On Thursday 20 August 2020 15:19:41 Janek Stolarek wrote:
> > Now why, I ask, should Google get something via wget from my machine when
> > Vivaldi starts up?
>
> What happens if you got Vivalid Settings -> Privacy and disable using of
> Google's DNS and privacy protection services? (I totally realize the irony
> of this - Google offering privacy protection against 3rd parties. Duh.)
>

> Janek
>

Okay, sorry for the delay. It took me a while to get round to your question, 
but as I said it is that time of the month. I need to pay bills, and do 
business-type stuff online, and Vivaldi-snapshot at present is useful for 
those tasks. 

I already had Google privacy protection turned off, pretty much Google 
everything turned off, except for Google DNS, so I don't know if there is 
much difference. 

What *did* happen, however, was really annoying. 

When I upgraded Vivaldi-Snapshot to the most recent build, I suddenly lost all 
my settings: started getting cookies I didn't want, V would remember my 
browsing history, even reset my home page, totally undid my preferences. 

Then I tried to remember how I had it, and restored my settings. I'm pretty 
sure that this happened once before, too. I was still getting used to 
Vivaldi, maybe 6 months or a year ago, so my memory of the details is fuzzy, 
but I seem to recall my settings were wiped after an upgrade. 

Vivaldi is definitely better than Chromium. While doing a little online 
research (shopping for hardware), Chromium made my system come almost to a 
complete halt, and I would sit there for five or ten minutes just waiting to 
scroll up or down a few lines. 

Vivaldi doesn't give me any of those problems, but still needs work, I would 
say. Or maybe I need to explore it further; but thus far I have not unlocked 
its mysteries. It would be nice to look inside, like I can do with 
Mozilla-type browsers, and Vivaldi should have about:config. 

Among other browsers out there, IMHO worth checking out: Midori, Qupzilla, and 
Seamonkey. There is supposed to be a Chromium-ungoogled, too, something like 
that, available in repositories: Chromium with everything Google removed. I 
just heard about it a few days ago. 

Bill