Hello all! I’ve been making the switch from American to European tech, and was wondering your thoughts on Vivaldi browser and Qwant search engine.

Vivaldi is based on Chromium and iirc not fully open source, but is still suggested in European tech spaces, and has a pretty good privacy policy.

Qwant is not open source, though claims to not to sell personal data or store searches.

What are your thoughts and perhaps suggestions for alternatives?

  • UnknowableNight@piefed.socialOPEnglish
    1·
    2 days ago

    I agree to not be using something that comes from Chrome, but Chromium is open-source, so it’s not like it’s actively benefiting Google, right? (Correct me if I’m wrong.)

    • North@lemmy.org
      1·
      22 hours ago

      You’re right but Chromium still belongs to Google and they can change it whenever the want, and do anything to it. For example, if Google, say, removes a feature from Chromium or a line of code in it, this change will not be limited to just Chrome but also other Chromium browsers like Brave, Vivaldi, etc. including FOSS ones like Cromite. And the second reason to avoid Chromium is so as to not let them become a monopoly in this as well. If they control this market too, that’s a win for them.

    • astropenguin5@lemmy.world
      3·
      2 days ago

      Chromium is still controlled by Google though, and they way it benefits them is giving them market share and user base. It’s not as direct as using Google, but indirectly still benefits them to have such massive market share with chromium that they can do whatever they want with it. See:manifest v3 and working against adblockers