If you value privacy, ditch Chrome and switch to Firefox now
fastcompany.com
With the number of people concerned about privacy, it is a wonder why chrome is even popular.
With the number of people concerned about privacy, it is a wonder why chrome is even popular.
The best time to switch to Firefox was 5 years ago. The second best is today.
Oops, I switched 15 years ago,
I switch when it was Phoenix, then switch again when it was Firebird, and finally switch when it become Firefox
you win Firefox!
I went straight from Mozilla Navigator to Firefox 1.0.
Tabs were such a crazy new thing back then. You would show tabbed browsing to someone (rather than opening new windows) and they thought you were a wizard. IE5 didn’t have tabs, so nerds moved to Mozilla/Firefox. Then IE6 came out but still didn’t have tabs. By the time IE7 came out, I’d had tabbed browsing for 5+ years.
Noob. I switched in 2006 - 17 years ago.
What took you so long?!?
I had to pee!
I cannot be 100% certain but I'm confident I was using it not long after the 1.0 release. That'd put me at 2004. 19 years!
Although I did briefly switch over to Chrome when it was new and fast. Then switched back when Firefox had a major optimization pass.
The early Chrome was crazy fast when it had none of the bloat.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/nCgQDjiotG0
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Funnily enough - this article is 3 years old
I use Firefox since it's release. It was never bad. I don't get all the Chrome users.
I had the crappiest of PCs in 2006 or 2007 with 768MBs of RAM running Windows XP. Funnily enough the reason I switched to Chrome back then was the immense RAM usage of Firefox compared to Chrome back then. With the big rebranding an rerelease of Firefox in 2017? 2018? I came back and haven’t looked back since.
It has a pretty severe memory leak issue during the period where Chrome siphoned off most of its users.
Most people aren’t concerned about privacy outside of places like here and Reddit.
With Chrome killing ad blocking, they'll quickly care
Except most people don't use adblock. I don't even know how they live
I'm conviced those people aren't real and everyone is in fact secretly using an ad blocker.
I mean, how do you not get annoyed with so much ads? People are probabaly lying in surveys to trick youtube to not blocking adblockers.
You are mostly right. Think about how many people use chrome on corporate office computers that they do not have permission to install anything on or modify. It's part of the reason Windows is so dominant. Businesses run windows and chrome a shit ton. I work for a Fortune 100 company. It's Windows and Chrome across the whole company.
I work for a large company and its the same. They even force-install Chrome despite Edge already being there! Yes, some people will make the privacy argument that Microsoft takes your data, but so will Google, and it's not as if the business cared either way, because if they did they'd install an adblocker or Firefox, which they don't.
Hate to say it, but I think you're giving the average person way too much credit. Most people are just not that smart.
"Think of how stupid the average person is, and then realize that half of them are stupider than that." - George Carlin
Average and below internet users are not the kind of people you meet on Lemmy. They are people like the aging Gen-Xer who doesn't know the difference between "the internet" and a web browser, or the kid whose parents shoved a tablet in their face to get them to be quiet for an hour.
Most people want computers to be an appliance like a washing machine - the thought that they can shape their own experience on their phone or computer never even occurs to them.
I forget that these people exist sometimes. I can’t ever go back to the internet with no ad blockers.
I suspect they spend most of their time in apps and not surfing the internet. Just a guess really since I saw the mobile traffic exceeded desktop. A lot of people don't spend hours on the "internet" surfing. Tic Tok sure. Hell I'm getting more and more like that. Even when I use chrome I still only go the the same sites for the most part. lol
It could be a good thing. Maybe they won't bother about people blocking ads because they become even less than before.
So maybe you need to pause the ad block a lot less.
Google’s doing a pretty shitty job on that front since uBlock is already prepared with a new version that will work largely the same after the changeover.
Honestly, it seems like people have basically created internal adblockers where they seem to not notice ads.
Hmmm, on the bright side, with lemmy going mainstream maybe some of this culture (including privacy and FOSS) becomes more and more openly discussed.
As much as I love Lemmy I don't see it going mainstream :/
It's too weird for the general user
Yeah I agree. Arguably reddit isn't even mainstream, and it is exponentially larger than Lemmy now and will remain so for the foreseeable future.
I'm really loving Lemmy, but it is not even remotely a factor if we are having a conversation about things that are mainstream enough to reflect popular opinion.
... with just 0.91% of US social media visits
this yearin March this year, if this isn't wrong:https://www.statista.com/statistics/265773/market-share-of-the-most-popular-social-media-websites-in-the-us/
FB 53.09%, Twit 16.25%, IG 13.85%, ..., Reddit 0.91% ...
[Edited to fix my error.]
[I have no affiliation with the linked site.]
That's US based. I don't have stats handy, but I remember seeing that huge amounts of Reddit traffic are outside the US, and from anecdotal experience, limiting the study further to younger demographics would drastically change these results.
Reddit was too weird for most people until they ended up being in their Google search results for most topics. It will take a while but the Fediverse will eventually reach a level of popularity and mainstream utility.
We could have it both, where big instances like LemmyWorld or BeeHaw becomes the well known public interface, while they maintain federation with smaller instances.
