Ask HN: With trust in Firefox gone, is Chrome-ish the only option?
96 comments
·March 10, 2025worble
The rhetoric around Firefox is so exhausting. They change some wording while having made no actual technical changes to the browser and the internet is on fire for days calling them the devil incarnate, meanwhile Chrome gutted uBlock and other extensions a week ago and there was barely any noise about it.
What causes this phenomenon where the project with significantly less resources is held to a higher standard than the other players?
mkl
From long experience we expect Google and hence Chrome to act against our interests. We have not expected that of Mozilla and Firefox.
Google did give us a lot of warning that they would greatly restrict ad-blocking and tracker-blocking, so most of that angst has already been and gone.
InDubioProRubio
But firefox always was a monopoly figleave sockpuppet - and now they do not need it anymore, so firefox either finds a new purpose (doing what it promised) or it tries to sell out in one final scam.
KevinMS
> From long experience we expect Google and hence Chrome to act against our interests. We have not expected that of Mozilla and Firefox.
HN used to gush over how great Chrome was. Some of us were saying, um guys, you know google is in the business of selling advertising right? Nobody seemed to care. Now mozilla's lawyers have them change some legalese and they are instantly the bad guys.
magicalhippo
> meanwhile Chrome gutted uBlock and other extensions a week ago and there was barely any noise about it
Because anyone who cared knew this was coming in the near future after they published manifest v3 several years ago. Back then there was a huge kerfuffle, but since then anyone who cared has moved on.
lukan
Well, no one (sane) has any illusions left about chrome.
But FF was supposed to remain the shiny counterexample (despite acting also shady since years).
sebazzz
It is still the least worse option. These posts like OP is just throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
cassianoleal
OP's premise is that "Firefox is gone" and "Chrome is the only option". That suggests Chrome is better than current Firefox.
Personally, even though my trust in Firefox (and especially Mozilla) has been eroding rapidly in recent years, it's still so much greater than what I have for Google and Chrome that it's not even a choice.
Therefore, I agree with GP that this rhetoric is exhausting.
Bringing up the issues with FF and Mozilla is important and deserves attention. This kind of misleading FUD is not and does not.
beehivebasic
> OP's premise is that "Firefox is gone" and "Chrome is the only option". That suggests Chrome is better than current Firefox.
To be fair, OP asked if "Chrome-ish" is the only option, i.e. Chromium-based browsers - not Chrome itself.
Even so, I don't think the implication is that Chromium is better than Firefox, but that without Firefox only Chromium-based browsers remain. "If I don't want to use Firefox, is it really only Chrome-clones available?"
torstenvl
Chrome is better than current Firefox. Chrome does not require users to grant Google a license to the information they enter online.
refulgentis
> What causes this phenomenon where the project with significantly less resources is held to a higher standard than the other players?
Hm, my lived experience is the inverse, and both seem sort of important to talk about.
We've been hearing about Chrome implementing the same privacy protections as Safari as a transgression for years, years, and years, as it was delayed again and again.
It was ex-Mozilla people who brought to my attention that they were deeply alarmed by the privacy-concious-Do-Not-Track people making this pivot and that it was a really bad sign.
Generally, I try to avoid loaded questions phrased like "why is X considered as A while Y is considered as B?" because it suffers from high failure rates
(likelihood you're the first person to realize the truth; likelihood these things ended up sorted neatly into opposing binaries; undecidability of 'how come everyone believes the wrong thing?'; uncomfortable conversation when someone starts from 'how come everyone believes the wrong thing?' and you have to sort of lead them gently to 'is it possible you are missing something, not everyone else?' without making it obvious)
scarface_74
> We've been hearing about Chrome implementing the same privacy protections as Safari as a transgression for years, years, and years, as it was delayed again and again.
Well Apple didn’t turn around and try to push the Topics API..
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Topics_API
(Just to be clear. Mozilla is opposed to it too. They are just documenting it and don’t plan to implement the API)
refulgentis
To be clear, I don't think trying to score or rank browser manufacturers on Goodness is an achievable goal. Endless what-abouts are available, with rational arguments available to opposing opinions.
However, I must admit I am intrigued by seeing Topics posited as a stain.
I strongly believe we would have been obviously better off as consumers with topics, than the status quo, a wild west of tracking, but AFAIK, weakly, it could have entrenched incumbents further.*
Selfishly, for my individual interests, I wish Apple had proposed it.
I have a feeling it would have been more dogged in working through it, rather than Google's laissez-faire "oh well! guess we get to keep tracking" when the bottom feeders complained.**
That's probably why it seems unachievable to me to rank on Goodness, opinions abound and they're all reasonable.
* i.e. even if the topics are retrievable via JS by any page, I'd assume there's some clever way for Google to do something strictly superior from an advertiser perspective leveraging some E2E integration, ex. perhaps most pages have to wait till load to get topics, but Google can do a special preflight request given a special HEAD tag, idk
** My weak understanding is this essentially was put on pause/shit-canned after UK competition authorities relayed general concern, and I don't remember Google giving up so easily on anything ever
stupidbrowsers
[flagged]
beehivebasic
When Firefox removed Do Not Track in December last year [0] people also freaked out, which came as a considerable surprise to me; I thought most tech-savvy users were well aware of the flaws with DNT, and were well aware of DNT's newfangled replacement (GPC) that Firefox had already adopted [1].
I will never understand why people attack Firefox so eagerly at every given opportunity.
[0]: https://circuitbulletin.com/what-is-global-privacy-control-t... [1]: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/global-privacy-control
TiredOfLife
>there was barely any noise about it.
