I will take “Things I don’t have to care about since I ditched Chrome over two years ago.” for $900 Alex.
google did play this long game pretty well… get mozilla on-board with webextensions format. get microsoft to adopt chromium for its own browser. use every trick in the book, legal or not, to gain marketshare. then start the rug pull. first: neuter the adblockers (we are here), next (and there will be a ‘next’) will be killing ad or content blockers and manipulators completely.
I think next step would be forcing chromium-only web development so FF or any other own-engine browser would not work properly on most common sites. That’ll kill other browsers in an instant.
It kind of works already, seeing that a few complain about FF not working properly on some sites. Also, FF cant catch up with some features GC has like HID support. Anything which is not chromium is way behind and cant catch up. We are in a desperate need of something that is really good and is 3rd party (preferably OSS) to counter browser market monopoly. It is not monopoly yet, but damn it is on the edge.
Yeah, people call me stupid, but I have been complaining for a while about Google using its market power to bully standards that only benefit itself.
The one I got flac a lot for was the https thing. Like yes, https is good, but it also ads an often unneeded layer of complexity for small time web stuff. It also makes it slight a pain for local stuff since you can’t https an IP, it needs a domain.
On top of that, it harms one of Google’s main ad/tracking xompetitors, ISPs. Now, we can debate if tracking is good or not (its really not), but beside that point, Google has a zillion other ways to track you, ISPs, less so, they are not embedding tracking pixels and shit or backdooring your browser history. And Google gets to kneecap them by penalising anyone not using https.
They tried to do the same thing to other competition by pushing to kill cookies, but backed off. Once again, is tracking good or bad? Not the debate here. But Google tracks you other ways, many of their competitors in the ad space use cookies. Or track traffix on their networks (ISPs).
Tracking good or bad is debatable, but lack of competition in pretty much anyspace is bad.
USB through the browser is deliberately not added to Firefox
HID support? We browsing the web with a game controller now?
You can flash a firmware of your phone though google chrome if you want. GrapheneOS even suggests to do it this way.
You can visit controller test websites and check your controllers.
Not sure about this one but technically you can play games through game streaming services in your browser. No additional software needed.
HID API is a cool feature ngl. But I still use FF only.
Yech. Seems like this should be a feature of the OS.
I prefer a WebUI configuration app for mice, controllers, and other devices with firmware-level settings to installed crapware that only runs on Windows (and poorly). I use Ungoogled Chromium exclusively for the HID webapps. It’s a neat part of the “web app framework” side of the modern browser that is almost totally irrelevant to the “browser” side.
See what they don’t understand is that I, and many people like me, hate watching ads more than anything, and can, and will, stop using the entire Internet if it’s all just ads. YouTube is already so shitty that it’s basically already there, and I stopped paying for it and because it’s so shitty now, hardly watch YouTube, trending quickly to zero.
Congratulations, Google. You’re ruining everything.
next (and there will be a ‘next’) will be killing ad or content blockers and manipulators completely
They already tried that!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Environment_Integrity
Fortunately, they jumped the gun on it, and it was shut down … for now anyway, but yeah they’ve clearly shown their intentions.
Maybe then Chrome can finally die.
Google will ramp up their sabotage of other browsers and browser engines, so idk
Seriously, who is still using Chrome in 2026?
Bro. Have you seen browser marketshare graphs from recent years? It is dominated by chrome and chromium-based browsers. HELL OF A LOT of people use chrome in 2026 and it wont slow down any time soon.
At work I am forced to for compliance reasons. At home: laughs in firefox
This one damn bank website does not open right in Firefox. I had a good quarter of my clients at that bank.
When the entire pool is piss, it’s time to get out of the pool.
Thats why I leave Edge installed by default in Windows. You need a chromium brower from time to time, why not just use the one provided?
Because sometimes the wedgie doesn’t work too. I have (and use in the following priority) Firefox, opera, chrome, and edge. I kind of want to install Netscape for fun, but I cheaped on my hdd
Around 2020 I installed the last released version of Netscape out of boredom. Don’t do it. It is an insecure nightmare of bloat that doesn’t really work anymore.
