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Just so we can avoid rehashing the discussion whenever a post encouraging the use of Firefox is posted. - Yes, Mozilla is still the better browser when it come

Just so we can avoid rehashing the discussion whenever a post encouraging the use of Firefox is posted. - Yes, Mozilla is still the better browser when it comes to privacy. - Yes, Mozilla has made missteps with Pocket and Mr. Robot. - Yes, it is slow/resource heavy on certain Macs with non-default resolutions. Yes, Mozilla is working on a fix. - Yes, it has become really fast for most users after Quantum improvements landed, and likely will continue to get better. - No, you can't just "fork Chromium" if you don't like the way Google is running the project. Web developers will still make their website work well with whatever Google releases, regardless of standards. - Yes, Firefox doesn't feel native on your platform of choice. - Yes, neither does Chrome (doesn't support dark mode on macOS) - Yes, Chrome has better security against malware. - Yes, Firefox removed the feature that was essential to your workflow, even though most users don't care. edit, thought of one more - No, the argument "Chrome will be the new IE if you don't use Firefox" doesn't matter to most users.

ekianjo 8y ago
> - Yes, Mozilla has made missteps with Pocket and Mr. Robot. and the removal of RSS support. So much for the champions of the Free Web!
- xfitm3 8y ago
  Is the misstep with Pocket including it in the browser?
  - nindalf 8y ago
    Yes. I like Pocket, but I can't see why it shouldn't be an extension that can be removed.
    - Yoric 8y ago
      Intellectually, I agree, but - it actually doesn't hurt; - market research indicates that most people actually love it.
      - lagadu 8y ago
        Market research, in this particular case adoption rate, also indicates that people love giving all their privacy away to google.
        Yoric 8y ago
        Good point. But Pocket isn't harmful, especially if you don't use it. In the worst case, it makes the Firefox installer a few kb larger, that's about it.
        Karunamon 8y ago
        The same could be said of the RSS support.
        Yoric 8y ago
        True. The big difference is that users use Pocket but didn't use RSS.
        Karunamon 8y ago
        Meaning the nontechnical set of users that don't go out of their way to disable telemetry, at least...
        dao- 8y ago
        If you disable telemetry, Mozilla won't know about you. If you want Mozilla to cater for you, don't disable telemetry?
        ekianjo 8y ago
        Telemetry should never be enabled by default without consent. Its a dark pattern.
        8y ago
- Yoric 8y ago
  It was removed because - pretty much nobody was using it; - it's pretty easy to reimplement as an extension. Championing the Free Web is harder if you also need to champion the dead web. edit "nobody" => "pretty much nobody"
  - ekianjo 8y ago
    > - nobody was using it; You'll need a source for that, since most Wordpress sites which constitute a HUGE part of the web have pretty much by default rss feeds. It's not because you are not using it that nobody is. And even you premise was true (which is debatable), it cost absolutely nothing for Firefox to keep a functional RSS reader without putting much effort into it (or instead, you know, putting efforts in pushing ads to people who never wanted them).
    - Yoric 8y ago
      > You'll need a source for that, since most Wordpress sites which constitute a HUGE part of the web have pretty much by default rss feeds. It's not because you are not using it that nobody is. I'm not making it up. I don't remember the exact details – you'll have to look at the archives of the Mozilla dev-platform mailing list if you want them – but I seem to remember the usage was below 0.001% of users. I personally read RSS with Thunderbird, which is a much better experience anyway. > And even you premise was true (which is debatable), it cost absolutely nothing for Firefox to keep a functional RSS reader without putting much effort into it (or instead, you know, putting efforts in pushing ads to people who never wanted them). It actually does. Every piece of software that you need to maintain is a tax. Paying the tax makes sense if the code is useful, not if it isn't. Also, frankly, this implementation didn't bring anything to users. It wasn't nice to use. There are much better RSS readers than a browser – starting with RSS WebExtensions.
    - tapland 8y ago
      No. Not literally noone was using it. Just a colloquial 'noone' as in 'noone is using Firefox'. Additional features that the average user does not want to use or care about creates confusion and a feeling of bloat. An official extension would be nice though.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
TheKIngofBelAir 8y ago
> Yes, neither does Chrome (doesn't support dark mode on macOS) Yet, this will change though https://9to5google.com/2018/09/21/google-chrome-macos-dark-mode/ https://9to5google.com/2018/09/21/google-chrome-macos-dark-m...
bryanrasmussen 8y ago
Chrome has better security unless you want to keep yourself secure from prying by Google.
- nindalf 8y ago
  Updated to mention "malware"
- ballooney 8y ago
  Would someone who actually _knows_ the answer (I know this will not deter the HN-reckon but worth a try) be able to comment on if/why this security gap exists? Is it something fundamental to the different design choices, is it just which has had more test/resources thrown at it, and is the closing of the gap practical and/or on a roadmap?
