Most of the world uses Google Chrome as its main browser for many reasons: It’s user-friendly, linked to your Google account, comes pre-installed in many devices, and so on.
Now, looking at it from a privacy perspective, you are living in a nightmare. Going into the rabbit hole of privacy and security makes this clearer.
Built By an Advertising Company?
Google is pretty much an advertising company, lots of their revenue comes from ads. I would even say that Chrome is not a product but a pipeline to feed your data into Google for targeted advertising. Google knows everything you are doing online.
For example, in 2018, cryptographer Matthew Green wrote the blog post “Why I’m Done With Chrome”, which talks about a change in Chrome sign-in experience. Previously, you could use Chrome without logging in. Then, Google decided that simply logging into Gmail would automatically sign you into the browser without your consent and start syncing your browsing data to Google’s servers.
This is not just a change, it a behavior, Google will change how their products work to invade your privacy.
What Chrome Actually Collects
When you sign-in to your Google account in Chrome, the browser can correlate your browsing history, search queries, location, and cookie information across devices and sessions to feed their advertising engine. So, if you use Google products in the Chrome browser, Google has a full picture of your life.
Even if you are using Incognito Mode, you are not anonymous. Google will still see your traffic, log DNS lookups, and track your online activity. This is so serious that Google actually settled a $5 billion class action lawsuit from users who claimed they were misled about what Incognito Mode actually does, Google agreed to delete billions of records it had collected from users it had told were browsing privately (source).
Third-Party Cookies and Privacy Sandbox
Third-party cookies allow advertisers to follow you around the web from site to site to create a digital profile of you and sell your data. Firefox, Safari, and most other browsers block these third-party cookies by default to improve user privacy, not Google though.
In 2020 Google announced they’d be phasing out third-party cookies in Chrome (source), however they decided to do a complete U-turn and abandon this plan (source).
Instead, Google introduced the Privacy Sandbox, in which rather than letting third-party trackers follow you around the web, Privacy Sandbox moves the tracking into Chrome itself. Your browser watches what you do, builds a profile of your interests, and then shares it with advertisers. Still a privacy nightmare.
Then in 2025, Google announced Privacy Sandbox was dead (source) and will be keeping third-party cookies in Chrome indefinitely.
Google Killed the Best Ad Blocker in Chrome
In 2025, Google fully transitioned from Manifest V2 to Manifest V3, a new framework on how Chrome extensions work. The main change was replacing the webRequest API, which extensions like uBlock Origin (the most effective content blocker ever built) used to intercept network requests in real time, with the far more limited declarativeNetRequest API (source).
This resulted in the full version of uBlock Origin to no longer work in Chrome. A Lite version exists that’s been rebuilt around Manifest V3’s constraints, but it’s less capable than the full version.
So Google, an advertising company, redesigned the extension platform in a way that specifically cripples the best ad-blocking software, which conveniently benefits their core business. We might be onto something here.
Chrome vs Chromium
Chrome is Google’s proprietary browser built on top of Chromium, which is open source.
Chromium, in a sense, is more trustworthy than Chrome. So, some people prefer to use Chromium-based privacy-focused browsers like Brave instead of Firefox, which is a solid option.
So Should You Switch?
Yes, post over… or…
Before changing browsers, even if Chrome is terrible for privacy, it does have excellent extensions that allow you to easily integrate third-party tools and automate browser workflows, and many AI-powered browser extensions are Chrome-first (or Chrome-only).
Take that into consideration before fully migrating. If you prefer some of this functionality I would recommend to keep Chrome as a secondary browser to use when needed but not your main if you value privacy.
That said, Firefox isn’t perfect and Mozilla fumbles the bag as well. In 2025, Mozilla quietly updated their Terms of Use with broad licensing language that appeared to grant Mozilla rights to whatever data you input into the browser. They walked it back after massive backlash, claiming it was just poorly a worded update, but we are not that dumb (source).
Then in late 2025, the new Mozilla CEO announced Firefox would evolve into a “modern AI browser”, raising question on where this AI-gathered data lives, privacy, and security of the feature (source).
Firefox and Its Privacy-Respecting Forks
Even if Mozilla has its quirks and concerns, they are a much better option for privacy-focused individuals.
Firefox blocks third-party cookies by default through Enhanced Tracking Protection, supports the full version of uBlock Origin, and supports about:config, where you can tune hundreds of settings that Chrome doesn’t expose.
Personally, instead of just vanilla Firefox, i prefer to use a privacy-focused Firefox fork, which works well and is more locked down.
- LibreWolf is the most-privacy focused fork with great defaults out of the box. The only trade-off i see is that some sites break because of the aggressive fingerprinting resistance and that there are a low number of maintainers.
- Waterfox is less aggressive than LibreWolf in terms of hardening but more focused on removing the telemetry and “phone home” behavior Mozilla has added over the years while keeping Firefox’s extension compatibility and user experience mostly intact. This is a good middle-ground option for most users.
In the end, its personal preference on what you value from user-experience and privacy. You can choose to remain in Chrome, switch to a Chromium-based browser like Brave, go with Firefox and forks, or another browser altogether, choose wisely.
