It is essential to stop using Chrome.
Under the pretense of saving users from third-party spyware, Google is creating an ecosystem in which Chrome itself is the spyware.
Given Google's overwhelming presence in the browser market, this is unconscionable.
We should all despise the ad-tech business, and have no sympathy for the companies getting whacked by Google's actions. But we should not permit one monopolist to replace them all.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/year-review-googles-corporate-paternalism-browser
I keep going back and forth with Firefox and Vivaldi. The chrome based browsers just tend to run better. I love firefox on mobile but on desktop it’s tougher for me to stick with. Also Mozilla seems to have a different goal for the future with all the other products and ai weirdness they recently announced.
I’m in the exact same boat. Vivaldi devs are so open about everything they do that they’ve honestly earned my trust in their browser.
No nonsense and very clear options to disable data collection despite being a chromium based browser. I love firefox mobile’s extensions but it just doesn’t have the same consistency between desktop and mobile. For example, Vivaldi mobile let’s you control site permissions to the level of controlling if they’re allowed to play sound or not
Serious question. Is it actually better for the typical user? I don’t mean people commenting here. I’m thinking about the majority that don’t care about privacy, blocking ads, quality technology, etc. for those people, I’m guessing that Firefox is equivalent. Just another browser that works fine. So why switch??
I run into compatibility issues and weird bugs with firefox a lot. I’m still using it as my primary browser, but I have to keep a chromium based browser ready for times when a website won’t work in firefox. I can put up with that personally, but I wouldn’t want to set up firefox on family/friend computers because I don’t want to get a call whenever something doesn’t work and they don’t know why.
Chrome based browsers also have some super useful features (like tab groups) that firefox doesn’t have a good alternative for.
I run into compatibility issues and weird bugs with firefox a lot. I’m still using it as my primary browser, but I have to keep a chromium based browser ready for times when a website won’t work in firefox…
Got any specific examples you don’t mind sharing? I can’t remember the last time I ran into this.
Most recent one was visiting https://www.lifetime.com/playsets on Firefox mobile. After going back and forth between the list of playsets and individual playset pages, Firefox stopped loading the list of playsets. I would load in most of the page, but the actual product list wouldn’t load. Refreshing and restarting Firefox wouldn’t fix it, but the page loaded fine in brave browser so it didn’t appear to be a server issue.
Before that one, I had a time where Firefox mobile was completely broken by an update for like a week. Wouldn’t load any web pages, reinstalling/resetting user data/etc wouldn’t fix it.
I’ve had websites break on Firefox desktop too, but I don’t have any specific examples I can recall right now. I definitely run into more issues with Firefox mobile than desktop though.
I definitely run into more issues with Firefox mobile than desktop though.
Ah, mobile. I don’t use Firefox mobile due to its insecure status, particularly lack of sandboxing:
Avoid Gecko-based browsers like Firefox as they’re currently much more vulnerable to exploitation and inherently add a huge amount of attack surface. Gecko doesn’t have a WebView implementation (GeckoView is not a WebView implementation), so it has to be used alongside the Chromium-based WebView rather than instead of Chromium, which means having the remote attack surface of two separate browser engines instead of only one. Firefox / Gecko also bypass or cripple a fair bit of the upstream and GrapheneOS hardening work for apps. Worst of all, Firefox does not have internal sandboxing on Android. This is despite the fact that Chromium semantic sandbox layer on Android is implemented via the OS isolatedProcess feature, which is a very easy to use boolean property for app service processes to provide strong isolation with only the ability to communicate with the app running them via the standard service API. Even in the desktop version, Firefox’s sandbox is still substantially weaker (especially on Linux) and lacks full support for isolating sites from each other rather than only containing content as a whole. The sandbox has been gradually improving on the desktop but it isn’t happening for their Android browser yet.
Interesting. I’ve heard this many times from people here on Lemmy. I’ve been running Firefox for ~6 months now (previously Brave) and haven’t seen these issues yet. I don’t even have a chromium based browser available on any of my devices.
Regardless, I hear you about not wanting to be personal support for friends and family. That’s annoying
For the overwhelming majority of users, they won’t know the difference between using the two. People here are on a high inhaling the air in this echo chamber.
I’ve used Chrome on every device imaginable since Chrome was a thing. I’ve had a negligible amount of problems, in all my years. I absolutely hate that Google shuts services down when they get bored. And I absolutely hate what they did with Google Music and Google Chats, and Domains.
I move off Google services when they shut down. Besides that, I’ve no problems with the ones I use (minus nitpicks and the above products).
So to anyone here feeling bad and are afraid to comment on here because they don’t want to lose Internet points, fret not. There are millions of us perfectly satisfied using Google, PAYING for their services where we see fit, and generally not worrying at all about any of this.
