I use Chrome at work and Firefox on personal devices (including my Android phone).
As a heavy user of both browsers, as far as I can see there is really no downside to Firefox.
In fact, even though presumably there are way more engineers working on Chrome than on Firefox, I guess most of Chrome's engineering effort goes towards benefitting advertisers, not users. While Chrome seems entirely stagnant since I adopted it 4 years ago, Firefox gets a steady trickle of improvements and fixes.
Chrome Mobile is the largest reason I would not recommend an Android (specifically Pixel) device to friends or family. I bought one, and I found myself actively avoiding browsing the web on it.
Even after installing Firefox you can’t get rid of the Google Chrome web search bar on the home screen, and in-app web views are Chrome, so you’re never really free from Chrome.
I do understand the why of ads, and I’m okay with _some_ ads. On 99% of websites from a Google search you get a sticky top and/or bottom bar, and interstitial ads between paragraphs and they’re a little annoying but not so bad. But then on about 30% of search results one of those sticky ads is an autoplaying video, which means I can’t actually read the content (since 1/3 of my screen is video) and the “X” icon is 0.5mm wide so I can’t close it without clicking the video. Then there’s the email subscribe pop up on scroll, and after 15 seconds you get prompted to allow notifications for this website.
Using the web without an ad blocker feels like you’re being attacked, it’s aggressive and stressful.
I had hoped the ubiquity of ad blocking would result in advertisers going “hmmm, maybe we can drive fewer people to install these things by acting better”, but instead it’s been a race to who can exploit the smaller pool of users for clicks.
Of course you can get rid of the "web search bar". Not sure what launcher the Pixel is using, as I have a Samsung device, but you can install a different launcher if needed.
The in-app views can be Firefox by just setting it as the default browser. Lest we forget, at least Android has an actual Firefox implementation, versus iOS which does not. Not sure what you're talking about, but if you bumped into certain cases where a Chromium web view would be better for compatibility, you can use a Chromium-based fork, like Bromite, Vivaldi, or Brave, all of which can fit the bill.
The only exception I can think of is Facebook, which comes with a highly customized web view meant for tracking users, but it's not using Chrome directly. And on Android it is the custom to also allow opening links in the external browser, and even Facebook has this option (Settings -> Preferences -> Media -> Open links in external browser).
The only edge that Chrome has is the deeper integration on the "Install app" menu option for websites that integrate with SSB/PWA. Otherwise you can safely uninstall or disable Chrome completely (which I do).
I have a Samsung S21 Ultra, with 512 GB of storage. I can download torrents straight to my phone via LibreTorrent. The other day I downloaded 3 seasons of Star Trek Picard and started playing them on my TV. But first, I used Firefox with uBlock Origin installed to navigate a Pirate Bay mirror. The entire scenario is only possible on Android.
On Pixel devices, the default launcher is the Pixel launcher, and you can't remove the search bar on the homescreen. But like you said, you can install a different launcher.
I don't think I've ever had the search bar on the home screen for more than a couple minutes after getting a new phone.
My in-app web views are also in Firefox. I'm pretty sure just changing the default browser changes this, though there may be a second setting I'm forgetting about.
This is actually my main sticking point on refusing to try iOs. You can't even install Firefox on an iPhone, their "Firefox" is just a wrapper around Safari.
The search bar on the home screen referenced by OP is a Pixel launcher exclusive, which is the default installed launcher on Pixel devices. You can't remove it. You can install an third-party launcher however. You can also use a widget provided by a browser app to put a search bar on the homescreen (all major browsers have such an option).
For the most part, my webviews are in FF (selected as my default browser), but it depends on what app launches the webview. Sometimes it defaults to Chrome.
I was wrong about the web views, I didn’t realize they updated because it seems like app developers can choose to use specific web views instead of the system one.
Also wrong about the launcher, I’m relatively new to Android and hadn’t seen any settings for it.
I haven't played with the default launcher, but you can absolutely get rid of it with other launchers (as many sibling comments noted).
As for the chrome//android web view, you can disable the chrome app and 99% of apps that use android web view have an escape hatch option to just open it in your default browser, so that's also a non issue.
> Chrome Mobile is the largest reason I would not recommend an Android (specifically Pixel) device to friends or family. [...] Even after installing Firefox you can’t get rid of the Google Chrome web search bar on the home screen, and in-app web views are Chrome, so you’re never really free from Chrome.
Meanwhile, on pretty much the only competition, you can't even install a different browser, they're all just reskins of Safari. You'd be better off recommending Android...
Firefox on Android with adblockers is better than Safari with adblockers, but since Safari supports adblockers easily I would recommend it to family and friends over Chrome which doesn’t.
I have been corrected on removing the launcher and how web views work in this thread.
I mean, you bought a hardware device from the same company that sells ads. Of course it is going to be encumbered with mechanisms to get those ads in front of your eyeballs. That's like complaining about getting bit when trying to pet the snarling foaming at the mouth dog.
