If you value privacy, ditch Chrome and switch to Firefox now
If you value privacy, ditch Chrome and switch to Firefox now
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,
Google has a web-browser?
10 to 15 years ago, myself. Don't remember exactly.
Sorry, that's 3rd best at most, according to the data above. Sorry, I don't make the rules!
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.
I used it since netscape navigator XD
Does it have native dark pages. Why I use brave. Would use Firefox but it's glaring white
Firefox has dark mode.
Most people aren’t concerned about privacy outside of places like here and Reddit.
With Chrome killing ad blocking, they'll quickly care
I’m going to use Chrome as long as I can. If they update and break my Adblock extensions (and there isn’t a fix in a day or two from devs), I switch browsers or find some other workaround.
I’m glad people with more ability to avoid the problem are trying to do so proactively (via ad-on updates, alternative browsers, etc)… so I don’t need to worry about an ‘escape route’… because I know there will be one.
The plan to deprecate Chrome V2 extensions has been constantly postponed again and again for years now. There is NO SCHEDULED DATE for this to happen currently, and when it is announced it will be more than 6 months out.
Source: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/chromium-extensions/c/zQ77HkGmK9E/m/HjaaCIG-BQAJ?pli=1
If Google really wanted to kill ad blockers, they would have done this years ago.
They don't. They want to force ad blockers and other similar extensions to use more efficient APIs that don't slow down the web. Extension developers overall (not just ad blockers) aren't happy with the changes, so they're still working on the APIs.
Hmmm, on the bright side, with lemmy going mainstream maybe some of this culture (including privacy and FOSS) becomes more and more openly discussed.
I wish that was the case. Privacy is barely a thing in the general public's eye. FOSS is a spec in the wind in comparison.
WHAAT? I CANT HEAR YOU OVER THE MEEEEEMEES!!. SPEAK LOUDEERRR!
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.
Firefox is a weird buggy mess that constantly freezes.
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.
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
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.
I recently learned that ddg is a meta search engine which pulls from Bing search, which is probably why it sucks.
Tried out brave search engine (uses it's own search algorithm) and the results have been better. Probably slightly weaker than google.
I do all my personal browsing on Firefox now. I'm still using chrome, but strictly for work stuff. It's nice to keep those activities separate, especially since many apps I use for work still discriminate against Firefox.
If you like the chrome feel, you should check out a browser called brave. It’s built off of chromium (read as: looks like chrome) and can run all the extensions you like, but is built to be privacy minded.
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.
With the number of people concerned about privacy
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.
Curious
Not really, it means less work and less risk for them if they have to support fewer software.
Back when Internet Explorer was still a thing you could configure it with group policies domain wide. If Microsoft implemented similar features for Edge in an active directory environment I can definitely see the appeal. Not to say similar isn't possible with Chrome or Firefox, but first party integrations in a corporate environment tends to be the path of least resistance.
It's curious because Microsoft owns the operating system and was more than capable of designing in such a way that would allow sysadmins more control over third party browsers and software. Firefox would have been willing to work with them to provide the necessary levers. They already do with group policy.
"Security" is a term that shuts down arguments and silences all accusation of anticompetitive behavior. And they absolutely abuse that. You don't think the bean counters are ecstatic about the fact that they have effectively been able to turn every IT department in the country into Edge salesmen? You don't think there was a board meeting where the benefits of that were discussed?
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.
that doesn't mean security is bad across the board. As invasive and terrible as Edge is, it's actually the most secure browser out there.
That's just because Edge is integrated with O365 and can pass device compliance information. There's actually a plugin to enable Chrome to do the same thing, but nothing yet for Firefox.
What if you run the portable version of Firefox? How would they know?
There's definitely ways to know if they really wanted to stop that, but those employees aren't going to pull something like that. They weren't just told they can't use Mozilla, they were told they must use Edge. Using anything else is noncompliance (which I absolutely support as a person but as an employee I have no say in the policy)
Besides, with the upcoming changes to 365, you'll never get links to open in anything but Edge without admin credentials at the very least, but realistically even that won't stop it. You could use a portable version I suppose, if just to have at least one browser with proper uBlock support.
With the number of people concerned about privacy
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.
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!
Yes. And it makes many sites more browsable in phone.
Wish I could get cookie auto delete on Android too
There's no reason you should be using Chrome. Using Chrome:
- Means you consent to spyware (along with everyone else you interact with)
- Allows Google to continue dictating web standards
- Is a resource hog
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.
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.
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.
Firefox for Android is a blessing with extensions. Most of my favorite desktop privacy extensions are available on mobile. I love it.
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/
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
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 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.
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 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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
It is corporate laptop. It is very infuriating to know users try to mess up company's policy for no reason.
If you want privacy, use your own damn laptop.