I mean I love Lemmy but I don't see it going mainstream :/
It's too weird for the general user
The irony of this comment duplicating 😅 but yeah you're right, there needs to be a lot of streamlining first
I've seen this issue hundreds of times on red dot
I dunno. Lemmy isn't all that weird outside the first little bit of choosing an instance and signing up for communities. Everything since that has felt extremely normal to me. Some more thought about that and a good instance onboarding workflow can be implemented, that seems like a solvable problem.
Not sure why it’s weird, it’s just reddit but open source?
Lemmy isn't weird at all. Now P2P platforms like secure scuttlebutt and aether, that's some weird stuff. I couldn't get them working at all (or maybe nobody is using these anymore). P2P is very confusing for me. I assume that a federated network is as confusing for many people as p2p social networks are confusing for me. I guess there will be someone out there who reads my comment and be like: "What? P2P networks are so simple, what don't you understand?" I guess people just have different amount of tolorance to being confused by complexity of something before they just give up. I couldn't figure out those P2P systems so I just give up.
I think lots of boomers and gen-x do care. (At least the ones I know). They just aren't tech literate enough to do anything about it.
I think we need more privacy oriented devices and software with simple ux, and advertising that isn't targetted at the tech community.
Run some TV ads for a privacy enabled smartphone, and play up how it works just the same as your current phone but doesn't spy on you. Shit like that.
Firefox + Ublock Origin blows Google Chrome out of water.
In adittion to this make sure to disable the telemetry that's on by default. If you want even better protection from fingerprinting etc, use arkenfox/librewolf (librewolf being preconfigured fork of firefox)
I'd also recommend disabling Normandy in Firefox.
This is definitely not normal, Firefox never freezes for me. May be worth checking that out, especially your extensions.
Especially your security programs, like third-party antivirus or firewalls. They can install system-level plugins in your browsers, and sometimes those don't work well. Windows defender and the built in firewall are good enough and play nice with other programs.
The whole Reddit debacle has really made me rethink all my services. I recently installed duck duck go and still getting used to it, so not quite sure if I'm ready to make another drastic change.
I used to love Firefox in 2006 or so, but got Chrome when it was released and forgot about Firefox. I think I'll open a tab in my chrome browser for the Firefox page now...this is how I remind myself to delve deeper into stuff later. Thanks for the inspiration, everyone. Google has irked me ever since removing the Don't Be Evil mantra.
Firefox has a super simple way to import everything from your Chrome install. And from what I can tell it has every feature plus more. Was very easy for me to switch. I was actually inspired to try it as my daily driver since Chrome hogs an uncomfortable amount of RAM on my laptop
There was one extension I used in Chrome that I haven't found a Firefox replacement for, but I stopped trying to look a while ago and just live without it.
Was a specific kind of cookie manager: you could whitelist a set of websites to keep their cookies. Everything else would be deleted when you told the extension to do so.
Too many websites need cookies that stick around indefinitely. But I also don't want to delete everything everytime I close Firefox, because I may want to keep a website around for a few days without wanting to bother adding it to a whitelist.
Most Chrome extensions can easily be run in Firefox. Simply download the CRX and upload an copy to addons.mozilla.org as an unlisted extension and within a few hours the extension should be approved and ready to install in Firefox.
Firefox has strong support for the extension cookie management APIs: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtensions/API/cookies
I think this might be what you are searching for. I've used it a few times and it does everything it promises imho: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-autodelete
Reddit being enshittified is what motivated me to switch back to Android. I don't want to continue using a a locked ecosystem only for apple to one day say: "Welp, no more adblocks 😜 Oh you use VLC? Dude that's for pirates only. Signal? That's for terrorists. Standard Notes? What evil plans are you hiding? Banned Banned and Banned."
I used iPhones because everyone else was using them so I kinds fell for the peer pressure thinking "Hmm... what are the odds that Apple become evil? Probably don't have to worry about it." The Reddit shitshow just triggered a fear in me that made me rethink about my life decisions. Apple's locked ecosystem suddenly looked terrifying to me, and I just wanna nope out. So I got an Android phone and gave the iPhone to someone. I love my apks and don't need to worry about Google-Play shennanigans.
True. It takes a big chance to switch browsers for some. And there may be learning curves, but being intentional about our internet and app use goes a long way to saving headaches in the future. The early investment (ie learning a more open source and free, even FOSS software) will help mitigate loss in case a profit driven company changes or “pivots” to a new direction.
The best time to start with a new browser is when you get a new device. Since you have to re enter your logins or re enable your pw manager anyway, it's just a convenient time. That's when I switched, about 1 year ago when I upgraded phones.
Duckduckgo app tracking blocker is my new jam too. Which I leaned about here on lemmy about 1 weeks ago when I joined
If you use a password manager like bitwarden, there’s no need to enter all your logins. I guess that’s why I’m a bit browser agnostic. I use different browsers for different purposes. And I don’t have to worry about remembering my passwords with bitwarden.
The difference between ddg and Firefox for me is that Firefox is a genuinely good product, whereas ddg is noticeably worse than Google. Still trying to find a good search alternative.
