I’ve reiterated this on various occasions but here I am again. Google Chrome is a browser that is not ideal for a significant chunk of internet users.
Yet over 50% of internet users are using it. Despite its popularity, Google Chrome is a browser which has many significant flaws.
These flaws can become a huge detriment to the average user. Here are some reasons why you should stop using chrome and switch to an alternative.
System resources
Please, please, please leave some ram for textedit. Please.
This is the most frequent qualm that nearly everyone has about Google Chrome. It is a hungry resource eater.
Have 16gb of ram? Chrome will eat that up. It is well known that Google Chrome is one of the most resource hungry browsers on the planet. While for some that might as well be a good thing, it severely limits the ability for the device to multitask.
This is especially the case on computers with 4 GB of ram as this makes it extraordinarily difficult to have open another software like Microsoft word at the same time.
Even for computers with 8GB ram, unless you are very organized with your tabs and never exceed 10–15 tabs, you will probably have issues with system performance more so while multitasking.
Battery
This sort of comes under the previous section but it is something that needs to be covered in detail.
Google Chrome, besides being one of the most ram hungry browsers there is, also requires a lot of battery. This has been shown on various occasions. When it comes to day to day use, I personally realized a 2 hour difference in battery life when I switched out of Google Chrome.
This is a tremendous increase and while the improvements won’t be as dramatic for most, it shows something significant.
Privacy
The third section, and arguably the most important, are the privacy implications. Simply put, you do not want to be giving google any more information about you than they already have.
Google has established itself as the leading advertisement company in the world. Why is this so? Google has the best targeting services out of the big advertisement companies because of one fundamental thing. The trove of information that they possess about everyone.
Google is everywhere in our lives. It knows what time you wake up, what your interests are and even what music you like to listen to.
Are you really going to entrust all of your data to an enoumous global company with uncertain privacy practices?
Giving google access to the browser is an even riskier operation. In a study conducted by Douglas Leith, it was found that Chrome tags all search requests with identifiers which can then be sent out.
It was found that through the auto complete present in chrome, it can give the search queries to Google.
There was a persistent cookie present in Google Chrome which was transferred to google upon Browser restart.
These are some shocking revelations out of which more have been covered in the cited paper.
Ask yourself a question
What the hell can you find in chrome which you can’t find anywhere else?
- Chromecast
- Hangouts compatibility
- Vast extension store
- Speed
- Ease of use
- Sync
Really? I can think of browsers right off the back of my head which can match or beat chrome in these aspects and more.
A better browser
In the study mentioned above, the browser that was deemed the most private was the BRAVE Browser.
Founded by Brandon Eich, the founder of Mozilla and the creator of JavaScript, the Brave Browser is a browser that aims to free the internet.
It possesses a wide range of privacy protection features including an in-built ad blocker and tracker protection.
How it fares against chrome
The brave browser is actually built upon the same engine as Chrome, chromium. However, unlike most chromium based browsers, the version of chromium which it is based upon has been removed of its google components.
In short, they have removed the parts of chromium which reveal your data to google in Brave.
While Google Chrome used identifiers that could persist and be used to track the device, Brave solely uses ephemeral identifiers.
With customization and features, Brave matches up to and often surpassed chrome in various facets.
For a start, it is compatible with nearly all chrome extensions. While there are a few that aren’t comparable with brave, I haven’t run into any so far.
Speed is one of the greatest strengths of Brave. It runs at an incredible speed which can beat Chrome in a variety of benchmarks.
While its speed can match up to Chrome, Brave has the lowest energy consumption out of all the major browsers.
It has been found through the use of Browsertime, Brave loads pages 10 seconds faster on average than Chrome, Firefox and Opera as per the page loading time (PLT).With fully loaded time, Brave loads pages 13.2 seconds faster on average.
This leads to a significant amount of time being saved in the long run.
With ease of use, while Brave has features meant for advanced users (like the crypto wallet), Brave makes use of various features that result in increased ease of use.
For instance, Brave has the Wayback Machine in built. This is an option that can help even novice users navigate through difficult to discern 404 webpages. To add on, it even has a basic torrent client in-built.
Chrome has announced plans to disable nearly every single ad blocker on its webstore. What is brave’s solution? They’ve implemented an in-built ad and tracker blocker with HTTPS upgrading features.
While Brave’s sync functionality has been temporarily suspended, their new secure sync architecture has already begun rolling out to beta testers.
Brave’s user interface is similar to that of google chrome and easy to understand. The average user will have no trouble getting started, especially coming from Chrome.
Oh, and various tests have proven that Brave uses about a fraction of the memory that Chrome uses.
No more struggling to find ram to open even textedit
This, coupled with lower energy requirements, lower CPU usage, lower bandwidth usage (for all those with an expensive data plan) and hugely better privacy makes brave an excellent choice for a chrome replacement.
You can download Brave here.
Despite all of these reasons, many people continue to use chrome. I ask you all a question, in today’s privacy and efficiency focused world, why must you give both your data and your computers resources to chrome? When there are better options available in the market with most if not all of chrome’s features, coupled with immense resource savings and privacy protection, why are you
Citations
Leith, Douglas. Web Browser Privacy: What Do Browsers Say When They Phone Home? 2020.
Aucinas, Andrius, and Matteo Varvello. “Brave 1.0 Performance: Methodology and Results.” Brave Browser, 21 Jan. 2020, brave.com/brave-one-dot-zero-performance-methodology-and-results/.
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