Settling The Web Browser Debate

Published: Nov 24, 2023

Last updated: March 26, 2025

I used to use Firefox.

1. I wanted something fast
2. I wanted something that just works
3. I didn’t want to give Google my data

Now I use Brave, because Chrome is trash and so is Firefox now (This was updated after the Firefox data collection news).

TLDR of this post: Use hardened Firefox (yes, even now) if you care about privacy, otherwise use any other browser.

Nowadays I am a lot more busy and I need an effective setup that just works and gets the job done. I no longer have time to nerd out on hardening a Firefox install and just don’t care anymore.

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The debate since the beginning of time has been “Google Chrome of Firefox???”

With newer browsers gaining popularity (mainly Brave & Opera), it is giving people more of a reason to switch browsers.

Did you know that most browsers are just Chromium forks?

Every popular browser currently other than Firefox & Safari are Chromium based.

This means the developers built on top of Chromium to make their own forked browser.

All of the Brave users who think they have top tier privacy and security in reality do not since they are using a browser that isn’t de-googled. You have better privacy and security, yeah, but you’re still using a Chromium fork and giving Google your data. One of the reasons Brave is labeled a “privacy friendly” or a “security friendly” browser is due to the fact that it is open-sourced, just like the browser it’s based on (Chromium).

Brave also has security/privacy friendly features baked into the browser by default, such as:

• blocking trackers
• prevents fingerprinting via user-agent
• potentially preventing phishing attempts

This leads many to believe Brave is more privacy friendly out of the box than Firefox, and at the end of the day that answer ultimately comes down to your definition of “privacy”.

From a technical perspective this theory is incorrect as it is still a Chromium fork at the end of the day and you’re better off configuring a Firefox install to mirror the benefits of Brave. There is nothing that Brave does that cannot be done on a Firefox instance, and many of these features can be modified directly on the Firefox engine using about:config. Extensions can do the rest, such as uBlock Origin (RIP chrome users) and a user-agent randomizer extension.

A modified Firefox instance with the proper settings and extensions is the route if you want privacy and security. If you don’t, then any other browser will work.

Think of every browser as a bloated version of Chromium, because that’s literally what they are; a Chromium fork with extra features.

Chromium & Google Chrome

Chromium is just a better Chrome. uBlock Origin also works on Chromium, I advise to just use Chromium if you’re looking for something reliable and fast and privacy isn’t a concern. Chromium looks and feels exactly like Google Chrome.

Chromium has to be:

• realible
• fast
• well maintained

This should come as no surprise, right? Chromium is what most browsers are built upon. Developers have to trust Chromium as the foundation for their project.

Chromium & Chrome are both good options when it comes to speed because Chromium is known as a browser foundation and is what Chrome is based off of, and Chrome is the most popular web browser in the world. Popularity = well maintained and fast browser for end-user convenience.

Google owns the most popular Web browser AND the most popular search engine in the world. This allows their browsers to be extremely “compatible”, efficient, and fast as it’s all the same ecosytem of tech.

The Google search engine is also the best search engine for consistent results. Google by far gives the best results of all search engines in terms of consistency, accuracy, etc.. This is due to the popularity of the search engine. The Google search engine is arguably the most popular piece of software ever created. This grants the Google search engine a huge advantage over other search engines as it has more information generated into the algorithm.

Picking a search engine to use is just deciding what neural network you want to use. What network had more time to develop with more data fed into the algorithm?

Brave

There isn’t a whole lot to discuss about Brave as I already covered its selling points.

Key takeaways:

• fork of Chromium
• Has features built in by default that are privacy & security friendly
• want privacy? just use a well configured Firefox install instead, watch this video, as well as this video
• if you want privacy but you’re “too lazy” to custom configure a Firefox install, use brave

Opera

Take Chromium > bloat it > bam you have Opera

Summary

It does not matter what browser you use.

Use what you want.