Not using Chrome is so easy. I mean, Firefox is right there and is a better browser to boot. I genuinely have no idea why people still use Chrome for everything.
I keep going back and forth with Firefox and Vivaldi. The chrome based browsers just tend to run better. I love firefox on mobile but on desktop it’s tougher for me to stick with. Also Mozilla seems to have a different goal for the future with all the other products and ai weirdness they recently announced.
All chromium browsers are supporting Google’s grip on the internet.
This is true. Which is why Mozilla needs to focus on making a better browser instead of adding their own ai bullshit.
Mozilla has frequently pointed their efforts into the wrong direction. We need to politely encourage them to focus on the things that matter.
I’m in the exact same boat. Vivaldi devs are so open about everything they do that they’ve honestly earned my trust in their browser.
No nonsense and very clear options to disable data collection despite being a chromium based browser. I love firefox mobile’s extensions but it just doesn’t have the same consistency between desktop and mobile. For example, Vivaldi mobile let’s you control site permissions to the level of controlling if they’re allowed to play sound or not
Are those fractions of a second really worth your privacy?
Serious question. Is it actually better for the typical user? I don’t mean people commenting here. I’m thinking about the majority that don’t care about privacy, blocking ads, quality technology, etc. for those people, I’m guessing that Firefox is equivalent. Just another browser that works fine. So why switch??
I run into compatibility issues and weird bugs with firefox a lot. I’m still using it as my primary browser, but I have to keep a chromium based browser ready for times when a website won’t work in firefox. I can put up with that personally, but I wouldn’t want to set up firefox on family/friend computers because I don’t want to get a call whenever something doesn’t work and they don’t know why.
Chrome based browsers also have some super useful features (like tab groups) that firefox doesn’t have a good alternative for.
Interesting. I’ve heard this many times from people here on Lemmy. I’ve been running Firefox for ~6 months now (previously Brave) and haven’t seen these issues yet. I don’t even have a chromium based browser available on any of my devices.
Regardless, I hear you about not wanting to be personal support for friends and family. That’s annoying
People inevitably bring up compatibility issues in Firefox when this subject comes up, and nobody ever has specific examples.
I run into compatibility issues and weird bugs with firefox a lot. I’m still using it as my primary browser, but I have to keep a chromium based browser ready for times when a website won’t work in firefox…
Got any specific examples you don’t mind sharing? I can’t remember the last time I ran into this.
Most recent one was visiting https://www.lifetime.com/playsets on Firefox mobile. After going back and forth between the list of playsets and individual playset pages, Firefox stopped loading the list of playsets. I would load in most of the page, but the actual product list wouldn’t load. Refreshing and restarting Firefox wouldn’t fix it, but the page loaded fine in brave browser so it didn’t appear to be a server issue.
Before that one, I had a time where Firefox mobile was completely broken by an update for like a week. Wouldn’t load any web pages, reinstalling/resetting user data/etc wouldn’t fix it.
I’ve had websites break on Firefox desktop too, but I don’t have any specific examples I can recall right now. I definitely run into more issues with Firefox mobile than desktop though.
I definitely run into more issues with Firefox mobile than desktop though.
Ah, mobile. I don’t use Firefox mobile due to its insecure status, particularly lack of sandboxing:
Avoid Gecko-based browsers like Firefox as they’re currently much more vulnerable to exploitation and inherently add a huge amount of attack surface. Gecko doesn’t have a WebView implementation (GeckoView is not a WebView implementation), so it has to be used alongside the Chromium-based WebView rather than instead of Chromium, which means having the remote attack surface of two separate browser engines instead of only one. Firefox / Gecko also bypass or cripple a fair bit of the upstream and GrapheneOS hardening work for apps. Worst of all, Firefox does not have internal sandboxing on Android. This is despite the fact that Chromium semantic sandbox layer on Android is implemented via the OS isolatedProcess feature, which is a very easy to use boolean property for app service processes to provide strong isolation with only the ability to communicate with the app running them via the standard service API. Even in the desktop version, Firefox’s sandbox is still substantially weaker (especially on Linux) and lacks full support for isolating sites from each other rather than only containing content as a whole. The sandbox has been gradually improving on the desktop but it isn’t happening for their Android browser yet.
