20 ms·

Is Firefox better than Chrome? It comes down to privacy

421 points by donohoe 7y ago

ForHackernews 7y ago
An exception to Betteridge's Law of Headlines?
- charliesharding 7y ago
  I suspect the downvotes are for those who think it really can be answered with a simple no. Or perhaps because it doesn't end in a question mark.. On topic though I recently tried switching to FF and was surprised at how much slower pages were loading. Has anyone else experienced this? Is this just a matter of caching?
  - pessimizer 7y ago
    The downvotes are just for mentioning "Betteridge's Law of Headlines." 8-10 years ago on every headline that was phrased as a question, it was like every 3rd comment. It adds nothing, and I still reflexively downvote it without any particular malice. A) Everybody has heard of it (or can hear about it from somewhere else), B) nobody cares if a particular headline comports with it, because C) it's not a law, just a funny observation somebody made once that definitely doesn't hold anymore because headline writers are familiar with it, too.
  - rossdavidh 7y ago
    I've actually had the opposite experience recently, but it was a page I developed myself using FF as my primary browser, and when I switched to Chrome discovered it was very slow (>10s vs. <1s in FF). I expect it depends mostly on what the developer is targeting. As Chrome approaches monoculture status similar to IE in the 90's, devs are more and more paying attention only to it.
  - abstractbarista 7y ago
    Yea stuff is always loading a bit slower on FF versus Chrome, both on my phone and actual computers. Regardless, I only use FF. It's worth it if only for the ad-blocking extensions on mobile.
- GuB-42 7y ago
  I call Betteridge's law on your comment ;) Betteridge's law doesn't apply here because it answers the question: it comes down to privacy. But even if it did, then Bettridge's law would apply. If you read the article, you will see that he doesn't say that Firefox is flat out better than Chrome. If fact, he even gives the performance advantage to Chrome and says that there are ways of "defanging" Chrome when it comes to privacy. Really, the point of the article is not a technical comparison of browsers, but rather a statement of the importance of Firefox when it comes to privacy. And the value of not using a browser made by an adtech company.
rasengan 7y ago
I was shocked when I reviewed the Firefox repo. Firefox has a ton of telemetry code. Edit: to the downvoters - why would you downvote a true statement. Have you read the code?
- m463 7y ago
  At first I used all the about:config settings, but then I ended up blocking mozilla.org outgoing. As to ff vs chrome, what I figure is: I'd rather have poorly funded code defending my privacy than well-funded code defeating my privacy.
- napo 7y ago
  The downvotes seems a bit unfair. I think this is a good comment. Any chance you could give more info on which metrics they're looking at though? Because if it's mainly CPU usage and the like it doesn't seem to be a big concern.
  - bzbarsky 7y ago
    If you load about:telemetry in Firefox, it will tell you what information is being collected, link to various documentation, etc. It also tells you whether telemetry is actually enabled right now or not, and links to the preference section where you can enable/disable telemetry. The set of telemetry collected by default depends on the build channel: release builds collect much less data than nightly or beta. You can also see exactly what data Firefox engineers can see at https://telemetry.mozilla.org/ https://telemetry.mozilla.org/ -- there is no special behind-a-login view for this stuff that I know of. Disclaimer: I work on Firefox.
    - rasengan 7y ago
      The problem is there are more lines of telemetry than most projects have code. You should probably have it audited - or better yet - just remove the telemetry.
      - threwawasy1228 7y ago
jtreminio 7y ago
Firefox has weird font rendering issues (tested on Fedora 30). Fonts that look perfect on Chrome look like they bleed on Firefox. Firefox's containers is also a poor man's version of Chrome profiles. I want completely separate _everything_. Firefox's Profiles is similar, but then you get warnings about Firefox already running when you click a link in a non-Firefox program. These things are deal breakers for me.
- OrgNet 7y ago
  Do you have an example URL? I don't have an 8k or 4k display but I have never seen that
  - jtreminio 7y ago
    I complained about it here, with a screenshot: https://twitter.com/juantreminio/status/1137563286319316992 https://twitter.com/juantreminio/status/1137563286319316992
    - jamienicol 7y ago
      Are you running Firefox Nightly? If so do you have webrender enabled? If you check about:support it should tell you.
      - jtreminio 7y ago
        Firefox that comes packaged in Fedora. No config changes made. I believe it's the Roboto font at small sizes that causes issues on Firefox.
- eclipseo76 7y ago
  > Firefox's Profiles is similar, but then you get warnings about Firefox already running when you click a link in a non-Firefox program. Use about:profiles to launch a process with another profile I don't have any issue with fonts in F30, do you have a picture illustrating the issue? https://imgpile.com/i/1JyqT1 https://imgpile.com/i/1JyqT1 Roboto font at 14pt, 115 dpi, default antialiasing in Plasma
user17843 7y ago
The article has it wrong with Safari. While ITP (Intelligent Tracking Protection) started in 2017 indeed, Safari has been blocking all third party (and thus all tracking) cookies since almost forever. Safari started to block all third party cookies in 2003 with the release of Safari version 1. [1] Not only that, Safari also started to partition web cache in 2013, and it's still the only browser with such partitioning. [2] Without it, tracking doesnt even need cookies. "If you only block cookies, you still have all the other storage and stateful things to worry about." - Safari ITP engineer John Wilander [3] Also the spin of the article is slightly dishonest, simply turning off third-party cookies in Chrome achieves to negate most of the explicit criticism in the article. The author probably had the conclusion of the article in mind (setting up good Firefox against evil Chrome) before looking for supporting arguments. It's a bit ironic. While mainstream media starts to discover the existence of third-party cookies, which had been a known issue for around 20 years, Big Tech tracking has already moved to first-party tracking, fingerpringing and cache tracking. For example, Facebook switched to first-party cookie tracking in 2018. [4] Everyone who wants to understand the dynamic needs to look into the relationship between Apple and ad tech, with Apple's recent counter-move being