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Way to dismiss everybody else's opinions. You won't win the "war" by doing that. I use Chrome because it's fast and it gets out of my way. Firefox on the other

by veave 3y ago

Way to dismiss everybody else's opinions. You won't win the "war" by doing that. I use Chrome because it's fast and it gets out of my way. Firefox on the other hand is slower (not slow, but slower than Chrome) and shows ads every now and then. Other browsers are Blink-based so they are as fast as Chrome but there are concerns about ads too (think Brave, Opera, etc). So maybe Firefox should get their act together? Why are you blaming users? Is it our fault that things are this way? We do what we can with the tools we have.

brucethemoose2 3y ago
You could at least use a "degoogled" chrome variant like Thorium, Bromite, Ungoogled Chromium and such. And some "farther from the tree" variants like Vivaldi are not as shady as, say, Opera.
- nomilk 3y ago
  I should also 'know better', yet I still use chrome despite a growing distrust of google. I agree with the parent comment's observation that it's no good blaming users; other browsers need to make a compelling case. There's a saying in YC lore that a new app has to be an order of magnitude better for people to switch, but I think other browsers are approximately as good as chrome (but not 10x better). The greatest concern for me is privacy; I presume the org who makes the browser sees a list of every action I do on the internet, so I have to be able to 1. know who they are and 2. trust them (or, distrust them less than I do Google). There's probably also some 'safety in numbers' heuristic to browser choice too.
- veave 3y ago
  The browser is a very sensitive piece of software (most of the data I receive and send goes through it every day) and I can't trust the creators of small forks. I also can't trust they are updated fast enough. Vivaldi is awful. They rewrote the UI in javascript and it's slow and buggy.
piva00 3y ago
I've been back to using Firefox for about 3 years now, never seen an ad from it. What do you mean by "show ads every now and then"? I really don't remember one single instance of being shown an ad in the browser since I got fed up with Chrome's bullshit. At least on my computers I don't see any performance difference between Firefox and Chrome, at work I have to use both, and right now I have 3 Chrome windows and 2 Firefox ones open, all of them with multiple (like dozens) of tabs, no noticeable difference.
- luuurker 3y ago
  > What do you mean by "show ads every now and then"? Last month, for example: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/mozilla-stops-firefox-fullscreen-vpn-ads-after-user-outrage/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/mozilla-stops... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36077360 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36077360
  - piva00 3y ago
    Woah, gladly I didn't experience those, I'd be extremely fucking pissed. Has there been any other instances of this practice from Mozilla?
lolinder 3y ago
Mozilla should definitely get their act together, but using Google Chrome because you're concerned about ads in other brothers is ironic, to say the least. Chrome doesn't need to serve you ads in the browser because they can track your data to serve you very profitable ads everywhere, and they can hamstring ad blockers with things like Manifest V3. I'm not defending the ads in Firefox, it's just that when it comes to advertising we're really in a place of choosing the lesser of evils.
- prox 3y ago
  Why are people seeing ads in Firefox? I never see any (Adblock origin is installed)
  - LegitShady 3y ago
    Mozilla has been doing this stupid thing where every once in a long while (maybe after an update?) Firefox opens a tab with an ad for their VPN or something similarly stupid. I hope they’re making money hand over fist with it because the reputational effect of built in ads for other Mozilla programs is bad. You have to go into about:config and set browser.vpn_promo.enabled to false to disable them. No way to turn them off for regular users.
- veave 3y ago
  >they can track your data to serve you very profitable ads everywhere Where? I don't see ads absolutely anywhere. >they can hamstring ad blockers with things like Manifest V3 I've been hearing about this for years and it still hasn't happened. When the change occurs, if I begin seeing ads, I will abandon Chrome. But until then I will keep using it.
luuurker 3y ago
I use Firefox, but not because it's more polished than Chrome. It's not. A small thing that annoys me: ctrl/cmd + click on bookmark doesn't behave like the same click on a web page (opening in the background). There are changes that can be made to about:config, but it's a mess, behaviour is different between a bookmark and bookmark folders, sometimes it switches you to the new tab, etc. I've also noticed that JS performance isn't as good on some sites. For example, the hash step on VirusTotal takes way longer for larger files on Firefox than it does on Chrome. The messy profile switch is also annoying, especially when they've supported the feature for years. And no, containers are not a replacement for profiles. So I agree that Firefox needs to improve. The average user won't use it just because it supports the "open web"... do they even know what that means?

