Chromium is not a good alternative: 95% of Chromium commits come from Google. [2]
[1]: https://wiki.rossmanngroup.com/wiki/File:501c3_2023_990_Mozi...
[2]: https://chromiumstats.github.io/cr-stats/authors/company_aut...
Or ... Chromium is the perfect alternative ... as long as it remains open source and privacy invasion can be easily stripped out of it. Let Google fund most of the development of a privacy respecting browser (i.e. Brave).
And if it doesn't remain open source? Then it's time for a fork --- just like it is now with Firefox.
Bottom line: If you reject Chromium, shouldn't you also reject Mozilla/Firefox? Virtually all development over the past decade was funded by Google.
Why would they do that? (I mean, they wouldn’t stop it in one go, but they sure as hell will try to push users off the web.)
> If you reject Chromium, shouldn't you also reject Mozilla/Firefox? Virtually all development over the past decade was funded by Google.
Which is exactly the problem :-)
If Chromium can live on without Google – I don’t mind it. My primary concern is Firefox, though.
???
Google's revenue stream is almost wholly dependent on the web and the privacy invasion it facilitates. Pushing users off the web would be self defeating.
Brave offers everything Firefox does and more --- like privacy by default (which Firefox could but won't do for obvious reasons) --- all without millions in direct Google payola.
Yes, ManifestV3 nerfs adblocking, and Google loves that side effect. It will hamper Brave' internal adblocking engine.
I think the big interesting question is: if Brave figures out how to add improvements to ManifestV3 that aid adblocking without sacrificing performance or privacy/security, will Google accept the PRs?
Genuine question from a FF user.
For each profile, you would have to install again every extension, set every setting, every bookmark,.. of course no sync between your main profile and others.
Can't right click on link to open them in another profile.
No automatic opening of profiles when you go on a specific url
And so on.
On the other hand, brave will push it's crypto crap, web3 and 'bat coins' everywhere.
- Replacing ads on pages without owner's intervention, under the guise that they were offering owners a cryptocurrency
- Inserting their own referral codes on websites
- Installing their VPN software on Windows machines without consent
They also introduced a Tor mode into their browser that sent DNS requests unmasked to your ISP. I don't know why you would trust Brave at this point.
*When* Google asks them to remove manifest v2, what do you think they'll do?
It’s even more pointless than removing it from Chromium though: Firefox users would just switch to a fork that still supports it, or to a fork that supports blockingWebRequest APIs on v3 extensions, or to a fork that implements some other ad blocking method. With Chromium, they at least have Chrome users, many of whow wouldn’t want to even bother. (Those who do have migrated to forks already)
Do you think that in open source there's no ownership?
This is a non sequitur. Google supplies Mozilla with money, but Mozilla decides how to deploy that money. This is significantly different than Google directing the development of Firefox, which they clearly don't do. They absolutely do direct the development of chromium, however. It makes no sense to trust an advertising company to direct the development of your browser, but not to trust a nonprofit. Conversely, it makes perfect sense to place more trust in a browser developed by a nonprofit, even one funded by an advertiser, over a browser developed by an advertising company. Web attestation and manifest V2 are both examples of exactly why this is the case.
Google engineers write specs for new APIs. They get rejected by Mozilla and Apple on privacy and security grounds. Google implements them anyway. Other Chromium-based browsers get these APIs as a result. Then they start popping up on sites showing Safari and Firefox “failing” to implement them. Then web developers ask why Safari and Firefox are so “behind” in implementing “web standards”.
This mechanism is how the web standards process is being subsumed into “whatever Google wants” instead of being a collaborative effort between multiple rendering engines. Google should not be able to unilaterally decide what is and isn’t a web standard.