the addition of ITP 2.2. [5] Since the release of ITP 2.1, even first-party cookies now are limited to 7 days, and all first-party cookies that are even potentially tracking cookies get deleted after already 1 day. [6] Firefox doesn't play much of a role in this fight. In fact, Firefox never did anything pro-actively to make ad-tech sweat. The decision by Mozilla to block all third-party cookies in 2013 [7] was reverted in fear of Ad-Tech. Mozilla is better at marketing than with the technology, and still hasn't enabled tracking-protection except for new users. [1] https://twitter.com/brendaneich/status/982631777574338561 https://twitter.com/brendaneich/status/982631777574338561 [2] https://twitter.com/johnwilander/status/1126191449161158657 https://twitter.com/johnwilander/status/1126191449161158657 [3] https://twitter.com/johnwilander/status/1126208457214836736 https://twitter.com/johnwilander/status/1126208457214836736 [4] https://www.adweek.com/programmatic/the-facebook-pixel-will-add-a-first-party-cookie-option/ https://www.adweek.com/programmatic/the-facebook-pixel-will-... [5] https://webkit.org/blog/8828/intelligent-tracking-prevention-2-2/ https://webkit.org/blog/8828/intelligent-tracking-prevention... [6] https://webkit.org/blog/8613/intelligent-tracking-prevention-2-1/ https://webkit.org/blog/8613/intelligent-tracking-prevention... [7] https://blog.mozilla.org/netpolicy/2013/02/25/firefox-getting-smarter-about-third-party-cookies/ https://blog.mozilla.org/netpolicy/2013/02/25/firefox-gettin...
stirfrykitty 7y ago
I really at a loss why decent browsers for "techies" cannot be better. I really like uzbl-tabbed even though it's fairly primitive and the code is getting older. All I need in a browser is the ability to browse (tabbed) while blocking ads. Browsers anymore have become walled gardens what with their add-on web stores, garbage like Pocket, sync, etc. I don't want any of that. Browsers could all be more like the old-school Konqueror, in the sense that one could import ad block lists at will without resorting to visiting store. No telemetry. No built in search for a certain search engine.
- tomxor 7y ago
  Bit of a digression but check out qutebrowser, it uses a chromium derived library under the hood, it has a VIM like interface. And it's engine isn't massively insecurely out of date like uzbl and co. However this has little to do with the discussion, I don't think qutebrowser does anything to stop fingerprinting and tracking like FireFox.
  - stirfrykitty 7y ago
    Good info; thank you. I'll check it out.
- catacombs 7y ago
  > All I need in a browser is the ability to browse (tabbed) while blocking ads. You can do this in Firefox, with several great ad-blocking extensions, such as uBlock Origin or Adnsaueum. > Browsers anymore have become walled gardens what with their add-on web stores, garbage like Pocket, sync, etc. I don't want any of that. Browsers could all be more like the old-school Konqueror, in the sense that one could import ad block lists at will without resorting to visiting store. Firefox allows you to remove what you don't need, especially Pocket. Sync is optional. > No telemetry. No built in search for a certain search engine. There are specific Firefox configurations that disable telemetry: https://github.com/CrisBRM/user.js/blob/master/user.js https://github.com/CrisBRM/user.js/blob/master/user.js
  - deleted 7y ago
Slashbot 7y ago
The better question are either of these basic junk browsers better than Vivaldi(which uses chromiumm, and has far better built in features, most of which you can't even get as shitty web extensions) Firefox no serves its purpose, it has zero addons that are exclusive to it (most of which made it far better pre quantum garbage) ... it devtools aren't beetter than chrome... it does nothing better because it's jhust a chrome clone in all but its backend code... which has ceased to be any of value to any third party developer wanting to make the default experience not shit.. Mozilla are clueless, Google well they don't give a fuck because they have a stranglehold on the normie noobs who don't know any better for a ux workflow in a browser etc or can't be bothered to try anything else. So no Firefox isn't any better, in anything really
- 908087 7y ago
  Your post history tells me Vivaldi should really reconsider hiring 14 year olds to shill for them.
- stirfrykitty 7y ago
  Not to mention they are far too involved in politics, which tech companies should not be, at least not overtly. I realize I'm likely in the minority here, but I grow weary of tech companies thinking they need to overtly champion causes, many of which I vociferously disagree with. If you make widgets, make them. Don't get involved in politics and then use your company to champion your beliefs, because this tends to alienate people.
  - jamienicol 7y ago
    Mozilla's purpose is political. We don't just make widgets for the sake of it nor to make money.
sciurus 7y ago
I'm glad the author recognizes the danger of trackers and the value of Firefox blocking them. Unfortunately, the rest of the Washington Post hasn't gotten the message. When I try to read the article just get a message that I have to disable tracking protection first. https://pasteboard.co/Ikt16xy.png https://pasteboard.co/Ikt16xy.png https://www.washingtonpost.com/steps-for-disabling-firefoxs-native-adblocker/2018/05/21/fb95bf4e-5d37-11e8-b2b8-08a538d9dbd6_story.html?utm_term=.b9a04242a46f https://www.washingtonpost.com/steps-for-disabling-firefoxs-...
- 98codes 7y ago
  I disabled Ghostery and (ironically) Firefox tracker protection, and I still got that same message. If you subscribe, they still want to throw ads and trackers at you unless you pay the higher tier fee, at double the cost. The hypocracy is thick; they're not wrong about Chrome though.
- thom 7y ago
  Heh, you can't even use it in Europe with paying for them to respect the GDPR.
- abstractbarista 7y ago
  I just disable JS any time a site does this to me. It forces them to either renege on their threats and send me the HTML, or I just leave and never come back because there's nothing to see.
  - satysin 7y ago
    Speaking of disabling JS. I wish Firefox had the same simple per site JS toggle like Chrome has it the Site settings area. I can't find a way to disable JS per site without using an extension such as uBlock Origin. Firefox has some site policy settings but I never got them to work not to mention they are a pain to manage even if they did work. I would like a simple enable/disable toggle as part of the site permissions interface they have when you click on the (i) next to the address.
- catacombs 7y ago
robertAngst 7y ago
