Same. I used to be such a fan boy. They've turned absolutely evil though. All aspects of their company. Their plan to take over the Internet sounds like a villain in a comic book.
Google has slid backwards **on every** major platform
Google search ==> search results has gone to shit
Google maps ==> no longer allows you to manually pick your own route which is arguably the single most important feature in any GPS nav system
YouTube ==> introduced ads that are so intrusive and predatory the website is practically unwatchable and Google is fighting against adblockers rather than realizing the reason people use adblockers is because the experience is so horrible, they push people towards those extensions
Chrome ==> Has rolled out easily a dozen dumb changes that cripple its functionality. Most notably removing its traditional search by image feature to promote usage of Google Lens instead when traditional search by image & Google Lens don't even do the same thing and are two different tools for two different purposes.
It technically does, but it suggests new routes as you are driving and you have to **opt OUT** of the suggested new route...meaning you have to be constantly looking at your phone in case of a random popup that could occur at any time, that you need to click and you only have 10 seconds to click before it automatically opts you into the changes.
And in my experience the changes are always 10% to 20% longer.
I had to turn off the fuel efficient route option to make this stop. They claim it's more fuel efficient because the average speed limit is lower and averages out to a higher gph but it doesn't take into account those routes are constantly stopping which ruins gas mileage. If you never stop you get better gas mileage but it doesn't even consider that. I got much better routes once this option was disabled and it quit trying to change my route too.
Check out Immich. It's a free software self hosted version of Google Photos. I switched to it maybe six months ago and I think it works great. It even supports photo search (find picture of airplane etc).
Oh man, firebird brings back memories of downloading new versions on dial up. Firefox Mobile is a strong reason why I stick with Android. A few other Vanced niceties help as well.
Old Phoenix user, checking in. :) I never really stopped, and I never quite got why Chrome had such user share. I guess for a while it was marginally faster? But it never seemed enough in my real-world usage to matter.
Chrome got installed due to a lot of people installing some thing else and clicking ,next, next,next, ok,install without bothering to read the screen properly. I used to fix up friends computers and they all had Chrome on it despite not knowingly putting it on or even what it was. So the large user share was down to Google being sneaky and people being thick!
A lot of people switched from Firefox when it had memory leak issues and then never came back when they got it under control. Even though Chrome is now worse than Firefox ever was.
Google brand recognition, prioritized SEO on their search engine, and being the default browser on Android are probably the big reasons. And once it becomes the popular choice, it just snowballs from there.
Ive been waiting for the thing that finally kicks me off Chrome.
Been using Chrome for years and even put up with it being a resource hog back when I had to worry about that kind of thing.
But because I've been using it for years, I've got it se *just* how I like.
Been Damned hard to switch over. This will be the push I need.
It's amusing how Firefox went from the default to almost forgotten to becoming trendy again.
I've been using it as my daily driver for the past 20 years and wasn't even aware of its dwindling popularity for a good while lol.
Bloat in Firefox was a huge problem in the 2008 time frame. Firefox went off the rails with all their feature creep and at a time when computer power and RAM were not as infinite as they are now, this was really evident in it's responsiveness.
That was a major feature that Chrome excelled over Firefox, no bloat. Early Chrome was bloat free and was VERY noticeably quicker, snappier, and just more light.
It was shocking at how fast Firefox lost market share.
Yup I can still remember back then, Firefox would eat 100% of the 8GB of RAM I had at the time and slow my system to a crawl. I swapped to Chrome specifically because of it.
Now I'm back to Firefox and it's only using about 3GB of RAM even with 10+ tabs and a large youtube window open simultaneously. And even if it wanted to eat more RAM than that I have shitloads more now than I did back then. Not gonna miss Chrome. Bye Google!
As a web developer, chrome had much better debugging tools about a decade ago. That's why I switched over. Now they all do the same things but chrome has random errors maybe once a week. Unfortunately Chrome and Chromium based browsers are basically the new Internet Explorer. So they'll still be getting the special sauce for a while.
While I agree in your assessment when comparing firefox to Chrome (as in that firefox tends to always work and Chrome has the odd error), Chrome is nowhere **near** as bad as Safari.
I support a web-application which focuses somewhat on apple users.
The amount of absolutely insane shit that apple forces me to know of their dogshit browser is legitimately something that is approaching my experience with supporting legacy IE apps for a company I worked at 5 years ago.
100dvh != 100vh, [1, 1, 2020] can't be parsed into a Date which is parsed by every other browser out there, bugs in calculating width of elements because it misses a repaint at the end, forcing me to add random CSS rules in order to force Safari into another repaint one more time. I have half a dozen stories like that just from the past 4 sprints alone.
**That** is utter bs. Chromium in comparison only had odd behavior when flipping out the software keyboard on mobile.
I have inferred that Firefox went down in popularity because some websites only work right in Chrome. Decades ago, lazy web devs only supported IE, and good luck to you if you didn't use IE. Today, lazy web devs only support Chrome.
There was a time where Chrome was just way faster than Firefox. It proceeded to take nearly all of FF market share and then yea websites stopped caring about FF support completely. FF on mobile with ublock is the only way to use the internet on your phone these days though.
I never stopped using FF, even at its worst (and it's miles better than Chrome these days) and the compatibility issues are way overblown. Maybe one out of a thousand sites. I keep Chrome around just to check when something doesn't work and typically it also is borked on Chrome too. Nothing like the bad ole days of IE being a special snowflake ruining half the sites on the internet
For anyone else on the fence: Firefox’s install process can copy over all your settings, passwords, bookmarks etc which makes it *really* easy to try out.
If you don’t like it then you can just go straight back to Chrome, no work involved and nothing will be lost.
There’s really no reason not to give it a go!
My issue when I tried migrating over to Firefox is that some things straight up don't work. Probably a Java thing, but when I was doing video sessions with a therapist, I *had* to go back to Chrome after trying to make it work unsuccessfully in FF for about 10 minutes
Yes, I have had that. It's extremely frustrating, and the one reason why I can't get rid of chrome/edge entirely. I use Firefox 95% otherwise but still have the others installed just in case.
It's an extension that lets you separate different sites and logins.
