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> Safari's track record on privacy technologies is longer and better than everyone. Certainly I would say Apple is doing better on privacy than Google, but whe

> Safari's track record on privacy technologies is longer and better than everyone. Certainly I would say Apple is doing better on privacy than Google, but when it comes to the browser specifically, I don't think they're doing significantly better. Google, for instance, pioneered Incognito mode (edit: nope, Safari beat them). They developed and deployed their privacy-preserving telemetry tool RAPPOR in Chrome a few years before Apple adopted the technology for anything. Chrome allowed you to configure DuckDuckGo as your default search engine pretty much from the beginning (as long as you did it manually), whereas Safari took years to allow it. Safari has been slowly shutting out many forms of third-party extensions which are frequently for ad and tracker blocking. (To be fair Apple has a design that reduces the amount of trust you need to put in an ad blocker to see your browsing behavior, but it is far more limited, and likely sees far lower adoption.) I do think Apple is prioritizing privacy-protecting features higher than Google is, so it would not surprise me to see Safari come ahead with features like Intelligent Tracking Prevention which conflict with Google's business interests.

millstone 7y ago
I think there's an excellent case for Safari. It had private browsing in 2005, before Chrome even existed. It was the first to block third party cookies by default, and today only Chrome still allows them. It added DDG as an option in 2014, while Chrome added it only this year.
- rgovostes 7y ago
  > It had private browsing in 2005 I stand corrected. > It added DDG as an option in 2014, while Chrome added it only this year. There's a nuance here. Apple's list of search engines comes from a cryptographically signed file which only they can modify. Chrome allowed you to manually configure DDG, but omitted it from the pre-configured list of search engines that included Bing and Yahoo!.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    Interestingly, the ability to add a new search engine has been removed from Safari with the deprecation of legacy extensions.
  - millstone 7y ago
    It's true that you couldn't add it as an option to the fixed list, but in practice there were extensions that enabled it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3770958 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3770958 is a fun trip down memory lane.
- Despegar 7y ago
  >It was the first to block third party cookies by default Which led to the FTC collecting a scalp for it. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2012/08/google-will-pay-225-million-settle-ftc-charges-it-misrepresented https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2012/08/googl...
  - colejohnson66 7y ago
    Should mention that that’s Google paying a fine, not Apple. Your wording makes it sound like it’s the latter.

millstone 7y ago

I think there's an excellent case for Safari. It had private browsing in 2005, before Chrome even existed. It was the first to block third party cookies by default, and today only Chrome still allows them. It added DDG as an option in 2014, while Chrome added it only this year.

rgovostes 7y ago
> It had private browsing in 2005 I stand corrected. > It added DDG as an option in 2014, while Chrome added it only this year. There's a nuance here. Apple's list of search engines comes from a cryptographically signed file which only they can modify. Chrome allowed you to manually configure DDG, but omitted it from the pre-configured list of search engines that included Bing and Yahoo!.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  Interestingly, the ability to add a new search engine has been removed from Safari with the deprecation of legacy extensions.
- millstone 7y ago
  It's true that you couldn't add it as an option to the fixed list, but in practice there were extensions that enabled it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3770958 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3770958 is a fun trip down memory lane.
Despegar 7y ago
>It was the first to block third party cookies by default Which led to the FTC collecting a scalp for it. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2012/08/google-will-pay-225-million-settle-ftc-charges-it-misrepresented https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2012/08/googl...
- colejohnson66 7y ago
  Should mention that that’s Google paying a fine, not Apple. Your wording makes it sound like it’s the latter.