Mozilla says that it's fairly close to passing though: https://last-chance-for-eidas.org/
Vincent
joined 2 years ago
It does kinda depend on whether this manages to actually pass...
I think the EP voted down Chat Control for now, but this is a different thing.
A Mozilla dependent on Google seeing value in Firefox sending searches their way is at minimum as good as one in which Mozilla doesn't exist and everybody uses Chromium-based browsers, by definition - and in practice, way better.
But yes, more non-Blink engines in use in general would also be a better world. Alas, that, too, isn't the world we live in.
Same for translations btw, Firefox didn't have built-in translations for a while because Mozilla had to painstakingly work on a research project to figure out how to do translation locally, on your machine, without sharing the page you're looking at with an external server.
Spell-check doesn't send things to a server in Firefox - that's Chrome (and only with a particular setting, IIRC).
I'll emphasise that the "handful of concessions" are concessions to usability, not to having to share data with Google or DuckDuckGo. Firefox is still an incredibly private browser, especially if you consider the rest of the landscape.
But also keep in mind that it couldn't exist without Firefox/Mozilla existing. A world in which more people use Firefox over Chromium-based browsers is a better world.
Use Tor Browser if you want it dialed up to eleven. You'll quickly find that it's way more of a hassle to use, and also still pretty easy to accidentally compromise the security measures.
Of course Firefox isn't perfect; nothing is. But a 180 turn implies it's the opposite of perfect now, and it really isn't - especially in a world where basically every other browser is waaaay closer to that.
You said you knew there weren't going to be compromised certificates because there was a government website. But also notice that the kerfuffle is about
New legislative articles, introduced in recent closed-door meetings and not yet public
In other words, these are new additions that are not yet reflected in public documents. This article is also a good explainer.
Specifically, everyone who's not using Chrome and its derivates did it. Use Firefox, people.
Let's hope so, feels like orgs were able to build up a reasonable amount of pressure in such a short amount of time.