• MrSilkworm
    101•2 years ago

    Firefox with add-ons. Especially, but not only, Ublock Origin.

      • @persolb@lemmy.mlEnglish
        9•2 years ago

        I love it in theory… but it just broke so many websites I needed to use. And not always in obvious ways.

        • @gammasfor@sh.itjust.works
          1•2 years ago

          Yeah these days literally every website uses JavaScript in some format as modern reactive design is easier to do if you can execute client side code. Blocking JavaScript is a sledgehammer solution to the problem.

        • z3rOR0ne
          1•2 years ago

          Then just put those sites on your trust list?

          You can go through all the sites the initial HTTP request calls out to and decide which ones get a pass. This is how I ensure sites like gstatic, googletagmanager, etc. don’t collect data even though the rest of the site works.

          If that’s too much, just open the flood gates for that site and trust everything there. At least it isn’t just sending all your data out by DEFAULT.

      • @vii@lemmy.ml
        2•2 years ago

        You can use Ublock Origin in advanced mode, which allows you to block, blacklist/whitelist scripts.

      • JokeDeity
        1•2 years ago

        IMO any of the forks are inherently weaker than the main and there’s nothing stopping you from making Firefox work exactly like whichever flavor of fork you prefer, but with security updates the day they come out.

  • @AncientBlueberry@lemmy.world
    75•2 years ago

    Google accounts for some 80%+ of Mozilla’s revenue. Firefox struck a different kind of deal with the devil than chromium browsers, but Google is the one pulling the strings.

    • Random Dent
      40•2 years ago

      Bit of a weird thought, but I wonder also if they see Mozilla as a sort of controlled opposition too? As in, keep Firefox around so they don’t get in trouble over antitrust or something like that?

      • @merc@sh.itjust.works
        4•2 years ago

        Mozilla.org is the corpse of Netscape that Google keeps animated so that it looks like they have competition when they really don’t.

        The existence of Firefox is something they can point to to say they’re not a monopoly. The fact that 80% of the revenue Firefox receives is from Google means that Google effectively controls them. Mozilla has to weigh every decision against the risk that it will cause Google to withdraw their funding. That severely restricts the choices they’re willing to consider.

        Firefox is only 5% of browsers, so it really doesn’t matter to Google if that 5% of users considers using a different search engine. Because of the Firefox user base, many of them will have already switched search engines, and because Google is such a dominant player, many others would switch back to Google if the browser used a different default. So, maybe 10% of that 5% would permanently switch search engines if Google stopped paying. Is that really worth billions per year? Probably not. But, pretending like you have competitors in the browser space and using that to push back on antitrust, that’s definitely worth billions per year.

        • @SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
          1•2 years ago

          Google makes something like $100 Billion a year in search ad revenue. 5% of that is $5 Billion.

          It’s odd that people think Google is incredibly worried about having too large of a market share in the browser market (which they don’t make any money from) yet their 92% market share in searches is not concerning at all in terms of the potential for regulation.

          The truth is nobody does anti-trust anymore (though they definitely should) and the big corporations aren’t worried at all about it. Google makes Chrome, Android, and pays Mozilla because they want to maintain dominance in the search market. Which is the thing they make money form. What they pay Mozilla is a drop in the bucket compared to what they pay Apple to be the default search engine on their devices.

          • @merc@sh.itjust.works
            1•2 years ago

            Google doesn’t directly make money from their browser, but controlling their browser means they lock in the thing that drives their revenues. They can always test it out against all their ads and make sure it works, putting out a fix if it ever doesn’t. We’ve also seen recently how they’re trying to make it so people can’t run ad blockers, something they could only consider if they lock down the entire browser market.

            • @DogMuffins@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
              1•2 years ago

              I disagree.

              Google doesn’t “control” mozilla in that way.

              They can always test it out against all their ads and make sure it works, putting out a fix if it ever doesn’t.

              They could do this even if they weren’t funding mozilla. Ad’s aren’t exactly reliant on bleeding edge web standards anyway. You’re thinking about tracking tech, which they don’t have any input in for firefox.

              We’ve also seen recently how they’re trying to make it so people can’t run ad blockers

              Well yes, and mozilla was quite vocal in their opposition, demonstrating that Google doesn’t have much control over them.

    • Zeragamba
      5•2 years ago

      As a web developer, EdgeHTML was the source of so many bugs, including a few that were regressions, and it didn’t seem like Microsoft dedicated enough resources to the Edge project.

  • m-p{3}
    32•2 years ago

    Mozilla doesn’t make it as easy to use the Firefox / Gecko engine in other projects, which doesn’t help for adoption.

    • arglebargleEnglish
      1•2 years ago

      AdNauseam

      Note that AdNauseam no longer recommends Firefox

      Sigh. I believe this is simply because of the removal from Firefox mobile

  • Resol van Lemmy
    18•2 years ago

    Safari still uses the WebKit engine… right?

    Google Chrome used to use WebKit before switching to their own weird engine that a whole bunch of other browsers now use.

    • @nonearther@lemmy.mlEnglish
      12•2 years ago

      When Google forked from WebKit to create Blink, they had genuine reasons for it.

      Apple was stalling any progress of web by stalling new features in WebKit. They wanted to push their native apps and get big cut from developers’ money.

      Google had to fork and progress web dev further.

      And unfortunately for us, Google folks are greedy assholes who stop at nothing to own everything web even if they have to bend everything.

      WEI is a perfect example.

      • @Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
        3•2 years ago

        Named as such because, like Weeping Angels, if you blink you’ll be sent back to a society without enforcement of antitrust laws

        • Zeragamba
          0•2 years ago

          I don’t understand this argument about antitrust laws. As far as i know Google hasn’t done anything to block other companies from making their own search engines or browsers. Nor does Value and Steam, nor Microsoft and Windows.

          • @Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
            1•2 years ago

            WEI checks if your browser and system is “genuine” and “unmodified” before letting you access any content “protected” by it, which inevitably leads to smaller and custom mods that don’t fit their predetermined criteria for “genuineness” being locked out, which in turn forces you to use Google (and Microsoft and Apple, they’re in on it too) products in order to access certain content and eventually the entire internet, just as surely as it’s almost completely impossible to avoid their Google Analytics malware.

            And before you say “that’s a ridiculous slippery slope fallacy! That’ll never happen!”, Logitech is already requiring you to go to a website that will only open in Chromium browsers in order to pair devices with the Logitech Unifying Receiver.

  • @hi_its_me@lemmy.world
    11•2 years ago

    Honest question… I get that Chrome has a bunch questionable privacy practices that sends data back to Google, but do the chromium based browsers do that as well? My understanding is that Chromium is just the rendering engine. How is it bad?

    Also, if Google implements their bullshit DRM features, I wonder if the derivative browsers will be able to disable it. I believe I saw that Brave said they won’t use it.

    • Deanne
      3•2 years ago

      well,epiphany isn’t really chromium. it’s webkit instead