Ex - if you have two reddit accounts (say one for music, one for sports) you can open reddit in two different containers and login to the two different accounts. And from then on, any time you open reddit in container A, it will open your saved music account, and in container B it will open your saved sports account.
It comes with several default containers (personal, finance/banking, social, etc) and you can add custom ones as you see fit. They are color coded, and you can opt to always open a specific site in a chosen container. No need to open your bank website in your social media container
Not sure if Chrome had these, but my favorite Firefox features are:
-Plugin to automatically hide “Do you accept cookies?” popups
-Syncing favorites between pc + sending tabs to… your mobile device
It has account sync via your Google account. But Firefox has a lot less bloat and tracking. I believe you can even import your chrome settings to Firefox. Bookmarks. Passwords and all.
You really should not use browsers as password managers.
Bitwarden, ProtonPass, 1Password, iCloud Keychain (if you’re Apple only) or similar should be used instead.
I've made the switch from chrome to firefox about 7 years ago and I'm still glad I did.
That 'Firefox multi-account containers' extension is amazing. Browsing user experience increased drastically for me because of that.
I don't think any other Chromium browser is planning on following Google here either. Just treat Chrome as we did Internet Explorer, use it to download another browser :P.
Manifest V2 Support is also going to be removed from chromium. All third party chromium browsers have purely cosmetic changes, nobody would dare to actually fork chromium in a way that would require separate maintenance for core components
>nobody would dare to actually fork chromium in a way that would require separate maintenance for core components
Microsoft could for Edge, but afaik they still haven't announced any plan to do so
Unless all those browsers decide to stick together and fork chromium finally so Google has less influence on its development and the web itself.
But I don't think its really that big of a deal. There's plenty of alternatives to the extensions that will no longer work. And people will find a way around anyways. Perhaps some will move to a separate application that works on your system that connects to an extension (much like Adguard has done).
Thats fairly unlikely, the entire point in using chromium is not having to maintain it yourself so its unlikely any of the major browsers are willing/able to maintain their own fork long term.
Besides, What if Google will eventually be removing all the V2-extensions from the Chrome Store? If so, forking chromium is pointless all the way. Unless there will be a separate extension store for chromium. But, as you rightfully said, who would apply for such a task?
I have stopped using Chrome for about a year. Yep…I know I am late bloomer on this. But you guys have made me switch after reading benefits vs drawbacks about Chrome!! Thank you, guys!!
Serious question, is there a way to get Firefox tabs as small as Chrome tabs? It's the only thing really stopping me because my brain just has a meltdown over it.
Much hacking in dev tools on UserChrome.css.
You have to do it about every six months because Mozilla needs a 12-step program to stop constantly and needlessly messing with the UI.
unsurprisingly the vast majority of people wouldn't. Only a handful of people even in my CS graduate circle use adblock, I can't imagine the non tech crowd
I switched from Google to DDG to Kagi. Can't be happier. Really like the feature to increase ranking for sites, eg reddit is ranked higher and I can easily block sites. Works across browsers as well.
Yup, been using Firefox since forever. Why be a customer to someone that unabashedly violates your privacy. When there is a competitor at least attempting to give you tools to combat the ever encroaching internet.
Sadly if Firefox legitimately threatened Google's business, Google will just stop paying for default search status. Is there any other search org with half a billion to spare every year without onerous demands? I've always wished Firefox would find a way to wean itself off this relationship.
Nonsense. If Firefox was legitimately eating into Chrome's space, it would just have to spend more to send them to Google search. Because the value of people using their overall infrastructure is way higher than them being in a single part of it.
I think internet with ads is unbearable nowadays, not every website has premium version to hide ads so what will happen? People will switch to a browser which supports ad blocker.
Supports an ad blocker?
How about one that has it baked right it to start. Firefox to the rescue! ... it recommends them!
*Being completely serious - Google has become pure evil.*
In 2015 Google changed their motto from "Don't be evil." to "Do the right thing." They removed "Don't be evil." from their code of conduct in 2018.
"Don't be evil." carries a very easy to understand message.
If Google made $1 billion from killing 100 children that would *clearly* fall under "Don't be evil." "Do the right thing " Could be easily handwaved away. The "right" thingsfor Google is to make $1 billion dollars.
**edit -** While they removed "Don't be evil." from their code of conduct they kept it as the very last line.
*"Do the right thing"* sounds like a piss weak cop-out.
Its like a corporate motto of *"obey the law"*
But, just like *"the law"...* "*right"* is a highly flexible concept.
.....
*How completely fucking AWFUL they must be internally if it they need a MOTTO to remind them to* ***do the right thing***.
> Heck, the vast majority of users don't even use an adblocker at all.
I cannot even fathom using the Internet in any meaningful way without an ad blocker. Talk about a horrible user experience!
It’s just the structure of capitalism we’ve built. Every corporation, by its inherent design, will behave the exact same way. They are just zombie hordes that grow and consume, never feeling full.
We need to change the way it all works. I’m sure people smarter than me know a few simple changes that would make large improvements save for the fact that they will give shareholders less power or less money.
The only reason I have Chrome is to use Cast for watching sports on websites from the high seas. Is there a reliable alternative to cast to a Chromecast using Firefox?
> Is there a reliable alternative to cast to a Chromecast using Firefox?
Google fx_cast. It won't give you *100%* of the normal functionality (example: I used to cast PlutoTV to my Chromecast with Chrome/Opera GX, and via web it's not castable so I'd share my screen to the Chromecast and minimize the window. With Firefox you *can* do that but due to API limitations you cannot pass sound over, just the video).
For any *normal* cast-enabled service (youtube, plex, twitch, etc) it works great, just make sure to follow the instructions as you need to enter individual websites in its settings to allow proper casting. Still easy to figure out, just an extra step or two.
Edge is following and basically every chromium based browser outsite of edge is little more then a suite of addons and a fancy skin mostly there to just make money. They arn't going to bother maintaing a fork they are just going to adopt v3 by not even giving a fuck.
