If you value privacy, ditch Chrome and switch to Firefox now

The best time to switch to Firefox was 5 years ago. The second best is today.

Most people aren’t concerned about privacy outside of places like here and Reddit.

Firefox + Ublock Origin blows Google Chrome out of water.

Firefox is a weird buggy mess that constantly freezes.

This is definitely not normal, Firefox never freezes for me. May be worth checking that out, especially your extensions.

The whole Reddit debacle has really made me rethink all my services. I recently installed duck duck go and still getting used to it, so not quite sure if I'm ready to make another drastic change.

I used to love Firefox in 2006 or so, but got Chrome when it was released and forgot about Firefox. I think I'll open a tab in my chrome browser for the Firefox page now...this is how I remind myself to delve deeper into stuff later. Thanks for the inspiration, everyone. Google has irked me ever since removing the Don't Be Evil mantra.

IMO the thing is that people don't care about their privacy. Sure, some people around here do, but your average person owns an Alexa, has a FB/Instagram account and constantly posts their location, uses the same password on many sites, uses TikTok, doesn't block cookies, etc etc etc.

Most people don't actually care. Some claim they do, but then can't even be bothered to stop using Instagram etc because of the "inconvenience"... So do they really care?

Some companies (Apple, etc) push their products under a narrative around safety and security, and people will repeat that point as a way to justify a decision they already made, but if they actually cared, they would be doing other things too. But they don't.

The number of us who do actually care about privacy and security is actually very small.

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, it is a wonder why chrome is even popular.

It's no wonder. It's because people aren't actually concerned about privacy.

If you ask someone if they're "concerned about privacy" many people will of course say yes. If you follow up that question with "what are you willing to do about it", you'll find that the answer is a resounding "not a God damn thing". If they were they would spend 3 minutes on Google looking for an alternative browser that works even better than Chrome but without the privacy invasions.

A browser is the low-hanging fruit on the "do-you-care-about-privacy meter". It's the one step with no sacrifices and the highest increase in privacy.

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.

The biggest issue for a lot of people is going to be Microsoft forcing all Office 365 users to use Edge all the time. Our sysadmin recently forced me to uninstall Firefox and Chrome from all workstations unless they had an approved use for it. Everything must be through Edge.

Why? "Security" of course. It's always "security". Curious

Edit: the point is Microsoft could have worked to provide enterprise customers with ways to manage third party browsers going forward. They could have worked with Google and Mozilla to make that happen. They didn't. Not really.

It's that Microsoft continues to make decisions that create rationale for only using them, because that's their business. "Security" gives them an extremely convenient cover for anticompetitive behavior. Anyone that thinks their C-Suite hasn't pulled the defender/365 team into a meeting or two to discuss business strategy has far too much faith in a corporation that deserves very little.

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.

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

Firefox does not.

Seems like a pretty clear choice to me.

Using firefox exclusively on all my devices since the last major revamp of the Firefox Android.

There's no reason you should be using Chrome. Using Chrome:

• Means you consent to spyware (along with everyone else you interact with)
• Allows Google to continue dictating web standards
• Is a resource hog

If you haven't already, I highly recommend reading this comic about the dangers of Chrome: https://contrachrome.com/

If you need to absolutely use a Chromium-based browser, at least use Brave (just for that site).

Not-so-fun fact from the comic Contra Chrome: Google Chrome's URL bar is called the "omnibox." The name is derived from the Latin word "omnis," meaning "everything."

When you type into the omnibox, it's sent to Google's servers and added to your profile forever.

Even if you deleted it or didn't hit enter.

This is the problem! :( Monopoly is never good, in this case in particular since it's in the hand of a corporation they make money on people data.

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

I use Firefox because I don't like how Google acts with regards to web standards being the de facto standard because so many browsers are Chromium based. If everyone is using Chromium then they don't need to obey any standards and can just do whatever they want. There needs to be competition in that space. Microsoft Edge becoming Chromium based was a big problem on that regard.

The irony that Firefox is kept alive in part because Google pays them for Google to be the default search option is not lost on me.

If you're able to, donate to Mozilla as well! Keeping them up and running is imperative.

I've been using Firefox for years.