  - Yoric 8y ago
    The Chrome multiprocess isolation model is really good. Firefox devs have known this for ages (heck, there were demos of a version of Firefox 3.x with a similar model), but could not actually land this model for two reasons: - it would break all old-style extensions and users were unhappy about that; - it takes looooots of memory and users were unhappy about that, too. Now that Firefox has dropped all old-style extensions, there's large focus on reducing memory footprint, to allow moving to this model without costing as much memory as Chrome. There are still a few kinks to fix, but this new isolation model should hopefully land within a few months. Also, all sorts of security improvements are much easier now that Firefox dropped old-style extensions. Also, switching many developments to Rust makes new code much, much safer.
    - andrewl-hn 8y ago
      Also, Firefox isolates the browser UI and Web content into separate processes now. So that all the code you download from the internet doesn't run in the browser process. Same is with plugins.
    - Santosh83 8y ago
glogla 8y ago
> - Yes, it is slow/resource heavy on certain Macs with non-default resolutions. Yes, Mozilla is working on a fix. On some of them. I use Mac with non-default resolution and I have no issues.
- nindalf 8y ago
  Which is why I said "on certain Macs". From my anecdotal experience, I've never had a problem with Firefox on macOS with any resolution.
  - zerkten 8y ago
    I have a problem in this area and it has prevented me from moving back to Firefox. If I run Firefox on my 13" MBPr with the panel resolution (Scaled->More Space) then the battery usage goes through the roof. I'm following https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042 and hope this issue gets fixed soon. It seems that Apple changes may have made this issue more apparent to users in general. I can obviously follow Bugzilla, but does Mozilla have anyone working this from more of a support angle and provide high-level updates on the top issues like this?
feanaro 8y ago
- Yes, Firefox does support Containers, which are a very innovative privacy feature allowing you to maintain separate browser sessions (cookies, site preferences, ...) towards different websites inside a single browser instance.[1][2] [1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/containers#w_what-are-containers https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/containers#w_what-are-c... [2] https://www.thechiefmeat.com/guides/containers.html https://www.thechiefmeat.com/guides/containers.html
- nindalf 8y ago
  Yes this is why > Mozilla is still the better browser when it comes to privacy
  - feanaro 8y ago
    Indeed. There are many more reasons than one for why Firefox is better for privacy though, such as Chrome and even Chromium phoning home by default. Containers deserve a special mention in my opinion since it still isn't a widely known feature and is a very nice idea.
  - squarefoot 8y ago
    Not just privacy. When Chrome came out it could literally spank Firefox' ass in speed; there was absolutely no contest then. But over time Chrome became bigger and bigger while the folks at Mozilla optimized FF code so that today the latest Firefox can outperform the latest Chrome while still being more trustworthy privacy wise. To me as of today there's not a single reason to use Chrome over Firefox, and users should also avoid using products requiring Chrome; just remember what became of the Internet when web developers started making sites that required IE to work.
- vram22 8y ago
  Interesting. I guess it may be possible to use it to be logged into and use different email accounts, e.g. foo@emailservice.com and bar@emailservice.com from the same browser instance. That would be helpful.
  - 8y ago
EGreg 8y ago
No, you can't just "fork Chromium" if you don't like the way Google is running the project What, why not? Beaker and others did exactly this.
- calcifer 8y ago
  Because even if you could keep up with the changes (you won't), your fork still won't mean anything for the open web or standards because nobody will care about your total market share of exactly 3 users.
  - tree_of_item 8y ago
    Microsoft would be the one forking Chromium in this case, so I really don't think that's true. Microsoft is more than capable of doing it.
    - calcifer 8y ago
      The whole reason Microsoft gave up on their own engine is because no one was using it, not even inside the company. Why would Edge suddenly become popular just because of a rendering engine change?
      - TAForObvReasons 8y ago
        ... because it is the default on Windows? The marketing effort of Chrome can be chipped away if "they are basically the same", which is a fair comment now that Edge is basically a glorified fork of Chromium
        calcifer 8y ago
        > because it is the default on Windows? Which clearly didn't mean anything [1] for increasing market share. [1] https://ferdychristant.com/the-state-of-web-browsers-f5a83a41c1cb#b7aa https://ferdychristant.com/the-state-of-web-browsers-f5a83a4...
weinzierl 8y ago
> - Yes, Mozilla has made missteps with Pocket and Mr. Robot. These are forgivable in my opinion. At least this steps are somehow understandable. What I‘m really miffed about is their partnership with Cliqz. If Google is the devil then Cliqz is Beelzebub. I don‘t understand what they were thinking...
