Thanks To Google's Collusion With The NSA, I've Switched Back To Firefox For My Browser of Choice

I have been using Google Chrome for many years now. Before that I was an avid Firefox supporter, but Chrome wooed me with it's less bulky interface, and really cool sync feature. It made me not care about my privacy so much. I mean, who cares if Google is tracking all my online activities and browsing habits, and basically selling me to third party marketers?

Well, I started caring when I found out about Google's participation in Prism, and I realized that there is a very high probability that Google isn't just selling my every browsing move to marketers, they are probably handing them over to Big Brother as well. I figured it was time to get rid of all the Google products I could. Chrome was next on the chopping block.

So what makes Firefox better? For one, Mozilla was not named in the Prism documents. Another is that Mozilla is still open source, so if you can read code you can verify that there are no backdoors in Firefox. Finally, Mozilla themselves, along with Fight For The Future have started the StopWatching.us campaign to organize people to fight government surveillance.

From their blog:

Last week, media reports emerged that the US government is requiring vast amounts of data from Internet and phone companies via top secret surveillance programs. The revelations, which confirm many of our worst fears, raise serious questions about individual privacy protections, checks on government power and court orders impacting some of the most popular Web services.
Today Mozilla is launching StopWatching.Us — a campaign sponsored by a broad coalition of organizations from across the political and technical spectrum calling on citizens and organizations from around the world to demand a full accounting of the extent to which our online data, communications and interactions are being monitored.

There is one more thing privacy wise that makes Mozilla better than Chrome. That's the fact that you can setup your own Sync server to sync your settings so they never have to traverse Mozilla's servers if you don't want. Do you think Google would ever let you do that? I don't think so.

The last big Google product I have to get rid of now is my Android phone. What are my alternatives? iPhone? Windows Mobile? I think not, both Apple and Microsoft have been named as being a part of the Prism program as well. I suppose I can go with Blackberry, but I despise Blackberry. I guess I will wait until the Ubuntu Mobile OS is available, or Mozilla's phone.

What about you? Are you going to keep suckling on Google's teat? Why or why not? Let us know in the comments.

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