Google has rolled out "Privacy Sandbox," a Chrome feature first announced back in 2019 that, among other things, exchanges third-party cookies—the most common form of tracking technology—for what the company is now calling "Topics." Topics is a response to pushback against Google’s proposed...
Agreed. I never understood why anyone goes out of their way to install Chrome.
Rant:
Why not use Edge, which comes with the OS? I’m not promoting Edge, but it’s already there. If you’re going to install another browser, why not use Firefox instead? Every time I ask someone why they’ve installed Chrome, they either don’t have an answer or say something like “it looks nice”.
That said, Firefox’ handling of tabs is still horrible. “Go Vivaldi” on this count. Sadly it’s a Chromium browser.
How does Firefox fail you at tabs? I’ve always been happy with it, I sandbox my FB and Google social stuff, Save groups for opening at once, share tabs across devices, I don’t want for anything.
Chrome and Edge have native vertical tabs. I was an Edge user before the Manifest V3 fiasco, and it’s the one feature I dearly miss. There are extensions to add this functionality to FF, but they require extensive setup, and every new FF update breaks them.
Edge also had shortcuts to open a link in new tab and switch to it or stay on the current tab.
It’s the little things that you don’t really notice until they’re gone.
I’ve been using a vertical tabs extension in FF for a couple years now and it has never once broken during update. I don’t recall setup being complicated either. Which one are you using?
I’m not on desktop atm but when I get home I’ll check which one I have. It’s not as good as Arc’s implementation but it’s serviceable.
Don’t forget grouping tabs! I used that a lot to group all my youtube tabs, and reddit tabs. It makes it easy to minimize them all in one go, which leads to a neater browser experience without having to close all the tabs…
I recently switched back to Firefox after using Chrome for like a decade, and one of the first extensions I installed was a tab grouper that allows me to group tabs into my own custom gcontainers while still only using one window. As a tab hoarder, it’s been a life saver.
Vivaldi does this out of the box: Tab grouping, tab stacking, tab stack renaming, vertical tabs, periodic tab reloading, etc.
Firefox has some catching up to do in this regard. I need extensions to do some of this. Tab stacking, for example, simply does not exist on Firefox, which means that my tab bar eventually makes me scroll horizontally.
Not badmouthing Firefox. Just saying that it isn’t the greatest in this area. Am still using it daily. I just don’t use it for tasks that require having many tabs at my disposal.
Inertia. For years: IE sucked and Mozilla was painfully slow and missing features. I know it’s been quite a few years since that was a thing, but people don’t like to change, so I really think it’s still leftover behavior.
Or at least it is for me, but I’m mostly in the Apple ecosystem now, so it’s not as relevant
Chrome was pretty good and somewhat faster than FF for a while in the oughts. At least it felt that way, and Google didn’t seem so evil at the time. My guess is people go with chrome out of inertia
I go out of my way to purge Edge from Windows every time it works it’s way back in no matter what registry edits I have to make, what Windows “features” it breaks or whatever script I have to write.
Edge is like having a roommate constantly hitting on you and occasionally withholding things from you when you reject them and you’re basically over here going “They’re already living with you, why not go with them instead of hooking up with someone from outside”
Chrome is ethically questionable admittedly at best, but Edge is straight up cancer.
I started using Chrome instead of IE11, which was crap for standards, and before Edge was a thing. When Edge came along, I got really ticked off by the constant nagging to use it, which made me hate it without even trying it. I will probably carry on with Chrome for now, whist I can still turn off all the ad tracking stuff.
Amen. Only using Edge when there’s no other choice.
Usually there is, though.
Chrome, on the other hand, is never needed or required. At least I have never encountered such a scenario. Conceivably, a company admin could force it on employees, but in my experience, admins usually just stick with Edge if they run Windows and want to lock down company PCs from being tampered with.
Google’s changes for Chrome are a problem. That’s the main topic of this discussion.
To take it further, Chromium being mainly developed and maintained by Google and a ton of browsers basing themselves on that is another problem: Chromium monoculture and why it is a concern.
