I don't do webdev, so I can't really comment about that. I agree wrt edge being terrible and not being willing to pay Apple prices.
Anyway I switched to Firefox on my computers and mobile system. I use that VPN to try limit Google's tracking of me and I use duckduckgo for the same reason.
Long story short I just switched back to chrome on my Android, because Firefox has kinda stopped working. I used to be able to keep 100 tabs open, not I can't even keep 1 open in the background. When I go back it just forgets what it was and won't refresh. I click refresh and it shows it's refreshing, but then nothing happens.
Nothing I can do. I'm reading some or I see a great article and I open it right away in a FF tab for later. I go back it doesn't load. Then I can't reset/restart it, because it won't die and then it stops syncing, etc.
It's really really bad. Sadly this wasn't the case when I decided to switch about 8 months back, this is only in the last 60 days.
I'll keep using Firefox for now on my desktop, but honestly I really rely on profiles and sync across profiles, which is a pain to get around on FF as it is, but now it's a big burden I can't really see my way around.
Too bad, but honestly I need a reliable tool more than I need privacy at this stage.
* Uses 30-40% CPU constantly on my Ubuntu laptop, causing the entire system to freeze.
* Slow on JS-heavy apps like JIRA, Gmail, Google docs.
* Firefox Android randomly decides to stop loading web pages, requiring a force quit and restart.
* Firefox Android bugged out while writing this comment, the text I typed would appear at a specific location, regardless of where I put the cursor. This and various other HTML input bugs require me to restart the browser again and again.
Also,Chrome might be more secure from a vulnerability point of view but browser exploits(exploit kits) are not a very common means of deploying malware these days. They tend to focus on IE and flash these days: https://blog.malwarebytes.com/threat-analysis/2018/03/exploi...
If you install some 3rd party app and give that app permission to access your data they'll give that app the access you requested them to give but otherwise no sharing AFAIK.
I personally use Chrome because it is secure and fast (and the debugger works far better than Firefox's, Safari's or Edge's). I personally don't use Apple because I don't want to spend x% of my disposable income on iDevices per year, when I can spend 0.x% on Android devices per year. I distrust Microsoft (their security is suspect and their implementations suck: I use outlook for work and the UI is super buggy - I notice unique flaws regularly and have to live with some bugs every day. Like email notifications stopped working the other day - just unbelievable shit). I would love to not use Google, but for the compromises I need to make, it remains the best choice by far for me. Edit: fixed # flaws.