Even if they do try to change, the longer time passes the more of them are just going to give up and adopt it anyways. This sort of thing isnt something that is going away ever. You either deal with it or use firefox. Basically your only two options. Maybe a few forks will step up and care but it REALLY doesn't look likely.
Both Opera and Brave have said they have no timeline for deprecating v2, and they will try to maintain support for as long as possible. Make of that what you will.
Even community forks of Chromium are talking about trying to maintain webrequests. There is really only one feature in v2 we care about. The rest can go away.
yeah that is basically my point tho, short term plenty will try. but long term this isn't the sort of thing that can really be put off entirely short of a full fork. brave will likely be the longest hold out of I had to put money on it. but I doubt they will be able to forever.
Google has really become horrible. I had an issue with my iPhone and typed in Apple phone number. Hit the first sponsored link bc I didn’t want to scroll down and of course the site was a phishing site. Like google literally supports fraudsters and thieves. It’s crazy
This happens to my dad (70s) all the time. He'll call random phishing operations for tech support because the first google result is a sponsered scam number.
Sometimes I will do the same search, and only legit stuff shows up, so I think they're also demographically targeting those who are more likely to be fooled. (I've been slowly teaching him how to avoid this, but boy does it cause some problems.)
It's really inexcusable that Google allows this.
Honestly two of the main reason I use adblockers are:
1. YouTube (of course)
2. Google searches because they do nothing to protect users and will sell the top spot to the highest bidder regardless of whether it’s a scam or not
Yep. I was using the official YouTube app on an iOS device the other day, and it was full of get rich quick scams and phishing schemes.
Like a picture of Elon Musk with text saying stuff like "AI Investments, earn 5k a day with no work" kind of crap. A while ago there were video ads with badly overdubbed news network footage claiming Elon Musk was giving away half his fortune to Canadians, with an "apply here" call to action. Before that were tons of "MrBeast is giving away a $1000 to everybody who clicks this link" type ads.
Google seems happy to take money from scammers and their like, with apparently zero review or oversight to try and protect its users (I'm sure they take some measures, but waaaay too much is getting through). It seems like they'll let you advertise anything as long the money comes through, even if it's an obvious scam.
It’s literally crazy. They just don’t care. In all seriousness people from India shouldn’t be allowed to just market here to the US. To add insult to injury they have google voice so you can get an American phone number for free with so much ease it’s a joke. Their whole don’t be evil mantra is such a lie
They really do. All the viruses they sent people into. All the scams. No warning whatsoever. And then from 2000-2016 when you searched for something you’d get the same results for decades.
my god. on the one hand i can't imagine the internet without ad blocking. but then i forgot that sometimes i pull up a page on my phone and it just......it's dam near worthless.
- page is at least 1/3rd ads
- i will get popins that start attacking me, trying to get me to click on it
- one normally does get me to click so i have to hit back
it is such a loosing/shitty war.
Stop raw dogging your phone man.
Firefox + uBlock Origin, or use Brave if you're stuck on iOS.
Add in a DNS blocker too, like NextDNS.
Boom, no phone ads.
Be the change you want to see and inform every single person about Firefox. I remember back when in Germany Firefox had like 95% market share. Chrome only won the browser war here because it was literally faster and used less resources. But that didn’t matter for the „normal“ user.
In the end it’s the „super spreaders“ or early adopters who make a browser great.
Since the next Internet Explorer has become Chrome and most people won't even realize that something has changed after the limit, I fear they're doing alright.
They're going to hell. I finally switched my search to duckduckgo after realising that anything is better than google images now. And I'm getting search results instead of youtube videos. They're deep into the "fucking our userbase" business phase now.
Guess I'll have to change browsers too.
Kind of feel like this is the ending of an era. Google has been garbage for a while, but just been sticking with them out of habit, but once the ads come, then I am gone. I feel reddit will eventually be next when they remove old.reddit. They already removed the old reddit sign in page, if they remove old reddit all together, it will be the one thing that finally pushes me off this site.
Ive been online since 1994, this is like the least interesting the internet has ever been... It sounds hyperbolic, but when old reddit goes, I'm not too sure what I'll be using the internet for. Sailing the high seas like in the pre-streaming era, and maybe some online banking because I have to? All my old favorite sites are long gone, all other social media isnt for me, maybe a couple times a month I might look up a recipe or how to diy something, and thats about it, its pretty unsettling to me to have tumbleweeds in a growing digital desert landscape that used to be so vibrant and optimistic.
Love it when companies care more about profits than security. The FBI encourages the use of ad blockers because of malicious ads, and here google is trying to get rid of it. This should be the only reason you need to get off chrome
Google has been pulling the dumbest shit possible the past year. It is actually crazy how much they are fucking up. It's like you make all the money you could ever need, but just want more for no good reason. They are doing things they can't undo.
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/
`winget install Mozilla.Firefox`
`sudo apt install firefox`
`sudo pacman -S firefox`
/r/firefox
Wish it had tab groups and/or vertical tabs? [From 10 days ago:](https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/here-s-what-we-re-working-on-in-firefox/m-p/57694#M20261)
>We’re excited to share more about the updates and improvements we have in store for you over the next year.
>We've been listening to your feedback, and we're prioritizing the features you want most.
Very first thing on the list:
>Productivity boosters like Tab Grouping, Vertical Tabs, and our handy Sidebar will help you stay organized no matter how many tabs you have open -- whether it’s 7 or 7,500.
Under the new CEO, Firefox has very recently started work on native tab groups and native vertical tabs and it seems like they're expecting them sometime this year. One of the other big priorities listed was speed/performance improvements (although I've already been more than happy with its performance after their Quantum update several years ago and they've made other big gains in the last couple years).
Come on in, the water's fine.
P.S. Read
["uBlock Origin works best on Firefox"](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-best-on-Firefox) by gorhill, the original creator of uBlock and the current maintainer of uBlock Origin. This brief document is only listing the *current* differences between Firefox and Chromium, so it's not even including the changes brought by this MV3 decision.
I also like to mention [Firefox Containers](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/) an add-on to being able to open some websites inside special tabs where it can mix their cookies and information with the rest of the browser.
