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I actually never ended up switching to Chrome from Firefox in the first place, but those are still good tips. I guess I did the right thing :) Yes, it has a te

I actually never ended up switching to Chrome from Firefox in the first place, but those are still good tips. I guess I did the right thing :) Yes, it has a terrible memory leak issue, but all of my computers have enough ram as to not notice. I'm still not ready to make the switch to DuckDuckGo. I figure that if I'm going to stick with Gmail no matter what, if Google already has that information, collecting a few search queries is nothing. Also, perhaps I'm missing something, but as far as I can tell Chrome is at least partially open source, no? http://www.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/get-the-code http://www.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/get-the-code Why aren't people forking it to create a more privacy friendly version?

jmillikin 13y ago
> Also, perhaps I'm missing something, but as far as I > can tell Chrome is at least partially open source, no? > http://www.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/get-the-code > > Why aren't people forking it to create a more privacy > friendly version? People citing privacy as a reason to move away from Chrome are doing so on moral rather than technical grounds. Chromium itself doesn't have anything harmful in it, so there's no point in forking. Chrome is just Chromium plus some third-party proprietary plugins (Flash, the PDF renderer).
- kryten 13y ago
  Well you hope it is. All sorts can happen between source and binary.
  - jmillikin 13y ago
    There's enough security researchers (of any hat color) crawling over the Chrome binaries that I'm fairly confident there are no backdoors being introduced. To verify, you could disassemble the Chrome binary and compare it against a disassembled Chromium binary that you built. You could also use a packet sniffer and/or MITM proxy to verify that no unexpected data transmissions are occurring.
    - claudius 13y ago
      That probably depends on your definition of ‘backdoors’. Some of the data Chrome sends to Google could easily be considered a breach of privacy (and the corresponding functionality hence supposedly doesn’t exist in Chromium).
      - jmillikin 13y ago
        I've never heard a claim that Chrome sends more data than Chromium. Do you have a link?
        claudius 13y ago
        The Wikipedia page on Chromium[0] gives some differences, though my remark was admittedly mostly based on the description of the chromium package in Debian[1], which at least claims ‘usage tracking’ (and the generally useless and backdoor-like auto-updater). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_(web_browser)#Differences_from_Google_Chrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_(web_browser)#Differe... [1] http://packages.debian.org/wheezy/chromium http://packages.debian.org/wheezy/chromium
    - kryten 13y ago
      That assumption relies on two uncertainties: 1. The probability of discovering something in all that binary code, especially with the intricate and non-orthogonal nature of x86/x64 assembly and odd compiler optimisations. This isn't some 80's game. A comparison: 28500000 = Chrome binary size [1] 750000000 = Human Genome size (converted to bytes - 1BP = 2bits so 4BP per byte) [2] So we're only 26x more complicated than Chrome and we have absolutely no fucking idea what is going on with us most of the time. 2. The probability of a vulnerability being published to Google versus selling it on the private market. [1] http://neugierig.org/software/chromium/bloat/ http://neugierig.org/software/chromium/bloat/ [2] http://www.biostars.org/p/5514/ http://www.biostars.org/p/5514/
      - jmillikin 13y ago
        The actual comparison would be between the Chrome binary size and the Chromium binary size, which is quite small if you exclude embedded graphical resources.
  - ernesth 13y ago
    > All sorts can happen between source and binary. True. But also true of firefox. But you can install chromium and firefox from source and be sure that apart from your compiler nobody planted anything in your browser.
mnemonik 13y ago
> terrible memory leak issue I don't think this is as terrible as you think anymore (or if it is really even an issue anymore). The MemShrink[0] project has made huge progress. See also: https://areweslimyet.com/ https://areweslimyet.com/ [0] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Performance/MemShrink https://wiki.mozilla.org/Performance/MemShrink
Watabou 13y ago
There aren't any memory leak issues in Firefox. I have been using Firefox since Firefox 10 and it has made huge strides in memory performance so much so that it beats every browser out there on memory benchmarks. In fact, on the mac, with the same number (34) of tabs, the same content, no add-ons or extensions, Firefox takes 600MB - 800MB, Safari takes around 900MB-1GB and Chrome takes around 900-1.2GB. I use these browsers every day and I have the same results every day. I have the same tabs open now in Firefox, all 34 of them and it's only taking 740MB. You just can't beat that. It's really awesome.
- lttlrck 13y ago
  None of that points to the absence of memory leaks. (I'm not saying Firefox has memory leaks. Though it's extremely unlikely it has none, same goes for Chrome and Safari)

