FF f'd up when they banned Dissenter extension and with their welcome screen full of google tracking. Not to mention a ton of "metric" requests FF is doing in the background.
As we've learnt, Chrome has a ton of google-specific code built into it(most notably the tracking id on youtube that was exposed few weeks ago) and a ton of background requests.
MS Edge is not that different. Sure it is cleaner Chrome but MS is the big daddy of tracking, just like google. they just call it "telemetry" instead of spying. their edge won't be any different.
Any other web browser out there is essentially derived from chrome. So I put zero trust in any of them. If mozilla would make FF into OS work that others could use to build web browsers off of, like chrome, it would be much better environment because there are no options left. Webkit has been superseded by chrome these days, gecko is slow and outdated(is it even public?) and so on. So the only way to sort of safely use your god damn web browser these days is to filter all the traffic manually(pihole, host file or advanced firewall) and use a ton of adblocking extensions that allow you to spoof referrer header and clean up headers and cookies altogether(google cdn, google captcha, google analytics, goodle dns, google this and google that).... even then google has so much data that just by ip address they have your persona pinpointed to a byte.
If you look at how much external resources the websites pull in these days, most if it has some sort of tracking in it, even if you do not see it directly(mostly cdn stuff).
tl;dr they are all bad. if it is free, you are the product. it's as simple as that. and they will make opting out so impossible that you just give up.
one of my last projects was a website for real estate(including warehouses, garages, parking spaces, offices...) rental and sale that was made for global(!) market with main goal being to get rid of real estate agents and connecting buyers and sellers directly, for free. i would sell ad space as source of income. i had no problem paying for the infra out of my pocket from the start so that was not an issue. it had a UI with a big map with a filter with similar feeling to airbnb. one of the main features was the filter itself - it worked on scoring system that took the criteria and ranked all ads within selected area accordingly, so if all criteria matched it gave it 100% score so there was no sorting by price, area, distance or anything typical like that. it had many more features but that is not important.
anyhow, i closed it down because today, in order to succeed, your idea or execution does not matter. you need to put all your money into promotion. it is not like in the early 2000s when you had a chance to build something new(software, service, ...). today, everything has been done and all markets have its established players. so even if you do it better, it does not matter anymore. it is only about budget for PR. and i was not willing to spend a ton of money on ads so I shut it down.
another project I made around that time as well was an online website builder service. drag&drop essentially. but even after it has been finished and connected to braintree payments and functional invoicing i came to realize that the PR is again a massive issue and that it would take a lot of time to build new widgets and try to compete with the best in the market. so i closed it down.
my third project that i will mention here is one that i am working on close to 10 years now. this is a big one. i stopped and got back to it multiple times. it evolved in concept, architecture and all other areas. currently the project's goal is to provide a single place for online B2B and B2C. if i would be able to get it up and running it would seriously threaten big players like amazon, aliexpress, shopifiy and so on. the thing is that i came to realize that for this iteration(as i have mentioned, it evolved from something simpler throughout the years into something much, much, bigger) to work, I am just unable to do it myself. It is way too big of a project for a single person. In the past in its simplified version(it started as a shopping cart software back in the day) I was betting on the fact that I can overcome money with time, which I had plenty of(still do). But you see, 10 years later, I am still not done. I took various paths in architecture and it just kept on evolving and finding itself. I reacted to the current state of the markets and tech and so it go me to where I am right now - massive concept where time no longer suffices. So I am currently trying to figure out how to simplify the architecture so it could be made by a single person within a year. So far I am stuck. I would have gave up a long time ago but this is just something I don't see being beating with a better idea to do in my spare time. It also served as a learning tool that allowed me to get to be a pro at what I do and earn and live like I do. So I have lost no time by working on this at all. One could say that this is my Moby Dick :)
well, you answered your own question - bootstrap it yourself. i know exactly where you're at, unfortunately.
my advice is - go with backend as api and separate frontend. define the api(protobuf+swagger plugin, not raw anonymous json because you will get lost in fluid schema later on and with 10+ routes you will go crazy without schema) and strict interfaces. so you know how data will flow. just pure basics, not all the functionality you have in your mind/vision. avoid DRY, copy code all over the place, go with kiss and most importantly YAGNI. use tech you know, not what is fancy right now.
then proceed to implement it in the fastest way possible. the end result should be a MVP with the worst code you can imagine. I myself have never been able to execute it, unfortunately. Each programmer strives for perfection which in this stage means time wasted not delivering the end product. I am certain that this way, no matter the size of the project, you should be able to produce something usable within 3 months.
You WILL be struggling with authN but mostly authZ(unsolved problem) so go for the simplest solution you can think of.
Next important thing is to do a monolith first. NO EXCEPTION. Forget microservices or SOA at this stage. I too fell into this trap and kinda keep repeating this mistake over and over. People like to use too much abstraction. Just brute-force it.
Then make sure you run one single VPS. No cloud, not kubernetes, no docker, nothing. Run it as close to metal as possible without any infra mumbojumbo fancy scheduler...tech..whatnot. And avoid cloud VPS. Look at OVH, Hetzner, DO or whatever. Just not cloud VPS because they are crazy expensive. Don't go for bare metal just yet(and avoid cloud altogether, it will bankrupt you in the long run, bare metal is where it's at).
Once you get the MVP up and running, look for first paid customer(s) and listen to their feedback. That feedback is free and no one else can give you better information than actual users. Also don't bother promoting the project on forums looking for people to test it for free. That is a dead end, trust me. Spend few bucks on some basic presentation page and some ads. Most notably it should be immediately clear on the website what your product does. I'd say 80% of companies these days fail at this horribly.
When you take payments, always upfront and annually will be better than monthly.
As we've learnt, Chrome has a ton of google-specific code built into it(most notably the tracking id on youtube that was exposed few weeks ago) and a ton of background requests.
MS Edge is not that different. Sure it is cleaner Chrome but MS is the big daddy of tracking, just like google. they just call it "telemetry" instead of spying. their edge won't be any different.
Any other web browser out there is essentially derived from chrome. So I put zero trust in any of them. If mozilla would make FF into OS work that others could use to build web browsers off of, like chrome, it would be much better environment because there are no options left. Webkit has been superseded by chrome these days, gecko is slow and outdated(is it even public?) and so on. So the only way to sort of safely use your god damn web browser these days is to filter all the traffic manually(pihole, host file or advanced firewall) and use a ton of adblocking extensions that allow you to spoof referrer header and clean up headers and cookies altogether(google cdn, google captcha, google analytics, goodle dns, google this and google that).... even then google has so much data that just by ip address they have your persona pinpointed to a byte.
If you look at how much external resources the websites pull in these days, most if it has some sort of tracking in it, even if you do not see it directly(mostly cdn stuff).
tl;dr they are all bad. if it is free, you are the product. it's as simple as that. and they will make opting out so impossible that you just give up.