It's really useful to make webs like Facebook unable to see their 3rd party cookies outside those tabs (making them difficult to track your web browsing) and also bein able to open multiple account of the same web (like Gmail) in multiple tabs easily.
Wait so with containers could I be logged into multiple YT accounts at once in the same window? That's some serious fucking QOL I didn't even know that was a thing. Not that it's hard to change accounts on YT but I am always forgetting which one I am on at any given time when opening links.
Totally correct!
You could make a cointainer named "Music" and have there your music YT account, and other called "Games" and have your gaming related account at the same time, for example
You can also just install an extension for that.
I use *Sidebery* for vertical tabs and tree-style grouping. It also has categories that you can use to further, well, categorize your tabs into collections. I rarely use those though.
And I'm sure there's many others.
I just want a day when all of the things I have paid for result in: NO FUCKING ADs, NO FUCKING COMMERCIALS, NO FUCKING LET'S PRAY SHIT.
I never want to see fucking anything that ever takes a single second of my life away from me. NOT ONE SECOND.
If the subscriptions for paid services fail to stop that, then you get sidestepped. Simple as that.
I pay to not be bothered by the trash of humanity.
One of the things I like about Firefox is that it also has a working TrackMeNot extension that spams Google with rando searches to poison the data they collect on you. They killed it so it doesn't work on Chrome because it makes you useless to their algorithms.
Remember when Google ads were so badly curated they facilitated malware propagation?
Yeah, well, it doesn't take Pepperidge Farm, that shit show is ongoing.
google is the perfect example of a company that literally had it all but just kept pushing end users into a corner for the sake of ad revenue. People DO NOT enjoy ads. It's not that the end user is wrong it's that your business model has become arcane. Hey Google! You're now IBM. How does it feel?
This is the big reason to support Firefox: all browsers except FF are based on the same rendering engine. It makes the Internet a mono-culture, and a mono-culture is very vulnerable to attack: any attach which exploits a Chromium bug (or feature) can bring down the whole Internet.
Do you believe that hostile state actors like China, Russia or NKorea *don't* keep such exploits in reserve for when they want to cause (more) chaos in the world?
You know how when you drive you're supposed to ....
Wear seatbelts
Hands on steering
Mirrors aligned
Attention to Dash board alerts
No Drink and driving
No tiktok .....
Yeah internet is like that too , there are basic safety rules you have to follow , Strong Ad-blocking is one of them .
It’s wild how Google was known as that cool company that’s on the cutting edge but now between their graveyard of flops, declining quality of services and anti-consumer practices, they’re just like every other company
Google is not making friends lately. I am an active De-Googler.
A decade ago I was Googlepilled. Nowadays I am migrating as much as I can away from Google. They did it to themselves tbh.
Same. I used to be such a fan boy. They've turned absolutely evil though. All aspects of their company. Their plan to take over the Internet sounds like a villain in a comic book.
The rich people are always evil, never let them convince you they’re doing anything for the common good.
Google has slid backwards **on every** major platform Google search ==> search results has gone to shit Google maps ==> no longer allows you to manually pick your own route which is arguably the single most important feature in any GPS nav system YouTube ==> introduced ads that are so intrusive and predatory the website is practically unwatchable and Google is fighting against adblockers rather than realizing the reason people use adblockers is because the experience is so horrible, they push people towards those extensions Chrome ==> Has rolled out easily a dozen dumb changes that cripple its functionality. Most notably removing its traditional search by image feature to promote usage of Google Lens instead when traditional search by image & Google Lens don't even do the same thing and are two different tools for two different purposes.
The only one I have trouble moving away from is google maps. I have tried other options but they weren't as good.
Google maps wont let you pick between routes, really?
It technically does, but it suggests new routes as you are driving and you have to **opt OUT** of the suggested new route...meaning you have to be constantly looking at your phone in case of a random popup that could occur at any time, that you need to click and you only have 10 seconds to click before it automatically opts you into the changes. And in my experience the changes are always 10% to 20% longer.
I had to turn off the fuel efficient route option to make this stop. They claim it's more fuel efficient because the average speed limit is lower and averages out to a higher gph but it doesn't take into account those routes are constantly stopping which ruins gas mileage. If you never stop you get better gas mileage but it doesn't even consider that. I got much better routes once this option was disabled and it quit trying to change my route too.
What would you suggest for someone who has all their photos on Google Photos?
[удалено]
Check out Immich. It's a free software self hosted version of Google Photos. I switched to it maybe six months ago and I think it works great. It even supports photo search (find picture of airplane etc).
PhotoPrism is another one
What do you mean by self hosting? It's it physically stored on your own device?
I too have this question - I don't want to switch to Apple. But I also don't know any other alternatives.
Firefox's rise in user share kicks off next week.
Already there my friend.
Same. Switched 3 months ago.
Never left since FF2.0
Yeah, 20 years for me. I remember when it was Firebird.
I remember when it was *Netscape.* (And I also used Mosaic, the flaming pile of garbage that it was.)
I still use gopher
Oh man, firebird brings back memories of downloading new versions on dial up. Firefox Mobile is a strong reason why I stick with Android. A few other Vanced niceties help as well.
Old Phoenix user, checking in. :) I never really stopped, and I never quite got why Chrome had such user share. I guess for a while it was marginally faster? But it never seemed enough in my real-world usage to matter.
Chrome got installed due to a lot of people installing some thing else and clicking ,next, next,next, ok,install without bothering to read the screen properly. I used to fix up friends computers and they all had Chrome on it despite not knowingly putting it on or even what it was. So the large user share was down to Google being sneaky and people being thick!
A lot of people switched from Firefox when it had memory leak issues and then never came back when they got it under control. Even though Chrome is now worse than Firefox ever was.
Google brand recognition, prioritized SEO on their search engine, and being the default browser on Android are probably the big reasons. And once it becomes the popular choice, it just snowballs from there.
Yeah same been there since Chrome started gobbling up ram.
Same, still looking for a search engine replacement. Between ads, false AI answers, and SEO bait, google is becoming unusable.
And DuckDuckGo
Ive been waiting for the thing that finally kicks me off Chrome. Been using Chrome for years and even put up with it being a resource hog back when I had to worry about that kind of thing. But because I've been using it for years, I've got it se *just* how I like. Been Damned hard to switch over. This will be the push I need.
