Can browser choice help digital sustainability?

At Wholegrain we spend a lot of time thinking about the environmental impact of our websites. Our designers create engaging, accessible layouts and craft planet and user friendly experiences. Our developers are continuously working to improve our efficient code bases. They push the envelope on what a low data website can deliver. Our project and account managers are on a mission to ensure that our clients (and their clients) get what they need in a way that is good for people and planet. The whole site from the back end to the front end is carefully considered and iterated on.

All our sites are tested on multiple browsers. They have high levels of backwards compatibility with older versions of Chrome, Safari and Firefox. At an agency level that’s normally where our consideration of browsers stops.

Recently though, I’ve been questioning my choices of tech platforms and software.

Out of all the programmes I use on a daily basis, a browser is what I spend the most time on. I’d never really thought about what browser I use or why. I hadn’t engaged with my choice from a sustainability point of view. This is strange because most of my working and personal life is spent doing just that. Curiosity got the better of me (which shouldn’t be a surprise given my job title) and I started investigating the question.

Much of this article is going to focus on Chrome and its alternatives. It is difficult to discuss Chrome without talking about Google as well. Google dominates browser market share in the same way that it dominates other online services:

• Search – First with a 91% market share
• Digital documents – First with a 50% market share
• Analytics – First with a 75%+ market share across different platforms
• Email – Second behind Apple with a 28% market share

Many of these products and services are widely used because they are free and default on devices. They are also used because they are good at what they do.

Google is a tech company but makes the majority of its income from advertising. Their dominance across multiple areas of the internet grants Google a monopolistic reach and influence over it. This access allows them to hoover up vast amounts of user data and intelligence through Chrome and other products. 

Myself and others see it as problematic.

Some of the others that share my opinion include the US Judiciary. Following an Antitrust ruling in August 2024, the US Department of Justice submitted a proposal stating that Google should be forced to sell off Chrome to reduce its monopolistic powers. 

In this article I will try to back up that proposal from a sustainability point of view. The intent is not to persuade you to cut Google out of your personal or professional life. Rather it is to help you make an informed decision about the environmental costs of your online activities.

With those caveats in place I’ll dig in.

Statistically speaking you are probably reading this article on Chrome or Safari. Google and Apple have huge dominance in the browser market. Worldwide Chrome takes 66% of browser market share, with Safari coming in second at 17.6%. Microsoft’s Edge browser trails way behind in third taking just over 5% of the market.

That means three giant tech firms are responsible for 90% of the browsers used globally. Does it matter that three companies hold the keys to how we interact with and consume content online? On an individual basis possibly not. Collectively though, especially in the case of Chrome, this dominance poses a problem for users and the environment. 

There are some obvious reasons why Chrome dominates the market. For a start, Android phones dominate the mobile market and Chrome comes as standard on them. More importantly, it works well. From a usability point of view it’s pretty solid. It’s got great developer tools and most sites are optimised for Chrome because of its dominance. It’s a rare, free, product that we use on a daily basis that works pretty much flawlessly.

It’s not just working flawlessly for its users. Google is benefitting hugely too. As the saying goes – “if you’re not paying for the product, then you are the product”. Chrome plays a vital part in Google making billions in profits from advertising. Essentially the browser is doing two things. Allowing users to access the internet and allowing Google to gather data for advertisers to use.

So what is this free product, used by approximately 3.67 billion people, actually costing us? In my opinion it costs us two interconnected things. As individuals it costs us a measure of privacy and agency in our browsing and consumption habits. 

In the context of digital sustainability, it extracts a cost that is paid by the planet.

Much of what we do at Wholegrain aims to reduce the data transfer associated with browsing our clients web pages. We try to help others to do the same with tools like Website Carbon and through our writing.

In many ways Chrome is trying to do the opposite.

By some estimates, Google stores an additional 15 petabytes of data every day. If 15 petabyte doesn’t sound like much, understand that 1 petabyte is equivalent to:

• 500 billion pages of standard printed text
• or 200 million 5mb photos
• or 13.3 years worth of HD video content

They won’t run out of storage any time soon though. Google has an estimated 30 zettabytes (30 trillion gigabytes) of capacity in their (power, water and resource hungry) data centres. 

The data they collect from Chrome takes the form of a “digital fingerprint”. This is user data that can identify and target the individual habits of a Chrome user. They use seemingly benign data points like IP addresses, screen resolution, device settings etc to build up a picture of your habits and interests. This, along with data from a wealth of other sources is used to help make their advertising solutions so effective.

In effect we and our data is the product that Google extracts from Chrome.

Using the internet is an essential part of daily life. Even an aspiring neo-luddite like myself can’t deny that. Nor can I ignore the positive benefits that digital solutions bring to us all. But browsing doesn’t have to mean vast amounts of data being collected. It doesn’t have to be stored and analysed. The additional, hidden energy and environmental costs of this data collection are not essential to our daily lives.

This data gathering by Chrome plays a part in the data centre growth that has exploded in recent years. These huge data centres need power, water, space, minerals and resources. A browser which helps create a digital doppelganger has impacts in the real world.

The 2024 UN Digital Economy report states, “low-carbon and digital technologies largely compete for the same critical minerals”. Additional and extractive data collection plays a part in this. At a time when we need to decarbonise our grid as quickly as possible, big data centres are increasing energy demands from companies like Google, Microsoft and others. Renewable energy growth is struggling to keep up and we can’t afford the competition for resources.

Less tangibly these digital fingerprints are helping the global economy maintain a level of consumption that our planet cannot sustain. Humanity consumes vastly more resources than the earth has the bio-capacity to regenerate. To combat the climate crisis, the developed world needs to consume less. Being exposed to fewer and less targeted adverts would likely help reduce consumption.

It would be healthier on our bank balances, our psyches and the earth’s eco-systems. 

If you would prefer a browsing experience without this hidden environmental cost, there are simple steps you can take. Making Chrome more privacy focussed is possible but is less effective than using an alternative privacy focussed browser. There are a number of options to do this including Brave and Vivaldi. Personally I’ve made the switch to Firefox as my main browser for a number of reasons.

1. Firstly it’s owned and maintained by a not for profit who are committed to building a fairer, safer internet. They want an internet “where our privacy is protected, AI is trustworthy and irresponsible tech companies are held accountable.” That sounds quite nice doesn’t it? Here’s their full Manifesto.
2. It’s a privacy first browser. It blocks trackers from the first time you install it by default. It also allows you to further enhance your online privacy if you wish. By contrast, Chrome tracks your browsing even in incognito windows.
3. Using Firefox means less data is collected and stored as I browse. This means less demand for data centres and less energy is required for my online actions.
4. Not only does using Firefox save energy use at a data centre level, there is evidence it does so at a device level too. Tests show that Firefox uses less electricity than Chrome, meaning lower browsing emissions.
5. Firefox is an open source project. This means that its source code can be scrutinised and improved by its users. A transparent and collaborative web is better and fairer for all its users.

If you are persuaded by the arguments above, Mozilla has a handy guide for making the switch to Firefox. While I’ve been happy with the experience of using the new browser it isn’t perfect. There are some additional privacy tweaks you might want to make. More pertinently I have occasionally found that some website features, such as payment portals, haven’t worked when using Firefox. This can be temporarily frustrating, but firing up the page on Safari or Chrome fixes the issue.

This serves as a good reminder that you don’t have to jump to an alternative browser full time. You could keep using Chrome for work and switch to another browser, such as Firefox, for personal browsing. Any time spent browsing on something other than Chrome means less data collected and stored.

For the sake of the planet, we should all be striving for that.