If they do this, I will uninstall Firefox and start recommending some other browser. Mozilla has really sunk in my eyes the last couple of years but this is the final spike in the coffin for me.
What else is there, though, at least for mainstream users? There's Chrome which has been doing this since the beginning for Google, there's Safari but only if you're on a Mac, and there's a smattering of smaller browser projects on Linux that are good in their own right but not mainstream enough to have the features of the big four.
On Windows, Microsoft Edge is of course a lean and capable browser, but the OS itself is also collecting telemetry on you at all times, including browsing habits.
Hopefully someone will fork Firefox for Windows/Mac/'nix and strip out all the telemetry and data gathering bits, otherwise there's not much choice left for a privacy focused, full featured, fully supported browser on all platforms.
Most likely Brave, Edge, Opera or Vivaldi. I haven't really dug into if they do telemetry but some quick google searches tells me that at least Vivaldi does not. Brave is also a browser all about privacy so it would be weird if they do spy on their users.
But you are correct, if Firefox falls as the last bastion in the web browser world to protect users privacy there is little choice left of really nice browsers.
If / when Firefox does this however there is really no real reason to even pick Firefox to begin with since all the other major players do the same.
Brave sounded interesting until I saw this at the bottom of the landing page:
"Brave makes money by taking 5% of any donations and -- after it is fully implemented -- a small cut of advertising that is placed. Brave even shares some revenue with you -- at least as much as we receive."
If they are planning to inject ads into the browser and somehow pay their users a kickback, how do they expect to maintain a reputation as a privacy focused project? Even if they offer to pay in cryptocurrency, they are still tying browsing habits and targeted advertisements to a trackable user. No thanks.
I had switched from Chromium back to Firefox after Google was caught injecting binary blobs into Chromium at build time[1], and so last year when I decided to drop all Google products from my life, I already had a great (if slow) browser making it less of a hurdle. Now, though, I think I'll stick with Safari on my phone and Mac, and find a way to sync bookmarks from Safari to Midori on my other systems.
Yeah that makes me also not want to run it. But still, there are a few options even if neither is very good. I will probably just start running Edge or something since I already use Windows.
