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> But Brave is based on Chromium! > Chromium is open source and all Google tracking can easily be disabled. Brave strips out all of this by default. Remember t

> But Brave is based on Chromium! > Chromium is open source and all Google tracking can easily be disabled. Brave strips out all of this by default. Remember that Chromium is not the same as Chrome. Sorry, but this is not a satisfactory explanation to me. Brave is marketed as the pro-decentralization/good web citizen browser. Yet, it uses Chromium, which contributes to Google’s dominance over the web — pushing developers to further neglect Firefox and other browsers as a target. Also, where is Brave’s innovation? I see none. Instead, I support Mozilla.

microcolonel 7y ago
A key part of why Mozilla succeeded in somewhat resurrecting the web was that it was good, when compared with Internet Explorer. Firefox is slow (especially on Linux) when compared with Chromium. The Firefox UI is more complex and not any more powerful; the excuse used to be that they supported more deeply-integrated extensions, but that's mostly dead now. With regard to "dominance over the web", Firefox is riddled with compliance bugs and misbehaviours, many of which go unaddressed for years, these bugs and incompatibilities have forced me to disable features for Firefox users, or find workarounds, over the years. > Also, where is Brave’s innovation? I see none. Instead, I support Mozilla. Where is Mozilla's innovation today? They maintain a broken, slightly-differentiated Netscape clone, and have an unmistakable chip on their shoulder; but there is no substantial benefit to using Mozilla, and there are some serious drawbacks that Mozilla could avoid if they cared. Brave is at least doing something interesting, with an innovative compensation model which has some hope to reduce reliance on surveillance-driven advertising, and they put a Tor client in the default distribution (even if the browser does not implement some of the anti-fingerprinting measures that Tor Browser does). On top of this all, Brave is differentiating on what matters, rather than taking up the pointless task of maintaining similarly-licensed, lower quality implementations of various web standards. If Google gains power over the web with Chromium, in some vague way, then Mozilla's power move would be to base Firefox on Chromium (or at least fork Chromium). Rust is a spectacular thing they've done, but at the end of the day, any argument for using Mozilla should begin with a long list of positive characteristics of the product, and not with vague platitudes about implementation diversity.
- thenewnewguy 7y ago
  > Firefox is slow (especially on Linux) when compared with Chromium. People tell me this, but I genuinely can't tell the difference between Chrome and FF's speed on linux. Both feel equally fast to me. My only real complaint about FF on linux is a lack of hardware video decoding. > Mozilla's power move would be to base Firefox on Chromium (or at least fork Chromium) You can't be serious.
  - ReverseCold 7y ago
    > People tell me this, but I genuinely can't tell the difference between Chrome and FF's speed on linux. It's pretty apparent in "web apps" - plenty of SPAs grind Firefox to a halt and not Chrome. The other major win for Chrome is battery life on laptops. I know it's getting better for FF, but it's still not that close. Safari actually does the best on (nearly) any hardware you can convince MacOS to run on, but they broke extensions recently so it's not viable for me anymore. (I still run FF Nightly as my main browser.)
    - kick 7y ago
      It's pretty apparent in "web apps" - plenty of SPAs grind Firefox to a halt and not Chrome. The other major win for Chrome is battery life on laptops. I know it's getting better for FF, but it's still not that close. Is this because you're on Mac OS? Firefox has always had Mac as a third-class OS, especially since they started pushing Metal. I can't remember the last time I had Firefox crash, grind to a halt, or even stutter.
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      > It's pretty apparent in "web apps" - plenty of SPAs grind Firefox to a halt and not Chrome. Perhaps they’re just “optimized” for Chrome?
  - microcolonel 7y ago
    > People tell me this, but I genuinely can't tell the difference between Chrome and FF's speed on Linux. It's a bit hard to compare, and part of the difference in perception is Firefox's weird animation function for smooth scrolling on stepped scroll wheels (it takes longer, and feels unnatural). Firefox regularly hitches on webpages that never miss a frame in Chromium-based browsers for me (and several other people share this experience, anecdotally, as you mention). When looking at most decent benchmarks, there is a clear quantitative difference, if anecdotes are not your jam. I've never gathered metrics or frame timings for both Firefox and Chromium, but I don't see why it would disagree with my experience. In my experience, slightly interesting CSS on documents, or scripts and layout on SPA-style applications, can cause Firefox to miss hundreds of milliseconds of frames. I've become accustomed to 144/165Hz with few or no missed frames, while I noticed Firefox missing frames even when I was on 60Hz monitors. > My only real complaint about FF on linux is a lack of hardware video decoding. Generally speaking, this is of little to no importance on a laptop or desktop. But yeah, that is a bit of a bummer. > You can't be serious. I'm fully serious; you won't convince me they wouldn't come out ahead, without some hard reason.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
sys_64738 7y ago
Innovation is dead as consolidation started about five years ago, so now we’re down to three layout engines as it appears to great a task for smaller entities to make the engines themselves. I could be wrong but it’s sounding like the dollars are not there to make it worthwhile or it’s too a mammoth task.
samantohermes 7y ago
> Yet, it uses Chromium, which contributes to Google’s dominance over the web — pushing developers to further neglect Firefox and other browsers as a target. The only solution is to create a new web standards organization, since Google controls W3C. For instance, WebAssembly has a lot of privacy issues.
- 1f60c 7y ago
  > WebAssembly has a lot of privacy issues This is the first time I've heard about this. How so?
buboard 7y ago
Didn't they use to use Mozilla's engine in the past? Brave is a payments shell on top of a browser ui. Maybe in the future they can afford to have both. I think focusing on the rendering engine is missing the point.

