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> It might be great but for now refuse to support anything that further strengthen Googles grip on the market. The question then becomes: "What else even is ou

> It might be great but for now refuse to support anything that further strengthen Googles grip on the market. The question then becomes: "What else even is out there?" Because if you're looking for something that's even remotely feature complete for browsing the modern day web, the majority of the current browsers out there are indeed based on Chromium, as expressed in this article, "Firefox is the Only Alternative": https://batsov.com/articles/2021/11/28/firefox-is-the-only-alternative/ https://batsov.com/articles/2021/11/28/firefox-is-the-only-a... Here's the table from the article in text format: Browser Based on Chromium Open-source Market Share (desktop + mobile) Chrome Yes No 64.7% Chromium Yes Yes - Edge Yes No 4.0% Brave Yes Yes - Vivaldi Yes No - Opera Yes No 2.4% Safari No No 19.0% Firefox No Yes 3.7% To me it seems like Firefox is the only viable alternative and putting all of our hopes on a singular browser and the company behind it, especially given that there has recently been some controversy around it, seems risky. For example: https://itdm.com/mozilla-firefox-usage-down-85-but-why-are-execs-salary-up-400/2050/ https://itdm.com/mozilla-firefox-usage-down-85-but-why-are-e... and https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/08/firefox-maker-mozilla-lays-off-250-workers-says-covid-19-lowered-revenue/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/08/firef...

BuckRogers 5y ago
While I may be the only one around here to not know this, but I didn't realize Brave was OSS all the way through. That's great. I used FF for 19 years and switched to Edge fulltime in August ('21), and never looked back as each browser has its strengths and weaknesses. In the end, other than me being upset with feature removal in FF, I found Edge objectively comes out on top for me. Vivaldi always seemed to hold the most promise but was buggy for me and still missing strong iOS integration that the competition has in place. Having used FF for so long, I was ready to go to a larger provider. So mainly, MS, Apple, or Google. Native browsers have big advantages so resisting those no longer made sense if I'm making a switch. But Brave in my testing, did not completely convince me. Reviewing my testing notes- Brave- no dedicated search bar option (important for privacy / prefetching and not having to continually retype your search query). Didn't get to mobile support and crossplatform sync. No dedicated extension store. Of course, I had to give up on my dedicated search bar requirement, because FF's has been gimped by Mozilla, and Vivaldi had other unrelated usability flaws. So Edge it has been, and being completely honest, I've been thrilled with it. There's plenty other good here to overlook that and I haven't missed it as much as I thought I would. All that said, I'm now going to keep Brave in mind, moving it up a notch. I always liked Eich which doesn't hurt. I don't fear a Chromium world, and never used FF because it wasn't, in fact I mostly resented it. I just don't see eye to eye with the anti-Blink crowd. I think Firefox should've morphed into Brave, rather than be a separate project. A Brave that has Vivaldi's feature set would be perfect. Only thing missing then is major vendor support, and it'll always be non-native on all platforms, but at that point it could be overlooked. For Firefox to fight its way back will require more than anti-Blink monoculture advocates supporting it. Blink has become the same as the USD, and isn't to be feared. For me, that's like saying you're resisting using the US Dollar because you don't want monoculture. Yet look at how much you can do with the USD. It enables quite a bit, embracing it just enables you to get other things done with less resistance. Users benefit. More important missions are at play. Like perhaps privacy, transparency, both things that Brave clearly focuses on. Or whatever one's chosen priorities are. I legitimately love MS Edge, and I always keep Tor installed for the best privacy, but Brave is now my #2 pick for a daily driver and will be advocating for it for those that don't want to use their native browser.
xahrepap 5y ago
Firefox isn't perfect. I'm sure if you go back to the last major browser war, you'll see that Firefox didn't "win" that war. But they did win the fight they were fighting. They proved that you don't have to put up with the monopolistic behavior of Microsoft to browse the internet. Today, Google and Microsoft and Apple are fighting Browser War 2, and it looks as though Google is winning. However, Firefox is still fighting, but not to win. But to prove that we don't have to put up with the monopolistic behavior of Google to browse the internet. Firefox has had it's ups and downs. But "winning the war", in my mind, isn't the point of Firefox.
kaba0 5y ago
I think the controversies around firefox are blown way out of proportion. Yeah, there are some, but the amount of hate the project or the company gets on HN under every new version post is ridiculous. It is an open-source project fighting a good fight, and the only one at that.

BuckRogers 5y ago

While I may be the only one around here to not know this, but I didn't realize Brave was OSS all the way through. That's great. I used FF for 19 years and switched to Edge fulltime in August ('21), and never looked back as each browser has its strengths and weaknesses. In the end, other than me being upset with feature removal in FF, I found Edge objectively comes out on top for me. Vivaldi always seemed to hold the most promise but was buggy for me and still missing strong iOS integration that the competition has in place. Having used FF for so long, I was ready to go to a larger provider. So mainly, MS, Apple, or Google. Native browsers have big advantages so resisting those no longer made sense if I'm making a switch. But Brave in my testing, did not completely convince me. Reviewing my testing notes- Brave- no dedicated search bar option (important for privacy / prefetching and not having to continually retype your search query). Didn't get to mobile support and crossplatform sync. No dedicated extension store. Of course, I had to give up on my dedicated search bar requirement, because FF's has been gimped by Mozilla, and Vivaldi had other unrelated usability flaws. So Edge it has been, and being completely honest, I've been thrilled with it. There's plenty other good here to overlook that and I haven't missed it as much as I thought I would. All that said, I'm now going to keep Brave in mind, moving it up a notch. I always liked Eich which doesn't hurt. I don't fear a Chromium world, and never used FF because it wasn't, in fact I mostly resented it. I just don't see eye to eye with the anti-Blink crowd. I think Firefox should've morphed into Brave, rather than be a separate project. A Brave that has Vivaldi's feature set would be perfect. Only thing missing then is major vendor support, and it'll always be non-native on all platforms, but at that point it could be overlooked. For Firefox to fight its way back will require more than anti-Blink monoculture advocates supporting it. Blink has become the same as the USD, and isn't to be feared. For me, that's like saying you're resisting using the US Dollar because you don't want monoculture. Yet look at how much you can do with the USD. It enables quite a bit, embracing it just enables you to get other things done with less resistance. Users benefit. More important missions are at play. Like perhaps privacy, transparency, both things that Brave clearly focuses on. Or whatever one's chosen priorities are. I legitimately love MS Edge, and I always keep Tor installed for the best privacy, but Brave is now my #2 pick for a daily driver and will be advocating for it for those that don't want to use their native browser.

xahrepap 5y ago

Firefox isn't perfect. I'm sure if you go back to the last major browser war, you'll see that Firefox didn't "win" that war. But they did win the fight they were fighting. They proved that you don't have to put up with the monopolistic behavior of Microsoft to browse the internet. Today, Google and Microsoft and Apple are fighting Browser War 2, and it looks as though Google is winning. However, Firefox is still fighting, but not to win. But to prove that we don't have to put up with the monopolistic behavior of Google to browse the internet. Firefox has had it's ups and downs. But "winning the war", in my mind, isn't the point of Firefox.

kaba0 5y ago

I think the controversies around firefox are blown way out of proportion. Yeah, there are some, but the amount of hate the project or the company gets on HN under every new version post is ridiculous. It is an open-source project fighting a good fight, and the only one at that.