Live data from Hacker News

In 2024, please switch to Firefox

roytanck.com

571–580 of 850 posts

Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#571

> "Privacy Firefox is the only major browser not built by a company that makes money from advertising" This is BS. Firefox is funded entirely by Google's Ads. Even if you donate to Mozilla, those donations won't be invested in Firefox. At this point, all 3 major browser engines are funded by ads. You may argue that Mozilla doesn't directly make money from advertising, but that's irrelevant because they'll never do an…

WebKit is founded by Apple selling their devices and it runs perfectly fine on Linux via Epiphany. I don't see how it is related to ads in any way?

Google pays Apple billions in their search deal, per year ($18 billion in 2021).

Apple may sell devices, but it's safe to say that at this point Google entirely funds Safari. Apple is unwilling to upset that cash cow without risking those tens of billions, even if we are talking about 5% of their revenue. ;-)

Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#572
The list of bullshit Mozilla has tried to pull over the years weighs heavily, and although I have had plenty of complaints with Chrome's decisions also, Mozilla's strike me as much worse.

Not interested until they completely disavow those strategies in a convincing way.

Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#574
Thanks for the reminder, I will give it another go - the latest Chrome redesign looks bad to my eyes, and I’m on the fence about whether I enjoy Arc or not. I’m still forever grateful to FF for leading us out of the dark days of IE6

Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#575
post #555
post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know what he's talking about. Firefox has constant nag screens. I just restarted Firefox and got two separate nags[1]. I am certain that within the next week it will nag me for at least one more thing. Maybe it'll want me to try Pocket, or sign in with a Mozilla account, or set up sync, or the absolute worst offender - when I launch the browser it will say "heyyyy I gotta update and I treat this like it's 1998 so y…

Ok, but obviously in this case you can check the "Don't show me this message again" checkbox and, like me, you'll have had to endure the burden of responding to this nag just once in years of using Firefox. I may be forgetting about nags that don't allow themselves to be disabled, but if so, they're infrequent enough that they seem insignificant and obviously non-memorable. Edit: I should add, when I had to have Chro…

> in this case you can check the "Don't show me this message again" checkbox

I had literally just installed Firefox minutes ago (inspired by this thread). During the install it asked me if I wanted to make it the default browser, and I had said no. This is what we mean by nagging. Firefox needs to know when to shut up and get out of the way.

> you'll have had to endure the burden of responding to this nag just once in years of using Firefox.

Twice. For this one particular nag. Next time Mozilla releases some shitty VPN or AI program, it will nag me again. If I don't log in to a Mozilla account, it will nag me to. If I don't try Pocket, I will be nagged to try it.

Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#576

I switched back to firefox last year and haven't looked back. I still use chrome on another laptop sometimes, the performance difference from my human perspective is literally zero. These days, it's much more common for me to encounter a website that works in firefox but not chrome than the other way around. I actually switched for good when I had to use firefox to file my taxes, because the IRS free self-file site w…

What would be really cool is a Firefox plugin that allowed you to replace the entire browser tab with a Chromium renderer on a specific website if you so wish, and remember that setting. That way there would really be no need to install Chrome for a few one-off websites.

Considering both Firefox and Chromium are open-source it should be entirely possible.

Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#577

If you keep feeding the Google monster you soon won't be able to browse the internet without a 3rd party attesting that your computer is worth browsing that site. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/googles-web-integrit...

"Users often depend on websites trusting the client environment they run in. This trust may assume that the client environment is honest about certain aspects of itself, keeps user data and intellectual property secure, and is transparent about whether or not a human is using it." Double-plus-good rights management!

This reads like someone hopelessly out of touch with actual users.

Most users don't give a shit if their client is "honest", or if it's respects intellectual property. These are concerns of web admins and media companies. Users just want something to load websites.

Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#578
> switching to the only remaining ethical web browser, Firefox

Mozilla is actually not an ethical organization, if ethics mean the things that are espoused in this article.

Mozilla receives literally billions from Google[1] every year -- $26,000,000,000.00 in 2021 alone, with only 3% market share. That's a lot of zeros -- some startups might be rather happy to see an annual 26 billion funding round!

Mozilla forced privacy-rejecting products like Pocket[2] into Firefox.

Mozilla secretly-installed advertising extensions[3].

1. https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/27/23934961/google-antitrus...

2. https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/the-firefox-brows...

3. https://www.zdnet.com/article/privacy-touting-mozilla-caught...

CORRECTION: a comment below correctly points out that Mozilla wasn't the only recipient of that $26B in 2021; it appears that Apple was the biggest payee.

Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#580
The engine monopoly point has been kind of stupid for a while now. Blink is open source. It's a stable target. It's not vendor-locked. There is no problem with it having a monopoly, and I am sure the industry can decide to fork it or start over if the leadership goes absolutely cuckoo. When it comes to good open source projects, we WANT to be converging on that one leading project and ensuring it's the best it can be. If Mozilla got their team to work supporting Blink and integrated it into Firefox, we'd probably all be better off.
Post reply on HN