What about the ad blocker changes they’re making? That’s pretty much the line for me. I use chrome everywhere but when ublock stops working well that’ll be me jumping ship. The web is a fucking unreadable cesspool without a solid adblocker running.
The adblock changes is a shit stain, absolutely agree with you there.
For my household, personally, it won’t make a difference because I have a pihole blocking everything from all devices. So that change isn’t enough to persuade me to make a move.
But yes, anyone who doesn’t have pihole of and uses adblockers, it will be 100% understandable for them to jump ship.
Some websites load faster in Chrome. But the reason why Chrome is so ubiquitous is because for normal people, Google is still the plucky user friendly company they were in the early 00s.
It grinds me a bit, as I did have a Linux version if Firefox installed on my Chromebook, but because the book is just a sofa device and doesn’t get any love (especially from the little shits), it runs dog slow, so I end up just using chrome on it, and suffer the pain of not having things synced between devices. Thankfully the most important thing, bitwarden is syncing, so I can manage the suffering.
No lie, I actually had to shift to Chrome from Firefox today. Some websites are straight-up broken on Firefox, while others load painfully slow (e.g. try arc.net on Firefox vs any Chromium-based browser). Not to mention the massive shame of Mozilla leadership treating its own flagship product as a second-class citizen in favour of “AI initiatives” or whatever the fuck those C-suites want to stud into their resumes.
I work at a small company - absolutely everything from work macros, accounts and shortcuts are all intertwined in Chrome, they’ve been using it like that for ten years - it’d be faster for me to find a new job then to unclog that mess from the entire office. I still installed firefox for personal use though.
in my previous job we were allowed to install some old version of firefox through the companys own portal. but we couldn’t access internet with it because “firefox is vulnerable”. they use google suite so chrome was the default browser, but edge worked too and even IE…
You can use a different frontend for YouTube. You’ve got Freetube for pc, Yattee for MacOS and iOS and piped on any platform. These solutions also protect your privacy and block ads.
My problem with these is that the quality is always bad. Usually 720p max and only H.264 instead of VP9. YouTube quality is already bad enough as it is and nerfing it even more feels awful.
Firefox is not the better browser in anything but privacy. Maybe it could win in customisability, but that’s something only a few percent of users care about.
It has longer load times and sometimes breaks sites entirely while using about the same resources. Yes, the reason for that is that website creators don’t deliberately support it, but the normal user only cares about functionality.
I still use it and recommend it to anyone that asks, but saying that it’s the better browser is just delusional.
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I keep going back and forth with Firefox and Vivaldi. The chrome based browsers just tend to run better. I love firefox on mobile but on desktop it’s tougher for me to stick with. Also Mozilla seems to have a different goal for the future with all the other products and ai weirdness they recently announced.
All chromium browsers are supporting Google’s grip on the internet.
This is true. Which is why Mozilla needs to focus on making a better browser instead of adding their own ai bullshit.
Mozilla has frequently pointed their efforts into the wrong direction. We need to politely encourage them to focus on the things that matter.
I’m in the exact same boat. Vivaldi devs are so open about everything they do that they’ve honestly earned my trust in their browser.
No nonsense and very clear options to disable data collection despite being a chromium based browser. I love firefox mobile’s extensions but it just doesn’t have the same consistency between desktop and mobile. For example, Vivaldi mobile let’s you control site permissions to the level of controlling if they’re allowed to play sound or not
Are those fractions of a second really worth your privacy?
Serious question. Is it actually better for the typical user? I don’t mean people commenting here. I’m thinking about the majority that don’t care about privacy, blocking ads, quality technology, etc. for those people, I’m guessing that Firefox is equivalent. Just another browser that works fine. So why switch??
I run into compatibility issues and weird bugs with firefox a lot. I’m still using it as my primary browser, but I have to keep a chromium based browser ready for times when a website won’t work in firefox. I can put up with that personally, but I wouldn’t want to set up firefox on family/friend computers because I don’t want to get a call whenever something doesn’t work and they don’t know why.
Chrome based browsers also have some super useful features (like tab groups) that firefox doesn’t have a good alternative for.
Got any specific examples you don’t mind sharing? I can’t remember the last time I ran into this.
Most recent one was visiting https://www.lifetime.com/playsets on Firefox mobile. After going back and forth between the list of playsets and individual playset pages, Firefox stopped loading the list of playsets. I would load in most of the page, but the actual product list wouldn’t load. Refreshing and restarting Firefox wouldn’t fix it, but the page loaded fine in brave browser so it didn’t appear to be a server issue.
Before that one, I had a time where Firefox mobile was completely broken by an update for like a week. Wouldn’t load any web pages, reinstalling/resetting user data/etc wouldn’t fix it.