How is attempting to install a different browser and then accepting but being annoyed that it won't let you "attempting to mess up company policy" lol, being allowed to install different browsers on your work laptop isn't exactly unheard of.
If they previously told him that everyone has to use edge, sure, but that doesn't seem likely.
I'm ok with that. But company policy should not be Ms Edge.
Not everyone uses FF for privacy. It's also just a great browser.
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.
I'm just thankful that Firefox still exists. I switched over back in 2003 and got hooked on Thunderbird as well.
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'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.
expired
I wonder if you deem Firefox buggy or having not enough features?
Using Firefox since it came out and never experienced any troubles.
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.
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
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.
Been using Firefox for a long, very long time.
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 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.
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.
So Chrome prematurely ejaculates?
What if I told you I always used Firefox... ?
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.
Yes, Edge ones aren't too bad either, especially the stacking visualization feature.
@Frostwolf I switched to Firefox a few years ago. Using Google Chrome on a low end Windows 10 laptop was a nightmare.
Vivaldi > Chrome
There is a lot of misinformation and people linking articles they haven't really read. I'm not going to address them because I don't feel like it.
I would suggest for anyone who doesn't like how slow and clunky Firefox is, to look into Ungoogled chromium. If you still decide to switch to Firefox, consider librewolf if you are ACTUALLY concerned about privacy and not just jumping on the bandwagon of hating Google ITT
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.
Generally I keep running into a constant habit where the same extensions I use in chrome are having memory leaks or some crazy ram issue that just clogs firefox to death. Meanwhile I just don't have the time or patience to figure out and/or find alternatives to said extensions.
Then i'll switch back a few years later but it's been on and off. It's always Firefox becoming unusable with my workflow, which is just not easy to deal with.
I never used chrome
I did that 3 years ago.
I’ve only been using FireFox and Safari for several years now.
I wish FF would natively support text replacement in macOS. This shouldn’t need an extension to accomplish a pretty basic thing.
https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/support-macos-text-replacement/idi-p/15219
Chrome is everywhere and everything is built on it or optimized for it.
Okay, but we had that same issue in 2010 before Chrome started to become mainstream. And before that, IE had to compete with Netscape.
Exactly. It become the current Internet Explorer.
This browser monoculture stuff will surely bite our asses someday. I just hope Firefox (and its derivatives) would still exist to take chromium refugees when Google show its true color in the future.
I think i've only ever used Firefox since i got the internet (2009), but that also makes my reccomendation kinda moot because i haven't used any other browser. How can i say that Firefox is better than Chrome if i've never used Chrome?
Another side effect is that i'm well aware of all the issues Firefox has, since it's all i've ever used, all the browser issues i've had were in Firefox.
I use Firefox, but I do run into a lot of problems with sites not working correctly. Makes me want to switch to Brave occasionally.
Keep using Firefox. We're now returning to the Era where websites only worked with Internet Explorer but in this case, it is chrome. We can't let that happen.
Also ... the most valuable content I find or want online for my own uses is all text based ... reading blogs, forums, news sites, articles, creative writing, wikipedia
I really don't care about design or flashy lights and pictures ... I just want to read the news
I often just toggle the read only view as soon as I find something I want to read and seldom care about what a site looks like ... on the other side of that ... if the site is so messed up or controlling that it refuses reader view .. I skip it and move on
While it won't become that bad ever again because of far more and better standardization, it has basically become a Webkit monopoly already. Sites often don't work (as well) on Firefox because web developers don't bother to do cross-browser testing anymore.
That was the actual (only) good thing with Internet Explorer: it coming with Windows endured significant adoption since many people don't bother installing another browser, especially in business environments. This forced web devs to make their sites and apps cross-browser compatible. With Edge being a Chromium browser that has gone out of the window.
I've used Firefox exclusively for a decade and have never had Firefox be the cause of a site not working properly. What the hell sites are you trying to use that FF is breaking?
Hotels.com last time I was visiting another country for example. A fair few other big sites are not working as expected either.
Still primarily use Firefox, but the fact is that due to small market share almost no testing is ever done on sites against Firefox.
The biggest weird thing I run into is that I can't sign in to Amazon on there. I haven't bothered to try to figure out why.
I find that usually it's a browser extension that's causing the issue.
The only consistent issue I've had is with certain google products, such as logins or specific Google Docs features, which feels intentional
For me it’s usually uBlock Origin causing the problem with Firefox. I personally use Firefox on Mac, Windows, and Linux. I use Chrome occasionally for stubborn websites or if I have to use q bunch of google related services that I don’t normally use.
Same. A lot of internal web apps I've used only work on chromium browsers.
That said, I'd recommend checking out DuckDuckGo browser before Brave.
To say nothing of adblock plus on firefox being able to block ads even on youtube.
