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Google Just Gave 2B Chrome Users a Reason to Switch to Firefox

forbes.com

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Re: Google Just Gave 2B Chrome Users a Reason to Switch to Firefox

#11

Post by zkomp »

Nursie wrote: post #2

I have one system I still use chrome on - my late-2013 Macbook Pro. The reason I use chrome as my main browser there is because Firefox and Slack do not seem to be friends on MacOS. I use slack in the browser rather than the native app and FF seems to get copy and paste functionality all messed up. I would use Safari, but some quirk of the office webmail (Outlook of some sort) means that email from Safari gets flagge…

See this comment a lot but absolutely disagree. Firefox works and is only getting better on MacOS. (And if being friends with MacOS is the point, then why not use Safari, does not get more friendly than that)

Re: Google Just Gave 2B Chrome Users a Reason to Switch to Firefox

#13

Post by dijit »

the_duke wrote: post #3

Great to see mainstream media picking this up and giving Firefox some exposure. With Microsoft switching to Chromium, Firefox is now the only viable (cross platform) alternative. FF gaining back a solid amount of market share is critical for the browser ecosystem in the future. (Personally I switched back to FF after the first Quantum release, which brought performance back on par with Chrome. On mobile, the ad block…

I think safari is more cross platform than IE, since you can run safari on macOS and Windows. But IE only runs on Windows.

EDIT: I have been informed that it's not cross-platform since 2012. My bad.

Re: Google Just Gave 2B Chrome Users a Reason to Switch to Firefox

#14

Post by tjpnz »

I switched 6 months ago to Firefox on all my mobile devices. Put simply I need the ability to block ads. A lot has been written on privacy but the immediate issue I was facing was around malware - a lot of it being delivered via Google's own ad networks. There were certain sites (mostly tech related) that I simply couldn't visit anymore due to frequent browser hijacking. Later versions of Chrome for Android shipped with a setting that would prevent some of it but it was disabled by default and hidden well away from the user. It started to feel like Google was not only well aware of the problem but was choosing to be complicit in all of it. I reported the ads but they clearly didn't want to know about it. I would urge to anyone that cares about their own security to make the move to Firefox, and to urge others to do the same (be it family, friends or colleagues).

Re: Google Just Gave 2B Chrome Users a Reason to Switch to Firefox

#15

Post by ljm »

the_duke wrote: post #3

Great to see mainstream media picking this up and giving Firefox some exposure. With Microsoft switching to Chromium, Firefox is now the only viable (cross platform) alternative. FF gaining back a solid amount of market share is critical for the browser ecosystem in the future. (Personally I switched back to FF after the first Quantum release, which brought performance back on par with Chrome. On mobile, the ad block…

I hope to see Firefox eventually providing an embeddable framework, considering that Chromium isn't just monopolising the web browser space... it's spreading into desktop applications through Electron. Left unchecked, Google will manage to poke its fingers into every pie within reach.

It seems like the ideal solution of using the OS's native web toolkit hasn't been successful so far. So the next best offering (aside from building on Qt), is to have an Electron competitor too.

Re: Google Just Gave 2B Chrome Users a Reason to Switch to Firefox

#17

Post by bambax »

The state of the debate is unsatisfactory.

Google employees such as Justin Schuh are aggressively defending the move on tech/security principles and denying commercial motivations, while uBlock Origin dev (Raymond Hill) says the change will cripple or kill uBO on Chrome and evil motives are its raison d'être.

It's good that mainstream media articles raise the awareness of the issue, but a good technical discussion by impartial analysts would also help.

Is it possible to fix the security issues of the existing webRequest API without deprecating it? Or by replacing it with something safer but just as powerful? There should be a simple answer to those questions.

(I'm tempted to side against Google because they keep invoking "performance issues", which is a ridiculous argument: nothing helps Chrome's performance more than efficient ad-blocking. But still, I'd like to know more.)

Re: Google Just Gave 2B Chrome Users a Reason to Switch to Firefox

#18

Post by riamu »

dijit wrote: post #13
the_duke wrote: post #3

Great to see mainstream media picking this up and giving Firefox some exposure. With Microsoft switching to Chromium, Firefox is now the only viable (cross platform) alternative. FF gaining back a solid amount of market share is critical for the browser ecosystem in the future. (Personally I switched back to FF after the first Quantum release, which brought performance back on par with Chrome. On mobile, the ad block…

I think safari is more cross platform than IE, since you can run safari on macOS and Windows. But IE only runs on Windows. EDIT: I have been informed that it's not cross-platform since 2012. My bad.

Safari is a terrible, Apple-like version of WebKit. The last viable windows version of Safari was abandoned 8 years ago, so please nobody use this browser.

Re: Google Just Gave 2B Chrome Users a Reason to Switch to Firefox

#19

Post by thestephen »

dijit wrote: post #13
the_duke wrote: post #3

Great to see mainstream media picking this up and giving Firefox some exposure. With Microsoft switching to Chromium, Firefox is now the only viable (cross platform) alternative. FF gaining back a solid amount of market share is critical for the browser ecosystem in the future. (Personally I switched back to FF after the first Quantum release, which brought performance back on par with Chrome. On mobile, the ad block…

I think safari is more cross platform than IE, since you can run safari on macOS and Windows. But IE only runs on Windows. EDIT: I have been informed that it's not cross-platform since 2012. My bad.

Safari hasn't been supported for Windows since 2012.

Re: Google Just Gave 2B Chrome Users a Reason to Switch to Firefox

#20

Post by [deleted] »

dijit wrote: post #13
the_duke wrote: post #3

Great to see mainstream media picking this up and giving Firefox some exposure. With Microsoft switching to Chromium, Firefox is now the only viable (cross platform) alternative. FF gaining back a solid amount of market share is critical for the browser ecosystem in the future. (Personally I switched back to FF after the first Quantum release, which brought performance back on par with Chrome. On mobile, the ad block…

I think safari is more cross platform than IE, since you can run safari on macOS and Windows. But IE only runs on Windows. EDIT: I have been informed that it's not cross-platform since 2012. My bad.

[deleted]
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