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'Why I'm Switching From Chrome To Firefox and You Should Too' (fastcodesign.com)
An anonymous reader quotes an associate technology editor at Fast Company's Co.Design:
While the amount of data about me may not have caused harm in my life yet -- as far as I know -- I don't want to be the victim of monopolistic internet oligarchs as they continue to cash in on surveillance-based business models. What's a concerned citizen of the internet to do? Here's one no-brainer: Stop using Chrome and switch to Firefox... [W]hy should I continue to use the company's browser, which acts as literally the window through which I experience much of the internet, when its incentives -- to learn a lot about me so it can sell advertisements -- don't align with mine....?
Unlike Chrome, Firefox is run by Mozilla, a nonprofit organization that advocates for a "healthy" internet. Its mission is to help build an internet in an open-source manner that's accessible to everyone -- and where privacy and security are built in. Contrast that to Chrome's privacy policy, which states that it stores your browsing data locally unless you are signed in to your Google account, which enables the browser to send that information back to Google. The policy also states that Chrome allows third-party websites to access your IP address and any information that site has tracked using cookies. If you care about privacy at all, you should ditch the browser that supports a company using data to sell advertisements and enabling other companies to track your online movements for one that does not use your data at all.... Firefox protects you from being tracked by advertising networks across websites, which has the lovely side effect of making sites load faster...
Ultimately, Firefox's designers have the leeway to make these privacy-first decisions because Mozilla's motivations are fundamentally different from Google's. Mozilla is a nonprofit with a mission, and Google is a for-profit corporation with an advertising-based business model.. While Firefox and Chrome ultimately perform the same service, the browsers' developers approached their design in a radically different way because one organization has to serve a bottom line, and the other doesn't.
The article points out that ironically, Mozilla supports its developers partly with revenue from Google, which (along with other search engines) pays to be listed as one of the search engines available in Firefox's search bar.
"But because it relies on these agreements rather than gathering user data so it can sell advertisements, the Mozilla Corporation has a fundamentally different business model than Google."
Unlike Chrome, Firefox is run by Mozilla, a nonprofit organization that advocates for a "healthy" internet. Its mission is to help build an internet in an open-source manner that's accessible to everyone -- and where privacy and security are built in. Contrast that to Chrome's privacy policy, which states that it stores your browsing data locally unless you are signed in to your Google account, which enables the browser to send that information back to Google. The policy also states that Chrome allows third-party websites to access your IP address and any information that site has tracked using cookies. If you care about privacy at all, you should ditch the browser that supports a company using data to sell advertisements and enabling other companies to track your online movements for one that does not use your data at all.... Firefox protects you from being tracked by advertising networks across websites, which has the lovely side effect of making sites load faster...
Ultimately, Firefox's designers have the leeway to make these privacy-first decisions because Mozilla's motivations are fundamentally different from Google's. Mozilla is a nonprofit with a mission, and Google is a for-profit corporation with an advertising-based business model.. While Firefox and Chrome ultimately perform the same service, the browsers' developers approached their design in a radically different way because one organization has to serve a bottom line, and the other doesn't.
The article points out that ironically, Mozilla supports its developers partly with revenue from Google, which (along with other search engines) pays to be listed as one of the search engines available in Firefox's search bar.
"But because it relies on these agreements rather than gathering user data so it can sell advertisements, the Mozilla Corporation has a fundamentally different business model than Google."
Try Palemoon instead.
Have you forgotten what the Firefox dolts did with their stupid Mr. Robot promo plugin?
>" What's a concerned citizen of the internet to do? Here's one no-brainer: Stop using Chrome and switch to Firefox."
Many of us, myself included, have NEVER used Chrome and still use Firefox on all our systems. Yes, that is a no-brainer if you value your privacy.
In the earlier days of Chrome, Firefox performance stagnated and Chrome was fast and lean. But that was less of a concern to many of us. Still, many switched primarily for that reason (with apparently no concern about closed binaries and privacy). Well, that reason is certainly gone now!
