Browser alternative to Google

[Ben Egbert]

I am tired of the PUPs I get with Google. I can go into incognito and eliminate them but thats really a hassle to use.

I looked into Safari, but learn that Apple is not longer supporting new releases on Win 10. That leaves Firefox or Edge. What do you use?

 

[Jameel Hyder]

My primary browser is edge. Works fine for me.

 

[Ben Egbert]

It's already loaded, so I will give it a try.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Got it up and running, pretty seamless changeover, just had to re log in a couple places. So far no pups. I guess they can get into any browser. I had completely uninstalled Chrome and reloaded it and they were still there.

 

[JimFox]

I haven’t noticed any pop ups ever with Edge.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Hope you are right Jim.

What I am seeing is called "PUP" by Malware Bytes when they block them. I was getting dozens per day. Malware would quarantine them, so I did not know exactly what they were other than Potentially Unwanted Programs. When I Googled them it said any browser could get them, but that using incognito would prevent them. But I did not like incognito either.

 

[Beth]

i don't see any pups with chrome and i use malware bytes too. but i also have a lot of my chrome settings locked down so not much runs without my say so. i use an ad blocker extension (abp ad blocker pro) that blocks a lot of extra crap besides just ads. and my proxy (windscribe) also has a chrome extension which blocks a lot.

 

[Ben Egbert]

I had an idea this could be blocked, but I never figured it out. I am pretty happy with the way Edge works.

 

[Amy Earl]

I use Brave - https://brave.com/

It blocks ads and website trackers automatically and was built with privacy in mind.

An overview:

• Brave is a fast and secure browser that is free and open-source.
  
  
• They emphasize speed and privacy and in this way is an upgrade over Chrome. It's also faster than Firefox due to its built-in ad blocking. It also blocks trackers.
  
  
• Brave loads pages twice as fast as Chrome and Firefox.
  
  
• The browser was built to strip online ads from websites. Its maker's business model relies not only on ad blocking, but on replacing the scratched-out ads with advertisements from its own network. (It was founded by a co-founder of Firefox).
  
  
• Brave is based on Chromium, an open-source structure maintained by Google and others and that is also used by browsers such as Chrome, Vivaldi, Opera and MS Edge.
  
  
• automatic HTTPS connection upgrades
  
  
• Native password manager
  
  
• Brave displays stats like the number of trackers it has blocked whenever you open a new tab
  
  
• In terms of actual precious RAM usage, the Brave browser is much heavier than Firefox
  
  
• Brave also supports the huge library of extensions available in the Google Chrome web store
  
  
• If your reasons for sticking with Chrome have been (a) extensions, (b) compatibility, (c) syncing across devices, or (d, unlikely) speed, Brave checks all of those boxes.

Only downside is that some web applications don't display correctly because of blocked scripts, but in this case you can easily turn off the ad-blocking for that particular site.