IMO the thing is that people don't care about their privacy. Sure, some people around here do, but your average person owns an Alexa, has a FB/Instagram account and constantly posts their location, uses the same password on many sites, uses TikTok, doesn't block cookies, etc etc etc.
Most people don't actually care. Some claim they do, but then can't even be bothered to stop using Instagram etc because of the "inconvenience"... So do they really care?
Some companies (Apple, etc) push their products under a narrative around safety and security, and people will repeat that point as a way to justify a decision they already made, but if they actually cared, they would be doing other things too. But they don't.
The number of us who do actually care about privacy and security is actually very small.
Exactly this. Most people care about convenience above all else. People want their software to "just work" without having to fiddle with settings or add-ons or anything else.
The average person owns a smartphone. I cannot fathom how anyone thinks a device that sits in one place is a bigger threat than one with greater capabilities that you carry with you all the time.
With the number of people concerned about privacy, it is a wonder how privacy is still a word in the dictionary
The Tech industry has been boiling frogs at an industrial level, they could open a fast food chain. DRM? Everywhere? Owning digital purchases? Nah. Privacy? What's that?
It's no wonder. It's because people aren't actually concerned about privacy.
If you ask someone if they're "concerned about privacy" many people will of course say yes. If you follow up that question with "what are you willing to do about it", you'll find that the answer is a resounding "not a God damn thing". If they were they would spend 3 minutes on Google looking for an alternative browser that works even better than Chrome but without the privacy invasions.
A browser is the low-hanging fruit on the "do-you-care-about-privacy meter". It's the one step with no sacrifices and the highest increase in privacy.
You may be right. Being on lemmy tends to skew perspectives a little bit.
Just look at how popular threads is. Only a tiny group of privacy enthusiasts are truly worried about privacy. The general public in the whole world do not give a flying fuck.
That number appears to be very small, all things considered. Out of everyone I know, literally one person cares about privacy. My mother. She will even go as far as to only use her first initial online instead of her name if she can get away with it. However, she uses Chrome all the time because she doesn't understand that your browser also tracks you.
I think that's what it comes down to. A mixture of lack of public interest, and lack of public awareness about tracking/privacy in general. If people can't immediately see how having their data harvested will inconvenience/hurt them, they simply don't care.
The biggest issue for a lot of people is going to be Microsoft forcing all Office 365 users to use Edge all the time. Our sysadmin recently forced me to uninstall Firefox and Chrome from all workstations unless they had an approved use for it. Everything must be through Edge.
Why? "Security" of course. It's always "security". Curious
Edit: the point is Microsoft could have worked to provide enterprise customers with ways to manage third party browsers going forward. They could have worked with Google and Mozilla to make that happen. They didn't. Not really.
It's that Microsoft continues to make decisions that create rationale for only using them, because that's their business. "Security" gives them an extremely convenient cover for anticompetitive behavior. Anyone that thinks their C-Suite hasn't pulled the defender/365 team into a meeting or two to discuss business strategy has far too much faith in a corporation that deserves very little.
Not really, it means less work and less risk for them if they have to support fewer software.
Microsoft has been on a shameless crusade recently to make people adopt Edge. Upon launch, thier Bing AI had a rather absurd requirement to use Edge to access it.
There can be other reasons, and while it saddens me to say, we were forced to keep IE for specific web-panels, which hadn't been updated since the 90s.
Edge does, after all, allow for compability with such sites, which is a good thing.
Please note that this is work work-related machines only. I dont see how it's an issue when it has to do with your work account. You shouldn't be using this for other things than work.
I wouldn’t count on Microsoft’s security:
https://www.npr.org/2023/07/12/1187208383/china-hack-us-government-microsoft
If this can happen to governments using microsoft, it can happen to little guys using microsoft.
Generous estimate there. "People" don't care. Who cares if your browser tracks your online presence when everything is connected back to your facebook profile or whatever is trending.
Most individuals embrace convenience above all; literally putting all their private stuff on any online service that tout "shiny feature that you won't even use". Even some privacy-focused people don't see putting all your emails/photo/video/agenda/chat/text messages in one third party opaque service as an issue.
Tons of business do the same, outsourcing the most basic stuff like private discussions and storage to anything "convenient" to not pay for two sysadmin to manage it (leading to most major leaks). I have direct experience of business coming to us, asking "yeah, privacy is good, data ownership and control is mandatory, so we won't host anything and you'll keep all our data, deal?". They prefer have us, a third party, bill them for hosting rather than have some control over it.
My take on this is that while pointing that browsers can be an issue is not a bad thing, the first step would be to get people and business interested in their privacy. Without that, it remains a niche. Sadly.
Google has a vested interest in showing you ads and selling your data.
Firefox does not.
Seems like a pretty clear choice to me.
Using firefox exclusively on all my devices since the last major revamp of the Firefox Android.
Gotta love the uBlock Origin extension on Firefox Android!
There's no reason you should be using Chrome. Using Chrome:
If you haven't already, I highly recommend reading this comic about the dangers of Chrome: https://contrachrome.com/
If you need to absolutely use a Chromium-based browser, at least use Brave (just for that site).
