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Comment by dadarecit | Hacker News Reader

I'm using firefox too, and yea it works great - but that doesn't mean its the "anti-chrome" / anti-google browser. The executives running Mozilla live in the shadow of Google's interests, and long ago have forgotten that their job is to make a damn good browser. Now they're too encumbered by the politics of the game, politics (and game) which Google are in full control of.

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I haven't seen any real evidence that Mozilla has made any decisions designed to explicitly benefit Google. They've been pretty antagonistic actually. The foundation is investigating YouTube and the Mozilla employees I've spoken to seem to hate Google.

For better or for worse, I would still say it's the anti-chrome. Find me another crossplatform browser with a stack that's still as independent as Mozilla's. They have the engine, the add-on store, and everything in between.

I would be using Opera right now but they threw in the towel years ago. Now the brand is being milked by a private equity firm.

> I haven't seen any real evidence that Mozilla has made any decisions designed to explicitly benefit Google.

Mozilla literally makes Google the default search engine.

Well, yeah. I was talking about besides the actual terms of their agreement.

and how hard is it to change that? as hard as it is in edge?

Firefox has pretty rich search settings, better than any other browser IMO. It's very easy to use different search engines for different things and changing the default is one click in about:preferences. As easy as it gets I think

That’s an arms length business arrangement though, rather than some undue influence

Its hard to be truly arms length with the person who gives you the majority of your money.

Well, at this point we've degraded into vague speculation, which isn't up to the standard that should be necessary to guide people's decisions.

If new scary stuff starts showing up in Firefox of source code where the auto sign you into google, or strangely start turning away from web standards and towards Google supported proprietary initiatives, or something like that, that would put some meat into the nothing burger.

If its hard, then they they must be commended for doing so.

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