11 ms·

Bye, Chrome: Why I’m switching to Firefox (2018)

315 points by commoner 7y ago

nbst 7y ago
“We put the user first in terms of privacy,” What a joke. How quickly people forget that they installed extensions into user's computers without their permission, and worse, didn't seem to realize the consequences of what that meant.
- quantummkv 7y ago
  Unless I am mistaken, the extension never collected any user data and phoned it to a nebulous ad network. So user data still remained private
  - nbst 7y ago
    When a request is made to a server, the server creates a log of it. When you interacted with the site that the plugin worked in tandem with, it requested assets (JavaScript, images, CSS, etc) to Firefox-run servers. That's enough for them to know you looked at that content and may have interest in it. Not a huge deal in that particular instance but it's CERTAINLY not putting the user's privacy first.
- jtmarl1n 7y ago
  Extensions like pocket and the Mr. Robot thing? Yeah, bad execution and communication, but privacy invading?
- IfOnlyYouKnew 7y ago
  What's the difference b/w "installing an extension without permission" and "shipping a feature without permission"?
cookie_monsta 7y ago
Not trying to snark, but this seems like pretty basic stuff - is there anything in the article that the average HN reader wouldn't have heard multiple times already?
- forgotmypw3 7y ago
  Content to advertising ratio very low with this article, I think people just voted it up for the feel-good value.
  - cookie_monsta 7y ago
    I guess that makes sense.
- xxxtentachyon 7y ago
  Nope, but this article isn't aimed at HN readers. It's aimed at lay people who don't necessarily understand what actions they're taking to implicitly undermine their own privacy or jeopardize the future of an open, standards-driven web. Katherine has written other, more innovative pieces around the same issues: https://www.fastcompany.com/90369697/googles-new-recaptcha-has-a-dark-side https://www.fastcompany.com/90369697/googles-new-recaptcha-h...
  - cookie_monsta 7y ago
    > Nope, but this article isn't aimed at HN readers. It's aimed at lay people who don't necessarily understand what actions they're taking... So why is it here?
    - naniwaduni 7y ago
      An article can be of interest to HN readers without being aimed at them.
      - cookie_monsta 7y ago
        No doubt. But the reason why this one isn't aimed at HN readers is because they've heard all of this multiple times already. I'm not disagreeing with the article, I'm just wondering why it is of interest.
- dammitfoo 7y ago
joemaller1 7y ago
Why not Brave? Honest question.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- pmoriarty 7y ago
  Does Brave have anything like uMatrix and uBlock Origin? That functionality is pretty essential to me, and I can get it on Firefox. Other nice-to-haves on Firefox are: CanvasBlocker, NoScript, Cookie AutoDelete, Textern, and Stylus. If Brave has some equivalent functionality, I'm interested. Qutebrowser was another alternative which looked pretty promising, but last I checked its lead (only?) developer didn't have time to add the uMatrix/NoScript-like functionality he had intended. So it's a no-starter for me.
  - zamadatix 7y ago
    Brave is just one of the Chromium clones so yes. Not on mobile though. Firefox on mobile does support extensinos is a bit rocky though in that the current classic version is a bit outdated and is by far the worst browser for battery according to multiple test while the upcoming Firefox Preview rewrite fixes this and updates the interface but doesn't yet support extensions. Some people disagree with Brave's operating model options around Ads. I'd recommend checking out Vivaldi as well if you haven't. It's a Chromium clone with a proprietary interface (but written in web technologies so the code is auditable). Outside of the usual Chromium clone story of being exactly like Chrome without Google it has an extremely customizable user interface. The downside is it has a disproportionate number of UI bugs compared to other browsers but that seems to have gotten better since the 2.0 release train.
    - com2kid 7y ago
      > Firefox on mobile does support extensinos is a bit rocky though It supports uBlock, good enough for me. It is the only thing that makes browsing recipe websites possible on Android!
forgotmypw3 7y ago
You're a couple years too late, Firefox has already been corrupted.
0xADADA 7y ago
Switched back when [Firefox Quantum](https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/11/14/introducing-firefox-quantum/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/11/14/introducing-firefox...) came out. Never looked back.
- bootlooped 7y ago
  I looked back repeatedly. For one I could never get it to launch Zoom from a link, it would always try to download the exe again. The Dark Reader extension is much slower on FF than Chrome. I think Chrome is still faster in general, I can tell especially when flipping through a bunch of tabs really fast. When I came to the realization I was using FireFox essentially just for idealogical reasons I went back to Chrome.
  - microcolonel 7y ago
    Give Brave a try, it does a lot of things well, and it has some basic independence from Google's direct interests.
  - Yoric 7y ago
    Out of curiosity, what's wrong with using a product because you believe in it?
  - pivo 7y ago
    FWIW I use Firefox and zoom with no issues and am really happy with recent updates to the browser. Haven’t tried the dark reader extension though.
Tade0 7y ago
The other day I wowed my iPhone using co-workers by showing that Firefox for Android indeed allows you to install extensions.
- chipotle_coyote 7y ago
  So does iOS Safari. Is the wow part specifically Firefox?
  - irq 7y ago
    > So does iOS Safari. This is incorrect. iOS Safari allows for rudimentary ad blockers to be installed. But no other sort of extensions are possible.
    - gnicholas 7y ago
      Actually, safari for iOS does support extensions other than adblockers. There are action extensions as well, though they have to be actively invoked every time you want to run them. This typically requires either 2 or 3 taps on every page, which stinks. It’s also difficult to educate users about their existence. But it’s technically an extension...
      - judge2020 7y ago
        Apple must have felt the "extensions that run on every page" would both A. introduce a common browser pain point (really crappy extensions slowing things down) and B. become dangerous to their users' privacy, since most things Extensions would be used for also require some sort of internet connectivity (eg. Grammarly - sending your text to the cloud).
    - chipotle_coyote 7y ago
      I've been using 1Password and Save to Instapaper on iOS for years. I suppose one can argue those aren't "true" extensions, but I'm not sure it'd be a very good argument, given that they're functionally pretty close to their Mac counterparts.
amingilani 7y ago