This strong push for 'privacy' is going to have a strong pushback. There may be some users here who need privacy, or some users who think privacy is necessary to keep whistleblowers safe. The majority of users want fantastic service. Privacy is niche, and not needed for everyone. We already have solutions, and have users pay for a dummy accounts.
- jxdxbx 7y ago
  Fantastic service does not require giving up your privacy. There are privacy-protecting ways to do personalization, gather data for machine learning, and so on. Even advertising business models do not require that people give up their privacy.
  - blotter_paper 7y ago
    I think we'd be silly to not recognise that there are some tradeoffs between privacy and UX. Facebook tracks your cursor for a reason, they're analysing what users do and changing the UX based on it. I can imagine wanting to look at this data using any number of filters for a/s/l/etc., and once you're cataloging enough criteria tying a session to a specific user can be done as an afterthought. I think GP is correct about most users valuing UX over privacy, unfortunately.
    - jxdxbx 7y ago
      But this data can be collected with differential privacy, some learning can be done on-device, etc etc. There are ways to get the best of both worlds, but they require more careful engineering.
      - robertAngst 7y ago
        I don't know what to learn from these ideas. This user speaks of Utopia where there is infinite engineering resources and endless profit to dig into. Maybe I suck at business, but making profit is very hard.
      - 7y ago
beenBoutIT 7y ago
It comes down to ignoring Firefox's inferior UI/UX and blindly buying into Firefox marketing. Seeing as how the internet is actually a shitload of poorly organized data it's unclear what advantage Mozilla gains by not being in the 'data collection business'. "Firefox isn’t perfect — it still defaults searches to Google and permits some other tracking. But it doesn’t share browsing data with Mozilla, which isn’t in the data-collection business." Needlessly relearning things to avoid collecting them doesn't make any part of browsing faster or more efficient.
- jxdxbx 7y ago
  Firefox is a much better designed app than Chrome, which never looks or acts like normal apps. It has even intercepted cmd-q now which is super annoying. Which browser works better or is faster, I have no idea, though I've never run into problems with Firefox.
  - babuskov 7y ago
    > It has even intercepted cmd-q now which is super annoying. I can understand reasoning behind that. I had to install a Firefox extension that disables cmd-q on macOS because I had closed the whole browser many times by accident (while trying to quickly hit cmd-w). You can still use cmd-q but you have to press it twice in a very short time. Maybe Chrome could do the same.
    - TechieKid 7y ago
      Firefox uses Ctrl+Shift+Q to quit the entire browser now on Windows and Linux based platforms, presumably because of that reason. You might not need that Firefox extension anymore.
  - jhasse 7y ago
    > It has even intercepted cmd-q now which is super annoying. You can disable that in the "Chrome" menu.
- driverdan 7y ago
catacombs 7y ago
> After the sign-in shift, Johns Hopkins associate professor Matthew Green made waves in the computer science world when he blogged he was done with Chrome. “I lost faith,” he told me. “It only takes a few tiny changes to make it very privacy unfriendly.” I read this and literally thought, "who?"
- leevlad 7y ago
  He's fairly active and popular on Twitter, and is opinionated about cryptography, blockchain, etc. https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green
  - techntoke 7y ago
    Did he ever say why he lost faith? Cause at least Chromium has hardware acceleration for video decoding on Linux. The story about ablock extensions being blocked was completely false.
    - kevincrane 7y ago
      Yeah, he wrote a whole blog post about it. https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2018/09/23/why-im-leaving-chrome/ https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2018/09/23/why-im-l...
      - techntoke 7y ago
        OMG, that is so easy to disable. He might as well be complaining about Firefox Sync.
    - goatsi 7y ago
      >The story about ablock extensions being blocked was completely false. What about it was false? Developers made it clear that the changes would neuter many ad blocking extensions, and Google actually backtracked due to the outrage (to a position that still prevents effective ad blocking).
WalterSear 7y ago
I've been trying to switch over to Firefox for the last few weeks. The experience hasn't been great, but most of the issues I'm willing to live with. However, even after disabling all extensions, it still pegs my cpus and freezes my machine, several times a day. I'm planning on moving back to chrome this weekend. No amount of privacy can make up for the disruption.
- barrkel 7y ago
  This is not normal behaviour. I've never had Firefox do that, even with a whole bunch of extensions, on Windows, Linux or Mac, over the past 10+ years. It did used to run out of memory for images, and the UI of Firefox (and just Firefox) would sometimes pause, but those issues are a couple of years back now. I'd dig deeper. There's something odd in your machine configuration.
  - sinsterizme 7y ago
    This is simply not true. It seems like a common problem. Chrome just seems more optimized and works flawlessly on a wider range of devices. Waving away individual issues is not the right solution
    - pojzon 7y ago
      A quick search on google search history trends show this statement: "It seems like a common problem" is "simply not true". Searching for firefox and freeze decreased significantly over the years. In current iteration I would say it's way more probable that the person who started this chain has an overall issue with PC performance outside of firefox. 1. https://trends.google.pl/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=Firefox%20freeze https://trends.google.pl/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=F...
    - joedevon 7y ago
      I have a lot more problems with Chrome than Firefox in the last year or two. FWIW.
    - AsyncAwait 7y ago
rileyt 7y ago
Isn't Chrome just as private as Safari or Firefox with the right extensions to block tracking and other common issues? I understand that most people won't know which extensions to install or how to install them, but for tech savvy people, isn't Chrome with Privacy Badger and HTTPS Only just as private as Firefox, with a much better overall browsing experience?
- jgalt212 7y ago
  > with a much better overall browsing experience That's a bit of stretch given recent Firefox versions. One can argue about the gap, but such a gap, is pretty small these days between FF and Chrome.
- sfotm 7y ago
  Not if you're trying to block Google as well, but for all other parties it probably is.
