I don't understand why this (and all the rest) is not driving people back to Firefox. Are we really going to wait for Mozilla to die, and then lament that Google has taken over the web?
Mozilla's main source of revenue has always been the money Google gives them to have Google as the default search engine. They could stop this at any time to effectively kill Mozilla. So, why haven't they? Because there's this case called United States v. Microsoft Corporation that deals with this very issue of browser monopolies. Now usually a lawsuit wouldn't mean dick to Google because they already have a litany of lawsuits against them that their star legal team is hired to handle. But in this one narrow instance a precedent case is massive, and were Google to kill Mozilla, there would be a league of lawyers jumping over themselves to sue Google on this. Why? Because it's a slam dunk, and would at best force Google to say "hey, you can download Chrome, or you can use these alternative browsers" everywhere there's a Chrome download prompt, or at worst force them to split up. They don't want that.
Regarding Mozilla's direction, we already have years of evidence. It all starts with Brendan Eich's resigning. Whether you agree the reasoning is immaterial; that decision lead him to start a direct competitor that is now fighting them for the ever-shrinking demographic of people that don't use Chrome. And then there's stuff like acquiring Pocket, something completely antithetical to Firefox's core values. Money-wasters like FoxOS (or whatever that mobile OS was called) that distracted from Firefox. And then lots of tick-tacky stuff like FF devtools being inferior to Chrome for years (people say it's better now, but I don't care to check it out, I've been using Chrome's for years), over-focusing on frivolous things like social justice issues. It will be death by 1000 cuts that kills Mozilla from the inside.
"Money-wasters" like FirefoxOS were a gamble to get onto the mobile phone bandwagon, to reduce Google's Android/Chrome moat. If they had worked, it'd have been a huge gain both for Firefox and for users.
> And then there's stuff like acquiring Pocket, something completely antithetical to Firefox's core values.
Pocket itself isn't antithetical to Firefox's values. It not being open source is, but from what I understand they're still working on making the server open source, though at disappointingly low priority.
pocket is mainly an article reader and not really a bookmark service. the whole point is you don't have to send tab of some js heavy news website, you can just have the clean reader view from pocket.
If you bookmark articles, they'll likely eventually go offline or your links will break because websites change and die. This is known as link rot.
There are services, of which Pocket is not the only one, that save you personal hard copies of content so you can have it available offline and keep things even if they're gone. Like a personal Wayback Machine. It's a very sensible thing to integrate into a browser in my opinion, although a lot of the Firefox fanbase, being idiots in love with the idea of FOSS donationware, are hostile to. I used to be one of those idiots.
Simply put it combines "article view" with pinterest style saving. Find an article online, save it to pocket, revisit it later and read it in an "article view".
There's a possibility that they're going to Bing, in which case they'd truly be a non-Google player. Not a non-Big Tech one, but a real anti-Google system.
If this breaks or degrades uBlock Origin it's a day one move to Firefox for me. That's a non-negotiable. I'm waiting until it stops working because I like Chrome's translation functionality.
Probably because v2 extensions haven't been switched off yet. It might be different in January 2023; or maybe the limited adblocking of v3 will be enough for most people. Time will tell.
Ad providers are obfuscating domains to bypass blocks. Currently only ublock origin deobfuscate and block based on the original domain.(It is supported on firefox only anyway) But after the change... I guess no one on chrome can do. And ad blocking will be totally useless at that point.
If you mean ublock origin cosmetic filters, yeah facebook is really putting up a fight. The status quo has been randomized css classes, identical html structure, interspersing hidden junk characters in between the "Sponsored" text, and the latest I've noticed, anchors that link to # until you hover over, preventing blocking href=^/ads. That and turning on or off or changing behavior between users and regions makes collaborating on rules really difficult.
This has me surprised because most of these changes are not very complicated and I have always wondered why these methods weren't more widespread. To me defeating ad blockers seems easy as long as you're willing to play cat and mouse (and if your income depends on it I guess you are)
Around which time Firefox is intending to make the same changes, having deprecated v2 manifests (this post seems to use that term to mean the actual removal) and doing all the API swaps to service workers and the such. Firefox just makes all the same decisions Chrome does, the good and the bad.
Mozilla does plan to support the old request-blocking APIs indefinitely, though, even after the Manifest v3 switch, until an alternative that meets the needs of extension developers is developed.
I never left. But then I again, I replaced everything Google with paid or self-hosted alternatives about 10 years ago. From what I hear, the Google ecosystem itself can be pain on Firefox. Although I check my old Gmail once every couple of weeks and I find it to work well enough. Maybe if you live in things like Google Docs, you start getting annoyed by accumulating papercuts? No idea..
The nuisances are minor. They're enough that if you're just thinking of switching, you might notice them and not do it. But after a while, you forget about them. I couldn't tell you what they were anymore.
And there are advantages as well, such as better autoplay avoidance.
As I understand it, the autoplay avoidance is the same but Chrome has a list of sites that they allow to bypass the policy. YouTube, Netflix, Disney+, etc.
about://media-engagement according to the docs (which implies engaging with the site is required, but I don’t think it is for YouTube).
