[aluren]

I don't get why people (I mean technically minded people who are aware of privacy issues and so on) don't just use firefox. They are pretty much at feature parity (Firefox may even get the edge due to the fantastic extensions ecosystem), except one spies on you and the other doesn't. Why do people find the switch so hard?

In addition, Firefox + ublokc origin is pretty much the only option on mobile if you want to block ads, unless you want to fiddle with hosts files or pi-holes or something.

[pmikesell]

I'm a technically minded person. I've been using web browsers since NCSA Mosaic. I switch browsers probably once per decade (mosaic -> netscape navigator -> firefox -> chrome).

At the time I started using Chrome IE was the dominant web browser and firefox was losing the war because content creators were continually accidentally making things work in IE only. (By "accidentally" I mean that the standards were very confusing, and understanding what would work with which browser was a continual battle, and Microsoft had a good 15 years under its belt of attempting to make the web a windows only affair).

So then Chrome comes along, backed my Google, and people started treating it as a first class citizen. Sites were belt to run with, and tested on Chrome.

Fast forward to now. I actually do want to have a wide array of ad sponsored content on the internet because I appreciate the free content and I'm not going to pay 30 different 5$ per month subscriptions for stuff I might read. Are they tracking me? Yes. When I search for lawn mowers online I get spams (which gmail seems to filter just fine) and my rarely logged into facebook feed is full of lawn mower ads. I use in-cognito when I want to see what a google or linked in search looks like without my user context. I use ABP when sites are too aggressive with their ads.

And it's all fine. I suspect my current experience is common, to answer your question.

[dao-]

> At the time I started using Chrome IE was the dominant web browser and firefox was losing the war [...]

This is false. Firefox's market share was continuously rising until Chrome came along (and Google marketed it aggressively). IE was still strong but already losing.

[olyjohn]

You are correct. For some reason, I keep seeing this history repeated over and over, but even the chart in the article confirms you're correct. Firefox was taking over like crazy before Chrome came along...

[pmikesell]

... I'm talking about before that. Netscape went from 90% to 6% once IE started bundling on Windows. Firefox "taking over like crazy" is a later comeback.

[pmikesell]

Netscape Navigator was something like 90% at one point. Netscape fell down to single digits against IE and then started climbing back up. That's the point at which the chart in the article begins. That's what I'm referring to when I say "losing the war". 90% -> 6% is losing.

I'm not like an IE fan - I don't user Windows for anything other than gaming, I just remember what the browser wars were like in the early 2000s.

[mda]

It's share was definitely stagnating around the time Chrome came out. I advocated heavily for Firefox at the time, but it was not enough. Not a surprise that many Firefox engineers went on to create Chrome at Google, Firefox codebase was still carrying the burden of old Netscape and it took them 10 years to modernize it.

[dao-]

> Not a surprise that many Firefox engineers went on to create Chrome at Google,

Google paid a bunch of engineers to work on Firefox, then pulled them to create Chrome. They weren't given a choice. So yeah, not surprising at all.

[blub]

IE wasn't winning any war against Firefox, it was Firefox which was gaining marketshare from IE, which had a crap reputation at that point.

For this reason and the fact that you think lawnmower ads are the worst that surveillance capitalism can do, I'm skeptical that you are technically minded at all. This is 100% how the average Joe thinks.

[klingonopera]

I remember when I made the change, must've been 2004 or 2005, I was reluctant at first to change from IE to Firefox, but the killer feature FF had at that time was tabbed browsing.

Kids these days will never know the struggle of having 10 browser windows clogging up the task bar...

[newscracker]

While I agree with your point on not willing to pay “30 different $5 per month subscriptions for stuff I might read”, I do not agree that technically aware people who know about privacy ought to have a lackadaisical attitude to tracking and surveillance. At an individual level you could argue that it doesn’t harm you (or better, hasn’t harmed you so far), but at the level of society and the world, we’d be worse off if everybody thought this wasn’t important and hence did nothing about it.

[ignoramous]

If only user tracking was limited to product ads. Behaviour control and propaganda are a thing, as evidenced many times over with Rohingya genocide, US elections, Brexit, and the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests to name but a few.

[ocdtrekkie]

The biggest problem is the subtle frustrations if you use Google websites or services at all, since Google builds the Internet explicitly for Chrome, and sometimes works on other browsers okay-ish. reCAPTCHA harassment is particularly egregious too.