Oh, and make sure to not use http://google.com/ for searching.... another no-brainer. I would recommend http://startpage.com/ or similar. Same results, no tracking.
I have been a Firefox user since before it was called Firefox, starting with the first buggy milestones during the final days of Netscape. I never bought into the whole Chrome thing as it had that distinct Internet Explorer feel to it.
Then, when Firefox Quantum rolled around, I saw myself forced to jump ship if I wanted to keep using the plugins and extensions I had come to rely on, including some extensions which I had written myself, but could not be ported to WebExtensions due to missing APIs.
That's when I decided to switch to Pale Moon, which is essentially a Firefox fork, but with significant differences, far less cruft and a truly free and open source model, without commercial involvement, like with Mozilla.
The Basilisk browser is the current preview of the next iteration of Pale Moon, and it will add some new features to Pale Moon, but retain the lean, low memory profile nature. I could honestly not be happier and would recommend that others switch to Pale Moon, Basilisk, or WaterFox (another Firefox fork).
Site & blog: http://www.mayaposch.com
There are more than just two browsers on the market... I've been a quite satisfied Opera user for years now. Ad-block without an extension. VPN without an extension. The fact the majority of the web is now designed for Webkit/Blink first, and Mozilla's rendering engine is just an afterthought. Opera is pretty much the best of all worlds.
Google can track you just fine even if you are not using Chrome.
Just by knowing the four or five web sites you visit most is enough to ID you.
The alternative to limited government is unlimited government.
I use the Chromium browser for Discordapp.com chat and Firefox for pretty much everything else. When you try to change your avatar or upload emoji in Firefox, Discord does not respond to a click on the upload button. (Nothing appears in the error console either.) This has been the case for roughly a year, since late May of 2017. Uploading avatars and emoji works in Chromium the same way as it works in the (Chromium-based) native app.
Or are the compelling features of Firefox themselves a reason to leave Discord behind?
The question is, what the fuck were you doing on Chrome in the first place?? Run Firefox+NoScript+Adblock/Ublock Origin and call it a day.
You mention revenue and imply Mozilla is not a non-profit?
Perhaps you should re-read what a non-profit is, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Non-profit orgs are allowed to have revenue. They do, after all, have to pay their employees and fund their projects.
I have no interest in the politics of which web browser to use. I use Safari, Edge, Chrome, and Firefox all the same time.
Safari for business browsing and other stuff. It is integrated best with MacOS naturally.
Edge when I have to do Windows stuff (in a VM) and it turns out to be a pretty good PDF viewer and some other interesting features.
Firefox when I am doing personal surfing and media playing. That way I keep my personal browser history separate from my business browser history. If I decide to wipe my personal browser history then I can do it and I don't lose the business history.
Chrome is best for JS debugging. It is really nice to be able to set breakpoints, single step, and inspect runtime state from inside the WebStorm IDE. Both Typescript and Javascript.
On top of that when I develop a web page or web app I use all of them to see how it looks in each and whether all the JS stuff works the same. That's the least I can do for my work, right?
I don't time to dither in browser wars.
I'll switch back as soon as Firefox starts supporting ALSA again. I could put up with all the other shit, even moving to new plug in architecture, that the fuckwit brogrammers at Mozilla did, but abandoning support for Linux's only universal sound architecture was simply beyond cretinous and well into the realm of counter-productive hipster stupidity. I suppose it was cool and ironic but I'm neither of those, and I prefer simple ALSA over ALSA+ so at that point it was goodbye to Firefox after almost 15 years of using it on Windows, Linux and lately Android, and hello to Chrome and Chromium.
You can run Firefox instead of Chrome on your Android device, too. I have come to like Opera more than FF lately, though.
So sorry if your gadget is an Apple, though.
My favorite tab management plugins only exist for Firefox, but I use Chrome as my workhorse browser because Firefox just can't handle large loads.
I have 32GB of RAM in my workstation. I did that because I was hitting the ceiling hard with anything less. When I use Firefox, even the 64 bit version, it starts breaking down as it reaches the 32bit memory barriers (2GB process image / 4GB address space) with larger numbers of open tabs. It grinds to a halt and often crashes. This is a serious pain for me because those tab management plugins would make handling my browser workload a hell of a lot easier.