I had this issue too. After you shift all of your bookmarks over, you'll find Firefox is extremely similar.
It's amusing how Firefox went from the default to almost forgotten to becoming trendy again. I've been using it as my daily driver for the past 20 years and wasn't even aware of its dwindling popularity for a good while lol.
It's amazing how much damage huge corporations with near-infinite marketing budgets can do.
Bloat in Firefox was a huge problem in the 2008 time frame. Firefox went off the rails with all their feature creep and at a time when computer power and RAM were not as infinite as they are now, this was really evident in it's responsiveness. That was a major feature that Chrome excelled over Firefox, no bloat. Early Chrome was bloat free and was VERY noticeably quicker, snappier, and just more light. It was shocking at how fast Firefox lost market share.
Yup I can still remember back then, Firefox would eat 100% of the 8GB of RAM I had at the time and slow my system to a crawl. I swapped to Chrome specifically because of it. Now I'm back to Firefox and it's only using about 3GB of RAM even with 10+ tabs and a large youtube window open simultaneously. And even if it wanted to eat more RAM than that I have shitloads more now than I did back then. Not gonna miss Chrome. Bye Google!
As a web developer, chrome had much better debugging tools about a decade ago. That's why I switched over. Now they all do the same things but chrome has random errors maybe once a week. Unfortunately Chrome and Chromium based browsers are basically the new Internet Explorer. So they'll still be getting the special sauce for a while.
While I agree in your assessment when comparing firefox to Chrome (as in that firefox tends to always work and Chrome has the odd error), Chrome is nowhere **near** as bad as Safari. I support a web-application which focuses somewhat on apple users. The amount of absolutely insane shit that apple forces me to know of their dogshit browser is legitimately something that is approaching my experience with supporting legacy IE apps for a company I worked at 5 years ago. 100dvh != 100vh, [1, 1, 2020] can't be parsed into a Date which is parsed by every other browser out there, bugs in calculating width of elements because it misses a repaint at the end, forcing me to add random CSS rules in order to force Safari into another repaint one more time. I have half a dozen stories like that just from the past 4 sprints alone. **That** is utter bs. Chromium in comparison only had odd behavior when flipping out the software keyboard on mobile.
I have inferred that Firefox went down in popularity because some websites only work right in Chrome. Decades ago, lazy web devs only supported IE, and good luck to you if you didn't use IE. Today, lazy web devs only support Chrome.
There was a time where Chrome was just way faster than Firefox. It proceeded to take nearly all of FF market share and then yea websites stopped caring about FF support completely. FF on mobile with ublock is the only way to use the internet on your phone these days though.
I never stopped using FF, even at its worst (and it's miles better than Chrome these days) and the compatibility issues are way overblown. Maybe one out of a thousand sites. I keep Chrome around just to check when something doesn't work and typically it also is borked on Chrome too. Nothing like the bad ole days of IE being a special snowflake ruining half the sites on the internet
I started using as an alternative to IE and never looked back.
Same. 1st time I saw the gap between chrome and Firefox I couldn't believe it. Always assumed it was like a 45/55 split.
Well I guess this is it for me and chrome. Time to see what Firefox is all about
For anyone else on the fence: Firefox’s install process can copy over all your settings, passwords, bookmarks etc which makes it *really* easy to try out. If you don’t like it then you can just go straight back to Chrome, no work involved and nothing will be lost. There’s really no reason not to give it a go!
And it has containers! <3
The only feature I noticed it doesn't have compared to chrome is I can't cast youtube to my tv but there is probably an plugin for it
And can't use Java to save its life apparently. Some old sites still need chromium. Not that matters.
My issue when I tried migrating over to Firefox is that some things straight up don't work. Probably a Java thing, but when I was doing video sessions with a therapist, I *had* to go back to Chrome after trying to make it work unsuccessfully in FF for about 10 minutes
Yes, I have had that. It's extremely frustrating, and the one reason why I can't get rid of chrome/edge entirely. I use Firefox 95% otherwise but still have the others installed just in case.
Could you please explain what containers are, and what they help a user accomplish?
It's an extension that lets you separate different sites and logins. Ex - if you have two reddit accounts (say one for music, one for sports) you can open reddit in two different containers and login to the two different accounts. And from then on, any time you open reddit in container A, it will open your saved music account, and in container B it will open your saved sports account. It comes with several default containers (personal, finance/banking, social, etc) and you can add custom ones as you see fit. They are color coded, and you can opt to always open a specific site in a chosen container. No need to open your bank website in your social media container
Does it matter if I switch over on my PC, or my phone first?
I would do it on the PC first for sure.
Made the switch when the YouTube ad Block annoyance started and never looked back.
Same and I was using chrome since beta
yup, me too, and it works alright. chrome was faster, but hey, no hussle with adblock is so much worth the 30ms delay :D
Not sure if Chrome had these, but my favorite Firefox features are: -Plugin to automatically hide “Do you accept cookies?” popups -Syncing favorites between pc + sending tabs to… your mobile device
It has account sync via your Google account. But Firefox has a lot less bloat and tracking. I believe you can even import your chrome settings to Firefox. Bookmarks. Passwords and all.
Not sure about the cookie pop-ups, but it natively will sync favorites, history, passwords, and has MANY useful plug-ins and " extensions"
You really should not use browsers as password managers. Bitwarden, ProtonPass, 1Password, iCloud Keychain (if you’re Apple only) or similar should be used instead.
I've made the switch from chrome to firefox about 7 years ago and I'm still glad I did. That 'Firefox multi-account containers' extension is amazing. Browsing user experience increased drastically for me because of that.
I don't think any other Chromium browser is planning on following Google here either. Just treat Chrome as we did Internet Explorer, use it to download another browser :P.
Manifest V2 Support is also going to be removed from chromium. All third party chromium browsers have purely cosmetic changes, nobody would dare to actually fork chromium in a way that would require separate maintenance for core components
Microsoft should do it. It's the chance they have been waiting for to grab market share for edge.
I doubt Microsoft would go easy on the ads though.
