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Yay for Firefox
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They fund Mozilla a ton on purpose. They want a small subset of people to use Firefox. It keeps them from the monopoly investigations
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I have already begun to move from Google services.
Look for other large corporations to continue this trend: offer a product to the masses for free, wait until you have little to no competitors and dominate in market share, then put it behind a pay wall or strongarm changes that most of the population doesn’t understand. Oracle did it with Java, knowing most companies were too invested to look for alternatives, and now Google is doing it with their Chrome baked-in privacy changes and ad crackdown.
I expect to see more of this trend from “free” services as the people continue to wake up and take their personal data seriously. We know the government(s) won’t do a thing to change the status quo, and I have no idea what else to do other than cry into my ramen and binge watch the death of a planet in 4K!
Unfortunately, the rich keep scarcity high to ensure they not only make the most money, but they can use less money to buy favors from those with less. Man greed sucks…
It’s even more insidious when you look at the shit Amazon does, im almost certain they hyper-aggressively track the popularity of products not made by them, ones that are made by small companies (and even individuals in some cases) for the sole purpose of seeing what’s popular with the masses and then they make their own shitty version of said product followed by undercutting the original products cost significantly. And when people go to search they of course put their shit product at the top of the search page so that’s the one the unaware will always buy. It’s kind of a genius business model if we are being honest, if you’re an absolute shit stain that completely lacks morals that is. I just can’t believe they’ve been allowed to do this for so long under the radar because I feel like I never hear people talk about that particular scummy tactic they use.
While I agree at some level, most users aren’t like you or me. They are my mom, my boss, my mailman. They only care about convenience, and understanding even the difference between browsers is one thing, let alone why they should use a different one. Unfortunately I don’t think that’s likely to change. If it was, Facebook wouldn’t exist, if those people cared about their online privacy they wouldn’t use the platform, but here we are
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Yeah early on when chrome was released I was a big proponent of it. But that was in Google’s earlier days before they adopted Microsoft’s EEE policy
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I made the switch a few weeks ago. While the transition was a little inconvenient, I got everything set up in maybe an hour or two. Performance was wacky for a few hours after that, but it’s settled now for my purposes.
You definitely have to finagle the browser with add-ons and other about:config things to make it work for you, but after that yeah I can say I prefer Firefox over Chrome!
Now I just need to deGoogle everything else…
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Check out Vivaldi
Riiiight, because Google wasn’t doing sneaky tracking shit leading up to this. This time, they’ll surely switch, all dozens of them, and a couple might even use Firefox. woohoo
Reality: https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share
Someone reply to me saying they just switched to make this a perfect internet circlejerk.
Unironically, yeah, this is the nail in the coffin for me.
But think about it. You’re talking on Lemmy - currently a niche messaging board with a tech focused audience. I don’t think you’d count as the average Chrome user. Most people won’t hear about this or if they do, won’t care.
‘Average user’ just means all traits proportionally blended together, right? Lemmy users are not a huge part of the internet, but our contribution to the ‘average’ is just a big as any other person; and our opinions and knowledge and behaviour does matter. Some might argue that the opinions of tech-focused people matter more because they are more likely to influence other people about tech decisions.
So yeah, we’re a niche group - but the discussion and sharing of ideas is important.
I honestly don’t get why people think chromium browsers are good, for example Firefox in my use case is far faster than chrome… by a long shot. Also if you want to argue…
something about the way it [chrome] handles memory isolation means i get fewer blue screens at work with all my bloated browser tools loaded at the same time. I have to have ~15 tabs open. It is not my laptop, so I cant go around experimenting with plugins much.
then again who gives a flying fart if chrome tracks me while i use the same internal browser tools day in and day out?
I cannot drag my tabs out properly. Its been the dealbreaker for many years for me, they dont fix it, but i just deal with it now because google is too evik.