Chomium isn’t Chrome, but Chrome is Chromium. Just like Vivaldi or Edge aren’t Chrome, they’re Chromium (based). Unless you can show that these tracking features are going into the Open Source Chromium Project, we’re pretty safe. Google has stripped the “good stuff” (account syncing/backup and maybe a few other things I’m unaware of) from Chromium in order to force people to Chrome, at least on Linux.
I wasn’t trying to argue about, or even educate people, on the specifics. I was just making an objective statement of fact. Anyone is free to do their own research to validate my assertion, disprove it, or just ignore it.
But, okay, I can provide a good entry point into the topic with a good write-up on Android browsers from the developer of a security focused ROM, DivestOS:
Orrrr… don’t use Google Chrome.
Agreed. I never understood why anyone goes out of their way to install Chrome.
Rant:
Why not use Edge, which comes with the OS? I’m not promoting Edge, but it’s already there. If you’re going to install another browser, why not use Firefox instead? Every time I ask someone why they’ve installed Chrome, they either don’t have an answer or say something like “it looks nice”.
That said, Firefox’ handling of tabs is still horrible. “Go Vivaldi” on this count. Sadly it’s a Chromium browser.
How does Firefox fail you at tabs? I’ve always been happy with it, I sandbox my FB and Google social stuff, Save groups for opening at once, share tabs across devices, I don’t want for anything.
The tab categories and paging are excellent. I don’t understand what else you need. There are even 3rd party tools that improve this functionality.
I wrote my answer up here.
Linking it so I don’t post it twice.
Chrome and Edge have native vertical tabs. I was an Edge user before the Manifest V3 fiasco, and it’s the one feature I dearly miss. There are extensions to add this functionality to FF, but they require extensive setup, and every new FF update breaks them. Edge also had shortcuts to open a link in new tab and switch to it or stay on the current tab. It’s the little things that you don’t really notice until they’re gone.
I’ve been using a vertical tabs extension in FF for a couple years now and it has never once broken during update. I don’t recall setup being complicated either. Which one are you using?
I’m not on desktop atm but when I get home I’ll check which one I have. It’s not as good as Arc’s implementation but it’s serviceable.
Don’t forget grouping tabs! I used that a lot to group all my youtube tabs, and reddit tabs. It makes it easy to minimize them all in one go, which leads to a neater browser experience without having to close all the tabs…
I recently switched back to Firefox after using Chrome for like a decade, and one of the first extensions I installed was a tab grouper that allows me to group tabs into my own custom gcontainers while still only using one window. As a tab hoarder, it’s been a life saver.
What’s the name of it?? I thought I looked everywhere when I made the swap early summer…
It’s called Simple Tab Groups, and it’s actually a Firefox recommended extension:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/simple-tab-groups/
Idk what people have about chromium tabs. Firefox does tabs just fine.
Also, edge does not come with most os, just w*ndows
Vivaldi does this out of the box: Tab grouping, tab stacking, tab stack renaming, vertical tabs, periodic tab reloading, etc.
Firefox has some catching up to do in this regard. I need extensions to do some of this. Tab stacking, for example, simply does not exist on Firefox, which means that my tab bar eventually makes me scroll horizontally.
Not badmouthing Firefox. Just saying that it isn’t the greatest in this area. Am still using it daily. I just don’t use it for tasks that require having many tabs at my disposal.
Edit: I didn’t say that Edge comes with most OSs. But Windows is the most widespread Desktop OS, so most people will have access to Edge “out of the box”.
Love Vivaldi, but when I hit a site that has excess crap on it, I’ll switch to FF and tap the reader mode for a cruft-free experience.
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lol
Not with any of my OSes.
Fair enough. 🙂
Am sure all know what I’m talking about.
Inertia. For years: IE sucked and Mozilla was painfully slow and missing features. I know it’s been quite a few years since that was a thing, but people don’t like to change, so I really think it’s still leftover behavior.
Or at least it is for me, but I’m mostly in the Apple ecosystem now, so it’s not as relevant
Using edge is probably a bigger offense than using chrome.
