Can someone remind me why we stopped using Firefox a while back? There was some piece of news that broke everyone’s trust, but I can’t remember what Mozilla did. Was it a change in their user agreement?
wait people stopped using Firefox? I’ve been rocking it since like 2006/2007
Small suggestion: if you’re over 21 stop blindly doing what others do. Start questioning things and do what you think is best.
Firefox used to have a “we’re a browser that won’t sell user data” promise. Then they changed their TOS and removed the promise, adding:
When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that information to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox."
When people reacted to their TOS they said it was an accident, it’s just boilerplate, don’t take it seriously.
Or in other words: an entity with a team of lawyers claimed ownership of all your data, and then downplayed it, and then has acted good since.
Personally I stick my head way into the alligators mouth and still use Firefox.
Don’t you mean Netscape Navigator?
The world in general switched from Firefox to Chrome several years ago because at that time (when just released) Chrome was new, shiny, and fast (much faster than Firefox). And at that time everyone loved Google (they still had their infamous “be no evil” motto). And Google also promoted their browser, and, given their web resources are immensely popular, that helped tremendously.
That switch had nothing to do with recent concerns about privacy in Mozilla products.
I just use Librewolf
I stopped using it and went to chrome bc my adblock stopped working and i waited for a fix but it didn’t come. It worked fine on chrome.
I went back to firefox bc my adblock stopped working but it worked fine on firefox.
these two events are several years apart if that wasn’t clear
“We” didn’t stop using Firefox. Open source boycotts are complicated because the software is separate from the developers. You can keep using the software even if you disagree with the development organisation.
Mozilla organisation is getting problematic for a whole lot of reasons. My issue with them is that they seem to be in the “more money than they know what to do with it” phase. They’re flush with cash, but it’s not reflecting to the product. If they buy an ad company and plan AI stuff, maybe things aren’t going well.
Problem is, there’s no viable competing organisation. Protest forks of software don’t really work that well unless you can actually guarantee the development support. Compare this to what happened when OpenOfficeOrg successfully moved to LibreOffice - developers saw the old organisation didn’t work, so they made a new one that did.
I stopped using Firefox for four core reasons:
Their investment into AI How they submit and work with their Google overlords to some degree Their browser putting in more and more unnecessary and unasked features (like Firefox account for one) Their Terms of Service
CEO compensation too
I recently tried to migrate to Firefox after the v2 extension changes in Chrome. I worked, but there were a few things that bothered me.
Chrome and chromium browsers will automatically use the window last used in the MacOS workspace you are in, and this usually works nicely when you have a work workspace and a personal workspace. It keeps things nicely separated when you click on links. Firefox doesn’t do that. It uses whatever window you last accessed. Not the end of the world.
The real problem I had is that the performance when using web tools like grafana in Firefox is so much worse compared to chromium based browsers. It was unbearable. I haven’t tried WebKit yet to see the same services in safari, for example.
I am lazy and have yet to switch to a new fork.
When? There have been a few times people stopped using Firefox in large numbers.
One of them was when Chrome first came out. Firefox (and every other browser) at the time ran every site in one process. As sites became more reliant on Javascript, which was usually poorly written, that meant any one tab having a problem made other sites and even the browser’s own UI unresponsive, or sometimes crashed the whole browser. Chrome’s multiprocess model was a revelation. Firefox didn’t get its own implementation until 2016.
Recently, there’s been some movement away from Firefox due to Mozilla making decisions people don’t feel align with open source, the open web, and privacy. The one that has me looking at forks is the planned addition of terms of use to the browser. Terms of use are for an ongoing relationship between a service operator and a user; Firefox is local software I’m operating myself on a computer I own. Its fine for optional online services like Sync to have terms of use, but the browser should work without those.
I asked ChatGPT is similar question earlier this week. This was the answer.
While Mozilla has not been found to sell user tracking data in the conventional sense, the introduction of features like PPA (Privacy-Preserving Attribution) and changes in privacy policy language have understandably caused concern among users. These developments suggest a shift towards balancing user privacy with the need to support advertising models. Users prioritizing privacy should stay informed about these changes and adjust their browser settings accordingly.
How much of that is true? What did they sell? Is the conclusion even valid, given the (popular) alternatives?
I did a little checking and it all agrees with the reporting.
The thing is, I never have. Chrome is absolute hot garbage and spyware, all the Chromium forks are all flawed and bugged and still feed into Google’s dominance because of engine and stupid Manifest bullshit. Firefox, despite all the stupid things Mozilla did and still does just works the best and is not Chromium.
I never fully did, but I did end up using Chromium more than I wanted to:
- Some poorly written sites refuse to work with FF. My water company, for example. They eventually fixed it after I complained multiple times. Now they display a warning that it’s “Optimized for Chrome” but no longer flat out prevent FF from logging in (you know, to pay bills and such).
- FF Desktop still doesn’t support PWAs, and their recent update says they’re working on it, but they’re half-assing it (installed web apps will still have the menu bars, address, bar etc). I self-host a lot of web applications and want them to appear like native apps. Hence, Chromium.
- There was some recent ToS / Privacy Policy change, and everyone was knee-jerking “time to abandon Firefox” as if there’s anywhere better to go. (This is probably what you’re thinking of)
- A good while back, Chrom(ium) was just flat-out faster. That’s been a while, and I think when FF’s “Quantum” update (or whatever it was called) came out in like 2016 or 2017, it put it back on par.
A good while back, Chrom(ium) was just flat-out faster
Performance was huge.
I was willing to put up with a little jank from my browser because I wanted a diverse browser ecosystem, but Chrome felt much, much now performant. After I switched to Chrome, browsing felt noticably better.
A good while back, Chrome was superior. Faster yes, but also more polished and intuitive as browsers go.
Also, Google was “Do no Evil”, and Firefox was good, but not great.
Today, Firefox is still good, and Google is evil.
Firefox is better than most but still smugly makes anti-user changes which are complete dog shit.
Remember when they turned off your ability to choose to load extensions that weren’t signed, because fuck you?
Fuck Pepperidge farm, I remember that shit.
Or how about DNS over https, because fuck you, user, why should you have any say over name resolution when you might use that power to block ads and malware?
