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Comment by ferguu_ | Hacker News Reader

Just curious, what is wrong with the Firefox source code specifically? I've used it for a couple years and haven't noticed anything awful, but if there's something I'm not aware of and it's as bad as you say I'll swap in a heartbeat.

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Not a problem with the source code, but did you see that Mozilla has literally become an advertising company?

• https://archive.md/6Un3E (using archive.md to avoid a disappointing problem with the source website)

Mozilla seems to still claim they're "stewards of the open web", yet they're so far off topic it's just impossible they can believe that with a straight face. :(

>Mozilla has literally become an advertising company

How is this relevant? Assuming what you say is true. The alternative GP promotes is building browsers atop Google's engine. If Mozilla is "literally an ad company", what is Google with ~80% revenue off ads?

You have no problem with Google being an ad company?

Oh damn that sucks, still nothing affecting user experience... yet. Reminds me of a nightly build I saw where they tested forcibly putting fakespot products on the frontpage. [https://blog.nightly.mozilla.org/2024/11/19/experimental-add...]. I think they knew this was gonna be controversial, you'd think the blog title would mention something like this but they choose to focus on smaller bug fixes and tuck the literal forced advertising near the bottom. For now I'll stick around, but if this stuff ever gets released / impacts the way the browser functions I'll have to find something else.

If you're using macOS, then Orion might be a good option:

https://kagi.com/orion/

It's many things; overall low-quality compared to Chromium. Thankfully they have deprecated XUL a few years back which was really holding people back in major ways, but yeah, it's not good. People don't like to hear that, but that's probably the reason why Chromium won. Much easier to patch it, & the inner layout of components, separation make more sense.

Sorry, could you be a bit more specific? As a user, not a developer, I'm curious if there's any flaws in the source code (potential security vulnerabilities, inefficient code that might cause slow / slower execution, dodgy third party data extraction, stuff like that.) that might affect day-to-day user experience. Personally, when I switched from Chrome to Firefox, I found I had much more control over each aspect of the browser experience and that's been the main reason I've stayed. I especially like the "about:config" page, chrome is sorely missing something similar.

Until recently, Firefox was quite slow but with the Quantum release they addressed it somewhat. From a user perspective, I say, if you like it, trust Mozilla, don't care about what they have become, you're fine. In my opinion, it's only downhill from here. That said, I think they did a good job over the years on security, the containers are neat, however the profile design in Chromium is probably superior. The majority of Web security research comes from Google, they invest deeply into security, although it doesn't matter as much because they're also cooperating with the industry, coordinated release is a thing, etc. The cache model specifically is more powerful in Chromium; memory usage is often touted as advantage for Firefox, but it's a statement on how Chromium cache model is superior more than anything.

I'm not sure what "aspects of the browser experience" you're referring to specifically, but I would guess it's probably marginal as in terms of Web standards Firefox is playing catch-up. It took them a long time to implement JIT in the engine at the point when V8 had it for years; touted as a huge accomplishment, and it was—considering how it's so hard to work with Firefox codebase. There's a dedicated group of developers punching above their weight, unfortunately they're at a disadvantage.

Hmm... alright, thank you. I'll stick with what I've got for now. You're right though, it seems like Mozilla is looking for a way to monetise their platform, at the expense of user experience.

You mentioning memory usage reminds me of this article, which was actually the reason I switched over. [https://www.pcmag.com/news/firefox-power-user-keeps-7400-plu...] Not sure if you could do that in Chrome!

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