Things have never been better

I felt old when one of my colleagues asked me, “You are still using Firefox?” with a bit of pity in their voice, and I wasn’t sure why they put the word “still” there. I thought about it for a while, and I think now I know what’s going on.

Well, nowadays, the majority of web users are using Chromium-based browsers, and that is a very good incentive for web developers to keep improving their website experience for users who use Chromium-based browsers. That means it will be more convenient to use those browsers, and of course, there is the matter that if you are using any Google product, these types of browsers offer the best experience. Now, why on earth would someone choose to use a browser like Firefox? Probably they are too old and were using Firefox when they were younger and never realized how shiny Chromium-based browsers are. Of course, that is just one possibility, but I can now understand why my colleague used the word “still” in their sentence.

I want to write a few sentences to clarify why I’m using Firefox and why you should also consider it. Firefox is maintained by Mozilla, a non-profit organization that has contributed a lot to the Internet as we know it. Many of the things you see in your web experience come from the community of people who were somehow involved with Mozilla. For example, if you are a web developer, you have probably seen “Developer Tools” in your browser, which let you troubleshoot a web page by going through the HTML source code, reviewing the CSS rules, and debugging JavaScript. Well, that whole thing came out of a Firefox extension called Firebug, and it was just a small example of how this community of people changed the web and also changed the world. Google, on the other hand, is a for-profit organization; they don’t care about anything in their OKR planning besides increasing their revenue one way or another. So, do you want to give up the future of the web to Google or a non-profit organization whose main vision is to keep the Internet free and private?