That was also my experience with Firefox. I tried it one time because I kept hearing it was better than chrome, and then the absolute first thing I noticed is that they can’t get tab dragging right.
I don’t care how much more “private” it is than chrome. If you can’t even get the first impression on absolute basic UI elements right, I simply have no faith in your browser
Maybe I’ll use Firefox when it matures a bit
Its been around for like 20 years though
Sometimes there is a proverbial straw to break a camel’s back.
I mean, for some percentage of users this will be it. Will it be a significant share of Chrome users? Probably not, but it just means those of us who got people to switch to Firefox in the 00’s and Chrome in the early 10’s need to be as vigorous with getting people off Chrome now.
I used chrome since it was launched and this summer I switched to Firefox on all devices.
I just switched my internet off!
What’s your thoughts on Orion? It’s weirdly niche, but has been killer for me.
Orion is not open source so that’s a no. There is no way to know that what they tell us is true. If they free their code it might become my go to browser as well.
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Check the binary for current outgoing traffic? Sure but instant traffic is not the only way to be tracked, and it is particularly difficult to get an overview for a browser.
A open source project is automatically safer to use. Sure, any binary can be injected with crap but in a closed source app there is really no way to know anything for sure.
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Sure the binary is what I run, but I am not following what your point is. If you are paranoid about binaries from an open source project, just compile it yourself. It’s easy. That’s just not an argument against open source.
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Please, everyone, stop using Chrome. This is an easy vote with your wallet that doesn’t even require your wallet.
Complacency means the internet gets worse, ads get worse, nickel and diming gets worse. It’s the easiest chance to take a stand you’ll ever have.
Serious question: let’s say I continue using Chrome and Privacy Sandbox becomes the norm. How does my internet experience get worse?
One key change in the short term is the Topics API. This is the replacement for 3rd-party cookies in Privacy Sandbox. Basically, it allows sites to query your browser directly about what topics you enjoy, and Chrome will respond with topics based on analysis of your browsing history to allow for targeted ads. If it seems strange that a new “privacy” feature is still serving up data about you for targeted ads – it is. And in fact, a lot of the proposed changes potentially just give Google more sway to act as a middleman, which ultimately gives them more data.
Will your experience change immediately? Likely not, but as with many things in this space, it’s about the dangers of the path and its longer term implications, specifically here about corporate controls and softening the definition of “privacy”.
Here’s a decent overview with more far more details.
I know what the Topics API does. I’m asking for a concrete example of exactly how it’s going to make my internet experience worse. (That Register article doesn’t provide one.)
Losing privacy makes your internet experience worse. That seems pretty clear to me, but if you don’t care about corporations being better suited to target ads to you, then I don’t think anyone would be able to convince you that these changes are bad.
I’d love to debate this with you properly but I’ve got COVID right now and don’t have the energy to put together a decent response, sorry. Basically I just don’t see how the specific features in the new Chrome build let advertisers do anything they can’t already do. I don’t see how they contribute to ads getting worse, or where “nickel and diming” comes into it.
Firefox is the way to go.
Give it time. Greed is greed, just a matter of time. Personally I’m back to use the old carrier pigeon. Kinda slow but probably still better than dialup
Edit: Either y’all don’t get this was a joke, or haven’t been alive long enough to watch your hero’s die.
Either way, fuck Google, sorry to rain on the parade
And soon, the carrier pigeon breeders will start tagging them with tracking chips…
Stooooop 😂😂😂
Or they just didn’t think it was funny…
oR mAyBe I JuSt got DowNvoTe brIgaDeD
Absolutely not. I’ve seen what you people think is funny.
Carrier pigeons are still faster than the internet, tested again this year to prove it
Bandwidth, maybe, but that latency…
What’s Opera based on? My friends mostly use Mac, so they all use Opera and Chrome, but I have gotten them to stop using Chrome.
Nearly every browser is Chromium-based. Additionally, Opera is Chinese-owned.