I use DDG's browser too, especially when I need to access site and don't care about cookies or saving history of that site (the private address generating feature is nice too).
On my Pixel, I use FF mainly, but also have DDG and Chrome (for Google-specific sites only).
I use Firefox on both Android and desktop. It's much better in many ways, and I love it. I do get compatibility issues sometimes, but I'm unsure whether it's because of all of the add-ons I use, or websites being buggy with Firefox.
I suspect it's your add-ons. I've been using Firefox mobile for years and I don't think I've ever had a site that worked better in Chrome.
Caveats: Sometimes launching apps from the browser only works in Chrome and some demos of bleeding edge experimental Chrome features obviously don't work in Firefox.
There are definitely sites that don't work in Firefox, although they are pretty far and few between.
Mailgun is one of the worst offenders. when I mentioned to their support that auth among other things was broken in Firefox, their response was "use chrome"
Yes that is good advice. I wouldn't use Mailgun again if I was starting from scratch today. The email sending infra is pretty solid, but their web UI is really fragile and routinely has outages. And of course, does not work in Firefox.
Here's an example that just got me: the Tesco mobile prepaid login has a hidden recapcha field that isn't filled in on Firefox mobile. It's rare, but happens enough I increasingly try and use chrome for multi step things that will be annoying or problems if they fail near the end, like government forms.
The Dutch national TV (NPO) videos do not play on Firefox for Android [1]. They do play on Chrome for Android and they do play on the Linux desktop firefox. Not sure if its some hidden setting that I need to find or something for the firefox team to look into.
Everybody and their dog want you to download "apps" - I wonder why?
Firefox on android is one of the few defence mechanisms we have.
Actually yeah this is something I'd forgotten about, that is indeed a downside to Firefox.
I had this problem with the British Film Institute's streaming service. I emailed them about it, they replied "please try with Chrome on Windows PC" and I replied "no thanks, please send a refund, I will pirate the film instead".
The other case where I ran into videos not playing was Twitter dot com. I tend not to click links into that site any more though.
Mozilla claims over 700 of their 750 employees work on Firefox. It's a bit harder to find out the number of people working on Chrome. The founding director remarks that there were 40 engineers working on Chrome mobile in https://mdwdotla.medium.com/some-thoughts-on-running-success.... That's obviously just a slice of the whole team. Search results suggest a range of numbers between 23 and 500. There appears to be about 12k in the whole department building Chrome, Android and the other software shipped to users. From all that you can extrapolate that there likely isn't a huge disparity between number of engineers on both browsers.
I genuinely don't believe that 700 people work on Firefox because if that were true the quality would be much different and things would be done faster.
If there's 700 active developers on Firefox then they sure as hell must be having a great time "working" remotely. The development pace of Firefox is atrocious.
One of the upsides to Firefox is ricing it to fit your flow. I got vertical tabs like some other browsers have and its great. People on reddit do alot crazier stuff
> as far as I can see there is really no downside to Firefox.
Profiles suck. Performance (specifically around video) has been ass for years. Many useful Chrome extensions don't have FF versions. Just off the top of my head.
I use Firefox containers as a replacement for Chrome profiles and I find them to be quite good. The Sidebery addon adds sidebar tab groups where each group can have a different default container, I use it to maintain different sets of sessions for personal and work stuff (GitHub, etc)
Containers are really great. Even my non-technical spouse uses them (She isn't quite ready for the temporary containers add on yet though). However, there are some downsides to containers vs profiles, mainly that you can't have different settings.
She is in grad school, and the online learning platform requires 3rd party cookies to work. With containers, this means enabling 3rd party cookies every where, which isn't good.
I set her up a separate school profile that has a different theme. Only that profile has 3rd party cookies enabled, and she knows to only do school stuff in that profile. It is clunky to say the least, even with the profile extension.
I'd really like to see better support for profile management!
I have a unique profile directory for each project -- in both Chrome and Firefox. I use a python script to wrap it -- so when I click links in a non-browser context that will launch the python wrapper, which prompts for the browser/profile combination. It's a extra click on launch -- and each profile needs to get configured (add uBO, etc). But I've got full isolation on those things.
Performance has been even or better than Chrome for roughly half a decade every time I’ve tested, especially if you consider much lower memory and energy usage.
Extensions are complicated because they’re also one of the top sources of compatibility and performance problems. Every time in the last decade or so that I’ve known someone to complain that their browser was broken or slow / using too much memory, uninstalling extensions fixed it. It annoys me because I like the concept but I’m not sure it’s really something developers can be trusted with.
As a heavy user of both browsers, as far as I can see there is really no downside to Firefox.
In fact, even though presumably there are way more engineers working on Chrome than on Firefox, I guess most of Chrome's engineering effort goes towards benefitting advertisers, not users. While Chrome seems entirely stagnant since I adopted it 4 years ago, Firefox gets a steady trickle of improvements and fixes.
So a huge +1 to the last point. Firefox rules.