I think Google overestimates my Internet addiction and underestimates my steadfast hatred of advertisements.
Been on chrome for like 12 years. Syncs across my phone, everything. I will make the switch. I have been wondering when google was going to go evil. Why not 2023 like everything else on the internet?
2 years from now Firefox will have blocked adblockers, and there will be chromium based browsers (not Chrome) that won’t have them blocked.
I don’t see why people seem to be thinking a large company in a capitalistic landscape isn’t going to side with profits. Firefox will oppose it openly right now and take the new users and then move to the same without lube and without apologies.
Small browsers that still have some morals before going public will build browers off chromium because of its ease, and they will be able to exclude those blocks. Likely means we will be using different browsers every few years until something else changes.
Maybe I’m pessimistic here, but anyone who just moved from Reddit to Lemmy should know that Firefox isn’t the answer, it is another greed driven overlord.
Mimicking the tokens on the otherhand… those sites we will need to boycott if possible.
This is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever read.
Mozilla is a non-profit whose mission is to keep the internet freely available and privacy focused. See https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/who-we-are/
Firefox is built by open source developers who overwhelmingly have those same values. They have also been at this for many years now and have given us no real reason to doubt this commitment.
Makes no sense. Mozilla has no horse in the advertising race. But Google does. Almost all of Google’s profits are from ads. Ads keep the entire Alphabet house of cards afloat.
But not Mozilla. The largest connection there is them being paid for default lt search engine.
I love this quote, it exactly sums up my sentiments.
I’m actually looking forward to it, because it will finally force me to go cold turkey on so many bullshit websites I don’t need in my life anyway, which I was never able to do on my own, because the addiction simply is there. But not as strong ans my hatred of fingerprinting and advertisements.
For anyone who thinks they’re “stuck” with chrome, Firefox has gotten it’s shit together massively in the last few years.
Which is why Google’s next step is to effectively require chromium browsers for any websites wanting access to Google services and products.
Feels bad but I can’t condone this behaviour anymore and I feel ashamed that I haven’t seen the greed Google is capable of doing.
In the coming months I will do my best to migrate away from the Google system, even if I end up paying a tad more, maybe just in time to set up a home server for photos.
Sounds like a good reason to stop using Google services and products. Some examples (note, I haven’t used some of these yet):
Search - DuckDuckGo
Email - ProtonMail
Drive - Dropbox
Sheets/Docs - Zoho
Some of these examples may not the best for everyone, but my point is that we do not have to let Google continue to push us around.
No, it sounds like a good reason for anti-trust regulators to make an injunction to stop Google from doing it.
It’s time for this fantasy bullshit notion that boycotts are worth a damn to end. In reality, it’s nothing but pro-corporate propaganda designed to make people think they’re “fighting the man” or whatever when they’re actually completely ineffective.
Now, don’t get me wrong: by all means, please feel free to quit using Google’s shit! That’s 100% a good thing and I fully encourage it! Just don’t delude yourself into thinking it represents even the slightest shred of a solution to the systemic problem Google’s anticompetitive strategies represent.
It’s not you and me. It’s the websites. They’re not going to give up on having anyone with Chrome or using Google services from being able to access their sites. We’d end up with 2 Internets - one with Google and one without. And we all know that the one with Google will win.
If you like ChatGPT/care less about privacy, Bing is a great alternative.
Oh, but it will not be GOOGLE’s next step. I dont think it is the goal anyway. They only need to help site owners to sign up to their WEI thing, and there will be oh so many incentives. Google will be happy to license it out, or even make the toolkit fully opensource, to whoever wants to implement it in their browser, regardless of the engine used. Their obvious ultimate goal is to show the ads with no interruptions, which also happens to be the desire of most of the websites. And many websites will willingly implement it on their side, they do not really need too much encouragement.
I dont understand when people think Firefox didn’t have their shit together. Been using it since 2006 and never had an issue. Ya’ll must be doing some serious browsing.
Been using since release. I never felt like I was making some kind of compromise by using it. Firefox always had their shit together from my experience.
Now, it’s on par with Chrome or better than (tradeoffs and personal preference), even for developing web apps. Firefox dev tools pull ahead of Chrome’s, then Chrome catches up and does something new and useful, then Firefox catches up, and so forth.
Firefox is good. It’s not like “I’m leaving Photoshop for the GIMP” kind of thing-- It’s like “I’m leaving Honda for Toyota.”
When chrome was released, Firefox felt bloated visually and slow. I switched to chrome with the initial release, then tried to come back to Firefox some years later. Still felt like it was slow.
Im back trying it again. The desktop browser seems to work alright, but I’m growing weary of the Android app.
Now you can use desktop extensions on firefox mobile. They stepped up big time.
Did they lift the “only curated extensions” bullshit yet? I’m on Kiwi just to be able to run my own (unpacked) extensions that FF doesn’t let me do so.
