don't care about the browser, and use the money stream to fund pet projects. If the spigot gets shut off, they don't care, they'll jump ship to some other non profit and will keep "making the world a better place" there. Meanwhile the entire internet will be worse off because of it.
Even at a 5% interest rate, the $500M that Google has given Mozilla over the years would be returning $25M p.a. That can fund quite a few six figure salaries, indefinitely, while maintaining independence.
Free YouTube: You can watch with ads and you are tracked.
YouTube Premium: You can watch without ads but you're still tracked.
YouTube with an Ad Blocker: You can watch without ads and without being tracked.
Google's largest chunk of revenue comes from ads. Being tracked simply means you'll be shown targeted ads in other areas apart from YouTube if you pay them. They shouldn't charge you and still sell your data.
But that's not the problem. YouTube premium simply isn't worth €168/year to me (I don't use it enough) and they'll still track me anyway wherever other people are using google analytics. I have a newspaper subscription to support local journalism and it is the same deal: the site is full of ads and just as bad as the free stuff, except I can see all the articles.
I use Firefox, though.
I have and will keep financially supporting software I find useful. However, I do agree that it's questionable whether you can easily replace Google as a source of funding.
You have an official "Facebook Container", but of course no official "Google Container" ... even though Google is the one that does actual tracking across the whole internet and has JS/fonts/etc. on nearly ever webpage
The facebook container was just a way of introducing people to the container concept, and they can move to the generic Multi-Account Containers so they can really separate everything including Google.
They're also really nifty to log in to multiple microsoft tenants which are really a pain in the ** to deal with otherwise.
I did a quick search on DDG but no meaningful results came up with search engine for firefox on android. Gut feeling tells me 'minimal'. People do like their google remembering stuff. Convenience is the enemy of security (privacy in this case).
I would totally expect a reasonable number of Android Firefox users, of all apps, to change at least the search engine.
(I'm with you on the general case)
The concern is that google basically funds firefox, and can choose to revoke that funding at the most inconvenient time for mozilla, risking bankruptcy. Companies ebb and flow on cash flow, and a unexpected drop at the exact wrong moment can cripple even the most well funded ones.
Or just threaten to do so to exert pressure.
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- the experience is 90% the same. - Sync between Android app and desktop is just as flawless (that one made me switch back to Chromium on my first try a few years ago) - Theming is nicer - switching between home and work profile is great with the profile switcher extension - Firefox seems less well integrated into many websites. I keep entering my credit card info on many sites, because the option to use saved cards either does not appear or does not work. Same is true for suggesting passwords. So I use keepass' for both now (which might be good) -the developer tools are a little annoying. I use them mainly for Web scraping and sometimes I give up and copy the curl call from Chromium because the formatting is nicer and the network tab looks cleaner
I won't switch back to Chrome and miss it less and less. Only during black Friday and when I taught my webscraping course I missed Chromium a little.