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Honest question - why do people use Chrome? It’s from an arguably as-evil company as Facebook. Alternatives exist. What’s the draw?
by crushcrashcrush 8y ago
Honest question - why do people use Chrome? It’s from an arguably as-evil company as Facebook. Alternatives exist. What’s the draw?
- josefresco 8y agoI use it because my clients use it, and their customers use it, which means my client's website has to look and work perfectly in it. I also use Firefox on my second monitor, because it's my preferred browser.
- saagarjha 8y agoIt's simple, familiar, and works on all their devices?
- JohnJamesRambo 8y agoI used it because it was fast, now I use Brave and it is fast and private.
- crispyporkbites 8y agoHow do you know if someone uses Brave? ... They'll tell you!
- bepvte 8y agoActually, you can tell because of the referrer http headers brave injects for websites that pay brave
- lapnitnelav 8y agoWhat do you mean by websites that pay Brave? Isn't that supposed to be the other way around? -- That's a serious question btw.
- freeopinion 8y agoAnd still vulnerable to this?
- LinuxBender 8y agoBrave is based on Chromium and has a recent update.
- ryacko 8y agoThese faster release cycles haven’t been around since sandboxing was implemented but it feels strange when browsers are allowing known security holes to be around. It doesn’t seem like they are trying to patch many other bugs.
- TACIXAT 8y agoA lot of people have Google / Gmail accounts, with which it integrates very well. Also, most people don't care about ads/tracking, as evidenced by the massive number of people who still have Facebook accounts. It is a leader in web standards and features (e.g. PWAs). In my industry, it is a very secure solution (despite the vulnerability disclosed here), so it gets chosen for that reason. I personally prefer Vivaldi (which uses Chromium), but I do choose Chrome over Firefox. I'm not sure if it's the UI or what, but it has never really stuck for me. The thing that would get me to move away from Chrome is if they broke the API for ad blockers.
- ladzoppelin 8y agoI think they already did or its coming in an update, I think. Also, Good luck trying to block auto-play videos in Chrome.
- tcbasche 8y agoI gave Firefox an honest go, but some web apps just don't work 100% in it. Chrome does not have this issue. Most of us drive cars filled with fuel from evil oil companies, why do we all drive cars?
- moreira 8y agoThat compatibility with different browsers is a big enough issue in 2019 to stop you from using Firefox is just a sad reminder of how far we’ve fallen. Used to be that we actually cared about stuff being usable across browsers, after what we experienced during IE’s dominance. It’s also a testament to Chrome’s dominance -now-.
- Doctor_Fegg 8y ago> why do we all drive cars? ...we don't?
- lghh 8y ago>90% of us do, or at least that's what I'd reasonably guess.
- NeoBasilisk 8y agoIs the stuff not working in Firefox due to lazy devs too young to remember IE6?
- Jach 8y agoIt's partly that, but it's also partly that the pace at which new standards of useful things get implemented (pre-ratification and post ratification) entails patchy support plus differing implementation decisions from under-specified standards. My favorite example area right now is all the fun that is CSP. Firefox supports the SecurityPolicyViolation Event, which is useful so that you can let non-power users know about CSP issues without having to open the console, except it's gated by a setting in about:config that is off by default. Additionally for CSP's report-uri endpoint, Firefox won't send up any cookies with a request to that endpoint (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1506992 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1506992) which sucks if the endpoint relied on authentication that way. Chrome just works, meanwhile, on both of these issues. (Of course personally, if something doesn't work in Firefox, then I just don't use that something, or if I really need to (e.g. test business feature), I use chromium for just that one thing.)
- seppin 8y agoextensions. also it was faster a while back, now it's about the same.
- roywiggins 8y agoThe Firefox Quantum update didn't work on my work machine; I had the choice of either using the LTS version or switch to Chrome, and I ended up switching to Chrome.
- tapoxi 8y agoIt has a better security track record than its competitors, and its faster too.
- PascLeRasc 8y agoI'd like to switch to Firefox but font rendering, especially in PDFs, is so much nicer on Chrome/chromium in my opinion.