Chrome works. If I'm doing browser platform stuff that requires I start pushing the limits of my hardware, it doesn't bat an eye.
I still love Firefox, but it never learned to scale.
If you use the internet you're already a victim of surveillance
FTFY
Then:*
Mozilla's mission is to promote openness, innovation, and opportunity on the web. We do this by creating great software, like the Firefox browser, and building movements, like Drumbeat, that give people tools to take control of their online lives.
Now:
Our mission is to ensure the Internet is a global public resource, open and accessible to all. An Internet that truly puts people first, where individuals can shape their own experience and are empowered, safe and independent.
The past focused on software. The present focuses on... the Mozilla Foundation?
*Actually, the meandering mission statement in the very beginning (1999) was this and it stayed pretty much the same (save for some minor edits) for a decade or so.
There is also the Vivaldi browser, which is based on Chromium (open source). People who liked the "old" Opera browser (prior to Opera 15) would probably like Vivaldi. Vivaldi's privacy policy -> https://vivaldi.com/privacy/br...
Non-profit is not the same as charity. It costs a LOT of money to keep Mozilla going.
No, it costs a lot of money to employ hundreds of people who do nothing of value, sitting in extremely expensive San Francisco office space.
Not hard to find a solution: https://kb.vmware.com/s/articl.... I searched all of 3 seconds. Any other bullshit examples?
While absolutely non-profits can and are actively abused in different ways, they are generally orders of magnitude better than the abuse from most full corporations (as I type this from a Google Chrome window...). Mozilla has faults for sure, but they are not baked in quite like Google's faults. As they mentioned, Google is an ad company and always has been. Sure, they have created a bunch of cool stuff and back in the early days they were probably just the legit nerdy people wanting to build awesome things for people to use while using the ad dollars to fund their passion. Problem is somewhere along the lines that was lost (probably around that billion dollar net worth mark...) and they realized they could use these cool things they built to create a greater ad platform that made lots of money and that not just some companies would use, but all companies would use. This honestly became even more evident when they reorganized into Alphabet as the parent company and Google being made a sub-entity with an advertisement focus (notice how the browser, Gmail, Android, etc. were not split off into their own companies or non-profit foundations? Yea, there is a reason for that...).
I've been toying with the idea of getting off the Google teet at least a bit myself simply because they have become significantly less trust-worthy over the past 5 years, arguably decade. Problem I am running into is the alternatives are not too stellar and the migration process is PAINFUL. I migrated to Gmail from Yahoo since Yahoo made clear they hired a bunch of 10 year olds to manage their security and that was rough as hell. I would honestly like to switch to Proton Mail or a self hosted solution now, but I dread going through all of that again.
Then phone-wise, as much as I loathe Apple, I have to give them credit that they are actually taking privacy practices pretty seriously. Playing into the greater point though, guess why? Apple is a hardware business and has been since forever. They can afford to do it, because that was never their business model, unlike Google who was doing advertising from the start (which relies heavily on knowing your demographics). The problem is that no one else provides a flexible phone OS like Android and I really don't want to start installing custom ROMs...
Now browser might be something I could do reasonably without too much pain. We have real competition in the browser space (though all of them have their issues) and I genuinely feel like Mozilla is much better than Google at this point (note BETTER not necessarily good...).
... the individual cannot be responsible for their privacy when companies with bottomless wells of cash and Internet service providers who are also cable companies are sharing data and have developed advanced software to identify individuals. The same way TOR is being blocked by services like cloudfare and people are forced to do captcha's. If you want to use TOR to browse a popular website or be anonymous good luck with that.
Your IP address and your email can be correlated using flaws in html, java and other protocols. You better bet your dollar that there are millions of ways to identify people on the net the average individual cannot hope to plug the holes. If you are on the internet by default you are broadcasting and accessing other peoples computers not geographically near you. That by itself requires messages to be broadcast across the network.
No amount of changing browsers is going to defend you against big companies and the top talent they hire to identify you using flaws in protocols and some mathematics.
