It is essential to stop using Chrome. Under the pretense of saving users from third-party spyware, Google is creating an ecosystem in which Chrome itself is the spyware.

As a former chrome user it's so real. Chrome connects every device for you and once you ARE in the loop it's hard to leave it. Wanna switch to Firefox? Oops suddenly your authentication doesn't work anymore. Oh what about those useful Google logins tied to everything now? Good luck with that.

It took me huge effort to switch off chromium based browsers because the longer you use chrome, the more it worms it's way into all your services making it harder and harder to switch. I still can't figure out how to seperate my Yahoo account from my Gmail account

A huge reason I left is realising that if google decided I broke their TOS on something like say, YouTube ad blocking, they can just terminate by Google account and every service attached to it suddenly becomes unusable. I'd rather not be taken hostage like that

Edit: for all the wise people in the comments. I was trying to decouple entirely from Google products, not just chrome

We can't forget that a lot of people have absolutely no idea that this is happening or what it means. Many folks just think the Chrome icon is how you access the internet and have no idea that there are other options. Helping to educate those folks is going to be a significant part of minimizing Chrome's dominance.

What lessons have you learned so far? I've switched to FF and DDG with great results, but still use Gmail/android/photos.

How many google services do you have? I just have one, and if I ever deleted it, all of the google apps I use would become worthless.

i switched to calyx os yesterday and i love it already!

You need to have effective replacements.

This is why Apple is so popular… much more thoroughly integrated, in many cases a better product, and for the most part paying more than just lip service to privacy.

About the only Google services I still use is the search engine (while it is still marginally useful), and Maps (since so many people on FB Marketplace also use it, so sending an address using a maps link is the ideal solution).

Security? No. Privacy? Of course (assuming you don't use vanilla FF). Is it much easier to escape the sandbox in Gecko than Chromium. Doesn't matter what options they give you in the settings titled "Security".

Switched to it recently, have been absolutely loving it! No regrets!

I have to restart it once or twice each day as it refuses to play videos or audio after a while. I know it's not a settings or add-on issue, and I searched everywhere for an explanation. It fucking sucks. I'm this close to going back to Chrome.

There are a couple tiny issues I have with it that drive me nuts (namely: 1 how they implement the CSS blur filter sucks and 2 the fact that they haven't implemented page transitions even though I think it was their idea to start with (?))

But other than those things, I certainly don't feel like I'm missing anything by ditching Google.

'Work' bookmarks

Sure buddy.

FF has way too much groundwork laid and way too much mindshare currently (especially given the rust language and all..) If, for some reason, thousands of devs just gave up on mozilla, more would continue the path and fork it most likely.

FF has always been security conscious and was actually the big dog until around 2007 or so when they had to do a full rebuild of their code and this made it so that a lot of peoples' favorite plugins stopped working until they were updated. This coincided with when Chrome started to become bigger and people switched. Now people are switching back. I use a combination of FF and Opera GX.

At one point it was the top dog - this was before google was even in the browser market mind you. Then they entered and used a lot of... Shall we say interesting marketing practices to usurp firefoxes dominant position - it wasn't all due to chrome being better.

I agree it's BS, but how do you know they're "paid off"? What's an example of one that was "paid off"?

So nothing will change 😅

Firefox isn't based on WebKit. Maybe you're thinking Safari.

tbh i think it would be better if there was a single collaborative engine instead, owned by a non-profit company like The Linux Foundation

maybe the W3C could establish their own but idk if they even do anything these days

As of now we really only have 3, Webkit, Firefox, and Chromium.

Webkit is the only browser engine in that list; the other 2 are browsers, not engines. Firefox uses the Gecko engine. Chrome/chromium use Blink engine.

Gecko came from Netscape. Webkit came from KHTML. Pretty sure Gecko/Firefox are not Webkit based. Blink is though.

We really need more browser engines floating around.

No don't

Please don't with this tech elitest stuff. Yeah, most people will continue to use chrome because they don't really understand the gravity of what it means for their privacy, doesn't mean we can't do our best to help them out.

You did so well until the last few sentences. Casually throwing everyone under the bus as idiots isn't a great move.

To be blunt, there's a lot of tech noobs out there that have always been, and will always be, fairly bad with technology. There's an even larger number that can't be bothered to pay attention or care about it. And finally, there's the enthusiasts and the tech savvy, most of whom are working in a tech related field (or want to). Special shout out to the enthusiasts who don't work in a tech field who are still quite savvy. But let's face it, the enthusiasts and the tech savvy are a minority. We are not their targets. Fact is, even if you're using Google's various services or Chrome or whatever, the tech literate are at least aware of what's happening, and a nontrivial number of them are here. Including you and I.

It then becomes our job to save others from themselves and get them away from the products looking to harm them. Throwing in the towel and calling everyone neaderthals isn't the way to accomplish this. If we all do our part, we can save those we care about from becoming yet another battery in the machine, with all their data flowing through one company. It's our duty.

For those that REALLY want to help, get involved in local politics and be the change. Help push regulation on the corporate shills that want it all. Whether that's running for office, or contacting your local representative or whatever, it's something that should be done. They shouldn't be allowed to just implement, what is essentially mass surveillance on the world without someone doing something about it. That's what the government is supposed to be there to do. I'll reserve my comments about how effective they've been in the past or how corrupt the whole system is, because that will vary from country to country. But bluntly, you can be that change by getting involved.

As to the comments about the general idiocy of the population of earth, I say this: do you know it all? Well, neither do they. Nobody does. Can you fix your car and then turn around and frame a shed from scratch? Me neither. Can you perform experiments to discover new and exciting things in quantum physics, then build a toaster from raw materials? Me neither. Can you fix your plumbing, then create a program in Pascal that does your taxes for you? Me neither. Everyone has their skills, talents and expertise. Simply because there is a large percentage of people whose expertise is not tech, doesn't, and shouldn't, invalidate their intelligence as an individual.