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

Android users can use an even more private version with telemetry removed. Keeps updated with current version, but is available via F-Droid repository instead.

Fennec (then install add-on uBlock Origin)

Fuck Chromium-based browsers.

Chrome is popular because it works. The average person is not going to give up convenience for privacy, even if they claim to care about it. As someone who uses Firefox, I can say that some websites don't work on Firefox and Firefox is often slower than chromium browsers. While I'm ok with that, others might not be.

Firefox for Android is a blessing with extensions. Most of my favorite desktop privacy extensions are available on mobile. I love it.

To be honest, Firefox works perfectly fine and it is not that difficult to navigate through.

High number of people concerned about privacy?? There's, like, 5 of us unfortunately.

For me Firefox has some showstoppers that Mozilla doesn't seem too interested in fixing (tablet ui on Android, lack of share target support for pwas). I'm not some hater mind you, I want it to succeed.

I used to use Brave and saw that article last week about how they are selling your data for AI training. I instantly jumped to Firefox

Source: https://stackdiary.com/brave-selling-copyrighted-data-for-ai-training/

I hope more people can become aware of how Firefox is better for your privacy

I switched about a year ago. My only complaint on desktop is different short cuts. I hope Firefox sticks around. It's like the last free browser on the web

I use Vivaldi, which isn't perfect, but I need tab grouping in some form. Firefox's solutions for tab groups are meh at best

There's also Librewolf, based on Firefox. Comes with many (but could be better) privacy related settings available in firefox.

From the website:

This project is a custom and independent version of Firefox, with the primary goals of privacy, security and user freedom.

LibreWolf is designed to increase protection against tracking and fingerprinting techniques, while also including a few security improvements. This is achieved through our privacy and security oriented settings and patches. LibreWolf also aims to remove all the telemetry, data collection and annoyances, as well as disabling anti-freedom features like DRM.

Available for Linux, macOs, and Windows.

https://librewolf.net

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.

Modern Firefox is excellent. I have it loaded up with great quality of life addons that seem to work better than their WebKit counterparts.

Bro, I never left. I never liked Chrome's interface. I think I ditched Internet Explorer for Firefox when IE started getting too bloated and sluggish and Firefox was mature enough to compete.

Permanently Deleted

Does it matter if you use a Chromium browser that isn't Chrome itself? I know Google has a large influence in Chromium development, but presumably they can't just stick tracking in other Chromium based browsers, can they? I just really like Vivaldi.

I've been a Firefox main since before it was even called Firefox :D

As much as it lagged behind in speed in the early days of Chrome, back then Chrome didn't have anywhere near to Firefox's amazing selection of addons, many of which were essential to my workflow.

That also meant that I hated Firefox's switch to WebExtensions, as it gutted most of the addons I used at the time, and it took them many years to get back as many features as possible (which of course has never been all the original features).

I even switched to Firefox ESR, then when that dropped support too, to Waterfox for a few years to retain the ability to use classic addons. But eventually it became too much hassle, and I have been a Firefox mainbranch user again since 2021 :)

For the handful of websites that only work in Chrome (or when I need to test my own websites), I've been using Brave in recent years. It's weirdly into crypto nonsense, but at least those features can be disabled. But if anyone knows a better Google-less Chromium browser, pls let me know!

I have one thing keeping me from moving back to Firefox. I use Chrome profiles extensively to separate my various client access sessions that I need to do my job. So I need a solution in Firefox that allows me to have separate profiles with separate sessions. I've tried Firefox profiles but those are so much clunkier to setup and switch between. Also there's no way I've found to get the Firefox profiles to be in separate color-coded windows like Chrome does so I have to look through all my open windows to find the one for the specific client I'm working with.

If someone can solve this I'll switch back to Firefox immediately.

My biggest issue with FF is the lack of the ability to switch accounts easily. In Chrome I have a work account, a home account, and a side hustle account. Each has their own bookmarks, themes, passwords, and history.

I have tried using FF and the few workarounds to match this feature, but so far it has none worked as smoothly as chromes 2 button clicks to switch accounts.

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 tried to install Firefox in my corporate laptop and the antivirus marked it as malware ;_;

The corporation is apparently ok with Microsoft spying on us all.

