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Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

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Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#241

Post by fma »

cehrlich wrote: post #96

I recently switched back to Firefox after using Chrome and Edge as my main browsers for the past couple of years. So far: * Performance feels better. Both in terms of being more lean in everyday use, and in not having random issues where CPU/Memory spikes for seemingly no reason. * I'm sure there are websites that don't work with Firefox, but I haven't found any yet. * I don't like that tabs in the tab bar are roundr…

I've been outta the loop on the whole Firefox bad, Firefox declining and what decisions they made. I've used Firefox for the past many years after switching from Chrome. I'm not a huge privacy encrypt the world type person. I don't even use Duck Duck Go...but it makes the most sense to me that the app I use the most should not be tied to Google.

There is a webapp I use that has a chat feature and causes high CPU consumption on Firefox. It's the only app I know. I'll switch to Chrome if I use it.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#242

Post by kwertyoowiyop »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #197
bool3max wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to strongly agree with your last point - I also never understood the massive hard-on that the technical user-base has against useful telemetry. Perhaps it's just the loud minority, but to me it seems that most of them have never worked on an user-facing product (for-profit or not). Yes, users can themselves explicitly communicate feedback regarding the product or its features, and no, most of them don't do tha…

We live in a time when wrong think can get you cancelled and Firefox has demonstrated a strong ideological bias towards those groups that love to engage in cancel culture. The telemetry might be entirely technical in nature but both ability and the motive are there for it to be something much worse. At a minimum Firefox needs 100% transparency into who had access to the data, how it is secured, its exact uses, and ti…

Please keep political commentary off HN.

> …Firefox has demonstrated a strong ideological bias towards those groups that love to engage in cancel culture.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#243

Post by floatboth »

thriftwy wrote: post #149

I remember using Konqueror in the middle of 00s. It was much better UI-wise, but a lot of web sites were broken in it so I had to default to Firefox often. Guess what, today using Firefox is the same, even if it's better than Chromium derivatives for you, too often will you need to switch to Chromium when faced with Google Hangouts / Google Meet / Zoom / the fad of the day, or some random websites. And this time it d…

Google Meet works perfectly in Firefox, what are you talking about?

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#244

Post by politelemon »

samwillis wrote: post #181
K0nserv wrote: post #153

I've been meaning to write almost exactly this blog post for a while now, glad that someone else did it. Two things that I think are worth calling out: 1. In many ways Apple's anti-competitive behaviour on iOS/iPadOS is a blessing. It's one of the few things that keep Chromium's dominance in check. Of course, it's not great that Apple are stifling innovation like this, but consider the alternative: Chromium dominance…

> 1. In many ways Apple's anti-competitive behaviour on iOS/iPadOS is a blessing. It's one of the few things that keep Chromium's dominance in check. Of course, it's not great that Apple are stifling innovation like this, but consider the alternative: Chromium dominance on all platforms. I think it’s worth noting that (at least I believe) the reason apple limit the usage of other browser engines in iOS isn’t (mostly)…

> I think it’s worth noting that (at least I believe) the reason apple limit the usage of other browser engines in iOS isn’t (mostly) about maintaining control and dominance. It’s about battery usage,

I disagree with this word gymnastics, it is Apple-ogism. It takes just a brief look at other decisions they've made to easily see that it is about user lock-in which fits in with their general philosophy. It is not great that they are stifling innovation at all, conflating it with browser dominance is a separate thing.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#245

Post by kkjjkgjjgg »

ahartmetz wrote: post #221
kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why so many companies feel compelled to needlessly take political stances. I think they can only lose from that. Although I have heard Nike earned billions with the Kaepernick campaigns, so maybe sometimes it does pay off. But for Mozilla? Do they get government funding?

But what does it matter to you? You can ignore it. It's a good browser and it doesn't insert political messages into websites.

They explicitly said the want to do more censorship and promote fake news (like the New York Times), so how can I trust that they won't influence my browsing? What is their differentiating factor to Google now?

It is a 180° turn on what they seemed to stand for in the past, an open web.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#246

Post by tapoxi »

sleepysysadmin wrote: post #228

Recently reinstalled OS and tried Firefox for some time. Could only last a couple weeks before dumping firefox. I guess Safari is still their own. KDE Konqueror still their own. Sad that opera became chrome. Guess I'll be staying Brave for awhile. Firefox's huge decline also makes sense to me. Firefox stopped building their browser ~5 years ago? It's not that Chromium is inherently just better, it's that Mozilla move…

Why do you think inclusion and good engineering are mutually exclusive?

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#247

Post by gdelfino01 »

kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #110

Maybe I am a minority, but I and some others I know of have turned their backs on Firefox because Mozilla got woke and spoke out in favor of censorship and promoting fake news. Since they are no longer proponents of freedom on the internet, any reason to still give them the time of the day has been gone away. In fact I now celebrate their shrinking market share.

After many years, I stopped using Firefox for this same reason. On the other hand, there is a fork named LibreWolf which so far is working well for me and is not related to Mozilla.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#248

Post by kkjjkgjjgg »

clavicat wrote: post #219
kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #110

Maybe I am a minority, but I and some others I know of have turned their backs on Firefox because Mozilla got woke and spoke out in favor of censorship and promoting fake news. Since they are no longer proponents of freedom on the internet, any reason to still give them the time of the day has been gone away. In fact I now celebrate their shrinking market share.

I receive all of Mozilla’s newsletters and I seethe whenever I see them demanding that more be done to sanitize online expression, which is all the time. That said, Chrome is hardly an alternative given Google’s approach to moderating YouTube.

I tried Vivaldi for a while and now I am using Edge. None of the options are really good. It's a shame.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#249

Post by kwertyoowiyop »

akagusu wrote: post #130

The real problem of Firefox is one that nobody cares about: distribution. Let's say Firefox is the most advanced browser of the universe. How can you get people to install Firefox? Chrome has the advantage here because it is preinstalled in every Android phone and Android has more than 90% market share. The second advantage Chrome has is that it cannot be uninstalled from Android. The fact that Android phones have a…

Google: ‘We don’t force people to use Chrome! We just ask them again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again…’

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#250

Post by [deleted] »

dralley wrote: post #216
fault1 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to believe Mozilla will do much considering 90% of their revenue comes from Google. for better or worse, Apple has been the single biggest driver towards privacy enhancement.

Why do people keep saying this when Mozilla is and has already been vocally fighting against Google's overreaching proposals? There's new headlines about this every few months. https://blog.mozilla.org/en/privacy-security/privacy-analysi ... https://www.howtogeek.com/756338/mozilla-says-chromes-latest ... There's also this: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2020/08/04/latest-firefox-roll ... https://twitter.com/__jakub_g…

[deleted]
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