Not-so-fun fact from the comic Contra Chrome: Google Chrome's URL bar is called the "omnibox." The name is derived from the Latin word "omnis," meaning "everything."
When you type into the omnibox, it's sent to Google's servers and added to your profile forever.
Even if you deleted it or didn't hit enter.
Brave is also spyware, I probably would chose edge over brave lol. But a real alternative is ungoogled chromium.
This is the problem! :( Monopoly is never good, in this case in particular since it's in the hand of a corporation they make money on people data.
I was confused when looking at the map, how come China is Chrome when google is not even allowed in China. Then I remember all those ad-riddled Chinese browsers that are based on Chrome.
They're likely based on Chromium, which is what Google Chrome is based on. Chromium is open-source. Chrome is not.
Not that China cares about US copyright. But it's still easier to just use open-source code rather than creating a browser from scratch or cracking open the code of a proprietary browser.
It's ironic that there are over 60 blockable elements and such over Privacy Badger and Ublock origin on that page.
I use Firefox because I don't like how Google acts with regards to web standards being the de facto standard because so many browsers are Chromium based. If everyone is using Chromium then they don't need to obey any standards and can just do whatever they want. There needs to be competition in that space. Microsoft Edge becoming Chromium based was a big problem on that regard.
The irony that Firefox is kept alive in part because Google pays them for Google to be the default search option is not lost on me.
If you're able to, donate to Mozilla as well! Keeping them up and running is imperative.
Their VPN + Relay bundle is also pretty good if you want to monetarily support them while also getting something back. Relay is actually a killer product for keeping your inbox clean.
I've been using Firefox for years.
Chrome is popular because it works. The average person is not going to give up convenience for privacy, even if they claim to care about it. As someone who uses Firefox, I can say that some websites don't work on Firefox and Firefox is often slower than chromium browsers. While I'm ok with that, others might not be.
Anecdotal experience is great.
I've never once come across a website that doesn't work in Firefox and find Chrome and Edge significantly slower.
I do think Firefox gets a degraded experience on some websites.
For example, Google Meet supports virtual video backgrounds and 3D face filters for Chromium based browsers.
And Google Search serves up an older results page design with fewer features to Firefox users. Someone has literally had to create a Firefox addon to make it pretend to be Chrome so it gets the modern results page.
I realise these are both Google-owned websites - but I don't think it's accurate to say that the average user isn't going to come up across these differences.
I regularly find websites I need for business to be non-functional or crippled. I use Chrome only for specific business needs. FF for everything else.
Pretty much every internal app for companies I've consulted at they never build them to work outside chromium. Learning site media often has issues. That's banks, insurance companies and government.
The average user uses what they know which is often what they have at work.
Chrome is popular because of marketing. Yes it works but I'm sure Firefox works just as fine for the average user.
Firefox has multi-account containers and chrome does not. That (mozilla-created) extension is their killer app for me.
I use Firefox at home and chrome at work. I've never had a meaningful problem with Firefox that isn't roughly equivalent on chrome.
regarding cookies which are fucking annoying...
you can install this:
https://consentomatic.au.dk/
(its supported by various browsers including chromium based, and firefox)
its open source, and made by some people at the university of Aarhus in Denmark.
you set the preferences and it automatically clicks your preferences, to the cookies, on the site(s) you visit.
its very much a "set and forget" kinda thing.
it doesn't prevent cookie tracking or anything. it just fills out the cookie-consentform automatically based on your preferences (so check those after installing)
I've never ran into a website that didn't work on firefox but I don't consume content and go on websites that normal people like. My favorite sites are just giant textwalls.
threads.netcomes to mind. That annoyed me until I opened the console and saw that it was because of an infinite number of cross-site origin violations, at which point I lost interest in Threads.Android users can use an even more private version with telemetry removed. Keeps updated with current version, but is available via F-Droid repository instead.
Fennec (then install add-on uBlock Origin)
Fuck Chromium-based browsers.
i still have no clue why people use chrome for the past 5+ years, there's better chromium alternatives if you still want to use chromium for some reason, and there's firefox which doesn't support the chromium monopoly, works really well and doesn't try to restrict you from using adblockers
High number of people concerned about privacy?? There's, like, 5 of us unfortunately.
To be honest, Firefox works perfectly fine and it is not that difficult to navigate through.
Firefox for Android is a blessing with extensions. Most of my favorite desktop privacy extensions are available on mobile. I love it.
For me Firefox has some showstoppers that Mozilla doesn't seem too interested in fixing (tablet ui on Android, lack of share target support for pwas). I'm not some hater mind you, I want it to succeed.
And, crucially, security. It is far behind, on desktop and especially mobile. Process isolation aka sandboxing is superior on Chrome platforms. Unfortunately.
What's your concern with the tablet ui on Android? It works fine for me.
I used to use Brave and saw that article last week about how they are selling your data for AI training. I instantly jumped to Firefox
Source: https://stackdiary.com/brave-selling-copyrighted-data-for-ai-training/
Brave is just a reskinned Chrome anyway. Even Chromium has built in telemetry.
