Is Firefox better than Chrome? It comes down to privacy
The article has it wrong with Safari. While ITP (Intelligent Tracking Protection) started in 2017 indeed, Safari has been blocking all third party (and thus all tracking) cookies since almost forever. Safari started to block all third party cookies in 2003 with the release of Safari version 1. [1]<p>Not only that, Safari also started to partition web cache in 2013, and it&#x27;s still the only browser with such partitioning. [2] Without it, tracking doesnt even need cookies.<p>&quot;If you only block cookies, you still have all the other storage and stateful things to worry about.&quot; - Safari ITP engineer John Wilander [3]<p>Also the spin of the article is slightly dishonest, simply turning off third-party cookies in Chrome achieves to negate most of the explicit criticism in the article. The author probably had the conclusion of the article in mind (setting up good Firefox against evil Chrome) before looking for supporting arguments.<p>It&#x27;s a bit ironic. While mainstream media starts to discover the existence of third-party cookies, which had been a known issue for around 20 years, Big Tech tracking has already moved to first-party tracking, fingerpringing and cache tracking.<p>For example, Facebook switched to first-party cookie tracking in 2018. [4]<p>Everyone who wants to understand the dynamic needs to look into the relationship between Apple and ad tech, with Apple&#x27;s recent counter-move being the addition of ITP 2.2. [5]<p>Since the release of ITP 2.1, even first-party cookies now are limited to 7 days, and all first-party cookies that are even potentially tracking cookies get deleted after already 1 day. [6]<p>Firefox doesn&#x27;t play much of a role in this fight. In fact, Firefox never did anything pro-actively to make ad-tech sweat. The decision by Mozilla to block all third-party cookies in 2013 [7] was reverted in fear of Ad-Tech.<p>Mozilla is better at marketing than with the technology, and still hasn&#x27;t enabled tracking-protection except for new users.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;brendaneich&#x2F;status&#x2F;982631777574338561" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;brendaneich&#x2F;status&#x2F;982631777574338561</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;johnwilander&#x2F;status&#x2F;1126191449161158657" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;johnwilander&#x2F;status&#x2F;1126191449161158657</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;johnwilander&#x2F;status&#x2F;1126208457214836736" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;johnwilander&#x2F;status&#x2F;1126208457214836736</a><p>[4] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.adweek.com&#x2F;programmatic&#x2F;the-facebook-pixel-will-add-a-first-party-cookie-option&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.adweek.com&#x2F;programmatic&#x2F;the-facebook-pixel-will-...</a><p>[5] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;webkit.org&#x2F;blog&#x2F;8828&#x2F;intelligent-tracking-prevention-2-2&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;webkit.org&#x2F;blog&#x2F;8828&#x2F;intelligent-tracking-prevention...</a><p>[6] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;webkit.org&#x2F;blog&#x2F;8613&#x2F;intelligent-tracking-prevention-2-1&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;webkit.org&#x2F;blog&#x2F;8613&#x2F;intelligent-tracking-prevention...</a><p>[7] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.mozilla.org&#x2F;netpolicy&#x2F;2013&#x2F;02&#x2F;25&#x2F;firefox-getting-smarter-about-third-party-cookies&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.mozilla.org&#x2F;netpolicy&#x2F;2013&#x2F;02&#x2F;25&#x2F;firefox-gettin...</a>