Moving to Firefox: the First Anniversary
- Published on:
- Categories:
- Firefox 2, Browsers 2, Personal 16
- Current music:
- Sigur Rós — Sæglópur
- Current drink:
- Peppermint Tea
One year ago, I moved to Firefox. I’m still using it (the “Nightly” version).
Mozilla has made some questionable moves since then.
But, each time I look at the alternatives, I am not entirely sure if there is any reason — for me — to move to something else.
- I don’t want to use anything based on Chromium, as I don’t want to use an engine with the biggest market share.
- Each time I try Safari, I find it lacking in many areas I care about.
- I want to use the latest version possible, so I don’t want to use anything that is based on Gecko, as it would be guaranteed to not be the latest. If I were to use Chromium — I’d use Canary, if Safari — then Technology Preview.
- And I don’t think Servo is ready (but this is probably the one engine I’ll be looking at more closely when it comes closer to being feature-complete).
And like there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, there is no ethical browser development under it. If we’d follow the money trail of almost all browser development, what would we find? Likely, Google’s money.
If Google were to just stop giving money to Apple and Mozilla for the default search, and they would stop updating their engines, would they be added killedbygoogle.com?
Monopoly bad, capitalism bad, and I have no idea what the answer to all of this is.
Of course, there are boundaries that Mozilla could cross which will make me reconsider it. For me, they’re not there yet.
Thankfully, I changed browsers so many times, that if the need to move will arise, I will just move. But there are already so many things to worry about, and the theoretical purity of a browser engine is not something I have spoons to tackle right now.
Not that I have that many of them left. Initially, I wanted to write about Firefox plugins that I’m still using, and those I deleted. Or about my custom CSS overrides for Firefox’s UI. Not today. I’m too tired.
Let’s hope that Mozilla won’t do anything else, and I will write another post about all of this in one year.