So? It isn’t google. Also google and Mozilla have Asian employees so I guess you’ll have to be not racist.
I do agree that the Chinese government is problematic though.
I’d like to point out that they said nothing about it being a bad thing and that all they did was say it was Chinese-owned, hence making your comment a pointless attack of nonsense.
Hooray pointless-nonsense-spew!
It uses Chromium as its base, so is essentially Chrome with fancy things attached to it. It uses Blink, Chrome/Chromium’s rendering engine.
We need fewer Chromium-based browsers out there. The greater marketshare they have, the easier it will be for Google to push W3C and everyone else around to conform to their desired business model.
For example, when Google inevitably pushes WEI into Chrome, WebKit and Gecko (Safari-based and Firefox-based browsers) won’t be affected at all.
If, however, 90% of all users end up on Blink (whether it’s Chrome, Opera, Vivaldi, Edge, Brave, or whatever) then Google can do whatever they want to the web.
Chromium is owned by Google. That should be bad enough
Opera has unfortunately given up and switched to Chromium as its backend.
At least its not chrome
Firefox gets like 90% of its revenue from Google.
Keep Firefox independent and donate: https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/?form=donate
But donating your money can not make firefox independent.It will only make firefox more revenue.
Google wants to keep mozilla afloat to stay out of anti-competitive allegations.
If mozilla gets market share, google will defund them. That mozilla have a money will help.
Also mozilla’s other projects are also good ;)
Also big CEO wallets.
Nothing in comparison to others but there is some special pay going.But it’s definitely the lesser of the evils.
Some of Mozilla’s other projects are good, iirc there was a journalist a few years ago who chronicled how Mozilla had donated a lot of money to other charities unrelated to it’s goal rather than reinvesting in the business so that it can try to ween off of Google reliance.
And the money won’t go to Firefox, but Mozilla’s other projects.
Firefox has been my go-to, but I’ve left Chrome installed just to have on hand incase some website fuckiness could be solved with a browser change.
Naw. It’s not worthy of staying around even for that. Time to completely scrub my devices of google.
Feeling the same, it’s surprising how many companies are just leaning towards screwing users for a few more pennies on the dollar. Eventually, Google with be the next AOL.
Just need their Time-Warner to put the last nail in the coffin
We can only pray, the ghouls.
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I suggest to use chromium as the backup “in case a webpage doesn’t work on Firefox” browser. All the compatibility but no telemetry.
But why use chromium or any chromium based browser since google disabled ad blocking plug-ins?
I suggest it as the backup browser. Use Firefox and if you need to open something that only works on chrome, I’d rather use chromium, so Google doesn’t rape your computer when trying to use the internet.
Eh, did they? I’m sure I still have Ublock Origin on the work browser, which is Chrome.
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I’ve been doing similar; been using Firefox, but Chrome is installed for its browser-wide automatic captioning. Not something I need often, but I rely on it for the occasional remote meeting here and there. I’m sure free automatic captioning applications exist for my operating system, but I’d have to actually test each one to see if they actually work, and it’s just been so convenient keeping Google’s around.
(Speaking of which, if anybody happens to have recommendations for free automatic captioning software that works on Ubuntu, I seem to be in the market…)
Nah, I use Edge for that. Chrome is only for work for me, but I think I’m going to migrate to another Chromium-based browser for that.
The site you’ve linked to literally uses Facebook and Google browser trackers. Pretty hypocritical of them if you ask me.
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It’s always funny/sad to see that “we care about your privacy” doublespeak on an article about digital privacy
You guys are way to late to quit chrome, and you probably won’t at this point. This is what happens when you don’t swap, you enable this anti-consumer monopoly behavior.
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Please don’t confuse Internet with WWW, it’s making discussion like this even harder, thanks.
Okay, still use Firefox
We have firefox, iceweasel, fennec (android). Anything else not firefox based is chrome based. Don’t get tricked by opera and similars.
You can still change browser.
