Mozilla is such a treasure.
The treasure is being bankrolled by google, so I mean it’s someone’s Treasure that’s for sure.
If only Firefox would have a bigger userbase. I still use it, but the vast majority of people is on Chromium.
I’m switching today. Right now. Because of this post.
^^maybe
EDIT: okay. I think I’ve done it. I’m currently editing this comment from Firefox. I already had Firefox installed. But now I have pinned it to my taskbar. I went to import my bookmarks from chrome, and found that I also had the option of importing other stuff from chrome, too (bookmarks, passwords, history and autofill data). That’s sweet. My bookmark bar has the same bookmarks in the same position. I also installed ublock origin, like someone recommended. And I am going to give it a go. If it all goes smoothly, I will unpin Chrome from the taskbar.
Thanks everyone for the encouragement!
If it would help with the transition, Firefox has a first time install option to move over all of your bookmarks. A super cool reason to have a firefox account is the ability to transfer a tab from one device to another. Best part is that Firefox isn’t profit motivated like Chrome so there’s much less bullshit to deal with
I highly recommend putting your passwords in a paid manager. Bitwarden is awesome. I’m also testing out Protonpass which just came out. If you’re looking to move more services from google to an alternative, give Proton a look. Been running their email, calendar, and VPN and I’ve been pleased. Its still missing a few things but its improving everyday.
Firefox is awesome now. It was great, then it lost out a bit to chrome, but it’s back to being awesome. If anyone’s reading this and isn’t using Firefox, please switch!
And importantly, their import mechanisms are great. A typical user can switch with basically no effort. Next time they ask you for help, switch your parents too, and your siblings, and that neighbour who keeps referring to the internet as “the google”. Set them up with Firefox and ublock origin and they’ll be set.
The person you replied to was mistaken. Firefox isn’t “back to” being awesome because it never stopped being so.
Depends on what you mean by “when”. From my POV for the last few years, it has an amazing plugin ecosystem (almost complete interoperability with Chrome’s), a revamped/minimal UI, performance optimizations, a better DX for web devs than Chrome, and an active R&D (Firefox View, new plugins button, better personalization, etc). I’m missing a few things but those are the ones that stand out to me.
The fact that this is even remotely controversial is stunning. Like does google not understand its not just home users that use adblock, but also businesses as well? Because google is so fucking bad they don’t understand there are viruses in their fucking ads. If this shit goes through, you think anyone’s dumb enough to believe google will be on top of the virus shit? Fuck off google
ya, using the internet without an adblocker is a security risk because Google enables scams across its services.
How about they learn to clean house first before shitting on the internet lol.
incompetent company will do incompetent things.
I think the FBI recommends the use of ad blockers for personal safety, let me find that link real quick…
Edit: FOUND IT, Third point under “Tips to Protect Yourself”
Let’s just go back to the good old days when the web worked without JS. That would remove a massive amount of attack surface. Might seem a bit shit without the interactivity, though.
People’s willingness to seize every opportunity and monetize everything that was once free and open is truly shocking. Every day when I read about another dogshit attempt to make the internet as a whole a worse place, I’m not even supprised anymore
In our society it’s literally stupid NOT to do these things. If you got rich doing it you “won.” Fuck the general population, fuck “good” things, fuck literally everything, C.R.E.A.M.
I hate it so much.
“People’s” willingness? That’s rich, it seems you forgot who actually has the capital and power to put this nonsense into place. The people don’t have a say in this matter, even if they’d get loud. The only way to end this and ensure software freedom is to end the thing that is in the way, capitalism.
It’s unfortunate that so many people use Chrome. Google has control over the internet that no single company should hold.
“It’s in our interest to make the Internet better and without competition we have stagnation”. From the Google Chrome comic book.
Example Firefox: As it is Google is funding Mozilla to make it seem that there is competition. I don’t know if I want firefox to get bigger just enough so Google cuts their funding and it disappears. If so many people want to use spyware let them, so we can have the goodies.
Google pays to be the default search engine in Firefox.
The larger Firefox gets, the less Google is going to want that default search to be anybody OTHER than them.
Being fair to Chrome (which I hate doing but there is a point), they got in when more tech-people online saw them as pushing so many things forward. Was functionally faster than IE for sure, but also Firefox got stuck on their 4.0 limbo and being heavy in memory usage. Though I think the issue with memory usage also came from having almost a decade of so many extensions. Chrome was also slightly simpler than Firefox (imo even though my primary browser is and has been since before 1.5). Pair that with Google also then becoming the only (in market share) real competition to Apple’s ecosystem on Smartphones.
The best way to start taking down Chrome’s massive control over web standards is to do the same things as when IE was the default name people knew. Start using Firefox and get others to try it again or for the first time. Since so many people would trick their parents into using Chrome by changing the name and icon to IE. Most older folks kind of don’t even notice, and just think and “update” changed the look a bit. But as long as it works, they will just use it. In fact this can apply to a lot of the general public in actually scary ways. Back in the day with IE and those stacks and stacks of toolbars that I saw on almost every PC I worked on for people. I would just start removing them while they told me about why they were in (which was often caused by but not seen as to them as the issue). They would see me just OCD getting rid of them and would be shocked, and I do truly mean shocked, that those things weren’t just “part of the browser and never questioned them being there.”
Now that Chrome and Chromium are the main browser and browser base. I see soooo many BS Chromium browsers just get installed via the same kinds of tactics as the old toolbars. Even set themselves to both launch at every reboot, set themselves to always be able to run in the background, AND set themselves as the system default browser. Sometimes there may be multiple all doing the same things, but also have been made into desktop toolbars/docks of sorts. And that same shit is done by the super annoying ones skinned by the AV companies (AVG, Avast, CCleaner, and now even mainline Norton). And the person just thinks they are just part of Windows, but they only even came in because they “started having issues with wifi” or even a broken Windows update that wasn’t related.
That shit should really really get more attention in general. With so many fake things just being ignored, it means that the mass public will just never know or care about Google turning the internet into whatever it wants. Just not even know that they had actual options before they are removed. If it wouldn’t piss off the massive amount of companies that do ad business with Google. I wouldn’t be shocked if they turned ad blocking into a “premium feature” to subscribe to monthly.
I personally install Firefox as the non-Edge option when setting up someone’s new PC (so long as they didn’t specify Chrome) so they might at least try it. I never set it as the default, and will remove it if they want it gone when picking up the PC. Also do try to let some of them that ask about Chrome know that Edge is 100% compatible for their sites that mention Chrome. Which they at least then tend to be like “oh, well then I guess don’t worry about installing Chrome then.” No real pressure is put on them, just information, though Microsoft is making it hard with all the wild “HEY TRY THIS FEATURE!” pop-ups and that damn pointless desktop search bar.