Check yourself, or the next time you have a problem you don't know how to fix, people might just throw in the towel on helping you.

Do you have any examples? I have used Firefox for years and never experienced this, nor heard of anyone I know who uses Firefox experiencing this.

If a website or app doesn't test in Firefox, I avoid it. That's something I run into like once a year, and I just use edge once if I need to, and avoid that website or app in the future. It's not hard to support Firefox, it's just a shitty ass business decision not to

Use a Chromium fork instead if you're having so much trouble. Thorium is a decent alternative.

Just another reason to avoid it as much as possible.

I have had multiple websites just don't work with Firefox regardless of whatever add-ons I put.

The exact reason why we encurage to ditch Chrome.

I have had multiple websites just don’t work with Firefox regardless of whatever add-ons I put.

Have you tried to change the browser's user agent ?

Google recently revised that motto, it now has a comma after the first word.

People saying "just use Firefox" have a very narrow view on how any of this works

No, not at all. I understand perfectly. Your concerns are valid.

Our point is not supporting Chrome is more important in the long run.

There is no front end in the world that will make up for the loss of true ad blocking and everything else Google pushes down the line.

Let's be clear about this:

I don't want to tell you to use Firefox. I want to tell you to use whatever you like. I wish we lived in a world where the choice didn't matter.

But we don't

When I'm telling people to use firefox, I'm telling them if you have a problem with the direction the internet is going in, you actually have to do something about it beyond just complaining. Support the competition, the only non-profit in the space, and the only true alternative browser left. Because everything is going to get exponentially worse without competition, and we really really need to preserve the one remaining safe refuge.

What features does Vivaldi have that don't exist in a FF extension?

And using a WebKit based browser is still better than using a chromium fork.

It would be great if the frontend and backend were separated with a unified API and you could simply choose a frontend/interface (Vivaldi) with whatever backend/engine (Gecko). That’s not how it (currently) works though.

Arc has floated this idea. Currently Arc is Chromium-based, but they say they've designed it to allow for swapping engines in the future.

IIRC, Edge had a similar feature for a while, allowing you to run legacy Internet Explorer tabs if a site required it. Not sure if that still exists.

I tried really hard to use Floorp which fixes most of my problems with stock Firefox but even that just showed me how excellent Vivaldi is compared to other browsers.

Let me add that support for passkeys is becoming more and more important and Firefox doesn't support passkeys. Yes, it supports forms of WebAuthn (YubiKey and the likes), but not "scan this QR code with your smartphone and use biometric authentication to sign in".

Writing a new ff UI is pretty easy. The entire UI is written in html at this point. I'm not sure why people would say it's "hard" to change.

Embedding gecko into something requires work (even that isn't that hard really, you just have to hand it a gl surface and pass through inputs)

You admit in the opening of your comment that your issue is preference and then go on to say there's no single universal solution.

There absolutely is a single universal solution. Either adapt your preference and use a different browser until you're familiar enough with it to prefer it, or adapt your preference to admitting that you don't care that Google is getting your data more than you care about being ever-so-slightly inconvenienced. It's pretty simple.

A Cybersecurity professional once told me that Firefox is frowned upon

This has been rampant for years now.

There was a massive movement years ago to get every user on Chrome. Even going so far as to replace all appearances of IE with Chrome, then change the Chrome desktop icon to the IE icon, then tell the users it’s a new better version of IE.

What is a CVE?

May I ask what specific CVE and when your professional told you that?

since netscape navigator here. even used netscape during the dark ages (when aol controlled it).

You're not wrong. One spy is better than 1+x spies, especially if that one spy is well controlled with regulation. Better than bad is still not necessarily good.

Oh, no, no, no, it can look like a good thing, but it's terrible. If google gets the "spying monopoly", they will have such power in their hands that they will be able to, alone, to things like manipulate your habits and routine, decide when you should replace your electronics, manipulate elections, markets, and so much more. It can seem, at first, that it would be easier to "just block google and that's it" or "just let the governments regulate them", but in reality, they would create a scenario where you couldn't even browse the web or use simple tech devices without being logged in in a "safety-something compatible device", while lobbying heavily to do so.

They're already trying to go that way. With a monopoly, they would simply have no resistance at all.

Correct me if I am wrong but arent Apple based browsers all modifications of WebKit/Safari?
Or is it a iOS/iPad OS specific thing and MacOS is actually free from those restrictions by being able to sideload.

I do believe there is either a flag or an add on that gives you this option again. I haven’t used it in a while so don’t quote me on that.

Found it. It is an add on. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pwas-for-firefox/

Yes

For casting, you can use VLC Media Player.

The only Google thing holding me back from full degoogling is YouTube, but with how garbage the platform is becoming, especially with the algorithm just going berserk and it probably not being long until I start being affected by the adblock-block, I think moving away from it is only going to be easier than ever before.

Or just use Firefox...?

My experience has been the opposite. I will have far too many tabs and windows open and with Chrome I would often see memory usage over 10gb. And on more than one occasion I'd have to end task on chrome as it was locking or already locked up.

Switched [back] to Firefox in the last year or two, same plugins, no change in behavior, and it never locks up. Memory usage is fine. Right now with just as many windows and tabs open it's using 5gb ram.

Chrome has been uninstalled from my PC.

And the tab containers plugin from Mozilla is really incredible.

Firefox's rendering looks like ass. Maybe you would like ungoogled-chromium?

And... for what's worth Firefox is a privacy nightmare as well, just start Wireshark and launch the browser to see what it does. LibreWolf or ungoogled-chromium always.