You remember me saying all the praises about Google Chrome being the best browser on the web. That one still remains true, but as I stated in the previous article, all the information that Google collects end up swimming in the same pool of information that will readily be available to our governments to track us. And let’s not mention the hackers and anyone who can obtain those information.
This one is actually the hardest one for me. But the first step in quitting the addiction is going to the root of the problem. The solution ain’t that bad. I have the option between migrating to Mozilla Firefox, which has memory leakage problems on the OS X Lion. So instead I turned to the trustworthy Safari. I believe that all the information that Safari obtains remains on the Safari itself, and it doesn’t share any information with Apple, except for your bookmarks that go in sync with iCloud.
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Making the switch
Choosing a browser is no longer just about speed and convenience — it’s also about data defaults.
It’s true that Google usually obtains consent before gathering data, and offers a lot of knobs you can adjust to opt out of tracking and targeted advertising. But its controls often feel like a shell game that results in us sharing more personal data.
What’s Happening Exactly?
It’s a huge update to Google’s popular web browser in the form of a new extension manifest. It has been four years in the making, and Google itself calls it “one of the most significant shifts” it has ever made in how Chrome browser extensions work.
An extension manifest gives a browser data about an extension that might include details like key files and functionality the extension needs access to. But Google’s new manifest changes how network request modifications work, removing extensions’ power to use dynamic filtering in order to find and block ads. Instead, the extensions will rely on a much smaller list of banned URLs, cutting the number of ads it can block back by 90% or more.
Why move away from Google?
But first, let’s talk about why you might want to move away from Google in the first place.
Maybe you started using Google back in the early days, when “Do no evil,” was not just a slogan, but a mandate, and the search giant had not yet turned to monetizing every last bit of data they could squeeze out of you. Now, disenchanted with the search giant’s effective monopoly, you’ve made the decision to break free as a matter of principle. If that’s the case, you’ll probably be happy with any of Google’s many competitors for the Google applications that you use, but depending on the exact principle you’re upholding by leaving Google, you might want to consider some of the other reasons for leaving Google below.
Brave Is Building a Brave New World
I remember using an extension on Chrome called Momentum to update wallpapers every day but had to remove it because too many extensions were causing my Chrome to lag. Brave shows a new wallpaper every time I open a new tab, and still no lags.
I am moving to Brave browser for the foreseeable future because it solves a lot of problems. It blocks ads and trackers more effectively, it handles my data differently if not better, it allows me to control if and how ads are displayed to me, and I can earn now tokens for using a web browser to do my job.