by veave 3y ago

brucethemoose2 3y ago

You could at least use a "degoogled" chrome variant like Thorium, Bromite, Ungoogled Chromium and such. And some "farther from the tree" variants like Vivaldi are not as shady as, say, Opera.

nomilk 3y ago
I should also 'know better', yet I still use chrome despite a growing distrust of google. I agree with the parent comment's observation that it's no good blaming users; other browsers need to make a compelling case. There's a saying in YC lore that a new app has to be an order of magnitude better for people to switch, but I think other browsers are approximately as good as chrome (but not 10x better). The greatest concern for me is privacy; I presume the org who makes the browser sees a list of every action I do on the internet, so I have to be able to 1. know who they are and 2. trust them (or, distrust them less than I do Google). There's probably also some 'safety in numbers' heuristic to browser choice too.
veave 3y ago
The browser is a very sensitive piece of software (most of the data I receive and send goes through it every day) and I can't trust the creators of small forks. I also can't trust they are updated fast enough. Vivaldi is awful. They rewrote the UI in javascript and it's slow and buggy.

piva00 3y ago

I've been back to using Firefox for about 3 years now, never seen an ad from it. What do you mean by "show ads every now and then"? I really don't remember one single instance of being shown an ad in the browser since I got fed up with Chrome's bullshit. At least on my computers I don't see any performance difference between Firefox and Chrome, at work I have to use both, and right now I have 3 Chrome windows and 2 Firefox ones open, all of them with multiple (like dozens) of tabs, no noticeable difference.

luuurker 3y ago
> What do you mean by "show ads every now and then"? Last month, for example: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/mozilla-stops-firefox-fullscreen-vpn-ads-after-user-outrage/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/mozilla-stops... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36077360 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36077360
- piva00 3y ago
  Woah, gladly I didn't experience those, I'd be extremely fucking pissed. Has there been any other instances of this practice from Mozilla?

lolinder 3y ago

Mozilla should definitely get their act together, but using Google Chrome because you're concerned about ads in other brothers is ironic, to say the least. Chrome doesn't need to serve you ads in the browser because they can track your data to serve you very profitable ads everywhere, and they can hamstring ad blockers with things like Manifest V3. I'm not defending the ads in Firefox, it's just that when it comes to advertising we're really in a place of choosing the lesser of evils.

prox 3y ago
Why are people seeing ads in Firefox? I never see any (Adblock origin is installed)
- LegitShady 3y ago
  Mozilla has been doing this stupid thing where every once in a long while (maybe after an update?) Firefox opens a tab with an ad for their VPN or something similarly stupid. I hope they’re making money hand over fist with it because the reputational effect of built in ads for other Mozilla programs is bad. You have to go into about:config and set browser.vpn_promo.enabled to false to disable them. No way to turn them off for regular users.
veave 3y ago
>they can track your data to serve you very profitable ads everywhere Where? I don't see ads absolutely anywhere. >they can hamstring ad blockers with things like Manifest V3 I've been hearing about this for years and it still hasn't happened. When the change occurs, if I begin seeing ads, I will abandon Chrome. But until then I will keep using it.

luuurker 3y ago

I use Firefox, but not because it's more polished than Chrome. It's not. A small thing that annoys me: ctrl/cmd + click on bookmark doesn't behave like the same click on a web page (opening in the background). There are changes that can be made to about:config, but it's a mess, behaviour is different between a bookmark and bookmark folders, sometimes it switches you to the new tab, etc. I've also noticed that JS performance isn't as good on some sites. For example, the hash step on VirusTotal takes way longer for larger files on Firefox than it does on Chrome. The messy profile switch is also annoying, especially when they've supported the feature for years. And no, containers are not a replacement for profiles. So I agree that Firefox needs to improve. The average user won't use it just because it supports the "open web"... do they even know what that means?