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Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

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Re: Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

#451

Post by Qem »

executesorder66 wrote: post #316
j1elo wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It amazes me how quick people jump to something especially when it has a big company behind advertising it. Because it works . Advertising works. That's the bane of the conflict of interest between companies and users of Ad blockers. We (technical users) cannot complain that companies should not use and abuse Ads, because at the same time we (humanity as a collective) constantly show once and again that Ads do work…

> We (technical users) cannot complain that companies should not use and abuse Ads, because at the same time we (humanity as a collective) constantly show once and again that Ads do work excellently for their intended purpose. Just because something works, doesn't mean you should do it. Using a gun or knife to threaten someone with death if they don't hand over their wallet works. Do you think people should complain/…

> Just because something works, doesn't mean you should do it.

That reminds me of that chinese restaurant that sold opium-laced noodles, to keep customers loyal: https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-29312562

Re: Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

#452

Post by dimask »

pharmakom wrote: post #158
masfoobar wrote: post #148

I have been a happy Firefox user for 15 years... maybe more. I have seen people use and complain Internet Explorer in my younger days, from version 6 to 7, etc. Even though I mention Firefox to them, they stay with IE. What amazes me is how quick they transitioned to Google Chrome when it released. This was around 2009. It amazes me how quick people jump to something especially when it has a big company behind advert…

Some things (e.g. Slack calls) will not work in Firefox. It’s pretty annoying. Personally I still use Firefox.

If we are talking about a paid service (like slack), not supporting firefox imo means it is a bad product. A service for which one pays for should not force them use a specific browser. This is essentially an argument of not using slack, not firefox.

Re: Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

#453

Post by ditsuke »

qwertox wrote: post #422

Is there an extension which stores a history of all my visited tabs, also with some kind of window id in order to group them per window? I'm not talking about the integrated history which will be lost when cleared (and may have a limit of how long entries are kept) I've (and Google as well) found my Chrome's Activity History to be pretty useful when I need to search for something I was looking for years ago.

[dead]

Re: Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

#454

Post by Karolis_K »

I don't get why FF is mainly advertised as a 'privacy first' browser. I think most people first want ease of use and features, not privacy. And for them, Firefox may look like a niche program only for those who are paranoid or have something to hide. But in my opinion even if we don't count privacy, Firefox will still be a serious contender in all other areas and winner in many. At least for me it's not privacy that wins.

Re: Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

#455

Post by jacquesm »

Dah00n wrote: post #380
_cenw wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who don't see the problem with Edge must all be domain joined or on Pro for Workstations / Enterprise. Supposedly the browser doesn't annoy "confirmed" business customers as much. I recently switched to the RC Insider ring just to get the EU digital markets update, which lets you uninstall Edge. Because it started doing incredibly creepy stuff. * Keeps asking me every day if I want to keep my new tab extension…

>to get the EU digital markets update, which lets you uninstall Edge. Again — as a former anti-EU person — I am reminded why I am now pro-EU. While nowhere perfect it is much better than not having an EU and way, way better than the US.

I've come across many anti EU persons and there are some broad categories:

- the uninformed, they have no idea about how the EU came about or what it does, but they're against it anyway

- the people on the receiving end of the regulations (anti-trust, advertisers, marketeers, bankers, data sellers etc). They have a very good idea about what it does, but it interferes with their preferred way of getting to more cash.

- the people that are nostalgic and that remember their country as it was 50 years ago and would like to go back there. They believe that because the EU happened to coincide with the downslide of their country that the two are related. What they usually forget is that without the EU that downslide would have been much worse.

- the people who genuinely believe that 'smaller is better' when it comes to politics and who tend to miss the wood for the trees: that in politics smaller is only better when you are very wealthy and can set your own rules. Think Switzerland. Everybody else will have a less privileged position and if they find themselves up against the giants of the world for whatever reason suddenly 'small' translates to 'weak'. In unity there is some strength so it makes sense for smaller countries to join in a larger unit, if only to curb the inevitable infighting (and the local wars that come with those).

I've yet to come across someone who actually spent some time figuring out what the EU actually does who remained against it. There is a lot of valid criticism against the EU bureaucrats: lots of them are grifters and there is quite a bit of corruption. But it is much worse in other places and on balance I'll take the grifters because I realize that politics as such is a grift of sorts, but it is inevitable, like taxes are.

