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Why I’m done with Chrome

blog.cryptographyengineering.com

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Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#281

Post by JoshMnem »

> Even if the browser never produced a scrap of revenue for Google...

I think that Google Chrome was always about ads. The browser has an auto-completion algorithm that sends users to Google Search to click on well-disguised ads on the way to their destinations rather than sending users directly to URLs.

(Until recently, Firefox would send people directly to URLs instead of search. You have to enable the two separate boxes in Firefox to make that work now -- ctrl-l for URLs and ctrl-k for search.)

Chrome has a few serious dark patterns if you look closely. Also watch out for Google's current attempts to get rid of URLs, because it's probably motivated by getting people to become more dependent on search to click on ads (as well as hiding from people that they are visiting AMP "caches" instead of people's real (HTML) websites).

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#282

Post by yunruse »

krapp wrote: post #249
fma wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money is the root of all evil. That's why they got rid of the mantra, as it meant 'Do no money'... And they need to please share holders. I got rid of chrome when I noticed it hoggged my memory and CPU, and decided to try Firefox. Firefox is much more processor friendly for me at least.

>Money is the root of all evil. The love of money is the root of all evil.

When you think of money as “intermediary token of value”, this makes a lot of sense. If you have a love of money, you will naturally tend towards whatever has the highest money-in-to-value-out ratio. With Google, however, the user is the product, so Google only want to put as much value in as to make sure the user stays. And yes, that does result in a good and polished browser, but only because it’s what keeps users from going to another one.

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#283

Post by r00fus »

Chazprime wrote: post #142
orbifold wrote: post #27

At least on iOS and macOS I see no reason not to use Safari, Edge on Windows is pretty good too. Power users will stop recommending Chrome to the average user after these changes and over time market share will hopefully decline.

It’s tough to use Safari if you’re a web developer; Chrome tends to be better at rendering pages and in overall performance, as well as adopting features quicker than Apple.

I just recently visited a site (afterschool program) that silently failed for me using Mac Chrome where Safari worked fine. All other assets other than the login form loaded making me wonder what I was missing.

I almost missed a mandatory form that finally resolved by calling the number on the contact page. This is the sort of thing that used to be the other way around...

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#284

Post by newscracker »

i_am_nomad wrote: post #232
hellofunk wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I could use it but it has serious performance problems on macOS. I tried and it was just terrible. (thought not all Mac users have problems, quite a number do, and Mozilla has an open issue asking for debugging logs from Macs to find the reasons).

Sorry to sound naive, but is there a good reason (or a few) not to use Safari?

One reason is that the variety and number of extensions available is far lesser on Safari compared to Firefox. If someone is dependent on several extensions, then it may be a no-go.

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#285

Post by r00fus »

pimlottc wrote: post #156

Another wrinkle with this: if your account is with a private G Suite instance, logging into the browser can have a profound effect since it will apply any management policies. This will probably be sold as a security enhancement - you can’t access your organizations data without active management (at least, if you’re using Chrome), but for users with access to multiple G Suite domains, this will become a real nuisanc…

Would multiple profile / personas help for this?

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#286

Post by rictic »

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'm on the Polymer team at Google. We've been helping the YouTube team, who's been doing a ton of work to update to the final v1 version of the webcomponent specs. So far it's a bit neck and neck between Firefox launching version 63 with native web component support (eta October) and YouTube switching the main desktop app over.

These are new standards, and there were a number of breaking changes from the v0 specs to v1. It's a lot of code to update, but we're working super hard to get all of Google onto v1.

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#287

Post by OnlyRepliesToBS »

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

wow, the youtube design sucks

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#288

Post by ziftface »

SiVal wrote: post #150
stefano wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It seems as though the needed escape hatch is a browser that simply CAN'T send info about you back to home base. Firefox might qualify, but I don't know for sure, and I don't want that to be our only option. There's a lot of great engineering that goes into Chrome. So I'm wondering: Is enough code open sourced to make it possible for an organization such as Apache, GNU, or whatever, to create a sanitized fork of each…

This doesn't answer your question, but I thought I'd mention: A lot of great engineering goes into Firefox too. I really think you ought to try the version of Firefox that enables WebRender by default, when it comes out. I've been using it in Nightly on Mac, and it's seriously worth trying.

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#289

Post by dithering »

shawnz wrote: post #244
torstenvl wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there would be a seperate log-in process for Chrome versus every other google service Chrome is not a Google service. It is a web browser. It should act like one.

Is that just your opinion, or do you genuinely believe most Chrome users see it that way?

We could apply the principle of least astonishment to get a feel for correct behaviour without resorting to sterile arguments about what proportion of users understand the difference between a web site and a web browser.

If they looked at a slightly risque URL on their phone, would the average user expect Chrome on their laptop to autocomplete that URL?

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#290

Post by theli0nheart »

drannex wrote: post #93
MentallyRetired wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also switched to Firefox. I wanted to give Opera a try but they also use Chromium, where this feature now exists. Firefox it is, and they have done a great job with the new version.

Surprised no one has brought I up, but Vivaldi is superior in a dozen ways to Opera (and founded by the original Oper founder).

Wow, just downloaded and I'm very impressed. Vivaldi is a real pleasure to use. Thanks for the recommendation.
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