Firefox is the only independent browser. Even Edge is Chrome these days.
We need to support Firefox. Unfortunately it's dying more and more every year
That article you're talking about isn't about brave as a browser. It was a out the brave search engine.
I hope more people can become aware of how Firefox is better for your privacy
I switched about a year ago. My only complaint on desktop is different short cuts. I hope Firefox sticks around. It's like the last free browser on the web
I use Vivaldi, which isn't perfect, but I need tab grouping in some form. Firefox's solutions for tab groups are meh at best
Modern Firefox is excellent. I have it loaded up with great quality of life addons that seem to work better than their WebKit counterparts.
There's also Librewolf, based on Firefox. Comes with many (but could be better) privacy related settings available in firefox.
From the website:
Available for Linux, macOs, and Windows.
https://librewolf.net
The default settings of librewolf would drive the average user crazy. I'm not a fan of Firefox and use Librewolf myself but Firefox has sensible defaults for an average user that would be a net positive coming from Chrome. Just an FYI thinking of making the switch.
For additional context of those curious, Librewolf is very hardened by default. When you close your browser all site data is wiped (this can be turned off). Most people don't mess with their browser settings though... there's also a lot of little things that are disabled by default that will make people think the browser is broken e.g. canvas requests are silently denied by default, it's just not realistic for most people to use librewolf.
Bro, I never left. I never liked Chrome's interface. I think I ditched Internet Explorer for Firefox when IE started getting too bloated and sluggish and Firefox was mature enough to compete.
I was originally an Opera user (back when it was using Presto) back in the day, but I switched to Firefox during the last moments of the Presto engine. When Presto died, I worried a bit about the state of other browser engines, but I didn't worry about it too much because I never thought Microsoft would use Chromium with their Edge browser. Yet, here we are.
Putting privacy concerns aside, we should encourage the use of Firefox because it helps promote browser engine diversity. The more diverse browser engines we have, the better it is for us, especially when it comes to innovation. I mean, it may be a bit different than the era of Internet Explorer, but since Google is leading the Chromium project, who knows what could happen.
They might remove a particular feature that was once very useful for whatever reason, and we could end up just accepting it because we can't do anything about it.
Does it matter if you use a Chromium browser that isn't Chrome itself? I know Google has a large influence in Chromium development, but presumably they can't just stick tracking in other Chromium based browsers, can they? I just really like Vivaldi.
Pretty sure Chromium has Google tracking, you have to use ungoogled-chromium, and hope they did a good job ungoogling. I don't know how Chromium based browsers deal with Chromium's built in tracking...
Chromium browsers don't allow extensions (uBlock Origin being the best) to block ads as effectively due to their implementation of Manifest V3. The Firefox implementation doesn't share that limitation.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/12/chrome-users-beware-manifest-v3-deceitful-and-threatening
https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/17/23559234/firefox-manifest-v3-content-ad-blocker
https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2022/05/18/manifest-v3-in-firefox-recap-next-steps/
I have one thing keeping me from moving back to Firefox. I use Chrome profiles extensively to separate my various client access sessions that I need to do my job. So I need a solution in Firefox that allows me to have separate profiles with separate sessions. I've tried Firefox profiles but those are so much clunkier to setup and switch between. Also there's no way I've found to get the Firefox profiles to be in separate color-coded windows like Chrome does so I have to look through all my open windows to find the one for the specific client I'm working with.
If someone can solve this I'll switch back to Firefox immediately.
It seems something similar to Firefox Containers
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/containers
This is already handled by Firefox's very own Multi-Account Containers extension.
I like to add Sticky Window Containers for extra functionality. Sidebery also works well with containers.
This (and the other suggestions below) are what I've tried previously.
It's close but Google's got the native solution and the "window-level" containers that have individual per-container icons make it much easier for me to sort my sessions. Unfortunately it looks like Firefox still has them relegated to a single taskbar item. I guess this is necessary since container tabs can be moved between windows unlike Chrome which draws a hard line between windows. I guess this is just the method Firefox went with but it makes my processes a lot more difficult.
Thanks for the suggestions. I'll give it another go and check out ungoogled Chromium as well.
I just launch Firefox with this option:
"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -ProfileManagerAlways launches with the profile selector. Then install a profile switcher extension. Done.
Unfortuntaley 1) it doesn't really come out of the box and 2) the extension must be installed on every single profile. Not the most obvious or user friendly.
I tried to install Firefox in my corporate laptop and the
antivirus marked it as malware ;_;The corporation is apparently ok with Microsoft spying on us all.
My university forced us to switch from Google Workspace to Microsoft 365 and from BigBlueButton to Teams for online classes probably because Microsoft offered them an irresistible deal. It was a really annoying and user-hostile process for everyone.
I've been a Firefox main since before it was even called Firefox :D
As much as it lagged behind in speed in the early days of Chrome, back then Chrome didn't have anywhere near to Firefox's amazing selection of addons, many of which were essential to my workflow.
That also meant that I hated Firefox's switch to WebExtensions, as it gutted most of the addons I used at the time, and it took them many years to get back as many features as possible (which of course has never been all the original features).
