julian

Google Chrome vs. Mozilla Firefox

“It's built with open source technology — that's good, right?”

Have we lost sight of the goal posts? Why do we like open source? So we can inspect our tools, modify our tools, own our tools. The browser is a tool. But we want to own tools that serve us. Here we're talking about Chrome/Chromium, a tool built to serve its creator's interests: advertising, attention economy, centralised big tech services. Built to serve the Facebooks, the Twitters, the Tiktoks, the Amazon.coms of our world. Built to support “monetizing” us as we use it. Should we desire that tool because its creator is letting us “own” it? Is owning that particular tool good for us? Should we spend our effort debating exactly how “free” it is?

Not me. I reject it. I choose tools that are built to support public standards and for the good of the people who use them. There's currently no perfect independent public-spirited browser. The best fit for my values is presently Firefox derivatives. (That's despite Mozilla's abominable financial dependence on and consequent promotion of Google, which I deplore. At least Firefox lets us operate it in our own interests, by letting us install ad blockers, etc., and has a community of better-privacy derivatives.) Do we see Google building their browser to support local community low-tech protocols and practices, like Fediverse for example? We don't.

And we don't choose a tool just for being given away as open source, when that tool is built to serve Big Tech above ourselves.

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