I'd like to formally apologize. I should have never left.
It's cool just come back and bring a friend with you.
Same here. I left for about 10 years but started coming back gradually a few years ago. After everything that happened this year, I made the full switch to Mozilla on all my devices. I'm very happy to be back though!
Switch? I never left!
I deeply regret leaving.
Growing up, I used Firefox on PC, but switched to Chrome early 2010s due to using a lot of google products for university work, and the general “google is cool” vibe that surrounded me from peers (tech/business student).
Now after a decade, I’m deeply entrenched in Google with bookmarks, passwords and habits. Only progress I made is switching to iOS from Android. Installed Ff on mobile, but didn’t really like the experience, so not really using it.
Will probably try to make a stronger push to invest some time and switch completely during Xmas break, as it does bother me to be part of the problem, though I hate how convenient not doing anything about it is.
I had a similar history to you.
I finally decided a couple months back to start de-googling and did the following so far:
Only progress I made is switching to iOS from Android. Installed Ff on mobile, but didn’t really like the experience, so not really using it.
Well if you switched to iOS then there's not really much point as the browser backend is still the same as Safari there. Apple doesn't allow other browser engines so on iOS Firefox/Chrome/etc are all just wrappers on Apple's browser engine.
Apple is worse than Google in many ways and if you wanted to maintain control over your privacy (and even just de-google) you ironically would be better off staying on Android.
There are many great custom firmwares available for Android devices such as GrapheneOS which can truly de-google your device.
Exactly. I've been here since Netscape Navigator.
Tree. Style. Tabs.
Best damned extension ever. It's amazing to me that all browsers don't have this style of tabs.
Thanks for the recommendation. I need to organize my 100+ tabs.
Tree Style Tab also lets you bookmark whole trees. I'm often jumping between different coding languages, or different areas of DevOps on a weekly basis, and tree bookmarks help. I can "file away" a bunch of research and load it all back later, and still have the tree! Very useful for context switching.
Just because Google broke the most trafficked site on the internet for Firefox doesn't mean its a bad browser. Hell that's a ringing endorsement.
Personally I'd rather stop using any Google services, than handing them a Chrome monopoly. Google is already way to dominant IMO.
The best time to switch to Firefox was 19 years ago when it first came into existence. The 2nd best time is now.
my cubicle wall poster I sent money for. yw
It was never a good time to switch to Chrome.
When it was released, Chrome was revolutionary. Sandboxing individual tabs into their own processes was a stroke of genius. Until then, if a single site ate up all your memory and crashed your browser, all your tabs/sites died and you had to start again.
It really was the best browser for a hot minute before others copied the idea.
I never understood why so many people thought it was a good idea to hand Google the near monopoly power we had just prevented Microsoft in keeping. And that was AFTER we saw how bad it was that Microsoft had that power.
Too many people go for short term gain for way greater long term losses.
Chrome was much faster and more stable than Firefox for a time, but they're similar now.
This is my recollection, when chrome first came out it seemed significantly faster than IE and Firefox at the time, and Google was much less evil big brother at the time.
I've been using Firefox on desktop and mobile exclusively for a number of years now. I will say the experience isn't perfect but it's better than using a browser made by a company that is actively hostile to its users.
It is important to take note that you will experience issues with some websites. For example, https://astro.build/ Try scrolling quickly up and down on this page on Firefox vs Chrome (on mobile).
What's wrong with that page? I'm not seeing anything in particular.
Exclusively used chrome browser for ~10yrs. Switched to Firefox last week, cause google being evil.
I never left 😘
Personally I've never left Firefox. Used to develop on it when it was still called Mozilla, and I'm happy it's still around. Privacy is a major strength of it compared to other browsers.
Container tabs are hands down the best add-on I have ever used. Being able to use multiple accounts across tabs is fantastic. Alot of my colleagues have switched due to this alone
When Firefox announced that a ton of their add-ons/extensions were coming to the mobile app, it got me to switch from chrome after almost 15 years.
The mobile experience of Firefox with ad block is so much better than Chrome. Using chrome on mobile makes the Internet feel broken to me. I can't go back.
Since version 120 is coming to mobile soon with about 200 extensions (as mentioned in the article), can anyone recommend some good extensions that are newly added? I have ublock origin, HD YouTube, Google search fixer, clear url fixer, dark reader, privacy badger, and ghostery
I think ghostery is owned by an ad company. I wouldn't trust it.
Try libredirect, it automatically redirects links from twitter, youtube, imgur and many other spying platforms to alternative privacy friendly frontends. It is also very customizable: you can turn only some redirects and configure what particular site to use for each platform.
You've hit all the great ones, most of which were already available.
Have you added the bypass paywall clean filter list to ublock? Here's the url you can copy paste under "import" in the ublock addon settings: https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-clean-filters/-/raw/main/bpc-paywall-filter.txt
The best time was 15 years ago
And the second best time is now.
Don't forget about the Firefox forks like LibreWolf!
I use it on desktop and phone and honestly been pretty good no complaints.
How is this going to end?
Google blocks access to it's services for Firefox altogether? Maybe even ban it from the Play Store? That would finally give me a real incentive to install some CFW.
For people asking, add-ons work fine on Nightly.
It's always been a viable alternative. If the Internet was standard-compliant it would have been the best for a long time
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