  - rileyt 7y ago
    This is even more in the weeds, but if you turn off sync, google services, page preloading and use a non-google default search engine, what's left for them to track?
    - vitorgrs 7y ago
      Just run chromium then lol
- damnyou 7y ago
  To a first approximation, defaults are the only thing that matter.
boybd 7y ago
That's true, it comes down to privacy. Firefox sent the full URL history of some users to a third party, an advertising company: 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... Take this into account if you're considering moving to Firefox to get more "privacy".
- SomeOldThrow 7y ago
  So... you use lynx?
- Yoric 7y ago
  Not a big fan of that choice, but isn't Cliqz is a privacy-oriented search engine, rather than an advertising company?
futureastronaut 7y ago
It also has a working location bar that doesn't forget my history from a day ago. And a functional history that indexes on more than component prefixes (thanks Chrome).
- ndesaulniers 7y ago
  Yeah, I feel like when I type `h` in chrome's url bar, I always want hacker news. In Firefox it's always the first result for me, but I feel like with chrome it never is. Does anyone else observe this or am I holding it wrong?
  - StavrosK 7y ago
    It's always worked for me when I typed "n", but I haven't used Chrome in years.
    - apeace 7y ago
      It seems to me like if you visit a URL about three times, then any time you type a fragment of that URL it assumes that's what you want. This happens to me at work all the time. When I'm working I'll visit localhost:8080/feature/abc over and over, as I'm working on feature ABC. But a month later when I start working on feature XYZ and typing localhost:8080/feature/xyz, it does not pick up on the pattern. Typing "l", "localhost", or even "localhost:8080/feature/" will always autocomplete to ABC, no matter how many times I visit XYZ.
- SomeOldThrow 7y ago
  It also has permanent incognito mode! Now if they only allowed disabling the url dropdown....
vkaku 7y ago
I think it's reasonable to start bringing Servo into limelight, and start removing all Chromium based code eventually, given the amount of control Google has over Blink. I for one, would like things like Opera/Electron to start moving us over, because of the fears that Chromium may no more be safe from eventual interference.
- SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
  That’s what I don’t understand about all the “switch to brave” comments. Everyone does that and Firefox still goes away. And you’re left with Google still running the show.
modzu 7y ago
a shameless plug: the reason i couldn't make the switch was the poor bookmarking/topsites. so i finally got around to making a speed dial extension that replicates the awesomeness of opera's. every other speed dial extension i could find was shady -- defeating the purpose of going to ff in the first place :o hope others find it useful :) https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/yet-another-speed-dial/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/yet-another-s... it's new so feedback is welcome. released under GPLv3.
Zak 7y ago
Android is barely mentioned in the article, but Firefox for Android offers significantly more compelling advantages over Chrome on Android than desktop. For some users, the ability to run extensions is a big win.
- komali2 7y ago
  Firefox for android is the only way I can block reddit and twitter as a means to improve my focus. I can't access my hosts file because to do so would require root, which apparently would break Android / Google / Samsung Pay (I'm not sure the difference between them, but apparently rooting breaks them, and I use.. er.. one of them, I dunno which one).
  - Youden 7y ago
    > I can't access my hosts file These days you don't need to. Blokada (https://blokada.org/index.html https://blokada.org/index.html) takes over your DNS and gives a bad response when a domain on your blocklist is requested. Other options are to set your phone's DNS server to a pi-hole or to use a VPN to a network that has a pi-hole. > which apparently would break Android / Google / Samsung Pay Not the case anymore. Magisk (https://forum.xda-developers.com/apps/magisk/official-magisk-v7-universal-systemless-t3473445 https://forum.xda-developers.com/apps/magisk/official-magisk...) is able to pass the Safetynet checks that most of these apps rely on. You may need to use the "Magisk Hide" and "Hide Magisk Manager" features though.
- StevePerkins 7y ago
  My problem with Firefox on Android is extreme latency on initial page load. I select a URL, and literally sit there for 5 to 10 full seconds before the page even starts to load (it does render quickly once it starts). I load the same page on the same device with Brave, or Chrome, and there's near-zero latency. It just starts loading right away. I'd love to switch over, as Firefox is my daily driver on the desktop and it's where all of my passwords are synced. But on Android it just hasn't been usable for me yet.
  - 7y ago
onyva 7y ago
Finally the narrative is changing from features to privacy. It’s a fantastic modern and fast browser but it’s really Mozilla as an organization and their commitment to users that’s making Firefox the most important browser out there, if not the only one, users can trust.
OrgNet 7y ago
the article title is: Goodbye, Chrome: Google’s web browser has become spy software
czottmann 7y ago
I am very fond of Firefox and use it on macOS & Android as my daily driver but the one thing where it doesn't hold a candle to Safari and Chrome is its Applescript support which is simply abysmal. Example: with Safari and Chrome I can use Applescript to query the browser for a list of open tabs, and switch to a particular one. In Firefox there is no way to do that.
ngrilly 7y ago
After having read this article, I read a bit more about third-party cookie blocking, and I was reminded that cookies are not the only way to track internet users: localStorage, and cache tracking with HTTP ETag, also enable tracking. This led me to Safari which partitions cookies, cache and HTML 5 storage for all third-party domains. As far as I know, Firefox (and Chrome of course) don’t to that. It’s easy to check with the browser developer tools open: - Empty your cache. - Visit a website that uses a given font hosted on fonts.google.com. - You should see the HTTP request for the font in the network tab. - Then visit another website that uses the same font on fonts.google.com. - In Safari, you should see another HTTP request, because the cache is not shared. - In Chrome and Firefox, you’ll see the font is retrieved from the cache. Kudos to Apple for their work on the privacy features of Safari! I’d be happy to see Firefox put the same emphasis on this :-)

