I'm using firefox for another reason, it is the fastest, most secure, most memory efficient browser out there. Chrome doesn't even compare on benchmarks. They may have had the crown for a tiny split second a few years ago but not anymore firefox closed the distance a while ago and now they're ahead and the gap is growing.
This is baseless FUD; any serious objections he might have are only hinted at: "things I can't talk about". If everyone switched to Chrome, at worst Chrome would get complacent, as IE did, and at best, it would continue to be a great browser.<p>Use whatever browser you like best.
I've been using Firefox as my primary browser since it was called Firebird, and I have to say that I'm on the cusp of switching away from it. It seems like every time I update, the UI breaks. With the latest update, for some reason my address bar is gigantic:<p><a href="https://i.imgur.com/2QlIZwo.png" rel="nofollow">https://i.imgur.com/2QlIZwo.png</a><p>It also enabled address bar autocomplete, which I did not previously have enabled.<p>The previous update, Firefox 29, came with Australis, which left me with a completely unusable configuration and required me to fiddle with yet another "classic restorer" style addon. I now use:<p><pre><code> * "Classic theme restorer" to gut Australis
* "oldbar" to get rid of the AwesomeBar
* "Old default image style" to restore the old style for displaying raw images.
* "Switch to tab no more" to cut off yet another head of the hydra that is AwesomeBar
* "Undo close tab replacement" to restore the Recently closed tabs menu.
</code></pre>
All to fight back against UI-breaking new features. I also had to muddle around with browser.urlbar settings in about:config to restore some kind of sane behavior to the address bar after AwesomeBar was introduced.<p>But what can I do? I obviously need security updates and the latest support for web standards, so I can't ignore new versions. But I'm tired of fighting a browser that I no longer recognize.
I just wish they'd focus more on producing a great browser and less on random, wacky, side projects. Not that the side projects aren't interesting, but the browser is what I care about. Even this person, who is associated with Mozilla can't say anything more positive than "[w]e have a good browser...".<p>That said, he's right... `sudo apt-get install firefox`.
> So if you want an Internet --- which means, in many ways, a world --- that isn't controlled by Google, you must stop using Chrome now and encourage others to do the same. If you don't, and Google wins, then in years to come you'll wish you had a choice and have only yourself to blame for spurning it now.<p>I sympathize with the general sentiment of the article, but this is just hyperbole. I used Firefox when it was the best browser (for me), and I'm using Chrome now because it's the best browser.
Deoesn't Mozilla get like 85% of its budget from Google? [1]<p>[1] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation#Financing" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation#Financing</a>
I think half of the comments on this thread are missing the point - to paraphrase Richard Stallman, the link is arguing from <i>freedom</i>, not convenience. Responding with "but Chrome is better" may be true or it may be false, but in both cases it is irrelevant.<p><a href="https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....</a>
I have been a Firefox user from 0.93 or so, except for a year or so of Chrome usage on a USB disk when Firefox really was performing too badly in that case—but once that was fixed I gladly moved back to Firefox. I see how people use Chrome and wonder how they can possibly stand it, especially if they end up with more than twenty tabs in a window… Firefox is certainly <i>way</i> better for tab management for me. I use Firefox both because I believe it is the best browser for me and for philosophical reasons. (I also have approved of almost every change to Firefox that I’ve seen; 4 was a great thing, Australis was a great thing, &c.)<p>I have also been gravely concerned, as the author is, by what I see at Google. Five years ago, had there been Google offices in Melbourne, I would have enjoyed working for them. In the three years since then I steadily became opposed to Google and I do not believe that I would be willing to be employed by them; they are now pushing the Chrome brand far too far, using a very significant marketing budget on it purely to get people to use it, and from their other web properties pushing Chrome constantly, almost always to my mind deceptively and far too often outright lying. Telling people to upgrade from IE6 was entirely understandable, and I could even forgive that they will push their own browser rather than merely pushing for a newer browser of whichever brand. But if I’m using Firefox, why would you go pestering me to “upgrade” to this browser with claims of its being faster <i>which are simply not true</i>? Four years ago they were true, to be sure; Firefox <i>was</i> slower than Chrome. But that has long since been fixed and the two are competitive now, Chrome winning in some areas, Firefox winning in others. (Of course, I believe Firefox to be winning in more, but that can immediately be discounted as a biased and unreasoned view.)<p>I look at what punishment Microsoft got for its anticompetitive behaviour and I wonder how long it can be before Google is dealt with. Because as it is, they’re just as great a threat as Microsoft ever was to the web, if not greater.<p>Google looks fair and feels foul.
Im sad to say there is only one reason left that I continue to use firefox as my main browser- The most excellent security addon, noscript, by Giorgio Maone. (and before you say chrome can block javascript- understand noscript does much, much more than just block JS)<p>If he was to port that to chrome, I would be gone in a heartbeat. Chrome is (from my experiences browsing the web with both browsers), a better browser in almost every sense of the word. Faster updates, Feels much faster browsing and overall just a more enjoyable user experience.<p>If firefox wants to stay relevant, they will have a real battle on their hands.<p>This latest design update firefox did is especially infuriating. The steps firefox was making me take to revert my experience to what I knew was insulting. I understand you want me to use this new interface, but you are going to hardcode it so much that I have to read a 3 page doc and install random addons to revert it? This mentality seems to plague mozilla. A bunch of FOSS guys get to decide what the rest of end up with every release.
Also a very happy user of Aurora, the new dev tool features in r33 are making Firefox yet more wonderful to browse/work with. I was using Chrome exclusively for years until I began to realize the general ramifications of giving in to an 'all Google' internet. My only issue with Firefox is the still seemingly slower JS engine. I still feel SpiderMonkey isn't still as fast as V8.