- mparramon 8y ago
  can you elaborate?
  - vrazj 8y ago
    For some time last year, the Mozilla Corporation made it so a fraction of Firefox users got their entire browsing activity siphoned to a third party company, Cliqz, so they could bundle ads in the browser: https://blog.mozilla.org/press-uk/2017/10/06/testing-cliqz-in-firefox/ https://blog.mozilla.org/press-uk/2017/10/06/testing-cliqz-i...
  - weinzierl 8y ago
    Cliqz is a company that primarily provides a Firefox based browser with privacy-oriented changes. Their slogan is „The no-compromise browser. Cliqz gives you relevant search results and does not leak your private data.” Sounds good on the surface, but what they really mean with „does not leak” is leak to Google. The Cliqz browser sends every keystroke in real-time to some supposedly Cliqz owned AWS instances. I verified that myself with Wireshark. They outright lie about this in their Transparency Cockpit: ”Telemetry data do not contain any information about queries, search results or visited URLs.” Now Cliqz is owned by Hubert Burda Media one of Germany‘s largest media groups. Honi soit quit mal y pense. I wrote a comment about this about a year ago[1] and also one about their relationship with Ghostery[2] more recently. Hubert Burda Media is also one of the primary drivers behind EU link tax and upload filter legislation. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15427992#15428104 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15427992#15428104 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17159497#17161135 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17159497#17161135
    - 8y ago
aceshades 8y ago
What was the misstep with Pocket? I've been loving it since I discovered it thru Firefox.
- vrazj 8y ago
  That's cool. And? I use a lot of addons. Should they all be bundled because many people happen to love them too?
  - AsyncAwait 8y ago
    To be fair, Mozilla now owns Pocket. It's not just some random extension. Chrome comes preinstalled with YouTube, Gmail etc. too. It's a bit of cross-property promotion and to be fair, Pocket is indeed quite useful.
    - peteretep 8y ago
      > To be fair, Mozilla now owns Pocket. It's not just some random extension. My understanding is that at the time it was foist in users it was very much just some random extension, tho
      - AsyncAwait 8y ago
        They did not own it from the start, but they did have a special privacy agreement with Pocket regarding user data. Also, the acquisition was a result of user feedback, something Google would likely ignore.
    - Shorel 8y ago
      If you own a Kobo, it is even more useful. In fact, I switched to Firefox because of the pocket integration, not the other way around.
- AsyncAwait 8y ago
  It's just some people don't like it's bundled in by default. Seems really as a non-issue, especially since now Mozilla owns the service.
me551ah 8y ago
You missed Webrender. I switched over the firefox a month ago from chrome. While I had tried doing that a few times over the past few years, i came back to chrome because honestly there was not much difference and chrome just feels like home. This time around I had switched to try out a new tech called 'webrender'. Webrender takes a completely different approach to rendering and compositing, instead of maintainting layers and repainting certain sections it renders and paints content like a game engine. Chrome can get jerky on a 4k monitor with lots of tabs open, but not firefox . With webrender everything is silky smooth. It's so good that I used hacks to also enable it on my intel laptop ( webrender is currently not supported on integrated graphics by default ) and the result is a browser which feels and works smoother than anything that I have experienced before. Everytime I open chrome now it just feels laggy and slow in comparison.
- nindalf 8y ago
  Webrender is exactly what I was thinking of when I said > [Firefox] ... likely will continue to get better.
- MrBuddyCasino 8y ago
  Not yet available on Mac it seems.
  - samat 8y ago
    I wonder if it is possible to subscribe to something to get an update once it's available in any form on Mac?
    - MrBuddyCasino 8y ago
      There should be a FeatureAlert service that notifies you. People should be able to crowdsource feature requests, and devs would implement the most popular ones.
  - pcwalton 8y ago
    It's available on Mac via about:config, on nightly. (All caveats about pre-release software apply.) I've been using WebRender as my daily driver on Mac for months now.
notbeevil5 8y ago
Chromium is better than Firefox
artichokeheart 8y ago
> No, the argument "Chrome will be the new IE if you don't use Firefox" doesn't matter to most users But it should and advocates can make it matter to users, just like they did when Phoenix was the cure for the made for IE blues
MikusR 8y ago
As nobody responsible for that Mr. Robot thing got fired, I trust Mozilla about the same as Google/Microsoft.
- Yoric 8y ago
  So you don't trust people to learn from their mistakes without being fired first?
  - MikusR 8y ago
    There is a difference between a mistake and intentionally pushing malicious code using channels reserved for security updates.
PhasmaFelis 8y ago
> - Yes, Firefox removed the feature that was essential to your workflow, even though most users don't care. So did Chrome, to be fair.