This was the case back when Chrome was starting out too. Everything was made for IE and you’d have to keep it around for the odd time you needed it.
Eventually those old sites were replaced and now Chrome is the new de facto standard.
For the overwhelming majority of users, they won’t know the difference between using the two. People here are on a high inhaling the air in this echo chamber.
I’ve used Chrome on every device imaginable since Chrome was a thing. I’ve had a negligible amount of problems, in all my years. I absolutely hate that Google shuts services down when they get bored. And I absolutely hate what they did with Google Music and Google Chats, and Domains.
I move off Google services when they shut down. Besides that, I’ve no problems with the ones I use (minus nitpicks and the above products).
So to anyone here feeling bad and are afraid to comment on here because they don’t want to lose Internet points, fret not. There are millions of us perfectly satisfied using Google, PAYING for their services where we see fit, and generally not worrying at all about any of this.
What about the ad blocker changes they’re making? That’s pretty much the line for me. I use chrome everywhere but when ublock stops working well that’ll be me jumping ship. The web is a fucking unreadable cesspool without a solid adblocker running.
The adblock changes is a shit stain, absolutely agree with you there.
For my household, personally, it won’t make a difference because I have a pihole blocking everything from all devices. So that change isn’t enough to persuade me to make a move.
But yes, anyone who doesn’t have pihole of and uses adblockers, it will be 100% understandable for them to jump ship.
I once commented saying something like, except for work, all Linux users should be using Firefox. And this was the reply. Some people are just fucking hopeless:
"Firefox has only ever been a sometime back-up browser for me…ever since Chrome appeared in 2007. Prior to that, I used it because it was the sole usable alternative to Internet Exploder…
The Mozilla devs, for far too long, spent more time stabbing each other in the back than they did writing code and fixing the tons of problems that were always inherent in the code. It’s the only browser I’ve ever used that used to regularly crash & burn at least a dozen times a day. And ya wonder why people flocked to Chrome?"
But it’s true.
Chrome is great at multi-user switching. FF in comparison is @$$ in that respect… I went back to FF around a month ago after a decade long hiatus.
To be fair, chromebooks are great devices for kids, and the family link platform makes keeping them “secure”, easier… a lot easier!!!
Actually that’s a fair point. I totally forgot about Chromebooks.
It grinds me a bit, as I did have a Linux version if Firefox installed on my Chromebook, but because the book is just a sofa device and doesn’t get any love (especially from the little shits), it runs dog slow, so I end up just using chrome on it, and suffer the pain of not having things synced between devices. Thankfully the most important thing, bitwarden is syncing, so I can manage the suffering.
Horses and water
Some websites load faster in Chrome. But the reason why Chrome is so ubiquitous is because for normal people, Google is still the plucky user friendly company they were in the early 00s.
Because normies were using IE, then enough of them had their “tech enthusiast” grandson show them Chrome in 2010 and now that’s all they use.
I work at a small company - absolutely everything from work macros, accounts and shortcuts are all intertwined in Chrome, they’ve been using it like that for ten years - it’d be faster for me to find a new job then to unclog that mess from the entire office. I still installed firefox for personal use though.
Firefox is better on desktop, but on mobile it still sucks, sometimes it is even refusing to load websites.
Firefox is right there and is a better browser to boot. I genuinely have no idea why
I used to use mozilla by Mozilla, too. THAT’s why.
I’ve been removing Google services from my life bit by bit over the past year, and I have to say it is crazy how hard it actually is! They have inserted themselves into so many digital workflows, securing monopoly positions and preventing the rise of competitors and open ecosystems. In many areas the only alternatives are other tech giants, or accepting feature downgrades and having to set things up manually.
I’m really glad that the browser is one area where the transition is actually very simple and straightforward!
What lessons have you learned so far? I’ve switched to FF and DDG with great results, but still use Gmail/android/photos.
I urge you to check out Kagi Browser[1]. I forgot how pain-free using a search engine could be. With Google, a relatively simple search had me typing:
sink tap gasket intitle:"replacement" OR intitle:"repair" filetype:pdf OR filetype:doc inurl:product OR inurl:details "made in" (site:.com OR site:.co.uk OR site:.de) -site:amazon.com -site:ebay.com
I am appreciative that I’ve gotten pretty good at finding obscure nuggets of info, and it makes Google Dork[2] searches even more fun, but when I simply need “where to by $x”, Google shat out mindless SEO content.