Until we manage to change human nature no political system will be perfect. But given that the EU tends to stand up for the little guy and that they are powerful enough to make a difference but not so powerful enough that they are getting drunk on that power I'm ok with it.

Re: Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

#457

Post by bjord »

ggjkvcxddd wrote: post #165
masfoobar wrote: post #148

I have been a happy Firefox user for 15 years... maybe more. I have seen people use and complain Internet Explorer in my younger days, from version 6 to 7, etc. Even though I mention Firefox to them, they stay with IE. What amazes me is how quick they transitioned to Google Chrome when it released. This was around 2009. It amazes me how quick people jump to something especially when it has a big company behind advert…

>I just don't understand why people would use Chrome. Really? That seems hard to believe. I stuck with FF until around 2016 or so before being compelled to switch. The performance was just very clearly worse than Chrome's at the time. Not sure what the state of things is now. This is HN, so another huge reason to use Chrome is for the devtools, which I've always had a very good experience with and know pretty well. I…

is it possible the devtools experience is one of those things that is largely dependent on where you initially learned it? firefox is my daily driver, and I can't stand chrome devtools anytime I'm forced to use them

Re: Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

#458

Post by dubcanada »

Dah00n wrote: post #388
pyeri wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see some hope in Vivaldi. Even though chromium based, I don't see them getting more and more intrusive into your life and machine like the other big tech are doing. Plus it is also open source now[1], so no different than firefox, etc. even in that sense. The other place I see some hope left is the "ungoogled" chromium browser. Though the amount of hooves you need to jump in order to get a stable release (correspon…

The problem with these Chromium based browsers is that this is helping strangle the only real alternative to Chrome. You might not sell your soul to Google, but you still help Google keep their stranglehold on web standards, etc. Of course, a single person is always irrelevant in the big picture, but combined Vivaldi, Brave, etc. are helping strangle Firefox and helping prop up Google's heavy hand on web standards.

It's Firefoxs fault that Chromium took over, Firefox just had to copy what Google did with Chrome (which is make a version that is easily integrated in other applications). It had years to do so, and did not. I am not blaming Firefox for the rise in Chrome, but I am blaming them for the rise in Chromium. They have a solid alternative and didn't care enough to capitalize on it. Who knows in another timeline with changes it's possible Firefox Gecko rained supreme in the embeddable space.

So let's say you're a bunch of ex-Opera employees who want to start a new browser, are you going to write an entire browser engine yourself? No who has time and money to pay hundreds of developers for years just to catch up. You're going to use a off the shelf version and modify it.

Can you use Firefox? No, good luck integrating it into anything, it's extremely difficult. Firefox actively suggests not trying to embed it.

Can you use Chrome/Chromium? Yes it's easy and readily available SDK that even has thousands of implementation examples.

Can you use Webkit? Yes you can, but it's only managed by Apple and a select group of smaller companies, you are at the mercy of Apple. It also has poor support in some areas.

So you end up going through pros and cons and Chromium is the result. It's not the result of a bunch of Google loving companies, it's just pure developer economics. It gives you the best possible start.

Re: Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

#459

Post by etaweb »

ggjkvcxddd wrote: post #165
masfoobar wrote: post #148

I have been a happy Firefox user for 15 years... maybe more. I have seen people use and complain Internet Explorer in my younger days, from version 6 to 7, etc. Even though I mention Firefox to them, they stay with IE. What amazes me is how quick they transitioned to Google Chrome when it released. This was around 2009. It amazes me how quick people jump to something especially when it has a big company behind advert…

>I just don't understand why people would use Chrome. Really? That seems hard to believe. I stuck with FF until around 2016 or so before being compelled to switch. The performance was just very clearly worse than Chrome's at the time. Not sure what the state of things is now. This is HN, so another huge reason to use Chrome is for the devtools, which I've always had a very good experience with and know pretty well. I…

I worked with both for years and one of the reason who made me switch from Chrome to Firefox between 2016-2018 was the devtools. I found the Firefox's ones were way better and Mozilla implemented new features way faster than Google for some reasons.

Re: Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

#460

Post by jacquesm »

If there ever was an anti-trust argument to be made against Google this is it. You don't want a dominant search company, dominant advertiser and a browser vendor to be the same entity (or closely related).

At the same time: this also goes for Microsoft/Edge.

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