I second that. The whole problem is that Google is supplying a trojan horse that they use to prevent people from developing solutions from protecting their privacy and in fact they use it to gather even more data about people -- something that ensures unfair advantage over competition.

Even more reason to help push Mozilla Firefox.

Having typed that, I sure hope there are people at Mozilla who would help ensure that Mozilla does no evil :(

They may have noble intent, but they also have conflict of interest given Google basically signs their paychecks. [I do use Firefox regardless]

Unfortunately, from the look of it it seems like Mozilla overflows with people determined to make Firefox irrelevant.

They did lose a bit of focus in the past, but I believe they're getting it back with some privacy-oriented side-projects like Firefox Relay.

Hopefully they don't go under :(

The layoffs last summer tell us all we need to know about the direction Mozilla's headed. I think they're toast. Brave and -- dare I say it? -- even Edge have brighter prospects.

They're all based on chromium though. That gives Google a lot of leverage because every time these projects decide to do something different from upstream it adds to the maintenance burden.

If Google decides to make some fundamental changes to their core engine that would make, say, ad blocking a lot more difficult, would the other chromium-based browsers deep-fork the entire codebase to keep ad blockers working while at the same time integrating the new features as fast as possible in order to remain competitive with Chrome?

Microsoft has the resources to do it, but they may not care. Brave and Vivaldi would almost certainly care, but they may not have the resources to do it.

I could spend all day criticizing Mozilla but I'll use Firefox to the bitter end because of this. In the end there are only three engines in widespread use these days: Chrom(e|ium), WebKit/Safari and Gecko. As far as I know Safari is irrelevant outside of Mac world, so losing Gecko would be terrible for the open web.

Gecko is already effectively lost -- the groups doing cutting-edge work were cut back in August. We're just watching the implosion.

I switched from Firefox to Brave in October and suggest others do the same. Personally, I believe Brave would indeed "deep-fork" the Chromium codebase if necessary, and I'd guess there's a significant chance that other Chromium-based browsers would use it in preference to a submarined upstream.

I'm not willing to write Firefox/Gecko off until I encounter significant issues in the wild, although I agree that the future doesn't look bright.

Check out Vivaldi while you're at it.

A Chromium fork too. Meh.

Albeit a neat skin they put on it, I'll admit.

It seems as if google or is eh moles are monitoring this site because it is not the first time a reasonable anti google comments gets treated like this with no replies explaining why

Bear in mind, that many subconsciously are unhappy with their workplace's policies and effects on the world, but at the same time have linked their personal esteem and identity with work.

By threatening their self esteem, their very identity, by validating what the know deep inside them, that they work to do evil, without wanting to, they must strongly reject/defy such claims to reassert and restore their veiled view of themselves.

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

Even if socia Kali am h happens then the employees pass to own the company thus they would have more of an incentive to act like this blaming this on capitalism seems like a baseless claim in this specific situation

That quote isn’t specific to capitalism and would apply to any economic system where people have salaries.

Kay, stand corrected then. Edited the first line and left only the quote.