I’ve had websites break on Firefox desktop too, but I don’t have any specific examples I can recall right now. I definitely run into more issues with Firefox mobile than desktop though.
Ah, mobile. I don’t use Firefox mobile due to its insecure status, particularly lack of sandboxing:
Source: https://grapheneos.org/usage#web-browsing
Interesting. I’ve heard this many times from people here on Lemmy. I’ve been running Firefox for ~6 months now (previously Brave) and haven’t seen these issues yet. I don’t even have a chromium based browser available on any of my devices.
Regardless, I hear you about not wanting to be personal support for friends and family. That’s annoying
People inevitably bring up compatibility issues in Firefox when this subject comes up, and nobody ever has specific examples.
Proxmox virtual machine server, v8.x the UI is funky and the console doesn’t display properly.
That’s… an example for sure. Maybe an example a regular person would run into?
This was the case back when Chrome was starting out too. Everything was made for IE and you’d have to keep it around for the odd time you needed it.
Eventually those old sites were replaced and now Chrome is the new de facto standard.
For the overwhelming majority of users, they won’t know the difference between using the two. People here are on a high inhaling the air in this echo chamber.
I’ve used Chrome on every device imaginable since Chrome was a thing. I’ve had a negligible amount of problems, in all my years. I absolutely hate that Google shuts services down when they get bored. And I absolutely hate what they did with Google Music and Google Chats, and Domains.
I move off Google services when they shut down. Besides that, I’ve no problems with the ones I use (minus nitpicks and the above products).
So to anyone here feeling bad and are afraid to comment on here because they don’t want to lose Internet points, fret not. There are millions of us perfectly satisfied using Google, PAYING for their services where we see fit, and generally not worrying at all about any of this.
What about the ad blocker changes they’re making? That’s pretty much the line for me. I use chrome everywhere but when ublock stops working well that’ll be me jumping ship. The web is a fucking unreadable cesspool without a solid adblocker running.
The adblock changes is a shit stain, absolutely agree with you there.
For my household, personally, it won’t make a difference because I have a pihole blocking everything from all devices. So that change isn’t enough to persuade me to make a move.
But yes, anyone who doesn’t have pihole of and uses adblockers, it will be 100% understandable for them to jump ship.
Some websites load faster in Chrome. But the reason why Chrome is so ubiquitous is because for normal people, Google is still the plucky user friendly company they were in the early 00s.
Firefox is better on desktop, but on mobile it still sucks, sometimes it is even refusing to load websites.
To be fair, chromebooks are great devices for kids, and the family link platform makes keeping them “secure”, easier… a lot easier!!!
Even on Chromebooks you can install Firefox.
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It grinds me a bit, as I did have a Linux version if Firefox installed on my Chromebook, but because the book is just a sofa device and doesn’t get any love (especially from the little shits), it runs dog slow, so I end up just using chrome on it, and suffer the pain of not having things synced between devices. Thankfully the most important thing, bitwarden is syncing, so I can manage the suffering.
No lie, I actually had to shift to Chrome from Firefox today. Some websites are straight-up broken on Firefox, while others load painfully slow (e.g. try arc.net on Firefox vs any Chromium-based browser). Not to mention the massive shame of Mozilla leadership treating its own flagship product as a second-class citizen in favour of “AI initiatives” or whatever the fuck those C-suites want to stud into their resumes.
I work at a small company - absolutely everything from work macros, accounts and shortcuts are all intertwined in Chrome, they’ve been using it like that for ten years - it’d be faster for me to find a new job then to unclog that mess from the entire office. I still installed firefox for personal use though.
in my previous job we were allowed to install some old version of firefox through the companys own portal. but we couldn’t access internet with it because “firefox is vulnerable”. they use google suite so chrome was the default browser, but edge worked too and even IE…
Because normies were using IE, then enough of them had their “tech enthusiast” grandson show them Chrome in 2010 and now that’s all they use.
some small problems i face is that
while i use youtube it runs slower.
and the quick image search feature using google lens is not present.
and telegram voice call does not work.
You can use a different frontend for YouTube. You’ve got Freetube for pc, Yattee for MacOS and iOS and piped on any platform. These solutions also protect your privacy and block ads.
My problem with these is that the quality is always bad. Usually 720p max and only H.264 instead of VP9. YouTube quality is already bad enough as it is and nerfing it even more feels awful.
Firefox is not the better browser in anything but privacy. Maybe it could win in customisability, but that’s something only a few percent of users care about.
It has longer load times and sometimes breaks sites entirely while using about the same resources. Yes, the reason for that is that website creators don’t deliberately support it, but the normal user only cares about functionality.
I still use it and recommend it to anyone that asks, but saying that it’s the better browser is just delusional.