Firefox has never not had it’s shit together. It’s worked fine. I never understood people having issues with it, unless they were running like 50 extensions and a bunch of grease monkey scripts along with a crusty old profile with a massive cache of old data.
Meanwhile everyone is complaining about Chrome eating up all their RAM
Funnily enough Chromium actually consumes less RAM and is safer due to better sandboxing.
But neither of these concern the average user. However, the main difference between the browsers user may notice is how pages that are still loading behave. Firefox has the correct behavior. Aka waiting for vast majority of the elements to finish loading versus Chromium just going “if it’s rendered it’s intractable.” This unfortunately means that Firefox feels slower even though it’s actually faster.
Also, on behalf of the dark mode enjoyers, flashing white for a moment while launching, loading web pages or updating contents of a webpage is incredibly annoying. None of the Chromium browsers flash white on dark mode.
Any idea if Firefox has a good translation extension? Like Chrome has Google translate that actively translates the sites you enter into English.
I live in a country that I don’t speak the language of, so I often need to use websites and translate them to English, which is why I’ve been stuck with Chrome.
There are 36 pages of translation extensions. The official one works without the cloud, which is pretty unique.
Personally I like the Immersive Translate extension. You can select your preferred translation engine (cloud based, but it supports many) and it shows you both the translated text and original text by alternating the paragraphs.
Sadly the only thing it’s lacking. Saw a couple of years ago they were looking at different technologies to implement it client side for privacy reasons.
Before post edit:
While looking for the source i found this:
Firefox Tests Privacy-Friendly Web Page Translations
It’s coming bby!
@NamesArrHard @clearleaf, better than a extension is to use this one for Desktop, so you can use it independent of the browser.
It’s FOSS, multiengine for 125 languages, customizable shortcuts, Windows and Linux
I don’t think FF supports PWAs yet. I need to use Chromium to turn some sites like Discord into PWAs, as the desktop Linux version doesn’t screen share on Wayland. I also like having YTM as an app.
I believe that there is an extension for Firefox pwa support, but the Android version definitely supports pwas natively.
Yes, FF Android does, the extension for the desktop was very janky last time I used it. Mozilla just needs to support it natively IMO.
There have been quite a few questionable decisions by Mozilla though, they have focused on some very weird things, not to mention scandals about management salaries (No idea how it is now). I really really hope they will not follow suite which honestly is not as far fetched as one could think.
Does Firefox support multiple windows on iPad OS yet? That was the reason I stayed with Chrome for so long, and also is why I’ve more recently switched to Edge as the only other cross-platform browser I could find that had that.
I’m not sure, but Firefox on iOS isn’t true Firefox. To my knowledge, Apple doesn’t allow browsers to use anything but their Safari engine. As another user put it, “Firefox on iOS is barely more than a skin for Safari.”
I can speak to Firefox on desktop and Android, however: they’re fantastic!
tl;dr: If FF sucks on iOS, it’s Apple’s fault.
If FF sucks on iOS, it’s Apple’s fault.
Nope, not in this case. iPad OS has supported multiple windows of the same app for years now (since 2018 or 2019), and Safari naturally supported it out of the gate. Google supported it in Chrome very quickly, and Microsoft got around to it with Edge last year.
It turns out that while the rendering part of all browsers on iOS is Safari, the skin and UI elements (the “chrome” that Google’s browser was named after) are all custom to each app. And Firefox has been very poor at upgrading theirs.
I mean this with no personal enmity: piss off with your iPad. (Don’t expect power user features to actually be good)
Umm, why? With all due respect, why would you expect me to stop using a device that does everything I want it to perfectly well? I use Edge and it syncs with my Windows desktop and Android phone perfectly well. Both Edge and Google Chrome have supported this feature. It’s only Firefox that is being a laggard.
This is not an iPad problem, it’s a Firefox one.
Nah, Apple doesn’t allow any other browser engines on iOS other than their own, so every browser available on it is just safari.
Sure, but that’s not actually my point.
Since 2018 or so, iPad OS has supported multiple windows of the same application, but only if the app developer supports it. Safari, of course, supported this immediately. Google got around to implementing it pretty quickly on Chrome. Edge took years before they finally got there last year or maybe the year before.
Firefox, last time I checked (which was admittedly a few months ago) still did not support it. Plus, on their GitHub page, there was some talk about trying to implement it in a really dumb way, with each window sharing all the same tabs—completely defeating the point of the feature, in my opinion.
When wanting sync between my desktop (Windows), phone (Android), and tablet (iPad OS), I don’t really care what renderer is used under the hood. I care what name brand is on the browser and what it’s able to sync with. Firefox syncs with Firefox, even when Firefox is secretly Safari.