I also highly recommend Fastmail[3] as an alternative email host. Far cheaper than Google Workspace for custom domains, and their masked email function is wonderful, even more so with 1Password[4].
Turning your back from the abusive Google can look intimidating to begin with, but it turns out it takes very little effort if you make a lil’ plan of alternative services to use.
What’s your take on Kagi joining partnership with brave?
I saw this thread on mastodon the other day griping about Kagi not understanding how inherently political tech is which doesn’t fill me with confidence in their ability to proceed ethically: https://hachyderm.io/@inthehands/111707573907442638
That’s a darn shame, I just paid for a month of Kagi to try them out.
Saying “Politics finding its way into tech is one of the reason we do not have innovation any more.” instead of answering the question is a way to dodge a question you don’t want to answer. Super duper red flag. Unfortunate. I don’t think I can even trust that their search results aren’t biased.
1password rocks big time, AND it’s Canadian!
It even has a Linux desktop application to integrate with system authentication and the CLI for SSH keys.
I can recommended proton to get away from gmail. They also offer a bigger suite with a few other services like cloud storage, VPN, password manager.
The transition is super easy, they also have a free tier if you want to try it out. Though if you like it I recommend sending some money there way, even with a basic subscription
I also moved to the proton suite. It’s a tad expensive but I use all their services so it pays off. All their services feel half baked tho, especially in user experience.
I’m going to drop a recommendation for Skiff here. Paid but their free tier (which I’m using) has plenty of good stuff.
The biggest thing is probably that you’ll have to pay for things if you want something that’s ethical and preserves your privacy, either a paid service or some initial investment into self-hosting (what I did). It’s 100% worth it imo though, being mostly free from big tech feels really nice!
More specifically, I can highly recommend getting a Synology NAS and your own domain name. They have great replacements for many Google apps, and you can also try out open source alternatives with Docker.
I’m barely feeding my family and paying bills at this point. Paying for privacy, email or storage isn’t an option. I guess I need to up my hobby IT game.
If you have a job in IT, you can even get your hosting hardware for free!
Signed, admin that has gotten multiple servers, switches and a rack for free from my employers.
Or Tuta(nota) https://tuta.com are good!
I’ve been using gmx which is a free EU email service with encryption paid for through ads but they don’t harvest data and I just use IMAP into my nextcloud email app
How many google services do you have? I just have one, and if I ever deleted it, all of the google apps I use would become worthless.
i switched to calyx os yesterday and i love it already!
You need to have effective replacements.
This is why Apple is so popular… much more thoroughly integrated, in many cases a better product, and for the most part paying more than just lip service to privacy.
About the only Google services I still use is the search engine (while it is still marginally useful), and Maps (since so many people on FB Marketplace also use it, so sending an address using a maps link is the ideal solution).
Yeah, I’ll never use Chrome again. Google has always been shady, but this latest round of anti-features is unbelievable. I’m shocked there’s been no anti-trust suits related to what they’re doing with Chrome. Firefox is just a better browser with way more security options and extension support. That alone is enough for me to stick with it.
Regulators are blind to this, it’s too technical.
And they are too rich and too old to know or care
Me, a foss contributer choosing edge because it’s a more convenient browser 🤷♂️
Shit like this is why it’s 25 years later and we’re still joking about year of the Linux desktop.
At some point just accept your objectives are mutually exclusive.
More power to you! Edge isn’t bad, it just has bad affiliations. I’ll keep using Firefox though :^)
Edge is Chromium. Won’t it be subject to the same Web Integrity API features that Chrome is rolling out?
Yup. I’m just saying that Edge is no worse than Chrome, Vivaldi, Opera, etc. that all use the same Google-controlled rendering engine.
As a web dev, you do have to test against the Chromium engine, and in that context, Edge is not inherently worse than Chrome itself.