There are always going to be people that use a particular browser for a particular reason and it's that competition that encourages the organization behind the browser to improve.<p>Instead of using baseless FUD to try and win people over to your browser, work on making it the best from a usability and performance standpoint so people move over to it naturally. That's what Chrome did to me when it came out and what keeps me using it today.
A bigger takeaway from this blog may be the centralization of information (regardless of the company that does it). I'd be less worried about my browser of choice, and more about my ability to retain ownership of my data.<p>FWIW, I've started self-hosting as much as possible of my 'critical' items, be it at home, or on a VPS. You don't need vast amounts of bandwidth, and it's become much easier to setup over time (OpenVPN, OwnCloud, gitlab, or even just using a NAS with such features).<p>Items that you want to share are a slightly different matter (size, bandwidth, server security, etc), but in general I dislike putting my entire life on social media anyway.
quote about Mike Shaver (mozilla co-founder, now at FB) from <a href="http://john.jubjubs.net/2011/09/15/mike-shaver-thanks/" rel="nofollow">http://john.jubjubs.net/2011/09/15/mike-shaver-thanks/</a><p>> And he affected my framing of the problem deeply – I remember one day a couple of years back when we were talking about some market share point, thinking about how incredibly, insanely competitive the browser technology landscape was – and he said to me: “Look, this is the world we wanted. And this is the world we made.” Wow. Exactly right. He taught me so much about how enormous an impact a group of dedicated people can make.
Chose it years ago and was never really taken by Chrome, I usually install it to test against from time to time but I spend 95% of my browsing time within Nightly (daily browser for 9 years now!)
I switched to Chromium back when they first started with the fast release system and kept breaking my plugins. I've thought about switching back but need Chromium's ability to run newer versions of Flash. So I want to run both, but I have a large bookmark collection I use all the time and have found no good way to either keep the 2 browsers bookmarks in sync or an external bookmark management program.<p>Anyone have a good solution to bookmarks? This would be for Debian.
I was using Firefox to keep the web free, but then they agreed to start supporting DRM and I figured out here is no point to do this any more. I use Chrome now.
You shouldn't use a product only because you're worried the competition will do something theoretical; you should use a product that provides you with the best value.<p>For me, right now, it's Chrome. Before Chrome it was Opera. Mozilla needs to focus on providing better value in their browser rather the current releases which seem to always contain odd half-assed features.
I try to use FF every now and then, but unfortunately, Chrome is just a better browser in every respect, for my needs. My configuration is pretty simple, no flash, no java, no silverlight, no nothing. With FF I always get the feeling like I'm running a single threaded app, and where one tab can interfere with the performance of the other.
I was a huge proponent of Firefox for years (since Netscape 6), version 30 broke it so badly I had to move on to Chrome, two tabs open no plugins and it crashes on a machine with 16Gb of ram if left open over night, and the bug is trivial to reproduce. Updates haven't remedied the situation. When Google no longer monetizes Firefox via paying them to be the default search engine I don't see Firefox staying relevant, it's a shame I miss built in (no plugin needed) tab grouping, I miss having a search box that doesn't tell Google everything I'm typing as I'm typing it, and I certainly miss the smaller memory footprint. I just can't handle the constant crashing, the webpages that render as a completely black box (whether video acceleration is check marked or not) and the continued degradation in performance while they spend developer cycles on things like making it look like Chrome (a move I detested) or removing options power users and professionals use. Most of the time I can use about:config to restore functionality but should I have too? (echos of Gnome).
Even if chrome does end up gaining a monopoly on browsers (or google in general is in a monopoly position), eventually they will cease to innovate and will be taken over by the underdog (or the newest/best solution).
I just tried using Firefox again after reading this. I stopped after 2 minutes, when I realised installing the flash plugin was a pain. Apparently Adobe stopped supporting Flash for linux in 2012.
Err... Didn't Internet Explorer have 90% browser share 10 years ago? (i.e. Microsoft achieved exactly what this post is warning against?)<p>And yet, somehow we aren't all living in a Microsoftian dystopia.
IE and Safari are always (for some reasonable definition of always) going to exist. Firefox is the browser whose entire revenue stream is based around hoping Google DOESN'T want a browser monoculture to develop. If Mr. O'Callahan wants to use Firefox as a way to stop Google from taking over the web, there's two things he as a Mozilla coder he could do that would be far more effective than histrionic blog posts that say "other bad things are happening that I can't even talk about" and expect me to be able to fill in the blanks:<p>1) Build a better browser than Chrome, and
2) Come up with a way to generate revenue that doesn't depend on Google's benevolence towards Firefox.
Mozilla is not interested in enterprise users, so my employer chooses to only use chrome and internet explorer internally, and for supporting internal and external products.
If the first thing you have to say about yourself is that you're "Christian", I don't know that I really care what else you have to say.<p>Are non Christians suppose to be offended ? Will I be able to ignore the fact that he may be a pro-lifer supporting attacks on abortion clinics? A tea-bagger...<p>Find it tasteless to present oneself this way, and it seems it's only Anglo-Saxon Christians who choose to do so. As if they're a persecuted minority coming out of the closet.<p>Did anyone ever see non Christians introducing themselves on their blog by their religion or belive system? Jon Doe, atheist? Jane Doe, Muslim?
I'm not going to switch because of some imaginary ideological reason I couldn't care less about. I'm not going to switch until Firefox is actually better (I use both on a daily basis when developing).
Good. I hope Mozilla goes away. They think everything should be "web". They think everything should be "open". They don't respect native platforms and they want to keep the web duct-taped together the way it is instead of making something better that is actually an application platform. I disagree on all counts.<p>(Remember folks, don't down-vote just because you disagree! Sorry if it offends your sensibilities :)