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It is essential to stop using Chrome. Under the pretense of saving users from third-party spyware, Google is creating an ecosystem in which Chrome itself is the spyware. (mastodon.world)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 134 points 2 years ago (2 children)

"But Chrome is slightly more convenient! Why would I suffer tiny inconvenience today in order to save me from way greater inconvenience later? Who am I? Some reasonable person?" - typical Chrome user.

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  • [–] 62 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (8 children)

    As a former chrome user it's so real. Chrome connects every device for you and once you ARE in the loop it's hard to leave it. Wanna switch to Firefox? Oops suddenly your authentication doesn't work anymore. Oh what about those useful Google logins tied to everything now? Good luck with that.

    It took me huge effort to switch off chromium based browsers because the longer you use chrome, the more it worms it's way into all your services making it harder and harder to switch. I still can't figure out how to seperate my Yahoo account from my Gmail account

    A huge reason I left is realising that if google decided I broke their TOS on something like say, YouTube ad blocking, they can just terminate by Google account and every service attached to it suddenly becomes unusable. I'd rather not be taken hostage like that

    Edit: for all the wise people in the comments. I was trying to decouple entirely from Google products, not just chrome

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  • [–] 42 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    What you're describing sounds more like over-reliance on Google services than the browser. I don't use gmail or google logins anywhere, I just have Bitwarder plugin to manage my authentication and use masked emails to create accounts. I did the same in all the different browsers I used over the years and never had any issues with it or with switching between browsers.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    You're right, but that's still a valid concern. Many people are much more ingrained in the Google ecosystem, especially through Android.

    We're seeing this issue with Microsoft in the buisness space, too.

    And if course we've been seeing it with Apple for decades.

    These massive corporations have a great deal of people so ingrained in their interconnected services, it's next to impossible to convince them to extract themselves.

    This is why the EU regulations focus on "gatekeepers". Because users will not make the necessary changes in their habits to combat the abhorrent practices in the industry. There is no true free market here. So the solution is to regulate the shit out of these gatekeepers to make them open up and play fair.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    IMHO unfortunately most people will always go for what's more convenient, don't care about their privacy and don't mind ads and there's not much we can do about it. Eventually all the content on the web will be locked up behind a paywall and/or accompanied by nu-blockable ads. Most users won't mind that. We'll be left with what we can host/support ourselves like lemmy or mastodon.

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  • [–] 34 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Firefox syncs across devices as well, if you sign up for a Firefox account and enable sync. This works for bookmarks, logins, history, and you can even access remote tabs if you want. It's also easy to send a single page from one device to another.

    On desktop, Firefox has an import feature that will pull your bookmarks and logins m other browsers (like Chrome) into your Firefox profile.

    Even if you're neck-deep in Google services, Chrome doesn't do anything special.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago* (2 children)

    Yeee I'm using Firefox. It's just difficult to desynch the Google services with all my accounts tied to it I had to one by one change em or even make new accounts entirely.

    The worst is the fucking Google authentication app and how it's tied into stuff like Discord...At least I'm out of the Google ouroboros now but it was still intensely painful.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I don't understand the problem. Google services work in Firefox pretty much the same way, yeah? Does Chrome integrate an authenticator app? If som you might want change your 2FA settings at https://myaccount.google.com/security . If you have an Android phone you can get push notifications on it, or you can also use third-party authenticator apps.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    ...the problem is that I wanna get rid of Google services lol.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    Oh, gotcha. I misunderstood and thought you were describing a Chrome-vs-Firefox difference specifically. Yeah, I can relate. I'm de-googling my life but I'm not sure I'll ever be 100% de-googled. I'm taking it bit by bit. I sign up for new things with different email addresses now and occasionally I'll change existing services if it's possible. But there's no way I'm going to go through my bajillion web site accounts and move them all.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    the fucking Google authentication app and how it's tied into stuff like Discord

    The one that implements the open standard TOTP that has a bunch of open source implementations?

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago*

    Now I'm really happy that all the way back in the late 90s I learned as a software professional that depending on a 3rd party for anything essential is highly likely to eventually come around and bit you.

    So when the whole Single Sign-On (via Google, Facebook and so on) bollocks started becoming fashionable over a decade ago I just saw it as a single-point-of-failure dependency on a provider and avoided it.

    Ditto with Gmail - I've been renting my own domain with e-mail service included for almost two decades exactly because my ultimate dependency on that service is a national DNS Registar (not even the provider as I can just move over my domain and e-mail archive to another one) which can't just turn around and screw customers because they're the very same one on which massive companies depend for the proper working of everything linked to the domain names (thinks banks depending on them for customers reaching their website and e-mailing them).

    I highly recommend the practice on thinking "how critical is this for me" and "what would happen if these people went bankrupt or changed their minds" when you're considering getting into a situation were there is a continuous dependency on some external 3rd party provider (this is also why Software As A Service can be a really bad idea versus just buying the bloody software if you're using it regularly and data that you might need for years is stuck in their system with no chance of exporting it).

    Absolutelly: need to use something once or twice, it's fine, but for everyday life or as a requirement for your business operations, depending on an external actor from which you can't easilly switch and who doesn't have some kind of iron-clad tight legal contract with you that includes stiff monetary penalties for non compliance (and, even then, they might just go bankrupt) is a pretty risky choice.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago

    Even if you’re neck-deep in Google services, Chrome doesn’t do anything special.

    Actually, being able to cast to other devices is very easy to do with Chrome, but extremely hard to impossible to do with Firefox, unfortunately.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago

    Chrome connects every device for you

    What? Besides debugging things on mobile devices, I've never sought to connect any device to chrome. Btw this exact same process works in FF too. You're talking about chrome like it's an operating system.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago

    For me it was as easy as download > export bookmarks and passwords. Nothing broke. I even still use my google account to login to some services. It just brings up the google popup and I'm in.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    what about those useful Google logins tied to everything now? Good luck with that.

    What? You can still use your Google account without Chrome...

    Unless you're not talking about OAuth. Is it Chrome's password manager? Because I'm pretty sure that's easily exportable...

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I didn't have this experience at all. I switch browsers all the time just so I can know how they are, it's painless every time. I've used non-chromium edge, chromium Edge, Brave, Chrome, Firefox, OperaGX, and probably something else. Chrome is probably my least favorite, as it just doesn't have any bells and whistles.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago* (1 child)

    Oh I was way deeper than just browser

    I unfortunately had an account, my entire phone linked to it, my Microsoft account linked to it and even my authenticator app linked to it which was responsible for 2FA on most of my non Google accounts.

    It was all interlinked in a way that made removing it from the root hard

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago

    I can't say I relate to that at all. I'm not sure what you mean by having your MS account linked to chrome, and stuff like my authenticator is on my phone, I didn't even know you could use chrome as an authenticator.

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  • [–] 39 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    We can't forget that a lot of people have absolutely no idea that this is happening or what it means. Many folks just think the Chrome icon is how you access the internet and have no idea that there are other options. Helping to educate those folks is going to be a significant part of minimizing Chrome's dominance.

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  • [+] -12 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I use Edge. Seems to be working out for me pretty good.

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  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Edge is chromium btw

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