sfink 8y ago
Wow. That is a surprisingly complete and useful summary of the usual discussion. Thank you.
jasonvorhe 8y ago
* No, Chrome isn't the next IE because it doesn't feature proprietary web features
- bad_user 8y ago
  That's weak reasoning. And wrong if you define proprietary as non-standard.
- Drakim 8y ago
  Chrome does have proprietary web features.
csdreamer7 8y ago
I have never been able to move over to Chrome. Chrome always synces my bookmarks out of place. My bookmarks are how I get things done and run on muscle memory. Because of this I have been a loyal FF user for decades. I tried Chrome again last year and bookmarks still sync out of order. It boggles my mind that Google never fixed this or just isn't a problem for people (do people care?). As an FF user for decades, esp on Linux, the experience was really poor before the Quantum upgrade. Yes, we lost a lot of plugins, but some of those plugins existed because of FF's legacy code and we are better for it being gone. FF now runs very smooth and uses so much less memory. I actually had Chrome use up all the memory on my 16 gig laptop... it was first for me since I use it so little. The one thing Chrome does really well is profiles. I have one profile for work, that reopens all pages that were last open. And other for personal viewing in which I don't care. FF's multi account is a plugin and... it's okay for managing multiple social media accounts from one domain, but not good for separating work and play.
- chucksmash 8y ago
  I think you're referring to Containers. If so, you can always fallback to separate Firefox profiles (run `firefox -p` to open the profiles menu iirc) if Containers aren't flexible enough for you. I've been a 95% happy Containers user since it was a Test Pilot experiment but there are certainly cases where it's not enough. In my case, not being able to use the mobile device emulator in a container tab was a big pain.
  - csdreamer7 8y ago
    Those are terrible compared to the easy profile switching that Chrome offers. Containers also don't keep the pages you lasted work on the last time I checked. (If they do please let me know.)
- mixmastamyk 8y ago
  > FF now runs very smooth and uses so much less memory. The big memory use fix went out a few years before quantum. Extensions like firebug were leaking memory.
ocdtrekkie 8y ago
Thank you for most of this, except: Chrome is the primary distribution method of malware, and we need to stop pretending it has better security. It doesn't. The Chrome Web Store is full of active, known-about malware Google does not remove.
Improvotter 8y ago
I'd use Firefox if I didn't have to enter my master password on MacOS every time I start the program. It integrates with keyrings on Linux, is it that hard to get it to work on MacOS which has more users? Also, does it work on Windows?
- accatyyc 8y ago
  Never had this problem. How did you install/how do you launch it? Does it require root access for some reason?
  - Improvotter 8y ago
    I'm talking about the master password of my Firefox vault or whatever it is called.
leibwiht 8y ago
you missed the part where they broke all my extensions which will apparently literally never be ported due to missing API functionality
- phs2501 8y ago
  I think that was covered in "- Yes, Firefox removed the feature that was essential to your workflow, even though most users don't care."
burtonator 8y ago
I can't articulate it but I just don't "like" Firefox. I used to be a huge fan of FF... I think with Chromium, at least for me, the browser has never changed. Every time I try to go back to FF it's different and I have to re-learn it. It might be better for them to clone the FF menu system so that you can switch to it without having to re-learn everything.
tomc1985 8y ago
"- No, you can't just "fork Chromium" if you don't like the way Google is running the project. Web developers will still make their website work well with whatever Google releases, regardless of standards." Hah, even compiling Chromium takes a huge amount of effort and a workday or so of time. Don't think I'd want to go spelunking through that codebase
- jolmg 8y ago
  I would imagine that compiling Firefox is just as difficult.
  - sometimesijust 8y ago
    Firefox is much easier and faster to compile but still complicated enough that you need to follow their build guide. Chromium is held back by Google's overzealous build systems that assume everything is built on a unified build server and permanently cached somewhere on their corporate network which results in actual build times being unoptimized.
  - cztomsik 8y ago
    Firefox is moving to rust, and for example adding webrender to your project is just few dependencies away, so I'd expect building firefox will only get easier, unlike to google projects where everything is built with their custom tool
TheKarateKid 8y ago
- Yes, Firefox's memory leaks are still pretty bad especially compared to Chrome. Quantum helped a lot though.
mito88 8y ago
yes, sir!
no-s 8y ago
lets not for get the political baggage of Mozilla: I would have liked to use firefox, but I'm boycotting it because of the awful smear of Brendan Eich supported and perpetuated by contributors to mozilla. A huge number of people would have to stand up and apologize for participating in that despicable mob action before I'd go back.
eric24234 8y ago
What the relation b/w Mozilla and Mr.Robot ? Could you please enlighten.