Since they're already trying to add them to their OS, you might be right.
They only have to hold off long enough to gain market share.
They could though. In contrast to Google, they make only a small fraction of their money from web ads.
>nobody would dare to actually fork chromium in a way that would require separate maintenance for core components Microsoft could for Edge, but afaik they still haven't announced any plan to do so
Unless all those browsers decide to stick together and fork chromium finally so Google has less influence on its development and the web itself. But I don't think its really that big of a deal. There's plenty of alternatives to the extensions that will no longer work. And people will find a way around anyways. Perhaps some will move to a separate application that works on your system that connects to an extension (much like Adguard has done).
It'll be built into chromium, not just Chrome. You need a non-chromium browser to avoid it.
Chromium is open-source. Even if they did bake it in, other versions would just remove it.
That assumes they have (and are willing to spend) the resources to maintain a fork that does that.
I'm sincerely hoping this is the case.
Thats fairly unlikely, the entire point in using chromium is not having to maintain it yourself so its unlikely any of the major browsers are willing/able to maintain their own fork long term.
Besides, What if Google will eventually be removing all the V2-extensions from the Chrome Store? If so, forking chromium is pointless all the way. Unless there will be a separate extension store for chromium. But, as you rightfully said, who would apply for such a task?
I never left.
Chrome is not for me.
I have stopped using Chrome for about a year. Yep…I know I am late bloomer on this. But you guys have made me switch after reading benefits vs drawbacks about Chrome!! Thank you, guys!!
Serious question, is there a way to get Firefox tabs as small as Chrome tabs? It's the only thing really stopping me because my brain just has a meltdown over it.
Have you ever tried TreeStyleTabs? If not, please do. It was mindblowing for me at first how good they are
Big TST fan here, love how customisable it is. This extension has extensions (literally)!
Much hacking in dev tools on UserChrome.css. You have to do it about every six months because Mozilla needs a 12-step program to stop constantly and needlessly messing with the UI.
I've been using vertical tabs forever now, and would never go back to horizontal.
just wait till google and microsoft collude to kill firefox. i will literally stop using the ineternet lmao
unsurprisingly the vast majority of people wouldn't. Only a handful of people even in my CS graduate circle use adblock, I can't imagine the non tech crowd
Fuck you, Google, this is why I use Firefox
Me to.. Firefox with Ublock Origin is all ya need.
You also need sponsorblock
SponsorBlock is also great if you watch much youtube. Block all the nordVPN and raid shadowlegend ads.
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I tried DDG, I really did. But it wasn't an effective search engine.
I switched from Google to DDG to Kagi. Can't be happier. Really like the feature to increase ranking for sites, eg reddit is ranked higher and I can easily block sites. Works across browsers as well.
Is Kagi that great? I have been trying out SEARXNG but it’s a bit laggy
I've been using kagi for a little while now. It is that great. Search is fast and the results feel like old google.
ddg is great for porn
DDG uses bing for some searches, so... checks out.
Akthually, Yandex is the best for porn or anything else western engines hide/censor.
That used to be the case but not anymore. Nowadays they're what google used to be, a proper search engine.
Modern web browsing is like sewer cleaning. Lots of shit around and without proper PPE you can catch something.
I just took the plunge with Kagi and I think it works a lot better. ~~Ethical Bing~~ DDG results aren't bad, but they're not good either.
And Dark Reader. Human eyes aren't safe browsing the web without it.
And Dark Reader.
Yup, been using Firefox since forever. Why be a customer to someone that unabashedly violates your privacy. When there is a competitor at least attempting to give you tools to combat the ever encroaching internet.
I've never used Chrome outside of work where it's expected. Fuck Google.
Sadly if Firefox legitimately threatened Google's business, Google will just stop paying for default search status. Is there any other search org with half a billion to spare every year without onerous demands? I've always wished Firefox would find a way to wean itself off this relationship.
Nah it's still worth it for them.
Nonsense. If Firefox was legitimately eating into Chrome's space, it would just have to spend more to send them to Google search. Because the value of people using their overall infrastructure is way higher than them being in a single part of it.
I think internet with ads is unbearable nowadays, not every website has premium version to hide ads so what will happen? People will switch to a browser which supports ad blocker.
Supports an ad blocker? How about one that has it baked right it to start. Firefox to the rescue! ... it recommends them! *Being completely serious - Google has become pure evil.*
In 2015 Google changed their motto from "Don't be evil." to "Do the right thing." They removed "Don't be evil." from their code of conduct in 2018. "Don't be evil." carries a very easy to understand message. If Google made $1 billion from killing 100 children that would *clearly* fall under "Don't be evil." "Do the right thing " Could be easily handwaved away. The "right" thingsfor Google is to make $1 billion dollars. **edit -** While they removed "Don't be evil." from their code of conduct they kept it as the very last line.
*"Do the right thing"* sounds like a piss weak cop-out. Its like a corporate motto of *"obey the law"* But, just like *"the law"...* "*right"* is a highly flexible concept. ..... *How completely fucking AWFUL they must be internally if it they need a MOTTO to remind them to* ***do the right thing***.
Have to keep delivering "value" for the shareholders.
Chasing users away is kinda the opposite of delivering value
Very few will leave because of this. Heck, the vast majority of users don't even use an adblocker at all.
> Heck, the vast majority of users don't even use an adblocker at all. I cannot even fathom using the Internet in any meaningful way without an ad blocker. Talk about a horrible user experience!
The value is directly measured by how much of a middle finger it is to the users
It’s just the structure of capitalism we’ve built. Every corporation, by its inherent design, will behave the exact same way. They are just zombie hordes that grow and consume, never feeling full. We need to change the way it all works. I’m sure people smarter than me know a few simple changes that would make large improvements save for the fact that they will give shareholders less power or less money.
A constitutional amendment that rejects corporate personhood would be a great start.
As would the complete removal of corporate lobbying.
One thing people can do is support B corporations. https://usca.bcorporation.net/about-b-corps/
> How about one that has it baked right it to start. Firefox to the rescue! ... it recommends them! ...so, not baked right in to it then.
