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Comment by wwweston | Hacker News Reader

Google's integration is actually the reason why I'd switch back to Firefox in a heartbeat if the performance kept up -- there's some serious privacy issues involved in browsing the web using a Google browser while logged in to a Google account.

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Absolutely. Most often I catch myself do private browsing in Chrome and 'feel' safer with Firefox. May be my fears are unfounded and yet I do it often.

I like Chrome's "private browsing" mode better than Firefox's though. Mostly because I can have private and non-private windows open at the same time (and they're properly sandboxed from each other).

./firefox -P someotherprofile -no-remote

(assuming you created someotherprofile via Profile Manager - it's dead easy)

(Works on Windows, too)

Right, but in Chrome it's as easy as Ctrl + Shift + n from another Chrome window.

edit: I'll note that I don't believe that the parent to this post should be down-voted. It was informative and on-topic.

Maybe I would have deserved a downvote for forgetting to mention that after opening the second Firefox session you still have to switch it to Private Browsing :-))))

True. I'm not saying that google's integration is necessarily a good thing, but many people like having everything easily accessible, and don't consider the downsides to putting all their private eggs in one basket. I keep wanting Opera to be faster and better on Mac OS X, and while I enjoy Firefox, I'm not a huge fan of the design of it on a Mac.

Use Chromium if you complain about privacy

I don't see how Chromium solves any of the issues he was complaining about. It's not like it rips out the basic designs of the browser, which are still tightly tied to Google.

Chromium and Chrome are identical except for one compile flag (which means you can at least check it yourself):

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3034755

SRWare distributes a Chromium build called Iron that strips out privacy problems.

http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron.php

I used to recommend Iron but I don't anymore. I became increasingly uncomfortable with the lack of documentation and lack of transparency in the project. They delivered their source code as two code dumps on rapidshare last time I checked. Something just doesn't feel right at all.

http://chromium.hybridsource.org/the-iron-scam may be worth checking out, as well.

Thanks. That confirms my suspicions.

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