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0 pointskypro1y ago0 comments

People say similar things about Google Search, and a few times I've tried not use Google Search but every time I've tried it's become clear that the reason I use Google Search isn't just habit, but that it's the best search engine for most queries I perform.

I've had a very different experience with browsers though... I switch browsers pretty often and with ease. I genuinely can't get my head around why someone would continue to use Google Chrome if they're unhappy with how they're treating their users. The UI between browsers is 99% identical. The most annoying thing about switching browser is just having to spend 10 minutes setting things up, but that isn't going to exceed the annoyance of having to see ads constantly for months or years.

There's really no good reason not to switch browsers. Your habits are not going to change between browsers. Unless you're a Chrome power user and using some very niche features in Chrome there is very, very little difference between Firefox and Chrome for the vast majority of tasks.

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iforgotpassword1y ago

Well, today mostly yes. But at the same time, I've been an Opera user (if not fanboy) for a good decade, until they ditched their own engine and basically started from scratch with chrome as a base. It lost 99% of its features overnight.

I really struggled to switch to anything else. Firefox was definitely the most customizable, but finding extensions to replicate every feature of Opera, and properly at that, was a never-ending nightmare.

Only at that point did I realize how vital a browser has become for everyday tasks, and as a power user, how much you get accustomed to it. Maybe not if you're just running stock Chrome or Firefox with two extensions, but Opera was so feature-rich that I didn't ever install a single extension but needed about a dozen on Firefox to try and mimic it. In the end I just stayed on Opera 12 until it wasn't even funny anymore. It must've been about two years. Eventually so many sites broke that I just switched to Firefox and only installed uBO and greasemonkey. It hurt but over time I just gradually forgot what using opera was like. Sometimes I think back and really miss it. Some of it is just nostalgia by now, but the struggle switching was real.

aucisson_masque1y ago

i keep seeing some people pretend Vivaldi is the new opera, made from the same developer.

did you give a try, is it even remotely comparable ?

iforgotpassword1y ago

I don't remember when I tried it for the first time, but I did like it much better than the new opera. At least they were adding new features much faster. It was still different enough and lacking (to me) important features from the old opera. I still have it installed today as the fallback for the exceedingly rare case that some site doesn't work in Firefox and I really need to access it. But I have to admit that I didn't really bother to evaluate it properly in a long time. An ex colleague doing webdev just recently told me it's his primary browser as it has some nice things to make his life easier that were just more cumbersome to set up in chrome. I just gave up and accepted that at least by using Firefox I'm fighting the engine-monopoly of chrome/blink. ;)

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0 pointskypro1y ago0 comments

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iforgotpassword1y ago

aucisson_masque1y ago

i keep seeing some people pretend Vivaldi is the new opera, made from the same developer.

did you give a try, is it even remotely comparable ?

iforgotpassword1y ago

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