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!
My workplace is transitioning a bunch of their data and processing to the cloud. When I look at what software makes the cloud work, there is soooo much open source software there. Big business is quite comfortable with FOSS
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
Woosh…
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.
I change from Chrome to Firefox recently on all devices and it was a pretty easy transition.
Doing same thing right now… only two things I will miss are chromecast and page translation.
Good news about page translation, Firefox is adding it, and it’s all done locally too, no phoning home to their or somebody else’s translation servers.
I wonder if there’s an extension for Chromecast support? Might be worth looking into
Good news about page translation, Firefox is adding it, and it’s all done locally too, no phoning home to their or somebody else’s translation servers.
Till then there is this open source extension which provides the same functionality including local offline translation
Sadly, no, there is no chromecast extension (which I am aware of).
Actually there is one, but it’s not very good if I’m being honest ( but workable).
I’m kind of surprised that no open source project of renown has ever decided to implement that on Firefox well.
There is? What’s it called?
Just search for it from within Firefox, from the mods tab. That’s how I found it the first time.
I did, but found nothing.
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.
I’ve only had issues with Nordpass crashing occasionally when auto-filling, but it’s otherwise pretty seamless
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.
Use Ublock if you haven’t (Firefox extension)
- Ublock Origin, not Ublock
Is there just a Ublock? I’ve only ever seen Ublock origin
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.
there’s a whole class of users born with smartphone, those were not techie or concerned, then you have the other class who don’t know really anything about these things which only use smartphones.
even discussing with family about privacy is difficult. “but everyone use it”… gosh. then you have some of my IT colleagues - there for the good money job - which don’t care with the motto: I have nothing to hide.
anyway, stay true to your principles no matter what.
I blame these “tech youtubers” who don’t understand anything technical and keep repeating the script which the company provides them. I saw this idiot MKBHD telling his viewers how a phone has a “beast mode”. Wtf is a beast mode? ! Non technical guys eat shit like this and proceeds to buy because the phone has beast mode lol.
These are exactly my thoughts about tech YouTubers. They have no idea what they’re talking about and encourage mindless consumption. Glad I’m not the only one who’s thought about this.
I work in tech, and I’m still using Chrome. I don’t like it, and I know a lot of other tech people are in the same boat, but I can’t just switch. That’s what I’m working towards, but the amount of tooling we use every day that depends on specifically Chrome is, significant to say the least. This is tooling we built internally to help ourselves, that depends on Chrome-specific APIs that are either different, or do mot yet exist in Firefox.
We’re working to port this stuff over to Firefox, but that takes time, and not everyone can just drop what they are doing to reimplement the tooling they already have in a different browser. On top of userspace tooling, we also have tens of thousands of unit tests based in some part on chrome (through tools like jest and puppet) to validate certain aspects of massive distributed web platforms that cannot easily be unit tested in normal code (though we have high coverage where we can). These also need to be ported, and are VERY specific to Chrome (or Chromium in some cases) in particular. We’re talking entire teams of people, and tens of thousands of man hours.
A lot of users truly can just switch at the drop of a hat. The UI switch is annoying sure, but its doable. For a lot of users in the tech space though, it’s just not feasible to drop Chrome overnight. We’ve started the process to be clear, but it’s going to be a very long transition.
So, you are not using Chrome for the web? if it is not for the web, it’s fine you don’t have to switch :)
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
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
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.
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.
I’m fairly confident no one here is using Chrome.
I am …
I use it at work because of it has the best dev tools. Although edge is pretty much the same so I could use that, but not much of an ethical upgrade.
I use it at work because of it has the best dev tools.
Every Chromium fork has those same tools.
I know that. I acknowledged that in the next sentence when I talked about edge.
But it still wouldn’t stop me from using chrome because I need to test with it. It’s what most of our end users use. I’m not about to install Vivaldi or something when we don’t even support it, and none of our users use it.
Okay so I’m just not sure what your point is then.
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.
I tried to preach why Google sharing your browsing history with ad partners is bad, but most of my friends don’t seem to care. :(
It’s frustrating, I get it too. Nobody cares until the leopard bites their face. Then it’s too late, and we’re all affected by their indifference/laziness/ignorance.
Thank you.
I’m probably going to get downvotes for this, but I seriously don’t understand why you care whether other people care. If you don’t like Chrome and it’s approach to privacy, don’t use it. But man am I sick of people being so preachy about it. Just make your own choices and stop forcing your choices on others yeesh.
This line of thinking only works if you live as a hermit at the edge of the forest. Living in a society means dealing with consequences of the choices of others.
As far as browsers are concerned, having Firefox is pointless if 95% of websites will refuse to serve you content because you don’t have some cryptographically signed chrome web DRM enabled.
However deep the public at large deems is acceptable for raw sewage to puddle in the street is exactly how much sewage I have to wade through on my way to the store.
That is the whole point - your indifference screws us all. We ALL end up with no choice!
Everybody hates this stuff EXCEPT when Google does it and then they’re suddenly apathetic.
I don’t fuckin get it.
Probably because most people use google for everything. Not to mention chrome is practically synonymous with speed, although I got sick of it for its shit reliability
I think people care, but there is a lot of inertia. i.e. it takes a lot of little nudges for people to change their habits.