Safari isn’t Chromium based! But I’m not a fan of it on Desktop, just iOS.
Firefox for all my other devices.
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Been using it exclusively for a few years now, I’m pretty happy with it
It’s the only search engine i use.
For people who roll their eyes when someone mentions Linux and all of the free and open source projects adjacent to it (including Firefox!), this is exactly why many people value those things. We actually can have freedom in computing and it’s worth pushing for. We don’t have to roll over simply accept what Google, Microsoft and Apple want.
But there are a few specific hardware configurations and specialized jobs that Linux doesn’t work for, therefore nobody should use it!
Why not be happy both OS options exist? Both have a place and a use and in various ways an ease of use
That’s the point. We want options for OSs to exist, instead of one company monopolizing the entire market.
Linux with 100% market share can’t monopolize the entire market because it doesn’t have a centralized distro
You see similar to Google with Redhat/Canonical. If everyone was with them then it would be a problem
Linux with 100% marketshare means nothing.
GPL is designed to protect developer rights, not user rights.
If google packaged your linux distro and sold it through the play store bundled with their own apps and sandboxed everything and called it chromeOS, your rights would not be any better protected.
Security and privacy involves users making informed choices to protect themselves, full stop.
And as long as Chrome OS didn’t have majority market share it would be fine
What use is there for the others?
Any of thousands of people can say this but i don’t see it in the comments below so: I’ve been using a Linux Mint / Windows dual boot system for over 10 years and love it. I think a lot of people see Linux as highly technical, but versions like Mint and Ubuntu are more carefree than Windows nowadays.
Sure but Google also uses tons of open source - android is built on the linux kernel, and even chrome is or is based on open source:
I’m aware, but ultimately they’re still an ad company that uses technology to sell more ads. Any minor aspects of altruism (if it can be called that) can’t wash that away.
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Doing same thing right now… only two things I will miss are chromecast and page translation.
For translation you can use this. Since you can use Google translation service as the backend(?), it works as good as Google translate atleast in my experience
Thanks a lot, this extension looks very much as what I need. I wish Apple stopped their WebKit policy on iPhone so I could use it on mobile Firefox too…
For the time being I’m using TWP for translation. Seems to work flawlessly
I think libretranslate has a extension but I could be wrong
I’m using 2 extensions from the Firefox store, Simple Translate and Translate This Page. If one goes down, I use the other. Sometimes I use translate.yandex.ru as well.
only two things I will miss are chromecast and page translation.
You can use your phone to start the chromecasting, and translate.google.com lets you also put in a weblink to translate a whole page at once.
Use Ublock if you haven’t (Firefox extension)
- Ublock Origin, not Ublock
Is there just a Ublock? I’ve only ever seen Ublock origin
the main thing holding me back is the password manager in Chrome and having to basically use 2 browsers as passwords are slowly saved to a new system
Do yourself a favour and get Bitwarden or similar. Browser password managers are way too vulnerable.
The only issue is I have to keep a chromium browser because there are a few sites that Firefox has issues with. But the vast majority work fine.
Can you not use those sites? The reason they don’t work is because there userbase uses chrome.
Unfortunately I’m not in the business of working for them. They are mostly govt sites in my country and we simply have to work with them sometimes. Their web devs are underpaid general workers who know a bit of Joomla but added this and that shit to the point that it works only on Chrome.
Use Edge.
I’ve only had issues with Nordpass crashing occasionally when auto-filling, but it’s otherwise pretty seamless
Lol nice. People using chrome be like
That’s clever meme template usage if I’ve ever seen one
does this happen on Linux too?
i have to keep chrome around for sites that breaks with ff / ublock, but i only open it when i need it.
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Use brave
Use brave
Rather, use un-googled chromium. Brave is kind of bloated with all of the extra “features” they have.
Where can I download it from ? Can you please share the link for windows? . Ungoogled chromium for android is not maintained anymore.
