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Ask HN: For those who use Chrome, why do you?

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Re: Ask HN: For those who use Chrome, why do you?

#91

Post by xvector »

rand846633 wrote: post #67
xvector wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not use Brave instead, then?

I’m sure it says somewhere but i could not find out what version of chrome(chromium?) brave is based on while trying to find this out for maybe 5 minutes. So, just to be sure i am not installing an browser with known vulnerability I’ll stick with chrome for now.

If you look at README in the repo [1], it says that the Chromium version can be found in `package.json`, currently 90.0.4430.61, released 4 days ago [2].

[1]: https://github.com/brave/brave-browser

[2]: https://github.com/chromium/chromium/releases/tag/90.0.4430....

Re: Ask HN: For those who use Chrome, why do you?

#92

Post by CarelessExpert »

skybrian wrote: post #72
marshmallow_12 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what you are saying is privacy concerns are a straw man. But just to accuse HN doesn't really help me. Can you share with us a bit about what is going on in Chrome. I would be genuinely interested to hear more about how it was made/runs etc.

Oh, I don't know anything. I didn't work closely with the Chrome team, and even if I did, I left Google years ago. But I don't think my co-workers were evil, and though I didn't work personally with them much, I think the folks on the privacy and security teams know their business. Public blog posts can be extremely difficult to understand though, I'm guessing because it's gotten so political. You can get a bit more…

> But I don't think my co-workers were evil,

You don't have to be evil to do things that result in terrible outcomes.

I genuinely don't think anyone at Facebook wanted to create a propaganda tool, but that was the aggregate outcome.

I don't think anyone at Google set out to build an invasive surveillance platform. But in aggregate that's what's happened.

There's real danger in assuming you will only get bad outcomes because of bad people. Unintended consequences are a thing and I personally think most of the negatives of big tech come from precisely that.

If we can't acknowledge that because we insist on labelling everything and everyone good or evil, we'll never actually solve these issues.

Re: Ask HN: For those who use Chrome, why do you?

#93

Post by CarelessExpert »

shaicoleman wrote: post #84
MikeUt wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't consider tracking your location against your explicit settings a betrayal? Or the pushing of AMP? https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/aug/13/google-lo...

I've enabled the Timeline feature in Google Maps, which records everywhere I go. The benefit I get out of that feature outweighs the privacy concerns for me. Since I use Google as my main search engine, Google already knows what I've clicked on, so in that case AMP is just an annoyance, not a privacy concern. Google spent enormous efforts to make the internet fast (Chrome, V8, QUIC, SPDY & HTTP/2, BBR, TLS 1.3, etc.)…

> I'm personally less concerned about the recording of the data, than the security of the data. Leaks due to security incomptence (e.g. the Facebook leak) seem like a much bigger imminent threat to me.

This reminds me of an old joke: it's not the fall that kills you; it's the sudden stop at the end.

You wouldn't have to worry about leaks if they didn't collect the data in the first place.

Re: Ask HN: For those who use Chrome, why do you?

#94

Post by mbrodersen »

Every time I try to use Firefox instead, I give up and switch back to Chrome because:

1. Scrolling works really badly. 2. Save as PDF usually doesn’t work well.

I have noticed that quite a few posts mention the bad scrolling. Firefox devs just copy how Chrome works and you will make more people switch.

Re: Ask HN: For those who use Chrome, why do you?

#95

Post by newscracker »

pvtmert wrote: post #54

I am actually suprised nobody mentions profiles. I seperate stuff using profiles (little avatar next to menu button on top-right corner) Especially important if you want to split your clients' stuff and with your own things. (History, bookmarks, sync) And sync is the second reason. Of course firefox would work too but they were just late to the game. I already had lots of stuff (bookmarks, history, passwords) to migr…

On sync, Firefox has had sync from before Google Chrome was publicly released. Depending on when you started using Google Chrome and on which platform, you may have missed noticing that Firefox had it.

Re: Ask HN: For those who use Chrome, why do you?

