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I don’t see how, in 2020, any conscientious member of this site could justify their use or advocacy of Chrome. It’s an evil product peddled by an evil company f

I don’t see how, in 2020, any conscientious member of this site could justify their use or advocacy of Chrome. It’s an evil product peddled by an evil company for evil means. The alternatives are as good if not better from a usability perspective. Safari is great if you’re a regular Mac user. Firefox is great if you’re a dev on any platform. Chrome is toxic evil that needs to die for the good of humanity.

throwawaymath 7y ago
I guess this will probably be unpopular on HN, but... I still use Chrome. I don't feel the need to "justify" my use of Chrome. I like Chrome. I care about internet privacy - I use ublock origin and have JavaScript disabled by default, and only reenable it for sites I really care about. But I don't really have strong opinions about internet browsers. I used to use Firefox, but a few years ago I started using Chrome and just found it to be better for my habits. I like the tight integration between Chrome and my Google account. I use a Google Home and several Nest products at home (granted they're on their own VLAN). I use GSuite for my personal email, and Google domains for my domain names. Chrome is just another drop in the bucket, and I can't be bothered to change it. I also tried using other search engines, and somehow still found Google to be more helpful for me despite everyone saying DuckDuckGo has reached parity. I guess that makes me morally compromised, or supporting a "toxic evil" or whatever, but I just don't care that much. I'm self-aware in my apathy, I guess.
- Pigo 7y ago
  Don't let them make you feel bad about yourself. It was a little overboard in my opinion, I thought they were about to say you're a Nazi if you use Chrome. Knowledge is power, just be aware of what is going on with your apps and make a judgement call for yourself. Lately I've been enjoying going to brick and mortar stores and don't go to Facebook at all. Who still uses Facebook? And if I end up seeing an ad, I don't let it ruin my day.
zo1 7y ago
To be fair, one of the biggest reasons I still kinda stick to Chrome is due to its speed when it comes to Google products and other "web apps". Maps, Outlook365, Gmail are all absolutely horrendously slow on Firefox on Linux. And seeing as the entire web is going down this schmancy route of making everything under the sun a bloated, interactive "PWA/WebApp", it puts as in a corner when it comes to wanting to avoid using Chrome.
- CoolGuySteve 7y ago
  Microsoft’s IIS used to skip a lot of protocol if you were using Internet Explorer. It made pages load a lot faster. Seems like Google is running the same hustle.
  - zo1 7y ago
    I think so... Could be anything from hidden JS optimizations, SPDY, server-throttling. Last time I looked, my anecdotal and probably biased investigation into it appeared to indicate that the actual requests were slower on Firefox. Nevermind the question of why Gmail needs to make 230+ requests to the server to start up.
Consultant32452 7y ago
There's still some sites where chrome just works and Firefox does not including major sites like Periscope. I'm confident I could clear my cache/cookies, disable plugins, or other wizardry to get it working but in reality I just use chrome for these sites. That's why I'm a Firefox user but not an advocate. My mom can't handle the idea of using a different browser for some sites.
- ProstetnicJeltz 7y ago
  I can have some weird cases on firefox Linux, where it isn't rendering perfectly. This might be me though, it's generally when I'm developing. Just sometimes I'll go 'display: flex; justify-content: center; align-items: center;' and the content will end up about 5px above center. I'll be like 'WTF?' for a minute, then run it in chrome with no issue.
- boring_twenties 7y ago
  Not sure why you're being downvoted, this is sad but 100% true. For me, it's only a very rare site that doesn't work in Firefox, but one of them is my medical account. No choice but to have Chromium installed, otherwise I can't view my lab results, read my doctor's notes, and pay the bill. I assure you I don't like it but it's a fact of life. I only use it for those very few sites (less than 1% for sure), but not having it handy at all is just not an option. As for my mom, luckily she hasn't had any complaints so far, so she just uses Firefox as it's what's installed by default. I certainly don't think I could train her to switch between two different browsers, though. If it came to that it would have to be Chromium full time, there. One site that deserves a plug here is binance.com. They stopped working with Firefox a couple of months ago, but it was fixed in 2-3 days after I reported it. I guess a little healthy (heh) competition goes a long way.
nullandvoid 7y ago
Whilst I largely agree the quality of life developing in chrome was better than any competitor for a long period of time. Expecting everyone to stay in the loop and switch over night as firefox / alternatives have caught up seems silly V8 is a powerful runtime and has enabled some great products regardless of Google's history in areas
jdsully 7y ago
Firefox and Netscape before it go through weird phases of “we have to do a rewrite!” And then for the next 3 years they fall horribly behind and lose a huge chunk of market share. After the rewrite they become quite good again but you can’t blame the people that jumped ship during the dark period where it seemed like nothing was happening.
dang 7y ago
This comment breaks the HN rules against name-calling. Would you mind reviewing them? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html The idea here is curious conversation, not "evil ... evil ... evil ... toxic evil". If you post like that, you're inevitably going to provoke someone else into doing the same and worse, and then we get destructive flamewars. Also, denunciatory rhetoric isn't helpful and isn't interesting. Google and Google and Chrome is Chrome. Both are behemoth topics on HN. They can't be substantively reduced to "evil evil evil", though thoughtful critique is always welcome. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21833134 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21833134.
- jen729w 7y ago
  My apologies, dang. I’d had a long day and a few too many beers.
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throwawaymath 7y ago