I'm a Firefox user, but I've also already excised most of the rest of Google from my life. If you're still using Gmail, you're likely to stick with Chrome.

[gibspaulding]

I'm also a full time Firefox/uBO user, but I've never noticed isues with reCAPTCHA or gmail. The only time I can think of hitting reCAPTCHA is when creating a new account somewhere and gmail seems to work as expected. Photos, maps, Keep, and YouTube all seem to work fine too.

It's possible of course that I just don't know any better since I haven't actually used Chrome with any regularity in the last 5 years or so.

[mceachen]

My experience (on macOS, windows 10, and Ubuntu Desktop) is that captchas on Chrome pass seamlessly (frequently without a prompt), and firefox on all three platforms require 3-10 screenfuls of "where's the signal light?" where's-waldo fun and games.

[jfk13]

I use Gmail, but through Thunderbird and occasionally Firefox. Works pretty well for me. I keep Chrome around mainly for occasional compatibility testing.

[klingonopera]

Same, Gmail with Thunderbird is quite solid.

...I'm guessing we have a pretty much standardized IMAP protocol to thank for this?

[naravara]

It's not just Google. I've had helpdesk tickets with multiple services automatically assume I'm on mobile if I mention something doesn't work in Safari. I will even say "Safari on Mac OS 10.xx" and they will still assume mobile. The idea of desktop browsers that aren't Chrome seems to be fading away among even the marginally technically aware people.

[glenneroo]

HackerNews mods could help out by messing with rendering on Chrome, as revenge for Google's continual messing with Firefox rendering issues[1] ;)

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20755348

[EpicEng]

Pretty sure that would only hurt HN users and Google won't give a single damn.

[tzs]

I mostly use Firefox, except I use Chrome for certain tasks at work [1]. There is one thing about Firefox that occasionally has me on the verge of ditching it for Chrome.

It has a terrible spell checker. I find about as many errors in its spelling as it finds in mine.

There used to be one other thing that really irked me, but it looks like they recently fixed that (I'm on the beta channel, so not sure if everyone has this yet). That was handling of keyboard shortcuts. Shortcuts, such as OPTION-HOME to go to the home page, did not work if the focus was in the address bar, the "search in page" field, or a text entry field on the page.

[1] Chrome's dev tools seem more responsive and better organized, and it handles multiple profiles better.

[__dawid__]

>and it handles multiple profiles better.

I think that Containers available on Firefox are much better than profiles

[tzs]

Profiles provide separate bookmarks and add-ons per profile. I don't think containers do. Containers seem to be more about making it so you can appear as different people to different sites. Profiles are more about letting you separate roles.

For different things I do during development, I want different sets of cookies, bookmarks, history, and add-ons. With profiles, I get that, effectively getting a separate browser that I can extensively customize to its particular task.

[7786655]

Firefox also has profiles. (about:profiles)

[tzs]

Those were actually what I was thinking of when I said Chrome handles profiles better. Firefox has the functionality, but it doesn't have as nice an interface to it. Chrome, for example, on MacOS puts the available profiles on the right-click menu on its dock icon.

[dave5104]

Do Containers support segregated browsing history yet? That's what I've liked most about Chrome profiles. I can have a "personal" profile and then a "work" profile that doesn't comingle the browsing history. It's convenient when on a screenshare--the URL bar's type-ahead won't reveal your personal browsing history.

[greenyoda]

You can have multiple profiles in Firefox too. If you start Firefox with the "-P" flag, it brings up the profile manager, which allows you create/delete profiles or start Firefox with a selected profile.

You can also start/manage profiles from inside Firefox by navigating to about:profiles.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-...

[ro0ster]

How would you compare your Firefox experience to Brave? I'm not technically minded but Brave seemed to be easiest mobile ad blocking browser.

[basch]

and now youre back to using Chromium, and driving marketshare back towards a monosphere of Chromium influence on the web.

[spidermango]

but chromium influence on the web isn't bad by default. it's googles implementation in chrome. brave is built to counter everything the article argues

[Tomte]

> Firefox + ublokc origin is pretty much the only option on mobile if you want to block ads

Safari with Firefox Focus as content blocker works well.