I even switched to Firefox ESR, then when that dropped support too, to Waterfox for a few years to retain the ability to use classic addons. But eventually it became too much hassle, and I have been a Firefox mainbranch user again since 2021 :)
For the handful of websites that only work in Chrome (or when I need to test my own websites), I've been using Brave in recent years. It's weirdly into crypto nonsense, but at least those features can be disabled. But if anyone knows a better Google-less Chromium browser, pls let me know!
literally ungoogled-chromium
I just installed Vivaldi to test out
I just ditched Brave a few days ago for Firefox and really prefer it for performance and real privacy.
Just switched over to Firefox like a minute ago. So far, so good. Kinda a bummer to have to manually import my saved passwords.
Also, how are profiles handled? In Chrome, I had a separate personal and work profile. Is that easily doable in Firefox?
I know some others have already mentioned it, but this would be a great time to move your passwords to something more secure. I recommend Bitwarden as well. You can import you current passwords fairly easily.
I'd recommend getting off saving your passwords in the browser at all and move to something along the lines of BitWarden and install the appropriate plugins to your browser.
Saved passwords in browsers are often stored in plain text. I would highly recommend a password manager like BitWarden. Makes transferring them easy and it's more secure.
FWIW, latest Firefox nightlies have caught up to Chrome in terms of performance. I have been a Firefox user since the 3.5 days, I was briefly swayed by Chrome because of performance until I came back for the Quantum update and stuck with it ever since. The updates have been great and Firefox + ubo + Nextdns is a solid combination.
Lol Firefox has always been good. Like I care about .2s of increased page load speed.
Tbh, they trade blows all the time but I value privacy so I've been using Firefox for decades.
Firefox has been and in some cases still is far, far worse than .2s slower, but even not considering that, the reality is that chrome has more support and thus gets more development and attention.
This results in some websites not working properly or at all on Firefox, while this isn't Firefox's fault it is a thing nevertheless
Is it?
It’s popular because for 15 years it’s been fast, easy, better than the built in IE and legacy Edge and tech savvy people like us have been singing its praises since what? 2010? 2012? When did Firefox become slow and bloated?
People don’t care unless there is a big enough difference in experience. And so far, Chrome hasn’t fallen off a cliff when it comes to speed or rendering. If anything, the question should be why do people still bother to download Chrome when Edge is basically the same browser now?
Firefox fixed its issues a few years back and is now a great browser again. Honestly, you can’t go wrong with the big three on desktop or mobile. But privacy isn’t going to make most people switch anything unless the privacy violations are beyond the pale. And I don’t think Chrome’s are yet. Maybe if they go through with that change to kneecap extensions and gimp adblocking that might change.
I think it's important to not just consider the browser chrome currently is, but the company that owns it, and the power they wield through it.
I'm just thankful that Firefox still exists. I switched over back in 2003 and got hooked on Thunderbird as well.
My biggest issue with FF is the lack of the ability to switch accounts easily. In Chrome I have a work account, a home account, and a side hustle account. Each has their own bookmarks, themes, passwords, and history.
I have tried using FF and the few workarounds to match this feature, but so far it has none worked as smoothly as chromes 2 button clicks to switch accounts.
You can have full on separate profiles in Firefox with no common data between them! Accounts, cookies, settings, extensions and their data, even configuration flags and where the profile folder is located on your computer can be customized for each profile! You can even have multiple profiles open simultaneously. Check out about:profiles
Firefox has Container Tabs, where you can separate your personal, banking, work etc. Aside of that, they are completely separate sets of cookies used. You don't need to open new window.
Container tabs? They are an official extension but for some reason don't come pre-installed. I use them extensively for exactly this. Also they are great for paywall evasion, as they don't count as incognito browsing but can be created and destroyed in seconds.
You can always use firefox's profiles to manage different profiles and the "profile switcher for Firefox" extension. 2 clicks to change profile that way.
If only Firefox's management had its head screwed on better. I really don't care about Turning Red themes, I have a KDE theme just to keep it matching my desktop. Just make the core browsing experience better. Hell, take some features from Vivaldi. I've noticed a good portion of Vivaldi users back when I used Reddit were former Firefox users, and I can understand why.
I'd love them to make the UI similar to what it was in 3.* times. Just something intended for humans who use the browser and not managers who do presentations.
I've been using Firefox as much as possible and it has gotten better over the previous few months. I find fewer and fewer sites that I have issues with.
The price to pay for convenience is too steep for most people to migrate. Also if you just an average user, most of the time you will not get instant gratification for being more privacy-aware. The more you try to be more aware the more you realize that to achieve a certain level of privacy is really a pain in the ass.
Totally this for me and I'm someone who understands how bad Google is. I've been using the same Gmail account for twenty years. It's such an integral part of my everyday life. I have hundreds of stars on maps, a meticulously organised and synced Drive, all my YouTube favourites and subscriptions, Photos that are all mostly geotagged, etc. Degoogling would just be such a major hassle, and all my stuff would never be as nicely integrated ever again.
