It's not about fun, it's about denying Google the right to exercise complete control over the way that the web evolves. Having independent browser engines with substantial market share is the only path to a web that isn't just an extension of Google, and we shouldn't be relying on Apple alone to bear that weight.
That said, the success of this strategy for containing Google depends on having market share, which Mozilla's recent strategies have completely failed to do, but that has less to do with their independence than it does with Mozilla's focusing on just about anything other than Firefox.
It's only the path of least resistance for a chromium fork. For Firefox it takes a lot of work to implement a feature, which means the value proposition has to be really good for it to make it in.
but avoiding a browser monoculture does matter. having all browsers built on chromium is a serious problem given the way google treats chrome. see the latest decisions regarding extension support and adblocking all of which will end up in chromium. do you think brave will have the resources to fork chromium to avoid those changes?
it's not my fight though. If Mozilla thinks burning all these resources on their own engine is a good thing then, burn ahead. there are worst things to burn money on in the end. and it's not my money...
At least rust came out of all that.
I too lost interest in Firefox a long time ago, about the time they evicted Brendan Eich revealing internal politics.
Most people are just... inundated with ads. Try using a stock Chrome with no ad blockers for just a day. It's absolutely miserable. But every time you add another "setup" step you add potential breakage.
Now, I can just give someone Brave and they can have the same experience most of us do on HN!
Don't forget Apple devices, which use a different engine. Until very recently (or very soon?), iPhones could not use Blink, afaik.
- Chromium customizations: Not necessary in Firefox
- Client-side encryption for Brave Sync: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-firefox-sync-keeps-...
- DeAMPing: I think AMP has been dead for a few years now
- Limiting network server calls: I think this is a bit tangential to privacy, limiting calls is generally good but it doesn't mean you're transmitting less information. Brave's post comparing different browsers' first startup network calls is from 2019, not sure how Firefox performs today.
- Query parameter filtering: https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/toolkit/components/a...
- Better partitioning for better privacy: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Privacy/State_P...
- Referrer policy improvements: https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2021/03/22/firefox-87-trim...
- Fine grained / temporary permissions API: This is nice, I don't think Firefox has this.
- Social media blocking: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enhanced-tracking-prote...
- Bounce tracking protections: https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2020/08/04/firefox-79-incl...
- Limiting the life of Javascript: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-rolls-o.... Not explicitly mentioned but I believe Firefox does have this 7 day limit as well, in addition to other protections.
- Private windows with Tor: Firefox doesn't have built-in Tor integration, but the actual Tor Browser is built from Firefox.
I think Firefox also has one or two features that Brave does not, like Multi-Account Containers, and some paid services like https://relay.firefox.com/.
Yes, Brave subtly pushes some crypto nonsense, but it also delivers on privacy, it focuses where it matters. (It also bundles IPFS and Tor in the base install, I believe.)
And you can say "oh it's still Chrome!" but - Chromium is FOSS, and to me, it shows that Brave focus on what matters (data privacy) and not on what doesn't (writing their own HTML, CSS, JS engine).
I don't agree with the opinion that browser needs to have its own rendering engine to be able to be focused on privacy. I think it's the opposite - using Chrome engine helps Brave to focus on what matters.
But it's just me. It's fun to build own browser engine, I get it, I just don't know if it's time and money well spent.