all browsers are bad, actually

recently i’ve been coming across more and more websites that attempt to shame me for my choice of web browser, telling me to switch out of Chrome to a Morally and Ethically better browser, because in their opinion there are no downsides and by supporting Google i’m supporting capitalism.

while it is true that Google is the worst, and that their business ethics and ethics in general are horrible, i’m a firm believer in the non-existence of the “lesser evil”, and i generally don’t switch out bad for less bad, when the less bad is also something i categorically disagree with. Mozilla looks like a bunch of angels compared to Google, but it’s not the best place to work, by any means. forks aren’t immune to being maintained by shitheads, and neither are standalone browser projects, not to mention the unviability of the latter in our day and age. so why is it always only the Chrome User-Agent that gets messed with? i find it hard to understand why people don’t see the opportunity cost of changing your workflow is enormous compared to the luxury of being able to say your browser is slightly less morally bankrupt.

that being said, i recommend Firefox to my friends. i think it’s a decent browser, as far as web browsers go, in terms of usability and comfort. it doesn’t fit in my head — but no browser does, because the web is broken — so Firefox is my pick whenever people ask me which browser they should use. so why do i use Chromium?

the answer is, simply put, i have a day job. business-to-business tools aren’t built very well, so it would be farfetched to assume that anyone’s ever tested most of them with a non-Chromium based browser, apart from maybe Safari — once. changing my browser out for the sake of moral high ground — which, as i’ve established, isn’t even what it’s doing — would be a herculean task that would make me less productive at work and more likely to have things break. when these evangelists say “there are no downsides”, they mean that in their experience, the switch was smooth — and that’s great! — but anecdotal evidence is just evidence of an anecdote.

when comparing products made by evil companies, i can’t take into account the relative evil of each company. i have to look at the product as a standalone package, and in my case, Chromium is the only viable browser for me — at least until manifest 3.0 rolls around, at which point the opportunity costs and annoyances of Firefox and its forks will start looking pretty small. but that’s exactly my point — no one browser is a good fit for everyone, and you should carefully consider the pros and cons before jumping from one to the other, as well as respect someone’s choice of browser because you never know the full scope of their consideration.

in short, all browsers suck, and if you use the internet in any way, you have to use one of them. so pick one, and stay quiet about it, please. we’re all just trying to look at cool websites.