Firefox is the only browser on Android which still doesn’t have tabs. Wrangling multiple tabs on a tablet or foldable is just a pain on Firefox. Chrome on standard screen sizes even has tab groups. Until then, Firefox is a no go for me.
Uhh what? I’ve been using Firefox on Android for a looong time and there are tabs…
I’m speaking of an exposed tabs bar. Like all modern browsers have… except Firefox for Android. https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/tablet-amp-mobile-ui-tab-bar-for-android/idi-p/333
Google can do whatever bullshit they want, I am still not letting go of adblock
I won’t use sites with WEI or adblock blockers
I won’t use chromium
You can lead the sheep to the spyware but you can’t force them to open it
They can pry adblockers from our cold dead hands. Then other people will make new ones.
They may kill this iteration of ad blockers. But there will always be another and another. Google has a lot of smart people working for them. There are also a lot of smart people in the FOSS community that will eventually find a way around it.
At the end of the day there will still be people recording songs by holding two boom boxes together.
Hm, can we make an anti-WEI movement? Have a bunch of websites block browsers using WEI, to force it away?
I know that won’t actually work, but a man can dream…
and then 75% of people can’t use your website and then people stop using it? That wouldn’t work
I mean, yeah, that’s why I said it wouldn’t work. Maybe if there was a website that was big enough that it would drive people to use non-WEI browsers if they couldn’t access it, but any website big enough to do that would also want WEI for ad venue.
Donate to orgs like the EFF, Mozilla, and the FSF. Lobby your congressperson, your senators, and Biden to make the FTC to start doing its goddamn job again and enforce antitrust law.
The only real solution to this creeping megalomaniacal monopolistic behavior is legislative.
Sure hope you’re only using firefox since all the other browsers are chromium 🤣
Except safari of course (almost 20% market share).
Also, there are plenty of other browsers using Mozilla’s gecko engine. A quote from Wikipedia: “ Other web browsers using Gecko include GNU IceCat, Waterfox, K-Meleon, Lunascape, Portable Firefox, Conkeror, Classilla, TenFourFox.” (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gecko_(software))
Yes, certainly, but all of these, if they want to sync their data, or use a own selfhosted server or have to use those of Mozilla with an account, giving with it datas to Alphabet (Google) and googleanalytics. Sync is essential if you use the browser in several PC, PC and Mobile or simply as backup if the PC fails or you buy a new one and don’t want to lose your bookmarks, passwords and other data. Forks are a lot out there, also very nice ones, but most of these lacks the basic infrastructure, depending on a lot of third party services. A browser isn’t only an app to surf the web, it’s a continuos work, maintance, servers and most important, a good and active community. How many forks offer all this? There are almost 100 different browsers out there and other 70 which had said Game over for us, from people which thought “Nice, its easy to fork this engine making it to my like and gain a lot of customers”, nice short dream with a product oversaturated in the market.
Firefox have the same problem with the WEI filter, they also have to insert in Firefox the Google Token, same as any other, if he want to enter a Web with this fucking filter, anyway Mozilla will do this in FF precisely because several Google devs in Mozilla which are working on FF (Bad decision of Mozilla to have Google as main sponsor). Ad/trackerblocker are not the problem in Vivaldi, it has inbuild the needed filters (even those to block Cookie advices and adblocker warnings) and until now it has gutt out every Google intent with FloC, IdleAPI and others to control the Chromium base (remember, also Chromium is FOSS and customizable,above with first class devs Vivaldi has), also don’t have and don’t depends on extern inversors, but this fucking WEI DRM of websites is a greater problem and need to be avoided by ALL browser companies which are not Google in common, if there is not a genius which invent something to fake this Google Token. We’ll see.
it baffles me that people are still using Google Chrome.
Most people don’t use an ad blocker and most people don’t even know this drama exists.
most people don’t even know this drama exists.
Guilty, I’m ootl. Can someone explain why my Everything feed is all about browsers?!
Here’s the TLDR version:
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Most users (at least in my observation, in the instances and communities i’m on) on Lemmy are privacy minded, open source fans, linux enthusiasts , etc.
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Google is evil and will suck up any data they can find on you and sell it to anyone that will give them a buck. Lemmy users don’t like that. (me either)
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Google also makes a lot of money selling ads that are crafted for your likes based on the data they steal from you. Lemmy users also don’t like that (me either).
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Ad blockers will hamper some (not much) of google’s ad revenue so they don’t like them. many users use Ad Blockers ( I use an ad blocking DNS server)
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Recently Google announced that their Chrome browser would not allow ad-blockers because it’s changing the functionality that ad-blockers use (Google sucks, don’t use Google stuff)
So that is why it’s showing up an Lemmy a lot right now.
You’ve already got some answers, but the recent drama is specifically about a Chromium-centered API, called Web Environment Integrity.