I guess this will probably be unpopular on HN, but... I still use Chrome. I don't feel the need to "justify" my use of Chrome. I like Chrome. I care about internet privacy - I use ublock origin and have JavaScript disabled by default, and only reenable it for sites I really care about. But I don't really have strong opinions about internet browsers. I used to use Firefox, but a few years ago I started using Chrome and just found it to be better for my habits. I like the tight integration between Chrome and my Google account. I use a Google Home and several Nest products at home (granted they're on their own VLAN). I use GSuite for my personal email, and Google domains for my domain names. Chrome is just another drop in the bucket, and I can't be bothered to change it. I also tried using other search engines, and somehow still found Google to be more helpful for me despite everyone saying DuckDuckGo has reached parity. I guess that makes me morally compromised, or supporting a "toxic evil" or whatever, but I just don't care that much. I'm self-aware in my apathy, I guess.

Pigo 7y ago
Don't let them make you feel bad about yourself. It was a little overboard in my opinion, I thought they were about to say you're a Nazi if you use Chrome. Knowledge is power, just be aware of what is going on with your apps and make a judgement call for yourself. Lately I've been enjoying going to brick and mortar stores and don't go to Facebook at all. Who still uses Facebook? And if I end up seeing an ad, I don't let it ruin my day.

zo1 7y ago

To be fair, one of the biggest reasons I still kinda stick to Chrome is due to its speed when it comes to Google products and other "web apps". Maps, Outlook365, Gmail are all absolutely horrendously slow on Firefox on Linux. And seeing as the entire web is going down this schmancy route of making everything under the sun a bloated, interactive "PWA/WebApp", it puts as in a corner when it comes to wanting to avoid using Chrome.

CoolGuySteve 7y ago
Microsoft’s IIS used to skip a lot of protocol if you were using Internet Explorer. It made pages load a lot faster. Seems like Google is running the same hustle.
- zo1 7y ago
  I think so... Could be anything from hidden JS optimizations, SPDY, server-throttling. Last time I looked, my anecdotal and probably biased investigation into it appeared to indicate that the actual requests were slower on Firefox. Nevermind the question of why Gmail needs to make 230+ requests to the server to start up.

Consultant32452 7y ago

There's still some sites where chrome just works and Firefox does not including major sites like Periscope. I'm confident I could clear my cache/cookies, disable plugins, or other wizardry to get it working but in reality I just use chrome for these sites. That's why I'm a Firefox user but not an advocate. My mom can't handle the idea of using a different browser for some sites.

ProstetnicJeltz 7y ago
I can have some weird cases on firefox Linux, where it isn't rendering perfectly. This might be me though, it's generally when I'm developing. Just sometimes I'll go 'display: flex; justify-content: center; align-items: center;' and the content will end up about 5px above center. I'll be like 'WTF?' for a minute, then run it in chrome with no issue.
boring_twenties 7y ago
Not sure why you're being downvoted, this is sad but 100% true. For me, it's only a very rare site that doesn't work in Firefox, but one of them is my medical account. No choice but to have Chromium installed, otherwise I can't view my lab results, read my doctor's notes, and pay the bill. I assure you I don't like it but it's a fact of life. I only use it for those very few sites (less than 1% for sure), but not having it handy at all is just not an option. As for my mom, luckily she hasn't had any complaints so far, so she just uses Firefox as it's what's installed by default. I certainly don't think I could train her to switch between two different browsers, though. If it came to that it would have to be Chromium full time, there. One site that deserves a plug here is binance.com. They stopped working with Firefox a couple of months ago, but it was fixed in 2-3 days after I reported it. I guess a little healthy (heh) competition goes a long way.

nullandvoid 7y ago

Whilst I largely agree the quality of life developing in chrome was better than any competitor for a long period of time. Expecting everyone to stay in the loop and switch over night as firefox / alternatives have caught up seems silly V8 is a powerful runtime and has enabled some great products regardless of Google's history in areas

jdsully 7y ago

Firefox and Netscape before it go through weird phases of “we have to do a rewrite!” And then for the next 3 years they fall horribly behind and lose a huge chunk of market share. After the rewrite they become quite good again but you can’t blame the people that jumped ship during the dark period where it seemed like nothing was happening.

dang 7y ago

This comment breaks the HN rules against name-calling. Would you mind reviewing them? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html The idea here is curious conversation, not "evil ... evil ... evil ... toxic evil". If you post like that, you're inevitably going to provoke someone else into doing the same and worse, and then we get destructive flamewars. Also, denunciatory rhetoric isn't helpful and isn't interesting. Google and Google and Chrome is Chrome. Both are behemoth topics on HN. They can't be substantively reduced to "evil evil evil", though thoughtful critique is always welcome. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21833134 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21833134.

jen729w 7y ago
My apologies, dang. I’d had a long day and a few too many beers.
- deleted 7y ago
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