jmillikin 13y ago

> Also, perhaps I'm missing something, but as far as I > can tell Chrome is at least partially open source, no? > http://www.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/get-the-code > > Why aren't people forking it to create a more privacy > friendly version? People citing privacy as a reason to move away from Chrome are doing so on moral rather than technical grounds. Chromium itself doesn't have anything harmful in it, so there's no point in forking. Chrome is just Chromium plus some third-party proprietary plugins (Flash, the PDF renderer).

kryten 13y ago
Well you hope it is. All sorts can happen between source and binary.
- jmillikin 13y ago
  There's enough security researchers (of any hat color) crawling over the Chrome binaries that I'm fairly confident there are no backdoors being introduced. To verify, you could disassemble the Chrome binary and compare it against a disassembled Chromium binary that you built. You could also use a packet sniffer and/or MITM proxy to verify that no unexpected data transmissions are occurring.
  - claudius 13y ago
    That probably depends on your definition of ‘backdoors’. Some of the data Chrome sends to Google could easily be considered a breach of privacy (and the corresponding functionality hence supposedly doesn’t exist in Chromium).
    - jmillikin 13y ago
      I've never heard a claim that Chrome sends more data than Chromium. Do you have a link?
      - claudius 13y ago
        The Wikipedia page on Chromium[0] gives some differences, though my remark was admittedly mostly based on the description of the chromium package in Debian[1], which at least claims ‘usage tracking’ (and the generally useless and backdoor-like auto-updater). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_(web_browser)#Differences_from_Google_Chrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_(web_browser)#Differe... [1] http://packages.debian.org/wheezy/chromium http://packages.debian.org/wheezy/chromium
  - kryten 13y ago
    That assumption relies on two uncertainties: 1. The probability of discovering something in all that binary code, especially with the intricate and non-orthogonal nature of x86/x64 assembly and odd compiler optimisations. This isn't some 80's game. A comparison: 28500000 = Chrome binary size [1] 750000000 = Human Genome size (converted to bytes - 1BP = 2bits so 4BP per byte) [2] So we're only 26x more complicated than Chrome and we have absolutely no fucking idea what is going on with us most of the time. 2. The probability of a vulnerability being published to Google versus selling it on the private market. [1] http://neugierig.org/software/chromium/bloat/ http://neugierig.org/software/chromium/bloat/ [2] http://www.biostars.org/p/5514/ http://www.biostars.org/p/5514/
    - jmillikin 13y ago
      The actual comparison would be between the Chrome binary size and the Chromium binary size, which is quite small if you exclude embedded graphical resources.
- ernesth 13y ago
  > All sorts can happen between source and binary. True. But also true of firefox. But you can install chromium and firefox from source and be sure that apart from your compiler nobody planted anything in your browser.

mnemonik 13y ago

> terrible memory leak issue I don't think this is as terrible as you think anymore (or if it is really even an issue anymore). The MemShrink[0] project has made huge progress. See also: https://areweslimyet.com/ https://areweslimyet.com/ [0] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Performance/MemShrink https://wiki.mozilla.org/Performance/MemShrink

Watabou 13y ago

There aren't any memory leak issues in Firefox. I have been using Firefox since Firefox 10 and it has made huge strides in memory performance so much so that it beats every browser out there on memory benchmarks. In fact, on the mac, with the same number (34) of tabs, the same content, no add-ons or extensions, Firefox takes 600MB - 800MB, Safari takes around 900MB-1GB and Chrome takes around 900-1.2GB. I use these browsers every day and I have the same results every day. I have the same tabs open now in Firefox, all 34 of them and it's only taking 740MB. You just can't beat that. It's really awesome.

lttlrck 13y ago
None of that points to the absence of memory leaks. (I'm not saying Firefox has memory leaks. Though it's extremely unlikely it has none, same goes for Chrome and Safari)