This topic's been discussed ad nauseam, I feel, but I made the switch a few months ago. It's a little painful, Firefox' performance when it comes to handling video is still sub-par, but that said, I'm much happier overall. The performance loss isn't too bad, and Firefox's Containers is a much better flow than Chrome's Profiles. I'd like it if MetaMask didn't glitch out with hardware wallets so much on Firefox, but I can hop onto Brave for that. That said, I checked a site I was developing on Chrome a while ago, and for a moment, I thought I'd accidentally deployed to the apex domain. Thank goodness I switched before Chrome's anti-features went into overdrive. I don't think I'd be using Chrome when they did that, even if privacy weren't a huge concern of mine.
saagarjha 7y ago
> For instance, Firefox protects you from being tracked by advertising networks across websites, which has the lovely side effect of making sites load faster. “As you move from website to website, advertising networks essentially follow you so they can see what you’re doing so they can serve you targeted advertisements,” Dolanjski says. “Firefox is the only [major] browser out of the box that prevents that from happening.” Uh, Safari? > Even if you do care, reading through Google Chrome’s 13,500-word privacy white paper, which uses a lot of technical jargon and obfuscates exactly what data the browser is tracking, isn’t helpful either. Actually, I found it to be an interesting and relatively straightforward read: https://www.google.com/chrome/privacy/whitepaper.html https://www.google.com/chrome/privacy/whitepaper.html > One downside to using Firefox is that many browser extensions are built primarily for Chrome WebExtensions is pretty similar between Chrome and Firefox, isn't it? > my password manager luckily has a Firefox extension but it often causes the browser to crash !!
- Scarbutt 7y ago
  Where is ublock for safari? ;)
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    If you're referring to my first point, I'm talking about Intelligent Tracking Prevention.
    - inferiorhuman 7y ago
      You know a great way to prevent tracking? A decent ad blocker. I don't care how good Safari's "intelligent tracking prevention" is, but as long as they're blocking uBlock Origin I'll browse elsewhere.
      - Spivak 7y ago
        Safari isn’t blocking uBlock so much as they changed their extension API and uBlock can’t/won’t rewrite to support it. This is really no different than what Firefox did with WebExtensions but had the advantage of being mostly compatible with the Chromium ecosystem. It’s true that content blocking isn’t as powerful as what uBlock does/did with WebExt but WebExt also isn’t as powerful as XUL extensions.
kken 7y ago
These articles always feel like i missed something. I have stayed with Firefox all the time, never switched to Chrome. Why should I have switched to Chrome, again?
- AlexCoventry 7y ago
  It was faster and more secure. It's probably still more secure.
  - ajross 7y ago
    Exactly. It's a decade behind us now, so presumably many posters here never even experienced it, but it's hard to convey just how much of an innovation Chrome was when it landed in the browser world of the late aughts. We'd been subjected, at that point, to almost 15 years of perpetual bloat and decay by Netscape and then Microsoft. Chrome wasn't just faster, it was viscerally faster (V8 in particular was just completely without peer at the time). It was cleaner, without all the buttons and features adorning its competitors. We all swapped instantly. Really it was amazing. But that was 11 years ago, Chrome has grown the warts IE used to have, and Firefox has largely caught up on the features geeks care about.
    - weci2i 7y ago
      I was around then. I don’t remember Chrome ever actually feeling faster. Maybe it was my system, maybe it was just me, but I’ve never understood the “faster” argument. The Chrome is “faster” argument is eerily reminiscent to Sega’s “blast processing” propaganda from the 90’s. What Chrome did do better than Firefox was pay to put advertisements everywhere. I remember feeling dumbfounded that we needed Chrome Browser ads on TV to sway people away from IE. Strange, strange times.
      - zerkten 7y ago
        It was significantly faster on Windows, but not so much on other platforms.
matt4077 7y ago
There's nothing wrong with switching to FF, but I feel Google is getting an awful lot of somewhat undeserved accusations. Specifically, lots of people interpret all changes in Chrome as attempts to (directly) bolster Google's advertising business. This seems undeserved, considering Chrome has a track record that is rather spotless in that regard: they didn't ban ad blocking, never even attempted to send the click-stream into their user targeting, etc. A lot more of Chrome can be better explained by a slightly different motivating mechanism: Google needs to keep the open web at parity with native software/apps, because it's the open web where they earn money. This is far more important than any marginal change in ad blocking or whatever else these conspiracy theories see as the upside for Google. This model perfectly explains PWAs, for example. Another under-analysed issue are the comparisons with Microsoft/Internet Explorer's monopoly problem: The issue with IE was that it was closed-source, only available on Windows, and included strange runtimes for content that no other client had a chance to access. None of those issues align with anything in Chrome's position today. Chrome has a large market share, and to some extend the evolution of the web platform. But with Chrome leading the way, the web platform has seen an unprecedented success in terms of standardisation, performance, and features in the last five years or so. I get that people invested in existing standardisation process feel sad for the demise of their bureaucracy. But it's working rather well because Chrome's and users' interests align. And there isn't even an obvious mechanism for this to change, since other players such as Apple seem to be unthreatened in their position of having a de-facto veto.
- kwijibob 7y ago
  I think Google love this kind of media exposure and promotion of Firefox. It protects them from antitrust complaints and they are not too threatened by Mozilla Firefox.
  - judge2020 7y ago
    There will possibly be a tipping point, especially if developers do the IE thing (or now Chrome thing) and only test their sites on one browser; currently a large portion of the education, private, and public sectors rely on the word of their vendors for which browser their app works best on (mostly Chrome because of its 10 year dominance). If all of the developers go to Firefox, and the sentiment changes from Chrome to Firefox, we might start seeing dual-install deployments and eventually firefox-only. That is, if Google hadn't been pushing their GSuite offering for the past few years and managed to tie a large amount of both private sector and education organizations to Chrome for the integration and MDM.
