It pushes proprietary features, from what I know it starts enforcing some analytics/ads without possibility to block it out and there are other thing too, but since I’m not really an user I don’t track them deeply.
Based on my personal experiences with IE, ActiveX, Adobe Flash and not being able to fill my taxes without Microsoft license (that was around 800$ back then for me not adjusted for inflation) I am afraid the same will happen with Chrome once it gets enough ground.
“Hey, sorry but we can’t sell you toothbrush because you’re using Safari/Firefox/Vivaldi/whatever. Please switch to Chrome and continue with your tracked and dissected purchase route.”
Is there any other anti-Chrome bastion than iOS’ Safari?
Old E2E runner installed Google Chrome on my machine (didn’t even ask but that’s user space on dev machine so whatever) which grew into my MacOS machine. It cannot run in background but there is another daemon that constantly updates it. Multiple times a day I get notification that new service has been installed to run in background.
I’m not sure if that’s something I want to fight for.
Since you asked, Firefox is the browser to use if you do not want chrome.
not sure it is also possible to compete on battery performance with Safari but that is the only one I see. Drop any other project, any initiative and just focus on this.
Why:
1. Because there is a big chunk of developers who code web on MacOS thus winning them means what they build will run on MacOS
2. Becoming default for this group of technical people means they will recommend it for their families and more important install it for their young kids laptops
3. Can do it with Google money :)
My idea was primarily based on my experience is something like this:
I know (meaning I know what they use) around 15-20 devs on MacOS.
Almost all of them have FF installed. Some may open it occasionally but just as an alternative to open in private mode or check some weird behavior to see if it is cross-browser or cache related.
- personal usage: except maybe 2, all the others are using Safari (most of them) and Chrome few
- professional usage: except for the same 2, here I think Chrome is more used and Safari less
Thus in these developers' case, I don't think they will recommend FF to their friends or relatives even if FF is installed on their machine as it is not their daily driver.
I am in the same category regarding usage: I forced myself multiple times to use FF. Still try to do that couple of times per year.
But fallback to Safari because the battery lasts so much longer and because it is integrated with the MacOS keychain.
One might think that with M1, people might afford to lose a bit of battery but it is the reverse. Seeing how long it lasts one barely thinks of cutting those hours short :) Could mean starting to carry again the power adapter or always looking for a table near a power socket.
Here is a browser that I installed not long ago and start to like it more and more: https://browser.kagi.com