this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2024

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It is essential to stop using Chrome. Under the pretense of saving users from third-party spyware, Google is creating an ecosystem in which Chrome itself is the spyware. (mastodon.world)

submitted 10 months ago by Live_Let_Live@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[–] Lodra@programming.dev 9 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Serious question. Is it actually better for the typical user? I don’t mean people commenting here. I’m thinking about the majority that don’t care about privacy, blocking ads, quality technology, etc. for those people, I’m guessing that Firefox is equivalent. Just another browser that works fine. So why switch??

[–] Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz 17 points 10 months ago (3 children)

I run into compatibility issues and weird bugs with firefox a lot. I'm still using it as my primary browser, but I have to keep a chromium based browser ready for times when a website won't work in firefox. I can put up with that personally, but I wouldn't want to set up firefox on family/friend computers because I don't want to get a call whenever something doesn't work and they don't know why.

Chrome based browsers also have some super useful features (like tab groups) that firefox doesn't have a good alternative for.

[–] Lodra@programming.dev 11 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Interesting. I’ve heard this many times from people here on Lemmy. I’ve been running Firefox for ~6 months now (previously Brave) and haven’t seen these issues yet. I don’t even have a chromium based browser available on any of my devices.

Regardless, I hear you about not wanting to be personal support for friends and family. That’s annoying

[–] Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

People inevitably bring up compatibility issues in Firefox when this subject comes up, and nobody ever has specific examples.

[–] StopSpazzing@lemmy.world 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Proxmox virtual machine server, v8.x the UI is funky and the console doesn't display properly.

[–] Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 10 months ago

That’s.. an example for sure. Maybe an example a regular person would run into?

[–] FutileRecipe@lemmy.world 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I run into compatibility issues and weird bugs with firefox a lot. I'm still using it as my primary browser, but I have to keep a chromium based browser ready for times when a website won't work in firefox...

Got any specific examples you don't mind sharing? I can't remember the last time I ran into this.

[–] Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Most recent one was visiting https://www.lifetime.com/playsets on Firefox mobile. After going back and forth between the list of playsets and individual playset pages, Firefox stopped loading the list of playsets. I would load in most of the page, but the actual product list wouldn't load. Refreshing and restarting Firefox wouldn't fix it, but the page loaded fine in brave browser so it didn't appear to be a server issue.

Before that one, I had a time where Firefox mobile was completely broken by an update for like a week. Wouldn't load any web pages, reinstalling/resetting user data/etc wouldn't fix it.

I've had websites break on Firefox desktop too, but I don't have any specific examples I can recall right now. I definitely run into more issues with Firefox mobile than desktop though.

[–] FutileRecipe@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

I definitely run into more issues with Firefox mobile than desktop though.

Ah, mobile. I don't use Firefox mobile due to its insecure status, particularly lack of sandboxing:

Avoid Gecko-based browsers like Firefox as they're currently much more vulnerable to exploitation and inherently add a huge amount of attack surface. Gecko doesn't have a WebView implementation (GeckoView is not a WebView implementation), so it has to be used alongside the Chromium-based WebView rather than instead of Chromium, which means having the remote attack surface of two separate browser engines instead of only one. Firefox / Gecko also bypass or cripple a fair bit of the upstream and GrapheneOS hardening work for apps. Worst of all, Firefox does not have internal sandboxing on Android. This is despite the fact that Chromium semantic sandbox layer on Android is implemented via the OS isolatedProcess feature, which is a very easy to use boolean property for app service processes to provide strong isolation with only the ability to communicate with the app running them via the standard service API. Even in the desktop version, Firefox's sandbox is still substantially weaker (especially on Linux) and lacks full support for isolating sites from each other rather than only containing content as a whole. The sandbox has been gradually improving on the desktop but it isn't happening for their Android browser yet.

Source: https://grapheneos.org/usage#web-browsing

[–] foggenbooty@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago

This was the case back when Chrome was starting out too. Everything was made for IE and you'd have to keep it around for the odd time you needed it.

Eventually those old sites were replaced and now Chrome is the new de facto standard.

[–] diffcalculus@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

For the overwhelming majority of users, they won't know the difference between using the two. People here are on a high inhaling the air in this echo chamber.

I've used Chrome on every device imaginable since Chrome was a thing. I've had a negligible amount of problems, in all my years. I absolutely hate that Google shuts services down when they get bored. And I absolutely hate what they did with Google Music and Google Chats, and Domains.

I move off Google services when they shut down. Besides that, I've no problems with the ones I use (minus nitpicks and the above products).

So to anyone here feeling bad and are afraid to comment on here because they don't want to lose Internet points, fret not. There are millions of us perfectly satisfied using Google, PAYING for their services where we see fit, and generally not worrying at all about any of this.

[–] anotherandrew@lemmy.mixdown.ca 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

What about the ad blocker changes they’re making? That’s pretty much the line for me. I use chrome everywhere but when ublock stops working well that’ll be me jumping ship. The web is a fucking unreadable cesspool without a solid adblocker running.

[–] diffcalculus@lemmy.world 0 points 10 months ago

The adblock changes is a shit stain, absolutely agree with you there.

For my household, personally, it won't make a difference because I have a pihole blocking everything from all devices. So that change isn't enough to persuade me to make a move.

But yes, anyone who doesn't have pihole of and uses adblockers, it will be 100% understandable for them to jump ship.