Re-parsing that for anyone trying to read that but struggling with the formatting war crime from OP.
- The “Manifest v3” sabotage of content blocking extensions: https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/10/23131029/mozilla-ad-blocking-firefox-google-chrome-privacy-manifest-v3-web-request
- The attempted sabotage of JPEGXL: https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/chrome-banishes-jpeg-xl-photo-format-that-could-save-phone-space/
- Web Environment Integrity a.k.a. DRM for whole websites would hurt the web, opensource browsers, and OSes: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/googles-web-integrity-api-sounds-like-drm-for-the-web/
Everything we can do push people away from Chrome (and some other Chromium browsers like Edge) the better. Their market share gives them the power to dictate terms. Their search share and marketing dominance would still give them too much power, but at least not “dictate how the web works” power.
I started seeing these red flags back when they were pushing the https everywhere initiative. Because, while there were a lot of insecure sites that are now more secure, there are also billions upon billions of pages that have no need to expend the CPU cycles (wasting electricity and increasing carbon footprints) on encrypting and decrypting all external traffic. But site admins had to do it or chrome would make a stink. If “hackers” find out I was looking up stroganoff recipes on a site I’m not signed into, I think I’ll find a way to cope with the intrusion.
I switched to Firefox/Librewolf (with a brief stint on Vivaldi) last year and haven’t looked back.
I’ve used nothing but Firefox on all desktops/laptops since 2004. I really don’t understand how or why anyone would switch away.
Because for the longest time Chrome smashed the stale arse Firefox out of the water in features and performance.
Personally I found Opera the best, but that’s Chinese shovelware now.
It really didn’t… Firefox has been neck and neck performance wise the entire time with a massive arsenal of extensions (and to be fair some of those extensions did negatively impact performance enough to scare people off) and I can’t think of a major feature Firefox didn’t have first or get soon after.
Chrome largely just became a “speed meme” though among enthusiasts and had the backing from Google to win over IT teams.
I have used a mixed of Netscape/Firebird/Firefox mostly for personal uses, along with at the time IE then Chrome mostly for professional stuff and banking (at the time) and developing. But for ~3 years now it’s FF only, even on my phone. Google started their AMP stuff and all, and this DRM is the shit hitting the fan.
Similar boat for me. Used Netscape, then Mozilla, then Firefox. FF got kinda bad for a while, and chrome came along and was quite good. Then Google got progressively more evil, chrome also started getting buggy and falling behind, and Firefox got really good again. I fully dumped chrome a couple years ago. No regrets.
I keep hearing the counter argument that “Safari already shipped a version of WEI and no one made a fuss” but I can’t tell if that’s true or just missing a lot of nuance. Can someone explain?