So, about that Zen browser…
I’d recommend you just switch to Firefox instead, and make that work for you.
Zen browser (like many of those custom browser forks) is just someone’s pet project, and is highly dependent on what Firefox is doing anyway. It’s cool to use sometimes, but I wouldn’t want to depend on it to stick around or be properly maintained in the long term.
Politely
No.
Those “personal pet projects” are why Google and FireFox exist as many pieces of their projects often rely on open source components often maintained by a single person.
These pet projects also strip telemetry and respect your privacy.
Those “personal pet projects” are why Google and FireFox exist as many pieces of their projects often rely on open source components often maintained by a single person.
Those are a different kind of pet projects, like some small random math library developed by a guy in Nebraska that a big software stack depends on (there’s a relevant xkcd about it somewhere). The thing is, if support for such a project stops, the Microsofts, Googles and Firefoxes of the world are able to take over support, pay for it to be supported, or work around it in another way. Plus they are usually careful about which dependency they introduce, if something isn’t governed properly or does not have wide community support… it’s unlikely to be included.
Taking on a whole browser as a pet project is something entirely different. Browsers are huge and complex. You’re basically betting that mr-cheffy will be able to keep up with all the changes, like security updates, feature updates and bugfixes, that upstream Firefox produces, and that he will be able to keep his own part of the codebase secure, and that he won’t get burned out or bored with the project in one or two years.
For these reasons, I will never put all my eggs into the basket of some 1-man browser project, sorry.
These pet projects also strip telemetry and respect your privacy.
Turning off telemetry is just a few clicks, or about:config flags in Firefox anyway. And “respect your privacy” is just meaningless buzzword bingo. If you go to facebook or google in zenbrowser, your data is harvested just like everyone else’s. Privacy is a process not a product (browser).
How can something be dependent on firefox but then you put all your eggs in the basket of one person?
This is also INCREDIBLY disingenuous and strips credit from all the other developers who have contributed to the open source project. And even should a project go stale, the beauty of open source is, someone else can fork it and continue it. When a private, closed source project makes a change you don’t like or abandons a project, well, you’re SOL.
This reads as incredibly pro-capitalist, pro-private corporation because they have big dollar.
Privacy isn’t a buzzword, it’s a right and we should have a right to choose it. I choose a product that has no function to collect data such that it doesn’t exist to be collected rather than infrastructure being supported that can allow it to be exposed. As generations continue, being on locked down platforms and sharing your data is becoming more and more normalized.
Also, that’s why I don’t use facebook or google. You, yourself, are on a decentralized, open source platform. Why not go back to reddit? (Though r/browsers voted Zen as the top browser, maybe that’s why you’re here)
Also, it’s a browser dude, there’s hundreds of forks. Try them out? What’s wrong with that? Zen attempts to build a browser that has a different experience to your standard and thousands of people like that. Why is that a problem?
What open source project hurt you? Who was it? Do they have your family?
thats why i use brave.
You know that’s chromium based… You’ll lose access as well
yeah i know,i use the default adblocker of brave. https://brave.com/ublock-origin-alternative/
Chrome messing with my uBlock Origin extension, disabling it and uninstalling it when all this started, was the last straw. I promptly made the jump to Floorp/Firefox and even though I was scared for a long time to switch, it was all good and have zero regrets. I’m very happy I ditched Chrome.
I held out until the first ad got through adblock (about a year ago, I think?). Switched the same day. Should have done it a lot sooner. I thought it would be a whole thing, but I was set up i a few minutes.
Yep! Same experience with setting everything up.
I was scared for a long time to switch
But … why?
I’m honestly asking here. What’s so scary about using a different browser? I’ve got (let me count…) at least 6 different browsers installed on my current machine, switching between them for different tasks each of them is better at.
It’s not like switching from Windows to Linux, where you actually have to say goodbye to Windows (maybe) in order to make the switch. You can easily install Chrome and Firefox, using whichever one suits you at the moment. So what’s so scary about switching?
15 years of use, everything synced with Chrome and I wanted to also decouple browser dependency for password management say the same time. Not knowing if Firefox is up for the task. In many ways.