timwis 7y ago
Chrome shares my IP address with the websites I visit?! :O (lol)
- osamagirl69 7y ago
  The issue here is that it also shares them with Google, and in many cases shares a history of websites you have visited with other websites.
rsync 7y ago
I made this switch about 12-ish months ago when the writing was on the wall about ad-blocking and ... something about auto-creating a "chrome account" something something ... I've been fairly disappointed in the lack of flexibility that firefox provides and the real lack of maturity (and even usability) of the containers feature. I think I expected the move to firefox to bring with it a lot more flexibility and a richer set of configurations and customizations and this really isn't the case. Instead, my firefox experience has been surprisingly restrictive. Unless, of course, I am willing to install a bunch of add-ons, all of which come with the obligatory "access all of your data" and are from just some random dude on the net. Some specific issues: - I want to define a "home page" BUT I also want both new tabs and new windows to open with a blank page. You cannot do this. As soon as you set both new tab and new window to "blank page", the fn+opt+leftarrow shortcut ceases to do anything. - I want to use containers. Containers are only tabs. That makes no sense. The very first thing you want to do with a container, after learning what containers are, is open a Window and have all future tabs in that window inherit the container that that Window is. This is the basic use-case of the container feature and it doesn't exist. Instead, every use of container is mouse-mouse-mouse-click-click-click (since there is no key shortcut for them) and then open a tab for a single use. We should be making container windows and using key shortcuts to open tabs in those windows. - I can't force-title a firefox Window - it just gets the title of the currently open tab. All manner of interesting Window management can be done, outside of firefox, if you can lock the Window title. I could create 6-8 ffox Windows, just like I create 6-8 spaces in GNU Screen, and quickly hotkey between them ... I see no way to do this. - The fixation on tabs is, itself, a bit weird ... I don't think either a window-centric nor a tab-centric workflow should be favored - they should be equally developed and enabled.
- DHPersonal 7y ago
  Even worse, the Containers don't sync, so they have to be remade for every device. I really like the idea of the Container extension, but it needs a lot of work from Mozilla to be something I could recommend to others.
  - netfl0 7y ago
FillardMillmore 7y ago
It seems like we've had a discussion about this article every few months since its publication - not necessarily a bad thing, but just an observation. I've been a Firefox user since before Chrome was launched - it was one of the very few alternatives to IE at the time. And during these years, it was a breath of fresh air. When Chrome launched, as others have noted, Google leveraged its coffers to provide the new browser with extensive advertising and PR and of course, the icing on the cake, it actually was a great browser too. I never ran benchmarks or anything but there were certainly a number of years in which Chrome did seem like a faster browser. That said, I was always skeptical because the browser was a Google product. But I stuck with Firefox except for rare cases, mostly in the past 5 or so years, where certain sites didn't even appear to function properly without it (it being Chrome). Because of sites like these, I am at least appreciative that there are other Chromium-based browsers (which now, apparently include Microsoft Edge) that offer more or less the same site functionality as Chrome without having to directly leverage a Google product. I for one quite like Brave and its privacy features, including its defaults. Blocking ads by default is great, though of course, Brave compensates for this by presenting its own ads (which are still annoying, but less so to me). I like the ability to use Tor and DuckDuckGo easily just by starting a private window. It also seems to me that Brave is just as fast, if not faster than Firefox. In addition to this, you can use almost every Chrome extension on the Brave browser (for me, the important stuff is uBlock Origin, Dark Reader, and a Password Manager). I know many here are skeptical or disapproving of the 'Brave Rewards' cryptocurrency - and I get that. But I have completely ignored it (it is an opt-in system) and I am no worse for wear. Suffice it to say, I'm a long-time Firefox supporter - I still do use it somewhat frequently but I'm slowly shifting to Brave. I try not to use Chrome (though I appreciate what its impact has been on the browser space as a whole) and Microsoft's efforts with Edge at least provide amusing diversions. If you're running old SharePoint sites, Microsoft's browsers are still a must-have.
- topmonk 7y ago
  > Brave compensates for this by presenting its own ads (which are still annoying, but less so to me) I exclusively use brave on android, linux and windows and don't have replacement ads. I've read that you can opt into viewing ads in exchange for receiving a cryptocurrency token, but since I'm in a region that isn't offered, have never seen it. But I don't think it just plasters its own ads over the originals unless you opt into this “crypto for ad views” scheme.
JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
I keep wanting to like Firefox but I prefer Brave right now. It seems like all the ease of Chrome and ad blocking and privacy too.
helpPeople 7y ago
Not sure why Firefox takes literally minutes to load a page. Bugs are unacceptable. Weirdly my wife has the same issue on her computer.
newscracker 7y ago
Mods: this needs to be tagged 2018. This article is now a year and a half old. > Google already runs a lot of my online life–it’s my email, my calendar, my go-to map, and all my documents. I’d rather the author take care of this with urgency, in addition to switching from Chrome to Firefox. Firefox Focus is one of the best things from Mozilla in the recent years. I use it more than any browser (including Firefox itself). I’ve asked around before, but didn’t get a satisfactory answer. Mozilla Corporation (the one that funds Firefox development) gets more than 90% of its revenues from its search partnership with Google. So Firefox is, in a way, aligned to promoting Google to survive. If there were ways to fund Firefox more widely (not through some limited VPN service tie ups), that could make Mozilla bolder. Someone pointed out that while there’s an official Facebook Container extension for Firefox, there is no official Google Container extension. The Google Container is not created by Mozilla. I’d really want to support Firefox (and related) development directly. In my understanding this is not possible because donations on mozilla.org go to Mozilla Foundation, the non-profit that works on open web initiatives and education.
