With trust in Firefox gone, is Chrome-ish the only option?

The rhetoric around Firefox is so exhausting. They change some wording while having made no actual technical changes to the browser and the internet is on fire for days calling them the devil incarnate, meanwhile Chrome gutted uBlock and other extensions a week ago and there was barely any noise about it.

What causes this phenomenon where the project with significantly less resources is held to a higher standard than the other players?

It’s a bit premature to say Mozilla’s change to user agreements should result in a loss of our trust.

Particularly given the browser itself is open source and already has many eyes on it.

I’m going to wait and see what Mozilla’s next few releases are like before passing judgement.

One thing that bothers me is that, when smaller projects and companies get boycotted, the winners seem to always be US Big Tech companies that are far worse, and boycotts don't work against them either.

For what is worth, I still use Firefox.

If you fear Mozilla's telemetry going forward, you could pick a fork that disables it. E.g., Mullvad or Zen seem pretty good.

But on the other hand, if you really want to get off the Firefox bandwagon, yes, Chromium-based browsers are a viable alternative. Although, in my view, there are only 2 Chromium-based browsers that are fairly trustworthy (i.e., well updated, not insecure) and that are not full-on spyware: Vivaldi and Brave.

Regardless, the “forks” are good only for disabling features that you don't want. But keep in mind that the hard work is still done by Mozilla, Google or Apple, it costs a shit ton of money to maintain a browser engine and all of them are financed by ad-tech (Google's ad-tech to be more specific).

You can trust or distrust whoever you want, but I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss Firefox. They now have updated the wording of their TOS that caused so much uproar and confusion (in part fueled by Brendan Eich, who runs a competing browser) and are pretty clear about what they do.

Firefox also still supports Manifest V2, which lets you use the full, ultra-powerful version of uBlock Origin. There's no better privacy protection than uBlock.

Firefox is a much better choice than any Chromium based browser for the privacy conscious.

Chrome was NEVER (and won't be ever) the option.. https://contrachrome.com/

you can't be serious, surely?

yes, mozilla's TOS update is a bad thing, but switching to chrome (or chromium-based) for it is really cutting your nose to spite your face.

It's funny how Mozilla is being vilified non-stop this past week when nothing's really changed (only their legal wording). Whereas Google are literally personal information vampires; they make the web a worse place for people and their freedoms.

I will continue supporting Mozilla and using Firefox.

You may have missed Mozilla's update: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/update-on-terms..., discussed in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43213612

I don't think trust in Firefox should be gone.

I think it's great that we're able to hold mozilla to higher standards than google, but I think there's a couple important points to mention:

- Leaving firefox for chrome due to privacy concerns only makes sense if chrome has better privacy, which it definitely doesn't. Recent changes might bring them closer together, but firefox is very far from catching up.

- We should compare firefox to chrome or firefox-based to chromium-based. Browsers like waterfox, pale moon, edge, brave all use source code from one browser but with different privacy, so it doesn't make sense to say "I don't like firefox so I'll use a chromium based one".

- Bonus extra point just because this is hacker news, check out Ladybird, it's making awesome progress!

Yeah: firefox.

Is the browser ecosystem supposed to get better if we collapse it to just webkit and blink? Websites track us, browsers track us, web extensions track us, ISPs track us, OSs track us, cell networks track us.

Government passing legit privacy laws is the literal only way to prevent this - not browser choice. Unfortunately gov is fully captured by corporate interests most places in the world.

I have a few notes on alternative browsers at the bottom of this article that might be of use. https://vale.rocks/posts/everything-is-chrome#taking-action

As a privacy conscious user I'm surprised you consider anything other than firefox. Is is not confusing.

I have been out of the loop, what happened with Firefox?

I like to think of it like this:

Now that solar panels have been shown increase the risk of people falling off rooftops, is coal the only option?

Chrome (and Chromium) are created by the world's largest ad company. It was never an option.

Stick with Firefox and WebKit based browsers.

There's mozilla free versions of firefox, additionally there's ladybird browser in the brewing.

I’m sticking with Mozilla Firefox.

There have been a several episodes of online uproar against Mozilla over the last couple decades. IMO they’ve either been mountains out of molehills (because the feature is still privacy-protecting or can be disabled etc) or Mozilla apologized and changed course.

You can not convince me this thread is not either made by someone in college or by a google plant.

Orion uses webkit, not sponsored by ad revenue

Librewolf on Linux, and IronFox on Android seem to be working very well for me based on ~ 1 week of usage, after moving away from FF.

Both work well with Firefox Sync, and also support addons, which is great.

The trust in Mozilla went from 70 to 60. The trust in the google monopoly is approximately -99999999999999999, give or take a few points. You just can't compare them.

This is a silly statement. Mozilla revised the terms almost a week ago after people complained: https://indianexpress.com/article/technology/tech-news-techn...

Although Firefox is still the best to choose from a privacy standpunt currently, I am convinced the time will come where the sponsorship from Google will stop. Then Mozilla will likely not survive and the development of Firefox is left to the community. A browser is a pretty complex piece of software so I doubt the community will be able to maintain that.

OP here. I never intended to "rage bait" or something. With "Chrome-ish" i ment Chromium-based browsers. That's what i ment by "it feels like basically everything is Chrome nowadays". My question was: Taking FF out of the equation, which browsers except Chromium-Based ones are out there?

I think that Firefox remains the best option. Their moves over the last few years have reduced their privacy proposition, but I'm still unaware of any better alternative.

I dont ever trust Chrome

Trust in Firefox is not gone, and chrome is not the only option.

Without going into "trust in Firefox gone" part (others will), there are FF forks that are privacy focused so Chrome-based browsers are not only option.

Just keep using Firefox or a fork like Zen.

The idea that using a chrome fork is somehow better is ridiculous.

short answer, yes, chromium and its forks.

long answer, firefox have a strong community and solid product but lacking a sustainable business model and a comeptitive pr team. their tech is really good, the people in charge just really suck.

So many people don't seem to know the difference between Chrome and Chromium.

Libra Wolf - early fork of Firefox maintained separately - supports FF addons

[flagged]

To quote Louis Rossmann: "tldr: install Librewolf and go on with your life" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8bTquKjzos

Right now: Waterfox and Florp, both based on FF.

In long run: I hope Ladybird will become usable in the next couple of years.

brave?

I like chrome, I don't like google. I mean: I am so used to chrome devtools, I don't even know how to switch to firefox. I gave it a try and it was frustrating that I didn't know where to find my shit. Felt like 10x performance loss for my web development activities. Is there any way to make firefox devtools look and feel like chromes?