ekianjo 8y ago

> - Yes, Mozilla has made missteps with Pocket and Mr. Robot. and the removal of RSS support. So much for the champions of the Free Web!

xfitm3 8y ago
Is the misstep with Pocket including it in the browser?
- nindalf 8y ago
  Yes. I like Pocket, but I can't see why it shouldn't be an extension that can be removed.
  - Yoric 8y ago
    Intellectually, I agree, but - it actually doesn't hurt; - market research indicates that most people actually love it.
    - lagadu 8y ago
      Market research, in this particular case adoption rate, also indicates that people love giving all their privacy away to google.
      - Yoric 8y ago
        Good point. But Pocket isn't harmful, especially if you don't use it. In the worst case, it makes the Firefox installer a few kb larger, that's about it.
        Karunamon 8y ago
        The same could be said of the RSS support.
        Yoric 8y ago
        True. The big difference is that users use Pocket but didn't use RSS.
        Karunamon 8y ago
        Meaning the nontechnical set of users that don't go out of their way to disable telemetry, at least...
        dao- 8y ago
        If you disable telemetry, Mozilla won't know about you. If you want Mozilla to cater for you, don't disable telemetry?
        ekianjo 8y ago
        Telemetry should never be enabled by default without consent. Its a dark pattern.
        8y ago
Yoric 8y ago
It was removed because - pretty much nobody was using it; - it's pretty easy to reimplement as an extension. Championing the Free Web is harder if you also need to champion the dead web. edit "nobody" => "pretty much nobody"
- ekianjo 8y ago
  > - nobody was using it; You'll need a source for that, since most Wordpress sites which constitute a HUGE part of the web have pretty much by default rss feeds. It's not because you are not using it that nobody is. And even you premise was true (which is debatable), it cost absolutely nothing for Firefox to keep a functional RSS reader without putting much effort into it (or instead, you know, putting efforts in pushing ads to people who never wanted them).
  - Yoric 8y ago
    > You'll need a source for that, since most Wordpress sites which constitute a HUGE part of the web have pretty much by default rss feeds. It's not because you are not using it that nobody is. I'm not making it up. I don't remember the exact details – you'll have to look at the archives of the Mozilla dev-platform mailing list if you want them – but I seem to remember the usage was below 0.001% of users. I personally read RSS with Thunderbird, which is a much better experience anyway. > And even you premise was true (which is debatable), it cost absolutely nothing for Firefox to keep a functional RSS reader without putting much effort into it (or instead, you know, putting efforts in pushing ads to people who never wanted them). It actually does. Every piece of software that you need to maintain is a tax. Paying the tax makes sense if the code is useful, not if it isn't. Also, frankly, this implementation didn't bring anything to users. It wasn't nice to use. There are much better RSS readers than a browser – starting with RSS WebExtensions.
  - tapland 8y ago
    No. Not literally noone was using it. Just a colloquial 'noone' as in 'noone is using Firefox'. Additional features that the average user does not want to use or care about creates confusion and a feeling of bloat. An official extension would be nice though.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

TheKIngofBelAir 8y ago

> Yes, neither does Chrome (doesn't support dark mode on macOS) Yet, this will change though https://9to5google.com/2018/09/21/google-chrome-macos-dark-mode/ https://9to5google.com/2018/09/21/google-chrome-macos-dark-m...

bryanrasmussen 8y ago

Chrome has better security unless you want to keep yourself secure from prying by Google.