#96

Post by MikusR »

I started to use Chrome on phone because it worked well with many tabs. And I am in process of moving from Firefox on desktop to one of the Chromium based browsers because the upcoming Firefox redesign is the final straw in the long line of Firefox usability destruction by Mozillas "designers"

Re: Ask HN: For those who use Chrome, why do you?

#97

Post by NathanielK »

shaicoleman wrote: post #71

* Switched a couple of years ago from Firefox because of better dev tools. * GPU acceleration doesn't work properly with Firefox/Linux (Dell G5 SE, Ryzen 4800H). Some sites I use daily, such as Google Maps, are painfully slow/laggy on Firefox. * There's something about the Firefox's scrolling behaviour that I find really annoying. * It works well across all platforms (Firefox on Android wasn't great last time I check…

> There's something about the Firefox's scrolling behaviour that I find really annoying. Old versions didn't enable fractional scrolling by default. On Debian 9 XFCE, GTK3 apps and chromium both had it baked in.

Fractional scrolling is what lets you move just a pixel at a time with your trackpoint or trackpad scrolling. Maybe it has been patched since then, but at the time firefox needed a tweak. Afterwards trackpoint scrolling felt more precise than my W10 thinkpads.

Re: Ask HN: For those who use Chrome, why do you?

#98

Post by _odey »

stuartd wrote: post #86
ncw96 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what your use case is, but Firefox’s containers might solve your problem with the older profile system: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...

Containers are 1000 times better than profiles!

I'm afraid you're both wrong, containers are an add-on, profiles are a core functionality.

That person does not want something new, they just want to use their existing workflow, which is possible, but inconvenient due to bad UX and ugly UI. These are their words, not mine.

As a user of both containers and profiles in Firefox I have to agree with them. The UX needs to improve and the UI needs to be prettyfied.

Re: Ask HN: For those who use Chrome, why do you?

#99

Post by skybrian »

CarelessExpert wrote: post #92
skybrian wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, I don't know anything. I didn't work closely with the Chrome team, and even if I did, I left Google years ago. But I don't think my co-workers were evil, and though I didn't work personally with them much, I think the folks on the privacy and security teams know their business. Public blog posts can be extremely difficult to understand though, I'm guessing because it's gotten so political. You can get a bit more…

> But I don't think my co-workers were evil, You don't have to be evil to do things that result in terrible outcomes. I genuinely don't think anyone at Facebook wanted to create a propaganda tool, but that was the aggregate outcome. I don't think anyone at Google set out to build an invasive surveillance platform. But in aggregate that's what's happened. There's real danger in assuming you will only get bad outcomes…

Yes, unintentional outcomes do happen, despite everyone’s best efforts. Sometimes we call them bugs, security holes, or design flaws. They aren’t unique to Chrome, either. There are bug bounties and hacking contests to encourage outside investigation.

Links about things like that do get posted here and that keeps me coming back. But it seems like for certain topics, good-faith critiques are often intermingled with large amounts of contempt. Often the contempt gets upvoted too, just because a lot of people agree with the sentiment.

I wonder if it would be possible to discuss such things without the contempt? Even the Chrome team’s attempts to improve security and privacy get discussed with contempt.

Re: Ask HN: For those who use Chrome, why do you?

#100

Post by skinkestek »

readflaggedcomm wrote: post #68
ingvul wrote: post #61

Mainly because it's look and feel. I'm not a "power user". Chrome just looks lightweight and feels fast. The only browser that is similar in these aspects is Safari. Firefox looks bad. For example: - the spacing between the home button and the search bar - why there's a line at the top of the current tab? The way Chrome distinguishes the current tab looks "better"" - the "back", "forward" and "refresh" buttons look b…

Right click the open space and select "Customize...", or "Customize Toolbar" from the menu, and you can change the button sizes a bit and remove those default spacers.

The people at Firefox who has sacrificed so much customizability in favour of "usability" and "good default experience" should read this :-/

For me it is still OK, my point is that it used to be possible to make it smashing.

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