Youtube is where I notice it, and where I want it to stop autoplaying the most. "It doesn't autoplay, except all the places you want it to not autoplay" isn't what I'd call "The same"
I moved from Safari to Firefox a year ago (never used Chrome as my primary browser.) The reason I moved may sound really really dated, but I discovered that I can configure Firefox with separate search and URL fields. I //HATE// that UI and wanted my separate boxes back.
I wish I could find a extension that removes all motion on a page (video, js animated stuff) but I suspect that would be too difficult to do. I do use a extension that removes all color, but it doesn't work terribly well, and some UIs on websites are too dependant on color as differentiators.
That may be a deal breaker for you. But for others it's a necessary feature! Firefox added it as a feature and I love it! And I say that as a person with a very anti-Google stance. Perhaps it's an area that is ripe for disruption but without using the browser or Javascript.
I use Firefox on all devices since sometime around 2002 or 2003. Never been upset with it and usually my friends throughout that time all slowly go to Firefox.
Firefox mobile did the same kind of stuff... They disabled most extensions, there is only about 15 left... I still have Firefox Mobile v68 installed for this reason.
Because they themselves don't deserve it. I need a browser company to focus on making a good application, not focus on telling me what I should see on the web. Mozilla's definitely interested in the latter, but I don't remember the last time they actually introduced something that made me go "huh, that's good". The company are activists hostile to me and mine, seem to build a worse and worse product in and of itself (discounting devs not building for Firefox) and are funded by Google. What's there to like?
The privacy disaster that's new Edge is constantly doing really good UI innovation with powerful but simple features like collapsible sidebars while retaining native UI.
Vivaldi, well, the whole point of the browser is features, and they deliver. They have three different ways to use tab stacks, for heaven's sake. And they do privacy, and aren't interested in telling me what I should see.
Brave, same. Privacy focus, try to build standalone revenue streams. They actually ship new things, if less aggressively in the UI department than Edge or Vivaldi. And they're not interested in telling me what I should see on the web.
I'd gladly use Mozilla, but they have to deserve it first by being genuinely good in terms of attitude and/or product, preferably both, not just being "not Google". By my count, product's getting worse and the attitude is complete garbage.
Google, Microsoft and Apple all push their browsers forward by their external footprint - Google and Microsoft cloud platforms, and all three by being the default.
Brave's building their own platform, Vivaldi a bit of the same, but also just built-in tools in the browser like a simple notetaker and mail/calendar/RSS apps.
Firefox has Pocket, which is good and a good idea, but their userbase is stupidly hostile to ventures like that, the only thing they accept is a pristine FOSS project funded by donations.
I have attempted to move to Firefox twice: once 12 years ago and once 8 years ago (probably, I don't really remember exact time). I know, Firefox has come a long, long, long way since then, but the same were also promised 8 years ago, and it turn out Firefox cannot handle my use case well to the point of almost being unusable. (That said, my use case are definitely not normal)
It's a lot of effort to move everything: current session, bookmarks, extensions, sync (which mean I need to move on my 5+ devices at once). I have been bitten twice -- not sure if I want to risk it again. No matter how much people are saying how good it is now, it's hard to muster up the effort to move again.
EDIT: Perhaps I wasn't clear enough. Back when Firefox was saying it's as fast as Chrome without being multi-process. They were saying that it's better. I tried. I moved. I got f*cked up. I move back. Twice. You'd excuse me if I no longer believe what the Firefox dev were saying about their browser.
8 years ago, Firefox 25 was released. I don't know your needs but a lot as changed underneath. Notably, Firefox is now using multiple processes, the Javascript engine is probably a lot faster, the web engine too. I don't like every change, especially the latest revamp of the UI, but it is still the best browser for me.
You could try, and them move if conclusive? If you consider switching anyway.
Moving everything before being sure seems expensive.
As I said, I was bitten twice. It's hard to even try now. Back then I try for a few week before committing, but when I move my session (of 200+ tabs) onto Firefox, it's dead.
And back then I was told the exact same thing I was told this time, too.
FWIW, I have 3668 tabs open in Firefox right now. Looks like it's using about 1.6GB of RAM. (Notes: most of those thousands of tabs are unloaded, I block JavaScript rather aggressively, and yes I do recognize the absurdity but I confess my sins here to illustrate my point!)
I have no experience migrating from Chrome to Firefox, but FF can certainly handle lots of tabs. Vertical tab layouts are very helpful for navigating them.
My limited experience using Chrome says that Firefox requires vastly less RAM to handle multiple tabs (anything more than a dozen!).
Re: Conspicuous tab consumption: If I pared down, I'd be more like 50-100 active tabs. I appreciate that Firefox remains completely usable even when I do not pare down. Chrome fails for me at about 20 tabs due to lack of usable vertical tabs layout, even before RAM becomes an issue on this machine.
If you do ever want to try to make the switch again, you might try the 'Auto Tab Discard' extension. It lets you customize how tab unloading works. I had 2755 tabs open without breaking a sweat (down to 1093, woo!). Starting the browser will only load the last active tab and, as you continue to work, your older tabs (depending on your setting) will start to get unloaded.
I want to say this is a feature of the browser itself, but the extension (add-on, whatever we call them now) gives you a lot more control.
As for session migration, maybe an extension like 'Tab Session Manager' will help? It supports several different formats, so surely one of those formats is something that Chrome can export. That would let you move everything in one fell swoop, at least.