nindalf 8y ago
Updated to mention "malware"
ballooney 8y ago
Would someone who actually _knows_ the answer (I know this will not deter the HN-reckon but worth a try) be able to comment on if/why this security gap exists? Is it something fundamental to the different design choices, is it just which has had more test/resources thrown at it, and is the closing of the gap practical and/or on a roadmap?
- Yoric 8y ago
  The Chrome multiprocess isolation model is really good. Firefox devs have known this for ages (heck, there were demos of a version of Firefox 3.x with a similar model), but could not actually land this model for two reasons: - it would break all old-style extensions and users were unhappy about that; - it takes looooots of memory and users were unhappy about that, too. Now that Firefox has dropped all old-style extensions, there's large focus on reducing memory footprint, to allow moving to this model without costing as much memory as Chrome. There are still a few kinks to fix, but this new isolation model should hopefully land within a few months. Also, all sorts of security improvements are much easier now that Firefox dropped old-style extensions. Also, switching many developments to Rust makes new code much, much safer.
  - andrewl-hn 8y ago
    Also, Firefox isolates the browser UI and Web content into separate processes now. So that all the code you download from the internet doesn't run in the browser process. Same is with plugins.
  - Santosh83 8y ago

glogla 8y ago

> - Yes, it is slow/resource heavy on certain Macs with non-default resolutions. Yes, Mozilla is working on a fix. On some of them. I use Mac with non-default resolution and I have no issues.

nindalf 8y ago
Which is why I said "on certain Macs". From my anecdotal experience, I've never had a problem with Firefox on macOS with any resolution.
- zerkten 8y ago
  I have a problem in this area and it has prevented me from moving back to Firefox. If I run Firefox on my 13" MBPr with the panel resolution (Scaled->More Space) then the battery usage goes through the roof. I'm following https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042 and hope this issue gets fixed soon. It seems that Apple changes may have made this issue more apparent to users in general. I can obviously follow Bugzilla, but does Mozilla have anyone working this from more of a support angle and provide high-level updates on the top issues like this?

feanaro 8y ago

- Yes, Firefox does support Containers, which are a very innovative privacy feature allowing you to maintain separate browser sessions (cookies, site preferences, ...) towards different websites inside a single browser instance.[1][2] [1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/containers#w_what-are-containers https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/containers#w_what-are-c... [2] https://www.thechiefmeat.com/guides/containers.html https://www.thechiefmeat.com/guides/containers.html

nindalf 8y ago
Yes this is why > Mozilla is still the better browser when it comes to privacy
- feanaro 8y ago
  Indeed. There are many more reasons than one for why Firefox is better for privacy though, such as Chrome and even Chromium phoning home by default. Containers deserve a special mention in my opinion since it still isn't a widely known feature and is a very nice idea.
- squarefoot 8y ago
  Not just privacy. When Chrome came out it could literally spank Firefox' ass in speed; there was absolutely no contest then. But over time Chrome became bigger and bigger while the folks at Mozilla optimized FF code so that today the latest Firefox can outperform the latest Chrome while still being more trustworthy privacy wise. To me as of today there's not a single reason to use Chrome over Firefox, and users should also avoid using products requiring Chrome; just remember what became of the Internet when web developers started making sites that required IE to work.
vram22 8y ago
Interesting. I guess it may be possible to use it to be logged into and use different email accounts, e.g. foo@emailservice.com and bar@emailservice.com from the same browser instance. That would be helpful.
- 8y ago

EGreg 8y ago

No, you can't just "fork Chromium" if you don't like the way Google is running the project What, why not? Beaker and others did exactly this.

calcifer 8y ago
Because even if you could keep up with the changes (you won't), your fork still won't mean anything for the open web or standards because nobody will care about your total market share of exactly 3 users.
- tree_of_item 8y ago
  Microsoft would be the one forking Chromium in this case, so I really don't think that's true. Microsoft is more than capable of doing it.
  - calcifer 8y ago
    The whole reason Microsoft gave up on their own engine is because no one was using it, not even inside the company. Why would Edge suddenly become popular just because of a rendering engine change?
    - TAForObvReasons 8y ago
      ... because it is the default on Windows? The marketing effort of Chrome can be chipped away if "they are basically the same", which is a fair comment now that Edge is basically a glorified fork of Chromium
      - calcifer 8y ago
        > because it is the default on Windows? Which clearly didn't mean anything [1] for increasing market share. [1] https://ferdychristant.com/the-state-of-web-browsers-f5a83a41c1cb#b7aa https://ferdychristant.com/the-state-of-web-browsers-f5a83a4...

weinzierl 8y ago

> - Yes, Mozilla has made missteps with Pocket and Mr. Robot. These are forgivable in my opinion. At least this steps are somehow understandable. What I‘m really miffed about is their partnership with Cliqz. If Google is the devil then Cliqz is Beelzebub. I don‘t understand what they were thinking...