Security? No. Privacy? Of course (assuming you don’t use vanilla FF). Is it much easier to escape the sandbox in Gecko than Chromium. Doesn’t matter what options they give you in the settings titled “Security”.
you can always enable Project Fission for a better sandbox in Firefox.
lmao at the thought of mozilla suing microsoft. Basically no resources vs functionally infinite resources, they would stand no chance at all. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but our legal system is based on a variation of might vs right, we could call it rich vs bitch for convenience
“But Chrome is slightly more convenient! Why would I suffer tiny inconvenience today in order to save me from way greater inconvenience later? Who am I? Some reasonable person?” - typical Chrome user.
We can’t forget that a lot of people have absolutely no idea that this is happening or what it means. Many folks just think the Chrome icon is how you access the internet and have no idea that there are other options. Helping to educate those folks is going to be a significant part of minimizing Chrome’s dominance.
This comment is 20 years old if you replace the word Chrome with Internet Explorer.
As true now as it was then.
It was literally in the chrome “manifesto” when it launched.
As a former chrome user it’s so real. Chrome connects every device for you and once you ARE in the loop it’s hard to leave it. Wanna switch to Firefox? Oops suddenly your authentication doesn’t work anymore. Oh what about those useful Google logins tied to everything now? Good luck with that.
It took me huge effort to switch off chromium based browsers because the longer you use chrome, the more it worms it’s way into all your services making it harder and harder to switch. I still can’t figure out how to seperate my Yahoo account from my Gmail account
A huge reason I left is realising that if google decided I broke their TOS on something like say, YouTube ad blocking, they can just terminate by Google account and every service attached to it suddenly becomes unusable. I’d rather not be taken hostage like that
Edit: for all the wise people in the comments. I was trying to decouple entirely from Google products, not just chrome
What you’re describing sounds more like over-reliance on Google services than the browser. I don’t use gmail or google logins anywhere, I just have Bitwarder plugin to manage my authentication and use masked emails to create accounts. I did the same in all the different browsers I used over the years and never had any issues with it or with switching between browsers.
Firefox syncs across devices as well, if you sign up for a Firefox account and enable sync. This works for bookmarks, logins, history, and you can even access remote tabs if you want. It’s also easy to send a single page from one device to another.
On desktop, Firefox has an import feature that will pull your bookmarks and logins m other browsers (like Chrome) into your Firefox profile.
Even if you’re neck-deep in Google services, Chrome doesn’t do anything special.
Even if you’re neck-deep in Google services, Chrome doesn’t do anything special.
Actually, being able to cast to other devices is very easy to do with Chrome, but extremely hard to impossible to do with Firefox, unfortunately.
what about those useful Google logins tied to everything now? Good luck with that.
What? You can still use your Google account without Chrome…
Unless you’re not talking about OAuth. Is it Chrome’s password manager? Because I’m pretty sure that’s easily exportable…
What authentication doesn’t work anymore in FF…?
Firefox has always been great to use for me.
Switched to it recently, have been absolutely loving it! No regrets!
I tried and just not having grouped tabs is so painful. That and being embedded in Google’s federated system makes it hard to get out. Any advice on how to make the switch in the least painful way?
I still have Chromium (on Debian) running solely for the Google stuff I still use. Trying to get away from that as well but it’ll take some time. Be patient with yourself.
See if there is a plug in for grouped tab.
While you’re not wrong, I was hoping for some recommendations as I’ve not found any plugins that make grouped tabs easy to use.
Try using Sidebery, you can have panels, groups, containers, and snapshots in vertical tab tree style.
I use Simple Tab Groups, it’s great!
I’ve also recently started using this extension, and it’s incredible by comparison. Despite the name being “Simple”, it feels way more advanced than Chrome’s half-hearted attempt at tab groups.
This is the same issue I have. It’s too different and clunky to me and every time I try it I have to switch back.
I want out. What’s the opinion on Chromium?
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I have to restart it once or twice each day as it refuses to play videos or audio after a while. I know it’s not a settings or add-on issue, and I searched everywhere for an explanation. It fucking sucks. I’m this close to going back to Chrome.
If you’re the only one who has that issue, or it’s very uncommon, then it’s more likely a software or hardware configuration issue or some corruption on your systems part.
Just saying this, when I used to run windows, weird bugs like that as a cue to do a complete reinstall of windows. Usually would fix every problem I’d been having with every app to date.
