> Gecko doesn't have a WebView implementation (GeckoView is not a WebView implementation), so it has to be used alongside the Chromium-based WebView rather than instead of Chromium, which means having the remote attack surface of two separate browser engines instead of only one. Firefox/Gecko also bypass or cripple a fair bit of the upstream and GrapheneOS hardening work for apps. Worst of all, Firefox does not have internal sandboxing on Android.
> The sandbox has been gradually improving on the desktop but it isn't happening for their Android browser yet.
That's fair and true. I guess my issue with Firefox is that Google is obviously Google, and you know what to expect from a company like that. Mozilla is pretending to be an underdog while at the same time they are Google by proxy - aiming to bring more telemetry, more advertising, more AI and doing it with Google's money which they take partly so that Google can say they aren't a monopoly.
It's the sneaky ways that Firefox are Google that bother me. Above you said that they recently added a switch to disable AI - only after backlash (though I have to admit that the original blog post said there should be an option to disable it). I also dislike that they are focusing on AI and advertising instead of improving their browser, but that's their decision.
Graphene user here: Firefox is my standard browser because I like it but mostly because it runs ublock Origin (which again causes me to like it). Vanadium I use for social media sites so I'm not logged in to those on the primary browser.
If you're using a computer from any time in the past 20 years or so it's probably capable of multitasking so you can open another browser to pay your bills in the meantime.
I'll give myself as an example, between writing that first comment and replying to you, I downloaded and built ladybird on MacOS - it took 25 minutes, most of which was me fixing build dependencies - and here I am replying to you from an alternative browser. Text navigation is a little weird and text boxes are weird, but so far it works.
Of course, if building in the background is more effort than you're willing/able to expend, then continue using Chrome or Firefox until others finish the alternative, and then decide if the time required to download, install and get used to a packaged browser is also going to be a hindrance to you paying your bills.
There are Firefox forks that don't have any AI/advertising/etc. stuff in it.
There's also WebKit-based FOSS browsers not based on Chromium nor Gecko. Upstream it's maintained by Apple but the open source webkit browsers should not have any questionable features by default.
