this post was submitted on 29 Dec 2023
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[–] t3rmit3@beehaw.org 29 points 10 months ago (6 children)

Why would anyone not using an Android use Chrome? If you're tech savvy enough to be installing alternate browsers, why choose the one whose parent company actively harvests everyone's data (and which is more bloated than Edge, FF, and Safari)?

[–] chahk@beehaw.org 53 points 10 months ago (5 children)

Firefox on Android works great too. I'm slowly degoogling my life, and this was by far the easiest step.

[–] zhunk@beehaw.org 8 points 10 months ago

Same. The tab sync from desktop to mobile is also really cool.

[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 5 points 10 months ago

There's also Firefox Focus, which is like being in incognito mode all the time.

[–] t3rmit3@beehaw.org 5 points 10 months ago

Absolutely, I use FF on my android phone, I just don't expect normies to install separate browsers on their phones. That's why it's so perplexing to me that someone who knows enough to call it something other than "the internet... app" like my dad did this past week, would go and install the worse option if it wasn't the default.

[–] howrar@lemmy.ca 3 points 10 months ago

too

Funny that you say that. I always get the low end phones so I don't expect much performance-wise. I didn't even know it was possible for me to have a reasonable mobile web browsing experience because Chrome was always so awfully laggy while also making everything else lag and I didn't expect Firefox to be any different. Then I actually tried it, and holy shit the internet actually works. Not only that, I can't even tell that I'm browsing on a shitty low end phone.

[–] Hominy_Hank@beehaw.org 2 points 10 months ago (5 children)

How do you get Firefox to work on Android? I have nothing but issues on my pixel 7 pro. It's the only browser that constantly crashes, randomly takes forever to load pages, doesn't go to full screen mode without force quiting the app every time, and doesn't always sync with PC browser.

[–] gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 10 months ago

Sounds like a bad extension or something my gu Pixel 6 Pro, 7A, 8 Pro, and 4 all running FF in my family no issues

My 6 and 8 pros even have multiple extensions running smoothly

[–] TheGreenGolem@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 10 months ago

I have a Pixel 7. I have none of those issues you mentioned. FF works wonderfully for me.

[–] Lowbird@beehaw.org 6 points 10 months ago

Weird. You don't have any potentially problematic extensions installed?

You could also try Firefox Nightly, though I suspect it may not be better for you if the regular one is broken.

[–] 0xtero@beehaw.org 2 points 10 months ago

Running FF on Pixel 7. Have only uBlock Origin, no other addons. Runs great, never any problems. Syncs with my desktop.

[–] limerod@reddthat.com 1 points 10 months ago

Maybe your install is bugged. Try clearing the cache and a app restart if that doesn't fix the issue. Uninstall and reinstall firefox (backup your data 1st before).

Firefox has and is buggy on android. You may need to occasionally restart it once a while. It will continue to be improved. But, that may take time. Like the increased extensions which took years after the rewrite.

[–] guyrocket@kbin.social 13 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Your question assumes that users have a clue. Unsafe assumption.

[–] t3rmit3@beehaw.org 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I expect the clueless ones to use the default, pre-installed browser, which on a computer isn't Chrome.

[–] ColdCreasent@lemmy.ca 2 points 10 months ago

A lot of computers people buy from box stores are preloaded and configured to use chrome as the default for many years. Newer prebuilt a May no longer do that, but I doubt it.

[–] datavoid@lemmy.ml 9 points 10 months ago

Because for years chrome was a solid choice, and most people don't actively research browsers

[–] notfromhere@lemmy.ml 5 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I would have agreed with you about Edge when it was MS’s own engine. It was lightweight and fast. Even early builds on the Chromium stack were decent. Lately, Edge is more bloated than Chrome! It’s really showing MS’s true colors these days.

[–] Fizz@lemmy.nz 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Microsoft has always impressed me with their ability to ruin genuinely good products.