pantsme 7y ago
Man I miss when chrome first came out and made the web so dang fast. Now it is the heaviest app I have on my computer by far. We need a Chrome Lite. I have been enjoying Brave lately though.
18monthsin 7y ago
I never switched to chrome. I find it hilarious that the author thinks the decision to switch is forwardthinking enough to write about.
eddhead 7y ago
Been using the new Edge Beta for a year now, don't ever need Chrome for anything
loraa 7y ago
Sigh...
loraa 7y ago
Firefox used to be a real bag of crap for a while before chrome it was a no brainer, but therr was that time after chrome where everyone jumped ship, and they fired the ceo for not being part of the liberal hive mind.
paul7986 7y ago
it would be cool if DDG became Firefox's default search and or FF would promote/let users know they have a choice!
- microcolonel 7y ago
  But they need that Google cash to pay for the social political decadence of the few, and the occasional productive development resource.
  - paul7986 7y ago
    I bet if they made DDG the default in which a big rev share towards firefox was provided they'd be able to survive and more. Wouldn't be gangbusters like it is now with the big G, but maybe in the long run it would.
alex-wallish 7y ago
It's incredibly disappointing to me to learn that the majority of Firefox's revenue comes from promoting Google search. Maybe duckduckgo should build a browser.
- Groxx 7y ago
  2014-2017 was primarily from Yahoo, if that helps at all
Avi-D-coder 7y ago
The three reasons I can't seem to switch are tearing with compton and i3, startup time, and middle click not pasting when clicking the new tab button. Does anyone know how fix any of these behaviors? The last one may seem minor, but it takes three clicks to achieve the same result as chrome for a task I do constantly. How is Firefox on wayland with sway?
callekabo 7y ago
Long time user of Firefox on desktop, but recently moved away from Firefox on android after reading that it's "much more vulnerable to exploitation and inherently add a huge amount of attack surface". https://grapheneos.org/usage#web-browsing https://grapheneos.org/usage#web-browsing
shadowprofile77 7y ago
My one problem with Firefox is that it's just so damn slow on any laptop I use. I've tried every update since the beginning of 2019 and little appreciable change on this. My laptops tend towards the cheap and they don't have much kick but if Firefox is decent enough, it should be able to perform as well as Chrome on them, and with Chrome I rarely have this problem on any of the same machines. If anyone can give me some idea of how to address this, would be nice.
- i_am_proteus 7y ago
  I have had the opposite experience: Firefox runs just fine on a T420i (2nd gen i3,4GB RAM, Ubuntu 18.04) a T450 (5th gen i5, 8GB RAM, Windows 10) and a 2011 Macbook Air (2nd gen i5, 4GB RAM, OSX Sierra).
- fouc 7y ago
  Is it the page scrolling that feels slow to you? That's configurable.
- andai 7y ago
  I had the same experience with FF on laptops. Switched between FF and Chrome a few times then settled on Brave for a combination of Chromium’s performance, just without the Google :) It was a bit buggy but they’ve mostly ironed it out.
lenkite 7y ago
I will switch when Firefox supports the OS native certificate store for client-certificate authentication. Until then its Chrome.
- Yoric 7y ago
  I remember having this conversation with other Firefox security devs (I'm a Firefox dev myself). While I don't remember exactly why they are not supported, I remember that there was a very good security reason for this. Also, while it's off by default, Firefox can be configured to support them: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1175296 https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1175296
  - lenkite 7y ago
    That method doesn't work for client certificate authentication. Thousands of organisations in the world generate client certificates for their users and populate them into the OS certificate store. Those certificates are then expected to be presented at the time of client-certificate authentication to the hundreds of apps that expect them. The OS certificate in any enterprise company is "locked down" with extensive policies provided by the OS vendor. It is far harder to import/export certificate and key material from it than from Firefox's own certificate store. I know that my company runs has scripts that run regular background checks to validate certificates in the OS certificate store. If you want dev/test certificates, we even have an internal app that generates 'trusted' certificates for various purposes. There was a reason that Chrome chose to move to the OS certificate store. They realised it would increase their market share in the enterprise. Firefox is a no-go because it continues to cling to its own custom store.
dang 7y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17189396 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17189396
chewz 7y ago
I had been using Firefox during dark days and moved to Chrome (for other reasons) more or less at the time of Quantum release. Since Chrome 78 it is very perverse feeling to see Chrome informing me (with cute little icon in omnibox) that it had blocked 3rd-party cookies from domains like google-analytics.com or doubleclick.com. https://images.app.goo.gl/skf52r6Cndj7BvZp7 https://images.app.goo.gl/skf52r6Cndj7BvZp7
lcall 7y ago
I like the idea of not concentrating yet more power with Google, but, on OpenBSD, I use Iridium (Chrome derivative), so I see these benefits: 1) Iridium doesn't send info to Google like Chrome does (or that is the idea); 2) It is easier (last I checked) than with Firefox to leave some config tabs open so I can quickly turn on/off javascript, images, and/or cookies for those sites where I need them (by exception only, and easy to do without a mouse once the tab is open), and 3) OpenBSD adds pledge/unveil system calls from the browser, to prevent it from reading/writing files where it should not (plus I browse under a different user than I do other things with high confidence there will not be a privilege escalation; also they say the pledge/unveil support is easier to implement in Chrome/Iridium than in Firefox because of the cleaner separations of concerns in the code organization (my wording; though they have probably also put pledge/unveil in FF also for all I know), 4) Maybe the security of Chrome/Iridium benefits from Google's bug bounties. I don't really know but I'm glad they try. Given those things, are there still reasons I would prefer Firefox? (I am aware of OBSD removing DNS-over-HTTP from Firefox, indicating that is a choice that should be made by the user at the system level instead).
gaia 7y ago
If you NEED extensions, you should consider Vivaldi. Chrome engine, but doesn't require login to google and has better default privacy settings.