Well, Netscape first, then Mozilla Firefox. Switched to Chrome last year, when Firefox ditched the fully featured addon API.
As all of the addons I needed are either no longer available for Firefox or are limited in the same way Chrome addons are, I see no reason to go back.
Support is a two way street. I supported Firefox as long as they supported my needs. They no longer do, and so it's good bye. No compelling reason to come back as of now.
And I’ll be staying away. Philosophically, I’m more closely aligned with the Mozilla folks than with people like Eich - but Mozilla demonstrated that bullying and intolerance exist on both sides of the political spectrum, and I’m not going to overlook it just because their on “my” side.
So, for me, the only viable choice is Safari. I have to keep Chrome and Firefox around for testing, but they’re limited to that role.
#DeleteChrome
Vampire2 will duck the blood from Googles CEOooooo shit
Because Seamonkey doesn't even exist.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Now that Firefox runs in multiple processes, it sucks up virtually all of the memory on the laptop. I oftentimes have to kill Firefox in order to run other apps on the laptop.
It didn't seem quite so bad when it was just one process - then it at least was limited to 2G.
Just run the following performance test on Firefox and Chrome. On my machine it runs ten times faster on Chrome. Hell, even Internet Explorer is almost ten times faster than Firefox on this test.
https://testdrive-archive.azur...
This may be a special case, but working with SVG I can tell you that filtering and masking is considerably slower in Firefox than in Chrome.Oh, and that so called "hardware acceleration" is often enough a decelleration. Setting the number of maximum processes from 4 to 1 sometimes helps improving performance, which again is a bit funny.
No matter how ofter people repeat that Firefox is as fast as Chrome, it's just not true, yet. Firefox has made great progress, but the Mozilla team still has quite a bit to do.
Signature deleted by lameness filter.
That type of change is what made me move away from Firefox as well. Seemingly every other version they move all the buttons around. And I don't want to hear the crap about "Go into config;???" or whatever to configure it the way you want. Let the people who want the damn thing to change every week go into the config settings and they do the change. Don't put the burden on me, I never asked for it.
Caution: Contents under pressure
I was already on Firefox when it was still called Netscape. And I stayed on it all the time for exactly the reason the author uses. Well, and because IE was a piece of utter, utter crap in the 1990s and 2000s of course.
-- Cheers!
Since the major code refactor, Firefox has now leap frogged in terms of performance and memory usage over Chrome. I switched back initially because I of the reports that Firefox uses resources much more efficiently. Now, I am happy to be using it and not have my data mined.
All browsers are free yet they provide incredible functionality and value. I'm OK with the price of providing data to whomever has made the browser that I'm using. As long as they don't stifle my ability to anonymize myself or my ability to block any and all ads that I choose. So as long as this is true I'll select the browser that best suits my needs.
make your browser and trusted crypto.
Dont let an ad company near your webcam, microphone, data.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Don't forget https://www.seamonkey-project.... ... V2.49.3 currently uses Firefox v52 ESR's Gecko engine. :D
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I use firefox anyway.
I have no axe to grind. I don't care what browser anybody uses.
All google wants to do is send you targetted ads, instead of random ads. You are going to see ads anyway.
Google is not prying into your private life. Google has billions of users, and uses algorithms to target ads. It is unlikely that anybody at google would recognize your name, or know anything about you.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it is a big deal. If so, maybe somebody could explain why?
So....about 3 years ago I was annoyed that google services were so linked: once you connect to one (Gmail), you get connected to all (Youtube, Search etc.). Search was my biggest problem.
So I use Chrome for Gmail and Youtube (well, they already have my info) and do the rest of my browsing in Firefox (logged-out Google Search and all others).
For a lower-memory option (like a 4GB VM), I found I could open a Firefox private window and login to GMail+Youtube there (with saved passwords), leaving the main window unlogged to G services.
Oh....and I'm browsing under Ubuntu-mate, separate from my Windows Gaming powerhouse. And I don't use Facebook, although I think I would use that with Chrome since so many sites also use FB "tracking plugins".