10 posts daily about it on HN.
firefax
>The rhetoric around Firefox is so exhausting. They change some wording while having made no actual technical changes to the browser and the internet is on fire for days calling them the devil incarnate
Having worked there, it's concerning, since if you saw the discussions that go on with regard to user data, you'd know they are trying to make sure they word things correctly, not... insert weasel words to grab your data.
null
hnlmorg
It’s a bit premature to say Mozilla’s change to user agreements should result in a loss of our trust.
Particularly given the browser itself is open source and already has many eyes on it.
I’m going to wait and see what Mozilla’s next few releases are like before passing judgement.
bad_user
One thing that bothers me is that, when smaller projects and companies get boycotted, the winners seem to always be US Big Tech companies that are far worse, and boycotts don't work against them either.
For what is worth, I still use Firefox.
If you fear Mozilla's telemetry going forward, you could pick a fork that disables it. E.g., Mullvad or Zen seem pretty good.
But on the other hand, if you really want to get off the Firefox bandwagon, yes, Chromium-based browsers are a viable alternative. Although, in my view, there are only 2 Chromium-based browsers that are fairly trustworthy (i.e., well updated, not insecure) and that are not full-on spyware: Vivaldi and Brave.
Regardless, the “forks” are good only for disabling features that you don't want. But keep in mind that the hard work is still done by Mozilla, Google or Apple, it costs a shit ton of money to maintain a browser engine and all of them are financed by ad-tech (Google's ad-tech to be more specific).
bambax
You can trust or distrust whoever you want, but I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss Firefox. They now have updated the wording of their TOS that caused so much uproar and confusion (in part fueled by Brendan Eich, who runs a competing browser) and are pretty clear about what they do.
Firefox also still supports Manifest V2, which lets you use the full, ultra-powerful version of uBlock Origin. There's no better privacy protection than uBlock.
Firefox is a much better choice than any Chromium based browser for the privacy conscious.
bad_user
> in part fueled by Brendan Eich
I don't get why you needed to mention this, when the story became viral before Brendan Eich communicated it.
Do you feel that people misunderstood that, in fact, Mozilla does intend to sell user data?
Note that I'm still using and advocating for Firefox, I just found this offtopic attack odd.
bambax
I thought his attack on Firefox was a little unbecoming, while also forgetting to mention that he's a competitor (and his product is not free).
Mozilla is apparently run by corporate drones who made a blunder (as drones do). It happens. They corrected it. No need to attack or dismiss Firefox in general. Firefox is excellent.
BrendanEich
Your attacking me on false grounds as if doing so defends what Mozilla did is the only unbecoming thing I can see here.
I'm a founder of Mozilla (not latecomer or looter). The McKinseyites now running it into the ground deserve criticism from me as well as others who see what is going on. If you don't want to see it, keep using Firefox. Their terms and privacy policy changes still stink, they are integrating Anonym, and they're turning things on by default that we at Brave do not.
Try engaging with the substance of the arguments, not attacking the person making them.
JohnFen
> They corrected it.
Well, if by "corrected" you mean "acknowledged that the public perception of the change was correct", then I agree.
That said, I agree that Firefox is still the least worst option.
torstenvl
No, they didn't update anything meaningful.
promoterr
Chrome was NEVER (and won't be ever) the option.. https://contrachrome.com/
foxhill
you can't be serious, surely?
yes, mozilla's TOS update is a bad thing, but switching to chrome (or chromium-based) for it is really cutting your nose to spite your face.
timeon
> you can't be serious, surely?
Probably rage-bait.
botanical
It's funny how Mozilla is being vilified non-stop this past week when nothing's really changed (only their legal wording). Whereas Google are literally personal information vampires; they make the web a worse place for people and their freedoms.
I will continue supporting Mozilla and using Firefox.
mkl
You may have missed Mozilla's update: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/update-on-terms..., discussed in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43213612
I don't think trust in Firefox should be gone.
torstenvl
There is nothing meaningful in this "update."
If anything, it's worse, in that they EXPLICITLY admit that they are getting kickbacks—“'monetary' or 'other valuable consideration'”—for providing your user information.
benrutter
I think it's great that we're able to hold mozilla to higher standards than google, but I think there's a couple important points to mention:
- Leaving firefox for chrome due to privacy concerns only makes sense if chrome has better privacy, which it definitely doesn't. Recent changes might bring them closer together, but firefox is very far from catching up.
- We should compare firefox to chrome or firefox-based to chromium-based. Browsers like waterfox, pale moon, edge, brave all use source code from one browser but with different privacy, so it doesn't make sense to say "I don't like firefox so I'll use a chromium based one".
- Bonus extra point just because this is hacker news, check out Ladybird, it's making awesome progress!
crowselect
Yeah: firefox.
Is the browser ecosystem supposed to get better if we collapse it to just webkit and blink? Websites track us, browsers track us, web extensions track us, ISPs track us, OSs track us, cell networks track us.
Government passing legit privacy laws is the literal only way to prevent this - not browser choice. Unfortunately gov is fully captured by corporate interests most places in the world.
OuterVale
I have a few notes on alternative browsers at the bottom of this article that might be of use. https://vale.rocks/posts/everything-is-chrome#taking-action
tjoff
As a privacy conscious user I'm surprised you consider anything other than firefox. Is is not confusing.
As a privacy conscious user that loves open source software, I'm really puzzled regarding browsers right now. It's confusing.
It feels like basically everything is Chrome nowadays.
Are there any alternatives to Chrome-based browsers?
Best wishes and have a wonderful week