315 points by commoner 7y ago

nbst 7y ago

“We put the user first in terms of privacy,” What a joke. How quickly people forget that they installed extensions into user's computers without their permission, and worse, didn't seem to realize the consequences of what that meant.

quantummkv 7y ago
Unless I am mistaken, the extension never collected any user data and phoned it to a nebulous ad network. So user data still remained private
- nbst 7y ago
  When a request is made to a server, the server creates a log of it. When you interacted with the site that the plugin worked in tandem with, it requested assets (JavaScript, images, CSS, etc) to Firefox-run servers. That's enough for them to know you looked at that content and may have interest in it. Not a huge deal in that particular instance but it's CERTAINLY not putting the user's privacy first.
jtmarl1n 7y ago
Extensions like pocket and the Mr. Robot thing? Yeah, bad execution and communication, but privacy invading?
IfOnlyYouKnew 7y ago
What's the difference b/w "installing an extension without permission" and "shipping a feature without permission"?

cookie_monsta 7y ago

Not trying to snark, but this seems like pretty basic stuff - is there anything in the article that the average HN reader wouldn't have heard multiple times already?

forgotmypw3 7y ago
Content to advertising ratio very low with this article, I think people just voted it up for the feel-good value.
- cookie_monsta 7y ago
  I guess that makes sense.
xxxtentachyon 7y ago
Nope, but this article isn't aimed at HN readers. It's aimed at lay people who don't necessarily understand what actions they're taking to implicitly undermine their own privacy or jeopardize the future of an open, standards-driven web. Katherine has written other, more innovative pieces around the same issues: https://www.fastcompany.com/90369697/googles-new-recaptcha-has-a-dark-side https://www.fastcompany.com/90369697/googles-new-recaptcha-h...
- cookie_monsta 7y ago
  > Nope, but this article isn't aimed at HN readers. It's aimed at lay people who don't necessarily understand what actions they're taking... So why is it here?
  - naniwaduni 7y ago
    An article can be of interest to HN readers without being aimed at them.
    - cookie_monsta 7y ago
      No doubt. But the reason why this one isn't aimed at HN readers is because they've heard all of this multiple times already. I'm not disagreeing with the article, I'm just wondering why it is of interest.
dammitfoo 7y ago

joemaller1 7y ago

Why not Brave? Honest question.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
pmoriarty 7y ago
Does Brave have anything like uMatrix and uBlock Origin? That functionality is pretty essential to me, and I can get it on Firefox. Other nice-to-haves on Firefox are: CanvasBlocker, NoScript, Cookie AutoDelete, Textern, and Stylus. If Brave has some equivalent functionality, I'm interested. Qutebrowser was another alternative which looked pretty promising, but last I checked its lead (only?) developer didn't have time to add the uMatrix/NoScript-like functionality he had intended. So it's a no-starter for me.
- zamadatix 7y ago
  Brave is just one of the Chromium clones so yes. Not on mobile though. Firefox on mobile does support extensinos is a bit rocky though in that the current classic version is a bit outdated and is by far the worst browser for battery according to multiple test while the upcoming Firefox Preview rewrite fixes this and updates the interface but doesn't yet support extensions. Some people disagree with Brave's operating model options around Ads. I'd recommend checking out Vivaldi as well if you haven't. It's a Chromium clone with a proprietary interface (but written in web technologies so the code is auditable). Outside of the usual Chromium clone story of being exactly like Chrome without Google it has an extremely customizable user interface. The downside is it has a disproportionate number of UI bugs compared to other browsers but that seems to have gotten better since the 2.0 release train.
  - com2kid 7y ago
    > Firefox on mobile does support extensinos is a bit rocky though It supports uBlock, good enough for me. It is the only thing that makes browsing recipe websites possible on Android!

forgotmypw3 7y ago

You're a couple years too late, Firefox has already been corrupted.

0xADADA 7y ago

Switched back when [Firefox Quantum](https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/11/14/introducing-firefox-quantum/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/11/14/introducing-firefox...) came out. Never looked back.

bootlooped 7y ago
I looked back repeatedly. For one I could never get it to launch Zoom from a link, it would always try to download the exe again. The Dark Reader extension is much slower on FF than Chrome. I think Chrome is still faster in general, I can tell especially when flipping through a bunch of tabs really fast. When I came to the realization I was using FireFox essentially just for idealogical reasons I went back to Chrome.
- microcolonel 7y ago
  Give Brave a try, it does a lot of things well, and it has some basic independence from Google's direct interests.
- Yoric 7y ago
  Out of curiosity, what's wrong with using a product because you believe in it?
- pivo 7y ago
  FWIW I use Firefox and zoom with no issues and am really happy with recent updates to the browser. Haven’t tried the dark reader extension though.

Tade0 7y ago

The other day I wowed my iPhone using co-workers by showing that Firefox for Android indeed allows you to install extensions.

chipotle_coyote 7y ago
So does iOS Safari. Is the wow part specifically Firefox?
- irq 7y ago
  > So does iOS Safari. This is incorrect. iOS Safari allows for rudimentary ad blockers to be installed. But no other sort of extensions are possible.
  - gnicholas 7y ago
    Actually, safari for iOS does support extensions other than adblockers. There are action extensions as well, though they have to be actively invoked every time you want to run them. This typically requires either 2 or 3 taps on every page, which stinks. It’s also difficult to educate users about their existence. But it’s technically an extension...
    - judge2020 7y ago
      Apple must have felt the "extensions that run on every page" would both A. introduce a common browser pain point (really crappy extensions slowing things down) and B. become dangerous to their users' privacy, since most things Extensions would be used for also require some sort of internet connectivity (eg. Grammarly - sending your text to the cloud).
  - chipotle_coyote 7y ago
    I've been using 1Password and Save to Instapaper on iOS for years. I suppose one can argue those aren't "true" extensions, but I'm not sure it'd be a very good argument, given that they're functionally pretty close to their Mac counterparts.