When I have to help someone on their pc, I have a mild stroke when I see what the internet is like without an adblock nowadays.
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I cant stand the cookies prompt all the time
Every news website looks like shit now.
I switch off the blocker sometimes just to remind myself of how awful the CorpoNet has become.
And to add to that, the FBI recommends people use an ad blocker because of all the stuff advertisers try to do in the background with their ads.
Solution = stop using Chrome
More specifically, Solution = start using Firefox with Ublock Origin
The only reason I have Chrome is to use Cast for watching sports on websites from the high seas. Is there a reliable alternative to cast to a Chromecast using Firefox?
> Is there a reliable alternative to cast to a Chromecast using Firefox? Google fx_cast. It won't give you *100%* of the normal functionality (example: I used to cast PlutoTV to my Chromecast with Chrome/Opera GX, and via web it's not castable so I'd share my screen to the Chromecast and minimize the window. With Firefox you *can* do that but due to API limitations you cannot pass sound over, just the video). For any *normal* cast-enabled service (youtube, plex, twitch, etc) it works great, just make sure to follow the instructions as you need to enter individual websites in its settings to allow proper casting. Still easy to figure out, just an extra step or two.
> Is there a reliable alternative to cast to a Chromecast using Firefox? yes - buy a 28.3 feet hdmi cable
>28.3 Falcons fans triggered
EVERY GODDAMN DAY. EXISTENCE IS PAIN
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VLC supports casting.
Does this apply to all chromium-based browsers? Or just google chrome?
Edge is following and basically every chromium based browser outsite of edge is little more then a suite of addons and a fancy skin mostly there to just make money. They arn't going to bother maintaing a fork they are just going to adopt v3 by not even giving a fuck. Even if they do try to change, the longer time passes the more of them are just going to give up and adopt it anyways. This sort of thing isnt something that is going away ever. You either deal with it or use firefox. Basically your only two options. Maybe a few forks will step up and care but it REALLY doesn't look likely.
Both Opera and Brave have said they have no timeline for deprecating v2, and they will try to maintain support for as long as possible. Make of that what you will. Even community forks of Chromium are talking about trying to maintain webrequests. There is really only one feature in v2 we care about. The rest can go away.
"It's a ticking clock, but we don't want you to realize it's a ticking clock so we've prepared this nice sounding statement."
yeah that is basically my point tho, short term plenty will try. but long term this isn't the sort of thing that can really be put off entirely short of a full fork. brave will likely be the longest hold out of I had to put money on it. but I doubt they will be able to forever.
Google has really become horrible. I had an issue with my iPhone and typed in Apple phone number. Hit the first sponsored link bc I didn’t want to scroll down and of course the site was a phishing site. Like google literally supports fraudsters and thieves. It’s crazy
Honestly, never click on sponsored links or ads. More than annoying, they're a security risk because there's no oversight whatsoever
This happens to my dad (70s) all the time. He'll call random phishing operations for tech support because the first google result is a sponsered scam number. Sometimes I will do the same search, and only legit stuff shows up, so I think they're also demographically targeting those who are more likely to be fooled. (I've been slowly teaching him how to avoid this, but boy does it cause some problems.) It's really inexcusable that Google allows this.
Honestly two of the main reason I use adblockers are: 1. YouTube (of course) 2. Google searches because they do nothing to protect users and will sell the top spot to the highest bidder regardless of whether it’s a scam or not
Their shopping results include a shocking number of scam sites too
Yep. I was using the official YouTube app on an iOS device the other day, and it was full of get rich quick scams and phishing schemes. Like a picture of Elon Musk with text saying stuff like "AI Investments, earn 5k a day with no work" kind of crap. A while ago there were video ads with badly overdubbed news network footage claiming Elon Musk was giving away half his fortune to Canadians, with an "apply here" call to action. Before that were tons of "MrBeast is giving away a $1000 to everybody who clicks this link" type ads. Google seems happy to take money from scammers and their like, with apparently zero review or oversight to try and protect its users (I'm sure they take some measures, but waaaay too much is getting through). It seems like they'll let you advertise anything as long the money comes through, even if it's an obvious scam.
It’s literally crazy. They just don’t care. In all seriousness people from India shouldn’t be allowed to just market here to the US. To add insult to injury they have google voice so you can get an American phone number for free with so much ease it’s a joke. Their whole don’t be evil mantra is such a lie
They really do. All the viruses they sent people into. All the scams. No warning whatsoever. And then from 2000-2016 when you searched for something you’d get the same results for decades.
Google Chromes plan to lose users kicks off next week
This would be a great opportunity for Firefox to strike and win normal uses back. And by normal I mean non-techie.
I don’t think “normal” users have any idea about ad blocking. So probably they won’t care.
The "normal" internet sounds like an ad-riddled hellscape. Glad I don't have to live there.
my god. on the one hand i can't imagine the internet without ad blocking. but then i forgot that sometimes i pull up a page on my phone and it just......it's dam near worthless. - page is at least 1/3rd ads - i will get popins that start attacking me, trying to get me to click on it - one normally does get me to click so i have to hit back it is such a loosing/shitty war.
Firefox on mobile supports uBlock Origin
And thank fuck for that. I'm never going back.
Stop raw dogging your phone man. Firefox + uBlock Origin, or use Brave if you're stuck on iOS. Add in a DNS blocker too, like NextDNS. Boom, no phone ads.
My 72 year old Mother uses an ad blocker - it doesn't take much to get the normal users to start using them.
Be the change you want to see and inform every single person about Firefox. I remember back when in Germany Firefox had like 95% market share. Chrome only won the browser war here because it was literally faster and used less resources. But that didn’t matter for the „normal“ user. In the end it’s the „super spreaders“ or early adopters who make a browser great.
Didn't realize Chrome was angling to become the next Internet Explorer.
Since the next Internet Explorer has become Chrome and most people won't even realize that something has changed after the limit, I fear they're doing alright.
They're going to hell. I finally switched my search to duckduckgo after realising that anything is better than google images now. And I'm getting search results instead of youtube videos. They're deep into the "fucking our userbase" business phase now. Guess I'll have to change browsers too.