Thanks bro
Chromite is quite good its the successor of bromite and has increased adblock functionality I’ve used it for a little bit and it is quite nice.
Back in the old days when a software contains these crap, considered as adware/malware and people get their pitchforks.
Now: its normal.
Modern software: Please insert anal probe.
Average user: OK 😀
It’s sickening.
Every single thing about Google sucks nowadays. Great job Sundar, you successfully turned one of the former most exciting companies on the planet into one of the absolute lamest.
It was shit even before Sundar Pichai became the CEO
He did a great job shitting it up further, also.
Switched back to Firefox. Easy transition. Fuck Google.
Except websites that will tell you “Use a modern browser, switch to Chrome to view this page”.
This sort of thing is becoming more and more pervasive. I’m genuinely worried that between this and web DRM, there will be no where to hide from corporate America ducking everyone over with their greed.
I’ve been using Firefox for over 5 years now and I don’t think I’ve ever seen this message?
There has been a handful of times when a page just won’t work correctly and I have to switch to edge, but that is super rare and has probably been less than 10 occasions
the feature they just implemented will start to trigger this. there is a hardcore push for corporate to go all in on chromium for tracking/drm reasons similar to how IE had that market in the past. as a firefox user im kinda terrified were out of options.
were not talking about what the experience was, but what it will be
99% of the time you can just tell the website that firefox is actually chrome using the User Agent Switcher plugin and it will work perfectly. Unfortunately that 1% exists because chrome likes to add features that aren’t web standards that irresponsible devs then use and break compatibility with other browsers
I never switched from Firefox. Why anyone used Chrome in the first place is beyond me.
It was much faster, and firefox was slow as shit for a long time. It’s much better now
Time to uninstall chrome. Can I move my passwords, bookmarks and saved data there? How do I do it?
When you install any browser (Firefox recommend) it ask you if you want to transfer browser data. It will guide you through (its pretty much automatic)
just adding that granted FF already has a decent password manager there are also reliable, free and open source and audited independent password manager like as
- Bitwarden (remote service as basic or premium plan, optionally self hosted, user friendly service, very likely has some account migration wizard tool to help importing data from browsers) and
- KeepassXC (local, user managed, a bit techy)
which both can plug in any browser through their respective extension.
Being both an independent option from the browser they help the user not making him vendor locked to his browser through his saved data.
Plot twist: Bitwarden on desktop is Chromium browser based.
Still can be used in FF as plugin.
Good to know! I’ve never installed bitwarden desktop and always used the Firefox extension. I just recently found out that Bitwarden has a desktop app. I was thinking of trying it out, until I read your comment. I think I’ll just stick with the extension. Thank you for your TED talk.
There’s nothing special about it. It’s just the extension in a larger format. I’ve tried to use it a few times, but there’s no gain over the extension. And, typically the extension is better because I already have my browser open, so I don’t need to open a new app.
Pretty much every web-app wrapped into a desktop environment uses Electron, which is based in Chromium.
Avoid webapps ported to desktop, noted.
Unless you can run them over Firefox, using this for example
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The Android implementation is called KeePassDX.
There’s also KeePass2Android. I opted for this because it brings a very useful feature called QuickUnlock. Your opened database gets locked in standby but you can reopen it with just the last 3 characters without needing to retype the whole passphrase.
@aux@lemmy.world
KeepassDX can quick unlock with the device pin or with biometrics but the major hassle vs bitwarden is the management of syncing the database, which can be opened as file from the mobile and the desktop app also at the same time, instead bitwarden access your pwd database only remotely and only querying it, but the file is opened only on the server.
But browsers plugin work in the same way, they connect to the local app like it was a server, so it might be possible in the future that there will be an app which can access the db remotely, with this being opened only from the app on the desktop.
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to manage passwords, use bitwarden
is not tied to any browser, it sync between devices and it’s free.
there are clients for Android and desktop, most likely ios too.
