My guess is that the vast majority of people using Chrome aren’t even aware that Chromium exists.
this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2023
6 points (100.0% liked)
Free and Open Source Software
17779 readers
19 users here now
If it's free and open source and it's also software, it can be discussed here. Subcommunity of Technology.
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
This is sadly the correct answer. Many people also just use what their preferred OS preinstalles rarely users ever use an alternative to that
Outside of Firefox, and very niche browsers, every other browser is built on Chromium. Edge, Opera, Chrome, etc. They all just add in their own customizations and things. You have to go look directly for Chromium, which the vast majority of the world doesn't know exist. That's the only reason why.
90% of people, possibly more, don't know shit about tech and are not interested in the slightest in learing how to use and understand the tools they get their hands on everyday.
The vast majority of tech savy people don't care about privacy and free software at all, and they'll stick to chrome because it's the "gold standard" in their opinion.
That's it, from my experience at least. People don't know, and if they do, they don't care.
makes sense, I guess...
It does, but it sucks nontheless
Another part of it could be because people use Google search, search promotes Chrome for an optimal experience, they decide to try Chrome and end up sticking with Chrome.
Most do not know or care about the evils of Chrome.
Also, trying to install chromium on Android, iOS or Windows is something you really have to get out of your way to do.
And finally, some features that people want like sync are not available on Chromium.
They might just like the google sync part? If they use chrome on their mobiles and other computers and so on?
Haven't used Chrome or Chromium in quite some time, but sounds interesting -- especially since fully open-source forks of Firefox, such as Fennec, can use Mozilla's sync service.
Even non-Firefox browsers can use Firefox Sync! GNOME Web does for example.
I second the opinion people just don't know, in fact, I didn't know there was much of a difference between browsers. Because I don't like Windows shoving Edge on my face, so it has to be another browser. So I guess Chrome is what everyone uses and why not? No reason really. Reading other comments, no, I don't care about sync.
One thing I am liking about Lemmy is the well informed, tech savy crowd. So feel free to explain in layman terms why am I sinning. What have I done wrong?
I guess the best explanation is this comic - made as a sort of mea culpa for the original Chrome comic that explained the benefits of going with Chrome: https://contrachrome.com/
And let me take the opportunity to say: Try Firefox. It is definitely a better choice for many people - unless they depend heavily on PWAs. You can probably find your favorite extensions or alternatives to them. I have completely dropped Chromium-based browsers just to help maintain a healthy browser ecosystem, so if one browser fails catastrophically or is steered in the wrong direction (hello Google!), we have somewhere else to go. Chrome is essentially the new IE and that is reason enough for me to use something else. It is bad for the web and it is bad for users.
Great comic! I'll have to show this to some friends and family lol