amingilani 7y ago

This topic's been discussed ad nauseam, I feel, but I made the switch a few months ago. It's a little painful, Firefox' performance when it comes to handling video is still sub-par, but that said, I'm much happier overall. The performance loss isn't too bad, and Firefox's Containers is a much better flow than Chrome's Profiles. I'd like it if MetaMask didn't glitch out with hardware wallets so much on Firefox, but I can hop onto Brave for that. That said, I checked a site I was developing on Chrome a while ago, and for a moment, I thought I'd accidentally deployed to the apex domain. Thank goodness I switched before Chrome's anti-features went into overdrive. I don't think I'd be using Chrome when they did that, even if privacy weren't a huge concern of mine.

saagarjha 7y ago

> For instance, Firefox protects you from being tracked by advertising networks across websites, which has the lovely side effect of making sites load faster. “As you move from website to website, advertising networks essentially follow you so they can see what you’re doing so they can serve you targeted advertisements,” Dolanjski says. “Firefox is the only [major] browser out of the box that prevents that from happening.” Uh, Safari? > Even if you do care, reading through Google Chrome’s 13,500-word privacy white paper, which uses a lot of technical jargon and obfuscates exactly what data the browser is tracking, isn’t helpful either. Actually, I found it to be an interesting and relatively straightforward read: https://www.google.com/chrome/privacy/whitepaper.html https://www.google.com/chrome/privacy/whitepaper.html > One downside to using Firefox is that many browser extensions are built primarily for Chrome WebExtensions is pretty similar between Chrome and Firefox, isn't it? > my password manager luckily has a Firefox extension but it often causes the browser to crash !!

Scarbutt 7y ago
Where is ublock for safari? ;)
- saagarjha 7y ago
  If you're referring to my first point, I'm talking about Intelligent Tracking Prevention.
  - inferiorhuman 7y ago
    You know a great way to prevent tracking? A decent ad blocker. I don't care how good Safari's "intelligent tracking prevention" is, but as long as they're blocking uBlock Origin I'll browse elsewhere.
    - Spivak 7y ago
      Safari isn’t blocking uBlock so much as they changed their extension API and uBlock can’t/won’t rewrite to support it. This is really no different than what Firefox did with WebExtensions but had the advantage of being mostly compatible with the Chromium ecosystem. It’s true that content blocking isn’t as powerful as what uBlock does/did with WebExt but WebExt also isn’t as powerful as XUL extensions.

kken 7y ago

These articles always feel like i missed something. I have stayed with Firefox all the time, never switched to Chrome. Why should I have switched to Chrome, again?

AlexCoventry 7y ago
It was faster and more secure. It's probably still more secure.
- ajross 7y ago
  Exactly. It's a decade behind us now, so presumably many posters here never even experienced it, but it's hard to convey just how much of an innovation Chrome was when it landed in the browser world of the late aughts. We'd been subjected, at that point, to almost 15 years of perpetual bloat and decay by Netscape and then Microsoft. Chrome wasn't just faster, it was viscerally faster (V8 in particular was just completely without peer at the time). It was cleaner, without all the buttons and features adorning its competitors. We all swapped instantly. Really it was amazing. But that was 11 years ago, Chrome has grown the warts IE used to have, and Firefox has largely caught up on the features geeks care about.
  - weci2i 7y ago
    I was around then. I don’t remember Chrome ever actually feeling faster. Maybe it was my system, maybe it was just me, but I’ve never understood the “faster” argument. The Chrome is “faster” argument is eerily reminiscent to Sega’s “blast processing” propaganda from the 90’s. What Chrome did do better than Firefox was pay to put advertisements everywhere. I remember feeling dumbfounded that we needed Chrome Browser ads on TV to sway people away from IE. Strange, strange times.
    - zerkten 7y ago
      It was significantly faster on Windows, but not so much on other platforms.

matt4077 7y ago

There's nothing wrong with switching to FF, but I feel Google is getting an awful lot of somewhat undeserved accusations. Specifically, lots of people interpret all changes in Chrome as attempts to (directly) bolster Google's advertising business. This seems undeserved, considering Chrome has a track record that is rather spotless in that regard: they didn't ban ad blocking, never even attempted to send the click-stream into their user targeting, etc. A lot more of Chrome can be better explained by a slightly different motivating mechanism: Google needs to keep the open web at parity with native software/apps, because it's the open web where they earn money. This is far more important than any marginal change in ad blocking or whatever else these conspiracy theories see as the upside for Google. This model perfectly explains PWAs, for example. Another under-analysed issue are the comparisons with Microsoft/Internet Explorer's monopoly problem: The issue with IE was that it was closed-source, only available on Windows, and included strange runtimes for content that no other client had a chance to access. None of those issues align with anything in Chrome's position today. Chrome has a large market share, and to some extend the evolution of the web platform. But with Chrome leading the way, the web platform has seen an unprecedented success in terms of standardisation, performance, and features in the last five years or so. I get that people invested in existing standardisation process feel sad for the demise of their bureaucracy. But it's working rather well because Chrome's and users' interests align. And there isn't even an obvious mechanism for this to change, since other players such as Apple seem to be unthreatened in their position of having a de-facto veto.

kwijibob 7y ago
I think Google love this kind of media exposure and promotion of Firefox. It protects them from antitrust complaints and they are not too threatened by Mozilla Firefox.
- judge2020 7y ago
  There will possibly be a tipping point, especially if developers do the IE thing (or now Chrome thing) and only test their sites on one browser; currently a large portion of the education, private, and public sectors rely on the word of their vendors for which browser their app works best on (mostly Chrome because of its 10 year dominance). If all of the developers go to Firefox, and the sentiment changes from Chrome to Firefox, we might start seeing dual-install deployments and eventually firefox-only. That is, if Google hadn't been pushing their GSuite offering for the past few years and managed to tie a large amount of both private sector and education organizations to Chrome for the integration and MDM.