But everything is fine. I don’t feel I made a compromise.
Because Firefox is still the same legendary memory hog it’s always been
Do you all just leave your browser open and running all the time?
When not gaming, yeah
Huh.
If you keep 1000 tabs open, maybe. Otherwise, it’s not too bad.
More like a hundred.
Guess it also depends on your system. I pretty routinely keep several hundred firefox tabs open with no issues … but I’ve got 80GB of RAM to go around, so it’s fine.
16GB. I put off upgrading for wayyy too long, and now look where I am
The Firefox memory hog issue is worse if you use Windows
…I do. 😔
This teaches us that being open source is not enough. If it’s managed by big tech, it’s still not good. Technically, anyone can take the source and make a fork, but in practice, it’s rarely viable for smaller groups to take a big project and start maintaining it. The same applies to android
Excellent point. The way a project is governed should always be a consideration when evaluating software, especially for large and complex projects like a web browser that can’t easily be forked.
In the case of chromium, basically all the main developers are Google employees … so it’s no surprise there hasn’t been a viable fork.
I really wish we had something like the “linux kernel” of web browsers…
Hello [waves in Firefox]
Seriously, who is still using Chrome?
Many people are aggressively non-technical.
aggressively non-technical
This is the most succinct and level-headed way to talk about this group that I have seen. Gonna have to start using it.
But Chrome is only the default browser on Android. Anyone else aggressively non-technical should be using their own default browser, likely Edge … since Windows comes on their computer and Edge comes with Windows.
Edge is a Chromium-based browser.
There are only 3 “internet browsers” in the world and every thing out there is a variant of them. CHROME, FIREFOX, and SAFARI
Default on the phone is the only thing that really matters anymore because literally everyone has a phone, usually multiple, and only half those people have a laptop or desktop. That’s why in this graph Safari is in second place even though Windows cleans Apple’s clock on desktop and laptop installations.
But I am surprised more people haven’t jumped ship - off any Chromium browser, really. Once they really kill ublock give it a year or two before advertisers manage to do what they always fucking do - annoy the dogshit out of everybody - and you’ll see people switching.
I honestly don’t understand how anybody does things on a phone. For me, using any website on my phone is something reserved only for emergencies, when nothing else is possible.
In my experience, some non technical people often picked up the idea that “chrome is good” and they’ll manage to install it.
So I guess you’re right - the bottom tier sticks completely with the defaults, but there’s a sizable 2nd tier that picked up the idea that chrome is good, and not much else.
Dude, Chrome has 73% of market share worldwide. 3 out of every 4 people are using Chrome. Sad to say: a lot.
Dude, Chrome has 73% of market share worldwide
Internet Explorer had that too at one time.
Oh I’d love to see it drop the way IE did, but asking who uses it like it’s a niche product is just ignorant.
I’d be fine if Firefox had slightly higher market share but selfishly I confess I’m happy being in the small minority who block ads.
If blocking ads was majority behaviour, corporations would fight against it way harder than they do today.
Ugh why is time on that bar graph decreasing as you move to the right?
Apparently Firefox still supports MV2.
They do, but it should also be noted that Google’s implementation of MV3 was specifically designed to target adblocking and we know this because Firefox’s implementation of MV3 still enables full adblocking capabilities. So even if Firefox does away with MV2 entirely, uBlockOrigin can work with their MV3.
it supports it and the dev for ubo has outright had benchmarks that ubo blocks more stuff on gecko engine based browsers vs chromium based browsers even during manifest v2 era.
Will this play into the chrome spinoffs like brave? I know the opinions of brave are strong here, and I don’t care. I can change settings to eliminate their bullshit. i have to admit that the add blocking in brave is pretty damn good and is a big reason I have stuck with them.
i think yes many users will switch to brave once they see chrome cant block ads as good anymore
I will say that the best thing about having an OS install on an unsupported machine is that Chrome and even Chromium Legacy (buggy as fuck) no longer work with a damn.
Not that I ever used the browser in any real way, but oh, it’s nice not to have to fret over this MV2 horseshit… (laughs in firefox dynasty…)
. . . FOR SUCKERS