421 points by donohoe 7y ago

ForHackernews 7y ago

An exception to Betteridge's Law of Headlines?

charliesharding 7y ago
I suspect the downvotes are for those who think it really can be answered with a simple no. Or perhaps because it doesn't end in a question mark.. On topic though I recently tried switching to FF and was surprised at how much slower pages were loading. Has anyone else experienced this? Is this just a matter of caching?
- pessimizer 7y ago
  The downvotes are just for mentioning "Betteridge's Law of Headlines." 8-10 years ago on every headline that was phrased as a question, it was like every 3rd comment. It adds nothing, and I still reflexively downvote it without any particular malice. A) Everybody has heard of it (or can hear about it from somewhere else), B) nobody cares if a particular headline comports with it, because C) it's not a law, just a funny observation somebody made once that definitely doesn't hold anymore because headline writers are familiar with it, too.
- rossdavidh 7y ago
  I've actually had the opposite experience recently, but it was a page I developed myself using FF as my primary browser, and when I switched to Chrome discovered it was very slow (>10s vs. <1s in FF). I expect it depends mostly on what the developer is targeting. As Chrome approaches monoculture status similar to IE in the 90's, devs are more and more paying attention only to it.
- abstractbarista 7y ago
  Yea stuff is always loading a bit slower on FF versus Chrome, both on my phone and actual computers. Regardless, I only use FF. It's worth it if only for the ad-blocking extensions on mobile.
GuB-42 7y ago
I call Betteridge's law on your comment ;) Betteridge's law doesn't apply here because it answers the question: it comes down to privacy. But even if it did, then Bettridge's law would apply. If you read the article, you will see that he doesn't say that Firefox is flat out better than Chrome. If fact, he even gives the performance advantage to Chrome and says that there are ways of "defanging" Chrome when it comes to privacy. Really, the point of the article is not a technical comparison of browsers, but rather a statement of the importance of Firefox when it comes to privacy. And the value of not using a browser made by an adtech company.

rasengan 7y ago

I was shocked when I reviewed the Firefox repo. Firefox has a ton of telemetry code. Edit: to the downvoters - why would you downvote a true statement. Have you read the code?

m463 7y ago
At first I used all the about:config settings, but then I ended up blocking mozilla.org outgoing. As to ff vs chrome, what I figure is: I'd rather have poorly funded code defending my privacy than well-funded code defeating my privacy.
napo 7y ago
The downvotes seems a bit unfair. I think this is a good comment. Any chance you could give more info on which metrics they're looking at though? Because if it's mainly CPU usage and the like it doesn't seem to be a big concern.
- bzbarsky 7y ago
  If you load about:telemetry in Firefox, it will tell you what information is being collected, link to various documentation, etc. It also tells you whether telemetry is actually enabled right now or not, and links to the preference section where you can enable/disable telemetry. The set of telemetry collected by default depends on the build channel: release builds collect much less data than nightly or beta. You can also see exactly what data Firefox engineers can see at https://telemetry.mozilla.org/ https://telemetry.mozilla.org/ -- there is no special behind-a-login view for this stuff that I know of. Disclaimer: I work on Firefox.
  - rasengan 7y ago
    The problem is there are more lines of telemetry than most projects have code. You should probably have it audited - or better yet - just remove the telemetry.
    - threwawasy1228 7y ago

jtreminio 7y ago

Firefox has weird font rendering issues (tested on Fedora 30). Fonts that look perfect on Chrome look like they bleed on Firefox. Firefox's containers is also a poor man's version of Chrome profiles. I want completely separate _everything_. Firefox's Profiles is similar, but then you get warnings about Firefox already running when you click a link in a non-Firefox program. These things are deal breakers for me.

OrgNet 7y ago
Do you have an example URL? I don't have an 8k or 4k display but I have never seen that
- jtreminio 7y ago
  I complained about it here, with a screenshot: https://twitter.com/juantreminio/status/1137563286319316992 https://twitter.com/juantreminio/status/1137563286319316992
  - jamienicol 7y ago
    Are you running Firefox Nightly? If so do you have webrender enabled? If you check about:support it should tell you.
    - jtreminio 7y ago
      Firefox that comes packaged in Fedora. No config changes made. I believe it's the Roboto font at small sizes that causes issues on Firefox.
eclipseo76 7y ago
> Firefox's Profiles is similar, but then you get warnings about Firefox already running when you click a link in a non-Firefox program. Use about:profiles to launch a process with another profile I don't have any issue with fonts in F30, do you have a picture illustrating the issue? https://imgpile.com/i/1JyqT1 https://imgpile.com/i/1JyqT1 Roboto font at 14pt, 115 dpi, default antialiasing in Plasma