I've always used Netscape/Firefox, it even uses Meta+N as keyboard short cut.
Observing memory use I see no reason what so ever to ditch FF in favour of Chrome.
There are a few sites that work better in Chromium, can't really put my finger on the why.
But I do know certain sites can fill up memory till it's necessary to stop and restart FF.
It is Java Script causing this memory leak and using the JS switch plug in stops the problem.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Man, are you a sad specimen of mankind.
Kids need to learn about the realities of life and that love can mend what hate is trying to break.
Closing the curtains on the world is totally unfair to your kids.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Let me quantify your experience; Bull.
I'm a heavy FF user and it crashes maybe once per year, that's with configuration inherited since the advent of (K)ubuntu.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
The quickest and least bloated browser is my biggest priority, sorry to be shallow.
I'm having a hard time parsing exactly what you want here. You're angry at Mozilla not doing more to the guy.
Ballot initiatives are legal, that's democracy at work. Sometimes people promote ideas that you won't like. Sometimes you promote ideas that *they* won't like. We can't just "sue" people for promoting different ideas through the ballot initiative system, *even if* they're ballot initiatives which promote things which are illegal. e.g.: that's the entire point of ballot initiatives, to change the laws, so *every* ballot initiative is promoting something that's currently not legal. That's the point of allowing them. Mozilla firefox is a private company, they can *fire* the guy, and that's the harshest legal action they can in fact take. They can't "sue" him because they have no grounds to sue: he supported something in his private life. They can't "arrest" him because he committed no crime.
No, the harshest *legal* action they can take is to fire him. It just sounds like you were looking for any excuse to blame Firefox no matter how it ended up.
* I'll go a step further and say that angrily demanding that people who merely advocate for changes through legal avenues should be put in prison is getting dangerously totalitarian in outlook, no matter how "morally right" your cause is. Demanding prison for people who don't respect the *idea* of gay rights is fundamentally no different to a theocracy that imprisons people for being heretics. ... We become the thing we most hate.
If you breathe you're already a victim of surveillance
FTFY
FTFY
Just another day in Paradise
Neither bug is documented in MDN.
[...]
References: [Bugzilla links]
MDN is a wiki using GitHub authentication. If you have a GitHub account, and you know how to phrase something in a tone that's more descriptive than complaining, and you have time, you can correct this.
Why not just use the Discord app?
The Discord, Skype, and Slack desktop applications use Electron. This means each is literally a copy of Chromium hardcoded to view one website. Installing both Chromium and the Discord, Skype, and Slack desktop applications would just waste disk space, and running both Chromium and the Discord, Skype, and Slack desktop applications at the same time would just waste RAM.
People should be switching to Vivaldi
I use Chrome myself, for all my browsing. I'm fully aware the thing is spying on my browsing habits every day, all day.
But then, pretty much every website is doing this regardless of my browser choice. It's not difficult to build a 'profile' of what any particular given user looks like (to a computer.) The point being, I could use something like Pale Moon, Firefox, or any other non-Chrome browser, but does that increase my privacy and security? Probably not.
By electing to use the most nosy browser there is (and I just like Chrome), I am never lulling myself in to a false sense of privacy or security. I know it's watching me and I use it accordingly.
Is anyone looking at forking quantum. Unlock origin and umatrix are the only extensions I use, and I like the performable and security benefits of quantum (and aesthetically I like that it uses rust).
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
It is very nice if people can stay together their whole life, I admire them.
But it is very bad when they stay together to the detriment of themselves and especially the kids just because it is in their society (church!) not appreciated to recognise the truth
If you want to avoid divorce, simply don't get married because it doesn't add anything except stress.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Boy do you live in a sick church!
Kids (people) are not made homosexual, they either are or aren't, it is a genetic thing.
Besides who cares, especially consenting adult homosexuals should have the same freedom a heterosexual has, parents should not meddle in the sexuality of their kids but teach freedom by example until they are grown up.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
I tried to switch - but firefox was too slow - I'd end up spending 10-30 seconds waiting for it to do something?