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"But Chrome is slightly more convenient! Why would I suffer tiny inconvenience today in order to save me from way greater inconvenience later? Who am I? Some reasonable person?" - typical Chrome user.
As a former chrome user it's so real. Chrome connects every device for you and once you ARE in the loop it's hard to leave it. Wanna switch to Firefox? Oops suddenly your authentication doesn't work anymore. Oh what about those useful Google logins tied to everything now? Good luck with that.
It took me huge effort to switch off chromium based browsers because the longer you use chrome, the more it worms it's way into all your services making it harder and harder to switch. I still can't figure out how to seperate my Yahoo account from my Gmail account
A huge reason I left is realising that if google decided I broke their TOS on something like say, YouTube ad blocking, they can just terminate by Google account and every service attached to it suddenly becomes unusable. I'd rather not be taken hostage like that
Edit: for all the wise people in the comments. I was trying to decouple entirely from Google products, not just chrome
What you're describing sounds more like over-reliance on Google services than the browser. I don't use gmail or google logins anywhere, I just have Bitwarder plugin to manage my authentication and use masked emails to create accounts. I did the same in all the different browsers I used over the years and never had any issues with it or with switching between browsers.
Firefox syncs across devices as well, if you sign up for a Firefox account and enable sync. This works for bookmarks, logins, history, and you can even access remote tabs if you want. It's also easy to send a single page from one device to another.
On desktop, Firefox has an import feature that will pull your bookmarks and logins m other browsers (like Chrome) into your Firefox profile.
Even if you're neck-deep in Google services, Chrome doesn't do anything special.
We can't forget that a lot of people have absolutely no idea that this is happening or what it means. Many folks just think the Chrome icon is how you access the internet and have no idea that there are other options. Helping to educate those folks is going to be a significant part of minimizing Chrome's dominance.
This comment is 20 years old if you replace the word Chrome with Internet Explorer.
I've been removing Google services from my life bit by bit over the past year, and I have to say it is crazy how hard it actually is! They have inserted themselves into so many digital workflows, securing monopoly positions and preventing the rise of competitors and open ecosystems. In many areas the only alternatives are other tech giants, or accepting feature downgrades and having to set things up manually.
I'm really glad that the browser is one area where the transition is actually very simple and straightforward!
If Firefox goes away, I'll use Epiphany or Konquerer before I subject myself to anything that makes me view ads.
FF has way too much groundwork laid and way too much mindshare currently (especially given the rust language and all..) If, for some reason, thousands of devs just gave up on mozilla, more would continue the path and fork it most likely.
Mozilla is the result of people giving up on Netscape. It will live!
It's the result of Netscape losing to anti-trust behaviour by Microsoft and open sourcing their code as a final parting gift.
Netscape was struck down Firefox rose.
Chrome: First-party spyware.
I've used Firefox for years. It's always been the underdog imo.
If it ever becomes the top dog, I'll switch! To the next privacy underdog. More competition is good.
FF has always been security conscious and was actually the big dog until around 2007 or so when they had to do a full rebuild of their code and this made it so that a lot of peoples' favorite plugins stopped working until they were updated. This coincided with when Chrome started to become bigger and people switched. Now people are switching back. I use a combination of FF and Opera GX.
I've read so many bs paid-off articles recently how chrome is so much better than firefox, or firefox has nothing left to give to its users
Lots of people can't just straight up ditch it. I have had multiple websites just don't work with Firefox regardless of whatever add-ons I put. For me I just go into a Windows sandbox, but there's people who are not that tech savvy and it's often forced on them. Also iirc most schools have chrome books they let students use. So it's basically forced onto people.
Do you have any examples? I have used Firefox for years and never experienced this, nor heard of anyone I know who uses Firefox experiencing this.
Not the commenter, but...
I play tabletop RPGs (Pathfinder 2e for those care) online with some friends, and we use a website which hosts the program (forge-vtt.com).
For the life of me, I cannot get it to behave on Firefox. Maps will be pitch black while on Chrome they render perfectly. I've tried every permutation of browser setting and extension toggling I can think of to no avail.
Made the switch to Firefox last year. Love, love, love the freshness and versatility of the browser! Also add-ons for mobile!!!!
We really need more browser engines floating around.
As of now we really only have 3, Webkit, ~~Firefox~~ Gecko, and ~~Chromium~~ Blink.
Everything is based on these 3. And I know, technically chromium and firefox are both based on webkit, but they're so far gone from webkit they function as their own engines.
Well of course. Now all your traffic goes through proxies to Google's servers for analytics.
100℅ data harvesting.
Genius move by Google. Even calls it a security/privacy measure!
They will succeed too. Most of the human race are Neanderthals anyway. Couldn't care less.
Please don't with this tech elitest stuff. Yeah, most people will continue to use chrome because they don't really understand the gravity of what it means for their privacy, doesn't mean we can't do our best to help them out.
Don't Be Evil!
Google recently revised that motto, it now has a comma after the first word.
Way ahead of you. Been using Firefox since it was called Phoenix.
If I'm forced to use a Chrome browser, I use a deGoogled version of chromium. I can't think of the last time I've had to use it though. Firefox support is a priority for my company's IT dept.
My main problem is that I prefer other frontends to Firefox. I mostly use Vivaldi and think it's great, but of course it's Chromium based. I read somewhere that it's just way easier to base a browser on Chrome than it is to base one on Firefox. It would be great if the frontend and backend were separated with a unified API and you could simply choose a frontend/interface (Vivaldi) with whatever backend/engine (Gecko). That's not how it (currently) works though.
There are Firefox forks, but they're just that: forks with slight modifications. Vivaldi and Arc are basically completely different browsers. Even Orion isn't based on Gecko, it's based on WebKit.
Add to that small compatibility issues with certain websites/web apps that aren't Firefox' fault, but rather developers targeting Chrome instead of "100 % web standards". Still, as a user you'll likely into (small) issues from time to time.
People saying "just use Firefox" have a very narrow view on how any of this works and I sometimes feel like it's some form of elitism where the cool kids use Firefox and everybody using anything else are "lesser people". In reality, people have different requirements and priorities. It's similar to people posting "just use Linux" under every article talking about problems with Windows.
Yes, Chrome and Google sucks, I agree, but there isn't a single universal solution to this problem.
People saying "just use Firefox" have a very narrow view on how any of this works
No, not at all. I understand perfectly. Your concerns are valid.
Our point is not supporting Chrome is more important in the long run.
There is no front end in the world that will make up for the loss of true ad blocking and everything else Google pushes down the line.
Let's be clear about this:
I don't want to tell you to use Firefox. I want to tell you to use whatever you like. I wish we lived in a world where the choice didn't matter.
But we don't
When I'm telling people to use firefox, I'm telling them if you have a problem with the direction the internet is going in, you actually have to do something about it beyond just complaining. Support the competition, the only non-profit in the space, and the only true alternative browser left. Because everything is going to get exponentially worse without competition, and we really really need to preserve the one remaining safe refuge.
What features does Vivaldi have that don't exist in a FF extension?
And using a WebKit based browser is still better than using a chromium fork.
Ironically, in the past year, one of my employers specifically disallowed Firefox due to a CVE, saying that we were to use Chrome. A Cybersecurity professional once told me that Firefox is frowned upon because of CVEs.
The new McAfee.
I’m glad I’m in a position to basically never have to touch a chrome or chrome derivative for my work. It was a necessary evil to finally kill internet explorer, but these days it’s just hostile to its users.