Most of the Chromium-based browsers remove Google's telemetry and integrations, so if someone has a problem with Chrome "looking over my shoulder", then they have many more alternatives.
And sure, Manifest V2 will disappear in all those forks, but many browsers have built-in adblocker instead, for example both Opera and Brave claim to. And other than adblockers, what else is lost in Manifest V2?
Mind you, I am still using Firefox, but saying "the only alternatives are Chrome and Firefox" is completely incorrect.
This exactly what I disagree with and I think I supported my argument quite clearly. The more we say "Chrome is not Chromium" the more stuff like V2 will happen. At some point we need to admit that the dominance of Chromium does in fact give Google power over the web
It is kind of the same daydream as the Windows 11 debloaters have that if they just keep doing that, everything will be okay. That is until Microsoft implements features they can no longer fully disable, like recall, or just exercise their control to revert any changes at will.
Jk but tbh I think group them in with Firefox
Tired: Firefox
Wired: Floorp, Midori, Mullvad Browser, SeaMonkey, Waterfox, Zen, GNU Icecat
Inspired: Basilisk, Pale Moon
The future looks pretty clear to me. We will have to use two browsers. One government approved, google (or some other thing) vetted browser for all the official and banking stuff. One other for all the other causal stuff.
This would be bundled as a single package, with something like firefox containers automatically switching to the "approved" browser based on domain loaded in the tab.