[tistoon]

I am on a MacbookPro and would love to use Firefox, however because of this never-solved bug [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042], I have to stick to Opera or Safari or.. Chrome (and probably I am not the only one).

Firefox is losing a lot share just because it gets our fan/cpu crazy on macbooks.

[basch]

I use both. The firefox interface still freezes when the page freezes. Hung anything should never stop me from closing tabs. Quantum/Electrolysis was supposed to be a savior, but the problem remains for now.

[cameronbrown]

I want to like Firefox, and I use it regularly, but I just veer back to Chrome. I still prefer the UI and extensions (which Chrome still has the 'edge' in).

[gibspaulding]

Out of curiosity, what extensions do you miss? I've never really used anything beyond the usual privacy extensions (uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, and HTTPS everywhere). All of which seem to be as well or better supported in FireFox.

[cameronbrown]

Mainly Google extensions (yeah, not coming anytime soon): Keep and Chrome Remote Desktop are two of my favourite services.

[aqzman]

I only used Chrome Remote Desktop for the first time two weeks ago. I was blown away how easy it was the setup and how well it worked.

[cameronbrown]

Side-point: Steam In-Home Streaming is great for this as well. You're able to jump into a regular desktop and the protocol is highly optimised.

This is the best alternative I've found when using Firefox instead of Chrome.

[linza]

Same here. I use Firefox+adblocker on mobile for some sites. I don't know why it is, but i just dislike the UI of Firefox. I want to like it more, but it just doesn't work out...

[supuun]

Yeah, Firefox on mobile sucks, but they are fortunately working on a major update. Firefox on the desktop rocks tho.

[cpeterso]

You can test drive the new "Firefox Preview" on Android here:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.fe...

[realshowbiz]

I’ve been having a good experience with safari + ublock origin.

Firefox tends to consume a lot of system resources on my pretty modest machine.

[stOneskull]

Ublock origin can be added to Palemoon and it makes a great browser. If a website doesn't work in Palemoon then too bad for them. I've had a great break from twitter since their new UI doesn't work. And recaptchas can go captcha themselves.

[tunap]

I run NoScript + UBO in Pale Moon(1) on the desktop. UBO Legacy does not block Javascript. On mobile, PM is dead and Waterfox w/ newer JS blocking UBO works great.

(1) it's a PIA to manage both extensions, I'm using WF more & more on Desktop these days. I hope Pale Moon can survive, evolve or one-up their lack of Web Extension APIs.

[nwah1]

My understanding is that Firefox previously had some specific problems on Mac that were mostly resolved. Might be worth re-evaluating.

[nwah1]

https://www.zdnet.com/article/upcoming-firefox-update-will-d...

[saagarjha]

uBlock Origin will stop working with Safari 13.

[adamc]

I stopped using it (after many, many years) because it has bugs where the hamburger menu (and, often, tabs) stop working, and it was frustrating to deal with.

It also had some weird issues with remote desktop, and I remote to my desktop from meetings fairly often.

[badhombres]

Because when I run Firefox on my mac, the FAA calls me to let me know that I'm not allowed to be running jet engines inside of my house

[theboulevardier]

It runs fine on my Mac, the only time it seems to spin up the fans is for Youtube videos. It wouldn't suprise me if Google has done something to make Firefox not work as well on Youtube as they have done before.

[partiallypro]

I use Firefox and very much look forward to the Chromium version of Edge as well. I only use Chrome to do work related things.

[techntoke]

First, a lot of technically minded people run Linux and want to have hardware-accelerated video decoding for performance and Firefox isn't focused on supporting this for Linux, but it does work on multiple distros for Chromium.

In terms of mobile, me guesses you haven't got the news about Mozilla doing away with extensions for newer versions. Plus there are other open source browsers with extension support, even based on Chromium.

[onevu]

It's slower, which is practically all I care about now that all browsers have the same extension API.

>In addition, Firefox + ublokc origin is pretty much the only option on mobile if you want to block ads, unless you want to fiddle with hosts files or pi-holes or something.

On Android, Blokada, or any browser like Brave. On iOS, Safari has a builtin content filter.

[saagarjha]

> On iOS, Safari has a builtin content filter.

Not really. Safari provides the API that content blocker extensions you install can use.

[onevu]

Sure. You can choose from a myriad of ad blockers, like in any other browser. Firefox Klar or AdGuard are free.