user17843 7y ago

The article has it wrong with Safari. While ITP (Intelligent Tracking Protection) started in 2017 indeed, Safari has been blocking all third party (and thus all tracking) cookies since almost forever. Safari started to block all third party cookies in 2003 with the release of Safari version 1. [1] Not only that, Safari also started to partition web cache in 2013, and it's still the only browser with such partitioning. [2] Without it, tracking doesnt even need cookies. "If you only block cookies, you still have all the other storage and stateful things to worry about." - Safari ITP engineer John Wilander [3] Also the spin of the article is slightly dishonest, simply turning off third-party cookies in Chrome achieves to negate most of the explicit criticism in the article. The author probably had the conclusion of the article in mind (setting up good Firefox against evil Chrome) before looking for supporting arguments. It's a bit ironic. While mainstream media starts to discover the existence of third-party cookies, which had been a known issue for around 20 years, Big Tech tracking has already moved to first-party tracking, fingerpringing and cache tracking. For example, Facebook switched to first-party cookie tracking in 2018. [4] Everyone who wants to understand the dynamic needs to look into the relationship between Apple and ad tech, with Apple's recent counter-move being the addition of ITP 2.2. [5] Since the release of ITP 2.1, even first-party cookies now are limited to 7 days, and all first-party cookies that are even potentially tracking cookies get deleted after already 1 day. [6] Firefox doesn't play much of a role in this fight. In fact, Firefox never did anything pro-actively to make ad-tech sweat. The decision by Mozilla to block all third-party cookies in 2013 [7] was reverted in fear of Ad-Tech. Mozilla is better at marketing than with the technology, and still hasn't enabled tracking-protection except for new users. [1] https://twitter.com/brendaneich/status/982631777574338561 https://twitter.com/brendaneich/status/982631777574338561 [2] https://twitter.com/johnwilander/status/1126191449161158657 https://twitter.com/johnwilander/status/1126191449161158657 [3] https://twitter.com/johnwilander/status/1126208457214836736 https://twitter.com/johnwilander/status/1126208457214836736 [4] https://www.adweek.com/programmatic/the-facebook-pixel-will-add-a-first-party-cookie-option/ https://www.adweek.com/programmatic/the-facebook-pixel-will-... [5] https://webkit.org/blog/8828/intelligent-tracking-prevention-2-2/ https://webkit.org/blog/8828/intelligent-tracking-prevention... [6] https://webkit.org/blog/8613/intelligent-tracking-prevention-2-1/ https://webkit.org/blog/8613/intelligent-tracking-prevention... [7] https://blog.mozilla.org/netpolicy/2013/02/25/firefox-getting-smarter-about-third-party-cookies/ https://blog.mozilla.org/netpolicy/2013/02/25/firefox-gettin...

stirfrykitty 7y ago

I really at a loss why decent browsers for "techies" cannot be better. I really like uzbl-tabbed even though it's fairly primitive and the code is getting older. All I need in a browser is the ability to browse (tabbed) while blocking ads. Browsers anymore have become walled gardens what with their add-on web stores, garbage like Pocket, sync, etc. I don't want any of that. Browsers could all be more like the old-school Konqueror, in the sense that one could import ad block lists at will without resorting to visiting store. No telemetry. No built in search for a certain search engine.

tomxor 7y ago
Bit of a digression but check out qutebrowser, it uses a chromium derived library under the hood, it has a VIM like interface. And it's engine isn't massively insecurely out of date like uzbl and co. However this has little to do with the discussion, I don't think qutebrowser does anything to stop fingerprinting and tracking like FireFox.
- stirfrykitty 7y ago
  Good info; thank you. I'll check it out.
catacombs 7y ago
> All I need in a browser is the ability to browse (tabbed) while blocking ads. You can do this in Firefox, with several great ad-blocking extensions, such as uBlock Origin or Adnsaueum. > Browsers anymore have become walled gardens what with their add-on web stores, garbage like Pocket, sync, etc. I don't want any of that. Browsers could all be more like the old-school Konqueror, in the sense that one could import ad block lists at will without resorting to visiting store. Firefox allows you to remove what you don't need, especially Pocket. Sync is optional. > No telemetry. No built in search for a certain search engine. There are specific Firefox configurations that disable telemetry: https://github.com/CrisBRM/user.js/blob/master/user.js https://github.com/CrisBRM/user.js/blob/master/user.js
- deleted 7y ago

Slashbot 7y ago

The better question are either of these basic junk browsers better than Vivaldi(which uses chromiumm, and has far better built in features, most of which you can't even get as shitty web extensions) Firefox no serves its purpose, it has zero addons that are exclusive to it (most of which made it far better pre quantum garbage) ... it devtools aren't beetter than chrome... it does nothing better because it's jhust a chrome clone in all but its backend code... which has ceased to be any of value to any third party developer wanting to make the default experience not shit.. Mozilla are clueless, Google well they don't give a fuck because they have a stranglehold on the normie noobs who don't know any better for a ux workflow in a browser etc or can't be bothered to try anything else. So no Firefox isn't any better, in anything really

908087 7y ago
Your post history tells me Vivaldi should really reconsider hiring 14 year olds to shill for them.
stirfrykitty 7y ago
Not to mention they are far too involved in politics, which tech companies should not be, at least not overtly. I realize I'm likely in the minority here, but I grow weary of tech companies thinking they need to overtly champion causes, many of which I vociferously disagree with. If you make widgets, make them. Don't get involved in politics and then use your company to champion your beliefs, because this tends to alienate people.
- jamienicol 7y ago
  Mozilla's purpose is political. We don't just make widgets for the sake of it nor to make money.

sciurus 7y ago

I'm glad the author recognizes the danger of trackers and the value of Firefox blocking them. Unfortunately, the rest of the Washington Post hasn't gotten the message. When I try to read the article just get a message that I have to disable tracking protection first. https://pasteboard.co/Ikt16xy.png https://pasteboard.co/Ikt16xy.png https://www.washingtonpost.com/steps-for-disabling-firefoxs-native-adblocker/2018/05/21/fb95bf4e-5d37-11e8-b2b8-08a538d9dbd6_story.html?utm_term=.b9a04242a46f https://www.washingtonpost.com/steps-for-disabling-firefoxs-...

