Matisyahu's Blog

With Google hell bent on crippling their browsers functionality with the gradual work being done around killing off MV2 in favour of MV3 which cripples content blockers by limiting the number of filters that can be enabled, removing functionality for the sake of “but what happens if they install an extension from a non-verified source!” etc etc. The other issue that I’ve been tolerating for the last few months is the lack of extensions on Chrome for Android (which Firefox supports) – it starts to get a bit grating after a while but the big thing I noticed is how it this now possible to use Firefox Sync as the source for autofill on Android which has made it a viable option at least for me. Gradually decoupling my dependency on a single organisation can cause anxiety because of the comfort of the familiar but there are benefits – Apple for the hardware, Firefox for the browser, Google Workspace for the cloud etc. creating a heterogenous environment where everything works together.

There are a few websites, such as Skype and Teams for the web, which insists on treating Safari and Firefox like second class browsers but I do have limited use for Skype (I only use it to chat to one person) which makes it a non-issue but it is rather concerning that Microsoft is insisting on wedding their cloud to a specific browser engine rather than creating cloud based services that confirm to open standards. This is one aspect of Google I am thankful for – Firefox is fully supported with only a few limitations that don’t impact by day to day use of Google Workspace (link). I really do hope that with the work being done in the area of implementation compatibility (link) that long term choosing a browser won’t result in the follow up question of “will the websites I depend on work with it”. I can’t help but get the feeling that Chromium has become the Internet Explorer of the 21st century.