I don’t know they’re likely getting most of the information from the OS anyway.
Installing chrome is like doubling it.
My computer doesn’t come with edge
Chrome was pretty good and somewhat faster than FF for a while in the oughts. At least it felt that way, and Google didn’t seem so evil at the time. My guess is people go with chrome out of inertia
Yes unfortunately I’ve found chromium is just much better than Firefox when it comes to tabs. It’s at least a step removed from Chrome.
I go out of my way to purge Edge from Windows every time it works it’s way back in no matter what registry edits I have to make, what Windows “features” it breaks or whatever script I have to write.
Edge is like having a roommate constantly hitting on you and occasionally withholding things from you when you reject them and you’re basically over here going “They’re already living with you, why not go with them instead of hooking up with someone from outside”
Chrome is ethically questionable admittedly at best, but Edge is straight up cancer.
I started using Chrome instead of IE11, which was crap for standards, and before Edge was a thing. When Edge came along, I got really ticked off by the constant nagging to use it, which made me hate it without even trying it. I will probably carry on with Chrome for now, whist I can still turn off all the ad tracking stuff.
deleted by creator
Amen. Only using Edge when there’s no other choice.
Usually there is, though.
Chrome, on the other hand, is never needed or required. At least I have never encountered such a scenario. Conceivably, a company admin could force it on employees, but in my experience, admins usually just stick with Edge if they run Windows and want to lock down company PCs from being tampered with.
Chromium is the open source project, it doesn’t contain any of the Google Chrome specific changes.
Google’s changes for Chrome are a problem. That’s the main topic of this discussion.
To take it further, Chromium being mainly developed and maintained by Google and a ton of browsers basing themselves on that is another problem: Chromium monoculture and why it is a concern.
Chomium isn’t Chrome, but Chrome is Chromium. Just like Vivaldi or Edge aren’t Chrome, they’re Chromium (based). Unless you can show that these tracking features are going into the Open Source Chromium Project, we’re pretty safe. Google has stripped the “good stuff” (account syncing/backup and maybe a few other things I’m unaware of) from Chromium in order to force people to Chrome, at least on Linux.
Sure. I am with you. That’s not what my previous message was about, though.
I agree with you 100% on what you just said.
Unfortunately, on Android, Chromium based browsers are SIGNIFICANTLY more secure than any other browser framework. I recommend Mulch and Cromite.
Again, this is ANDROID specific. Everywhere else, I use FF based browsers.
You can’t just say that FF on Android is less secure and not give any sources for that claim.
I mean, you can, but that makes your claim not have any value.
I wasn’t trying to argue about, or even educate people, on the specifics. I was just making an objective statement of fact. Anyone is free to do their own research to validate my assertion, disprove it, or just ignore it.
But, okay, I can provide a good entry point into the topic with a good write-up on Android browsers from the developer of a security focused ROM, DivestOS:
https://divestos.org/pages/browsers
*He’s also the developer of two good Android hardened browsers: Mulch (Chromium) and Mull (FF/Gecko).
Edit: I also recommend NOT using Google’s official Android Chrome browser, just forks that are based around Chromium e.g. Mulch and Cromite.
The grapheneOS team also discourages using FF android but I still use it (well, Fennec). Add-ons are a must have and would never use a chromium browser.
Mobile FF on Android is just fine.
Firefox is great and works well on Android yes! I recommend Mull.
However, technically speaking, resources don’t fully recommend it due to there being no per-site process isolation yet that works well.
If that doesn’t matter to people then sure it’s great and better than using Chromium based browsers. 🙂
It’s just good to give everyone the information and reasoning why then let them decide.
Divest OS resource: https://divestos.org/pages/browsers#processIsolation
PrivacyGuides resource: https://www.privacyguides.org/en/mobile-browsers/?h=site#android
I’m having problems finding unpatched vulnerabilities on Android ff, could you expand on what makes it less secure?
Are there issues with FF on android?
I don’t know of them and I’ve used it for as long as it’s been available.