Picking the right portal to the Internet can enhance your Web surfing experience. — Image by vectorjuice on Freepik
Since launching back in 2008, Google’s Chrome has become the most popular Internet browser and held on to the crown ever since.
As of January 2023, Chrome stands tall over other contenders with almost 72% market share in Malaysia, while Safari comes a distant second at about 18%, according to statcounter.com.
But in a time where browsers have evolved – far beyond their 1990s predecessors Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator – perhaps it’s time to take a more in-depth look at the competition.
While browsers for the most part do the same thing, there are a lot of aspects to consider besides how well they browse the Internet.
The feature set on offer is a big part of what power users consider when picking their browser of choice.
Ads begone
Those with an aversion to ads may have picked up an extension on Chrome to block them, but browsers like Opera, Brave, and Vivaldi have ad blockers baked in.
These options also carry the benefit of using Chromium, which is the same open-source web browser project that Google Chrome is built on.
So for the most part, Chromium-based extensions will be inter-compatible with all browsers that use it.
For the gamers
When it comes to the sheer amount of browser-exclusive features on the other hand, Opera and its edgier “gamer”-flavoured sibling Opera GX seems to come on top.
A big reason for that is the built-in sidebar that comes with a large selection of messaging services that can be accessed on the fly – which includes WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Twitter, and even TikTok.
Added bonuses with the GX version is a RAM and CPU optimiser to prevent the browser from hogging too many system resources, along with feeds on new game releases, mini-games, a VPN, and integration with various music streaming services among other things.
However, Opera might feel a bit bloated for those that don’t want or need those features in the first place.
This is where Brave might be a more appealing browser, which sells itself on being significantly more lightweight than something like Chrome – their webpage claims to load pages three to six times faster.
Privacy first
Brave also has a large emphasis on privacy, coming preconfigured to block things like trackers, cookies, and fingerprinting.
Browser fingerprinting refers to the practice of gathering information about the unique system it is installed on, functioning much like a person’s fingerprint.
A device’s fingerprint takes into account the hardware it’s made up of, the software installed on it, along with other user details like timezones, system language, to even the peripherals plugged in.
All these can be bundled together with information on browsing habits gleaned from cookies and trackers to build a detailed profile on a user, which can then be used to serve targeted advertisements.
While not generally considered a major cybersecurity risk, it is quite a significant privacy one, which some may object to.
Private windows in Brave also make use of The Onion Router (TOR) connectivity to further obfuscate tracking.
Do note that if privacy is your main concern, using the Tor browser would add on further privacy protections, so you might want to consider that option instead.
Vivaldi on the other hand similarly pushes a privacy-centric browsing experience, but is a more customisable flavour of Chromium.
Unlike Opera which comes with messaging services and webpages added to its sidebar, Vivaldi takes the opposite approach and lets users add websites manually instead.
This gives users the ability to pick and choose the pages themselves, rather than have a huge selection of them baked in regardless of whether they’re actually used.
Vivaldi also comes with a split view feature similar to the one on Android that divides the screen between apps on a smartphone or tablet.
Features like the included email client, calendar, contacts, manager, and notepad make it a completely competent browser in its own right.
Data collection
Google itself collects no small amount of data from its users, which includes everything from location, search history and website visits, just to name a few.
All of which in Google’s own words are meant to “deliver our services, maintain and improve them, develop new services, measure the effectiveness of advertising, protect against fraud and abuse, and personalise content and ads you see on Google and on our partners’ sites and apps”.
And while some may trust Google and its old mantra of “Don’t be evil”, it is hardly the only company that’s out there harvesting your data, and possibly even selling it.
But no discussion on privacy and web browsing is complete without touching on the options based on Mozilla Firefox.
Navigating privately
Firefox and its derivatives (which coincidentally includes the aforementioned Tor browser) have long been known to be the preferred browsers for privacy.
A big part of this is how Mozilla – the company behind Firefox – is a non-profit and thus has significantly less motivation to track your browsing activity.
Granted, there is still a degree of tracking going on by default, with telemetry data being sent to Mozilla unless users specifically opt out from its collection.
Plus with Google set as the default search engine, the Firefox browser doesn’t fully escape the watchful eye of the world’s most popular search engine.
So perhaps consider an alternative if getting tracked is a major concern – for example, DuckDuckGo and Startpage are Internet search platforms with a reputation for not employing trackers on its users.
Numerous projects have also cropped up as a result of Firefox being open-source, with Tor browser, LibreWolf, and Waterfox being notable examples.
These range from being more portable to providing features like cloud syncing and VPNs, while also being built on the Gecko engine, which is used in Firefox.
All also usually retain the privacy-centric styling of the original, and in most cases expanded in some way with stripped telemetry.
The most extreme case is probably the Tor browser, which allows for a connection with the TOR (The Onion Router) network, relaying Internet traffic via a volunteer network that conceals the user’s location and protects against surveillance, although this is most likely overkill for the browsing needs of most regular folks.
But this can come at a cost, since some websites (Zencastr is an example) have features that require the use of Chromium, and hence do not work with browsers based on Firefox.
There’s also the option of “hardening” Firefox, which is basically another way to describe installing a specific selection of extensions and tweaking the settings on the about:config page to improve privacy.
This however can also come at the expense of anonymity, since altering Firefox can make it more identifiable than versions that have not been tinkered with.
Having a Firefox install behave in a way that is not expected or intended would make it stand out, especially when compared with how it should normally behave.
No one-size-fits-all
Each browser has its strengths, but at the risk of sounding cliched, there really is no “best” Internet browser.
To get the browser that suits you best, some tinkering is most likely required (see related story below).
