Firefox is the best browser in many respects. But even if it wasn’t. Even if it was missing extensions, used all my RAM and chewed my CPU, I would still choose it over Chrome. Because using a browser from the world’s biggest advertiser is wrong on principle. And using an ad blocker (I don’t use one) while using a browser made by an advertiser is next level cognitive dissonance.
> using a browser from the world’s biggest advertiser is wrong on principle
Spot on. As said many many times, the browser is the new OS.
If Google wowed the world and introduced a free (beer or speech, doesn't matter) Windows-killer OS[0] that was better in every way than Windows, was Windows-compatible, tons of people would use it. You and I wouldn't.
I think most people use an adblocker to avoid seeing ads, not privacy. Most people (myself included) care more about saving time on YouTube videos and making webpages not have pop ups all over the place than privacy.
I’d be careful not to generalize your own experience here. Just the fact that we are having this conversation on HN puts us in a bubble that is not representative of “most people”.
My motivation is privacy. The motivation of many people I know is “ads are super annoying”. Privacy awareness is growing, but most people are not as aware as the people on this thread.
It would be helpful to share an argument supporting your assertion if the goal is to help people understand and/or agree with your position.
If you consider a simplified definition of cognitive dissonance that goes something like “thoughts or actions that do not match your beliefs or values”, then the behavior described by the parent comment could be cognitive dissonance, but probably only if certain things are true:
- The person understands the nature of Google’s business
- The person believes that using Chrome still benefits Google even when anti-tracking extensions are installed
That said, the people who understand enough to be categorized as such are not the average Chrome user. The average user is not experiencing cognitive dissonance, they just don’t know any better.