mparramon 8y ago
can you elaborate?
- vrazj 8y ago
  For some time last year, the Mozilla Corporation made it so a fraction of Firefox users got their entire browsing activity siphoned to a third party company, Cliqz, so they could bundle ads in the browser: https://blog.mozilla.org/press-uk/2017/10/06/testing-cliqz-in-firefox/ https://blog.mozilla.org/press-uk/2017/10/06/testing-cliqz-i...
- weinzierl 8y ago
  Cliqz is a company that primarily provides a Firefox based browser with privacy-oriented changes. Their slogan is „The no-compromise browser. Cliqz gives you relevant search results and does not leak your private data.” Sounds good on the surface, but what they really mean with „does not leak” is leak to Google. The Cliqz browser sends every keystroke in real-time to some supposedly Cliqz owned AWS instances. I verified that myself with Wireshark. They outright lie about this in their Transparency Cockpit: ”Telemetry data do not contain any information about queries, search results or visited URLs.” Now Cliqz is owned by Hubert Burda Media one of Germany‘s largest media groups. Honi soit quit mal y pense. I wrote a comment about this about a year ago[1] and also one about their relationship with Ghostery[2] more recently. Hubert Burda Media is also one of the primary drivers behind EU link tax and upload filter legislation. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15427992#15428104 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15427992#15428104 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17159497#17161135 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17159497#17161135
  - 8y ago

aceshades 8y ago

What was the misstep with Pocket? I've been loving it since I discovered it thru Firefox.

vrazj 8y ago
That's cool. And? I use a lot of addons. Should they all be bundled because many people happen to love them too?
- AsyncAwait 8y ago
  To be fair, Mozilla now owns Pocket. It's not just some random extension. Chrome comes preinstalled with YouTube, Gmail etc. too. It's a bit of cross-property promotion and to be fair, Pocket is indeed quite useful.
  - peteretep 8y ago
    > To be fair, Mozilla now owns Pocket. It's not just some random extension. My understanding is that at the time it was foist in users it was very much just some random extension, tho
    - AsyncAwait 8y ago
      They did not own it from the start, but they did have a special privacy agreement with Pocket regarding user data. Also, the acquisition was a result of user feedback, something Google would likely ignore.
  - Shorel 8y ago
    If you own a Kobo, it is even more useful. In fact, I switched to Firefox because of the pocket integration, not the other way around.
AsyncAwait 8y ago
It's just some people don't like it's bundled in by default. Seems really as a non-issue, especially since now Mozilla owns the service.

me551ah 8y ago

You missed Webrender. I switched over the firefox a month ago from chrome. While I had tried doing that a few times over the past few years, i came back to chrome because honestly there was not much difference and chrome just feels like home. This time around I had switched to try out a new tech called 'webrender'. Webrender takes a completely different approach to rendering and compositing, instead of maintainting layers and repainting certain sections it renders and paints content like a game engine. Chrome can get jerky on a 4k monitor with lots of tabs open, but not firefox . With webrender everything is silky smooth. It's so good that I used hacks to also enable it on my intel laptop ( webrender is currently not supported on integrated graphics by default ) and the result is a browser which feels and works smoother than anything that I have experienced before. Everytime I open chrome now it just feels laggy and slow in comparison.

nindalf 8y ago
Webrender is exactly what I was thinking of when I said > [Firefox] ... likely will continue to get better.
MrBuddyCasino 8y ago
Not yet available on Mac it seems.
- samat 8y ago
  I wonder if it is possible to subscribe to something to get an update once it's available in any form on Mac?
  - MrBuddyCasino 8y ago
    There should be a FeatureAlert service that notifies you. People should be able to crowdsource feature requests, and devs would implement the most popular ones.
- pcwalton 8y ago
  It's available on Mac via about:config, on nightly. (All caveats about pre-release software apply.) I've been using WebRender as my daily driver on Mac for months now.

notbeevil5 8y ago

Chromium is better than Firefox

artichokeheart 8y ago

> No, the argument "Chrome will be the new IE if you don't use Firefox" doesn't matter to most users But it should and advocates can make it matter to users, just like they did when Phoenix was the cure for the made for IE blues

MikusR 8y ago

As nobody responsible for that Mr. Robot thing got fired, I trust Mozilla about the same as Google/Microsoft.

Yoric 8y ago
So you don't trust people to learn from their mistakes without being fired first?
- MikusR 8y ago
  There is a difference between a mistake and intentionally pushing malicious code using channels reserved for security updates.

