"Begin disabling installed extensions still using Manifest V2 in Chrome stable"

I've finally switched (back) to firefox today.

I switched from firefox to chrome for their superior devtools a few years back, but hopefully firefox has had time to catch up.

Everything old is new again!

This is why we need to break up Google.

Google is a de facto monopoly. They own the entire web. The gateway, the browser, the protocols, advertising, discovery.

Google is too big.

Sure, but we saw this coming a mile away (as in, people have been saying this about Chrome for about a decade). People--especially tech nerds--didn't have to switch to the closed source, conflict-of-interest, browser. But, everyone did, and this is what we get for it. We now have proprietary DRM built in to the web standards, and all kinds of other bullshit, because a bunch of people decided to not learn any lessons at all from Microsoft and Internet Explorer.

But, every time Mozilla does something slightly abrasive, HN users pile on about how Mozilla is ruining their privacy-respecting reputation, and then go back to using Chrome... The double-standard is really something else.

Maybe instead of getting someone else to break up Google for us, we could just... stop using their shit? I'm typing this from Firefox, I use Proton Mail (and pay for it!) for email, and I mostly search with DuckDuckGo (I know that's not perfect, either). I certainly don't feel like I'm living like a caveman...

/rant

Google made something better than what existed with Chrome, it was obvious it would capture the market significantly especially among more technical people.

I don't think the fact that Chrome is (was) better is the question, it's a question of how they got here.

Google took tons of money and threw it into Chrome and therefore developed something better. It's better because Google put more money into it than anyone else would have because, in the absence of considering using it to enshrine their search and ad revenue, it wouldn't make sense.

Isn't this part of the antitrust test?

It was only true that Chrome was significantly superior (performance-wise, anyway) for a little while. Firefox had to play catch up and it took several years. It was (mostly) called the "electrolysis" (a.k.a., "e10s") project. It was considered complete by 2018, and had already offered significant performance and stability improvements for years before then.

I wouldn't be surprised if Chrome still performs better on Google-owned web sites, for obvious reasons. But, nobody is really going to notice a difference between Firefox and Chrome when visiting, e.g., your bank's web site.

So, it's been somewhere between six and eight years that Firefox has had comparable performance, comparable web dev tools, and way cooler extensions. I'm sure plenty of people will reply that this isn't true and there was some website just this week that FORCES them to stay with Chrome because they noticed a jitter once, but people on the internet are top-tier experts at rationalizing and I don't buy it.

We could've all jumped on board with Firefox when the e10s project landed, but nobody did because it was just slightly less convenient to switch than to not. I hope it was worth it for them.