timwis 7y ago

Chrome shares my IP address with the websites I visit?! :O (lol)

osamagirl69 7y ago
The issue here is that it also shares them with Google, and in many cases shares a history of websites you have visited with other websites.

rsync 7y ago

I made this switch about 12-ish months ago when the writing was on the wall about ad-blocking and ... something about auto-creating a "chrome account" something something ... I've been fairly disappointed in the lack of flexibility that firefox provides and the real lack of maturity (and even usability) of the containers feature. I think I expected the move to firefox to bring with it a lot more flexibility and a richer set of configurations and customizations and this really isn't the case. Instead, my firefox experience has been surprisingly restrictive. Unless, of course, I am willing to install a bunch of add-ons, all of which come with the obligatory "access all of your data" and are from just some random dude on the net. Some specific issues: - I want to define a "home page" BUT I also want both new tabs and new windows to open with a blank page. You cannot do this. As soon as you set both new tab and new window to "blank page", the fn+opt+leftarrow shortcut ceases to do anything. - I want to use containers. Containers are only tabs. That makes no sense. The very first thing you want to do with a container, after learning what containers are, is open a Window and have all future tabs in that window inherit the container that that Window is. This is the basic use-case of the container feature and it doesn't exist. Instead, every use of container is mouse-mouse-mouse-click-click-click (since there is no key shortcut for them) and then open a tab for a single use. We should be making container windows and using key shortcuts to open tabs in those windows. - I can't force-title a firefox Window - it just gets the title of the currently open tab. All manner of interesting Window management can be done, outside of firefox, if you can lock the Window title. I could create 6-8 ffox Windows, just like I create 6-8 spaces in GNU Screen, and quickly hotkey between them ... I see no way to do this. - The fixation on tabs is, itself, a bit weird ... I don't think either a window-centric nor a tab-centric workflow should be favored - they should be equally developed and enabled.

DHPersonal 7y ago
Even worse, the Containers don't sync, so they have to be remade for every device. I really like the idea of the Container extension, but it needs a lot of work from Mozilla to be something I could recommend to others.
- netfl0 7y ago

FillardMillmore 7y ago

It seems like we've had a discussion about this article every few months since its publication - not necessarily a bad thing, but just an observation. I've been a Firefox user since before Chrome was launched - it was one of the very few alternatives to IE at the time. And during these years, it was a breath of fresh air. When Chrome launched, as others have noted, Google leveraged its coffers to provide the new browser with extensive advertising and PR and of course, the icing on the cake, it actually was a great browser too. I never ran benchmarks or anything but there were certainly a number of years in which Chrome did seem like a faster browser. That said, I was always skeptical because the browser was a Google product. But I stuck with Firefox except for rare cases, mostly in the past 5 or so years, where certain sites didn't even appear to function properly without it (it being Chrome). Because of sites like these, I am at least appreciative that there are other Chromium-based browsers (which now, apparently include Microsoft Edge) that offer more or less the same site functionality as Chrome without having to directly leverage a Google product. I for one quite like Brave and its privacy features, including its defaults. Blocking ads by default is great, though of course, Brave compensates for this by presenting its own ads (which are still annoying, but less so to me). I like the ability to use Tor and DuckDuckGo easily just by starting a private window. It also seems to me that Brave is just as fast, if not faster than Firefox. In addition to this, you can use almost every Chrome extension on the Brave browser (for me, the important stuff is uBlock Origin, Dark Reader, and a Password Manager). I know many here are skeptical or disapproving of the 'Brave Rewards' cryptocurrency - and I get that. But I have completely ignored it (it is an opt-in system) and I am no worse for wear. Suffice it to say, I'm a long-time Firefox supporter - I still do use it somewhat frequently but I'm slowly shifting to Brave. I try not to use Chrome (though I appreciate what its impact has been on the browser space as a whole) and Microsoft's efforts with Edge at least provide amusing diversions. If you're running old SharePoint sites, Microsoft's browsers are still a must-have.

topmonk 7y ago
> Brave compensates for this by presenting its own ads (which are still annoying, but less so to me) I exclusively use brave on android, linux and windows and don't have replacement ads. I've read that you can opt into viewing ads in exchange for receiving a cryptocurrency token, but since I'm in a region that isn't offered, have never seen it. But I don't think it just plasters its own ads over the originals unless you opt into this “crypto for ad views” scheme.

JohnJamesRambo 7y ago

I keep wanting to like Firefox but I prefer Brave right now. It seems like all the ease of Chrome and ad blocking and privacy too.

helpPeople 7y ago

Not sure why Firefox takes literally minutes to load a page. Bugs are unacceptable. Weirdly my wife has the same issue on her computer.

newscracker 7y ago

Mods: this needs to be tagged 2018. This article is now a year and a half old. > Google already runs a lot of my online life–it’s my email, my calendar, my go-to map, and all my documents. I’d rather the author take care of this with urgency, in addition to switching from Chrome to Firefox. Firefox Focus is one of the best things from Mozilla in the recent years. I use it more than any browser (including Firefox itself). I’ve asked around before, but didn’t get a satisfactory answer. Mozilla Corporation (the one that funds Firefox development) gets more than 90% of its revenues from its search partnership with Google. So Firefox is, in a way, aligned to promoting Google to survive. If there were ways to fund Firefox more widely (not through some limited VPN service tie ups), that could make Mozilla bolder. Someone pointed out that while there’s an official Facebook Container extension for Firefox, there is no official Google Container extension. The Google Container is not created by Mozilla. I’d really want to support Firefox (and related) development directly. In my understanding this is not possible because donations on mozilla.org go to Mozilla Foundation, the non-profit that works on open web initiatives and education.

pantsme 7y ago

Man I miss when chrome first came out and made the web so dang fast. Now it is the heaviest app I have on my computer by far. We need a Chrome Lite. I have been enjoying Brave lately though.

