Technology

With the number of people concerned about privacy, it is a wonder how privacy is still a word in the dictionary

With the number of people concerned about privacy

That number appears to be very small, all things considered. Out of everyone I know, literally one person cares about privacy. My mother. She will even go as far as to only use her first initial online instead of her name if she can get away with it. However, she uses Chrome all the time because she doesn't understand that your browser also tracks you.

I think that's what it comes down to. A mixture of lack of public interest, and lack of public awareness about tracking/privacy in general. If people can't immediately see how having their data harvested will inconvenience/hurt them, they simply don't care.

With the number of people concerned about privacy

Generous estimate there. "People" don't care. Who cares if your browser tracks your online presence when everything is connected back to your facebook profile or whatever is trending.

Most individuals embrace convenience above all; literally putting all their private stuff on any online service that tout "shiny feature that you won't even use". Even some privacy-focused people don't see putting all your emails/photo/video/agenda/chat/text messages in one third party opaque service as an issue.

Tons of business do the same, outsourcing the most basic stuff like private discussions and storage to anything "convenient" to not pay for two sysadmin to manage it (leading to most major leaks). I have direct experience of business coming to us, asking "yeah, privacy is good, data ownership and control is mandatory, so we won't host anything and you'll keep all our data, deal?". They prefer have us, a third party, bill them for hosting rather than have some control over it.

My take on this is that while pointing that browsers can be an issue is not a bad thing, the first step would be to get people and business interested in their privacy. Without that, it remains a niche. Sadly.

TOR browser is built off of Firefox and is even more private.

I was originally an Opera user (back when it was using Presto) back in the day, but I switched to Firefox during the last moments of the Presto engine. When Presto died, I worried a bit about the state of other browser engines, but I didn't worry about it too much because I never thought Microsoft would use Chromium with their Edge browser. Yet, here we are.

Putting privacy concerns aside, we should encourage the use of Firefox because it helps promote browser engine diversity. The more diverse browser engines we have, the better it is for us, especially when it comes to innovation. I mean, it may be a bit different than the era of Internet Explorer, but since Google is leading the Chromium project, who knows what could happen.

They might remove a particular feature that was once very useful for whatever reason, and we could end up just accepting it because we can't do anything about it.

Chrome is popular because of inertia. I was a huge Mozilla fan for years, until it became unusable. Chrome was the only choice and noticeably more performant. Since then, there hasn’t been sufficient reason to redirect that inertia. Yes, that was quite a few years ago. Lots of inertia

Waiting for Firefox to implement native browser profile switching UI (not container tabs, not desktop shortcuts, not janky workarounds/hacks) and I'll be there full time.

I just ditched Brave a few days ago for Firefox and really prefer it for performance and real privacy.

FWIW, latest Firefox nightlies have caught up to Chrome in terms of performance. I have been a Firefox user since the 3.5 days, I was briefly swayed by Chrome because of performance until I came back for the Quantum update and stuck with it ever since. The updates have been great and Firefox + ubo + Nextdns is a solid combination.

i still have no clue why people use chrome for the past 5+ years, there's better chromium alternatives if you still want to use chromium for some reason, and there's firefox which doesn't support the chromium monopoly, works really well and doesn't try to restrict you from using adblockers

Would be awesome if my company allowed to run anything but edge....

Loyal FF user since 2017 or so. Loving Thunderbird's renaissance, too.

FF has been my daily driver... longer than I can remember on essentially anything that can handle a browser. It's powerfull, feature rich, extensible, etc. But it does tend gain weight between major overhauls.

Out of curiosity, being a Linux user, I installed Chromium not 2 weeks ago and the thing is fast. It outperforms Firefox on my aging machine by far. And I was actually surprised. Yes, I do have the ghost of Google just waiting to sink its fangs in me, which I dislike, but I really have to admit the browser is fast, light and easy to approach for new users.

Will I let go of FF? Not really but Chromium did manage to get my attention.

I switched to FF a few years ago when my Chrome was showing some bloat. FF works for almost everything, but from time to time some sites, forms, e-commerce, etc., have issues with non-Chrome browsers. In that event, I use Edge.

Google has a vested interest in showing you ads and selling your data.

Firefox does not.

Seems like a pretty clear choice to me.

What’s wrong with Brave? Does this effect Brave?

What about LibreWolf, a fork of FF. Suppose to be better for security. Love using it !! Ditched Brave a couple of days ago

Vivaldi > Chrome

Thankfully, I've been about Firefox since 2006. People can use what they like, but it does ache me inside seeing someone use Chrome, logged in with the yellow "Update" icon at the top right, an unholy trinity.

expired

Chrome does have a use, namely Selenium and automation.

I'm guilty of having Chrome on my PC, as I need to nerf over my favourites to Firefox.

Firefox is my browser of choice on my Google Pixel 7, but then again no doubt it makes little difference.

I just choose to use a VPN, so any targeted adverts are blocked regardless of the profile built up from my browsing habits.

It's ironic that there are over 60 blockable elements and such over Privacy Badger and Ublock origin on that page.