Just switched over to Firefox like a minute ago. So far, so good. Kinda a bummer to have to manually import my saved passwords.

Also, how are profiles handled? In Chrome, I had a separate personal and work profile. Is that easily doable in Firefox?

If only Firefox's management had its head screwed on better. I really don't care about Turning Red themes, I have a KDE theme just to keep it matching my desktop. Just make the core browsing experience better. Hell, take some features from Vivaldi. I've noticed a good portion of Vivaldi users back when I used Reddit were former Firefox users, and I can understand why.

I'm just thankful that Firefox still exists. I switched over back in 2003 and got hooked on Thunderbird as well.

The price to pay for convenience is too steep for most people to migrate. Also if you just an average user, most of the time you will not get instant gratification for being more privacy-aware. The more you try to be more aware the more you realize that to achieve a certain level of privacy is really a pain in the ass.

I've been using Firefox as much as possible and it has gotten better over the previous few months. I find fewer and fewer sites that I have issues with.

Is it?

It’s popular because for 15 years it’s been fast, easy, better than the built in IE and legacy Edge and tech savvy people like us have been singing its praises since what? 2010? 2012? When did Firefox become slow and bloated?

People don’t care unless there is a big enough difference in experience. And so far, Chrome hasn’t fallen off a cliff when it comes to speed or rendering. If anything, the question should be why do people still bother to download Chrome when Edge is basically the same browser now?

Firefox fixed its issues a few years back and is now a great browser again. Honestly, you can’t go wrong with the big three on desktop or mobile. But privacy isn’t going to make most people switch anything unless the privacy violations are beyond the pale. And I don’t think Chrome’s are yet. Maybe if they go through with that change to kneecap extensions and gimp adblocking that might change.

I have always despised Chrome, with Firefox being my preferred web browser. However, I still keep Vivaldi installed on my Linux system in case something requires Chromium for compatibility reasons.

With the number of people concerned about privacy, it is a wonder why chrome is even popular.

They aren't "concerned about privacy", they are "concerned about privacy for the same price". And they are real cheapskates.

Note: for those who lack the knowledge, the "price" of a free product comes as an overall bugs / features ratio, where "bugs" and "features" are respectively defined as any undesirable / desirable behavior in the use case for the software.

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.

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

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

Firefox with sideberry (vertical tabs). Ultimate browser.

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

Has Google stopped funding Mozilla yet?

I love Firefox, been ride or die since I started. Chrome is just pure Spyware.

Chrome does suck regarding privacy.

But the article shared here is basically an ad for Firefox.

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.

Been a proud Firefox user for a long time. Never switched to Chrome, don't plan to.

At least the guys at Tumblr are promoting Firefox through femboy and furry memes.

My biggest concern with Firefox is that Google continues to make people's life hard. There have already been instances of things loading slowly because of crippled standards that only work on Chrome, or features like in-page translate only being available in Chromium based browsers.

Overall I've really enjoyed using it for the past 15 years or so, but it's definitely had periods of very rocky performance

Also disable the default DNS over HTTPs to Cloudflare.

Was using Brave and after reading things about it here, just switched back to Firefox!

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.

I switched from chrome to Firefox 5 years ago but for some reason, Firefox loading acts weird and video playback also is weird...Eventually moved to Vivaldi and I'm pretty happy wit it so far.

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

Permanently Deleted

Love Firefox, but if you want Chrome get Chromium or Brave.

Arkenfox/Librewolf + Mull/Fennec

I've been using the internet since 1999. I've been using Firefox before it was Firefox, and before it was Phoenix, back when it was just "Mozilla". (The original browser became SeaMonkey, but it's been slowly abandoned to the point that it doesn't work on modern sites anymore.) I've been frustrated at times and have sometimes used Chrome, Waterfox and Epiphany (Linux web browser) at times but I always come back to Firefox. Back in the Geocities era in 2000 Netscape 4.x was so poor at CSS I developed for Internet Explorer on my personal sites, (to my regret), but Mozilla eventually caught up.

Been using Firefox for a long, very long time.

