Hacker News Reader

Comment by s0ss | Hacker News Reader

Advertising companies shouldn’t be in the browser business. It’s a really bad conflict of interest. Chromium is a mistake.

Firefox is pretty great. But IMO they have some poor ux defaults that make it unappealing to random people who simply want a browser.

View on HN

There is no “browser business,” because people are - with rare exceptions - unwilling to pay for a web browser. Even Firefox is ad-supported indirectly via its default search contract with google.

There is a browser business when the browser company is also in the ad business.

Chromium being open source is not a mistake. Letting google be the sole driver and not forking it has been. People who want control over their browsers have options. It's a fight because most people don't care about these things.

And, Mozilla is more and more becoming an advertising company which is really worrying.

With their anonym acquisition and the "privacy preserving" attribution stuff they now have an active interest in advertising.

Right. For example, Firefox Mobile doesn't support hitting ctrl+T to open a new tab, completely breaking flow for anyone on a tablet with a keyboard or their phone docked to a monitor.

One can simply fire up a claude and tell it what you'd like to change. A few minutes to sign the extension and Firefox does exactly what you'd like it to. I relayy just do not understand why HN comments pretend this option doesn't exist, or that this is so hard. I have extensions linking it with my i3 setup, setting custom CSS on wm actions, custom shortcuts, what have you. It takes maybe an hour of work to do it nicely.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com