[pims]

It's amusing to see this message heavily upvoted on HN when most mentions of Firefox here are welcomed with an avalanche of perfect solution fallacies.

I'm dubious about people becoming militant about this when the software engineering industry gave Chrome a red carpet by using it and installing it on their relatives' computers while knowing very well it's adware and when switching to the alternative is incredibly cheap.

[mschuster91]

Chrome had the advantage for a long term because their dev tools were just so much better than Firebug in both features and performance. Even today, I can't pinpoint it to specific things because it's (relatively) little and subtle differences, but Chrome's dev tools feel way more polished than Firefox's.

It's almost as if Steve Ballmer and the legendary "developers developers developers" speech still rings true today - the key to getting people to use your software is to make life as easy for the power users as possible, let them spread the word. And it's ironic how Microsoft lost its ways there... a lot of people I know have gone from Windows to Mac and convinced their close relationships (aka those whose computers they fix) to do the same. It's just so much more relaxing to boot into an OS that doesn't try to shove advertising down your throat at every turn.

[svrtknst]

Personally I disagree. IMO, devtools were better when competing with firebug, but I haven't experienced much of a difference in the past... 8? years. Something like that.

[pims]

> Chrome had the advantage for a long term because their dev tools were just so much better than Firebug in both features and performance. Even today, I can't pinpoint it to specific things because it's (relatively) little and subtle differences, but Chrome's dev tools feel way more polished than Firefox's.

My point exactly! You're talking about which browser to use for web development. That's not relevant for engineers not touching html/js/css, and for all non tech savvy family members whose computers we set up.

[myfonj]

Interesting, in my murky memory Chrome's developer tools were at most "quite decent" but for a long period of time could hardly compete with Firefox's, maybe even with mere Firebug. It it true that in total "feature count" Chrome most probably leads now, and especially recently they seem to adapt features that used to be Firefox exclusive in remarkably increasing rate. But I really do not remember being blown away by Chrome's devtools, like, ever, actually. Even today I pretty much prefer Firefox Developer Tools over Chrome's, because they mostly has more features I actually need and also feel way less cluttered. Most of the times I need to do anything with Chrome's devtools it takes me just a little moment to stumble upon some missing detail I am used to (for example overflow/layout/event listeners badges directly in the DOM inspector tree) or to be mildly offended by unfamiliar (or missing) keybinding, or confusing layout. There are quite a few features In Chrome that I'd like to see in Firefox (command palette for example), but still prefer "living" in Fx albeit without them.

Yes, al subjective, biased and anecdotal, but wanted to leave one real (yet still virtual) vote in favour of Firefox's Developer Tools here.

[imglorp]

I think we shouldn't minimize the harm Chrome does by calling it adware. It monitors all your activity for Google to tie it to your identity, who then publish your demographics, preferences, history, and mental state on the global markets. Let's call it what it is: a brain tap.

[SauntSolaire]

> who then publish your demographics, preferences, history, and mental state on the global markets.

Is there any evidence this actually happens? Or are we just going based on vibes?

[imglorp]

No vibes and there is voluminous evidence, eg many links here: https://spreadprivacy.com/how-does-google-track-me-even-when... as well as Google Takeout itself. Oh and I forgot location data and shopping records, those are huge. So the collected data about you are well documented.

Given the data, why would a trillion dollar company leave money on the table? Their shareholders DEMAND they monetize it. There are few forces against this.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/google-says-it-doesnt-...

Given the 2.095 trillion reasons why this should happen, and few reasons it shouldn't, you should demand evidence it DOESN'T happen. Presumption of innocence is backwards when there are market forces.

[greycol]

For most of it you can just go to the customer facing part of ad services and see these as distinct chooseable options, for mental state you could hand wave it away as "do we really know the mental state of someone who closely followed political news and has been searching for air tickets and migration processes since Nov 6?"

[moomin]

Read any of the “I asked site X for my personal data” articles to get an idea of what’s going on.

[voxic11]

I asked Google for my personal data and they had almost nothing on me. But I have opted out of every form of data collection so it makes sense to me.

[latexr]

> It's amusing to see this message heavily upvoted on HN when most mentions of Firefox here are welcomed with an avalanche of perfect solution fallacies.

HN is not a hive mind. There are people here who love Firefox, people who despite it, and everyone in between. It’s tiring to always be reading your type of comment, as if everyone is a hypocrite. Maybe, just maybe, the people making those contradictory comments are not the same individuals.

And it’s not like Mozilla is free from controversies, including several of betraying user trust. If every major browser maker is going to break your trust and sell your data, I can see why people choose their poison based on other factors.

I use neither Firefox nor Chrome. Is Safari any better? Or Brave? In some areas yes, in others no. I don’t think there’s a single browser vendor which gets it unambiguously right.

[pims]

> HN is not a hive mind. There are people here who love Firefox, people who despite it, and everyone in between. It’s tiring to always be reading your type of comment, as if everyone is a hypocrite. Maybe, just maybe, the people making those contradictory comments are not the same individuals.

I didn't mean to say that all of HN despises Firefox, but simply that it very often brings negative sentiments, so seeing the comment I was responding to so high up in the thread made me react. It was also a kind reminder that militating is as simple as using an alternative to Chrome.

> And it’s not like Mozilla is free from controversies, including several of betraying user trust. If every major browser maker is going to break your trust and sell your data, I can see why people choose their poison based on other factors. > I use neither Firefox nor Chrome. Is Safari any better? Or Brave? In some areas yes, in others no. I don’t think there’s a single browser vendor which gets it unambiguously right.

And you're making my point about the perfect solution fallacy as well! Of course Firefox isn't perfect and has screwed up on several occasions, does that mean it's comparable to a piece of software that sends every single bit of information it can gather to its parent ad company?

[latexr]

> but simply that it very often brings negative sentiments

Just as often as it brings positive sentiments. Something that is (from anecdotal observation) quite common from both camps on HN is disappointment with Mozilla’s governance.

> does that mean it's comparable to a piece of software that sends every single bit of information it can gather to its parent ad company?

Not the argument I made. As I said, I use neither.

[account42]

Mozilla would be the first to request permission to stab you so that they can then analyze the blood of the knife in order to make future product decisions.