[–] be_excellent_to_each_other@kbin.social 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I couldn't help but think of this (nearly 20 year old) video in response to that comment. 😁

https://youtu.be/EUXnJraKM3k

[–] beefcat@beehaw.org 2 points 10 months ago

you could forgive the obnoxiously stupid packaging and marketing if the device inside that box was still as good as an iPod, but we all know a microsoft i-pod in 2005 would have been a clunky piece of crap. they didn’t figure out the zune until after the iPhone launched and it still wasn’t as polished as iPods from years earlier

[–] zhunk@beehaw.org 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I used Edge a bit at work because it feels like Office365 stuff runs better on it, but that might be placebo.

[–] notfromhere@lemmy.ml 1 points 10 months ago

Firefox runs it all just as good!

[–] Sina@beehaw.org 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Because people are lazy to switch. 10 years ago Chrome was a far better browser than anything else & people have their google account filled with their passwords & bookmarks now. Most don't even know how easy it is to migrate all that to Firefox, or that Firefox is actually good since Quantum.

Also why would you use Chrome on Android? On Android at least you can switch to other stuff, unlike on iOS.

[–] t3rmit3@beehaw.org 1 points 10 months ago

I wasn't arguing people on Android should use Chrome, it's just the default browser, so I don't expect most people to replace it.

[–] HairHeel@programming.dev 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

It doesn’t matter what browser you’re using. Everything Google was tracking here is the stuff all browsers send in incognito mode. This lawsuit was totally frivolous

[–] t3rmit3@beehaw.org 4 points 10 months ago

That wouldn't make it frivolous, that would just mean the others should be sued too. :P

[–] Max_P@lemmy.max-p.me 19 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The irony with this is if incognito was really untracable then the government would be pushing to make it less secure just like they're already actively trying to force backdoors in Signal and other actually private services because "think of the children".

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I just want to chat with my friends in private, we're not talking about anything bad just video games

But the children, Scrubbles, think of how they'll be exploited

No I think there are other ways to solve that problem that don't involve reading all of my messages. What about hashing word combinations, or AI that could give a warning indicator to companies without giving out all of the...

THE CHILDREN, THEY NEED OUR PROTECTION

o ok.

[–] jcg@halubilo.social 1 points 10 months ago

Well if you're not doing anything wrong why try to hide it at all?

/S

[–] MiddledAgedGuy@beehaw.org 13 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Probably preaching to the choir in the largely tech savvy world that is the Threadiverse, but going to PSA nonetheless. If you're concerned about privacy, don't use anything associated with Google. Because IMO this is entirely unsurprising.

[–] BigTrout75@beehaw.org 12 points 10 months ago

I want my $2

[–] peter@feddit.uk 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

So what exactly are they alleged to have tracked from incognito users? The article mentions search history, which of course they're going to continue to track because Google the search engine is not the same as Google Chrome the browser and the search engine has no business knowing or caring if you're in incognito mode or not

[–] t3rmit3@beehaw.org 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Chrome sends the text, progressively, as you type it into the address/search bar, so it can auto-complete results. This is what I believe they were referring to. Even if you don't use Google as the search engine, it still sends those characters to Google.

If you set up ZAP/ Burp/ etc you can watch the requests go out in realtime.

[–] peter@feddit.uk 1 points 10 months ago

Oh right, I suppose they could've not done that that's true

[–] autotldr@lemmings.world 2 points 10 months ago

🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:

Click here to see the summaryGoogle has agreed to settle a US lawsuit claiming it invaded the privacy of users by tracking them even when they were browsing in "private mode".

US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers put a scheduled trial for the case on hold in California on Thursday, after lawyers said they had reached a preliminary settlement.

It said this had turned Google into an "unaccountable trove of information" on user preferences and "potentially embarrassing things".

It added that Google could not "continue to engage in the covert and unauthorized data collection from virtually every American with a computer or phone".

Earlier this month, the technology giant said it would pay $700m to settle a lawsuit brought by a group of US states that accused Google of quashing competition to its Play Store on Android devices.

The video game company sued Google in 2020 for unlawfully making its app store dominant over rivals.


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