98codes 7y ago
I disabled Ghostery and (ironically) Firefox tracker protection, and I still got that same message. If you subscribe, they still want to throw ads and trackers at you unless you pay the higher tier fee, at double the cost. The hypocracy is thick; they're not wrong about Chrome though.
thom 7y ago
Heh, you can't even use it in Europe with paying for them to respect the GDPR.
abstractbarista 7y ago
I just disable JS any time a site does this to me. It forces them to either renege on their threats and send me the HTML, or I just leave and never come back because there's nothing to see.
- satysin 7y ago
  Speaking of disabling JS. I wish Firefox had the same simple per site JS toggle like Chrome has it the Site settings area. I can't find a way to disable JS per site without using an extension such as uBlock Origin. Firefox has some site policy settings but I never got them to work not to mention they are a pain to manage even if they did work. I would like a simple enable/disable toggle as part of the site permissions interface they have when you click on the (i) next to the address.
catacombs 7y ago

robertAngst 7y ago

This strong push for 'privacy' is going to have a strong pushback. There may be some users here who need privacy, or some users who think privacy is necessary to keep whistleblowers safe. The majority of users want fantastic service. Privacy is niche, and not needed for everyone. We already have solutions, and have users pay for a dummy accounts.

jxdxbx 7y ago
Fantastic service does not require giving up your privacy. There are privacy-protecting ways to do personalization, gather data for machine learning, and so on. Even advertising business models do not require that people give up their privacy.
- blotter_paper 7y ago
  I think we'd be silly to not recognise that there are some tradeoffs between privacy and UX. Facebook tracks your cursor for a reason, they're analysing what users do and changing the UX based on it. I can imagine wanting to look at this data using any number of filters for a/s/l/etc., and once you're cataloging enough criteria tying a session to a specific user can be done as an afterthought. I think GP is correct about most users valuing UX over privacy, unfortunately.
  - jxdxbx 7y ago
    But this data can be collected with differential privacy, some learning can be done on-device, etc etc. There are ways to get the best of both worlds, but they require more careful engineering.
    - robertAngst 7y ago
      I don't know what to learn from these ideas. This user speaks of Utopia where there is infinite engineering resources and endless profit to dig into. Maybe I suck at business, but making profit is very hard.
    - 7y ago

beenBoutIT 7y ago

It comes down to ignoring Firefox's inferior UI/UX and blindly buying into Firefox marketing. Seeing as how the internet is actually a shitload of poorly organized data it's unclear what advantage Mozilla gains by not being in the 'data collection business'. "Firefox isn’t perfect — it still defaults searches to Google and permits some other tracking. But it doesn’t share browsing data with Mozilla, which isn’t in the data-collection business." Needlessly relearning things to avoid collecting them doesn't make any part of browsing faster or more efficient.

jxdxbx 7y ago
Firefox is a much better designed app than Chrome, which never looks or acts like normal apps. It has even intercepted cmd-q now which is super annoying. Which browser works better or is faster, I have no idea, though I've never run into problems with Firefox.
- babuskov 7y ago
  > It has even intercepted cmd-q now which is super annoying. I can understand reasoning behind that. I had to install a Firefox extension that disables cmd-q on macOS because I had closed the whole browser many times by accident (while trying to quickly hit cmd-w). You can still use cmd-q but you have to press it twice in a very short time. Maybe Chrome could do the same.
  - TechieKid 7y ago
    Firefox uses Ctrl+Shift+Q to quit the entire browser now on Windows and Linux based platforms, presumably because of that reason. You might not need that Firefox extension anymore.
- jhasse 7y ago
  > It has even intercepted cmd-q now which is super annoying. You can disable that in the "Chrome" menu.
driverdan 7y ago

catacombs 7y ago

> After the sign-in shift, Johns Hopkins associate professor Matthew Green made waves in the computer science world when he blogged he was done with Chrome. “I lost faith,” he told me. “It only takes a few tiny changes to make it very privacy unfriendly.” I read this and literally thought, "who?"

leevlad 7y ago
He's fairly active and popular on Twitter, and is opinionated about cryptography, blockchain, etc. https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green
- techntoke 7y ago
  Did he ever say why he lost faith? Cause at least Chromium has hardware acceleration for video decoding on Linux. The story about ablock extensions being blocked was completely false.
  - kevincrane 7y ago
    Yeah, he wrote a whole blog post about it. https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2018/09/23/why-im-leaving-chrome/ https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2018/09/23/why-im-l...
    - techntoke 7y ago
      OMG, that is so easy to disable. He might as well be complaining about Firefox Sync.
  - goatsi 7y ago
    >The story about ablock extensions being blocked was completely false. What about it was false? Developers made it clear that the changes would neuter many ad blocking extensions, and Google actually backtracked due to the outrage (to a position that still prevents effective ad blocking).

WalterSear 7y ago

I've been trying to switch over to Firefox for the last few weeks. The experience hasn't been great, but most of the issues I'm willing to live with. However, even after disabling all extensions, it still pegs my cpus and freezes my machine, several times a day. I'm planning on moving back to chrome this weekend. No amount of privacy can make up for the disruption.

barrkel 7y ago
This is not normal behaviour. I've never had Firefox do that, even with a whole bunch of extensions, on Windows, Linux or Mac, over the past 10+ years. It did used to run out of memory for images, and the UI of Firefox (and just Firefox) would sometimes pause, but those issues are a couple of years back now. I'd dig deeper. There's something odd in your machine configuration.
- sinsterizme 7y ago
  This is simply not true. It seems like a common problem. Chrome just seems more optimized and works flawlessly on a wider range of devices. Waving away individual issues is not the right solution
  - pojzon 7y ago
    A quick search on google search history trends show this statement: "It seems like a common problem" is "simply not true". Searching for firefox and freeze decreased significantly over the years. In current iteration I would say it's way more probable that the person who started this chain has an overall issue with PC performance outside of firefox. 1. https://trends.google.pl/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=Firefox%20freeze https://trends.google.pl/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=F...
  - joedevon 7y ago
    I have a lot more problems with Chrome than Firefox in the last year or two. FWIW.
  - AsyncAwait 7y ago

rileyt 7y ago

Isn't Chrome just as private as Safari or Firefox with the right extensions to block tracking and other common issues? I understand that most people won't know which extensions to install or how to install them, but for tech savvy people, isn't Chrome with Privacy Badger and HTTPS Only just as private as Firefox, with a much better overall browsing experience?

jgalt212 7y ago
> with a much better overall browsing experience That's a bit of stretch given recent Firefox versions. One can argue about the gap, but such a gap, is pretty small these days between FF and Chrome.
sfotm 7y ago
Not if you're trying to block Google as well, but for all other parties it probably is.
- rileyt 7y ago
  This is even more in the weeds, but if you turn off sync, google services, page preloading and use a non-google default search engine, what's left for them to track?
  - vitorgrs 7y ago
    Just run chromium then lol
damnyou 7y ago
To a first approximation, defaults are the only thing that matter.

boybd 7y ago

That's true, it comes down to privacy. Firefox sent the full URL history of some users to a third party, an advertising company: 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... Take this into account if you're considering moving to Firefox to get more "privacy".