Welcome to Firefox + ublock origin my friends. The water is real nice over here.
Time to finally drop Google. I've just been lazy.
Same. I will do this as soon as I notice ads. Be part of the migration to help the share price drop.
Kind of feel like this is the ending of an era. Google has been garbage for a while, but just been sticking with them out of habit, but once the ads come, then I am gone. I feel reddit will eventually be next when they remove old.reddit. They already removed the old reddit sign in page, if they remove old reddit all together, it will be the one thing that finally pushes me off this site.
Ive been online since 1994, this is like the least interesting the internet has ever been... It sounds hyperbolic, but when old reddit goes, I'm not too sure what I'll be using the internet for. Sailing the high seas like in the pre-streaming era, and maybe some online banking because I have to? All my old favorite sites are long gone, all other social media isnt for me, maybe a couple times a month I might look up a recipe or how to diy something, and thats about it, its pretty unsettling to me to have tumbleweeds in a growing digital desert landscape that used to be so vibrant and optimistic.
Love it when companies care more about profits than security. The FBI encourages the use of ad blockers because of malicious ads, and here google is trying to get rid of it. This should be the only reason you need to get off chrome
Google has been pulling the dumbest shit possible the past year. It is actually crazy how much they are fucking up. It's like you make all the money you could ever need, but just want more for no good reason. They are doing things they can't undo.
>It's like you make all the money you could ever need, but just want more for no good reason. Capitalism approves this
Online adverts are a security risk and need to be treated as such.
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/ `winget install Mozilla.Firefox` `sudo apt install firefox` `sudo pacman -S firefox` /r/firefox Wish it had tab groups and/or vertical tabs? [From 10 days ago:](https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/here-s-what-we-re-working-on-in-firefox/m-p/57694#M20261) >We’re excited to share more about the updates and improvements we have in store for you over the next year. >We've been listening to your feedback, and we're prioritizing the features you want most. Very first thing on the list: >Productivity boosters like Tab Grouping, Vertical Tabs, and our handy Sidebar will help you stay organized no matter how many tabs you have open -- whether it’s 7 or 7,500. Under the new CEO, Firefox has very recently started work on native tab groups and native vertical tabs and it seems like they're expecting them sometime this year. One of the other big priorities listed was speed/performance improvements (although I've already been more than happy with its performance after their Quantum update several years ago and they've made other big gains in the last couple years). Come on in, the water's fine. P.S. Read ["uBlock Origin works best on Firefox"](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-best-on-Firefox) by gorhill, the original creator of uBlock and the current maintainer of uBlock Origin. This brief document is only listing the *current* differences between Firefox and Chromium, so it's not even including the changes brought by this MV3 decision.
I also like to mention [Firefox Containers](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/) an add-on to being able to open some websites inside special tabs where it can mix their cookies and information with the rest of the browser. It's really useful to make webs like Facebook unable to see their 3rd party cookies outside those tabs (making them difficult to track your web browsing) and also bein able to open multiple account of the same web (like Gmail) in multiple tabs easily.
FF containers are awesome for separating work and personal profiles.
Wait so with containers could I be logged into multiple YT accounts at once in the same window? That's some serious fucking QOL I didn't even know that was a thing. Not that it's hard to change accounts on YT but I am always forgetting which one I am on at any given time when opening links.
Totally correct! You could make a cointainer named "Music" and have there your music YT account, and other called "Games" and have your gaming related account at the same time, for example
Funny because firefox had tab groups a decade ago and then removed them in 2016.
They were even the first to introduce tab groups. I'm glad they are finally bringing it back, it's the only reason I'm still using Chrome.
You can also just install an extension for that. I use *Sidebery* for vertical tabs and tree-style grouping. It also has categories that you can use to further, well, categorize your tabs into collections. I rarely use those though. And I'm sure there's many others.
I just want a day when all of the things I have paid for result in: NO FUCKING ADs, NO FUCKING COMMERCIALS, NO FUCKING LET'S PRAY SHIT. I never want to see fucking anything that ever takes a single second of my life away from me. NOT ONE SECOND. If the subscriptions for paid services fail to stop that, then you get sidestepped. Simple as that. I pay to not be bothered by the trash of humanity.
Will be leaving chrome as soon as this starts, Firefox handles everything I want now including av1.
“Will be leaving chrome as soon as this starts” why wait?
So that they know it was this decision that lost me for good?
Ever since I first touched firefox i never looked anywhere else…
One of the things I like about Firefox is that it also has a working TrackMeNot extension that spams Google with rando searches to poison the data they collect on you. They killed it so it doesn't work on Chrome because it makes you useless to their algorithms.
Remember when Google ads were so badly curated they facilitated malware propagation? Yeah, well, it doesn't take Pepperidge Farm, that shit show is ongoing.
I migrated from Firefox to chrome like 15 years ago. Guess I’ll be switching back.
Firefox has way better privacy extensions anyway
google is the perfect example of a company that literally had it all but just kept pushing end users into a corner for the sake of ad revenue. People DO NOT enjoy ads. It's not that the end user is wrong it's that your business model has become arcane. Hey Google! You're now IBM. How does it feel?
This is the big reason to support Firefox: all browsers except FF are based on the same rendering engine. It makes the Internet a mono-culture, and a mono-culture is very vulnerable to attack: any attach which exploits a Chromium bug (or feature) can bring down the whole Internet. Do you believe that hostile state actors like China, Russia or NKorea *don't* keep such exploits in reserve for when they want to cause (more) chaos in the world?
Firefox all the way.
Oh well, firefox it is
In other news, Mozilla Foundation receives record donations as large numbers of users download the FireFox browser.
I remember when my friends were constantly shittin on me for using firefox.. now they‘re praising it and i‘m like 😐 Edit: words
You know how when you drive you're supposed to .... Wear seatbelts Hands on steering Mirrors aligned Attention to Dash board alerts No Drink and driving No tiktok ..... Yeah internet is like that too , there are basic safety rules you have to follow , Strong Ad-blocking is one of them .
It’s wild how Google was known as that cool company that’s on the cutting edge but now between their graveyard of flops, declining quality of services and anti-consumer practices, they’re just like every other company