I dunno, I've been using Firefox for 7+ years, and I've found nothing inconvenient about it.
The price to pay for myself to move is way too high, I use 3 chrome profiles daily. 1 as my personal gmail and 2 work email profiles and trying to manage that in Firefox is just not worth it.
A lot of businesses use the google services and when you’re locked into using them through work there’s absolutely no reason to not just do everything in chrome with profiles.
There’s also the fact that Firefox sync is absolutely shit compared to the google sync features and while I understand why from a user perspective it’s a massive loss of functionality.
I have always despised Chrome, with Firefox being my preferred web browser. However, I still keep Vivaldi installed on my Linux system in case something requires Chromium for compatibility reasons.
expired
I wonder if you deem Firefox buggy or having not enough features?
Using Firefox since it came out and never experienced any troubles.
Google Meet's background blur and visual filters do not work on Firefox. MS Teams straight up says that Firefox is not a supported browser. These decisions might be intentional on the part of Google and Microsoft, but to the average user of these popular products, it looks like a Firefox problem.
Well, yes - it's profitable for these corporations to portray Firefox as buggy and their own browser as superior. Change your user agent to one of a Chromium-based browser and watch how your "unsupported" Firefox suddenly works correctly in most cases.
Google products only supporting chromium is a tale as old as time. Try using this extension to enable background blur and see if it'll work: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/mercator-studio/
Edit: Looks like background blur is working on the latest version of Firefox if you spoof your user agent to chrome. See my comment below.
Waiting for Firefox to implement native browser profile switching UI (not container tabs, not desktop shortcuts, not janky workarounds/hacks) and I'll be there full time.
You can go to about:profiles and save it to your favorites bar. Boom - instant profile switcher. I put the bookmark in the top left of my bookmarks bar on all my profiles and use it to switch between them.
Chrome is popular because of inertia. I was a huge Mozilla fan for years, until it became unusable. Chrome was the only choice and noticeably more performant. Since then, there hasn’t been sufficient reason to redirect that inertia. Yes, that was quite a few years ago. Lots of inertia
IE being utter shit + Microsoft's anti-competitive practices definitely helped Google start it's browser monopoly.
Firefox with sideberry (vertical tabs). Ultimate browser.
What about LibreWolf, a fork of FF. Suppose to be better for security. Love using it !! Ditched Brave a couple of days ago
Has Google stopped funding Mozilla yet?
Doesn't Google fund Mozilla so it doesn't get done for monopolising the market?
Besides Google's intentions - the funding doesn't influence how Firefox is developed.
Correct. Otherwise regulators would jump on them.
Loyal FF user since 2017 or so. Loving Thunderbird's renaissance, too.
Chrome does suck regarding privacy.
But the article shared here is basically an ad for Firefox.
I love Firefox, been ride or die since I started. Chrome is just pure Spyware.
Been a proud Firefox user for a long time. Never switched to Chrome, don't plan to.
My biggest concern with Firefox is that Google continues to make people's life hard. There have already been instances of things loading slowly because of crippled standards that only work on Chrome, or features like in-page translate only being available in Chromium based browsers.
Overall I've really enjoyed using it for the past 15 years or so, but it's definitely had periods of very rocky performance
The biggest example of this is YouTube. Sometimes it runs fine but sometimes videos just don't load or freeze.
FF has been my daily driver... longer than I can remember on essentially anything that can handle a browser. It's powerfull, feature rich, extensible, etc. But it does tend gain weight between major overhauls.
Out of curiosity, being a Linux user, I installed Chromium not 2 weeks ago and the thing is fast. It outperforms Firefox on my aging machine by far. And I was actually surprised. Yes, I do have the ghost of Google just waiting to sink its fangs in me, which I dislike, but I really have to admit the browser is fast, light and easy to approach for new users.
Will I let go of FF? Not really but Chromium did manage to get my attention.
Was using Brave and after reading things about it here, just switched back to Firefox!
Also disable the default DNS over HTTPs to Cloudflare.
I really wish this wasn't the default. Most people have no idea that it's there so if you're running your own DNS it just bypasses it. Mildly annoying for pihole users, problematic for IT departments when internal addresses resolve wrong and they say 'well it works in chrome so use that'
I switched from chrome to Firefox 5 years ago but for some reason, Firefox loading acts weird and video playback also is weird...Eventually moved to Vivaldi and I'm pretty happy wit it so far.
Which still is a chrome frontend.
At least the guys at Tumblr are promoting Firefox through femboy and furry memes.
What’s wrong with Brave? Does this effect Brave?
Brave is ass. Use Vivaldi if you want a Chromium browser that's actually good.
Okay I’m going to step into it. I’ve been liking Vivaldi recently as a browser. Is that screwed too because it’s based on chromium? Or am I safe for now?
Love Firefox, but if you want Chrome get Chromium or Brave.
I don't trust the libertarian Brave guy (formerly of Firefox, haha): https://www.searchenginejournal.com/brave-browser-under-fire-for-alleged-sale-of-copyrighted-data/491854/
Vivaldi and Opera with Chromium as a back up are my Blink browsers.
