[Levitz]

Speaking for myself, it's really irritating to support a chrome alternative precisely because it's a chrome alternative and have it constantly shoot itself in the foot.

It sucks that I can't even attempt to convince someone to use it beyond "it's not Google", and data privacy. The vast majority of users won't ever give a damn about either of those by themselves.

[pessimizer]

A dozen years ago I was installing it on every computer I touched for more than a few minutes. Now I can't recommend it to anyone convincingly, especially because what I have to do to it to keep it as usable as it is for me (and what people see when they see me using it) is nothing that I could expect anyone normal to put up with. I honestly don't even want to use it at all without Debian standing between me and them.

But the sad part is all the hassle I go through gets it to about 80% of where it was a dozen years ago. A lot less crashy, though, I'll have to give them that - although everything is less crashy now. But they haven't destroyed the browser.

That's in a way even sadder: they decide every day to wake up and be bad, when any day they could decide to be better. Instead they've entered the modern massive predatory nonprofit space. Which usually is a vehicle for insiders to get rich off government grants, but Firefox have chosen the even eviller alternative of running interference for google as a product.

Any day they could choose to center the user and the health of the internet again. Every day they choose not to. They're just a valve that keeps paranoid and aware techies from going berserk and seriously competing against chrome, and that keeps antitrust away from google (not that there's anything for big business to to fear with horrible Obama judges like Amit Mehta on the bench.) It's their only serious source of income.

[skopje]

>> because what I have to do to it to keep it as usable

I find this confusing. Why is Firefox so much effort? Install it + badger + adnauseum. Done. Why so hard for you? I am not a power user, is that why I don't see the effort?

[hulitu]

> I find this confusing. Why is Firefox so much effort?

The new UI sucks (titlebar highjacking, tiny scrollbar), phones to Google by default (safe browsing), a lot of bad defaults.

> Install it + badger + adnauseum

So you need to install other stuff to make it usable. /s

[skopje]

Oh I see what you mean. I think of that as "one time setup" that any software needs, and not a bellyache.