Even now deleting everything associated to Firefox and reinstalling the app would probably fix it. The other thing to do is to keep an eye on the behaviour of your browser after installing extensions. Sometimes extensions themselves can cause weird problems.
There are a couple tiny issues I have with it that drive me nuts (namely: 1 how they implement the CSS blur filter sucks and 2 the fact that they haven’t implemented page transitions even though I think it was their idea to start with (?))
But other than those things, I certainly don’t feel like I’m missing anything by ditching Google.
If Firefox goes away, I’ll use Epiphany or Konquerer before I subject myself to anything that makes me view ads.
FF has way too much groundwork laid and way too much mindshare currently (especially given the rust language and all…) If, for some reason, thousands of devs just gave up on mozilla, more would continue the path and fork it most likely.
Mozilla is the result of people giving up on Netscape. It will live!
It’s the result of Netscape losing to anti-trust behaviour by Microsoft and open sourcing their code as a final parting gift.
Netscape was struck down Firefox rose.
And that’s surely why it was originally called Phoenix!
I hope that’s true, because I’m hearing rumblings that Mozilla is moving away from it as their core project.
Chrome: First-party spyware.
I’ve used Firefox for years. It’s always been the underdog imo.
If it ever becomes the top dog, I’ll switch! To the next privacy underdog. More competition is good.
FF has always been security conscious and was actually the big dog until around 2007 or so when they had to do a full rebuild of their code and this made it so that a lot of peoples’ favorite plugins stopped working until they were updated. This coincided with when Chrome started to become bigger and people switched. Now people are switching back. I use a combination of FF and Opera GX.
IIRC they switched to webextensions in Firefox 57 in 2017. Even before that it was never the browser with the biggest market share, and Chrome had already got a huge market share in 2017.
I’ve been using Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox as my default browser since 2003. Never understood the appeal of Chrome.
Even before that it was never the browser with the biggest market share
Between 2005 and 2007 it sort of felt like that for me. All kinds of computer-illiterate people were switching to Firefox.
I actually remember when Chrome first became a thing, I tried it then, used for some time as something cool, and then got back to Opera.
So Firefox and Chromium.
I’ll have to dump Opera at some point.
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FF was definitely the top dawg through the last half of the aughts. People got frustrated with the constant updates. Chrome had a lot of hype and for a while was the slick new browser. It didn’t take long for it to get just as slow as FF used to be, but now more enterprise web-apps will cripple compatibility on non-chromium browsers so it doesn’t matter how good FF gets.
I was one of the users who left because TabMixPlus stopped working. Never worked again, so I’m with Vivaldi. I know; it’s built on Chromium, but being able to have my tabs on the bottom of the window is worth it for me.
I use waterfox (firefox branch) and it has that as a default option https://imgur.com/oWzCeA7
I seriously miss tab mix plus.
At one point it was the top dog - this was before google was even in the browser market mind you. Then they entered and used a lot of… Shall we say interesting marketing practices to usurp firefoxes dominant position - it wasn’t all due to chrome being better.
Chrome is the new reddit
So nothing will change 😅
I’ve read so many bs paid-off articles recently how chrome is so much better than firefox, or firefox has nothing left to give to its users
I agree it’s BS, but how do you know they’re “paid off”? What’s an example of one that was “paid off”?
Well of course. Now all your traffic goes through proxies to Google’s servers for analytics.
100℅ data harvesting.
Genius move by Google. Even calls it a security/privacy measure!
They will succeed too. Most of the human race are Neanderthals anyway. Couldn’t care less.
Please don’t with this tech elitest stuff. Yeah, most people will continue to use chrome because they don’t really understand the gravity of what it means for their privacy, doesn’t mean we can’t do our best to help them out.
It’s like oil dependency, we could blame the individual but that really doesn’t help the situation. Unless of course we’re talking about individual executives, those bastards are totally culpable.
Well said. Contempt for the average user makes it easy to forget one’s humanity.
You did so well until the last few sentences. Casually throwing everyone under the bus as idiots isn’t a great move.
