Firefox vs Chrome

Round one! FIGHT!

I'm sure this has been discussed to death in other places, but it hasn't yet been discussed here.

I've been using Chrome for awhile as it seems to use a lot less RAM and waste less space on the screen with bars, menus, and such. I'm thinking of switching to Firefox, though, due to Google's increasingly lower standards of privacy and neutrality. The addon base for Firefox appears to be more robust, too, and I'd like to get "HTTPS Everywhere" going.

Which do you use, and why? What's your favorite feature from the browser you don't use, and wish you had access to?

 

Screw both of them. Opera.

 

I actually have both Firefox and Chrome. And Opera, too.

But most of the time I'm using Firefox. Opera is better sometimes, and so is Chrome, but Firefox I've got customised with everything I'm using, so it's just more convenient for me to keep on using it.

 

I use 4 browsers.
FF - for 95% of my browsing. Plugs, security, etc.
Chrome - (Dragon version from Comodo) for online transactions.
Opera - Just for loading Dredmorpedia at this point. I didn't want the long load times to mess with FF.
IE - When some damn page bugs or insists on IE AND when IE tab doesn't work in FF.

 

Firefox. But I sometimes have to use IE because of incompatibilities, and Safari on my IPad, and when I have to help my mom with her Mac (not a fan).

I've tried chrome -- it's fine, but I prefer Firefox.

 

I have been using Firefox for years. I am still using 3.6 instead of whatever version is current. I will not update yet. It does not always work with the extensions I use. (It did not when I last tried updating, but may now.)

I am a big privacy buff. I use a plethora of system security programs, but nothing automated at all outside of my extensions in Firefox. My list of used plugins/extensions that I know are great include:
Noscript
Adblock
HTTPS Finder
HTTPS Everywhere
RequestPolicy

Those are not all, but they are the essentials. Noscript and RequestPolicy take some micromanagement to get working for each user, but they are the best tools you could ask for to maintain relative privacy and security.

 

Opera's got its perks, but to use Tor/Vidalia you use FF and it's got a bazillion nice perks besides. Chrome is fast, but Google's starting to give me the creeps. IE is terrible and I only use it if the page INSISTS on it. Safari's a joke IMO and I don't touch it.

When I was using Kubuntu I kinda liked Konqueror, which had a FF-ish feel.

 

Google has been getting more and more interested in our daily affairs. They frighten me now. I have stopped using them over a year ago. I now use Ixquick for searches. It works as well, and they have a privacy policy that actually sounds reasonable. Google cannot be trusted to even hold to their "Do no Evil" motto from back when they started. And their terms for privacy change almost every day. Most of the time they bother to inform us when it changes, but they fail to inform us of *What* changed and what effect it has on the original policy.

In short, Google is not trustable. They forgot our desires for privacy and only see us as pennies to be swept into their bank accounts. So Chrome, for all it's appeal remains equally untrustable. (I shudder to breath the words, but I would sooner use IE than Chrome. And I have IE physically blocked from even launching in my system. Not to mention the firewall.)

Google has lost me forever. Lie to me once, shame on you. But if I am dumb enough to let you lie to me again and believe it, shame on me.

 

When Google made their IPO and became publicly tradeable, I think that was a sign of bad things to come. They should have remained private.

 

Yep. They now are "Obligated" to make a profit any way they can. If they fail, even on principle, they can be held criminally accountable for potential profits lost to investors.

That was the first sign of real corruption. They simply cannot recover without buying every share back.

 

Alright, I'm convinced. I'm going to make Firefox my main browser. I already use Thunderbird for most email. I'll use Chrome for intrusive things like Facebook, Google Plus, etc - those things will no longer be allowed to see my browsing activity.

Trouble is, I'm very accustomed to my Gmail threaded conversations and other special features. What do security/privacy fans use for their email?

 

As much as it shames me to admit it, I use the two worst offenders for my primary e-mail accounts.
Gmail and Hotmail. I used hotmail long before it was bought by Microsoft. I still have my one and only account there. My gmail account is obviously newer by far, but is much more functional.
(I still avoid Google like the plague. But I check my account daily and then log out.)

My user names are the same on each of those sites as it is here. But I will not spell it out, lest a spam bot archives it.

As far as I know, Gmail works perfectly in Firefox. I guess I am unsure what you are asking. I suggest you try it out. If it does not do something you want it to do, I would like to hear what it is.

I really do not communicate much via e-mail. I am probably the worst person to ask this sort of thing.

On an unrelated note, give Ixquick a try as a search engine. They have a simple and fair privacy policy. Read this to see what they say about it:
https://us2.ixquick.com/eng/protect-privacy.html

 

Firefox here, it's been my drug of choice for years bar a brief period of using Opera when Firefox kept giving me issues.

It's pretty good, though not perfect. AdBlock + IETabs keep me free from ads but also allows me to use IE if and when I ever need to (which is practically never).

 

From the link above, this quote stands out:

"Q: Why are other search engines not yet following Ixquick's lead? After the AOL story some search engines quickly commented they will not give up recording the privacy data of its users.
Ixquick's competitors are generally very large and often publicly owned search engines.Such a large share of these company's valuations is based on their ability to mine data from their users, they cannot afford to give the practice up. Commercial pressures to increase effectiveness of advertising and other commercial services, and the profit opportunities that arise by combining data collected across multiple services will ultimately drive these companies to make even greater impositions on your privacy. Even though lately announcements have been made by Yahoo, Google and MSN to lower data retention time, their true intentions can be questioned. The way in which IP addresses are made “anonymous” and the ability to continue to combine search data through the use of ID cookies and logins make these promises far less positive than they seem. Read more here."

That last link in the quote is of particular interest, since it illustrates that Google made a privacy policy just for show. It literally offers no privacy whatsoever.

A simple quote from that last link shows this among the more detailed explanation:

"Even though the 9-month-old search logs have been "anonymized", because the cookie values remain, it is trivial to match the newer search results to the older searches, and thus completely reverse the anonymization process."

This is just the final nail in the coffin. Google as we knew and loved died the day they sold their soul for shareholder profit. RiP Google.

/rant off

 

It would help if FF's private/incognito browsing window didn't shut down your main browsing window. If I were to use Chrome, and want to run a quick search in a private window, it's just Ctrl Shift N and keep doing what I was doing before for the most part. With FF, I have to make sure I'm not in the middle of anything, confirm that I'm sure I want to switch to private, wait while everything closes, do my thing, then switch back.

Oh well, Chrome can be used for the same purpose, for the most part, since it takes up roughly 0 ram. Browse on FF, search/facebook on chrome.