I’m usually a firefox defender, because usually people are blowing everything they do out of proportion, and straight up making up negatives.
That said, I don’t know what a “modern AI browser” is but I know it’s something I don’t want. Hopefully “AI should always be a choice — something people can easily turn off.” Is a serious statement.
But also, the AI features they’ve added so far have been out of my way and haven’t bothered me, and if what you’re calling for is to use chromium based browsers (gecko down stream is fine) then you are making the wrong decision for the future of the internet. Firefox, chrome, edge, and safari are the only browsers which have a snowballs chance of being accepted in corporate environments, and supporting google over Mozilla is a losing proposition.
Are they? What have they actually done to make it a bad choice? From my memory the last year or so they’ve:
Added some AI stuff that I don’t use but isn’t in my way
Added tab groups and sidebar tabs which I use constantly
Clarified some legalese that didn’t change anything but caused everyone to say the sky is falling for no reason
Refused to deprecate manifest v2
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying Mozilla is perfect and does everything I want. I wish they weren’t funded by google and I wish they didn’t waste so much money on executives, but not only do you need them to stand up to google by continuing to develop firefox (all the downstream gecko browsers would collapse), you need them to continue to participate in web standards committees so google doesn’t get to run away and do whatever the fuck it wants (no other non-big-tech entity has a seat at the table or would get one)
I swear there is astroturfing for anti-mozilla sentiment to undermine their importance in the ecosystem
Edit: I just remembered they are using LLM to replace human written documentation. That is the worst thing they’ve done by far :/
I’m always confused why the energy isn’t just put on pressuring Firefox publicly rather than just sitting in comments being negative and suggesting forks that critically depend on Firefox and can no way continue development without upstream.
Not defending but what’s the alternative to the chromium monopoly?
Most Firefox forks people talk about are a fork of the Firefox version + some patches. You’re better off using Phoenix instead of those forks IMO.
There’s are 2 main browsers, Firefox and Chromium. chromium has a monopoly due to Google, edge, brave, etc. This monopoly allows Google as they dictate what happens to the chromium project, some implementations for features were never incorporated as it didn’t suit Google like JPEG-XL. Even tho its open source its main contributors are from Google. Google dictated the change to manifest v2 to ruin adblockers as it impacts their revenue.
This decision impacted all other chromium forks. I think all of them (maybe except brave cause they may have the engineering bandwidth) now lack maifest v2 support. All because a corporate entity decided it was better if users didn’t have adblocking capabilities.
They have even made changes to their implementations of various standards (HTML etc) and since most webdevs only test on Chromium, you end up with a subpar experience if you’re not using Google or Chromiums implementation of that standard.
So my question as I stated earlier. What’s the alternative to Firefox since even the alternatives are dependent on the work done by Firefox for their fork.
And going to chromium is just allowing your core browsing experience (like adblocking) to be dictated by google.
point being that the active firefox forks are heavily dependent on upstream, just like the active chrome forks. if firefox dies, the forks die, unless they can scramble the 400ish full-time devs seemingly required to keep gecko current.
It’s still tolerably warm, and there are no other kettles that would be worth switching to right now. I use Firefox and if it ever popped an AI feature at me, I turned it off a long time ago and haven’t thought about it since.
Get ready for the Firefox defenders to comment as the water in the kettle they are swimming in gets a few degrees warmer.
I’m usually a firefox defender, because usually people are blowing everything they do out of proportion, and straight up making up negatives.
That said, I don’t know what a “modern AI browser” is but I know it’s something I don’t want. Hopefully “AI should always be a choice — something people can easily turn off.” Is a serious statement.
But also, the AI features they’ve added so far have been out of my way and haven’t bothered me, and if what you’re calling for is to use chromium based browsers (gecko down stream is fine) then you are making the wrong decision for the future of the internet. Firefox, chrome, edge, and safari are the only browsers which have a snowballs chance of being accepted in corporate environments, and supporting google over Mozilla is a losing proposition.
You’re not wrong but Mozilla is real busy making Firefox another bad choice among many bad choices.
Maybe it’s time to go back to BBSes. This whole internet thing kinda sucks now.
Try permanently disabling JavaScript. It will break most sites but what remains is a largely peaceful experience.
Are they? What have they actually done to make it a bad choice? From my memory the last year or so they’ve:
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying Mozilla is perfect and does everything I want. I wish they weren’t funded by google and I wish they didn’t waste so much money on executives, but not only do you need them to stand up to google by continuing to develop firefox (all the downstream gecko browsers would collapse), you need them to continue to participate in web standards committees so google doesn’t get to run away and do whatever the fuck it wants (no other non-big-tech entity has a seat at the table or would get one)
I swear there is astroturfing for anti-mozilla sentiment to undermine their importance in the ecosystem
Edit: I just remembered they are using LLM to replace human written documentation. That is the worst thing they’ve done by far :/
I’m always confused why the energy isn’t just put on pressuring Firefox publicly rather than just sitting in comments being negative and suggesting forks that critically depend on Firefox and can no way continue development without upstream.
Cause most of us have no way to pressure them. What am I going to do, threaten to take away the $0 I’ve paid them over the last 20 years?
But, you know, that’s exactly the reason they don’t care about our whining.
Not defending but what’s the alternative to the chromium monopoly? Most Firefox forks people talk about are a fork of the Firefox version + some patches. You’re better off using Phoenix instead of those forks IMO.
I mean, all modern browsers are forks. I don’t understand your point.
There’s are 2 main browsers, Firefox and Chromium. chromium has a monopoly due to Google, edge, brave, etc. This monopoly allows Google as they dictate what happens to the chromium project, some implementations for features were never incorporated as it didn’t suit Google like JPEG-XL. Even tho its open source its main contributors are from Google. Google dictated the change to manifest v2 to ruin adblockers as it impacts their revenue.
This decision impacted all other chromium forks. I think all of them (maybe except brave cause they may have the engineering bandwidth) now lack maifest v2 support. All because a corporate entity decided it was better if users didn’t have adblocking capabilities.
They have even made changes to their implementations of various standards (HTML etc) and since most webdevs only test on Chromium, you end up with a subpar experience if you’re not using Google or Chromiums implementation of that standard.
So my question as I stated earlier. What’s the alternative to Firefox since even the alternatives are dependent on the work done by Firefox for their fork. And going to chromium is just allowing your core browsing experience (like adblocking) to be dictated by google.
point being that the active firefox forks are heavily dependent on upstream, just like the active chrome forks. if firefox dies, the forks die, unless they can scramble the 400ish full-time devs seemingly required to keep gecko current.
It’s still tolerably warm, and there are no other kettles that would be worth switching to right now. I use Firefox and if it ever popped an AI feature at me, I turned it off a long time ago and haven’t thought about it since.