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Comment by e12e | Hacker News Reader

> IMHO, Edge is the best chromium based browser out there

Closed source web browser? Not really all that interested tbh.

You do realize Google Chrome is closed source, right?

> Unlike Chromium, Chrome is not open-source, so its binaries are licensed as freeware under the Google Chrome Terms of Service.

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_(web_browser)#Brandin...

I greatly prefer Firefox to Edge or Chrome, but unfortunately the world we live in is where some websites only work in Chrome, or corporate functionality requires plugins that only work in Chrome.

Hence, I run chromium, not chrome. (ed: and Firefox).

Using Chromium is a bit like buying chicken meat from a farmer because it gives you that nice feeling of "local fare" and "doing good"; meanwhile, the farmer sources that meat from the same gigantic poultry business that supplies all supermarkets, with chickens kept in squalid conditions.

I don't think that analogy is very good because your can't open source chickens..

Either way, I recommend librewolf, it's an amazing up to date Firefox fork with all the telemetry stripped out.

Yeah, it's just about the fact that the overall negative system continues to be enabled by supposedly-virtuous actions. Google working in the open doesn't change the fact that in practice they can (and do) steer wherever they want, and promoting the monoculture enables their dominance and abuse of user-data.

Closed source with MS tracking and spying from the network logs. There seems to be an army of MS fanbois that angrily downvote any comments critical of crappy MS products in the thread.

I freaking love the new Edge browser, but I only use it on my work machine where I could care less about spying and tracking. I really hope that MS will open source the edge browser at some point. I would love a "Edgium" or "UnMicrosofted" version of Edge that I can use on personal machines. Vertical tabs are awesome.

Probably not as good but https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tree-style-tab/oic... https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/verticaltabs/imimo...

Sadly, they aren't even close to what Edge offers.

My main browser is Firefox with Sidebery. That's what Chrome should copy. Edge's vertical tabs are the next best thing...especially when you need a chromium based browser.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sidebery/

Thanks! I’ve been using tree style tabs forever, but sidebery looks nice, I’ll give it a try!

That probably will not happen. Edge is not open source.

I feel this is necessary here:

https://youtu.be/om7O0MFkmpw

For me it's a trade-off between Google and Microsoft.

Nobody would ever confuse me for a Microsoft fan-boy, but I personally feel more comfortable with sharing telemetry data (which both Google and Microsoft collect) with a software and services company than an advertising company.

More than 80% of Google's revenue comes from advertising (source cited below).

The majority of Microsoft's revenue comes from cloud services, Office, and Windows.

But I understand Microsoft has a trust gap with many folks, based on their anti-OSS activity of the late 90's and early 00's, and I'm glad we are all free to choose.

The only major browser (by market share) that is truly open-source is still Mozilla Firefox.

source: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/18/how-does-google-make-money-a...

source: https://www.geekwire.com/2020/filing-shows-microsoft-really-...

Why not skip trading off completely and just use Firefox?

Says whom? It also tracks you. https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/firefox.html

it tracks you less, and the tracking can be disabled. You could always go for librewolf ungoogled chromium, maybe brave, or whatever else you desire

But still tracks and gives me a headache setting it up when I could use ungoogled chromium instead which with no effort doesn't track me. Why do you think Brave doesn't track you? Who or what told you that, and why do you believe it doesn't?

i dont know whether brave tracks you, which is why i said "maybe"

That neocities site isn't exactly an authoritative source. They consider a company holding any kind of information about you (even for legitimate business purposes) as "spyware". It's the tech version of paranoia and should be taken with a grain of salt.

>They consider a company holding any kind of information about you (even for legitimate business purposes) as "spyware".

What is that if not spyware? Do I consent to them taking that data? When is it ever non legitimate by that ridiculous metric? I don't want any company to have my data for "legitimate business purposes". What benefit is it to me? How is taking data I didn't want them to not spyware? Is it paranoid to not want to be tracked by your brower? If you want to be tracked by your brower, why do you care about privacy or think privacy is?

All of them want your browsing data for their advertising for totally legit reasons you say. So why bother with privacy if you want them to take your data?

They’re being aggregated and sold the same to advertisers. Just because you don’t think MS sells you anything (they do btw, why do they have a store?) doesn’t mean it’s not going to be used for advertising.

OpenBSD maintains a chromium fork that is outfitted with pledge() and unveil(), and Edge belongs in that package repository with similar safety features.

Edge should do what is necessary to get there, and this means opening the source.

Though I think I kind of agree, I tried out Edge, and it's actually not bad, too bad it isn't open sourced or I would honestly not mind using it when I'm already using Windows.

I still prefer Firefox.

Sure, but, while presumably very similar, isn’t the source for chrome slightly different from the open-source chromium, and not public?

(Does chrome have a setting to disable all DRM plugins like firefox does?)

This is (one reason) why I run chromium, not chrome.

Opera at least used to have a (fast, standards compliant) unique render engine and a snappy email client. Beyond IE-mode, I don't se why I would prefer Edge to Chromium.

That said, I'm happy to see first party support for Linux. But for me, being able to run SQL Server is much more useful than Edge.

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