> If tomorrow Google turns next-level evil in terms of privacy / steering the web, Microsoft will have forked Chromium within a week

Or, Microsoft will be happy with this "next-level evil."

> If tomorrow Google turns next-level evil in terms of privacy / steering the web

My fear isn't that tomorrow Google will start doing the browser-monopoly equivalent of kicking puppies and twirling a black mustache.

My fear is that Google has gradually accustomed everyone to their monopolistic dominance over the web, to the point where they can engage in blatant monopolistic privacy-destroying activities like privacy sandbox and people will still rush to their defense saying "but they haven't broken out the mustache twirling yet!"

I’m not defending Google. I completely excised them from my life almost a decade ago already.

I’m simply freeing people from the illusion that Google has “won the web” or whatever. Google is effectively giving everyone a free ride with Chromium. They aren’t forcing anyone onto Chrome (where the real tracking happens), and if they did by making Chromium private from now on, again, forks and upstream swaps would happen at lightspeed.

How much more evil do you want Google to get before it’s problematic that they control the portal through which most people interact with the web (both browser/engine and search)? And why not use Firefox (or Safari/WebKit) already?

> And why not use Firefox (or Safari/WebKit) already?

Mozilla these days seems more happy at pumping out tech-woke messages rather than being privacy first. Hell, they’ve refused to add an adblocker to their iOS browser for years now.

3rd party WebKit browsers are more rare, thus less well-developed.

I’ve settled on using Brave.

I like Brave, but I cant recommend it to my less-than-techie friends because of the bullshit that you have go through to disable (VPN, Wallet, advert related stuff, etc), which confuses people and gets in the way.

Yeah I agree it is annoying, but ultimately browser dev needs to be paid for somehow.

Brave does it via their extras. Mozilla mostly via their search deal with Google.

What are “tech-woke” messages?

> Today, I upgraded to Firefox 106. Upon opening Firefox, I received a very creepy message saying:

> "Thank you for loving Firefox".

> I really resent the presumptuousness of this message. I never told you I "loved" Firefox. How could anyone "love" a Web browser? It's a functional tool: a doorway to the Web.

I am dying. This has to be one of the funniest things I've read all year.

Agreed that was fun to read. I can relate as sometimes I too get angry and rant at marketing copy. And really, why does Mozilla want me to pick a color for Firefox when I just want to use it? I guess I'll stop now.

> why does Mozilla want me to pick a color for Firefox when I just want to use it?

Guess I just don't care. Some people want it. I mean I change my theme. But there's defaults and I don't have to think about most of these things and they don't affect me or anyone I know, so why care? lol

Afaik they want the same thing as google, our data, just geared their way. We are not protesting that Google is doing it, but more the general fact that it is done.