Why I want to do this

Mozilla has proven itself to be unreliable, unstable, and greedy. For example, Mozilla had abandoned the Servo project and fired 250 developers in August 2020, citing the pandemic as their reason. They further reduced spending on the browser as a whole. Very soon after, during that same pandemic, The salary of Mitchell Baker (then CEO of Mozilla Corporation, and current chairwoman of the Mozilla Foundation) had almost doubled. While Baker and the rest of Mozilla's executive branch had received astronomical raises, Firefox's user share plummeted to roughly 3%. Mozilla being the champion of the free and open web, I find that to be severely concerning.

In stark contrast, Pale Moon and UXP are independent open-source projects maintained by a team of passionate developers, funded entirely by user donations. With Mozilla being (in my opinion) worse and more greedy than even Google, I believe Moonchild Productions to be a significantly more trustworthy party, and I want to do anything I can to help spur UXP adoption. Not only do I trust them more, I believe them to be the last hope for the Open Web as we know it. So, as IE Tab did for Firefox before, ChromeTab will hopefully do for UXP now.

Firefox is dead, long live XUL.

What's wrong with Google Chrome? What about Edge or Opera?

Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Opera, Vivaldi, and most other alternatives are all based on Google's Chromium project. As it stands, giving Chromium even more majority usershare effectively gives Google more control and power over the web, much like Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 had way back when. With monopoly power over the web, Google can (and already have attempted to) implement invasive web DRM that will effectively kill user freedom and choice on the Internet. Supporting Google will only help them realize this vision.

While I use Chromium for ChromeTab (specifically the Chromium Embedded Framework), I don't render everything in Chromium. I leave it up to the user's discretion whether they want to run a page in a ChromeTab or not. I work with it now in the hopes that I don't need to in the future. As more people use UXP, and less use Chromium, more developers will test against UXP to ensure compatibility, reducing the need for ChromeTab, and further increasing UXP usershare, much like IE Tab allowed people to use Firefox in the days of old. In other words:

I make this with the hope that it dies.

What about Safari, or other WebKit-based alternatives?

WebKit is another alternative browser engine, maintained primarily by Apple Inc., for use in Safari. However, due to the project being open-source, many other browsers are available using WebKit as a base. WebKit is also not Chromium, and can therefore also prevent a "Chrome-pocalypse", but given the fact that there really isn't a universal way to extend WebKit, and many WebKit based browsers don't support extensions at all (Due to WebKit being an actual browser engine, rather than a browser base like the Blink-based Chromium), it's an unrealistic target for the time being. If you genuinely prefer Safari, Epiphany, or any number of other WebKit-based browsers, by all means, keep using them. You're still doing your part.

Why should I care?

Because this affects you too! If the web becomes monopolized by Google, it's your choices, your freedom, and your experience on the line. Google already have a lot of data on you, which they use to serve you scarily accurate advertisements. Imagine what they could or would do if they actually owned the Internet? WebExtensions Manifest v3 is already going to make blocking invasive ads, trackers, and malware a lot harder, if not impossible in some cases. We can't let this happen. This is not, and was never, what the Internet is meant to be. We need to fix this.