SomeOldThrow 7y ago
So... you use lynx?
Yoric 7y ago
Not a big fan of that choice, but isn't Cliqz is a privacy-oriented search engine, rather than an advertising company?

futureastronaut 7y ago

It also has a working location bar that doesn't forget my history from a day ago. And a functional history that indexes on more than component prefixes (thanks Chrome).

ndesaulniers 7y ago
Yeah, I feel like when I type `h` in chrome's url bar, I always want hacker news. In Firefox it's always the first result for me, but I feel like with chrome it never is. Does anyone else observe this or am I holding it wrong?
- StavrosK 7y ago
  It's always worked for me when I typed "n", but I haven't used Chrome in years.
  - apeace 7y ago
    It seems to me like if you visit a URL about three times, then any time you type a fragment of that URL it assumes that's what you want. This happens to me at work all the time. When I'm working I'll visit localhost:8080/feature/abc over and over, as I'm working on feature ABC. But a month later when I start working on feature XYZ and typing localhost:8080/feature/xyz, it does not pick up on the pattern. Typing "l", "localhost", or even "localhost:8080/feature/" will always autocomplete to ABC, no matter how many times I visit XYZ.
SomeOldThrow 7y ago
It also has permanent incognito mode! Now if they only allowed disabling the url dropdown....

vkaku 7y ago

I think it's reasonable to start bringing Servo into limelight, and start removing all Chromium based code eventually, given the amount of control Google has over Blink. I for one, would like things like Opera/Electron to start moving us over, because of the fears that Chromium may no more be safe from eventual interference.

SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
That’s what I don’t understand about all the “switch to brave” comments. Everyone does that and Firefox still goes away. And you’re left with Google still running the show.

modzu 7y ago

a shameless plug: the reason i couldn't make the switch was the poor bookmarking/topsites. so i finally got around to making a speed dial extension that replicates the awesomeness of opera's. every other speed dial extension i could find was shady -- defeating the purpose of going to ff in the first place :o hope others find it useful :) https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/yet-another-speed-dial/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/yet-another-s... it's new so feedback is welcome. released under GPLv3.

Zak 7y ago

Android is barely mentioned in the article, but Firefox for Android offers significantly more compelling advantages over Chrome on Android than desktop. For some users, the ability to run extensions is a big win.

komali2 7y ago
Firefox for android is the only way I can block reddit and twitter as a means to improve my focus. I can't access my hosts file because to do so would require root, which apparently would break Android / Google / Samsung Pay (I'm not sure the difference between them, but apparently rooting breaks them, and I use.. er.. one of them, I dunno which one).
- Youden 7y ago
  > I can't access my hosts file These days you don't need to. Blokada (https://blokada.org/index.html https://blokada.org/index.html) takes over your DNS and gives a bad response when a domain on your blocklist is requested. Other options are to set your phone's DNS server to a pi-hole or to use a VPN to a network that has a pi-hole. > which apparently would break Android / Google / Samsung Pay Not the case anymore. Magisk (https://forum.xda-developers.com/apps/magisk/official-magisk-v7-universal-systemless-t3473445 https://forum.xda-developers.com/apps/magisk/official-magisk...) is able to pass the Safetynet checks that most of these apps rely on. You may need to use the "Magisk Hide" and "Hide Magisk Manager" features though.
StevePerkins 7y ago
My problem with Firefox on Android is extreme latency on initial page load. I select a URL, and literally sit there for 5 to 10 full seconds before the page even starts to load (it does render quickly once it starts). I load the same page on the same device with Brave, or Chrome, and there's near-zero latency. It just starts loading right away. I'd love to switch over, as Firefox is my daily driver on the desktop and it's where all of my passwords are synced. But on Android it just hasn't been usable for me yet.
- 7y ago

onyva 7y ago

Finally the narrative is changing from features to privacy. It’s a fantastic modern and fast browser but it’s really Mozilla as an organization and their commitment to users that’s making Firefox the most important browser out there, if not the only one, users can trust.

OrgNet 7y ago

the article title is: Goodbye, Chrome: Google’s web browser has become spy software

czottmann 7y ago

I am very fond of Firefox and use it on macOS & Android as my daily driver but the one thing where it doesn't hold a candle to Safari and Chrome is its Applescript support which is simply abysmal. Example: with Safari and Chrome I can use Applescript to query the browser for a list of open tabs, and switch to a particular one. In Firefox there is no way to do that.

ngrilly 7y ago

After having read this article, I read a bit more about third-party cookie blocking, and I was reminded that cookies are not the only way to track internet users: localStorage, and cache tracking with HTTP ETag, also enable tracking. This led me to Safari which partitions cookies, cache and HTML 5 storage for all third-party domains. As far as I know, Firefox (and Chrome of course) don’t to that. It’s easy to check with the browser developer tools open: - Empty your cache. - Visit a website that uses a given font hosted on fonts.google.com. - You should see the HTTP request for the font in the network tab. - Then visit another website that uses the same font on fonts.google.com. - In Safari, you should see another HTTP request, because the cache is not shared. - In Chrome and Firefox, you’ll see the font is retrieved from the cache. Kudos to Apple for their work on the privacy features of Safari! I’d be happy to see Firefox put the same emphasis on this :-)