Why I switched from Firefox to Vivaldi for browsing

I cannot understand Mozilla.

We took time off of X, but we’re back. The internet is changing again, so we’re here as an independent voice for our users and the open internet.

@firefox (opens in a new tab) · Jul 20, 2026

They either do not know who their user base is, or they know but those are not the users they want.

I care about the open web and I care about privacy. I'm much more in the LLMs are a tool camp, but I still don't want "AI features" shoved down my throat or baked into everything these organizations are releasing.

It makes a lot of sense that Mozilla could be a champion of those things. User choice. Privacy. The open web. The web needs web engine variety so Gecko is important. Letting Chromium dominate the web gives Google an outsized say in its standards IMO.

But I just can't with Mozilla anymore. I can overlook a lot of shit, but I cannot stand Elon Musk and I can't understand why Mozilla would shut down their fediverse servers (opens in a new tab) and then rejoin X. That's literally the opposite of what I think they should do. I imagine most people who care about Firefox feel the same. Going back to X was the straw that broke the camel's back for me.

Here are the browsers that I considered.

LibreWolf #

I only briefly considered the Firefox forks. On LibreWolf specifically, I don't think I trust that they will be around. It seems they have one primary maintainer, they don't accept donations, and the main person could leave tomorrow. That's not just my read, that's their stated position.

We don't want to deal with the administration required to properly handle donations. If we don't need funding, we won't risk becoming dependent on it.

no donations means no expectations. This means that people working on LibreWolf are free to move on to other projects whenever they want.

LibreWolf, Frequently Asked Questions (opens in a new tab)

Google Chrome #

I'm not as dogmatically anti-Google as most people in my circles are, but I think Google is near the bottom of my list. They're an ad company so they're going to make decisions in support of that. Meh.

Microsoft Edge #

Not just no but fuck no. The nature of my job requires me to use Microsoft products and they're one of the worst offenders of giving its users unwanted "features". Why in the hell do I need an AI summary of a Word document at the top of every Word document? And I can't even turn it off??? 🤬

Brave #

When I first heard of Brave, their blockchain/crypto stuff was a big part of what they were about, which turned me off immediately. Crypto had the same snake oil feel as most "AI" claims have now.

I've also seen other questionable problems:

• 2018 They collected tips for creators who never signed up for it (opens in a new tab), using their names and photos. Tom Scott asked them to stop and give the money back. Brave told him they couldn't.
• 2020 They rewrote typed URLs to add their own affiliate codes (opens in a new tab). They swapped binance.us for binance.us/en?ref=35089877. They apologized and fixed it in two days.
• 2022 to 2023 They installed VPN services on every Windows machine (opens in a new tab), even for people who never bought the VPN. It sat there doing nothing, but nobody asked. They fixed it once people noticed.

In short, I just do not trust their leadership.

Vivaldi #

I've landed on Vivaldi mostly because I trust their leadership more than I trust the other organizations, and I feel they align better with my own values. It really sucks that they landed on Chromium as their browser engine. They did address it in a blog post (opens in a new tab), and I've read it and it makes sense to me.

Vivaldi is an active participant in the fediverse as they launched and maintain their own Mastodon instance, social.vivaldi.net (opens in a new tab).

Vivaldi is a supporter of the Social Web Foundation (opens in a new tab), which stewards ActivityPub.

Their business model (opens in a new tab) lines up with what I care about. No VC, no outside investors. They make money from search and bookmark deals, not from my data. Von Tetzchner funds it himself, and he's been open about why (opens in a new tab): investors pushed to sell Opera out from under him, and he's not doing that again.

Some of the cons for me as I was considering Vivaldi were that they have many features that I don't care about. They've really put a lot of time and energy into tab management. As I was going through the setup wizard, it seemed like there are users who keep many tabs open for a long time and use tab groups to manage them all. I do not do that. I open a few tabs, then I close them out when I'm done. They also roll in a bunch of other stuff that I'm not interested in using in my browser (calendar, contacts, notes, tasks) so I did not enable the features.

Then there's uBlock Origin. Chromium is finally dropping Manifest V2. Vivaldi held on longer than anyone, but it's already gone from their snapshot builds (opens in a new tab) and stable loses it when the 8.1 cycle ends, so around September. It sucks. I'd rather keep it, but I'm choosing to trust the Vivaldi team and their own blocking functionality (opens in a new tab).

Like relationships, Vivaldi is my .85 that I'm rounding up to be my 1. Even though they built their browser on Chromium, their values align the best with my own.

What browser are you using and why did you choose it?