microcolonel 7y ago

A key part of why Mozilla succeeded in somewhat resurrecting the web was that it was good, when compared with Internet Explorer. Firefox is slow (especially on Linux) when compared with Chromium. The Firefox UI is more complex and not any more powerful; the excuse used to be that they supported more deeply-integrated extensions, but that's mostly dead now. With regard to "dominance over the web", Firefox is riddled with compliance bugs and misbehaviours, many of which go unaddressed for years, these bugs and incompatibilities have forced me to disable features for Firefox users, or find workarounds, over the years. > Also, where is Brave’s innovation? I see none. Instead, I support Mozilla. Where is Mozilla's innovation today? They maintain a broken, slightly-differentiated Netscape clone, and have an unmistakable chip on their shoulder; but there is no substantial benefit to using Mozilla, and there are some serious drawbacks that Mozilla could avoid if they cared. Brave is at least doing something interesting, with an innovative compensation model which has some hope to reduce reliance on surveillance-driven advertising, and they put a Tor client in the default distribution (even if the browser does not implement some of the anti-fingerprinting measures that Tor Browser does). On top of this all, Brave is differentiating on what matters, rather than taking up the pointless task of maintaining similarly-licensed, lower quality implementations of various web standards. If Google gains power over the web with Chromium, in some vague way, then Mozilla's power move would be to base Firefox on Chromium (or at least fork Chromium). Rust is a spectacular thing they've done, but at the end of the day, any argument for using Mozilla should begin with a long list of positive characteristics of the product, and not with vague platitudes about implementation diversity.

thenewnewguy 7y ago
> Firefox is slow (especially on Linux) when compared with Chromium. People tell me this, but I genuinely can't tell the difference between Chrome and FF's speed on linux. Both feel equally fast to me. My only real complaint about FF on linux is a lack of hardware video decoding. > Mozilla's power move would be to base Firefox on Chromium (or at least fork Chromium) You can't be serious.
- ReverseCold 7y ago
  > People tell me this, but I genuinely can't tell the difference between Chrome and FF's speed on linux. It's pretty apparent in "web apps" - plenty of SPAs grind Firefox to a halt and not Chrome. The other major win for Chrome is battery life on laptops. I know it's getting better for FF, but it's still not that close. Safari actually does the best on (nearly) any hardware you can convince MacOS to run on, but they broke extensions recently so it's not viable for me anymore. (I still run FF Nightly as my main browser.)
  - kick 7y ago
    It's pretty apparent in "web apps" - plenty of SPAs grind Firefox to a halt and not Chrome. The other major win for Chrome is battery life on laptops. I know it's getting better for FF, but it's still not that close. Is this because you're on Mac OS? Firefox has always had Mac as a third-class OS, especially since they started pushing Metal. I can't remember the last time I had Firefox crash, grind to a halt, or even stutter.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    > It's pretty apparent in "web apps" - plenty of SPAs grind Firefox to a halt and not Chrome. Perhaps they’re just “optimized” for Chrome?
- microcolonel 7y ago
  > People tell me this, but I genuinely can't tell the difference between Chrome and FF's speed on Linux. It's a bit hard to compare, and part of the difference in perception is Firefox's weird animation function for smooth scrolling on stepped scroll wheels (it takes longer, and feels unnatural). Firefox regularly hitches on webpages that never miss a frame in Chromium-based browsers for me (and several other people share this experience, anecdotally, as you mention). When looking at most decent benchmarks, there is a clear quantitative difference, if anecdotes are not your jam. I've never gathered metrics or frame timings for both Firefox and Chromium, but I don't see why it would disagree with my experience. In my experience, slightly interesting CSS on documents, or scripts and layout on SPA-style applications, can cause Firefox to miss hundreds of milliseconds of frames. I've become accustomed to 144/165Hz with few or no missed frames, while I noticed Firefox missing frames even when I was on 60Hz monitors. > My only real complaint about FF on linux is a lack of hardware video decoding. Generally speaking, this is of little to no importance on a laptop or desktop. But yeah, that is a bit of a bummer. > You can't be serious. I'm fully serious; you won't convince me they wouldn't come out ahead, without some hard reason.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

sys_64738 7y ago

Innovation is dead as consolidation started about five years ago, so now we’re down to three layout engines as it appears to great a task for smaller entities to make the engines themselves. I could be wrong but it’s sounding like the dollars are not there to make it worthwhile or it’s too a mammoth task.

samantohermes 7y ago

> Yet, it uses Chromium, which contributes to Google’s dominance over the web — pushing developers to further neglect Firefox and other browsers as a target. The only solution is to create a new web standards organization, since Google controls W3C. For instance, WebAssembly has a lot of privacy issues.

1f60c 7y ago
> WebAssembly has a lot of privacy issues This is the first time I've heard about this. How so?

buboard 7y ago

Didn't they use to use Mozilla's engine in the past? Brave is a payments shell on top of a browser ui. Maybe in the future they can afford to have both. I think focusing on the rendering engine is missing the point.