Firefox is a great alternative to Google Chrome

  • zephorah@lemm.ee
    2·
    43 minutes ago

    I guess I just assumed everyone was using Firefox, except the business side of things, but then this isn’t my area. Why wouldn’t you use Firefox at home?

    • i_dont_want_to@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      1·
      9 minutes ago

      I occasionally have to use Chrome because sometimes the sites I need to use won’t work with Firefox. This includes bill pay for some of my utilities. (At least usually by the next month, the utility company fixes their site again so I can use Firefox…)

  • Azdalen@beehaw.orgEnglish
    4·
    19 hours ago

    I can name a couple other reasons why FF is better:

    1. I get way more lower-level control via about:config over internals than chrome’s about:flags (i.e., adjust caches, buffers, networking strategies, GC thresholds, etc.)
    2. I can fully disable newer ad delivery mechanisms like Service Workers and WASM at a core level (NOTE: while these were initially touted as ways to speed up the internet, they unfortunately are used mostly as ad-blocking and tracking circumvention measures now; its also easy enough to re-enable them temporarily if a site uses one for legitimate reasons).
    3. Actual, no-kidding, site cannot override, auto-play blocking (via some about:config tweaks).

    With the newer FF versions they landed some very nice speedups, but with some of the tweaks i’ve made, basically FF be zoom’n now 😅

  • mox@lemmy.sdf.org
    89·
    2 days ago
    1. Browser diversity weakens Google’s grip on web development, and their position as a gatekeeper of the web.
  • perishthethought@lemm.eeEnglish
    59·
    2 days ago

    I hate to say it but they’re preaching to the choir, as we say. The people who need to switch won’t read this great article.

    • TranquilTurbulence
      19·
      1 day ago

      I’m pretty sure the number of Lemmy users who like Chrone is very small. It feels like most people here already use Firefox or some related browser.

    • limerod@reddthat.com
      2·
      23 hours ago

      Well, you don’t need to switch. But, you can help your friends and family switch by setting up Firefox with Ublock-Origin.

      If they see the benefits. They will stick

  • Boomkop3@reddthat.com
    28·
    1 day ago
    1. It’s literally the only other decent option that is not a fork of the it or it’s one competitor.

    Unfortunately, both are funded by google. Yes, officially it’s just payments to keep the home page in firefox set to Google. But… without that Mozilla would collapse. Google’s got them by the low level components.

  • umbrella@lemmy.ml
    6·
    1 day ago

    what i want to understand beyond just “did you know chrome bad” is why laymen are so insistent on it.

    so we can break it.

    • desktop_user@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      1·
      20 hours ago

      (primarily firefox user here) the Google account being able to be used as a universal login is sorta convenient (at the expense of privacy) Snapchat web (at least previously) requiring it to work (or at least it’s user agent) and an all in all slightly cleaner (more samey) experience.

      • umbrella@lemmy.ml
        2·
        13 hours ago

        i mean if you login with google on any google site on firefox, it will also log you in to everything…

        and being cleaner is a matter of habit tbh, they look very similar

      • renard_roux@beehaw.orgEnglish
        1·
        2 hours ago

        Exactly! Seems like a very “Yo Dawg!”-moment to me.

        The less Microsoft I need, the better, and recently switched from VS Code to VS Codium, which, I believe, puts me at 100% free of Microsoft 😍

        (Barring some M$ code in other software I use that I don’t know about)

  • Boomkop3@reddthat.com
    3·
    1 day ago

    The privacy bit is just as much absent as using chrome. You’d want a fork for either of the two for that.

    • unknowing8343@discuss.tchncs.de
      26·
      1 day ago

      Sorry but your argument is absolutely false. Even if Firefox is not the most private browser ever, it’s waaaay more private than Chrome. And you can even make it better with a couple of toggles.

  • Engywuck@lemm.ee
    21·
    1 day ago

    1 reason I wont’ use Firefox or any gecko-based fork and I’ll keep using a Chromium fork, instead: I don’t want to support Mozilla.

    Enough.

    • megopie@beehaw.org
      42·
      1 day ago

      But supporting Google is fine? Because if using any gecko fork is supporting Mozilla, then using any chrome fork is supporting Google.

      How is it different? Or how is Mozilla worse than Google?Or are you using safari or other webkit based browsers?

    • stoy
      23·
      1 day ago

      That is like cutting off your own nose to spite your enemies.