18monthsin 7y ago

I never switched to chrome. I find it hilarious that the author thinks the decision to switch is forwardthinking enough to write about.

eddhead 7y ago

Been using the new Edge Beta for a year now, don't ever need Chrome for anything

loraa 7y ago

Sigh...

loraa 7y ago

Firefox used to be a real bag of crap for a while before chrome it was a no brainer, but therr was that time after chrome where everyone jumped ship, and they fired the ceo for not being part of the liberal hive mind.

paul7986 7y ago

it would be cool if DDG became Firefox's default search and or FF would promote/let users know they have a choice!

microcolonel 7y ago
But they need that Google cash to pay for the social political decadence of the few, and the occasional productive development resource.
- paul7986 7y ago
  I bet if they made DDG the default in which a big rev share towards firefox was provided they'd be able to survive and more. Wouldn't be gangbusters like it is now with the big G, but maybe in the long run it would.

alex-wallish 7y ago

It's incredibly disappointing to me to learn that the majority of Firefox's revenue comes from promoting Google search. Maybe duckduckgo should build a browser.

Groxx 7y ago
2014-2017 was primarily from Yahoo, if that helps at all

Avi-D-coder 7y ago

The three reasons I can't seem to switch are tearing with compton and i3, startup time, and middle click not pasting when clicking the new tab button. Does anyone know how fix any of these behaviors? The last one may seem minor, but it takes three clicks to achieve the same result as chrome for a task I do constantly. How is Firefox on wayland with sway?

callekabo 7y ago

Long time user of Firefox on desktop, but recently moved away from Firefox on android after reading that it's "much more vulnerable to exploitation and inherently add a huge amount of attack surface". https://grapheneos.org/usage#web-browsing https://grapheneos.org/usage#web-browsing

shadowprofile77 7y ago

My one problem with Firefox is that it's just so damn slow on any laptop I use. I've tried every update since the beginning of 2019 and little appreciable change on this. My laptops tend towards the cheap and they don't have much kick but if Firefox is decent enough, it should be able to perform as well as Chrome on them, and with Chrome I rarely have this problem on any of the same machines. If anyone can give me some idea of how to address this, would be nice.

i_am_proteus 7y ago
I have had the opposite experience: Firefox runs just fine on a T420i (2nd gen i3,4GB RAM, Ubuntu 18.04) a T450 (5th gen i5, 8GB RAM, Windows 10) and a 2011 Macbook Air (2nd gen i5, 4GB RAM, OSX Sierra).
fouc 7y ago
Is it the page scrolling that feels slow to you? That's configurable.
andai 7y ago
I had the same experience with FF on laptops. Switched between FF and Chrome a few times then settled on Brave for a combination of Chromium’s performance, just without the Google :) It was a bit buggy but they’ve mostly ironed it out.

lenkite 7y ago

I will switch when Firefox supports the OS native certificate store for client-certificate authentication. Until then its Chrome.

Yoric 7y ago
I remember having this conversation with other Firefox security devs (I'm a Firefox dev myself). While I don't remember exactly why they are not supported, I remember that there was a very good security reason for this. Also, while it's off by default, Firefox can be configured to support them: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1175296 https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1175296
- lenkite 7y ago
  That method doesn't work for client certificate authentication. Thousands of organisations in the world generate client certificates for their users and populate them into the OS certificate store. Those certificates are then expected to be presented at the time of client-certificate authentication to the hundreds of apps that expect them. The OS certificate in any enterprise company is "locked down" with extensive policies provided by the OS vendor. It is far harder to import/export certificate and key material from it than from Firefox's own certificate store. I know that my company runs has scripts that run regular background checks to validate certificates in the OS certificate store. If you want dev/test certificates, we even have an internal app that generates 'trusted' certificates for various purposes. There was a reason that Chrome chose to move to the OS certificate store. They realised it would increase their market share in the enterprise. Firefox is a no-go because it continues to cling to its own custom store.

dang 7y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17189396 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17189396

chewz 7y ago

I had been using Firefox during dark days and moved to Chrome (for other reasons) more or less at the time of Quantum release. Since Chrome 78 it is very perverse feeling to see Chrome informing me (with cute little icon in omnibox) that it had blocked 3rd-party cookies from domains like google-analytics.com or doubleclick.com. https://images.app.goo.gl/skf52r6Cndj7BvZp7 https://images.app.goo.gl/skf52r6Cndj7BvZp7

lcall 7y ago

I like the idea of not concentrating yet more power with Google, but, on OpenBSD, I use Iridium (Chrome derivative), so I see these benefits: 1) Iridium doesn't send info to Google like Chrome does (or that is the idea); 2) It is easier (last I checked) than with Firefox to leave some config tabs open so I can quickly turn on/off javascript, images, and/or cookies for those sites where I need them (by exception only, and easy to do without a mouse once the tab is open), and 3) OpenBSD adds pledge/unveil system calls from the browser, to prevent it from reading/writing files where it should not (plus I browse under a different user than I do other things with high confidence there will not be a privilege escalation; also they say the pledge/unveil support is easier to implement in Chrome/Iridium than in Firefox because of the cleaner separations of concerns in the code organization (my wording; though they have probably also put pledge/unveil in FF also for all I know), 4) Maybe the security of Chrome/Iridium benefits from Google's bug bounties. I don't really know but I'm glad they try. Given those things, are there still reasons I would prefer Firefox? (I am aware of OBSD removing DNS-over-HTTP from Firefox, indicating that is a choice that should be made by the user at the system level instead).

gaia 7y ago

If you NEED extensions, you should consider Vivaldi. Chrome engine, but doesn't require login to google and has better default privacy settings.