Okay I’m going to step into it. I’ve been liking Vivaldi recently as a browser. Is that screwed too because it’s based on chromium? Or am I safe for now?

I use ungoogled-chromium with Firefox as a backup. The great thing about ungoogled-chromium is its a barebone browser, and that is exactly what I want. Only downfall is the browser does not auto update. I use change detector to get a notification when a new version is out.

I switched to mull which I think is basically a fork of Firefox when bromite seemed to be dead.

No complaints it works great.

Yeah, I'm using it from a long time and I'm happy with it. But I'm also pissed at google what is actively blocking firefox on their services, e.g. GDrive always shows that when loading a page encountered an error or when linking discord to YouTube it shows Something went wrong but of course working on chromium. But having FF and WebKit is an really good for competition to do not let google rule whole internet.

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.

I prefer Vivaldi over Firefox. More features, better customizability.

But the again I might be the only one...

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

I just went back to Edge from Firefox. I've been a long-time user, but it seems like too many of the sites I use don't work properly and some not at all. It sucks because I've always preferred FF, but I gotta get sh*t done.

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

I never switched to Chrome. I didn't do it when it first came out and people were shitting their pants in excitement. I didn't use chrome in the middle of the 2010s when no one even knew about Firefox. I still don't use it. I never switched from Firefox.

Sigh. I really don't want to put in an official bug report for it but the #1 reason I don't exclusively use Firefox is a bug involving some porn sites I occasionally visit. No clue why, but Chrome (and its variants) load the sites in a second or two and Firefox will take 3+ mins to load them. Haven't seen that behavior anywhere else but those sites.

What if I told you I always used Firefox... ?

I still can't get used to Dev Tools in Firefox, even though they might be superior to Chrome's.

I use Firefox because I always did and because I don't want to support the Blink (Chromium web engine) monopoly that even Apples Webkit can barely keep up with but please don't think Mozilla (Firefox owners) are accaptable by any means, they just aren't as bad in my mind!

I've always wondered how Mozilla / Firefox makes money? I see that its a non-profit. Looks like sponsored links and content on their new tab?

@Frostwolf I switched to Firefox a few years ago. Using Google Chrome on a low end Windows 10 laptop was a nightmare.

Vivaldi > Chrome

So i did the switch a few months ago and ofc i am very happy but i n the german version of FF you can't autofill adressfields like name and well your adress and so on. Anyone know how to activate that? i googled it a few times but none of the solutions worked

I've been using brave these days. I really like it, I have it installed across all my devices.

There is a lot of misinformation and people linking articles they haven't really read. I'm not going to address them because I don't feel like it.

I would suggest for anyone who doesn't like how slow and clunky Firefox is, to look into Ungoogled chromium. If you still decide to switch to Firefox, consider librewolf if you are ACTUALLY concerned about privacy and not just jumping on the bandwagon of hating Google ITT

Generally I keep running into a constant habit where the same extensions I use in chrome are having memory leaks or some crazy ram issue that just clogs firefox to death. Meanwhile I just don't have the time or patience to figure out and/or find alternatives to said extensions.

Then i'll switch back a few years later but it's been on and off. It's always Firefox becoming unusable with my workflow, which is just not easy to deal with.

Permanently Deleted

I have been a loyal Firefox users for years but I would lie if I didn't say I get tired of websites not working.

I'm ready as soon as there is a copy of the vertical tab implementation from Edge. Until then, you'll have to pry Edge from my cold dead fingers.

I never used chrome

Chrome is everywhere and everything is built on it or optimized for it.

I have too use Edge at work. Is Edge also implementing this shit?

what are some necessary addons besides ublock?

I think i've only ever used Firefox since i got the internet (2009), but that also makes my reccomendation kinda moot because i haven't used any other browser. How can i say that Firefox is better than Chrome if i've never used Chrome?

Another side effect is that i'm well aware of all the issues Firefox has, since it's all i've ever used, all the browser issues i've had were in Firefox.

Windows 11 requires TPM 2.0 to be enabled. With this, Microsoft and Chrome have built a complete end to end DRM to the BIOS and hardware level.

This gives the end users nothing but is wonderful for Hollywood.

