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Why I’m done with Chrome

blog.cryptographyengineering.com

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Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#171

Post by zmw »

kbenson wrote: post #68
aphextron wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love Firefox in theory, it's just that in practice I've never been able to stick with it. One thing or another always leaves me running back to Chrome. It's possible that it's just my own bias and familiarity, but I'm not principled enough to endure an inferior experience in any way. Plus working in chrome dev tools all day long, you really miss it when you want to pop something open and look under the hood real qu…

Firefox's web tools are slightly different, but very comparable. Firefox container tabs are game changing.

Container tabs just makes up for lack of easy profile switching (at least on macOS, not sure about Windows or Linux), which was in Chrome for years. Even after it came, I gave it a try and found it pretty cumbersome.

(Before I get you-can-do-this-and-that replies, I know Profile Manager exists, and that's an ugly hack: macOS users should not need to run multiple copies of the same app bundle.)

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#172

Post by beezischillin »

I use Google Chrome very casually, mostly for development exactly for the very same privacy concerns as people have so I stopped using the Google Account integration for a long time explicitly because of these worries. I was extremely surprised to randomly see the browser logged into the account I use for YouTube.

As a user this is greatly worrying to me. I want my browser to not do anything like this without my explicit consent -- especially since I knowingly avoided doing it... I moved out as much of my digital identity from the Google Cloud as I could. I obviously can't escape needing to use YouTube, but everything can't be perfect.

I gotta be honest, I have some worries regarding Firefox, too. Too often they have pulled shady things and got into bad with terrible people. (the unwanted advertising stuff being auto-downloaded for Mr. Robot, the "fake news detector" thing, etc. etc.)

I find it extremely important to have good, independent open source alternatives to commercial web browsers and each step like this is a step towards one interest trying to take over the core of our internet experience. Pretty scary.

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#173

Post by ChicagoDave »

Firefox here I come. Google’s update, to automatically take an action on my computer that I specifically don’t want, is an egregious misuse of technology. This is what Microsoft might have done in the early 2000’s for which they were rightfully vilified.

What happened to “do no evil”?

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#174

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

stefano wrote: post #50
mehrdadn wrote: post #32

For now at least, there's this escape hatch: chrome://flags/#account-consistency Edit: Some are saying this doesn't work on Chrome 69. :(

When you're looking for escape hatches, you know the software is working against you. At that point, it's better to move to an alternative browser, it's not worth it to fight it with hacks. If too many people use the escape hatch, they'll remove it.

> When you're looking for escape hatches, you know the software is working against you.

I would say that when you're looking for escape hatches, you know the defaults don't match your personal preferences. I understand why some people don't like combined login. However, I personally prefer it, and I guess that the decision to add it was made on the basis of believing that most people would feel like I do, or at worst feel neutral.

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#176

Post by mehrdadn »

blihp wrote: post #155
mehrdadn wrote: post #32

For now at least, there's this escape hatch: chrome://flags/#account-consistency Edit: Some are saying this doesn't work on Chrome 69. :(

A better escape hatch is https://mozilla.org Granted, Mozilla's had their own issues and some apps / sites may have become as dependent on Chrome as sites were on IE way back when. But given Google's flexing their control muscles over the last few years, a clean break is probably the better long term solution.

Question: How do I sign extensions I wrote for myself so I can actually use them, without uploading a copy of the extension somewhere? That's my roadblocker right now. I don't know how to migrate make my own extensions work on my own system without uploading them to other people's servers. (Yes, I want Firefox stable. I don't want to run a buggy browser.)

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#177

Post by zmw »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #146
reaperducer wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you should ditch Gmail instead? I'm thinking about doing that. The single reason I started with GMail was because at the time, it had the best spam filter in the industry. But that was years ago. Has everyone else caught up? Is there another option with equally good spam filtering?

I used to self-host because I could run really strict spam filtering. Unfortunately Sonic dropped their plans to offer static IPs and reverse DNS with their fiber products so I'm stuck with using their servers as a smarthost at least. Can't say I enjoy it (especially with their all-day outage this week), but it does give me a chance to at least easily run aggressive spamassasin filters.

I have a self-hosted domain too, with docker-mailserver, but only for less important email. For important communications I really worry about ending up on a spam list somewhere and landing directly in people's spam box, plus there are potential downtime concerns, so I stick to GSuite for that.

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#178

Post by jonathanyc »

pg_bot wrote: post #153

I want to switch to Firefox, but the developer tools simply do not work at all. Every time I try to use the console on the site that I'm working on, the tab freezes and everything just stops working. (This immediately happens, not after a period of working and then bugging out) If any representative from Mozilla wants to reach out, I would be glad to help you fix your software because we need better competition in th…

I’ve never seen this happen on any website, ever, and I’ve used the dev console on some pretty insane websites. Come up with minimal steps to reproduce and file a bug like a normal person, like the other comment suggests.

People like me use Firefox for their paying job daily and somehow we still don’t find it beneath ourselves to file bugs.

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#179

Post by pessimizer »

skndr wrote: post #120

For those who've switched over to Firefox recently and find Youtube inexplicably slow, it's "because YouTube's Polymer redesign relies on the deprecated Shadow DOM v0 API only implemented in Chrome." [0] The YouTube Classic extension will speed things up: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-class... [0] https://twitter.com/cpeterso/status/1021626510296285185

I feel so stupid for not knowing this existed; thanks a lot.

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#180

Post by pdkl95 »

heartbreak wrote: post #51
0x0 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How little you think of people.

I think most people have more important things to do than worry about whether Google knows where they’ve been online. Edit: To clarify, I care about whether Google knows where I've been online. That's why I don't use Chrome. I just don't think most people care.

> I just don't think most people care.

Every single person I've explained how much data Google et al's regularly collect has cared a lot. My mother's first comment after hearing what Android and Chrome collect was, "Why aren't the in jail?"

Unfortunately, most of these people continue to use Google's services because they often don't have a choice or are not aware of alternatives. Please, actually talk to people outside your bubble and get their actual opinion (which might require educating them about the specifics of what the tech is doing).

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