To be blunt, there’s a lot of tech noobs out there that have always been, and will always be, fairly bad with technology. There’s an even larger number that can’t be bothered to pay attention or care about it. And finally, there’s the enthusiasts and the tech savvy, most of whom are working in a tech related field (or want to). Special shout out to the enthusiasts who don’t work in a tech field who are still quite savvy. But let’s face it, the enthusiasts and the tech savvy are a minority. We are not their targets. Fact is, even if you’re using Google’s various services or Chrome or whatever, the tech literate are at least aware of what’s happening, and a nontrivial number of them are here. Including you and I.
It then becomes our job to save others from themselves and get them away from the products looking to harm them. Throwing in the towel and calling everyone neaderthals isn’t the way to accomplish this. If we all do our part, we can save those we care about from becoming yet another battery in the machine, with all their data flowing through one company. It’s our duty.
For those that REALLY want to help, get involved in local politics and be the change. Help push regulation on the corporate shills that want it all. Whether that’s running for office, or contacting your local representative or whatever, it’s something that should be done. They shouldn’t be allowed to just implement, what is essentially mass surveillance on the world without someone doing something about it. That’s what the government is supposed to be there to do. I’ll reserve my comments about how effective they’ve been in the past or how corrupt the whole system is, because that will vary from country to country. But bluntly, you can be that change by getting involved.
As to the comments about the general idiocy of the population of earth, I say this: do you know it all? Well, neither do they. Nobody does. Can you fix your car and then turn around and frame a shed from scratch? Me neither. Can you perform experiments to discover new and exciting things in quantum physics, then build a toaster from raw materials? Me neither. Can you fix your plumbing, then create a program in Pascal that does your taxes for you? Me neither. Everyone has their skills, talents and expertise. Simply because there is a large percentage of people whose expertise is not tech, doesn’t, and shouldn’t, invalidate their intelligence as an individual.
Check yourself, or the next time you have a problem you don’t know how to fix, people might just throw in the towel on helping you.
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Made the switch to Firefox last year. Love, love, love the freshness and versatility of the browser! Also add-ons for mobile!!!
Don’t Be Evil!
Google recently revised that motto, it now has a comma after the first word.
We really need more browser engines floating around.
As of now we really only have 3, Webkit,
FirefoxGecko, andChromiumBlink.Everything is based on these 3. And I know, technically chromium and firefox are both based on webkit, but they’re so far gone from webkit they function as their own engines.
Firefox isn’t based on WebKit. Maybe you’re thinking Safari.
I doubt that’s what they meant since Safari currently uses WebKit. But yeah, maybe they meant how WebKit is a fork of KHTML and Chrome is a fork of WebKit.
Ultimately you really only have KHTML (what Webkit was forked from), Gecko, Triton (IE classic), and I can’t recall what the new (now dead) engine in IE11 was called. The rest are forks, mostly of Webkit/KHTML.
I guess there’s Ladybird and Servo too, but they are a way still from being used as a daily driver.
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tbh i think it would be better if there was a single collaborative engine instead, owned by a non-profit company like The Linux Foundation
maybe the W3C could establish their own but idk if they even do anything these days
In this case I still feel like that’s an improvement.
Embrace extend extinguish
It’s almost already too late at this point
Not going to lie, I really hate when the internet gets a new favorite phrase. Destroys discussion on the subjects and feels like it’s a race for commenters to say the hit phrase.
Lemmy is chock full of stupid people on the right team for the wrong reasons. They treat switching to Linux and FF the same way someone would declare they gave their life to Jesus Christ.
Most of them can’t even explain why something is good or bad without resorting to the catch phrase of the day. “Enshittification”, “EEE”, “Chrome bad cuz capitalism or something, gib updoots.”
PLAY STUPID GAMES,
I hate when that happens too, it’s the enshittification of the discussions.
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO GOOGLE!!!
If what you were gonna say is quashed by people knowing the big corpo tricks and treachery, then chances are what you had to say served no interests but corpo interest to begin with.
Username checks out.
Maybe we’re just tired of sheep. Even sheep that happened to end up on the right side.
At least he’s honest. Props for that.
I mean he’s dead wrong, but the user name is refreshing.
You’re doing an awful lot of Baaaa-ing over there to cry about other people being sheep.
It’s not. In the late 90s it was pretty much just IE after Netscape died. Mozilla came from the ashes.
Literally. It was originally built on the Netscape engine before making Gecko and transitioning to that.
extinguishing Chromium is the goal, isn’t it?