Firefox and Firefox Beta are my main browsers. I use the containers add on with FF Beta to basically use it as a sort of equivalent of Ferdi but with Firefox Beta allowing Google services in one account can talk to each other, all contained in one container that corresponds to one tab group/window.
I use ungoogled-chromium when I need compatibility for something.
I don't think chromium is much better than chrome.
I wouldn't touch brave.
I switched to FF a few years ago when my Chrome was showing some bloat. FF works for almost everything, but from time to time some sites, forms, e-commerce, etc., have issues with non-Chrome browsers. In that event, I use Edge.
Arkenfox/Librewolf + Mull/Fennec
Been using Firefox for a long, very long time.
I've always wondered how Mozilla / Firefox makes money? I see that its a non-profit. Looks like sponsored links and content on their new tab?
Mostly from search engines, especially Google. They also own Mozilla Corporation, a for-profit entity which reinvests all of its profits back into the Mozilla Foundation.
I've been using the internet since 1999. I've been using Firefox before it was Firefox, and before it was Phoenix, back when it was just "Mozilla". (The original browser became SeaMonkey, but it's been slowly abandoned to the point that it doesn't work on modern sites anymore.) I've been frustrated at times and have sometimes used Chrome, Waterfox and Epiphany (Linux web browser) at times but I always come back to Firefox. Back in the Geocities era in 2000 Netscape 4.x was so poor at CSS I developed for Internet Explorer on my personal sites, (to my regret), but Mozilla eventually caught up.
I use ungoogled-chromium with Firefox as a backup. The great thing about ungoogled-chromium is its a barebone browser, and that is exactly what I want. Only downfall is the browser does not auto update. I use change detector to get a notification when a new version is out.
Did ungoogled-chromium get Manifest v3? Breaking ad blocking is a dealbreaker for me, so I'm sticking with Firefox so far.
I prefer Vivaldi over Firefox. More features, better customizability.
But the again I might be the only one...
Vivaldi is based on chromium = Google controls it. Same privacy as google chrome ( if you take it super serious )
https://vivaldi.com/privacy/browser/
https://vivaldi.com/zerotracking/
Although it's based on Chromium, it's still nowhere near as bad as Chrome when it comes to Privacy. A lot of things that interact with Google itself can be turned off/disabled and it's up to the user on how much data they want to send to Google.
Hence why I find it the perfect Chrome browser when it comes to privacy, features and customizability.
I switched to mull which I think is basically a fork of Firefox when bromite seemed to be dead.
No complaints it works great.
Yeah, I'm using it from a long time and I'm happy with it. But I'm also pissed at google what is actively blocking firefox on their services, e.g. GDrive always shows that when loading a page encountered an error or when linking discord to YouTube it shows Something went wrong but of course working on chromium. But having FF and WebKit is an really good for competition to do not let google rule whole internet.
I just went back to Edge from Firefox. I've been a long-time user, but it seems like too many of the sites I use don't work properly and some not at all. It sucks because I've always preferred FF, but I gotta get sh*t done.
Would be awesome if my company allowed to run anything but edge....
Any browser really. I missed the browser wars of old where everyone is free to use and defend their browsers.
TOR browser is built off of Firefox and is even more private.
True, but it is insanely slow, and blacklisted by many websites.
Sigh. I really don't want to put in an official bug report for it but the #1 reason I don't exclusively use Firefox is a bug involving some porn sites I occasionally visit. No clue why, but Chrome (and its variants) load the sites in a second or two and Firefox will take 3+ mins to load them. Haven't seen that behavior anywhere else but those sites.
I was having issues with Firefox loading pages too. Turned out to be the NoScript extension. Might want to check if you have that installed and if so, try toggling it off and see if that helps.
@Frostwolf I switched to Firefox a few years ago. Using Google Chrome on a low end Windows 10 laptop was a nightmare.
I still can't get used to Dev Tools in Firefox, even though they might be superior to Chrome's.
I don't think they are. Slower and more unstable. I'm using Edge for developing.
I use Firefox because I always did and because I don't want to support the Blink (Chromium web engine) monopoly that even Apples Webkit can barely keep up with but please don't think Mozilla (Firefox owners) are accaptable by any means, they just aren't as bad in my mind!
Ah really? I am out of the loop on Mozilla, can you elaborate on why they are also not acceptable?
Thankfully, I've been about Firefox since 2006. People can use what they like, but it does ache me inside seeing someone use Chrome, logged in with the yellow "Update" icon at the top right, an unholy trinity.
What if I told you I always used Firefox... ?
So i did the switch a few months ago and ofc i am very happy but i n the german version of FF you can't autofill adressfields like name and well your adress and so on. Anyone know how to activate that? i googled it a few times but none of the solutions worked
I've been using brave these days. I really like it, I have it installed across all my devices.
As long as you know that Brave is basically Chrome (built on chromium), and that they're selling copyright data to AI companies: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36735777
I'm ready as soon as there is a copy of the vertical tab implementation from Edge. Until then, you'll have to pry Edge from my cold dead fingers.
I have been a loyal Firefox users for years but I would lie if I didn't say I get tired of websites not working.