It has been found on a Google engineer’s Github account, and iirc it’s being tested on Chrome.
It’s basically web DRM.
The idea is that the API allows websites to require browsers to guarantee they are unmodified through a “third-party” attester, like Google SafetyNet (or whatever the fuck it got rebranded as) does.
Imagine if you were trying to access a mobile-only website on your PC, by changing your HTTP user agent string;
the website would refuse to serve you the page, and tell you “I don’t trust you, are you really a Google Pixel?”.
A real Pixel’s browser would ask Google Play to vouch for it, and the website would trust Google Play (due to cryptographic shenanigans and whatnot); your browser, however, would not have an attester that:
- is (claiming to be) universally accepted as trustworthy;
- answers “yes, I’m a Google Pixel” on a PC;
- has the necessary cryptographic secrets to work.
That doesn’t sound too bad.
But, what if the attester can check your browser’s extensions, and tell the website that you’re running an adblocker (which is WEI’s explicit goal)?
What if it also checks your system’s running processes or applications?
What if you ran a debloater script for Windows, and the attester decided that a lack of ads in the start menu was sus?
What if it detected VPN usage? I know some governments that wouldn’t like that, I bet they would like it if VPN users would be denied access to half the web…
I’m from the Philippines and I can explain why, at least here, most people still use chrome. Over here, we’re much more concerned about our money and time over our rights and privacy, which means we usually just choose the most convenient and cheap money-wise, which is why the majority of us still use chrome and why the government here can get away with so much shit. we don’t care about our rights not because we’re being given bread and circuses, but because we’re too busy making a circus out of ourselves so we can buy bread.
I don’t think that’s good excuse. Firefox is free and installing it takes less than 10 minutes.
I think you misunderstood what they are trying to convey.
Yes, it’s quick and easy to install (privacy respecting alternative). But to even get to the point that you recognize that you need that alternative is a time commitment as well. They are so busy trying to stay alive and support themselves that they don’t have the extra mental registers to devote to keeping up with privacy implications of popular software.
Not to mention, some software now suffers from IE6-itis, except this time with chromium. So if a user encounters one of those issues on an important site, they’re more likely to drift over to the chromium side again. That friction alone causes more hardship for a person in their situation than simply giving up some privacy for convenience.
They’re also not even making excuses. They’re simply telling you what the point of view is in their world.
Your current approach presents a holler-than-thou attitude that is rude and off-putting. Ultimately, it’s not your job nor mine to chastise them for their choices. If they’re reading this thread, that shows interest in the topic.
Allow them to discover it for themselves (with guided encouragement and assistance if requested) instead of being guilted into a decision. That will have a much more long-lasting impact.
I see the method you attempt all over the Internet, and it always has the same effect of contributing to a toxic, elitist culture. IMHO, that needs to stop if we have any chance of changing more minds to be privacy-aware.
it’s not about how easy it is to install it’s that it has to be installed at all. Over here we prefer phones as there’s a lot of cheap phones here that only cost less than $100, and since most phones here come preinstalled with chrome, even if firefox is free and all, why go through the hassle of having to go and install it when Chrome’s already there?
most people here have a mindset of “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” which explains a lot of things wrong in this country.
I use Google Docs a lot and the only reason I haven’t uninstalled Chrome is that, for whatever reason, the fonts don’t display right on Firefox. They used to years ago but I suspect they changed something to negatively impact other browsers.
Fonts look fine here under FF:
Why? It does everything a non-techie would expect from browser and it performs well, why switch to something else?
That said I think Chrome is a terrible Chromium based browser. Edge and Vivaldi in my opinion are much better options. Edge for most folk and Vivaldi for more adventurous types.
I use Chrome and Firefox it really isn’t all that baffling when certain sites just break on Firefox or a dev doesn’t use the browser to promote their product.
We use hangouts for work calls and Firefox acts weird with it so keep chrome around for that… it’s super annoying.
Thank you, it’s so weird to me that Lemmy users who were here before the reddit migration can’t just admit products do certain things better than others and vice versa its not defending or justifying Google irs being rational and seeing a bigger picture. Google is the ass hole no matter what but you can’t just say, “Firefox is perfect why are they using Chrome. When Firefox isn’t perfect but it is way better since time has come along.”
I guess guys don’t see half the Lemmy posts I do with users complaining they can’t download a piece of software like Adobe because Adobe tells them Firefox isn’t supported.
I love how Lemmy users live in this small logical fallacy bubble of, “well I don’t have it happen to me so therefore you must be the outlier instead.”
I just use edge/chrome for twitch.tv… It’s no longer compatible with Firefox for some reason… :(
Edit: twitch does work, I meant the login doesn’t. Sorry I was too sleepy to word it correctly. After pressing login even though user and password are correct I get an error message saying my browser is not compatible.
Firefox FTW
UBlock Origin is fire