The whole point of the Privacy Sandbox is that Google is NOT sharing your browsing history with advertising partners. All that’s shared is information about whether or not your usage of Chrome suggests an interest in specific topics. The current list of topics is here: https://github.com/patcg-individual-drafts/topics/blob/main/taxonomy_v1.md
Ah, I see. Thanks for the heads up!
So as far as i know, firefox is the only mayor browser not based on chromium. Also, firefox is dependent on google’s funding because of a search engine exclisivity deal. So my understanding is that, if google decides to kill firefox, they could easily do that. Well, what then? Is there any other browser left wich similar features that would be untouchable by google?
They couldn’t kill Firefox without having the US government come down on them for monopoly. Which the government is already looking at https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/24/tech/doj-google-lawsuit/index.html , so it’s not likely Google will risk it even further by shitting down funding to Firefox. Pretty sure they’ll point at Firefox to claim they’re not a monopoly.
So the lawsuit appears to be looking at Google as a search engine monopoly, not web browser, right? And if I’m understanding this right, assuming this lawsuit goes anywhere, it would actually incentivize Google to pull funding from Firefox to no longer support that search engine exclusivity deal.
Google still benefits from having Firefox around, so that they can maintain less of an appearance of a monopoly in the browser space. Whatever way they fund Firefox, it’s still to their benefit to do so.
This is pretty much the same situation as when Apple faced bankruptcy a while back and Microsoft essentially bailed them out.
Having an effective monopoly is better than a literal one for legal reasons
We need to extend our laws to effective monopolies too, fuck this shit
Fun fact, Firefox used to be called… Netscape… Yeah… Let’s see how many miklenials are in here!
Sort of. Netscape released the program’s source code and Firefox used that as a base, but it wasn’t like they took Netscape and just changed the name to Firefox like your comment implies. They were competing browsers for a while.
Fair enough. My bad.
And remember what happened when Microsoft tried to kill Netscape? That needs to happen again, but against Google.
I’ve just browsed with Netscape. But did not know this fact.
I’ve been corrected that it is a branch off of, not a direct evolution of, Netscape.
This should be the top comment, and I’m going to come back to view the replies. I can’t personally think of any realistic alternatives. Someone further down posted a link to an article about the US investigating Google for a search engine monopoly, but I’m not sure how large a role that would factor into web browsers.
You have to decide for yourself if those browsers have the features you need, but just for your interest, other non-chromium browsers are Ladybird, NetSurf, Flow, Pale Moon, Basilisk and K-Meleon.
You totally forgot about webkit or is apple a non-starter? LMAO
This whole thing started with Apple blocking 3rd party tracking cookies in Safari in 2020.
Honestly, I’ll give credit to Apple for pushing forward JXL on webkit and pushing back against Chromium team’s dominance and Mozilla team’s apathetic stance in the browser space. While I appreciate Mozilla’s stance on Manifest V3 and several other issues, I can’t help but hope for more development from the Servo project.
We will have to maintain a Chromium fork with their trackers removed, if it comes to that.
Likely Google won’t do anything until or unless the bulk of the public moves off of Chrome over this.
Like Vivaldi or Brave?
awkward glances around
Yes…
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Edge switched to chromium in 2020…
Honestly, I was already using FF for my home. Made the switch on Mobile after seeing this on the news yesterday. I’m just one person though.
I’ve also switched to FF on both desktop and mobile because of this. So there’s two of us!
Moi makes trois!
I’ve been using Firefox Mobile for years. It’s never let me down and having mobile adblock is great
Yeah, I made the switch on Mobile when YouTube’s ads started getting super annoying. Ad block is a killer app in my book.
Apparently Firefox can synchronise your bookmarks between your desktop and your mobile app? Does anyone have experience with this?
Works perfectly for me, though by default mobile bookmarks are in their own folder, iirc
Not just that, it has a great password manager I’ve been using for years now. You can also sync tabs.
Bookmarks is a little finicky in my experience, but tabs syncing between devices is quite good, but not as automatic as I want to be.
I switched my whole family several years back. Nobody has any issues with it.
It’s lucky I haven’t used Chrome in years. Firefox is much appreciated these days.
Removed by mod
Custom rom exists
Yes they do, but that shouldn’t be necessary to use an everyday consumer device safely.
I totally agree, but that isn’t the reality right now.
When you’re right you’re right.😋
Where can I learn more about that?
https://lineageos.org/ is a good start
Xda forums
Which phone ? I am on latest android 13/and never saw an notification for ad tracking
The site you’ve linked to literally uses Facebook and Google browser trackers. Pretty hypocritical of them if you ask me.
It’s always funny/sad to see that “we care about your privacy” doublespeak on an article about digital privacy
That was completely expected. You give any company monopoly over anything and they will abuse it. This was Chrome dominating browser market. Microsoft did it with IE back in the day. Now Google is doing it again.
As much as Micro$oft sucks they at least have a revenue stream independent of data mining. Still won’t use Edge, mostly because it isn’t great but partially because the verb form of it is edging.
While true, Microsoft didn’t do it because of revenue. They did it to maintain monopoly and force people into depending on windows for corporate use. Thing they did rather well and it took us good part of the decade to break the spell.
Meh. You know I use that as a “casual” conversation question when I am dealing with a new client. Hey what kinda browser and email client does your work make you use? If I hear Edge and/or Lotus Notes I know what I need to know about that company.
Microsoft Edge is based on the Chrome codebase, so it will get the baked in ad mechanism.