PhasmaFelis 8y ago

> - Yes, Firefox removed the feature that was essential to your workflow, even though most users don't care. So did Chrome, to be fair.

sfink 8y ago

Wow. That is a surprisingly complete and useful summary of the usual discussion. Thank you.

jasonvorhe 8y ago

* No, Chrome isn't the next IE because it doesn't feature proprietary web features

bad_user 8y ago
That's weak reasoning. And wrong if you define proprietary as non-standard.
Drakim 8y ago
Chrome does have proprietary web features.

csdreamer7 8y ago

I have never been able to move over to Chrome. Chrome always synces my bookmarks out of place. My bookmarks are how I get things done and run on muscle memory. Because of this I have been a loyal FF user for decades. I tried Chrome again last year and bookmarks still sync out of order. It boggles my mind that Google never fixed this or just isn't a problem for people (do people care?). As an FF user for decades, esp on Linux, the experience was really poor before the Quantum upgrade. Yes, we lost a lot of plugins, but some of those plugins existed because of FF's legacy code and we are better for it being gone. FF now runs very smooth and uses so much less memory. I actually had Chrome use up all the memory on my 16 gig laptop... it was first for me since I use it so little. The one thing Chrome does really well is profiles. I have one profile for work, that reopens all pages that were last open. And other for personal viewing in which I don't care. FF's multi account is a plugin and... it's okay for managing multiple social media accounts from one domain, but not good for separating work and play.

chucksmash 8y ago
I think you're referring to Containers. If so, you can always fallback to separate Firefox profiles (run `firefox -p` to open the profiles menu iirc) if Containers aren't flexible enough for you. I've been a 95% happy Containers user since it was a Test Pilot experiment but there are certainly cases where it's not enough. In my case, not being able to use the mobile device emulator in a container tab was a big pain.
- csdreamer7 8y ago
  Those are terrible compared to the easy profile switching that Chrome offers. Containers also don't keep the pages you lasted work on the last time I checked. (If they do please let me know.)
mixmastamyk 8y ago
> FF now runs very smooth and uses so much less memory. The big memory use fix went out a few years before quantum. Extensions like firebug were leaking memory.

ocdtrekkie 8y ago

Thank you for most of this, except: Chrome is the primary distribution method of malware, and we need to stop pretending it has better security. It doesn't. The Chrome Web Store is full of active, known-about malware Google does not remove.

Improvotter 8y ago

I'd use Firefox if I didn't have to enter my master password on MacOS every time I start the program. It integrates with keyrings on Linux, is it that hard to get it to work on MacOS which has more users? Also, does it work on Windows?

accatyyc 8y ago
Never had this problem. How did you install/how do you launch it? Does it require root access for some reason?
- Improvotter 8y ago
  I'm talking about the master password of my Firefox vault or whatever it is called.

leibwiht 8y ago

you missed the part where they broke all my extensions which will apparently literally never be ported due to missing API functionality

phs2501 8y ago
I think that was covered in "- Yes, Firefox removed the feature that was essential to your workflow, even though most users don't care."

burtonator 8y ago

I can't articulate it but I just don't "like" Firefox. I used to be a huge fan of FF... I think with Chromium, at least for me, the browser has never changed. Every time I try to go back to FF it's different and I have to re-learn it. It might be better for them to clone the FF menu system so that you can switch to it without having to re-learn everything.

tomc1985 8y ago

"- No, you can't just "fork Chromium" if you don't like the way Google is running the project. Web developers will still make their website work well with whatever Google releases, regardless of standards." Hah, even compiling Chromium takes a huge amount of effort and a workday or so of time. Don't think I'd want to go spelunking through that codebase

jolmg 8y ago
I would imagine that compiling Firefox is just as difficult.
- sometimesijust 8y ago
  Firefox is much easier and faster to compile but still complicated enough that you need to follow their build guide. Chromium is held back by Google's overzealous build systems that assume everything is built on a unified build server and permanently cached somewhere on their corporate network which results in actual build times being unoptimized.
- cztomsik 8y ago
  Firefox is moving to rust, and for example adding webrender to your project is just few dependencies away, so I'd expect building firefox will only get easier, unlike to google projects where everything is built with their custom tool

TheKarateKid 8y ago

- Yes, Firefox's memory leaks are still pretty bad especially compared to Chrome. Quantum helped a lot though.

mito88 8y ago

yes, sir!

no-s 8y ago

lets not for get the political baggage of Mozilla: I would have liked to use firefox, but I'm boycotting it because of the awful smear of Brendan Eich supported and perpetuated by contributors to mozilla. A huge number of people would have to stand up and apologize for participating in that despicable mob action before I'd go back.

eric24234 8y ago

What the relation b/w Mozilla and Mr.Robot ? Could you please enlighten.