Got this notification when I opened Chrome when coming back to my desk after lunch.
“We changed our privacy settings to allow us to snoop on what you’re looking at and shove you ads accordingly. Feel free to opt out, but we’ll probably opt you back in when you aren’t paying attention.”
Serious question: Why do you use Chrome, a browser made by the world’s largest advertising and spying company, when you give the slightest f* about privacy?
At least use Ungoogled Chromium if you’re not gonna switch to something actually privacy-focused. Basically the same functionality, but without Google’s spyware.
I use it because of inertia. I jumped from Firefox to Chrome back when Chrome was new and came with hot features, like tab isolation, or being ultra fast. Google has gone through enshitification though, and FF has gotten much better since those days. I’ve started the migration back to Firefox now though.
Personally, I use Chrome because it and Edge are the only browsers installed on my work PC.
At home, it’s either Safari on my Mac or TOR on my Linux box with a VPN.
I swapped to Chrome a long time ago, probably around Firefox 7 or so, and never really looked back. I didn’t really have an issue with being part of the Google ecosystem, and they were still in their embrace phase. It’s been a while.
I have both browsers installed at the moment and under Linux/Wayland/Nvidia, Firefox definitely performs miles better (actual HW acceleration!) but Chrome still feels more practical to use, in my opinion. I think my main hang-up is that Chrome’s “Tab Groups” suit my approach to web browsing better than Firefox “Tab Containers”, even factoring in how Multi-Account Containers can make them more useful.