Firefox is only a secondary browser to me these days. I've grown tired of it's performance for years because the Mozilla group would rather keep stuffing unnecessary features into the browser and bring about it's own ecosystem that it may be collecting data from itself that nobody may know about than fixing that god damn memory leak.
Jokes on you. I've never used Chrome (outside of work limitations). I always liked the way Firefox looked over Chrome so never really got into it. I do use Edge Chromium every so often since some pages work better, but not sure if this would apply or not.
Also, does anyone know about the Duckduckgo beta browser, specifically what engine it uses? I tried it on a couple pages, but it seems pretty buggy right now.
How about Chromium?
There is even an ungoogled fork of Chromium: https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium I just used to it.
i use 5 browsers 3 of them are based on firefox
I switched back when I was in college - which is strange because it came out one year after I left. I also remember having to take a class on how to use Google in my first year of college - which gives you a hint how long ago it was.
Firefox is my daily driver and use a separate Chromium based browser for Google services, i.e. YouTube, Google Maps, Drive, etc.
And if you miss PWAs, Firefox got an extension for it now. Check out PWAsForFirefox. And unless Edge and Chrome, you can edit the name before pinning the site.
A few bugs and drawbacks though. It uses its own profile, so you will probably want Firefox Sync to transfer your password vault and extensions to it.
Using it since the last major revamp of Firefox Android on all my devices.
I've played around with a few browsers, and while Firefox is a better alternative to chrome, I'd more recommend a privacy hardened fork of firefox such as LibreWolf or GNU IceCat. I've also used mullvad browser which is kinda neat.
Some people are too comfortable using chrome for it's extension library however, so if a mozilla-based browser doesn't fulfill the extensions requirement, Brave browser is a good choice. I haven't tried de-googled chromium, but I imagine it's food for the reasons it says on the tin.
I'd love to get away from Chromium based browsers. At the moment I am using Brave.
Is there any other browser that works on and syncs between: MacOS, iPhone / iPad AND Windows? It also has to have adblock capabilities on all of the devices. FireFox with uBlock Origin would be my first choice but afaik you can't block ads on iPad / iPhone on it.
Any recommendations?
Firefox (arkenwolf) all the way.
Firefox is open source, non-profit, and you can run Ublock Origin on Android. That's what made my decision for me.
I recently did the switch, pretty similar in terms of experience. Only thing I can point out about firefox is that chrome's page translator is faster and more efficient. I'm using the Google translate extension, if someone knows off a better one.
Chrome does have a use, namely Selenium and automation.
I'm guilty of having Chrome on my PC, as I need to nerf over my favourites to Firefox.
Firefox is my browser of choice on my Google Pixel 7, but then again no doubt it makes little difference.
I just choose to use a VPN, so any targeted adverts are blocked regardless of the profile built up from my browsing habits.
Tried Chrome once and go back to Firefox... There is still some website that require Edge or Chrome. Which one is worst in terms privacy?
But I’m using iOS. Can I still do something to atleast increase my privacy?
You can still download firefox on iOS. Snowhaze for really sensitive stuff. Safari for anything else. Using different browsers for different purposes help defend against profiling.
I personally use firefox for work stuff, firefox focus for banking, safari for personal and snowhaze for ehem.. err adult stuff.
you're lying to yourself if you think mozzarella foxfire does'nt collect data. They may use it in a different way, but they still collect data. You have to jump through a bunch of config to disable their telemetry, which most users won't do.
Firefox is the least evil as far as I know, given its non profit roots. Chrome is owned by google, Opera by a chinese company. Firefox is the closest we can get to a FOSS browser.
Check out LibreWolf. Granted, anything you do to try to protect your privacy, nowadays, potentially leads to higher entropy: browser, add-ons, etc... It's still better.
that's what LibreWolf is for
You can see what they send by typing
about:telemetryinto your URL bar.
Innocuous stuff, in my opinion.
Tried Chrome once and go back to Firefox... There is still some website that requires Edge or Chrome. Which one is worst in terms privacy?
It is far from ready but I am holding out a lot of hope that Ladybird will save us from this mess:
You getting fked here or there. So don't think it matters that much.
I would love to and have tried. But I've found too many times that Firefox just doesn't work for some sites. And unfortunately some of those sites are needed for my work.
Alright. Then please tell me a way to circumvent site compatibility enforcement and I will gladly ditch any chrome-related browsers (that most sites are enforcing to use it nowadays) for the beloved fox on fire.
-EDIT And what do you have to say about this? https://youtu.be/_JNg4Ox2Hvc?t=512 .Its a very recent video and has some interesting takes about firefox.
I recommend Chromium Ungoogled if you can't let go of the Chromium ecosystem for some reason. It's an open source fork of Chromium and puts pretty much all the power in the users' hands, so much so that to get certain features to even work you have to configure it. It is also fully compatible with the Chrome app store, if you want it to be.
https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium/releases
The me from 6months back would be onboard with this idea, I don't really recommend firefox anymore. It's a bloated mess run by a very questionable corp. I had to move to PaleMoon, it's the only acceptable browser for me now.
