2019: The Year in Web Browsers (Premium)

Web browsers are, by far, the most important applications we use on desktop and mobile. And this year, most of them even got serious about privacy.

And it’s about fricking time.

The problem, of course, is that the market leader, Google Chrome---which currently holds about 67 percent usage share on desktop and 64 percent on mobile---is the least protective of our privacy among all the major browser makers. Google talks a lot about protecting user privacy and it even pretends to build an ad-blocker into its browser. But make no mistake: Google will never cut off the lifeblood to its core advertising business, and most of the tracking that occurs online today starts with Google (or its chief competitor in this market, Facebook).

This is a bigger problem than you may realize, as Chrome has little in the way of real competition. The majority of web users out there---thus, the majority of users---are unwittingly coughing up their personal data so that Google and third-party ad companies can learn more about them, construct elaborate profiles, and then offer them relevant ads at every step of their online activities.

But back to Chrome’s competition, such as it is. Depending on how you measure things, Apple Safari, with its 27 percent share on mobile, is the only other web browser to truly rival Chrome at all. How’s that, you ask? It’s the only web browser with double-digit usage share. And that’s only on mobile: Safari’s share on the desktop is just 4 percent. Even Microsoft Edge outperforms Safari on desktop.

Safari’s popularity is mostly a byproduct of the loyalty of Apple’s fans, of course. But credit the consumer electronics giant with at least understanding its audience: Thanks to its integrated privacy and security protections, Safari is also one of the safest web browsers you can use. But since it is offered only on Apple’s platforms, it’s not an option for most.

That’s a shame. But there are, at least, several viable alternatives for the 87 percent of the world that uses Windows PCs instead of Mac, Linux, or Chrome OS.

The most popular, of course, is Mozilla Firefox, though this once-mighty web browser has fallen on hard times in recent years and has, more literally, fallen to sub-10 percent usage share on desktop. (Its usage share on mobile is an almost non-existent 1 percent, which perhaps explains this year’s strategy change on mobile; a new client is on the way.)

Firefox is an excellent choice. It offers top-rated tracking protection against the data-collecting trackers that Google blithely ignores and it provides many integrated safety and security features, from its secure Firefox Lockwise password manager to its Firefox Monitor data breach alert system. Firefox’s privacy policy is so good, so strong, that even Apple admitted that they would just copy it.

I have two problems with Firefox, but to be clear, neither may bother you. First, it doesn’t offer the ability to locally in...