Firefox and other Gecko-based browsers are far superior to anything based on Chromium or Blink. The level of customization and the improvements in rights and freedoms from being FLOSS software mean that the ability to use Firefox without issue for all Internet tasks must be fought for.
The difference between the power of the user with Firefox and with Chromium I have myself seen personally on multiple occasions. When I was at my old AI gig, my employer mandated the usage of Chromium on the company website, which curiously prevented me from cutting-and-pasting text from outside the browser into the workspace, or spellchecking it. I was even kicked off online banking for one of my banks (and whom I no longer work with) for using Firefox, which triggered a bogus “fraud alert” before my ability to use online banking was cut-off (even when I reluctantly tried Chromium afterwards.)
Gecko-based browsers such as Zen, IceCat, or LibreWolf ought to be able to everything Firefox proper can, but in practice some other, smaller or niche browser engines are in fact a bit problematic. Lynx is lovely if you do not need to work with CSS or multimedia, while Pale Moon has many commendable features but often screws up the text of a page, and Dillo lacks any effective ad blocker or support for JavaScript. Since Firefox now has digital restrictions management (DRM) baked in as “optional,” I have considered switching to IceCat, which enjoys the same compatibility as Firefox. However, none of the issues of limitations with any of these options is anywhere near as awful as Google’s push for so-called web environment integrity (WEI), which shows Alphabet is willing to do pretty much anything to prop up the tyranny of Chromium and gavage-feed the world AdSense. If Google’s abuse of “open-source” Android via Google Play Services and the Play Store is any hint, degoogling must go further than simply removing all the malware of the Californian advertising giant from Google Chrome proper. And for any of you who are fans of Brave, it still uses Chromium, and I’d assume it still has the same sneaky, controlling behaviour I saw in ungoogled Chromium with my former employer.
At all costs, avoid using Chromium-based browsers. Various tactics of forced compatibility can be utilized to keep using Firefox: Ad-ons such as Chrome Mask can trick pesky websites into accepting your digital right to use Firefox and keep your data safe, including on mobile. And there are other user agent spoofers as well. Other tactics include not indulging corporations and privacy-invasive websites which resist browser freedom, avoiding giving anti-browser freedom websites and platforms traffic via the use of proxies, and advocating for browser freedom in person.
Internet Explorer once dominated the web and propped up a sad online world under Microsoft’s thumb. Chrome’s dominance need not continue much longer. Worldwide, Google’s power is beginning to show cracks in Android and search. Help carry this over into the browser world. It is imperative that the struggle against Google’s stranglehold on the modern web be broken. The browser wars are not yet lost, and we need to stand up for the right to use a reasonable and compatable alternative whenever we traverse the World Wide Web.