Here are some links for your reading pleasure...
Mozilla - Devil Incarnate
How to choose a browser for your daily use?I used chrome for less then 1 day ..it always sucked
I used to play around with a lot of internet browsers and executed on top of that scripts in greasemonkey, add-ons, plug-ins, ... . But the trustworthiness of these things were not clear for me anymore. So now I'm at using Edge Chromium. Better the devil you know 🙂
Using “Now” in the title linking an article from 3 years ago 💩
The titled was copied from the article using lemmy.
Al my passwords are in google. I just don't have the energy to migrate, frankly. Chrome does what I want, and the password manager is seamless enough that anything else is less-robust and more work.
You can export them from Chrome and import them to Firefox.
If you can, I highly recommend using a password manager like bitwarden with multiple backups spread on local password manager or local drive. Think of it this way, what happens if firefox or chrome were to suffer catastrophic failure? At least with a password manager, you can reinstall another browser and carry on as usual. :)
Firefox is alright, it served me adequately after Opera got sold off, but Vivaldi is so much better.
Even though it's based on a fork of chromium Vivaldi has an extremely strong focus on innovation as well as privacy, they've commited themselves to working around Mv3 for instance and their in-built ad-blocker is absolutely top notch but you can also install uBlock Origin to work with it in tandem on their desktop browser if you want.
And even though it's extremely feature rich, with speed dial, ad-blocker, password vault and side bar being some of their out of the box features all their power user functions are opt in through the settings where you can choose to stack your tabs vertically or enable mouse gestures (couldn't live without these) and a whole bunch more, it really offers everything you could think of and probably a whole bunch more.
I only ever tried Chrome on school computers but it was useless, always kept crashing.
Interesting. I switched to Firefox and will stay there, but I must say, Chrome is the most polished browser I've used. Firefox is a weird buggy mess that constantly freezes.
The Android version is clunky as hell, also.
Not to mention they finally fixed an issue with the print dialog in Firefox after months and me reporting it every single update.
Still sticking with Firefox, though.
You're getting downvoted for an opinion, but I'm upvoting you because I actually want to know the downsides of switching, because I'm considering it myself. Is there any truth to what you're saying, or do people just not like you saying something bad about firefox? I don't mind downsides to switching, I'd just like to be aware of them first so I don't get surprised and frustrated.
If only Firefox wasn’t so slow and such a terrible developer experience. Oh, and my bosses don’t give a fuck about Firefox so I’d have to retest in Chrome/Safari anyways.
Lastly Mozilla sucks. Like wtf are they doing over there? They put all their effort into shitty product they kill faster than Google does. Then they turn around and half-ass their browser while taking money from Google to make it the default search. Mozilla sucks and Firefox leaves a lot to be desired.
I have been using firefox wince forever, never really cared about privacy tbh…i just like it 🤷🏼♂️
What’s the real concern about privacy anyway? I mean google (gmail) and apple (iphone) already know more about me than my family…
Yes but why are we ok with that?
Why is it normal to have a giant American ad company know everything about your life, and billions of others?
Its not normal at all. We just got used to the status quo.
Many people associate this company with "the internet" even. It's sick.
Firefox Multi-Containers addon can help you with that, sandboxing different instances of Google. And you can even route each container through a different VPN server if you subcribe to Mozilla VPN or do extra legwork with Mullvad VPN, so that they can't fingerprint you with your IP address, browser, and machine, even if you have a separate set of cookies for each container.
"I've got nothing to hide" is not a good enough reason to give up privacy. "Watch out for terrorists" is not a good enough reason either. These days, "Think about our children" seems to be the argument of choice to encourage people to voluntarily give up their privacy.
If you truly value privacy you'll use mullvad vpn and tor browser?
Firefox is starting to crack. I get these stupid refresh your browser things on my servers and all these sign in pop ups. Firefox used to just be a browser.
I don't understand what's wrong with tracking me for advertising. If I have to see ads they might as well be something I might be interested in. Google can give more relevant search results. Things cost less. What are the downsides to selling my information to advertisers?
I understand how tik tok can be used for cyber warfare so I don't use that. I don't know what china can do with millions of people's personal information. Chrome doesn't collect nearly as much data as tik tok.
test
Brave is also great.
Didn't they just get in trouble for using user data to train AI? Or am I thinking of another browser?
Shit! You’re right! Dammit! Now I gotta go back to Firefox!
was that Brave browser or search engine? never fully understood from the article
I never liked them for shilling crypto way too much.
Unironically better to use Chrome than Brave. They're both spyware but at least you're not actively deluding yourself about privacy with Chrome.