- mda 8y agoIt is fast, responsive, has much better security history and architecture than all others, super convenient if you have multiple computers. I have absolutely no problems with Chrome, I already trusted my information with Google, so I always stay signed in as well, never had any issues.
- qrbLPHiKpiux 8y agoCaveat: if something’s “free,” you’re the product. Google wants to pull as much metadata from you as possible. I don’t trust anyone who gives me something for free. I therefore limit how I use it.
- vortico 8y agoWhat browser do you use then?
- core-questions 8y agoArachne for DOS
- qrbLPHiKpiux 8y agoFirefox primary on MacOS and windows. Chrome only for work related tasks. Firefox or Safari on iOS, depending what I’m doing. Firefox in Debian. You can donate to Firefox. Not to chrome.
- mda 8y agoI made my choices carefully and consciously. As I said, I entrusted Google with my data, my emails, pictures, history. I know that my data is never sold to anyone and always kept secure. Google is probably one of the most careful companies when dealing with private data in the world. I can delete or take a copy of it if I want as well. Needless to say, I disagree with the "you are the product" polemic.
- dexen 8y ago>Google is probably one of the most careful companies when dealing with private data >private data Ah, the fabled "metadata is not data" defense. Sadly, given the scale and pervasiveness of Google, observing meta-data and cross-referencing your activity with others' activities is good enough to deduce most of the valuable information about you with reasonably good reliability. And this data, both by itself, and also aggregated with other users', is "good enough" for any privacy-busting use. tl;dr: you are the meta-product.
- arisAlexis 8y agoI am switching to Brave when sync between devices rolls out
- kodablah 8y agoEasily embeddable.
- staticassertion 8y agoSince its inception I am aware of a single (this situation) case of an ITW exploit. So, that's why.
- city41 8y agoI have made several attempts to switch to Firefox. But for me at least Firefox seems to crash about once a day. I don't think Chrome has ever crashed on me in about a decade of using it, and crashed tabs are extremely rare.
- busterarm 8y agoI run Firefox on Arch Linux and OpenBSD with zero crashes. Hundreds of tabs open at once. Consider that it's possibly the fault of who packaged Firefox and not Firefox itself.
- einr 8y agoI've been using Firefox exclusively ever since it was Firebird 0.7, every day, on scores of computers using Linux and BSD and Windows from 95 to 10, and I just don't remember it ever really crashing. I'm sure it's happened at some point, but it's rare enough that I can't recall a single instance. But I've never used it on macOS, so I'm guessing that's what you're doing. I hear the Mac port is worse than the others in terms of stability and performance. If true, that's a pity, but Firefox really is rock solid on other platforms.
- floatboth 8y agoBecause Google (even just search and mail) is extremely popular, and they ran a relentless advertising campaign, persistently telling everyone to install Chrome, right on the front page among other places.
- latexr 8y agoI’d like to use Firefox, but their lack of AppleScript supports makes that unfeasible. I could get past its atrocious performance, but not past a missing feature I require multiple times a day. I don’t use Safari because it lacks other features. I can’t disable JavaScript on a per-site basis, and the content blockers are a joke compared to uBlock Origin. Most other browsers are Chromium based, so might as well use Chrome.
- why_only_15 8y agoWhat do you do that requires AppleScript support?
- latexr 8y agoI need the title and URL of the frontmost tab, as well as to send JavaScript to the page. Amongst other things, these are invaluable in dealing with the barrage of daily issues and PRs on Github.
- postalrat 8y agoChrome DevTools is so good.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- justanotherjoe 8y agoi've tried firefox, and chrome is simply faster in what i've experienced. I've tried the newer firefox too. Having my privacy stolen? The moment they do something malicious with the data they have, they are dead. I trust them with my data because I know how the world works. Facebook is so much more dangerous as far as privacy is concerned
- C4stor 8y agoAt work, too many websites for professional use are only working on Chrome, so I need to have it. Curiously enough, at home I have no problems with firefox, so I guess B2C devs are more conscious than B2B ones !