I use Firefox, but I do run into a lot of problems with sites not working correctly. Makes me want to switch to Brave occasionally.

I personally use brave since a year, and it work like a charm.

Firefox is only a secondary browser to me these days. I've grown tired of it's performance for years because the Mozilla group would rather keep stuffing unnecessary features into the browser and bring about it's own ecosystem that it may be collecting data from itself that nobody may know about than fixing that god damn memory leak.

I wish FF would natively support text replacement in macOS. This shouldn’t need an extension to accomplish a pretty basic thing.

https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/support-macos-text-replacement/idi-p/15219

I did that 3 years ago.

I’ve only been using FireFox and Safari for several years now.

To say nothing of adblock plus on firefox being able to block ads even on youtube.

I've played around with a few browsers, and while Firefox is a better alternative to chrome, I'd more recommend a privacy hardened fork of firefox such as LibreWolf or GNU IceCat. I've also used mullvad browser which is kinda neat.

Some people are too comfortable using chrome for it's extension library however, so if a mozilla-based browser doesn't fulfill the extensions requirement, Brave browser is a good choice. I haven't tried de-googled chromium, but I imagine it's food for the reasons it says on the tin.

What’s the most efficient way to transfer bookmarks form chrome to Firefox? I feel like half the reason I’m still using it is that.

Firefox is my daily driver and use a separate Chromium based browser for Google services, i.e. YouTube, Google Maps, Drive, etc.

Has Firefox gotten the feature to group or stack tabs together? I used to use Firefox and that was the main reason I moved to a chromium based one (Currently Vivaldi). I just need that 90% of the time

Jokes on you. I've never used Chrome (outside of work limitations). I always liked the way Firefox looked over Chrome so never really got into it. I do use Edge Chromium every so often since some pages work better, but not sure if this would apply or not.

Also, does anyone know about the Duckduckgo beta browser, specifically what engine it uses? I tried it on a couple pages, but it seems pretty buggy right now.

How about Chromium?

If you need a Chrome-like or Chromium based browser you can always try the various other versions of Chrome out there. Just about every browser that isn't FF is based on Chromium now.

I'd love to get away from Chromium based browsers. At the moment I am using Brave.

Is there any other browser that works on and syncs between: MacOS, iPhone / iPad AND Windows? It also has to have adblock capabilities on all of the devices. FireFox with uBlock Origin would be my first choice but afaik you can't block ads on iPad / iPhone on it.

Any recommendations?

I switched back when I was in college - which is strange because it came out one year after I left. I also remember having to take a class on how to use Google in my first year of college - which gives you a hint how long ago it was.

Using it since the last major revamp of Firefox Android on all my devices.

I value browsers that offer the best and most unique features

If only Firefox weren’t such a crap dev experience compared to Chrome.

And if you miss PWAs, Firefox got an extension for it now. Check out PWAsForFirefox. And unless Edge and Chrome, you can edit the name before pinning the site.

A few bugs and drawbacks though. It uses its own profile, so you will probably want Firefox Sync to transfer your password vault and extensions to it.

It is far from ready but I am holding out a lot of hope that Ladybird will save us from this mess:

https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/tree/master/Ladybird

Permanently Deleted

Firefox (arkenwolf) all the way.

Don't forget Opera :)

I switched back to Vivaldi recently after I learned about the workspaces feature they added. Will probably use this until Arc comes out for Windows, and then switch to Stack Next when that's had a lot more development.

using chrome in 2023

ngmi

Change my mind

Tried Chrome once and go back to Firefox... There is still some website that require Edge or Chrome. Which one is worst in terms privacy?

you're lying to yourself if you think mozzarella foxfire does'nt collect data. They may use it in a different way, but they still collect data. You have to jump through a bunch of config to disable their telemetry, which most users won't do.

Tried Chrome once and go back to Firefox... There is still some website that requires Edge or Chrome. Which one is worst in terms privacy?

But I’m using iOS. Can I still do something to atleast increase my privacy?

Opera cons notwithstanding, Opera One is really nice as a browser.

Firefox itself has some UI quirks that can cause a bit of friction.

Chrome always feels like it just works, but I rely on Google's ecosystem frequently.