I trust Samsung Internet with my passwords more than Chrome — here's why

24 Dec 2025, 16:15 by Ben Khalesi · Android Police

You carry a device in your pocket that knows more about you than your partner, your doctor, or your lawyer.

It knows your recent places, who you talk to, what you buy, and what keeps you up at night.

Most of that knowledge doesn't come from your phone itself. The gateway to this data is the web browser, and for the majority of Android users, it's Google Chrome.

Chrome is the default. It is the standard. It is also a surveillance tool built by the world's largest advertising company.

Now, tech companies aren't all cut from the same cloth. For some, your data is business. Others survive by convincing you that their products are worth buying.

After you start looking at browsers through that lens, it raises an uncomfortable question.

If your browser is the key to your passwords, your searches, and your private life, who should you really trust to hold it?

I tried Chrome, Opera, Firefox, and Samsung Internet for a month and here's my verdict

The ultimate browser showdown is finally here

Posts 24
By Parth Shah

How Google's business model shapes your browser experience

We need to have a serious conversation about free software. That word carries a lot of weight.

When a company pulls in hundreds of billions of dollars a year, mostly from advertising, nothing it builds is truly free.

Google is an ad company. It always has been. It likely always will be.

Samsung is different. Samsung is a hardware company. It does not need to know that you are looking for a new pair of hiking boots to be profitable.

It has already made its profit the moment you walk out of the store with a new phone. That difference in incentives is part of the reason why I trust Samsung Internet with my data.

Google treats privacy as a compliance problem. Samsung treats it as a selling point, part of what makes devices like the Galaxy S25 Ultra worth paying for.

Private browsing that actually blocks trackers

Incognito Mode is one of the greatest branding tricks in the history of consumer technology.

The name suggests you're hidden, and the spy icon backs it up. But when you open a Chrome Incognito tab, you're still exposed.

In contrast, Samsung's Secret Mode is designed as a vault within the browser, completely isolated from the rest of the system and your user session.

The most telling difference is how each one processes your network activity.

Google's disclaimer for Incognito is honest but disappointing. It admits that your activity might still be visible to websites you visit.

Incognito is essentially a local privacy feature. It protects you from your spouse, not from Amazon. It doesn't natively block third-party trackers.

By comparison, Samsung's Secret Mode is a hostile environment for trackers. It actively blocks them.

Samsung uses machine learning to identify new trackers that aren't on standard blacklists. This disrupts the profile building that data brokers rely on.

Chrome cannot do this aggressively because Google's business model relies on that data flow. They can't burn down the village to save the house, but Samsung can.

Chrome's restrictions vs. Samsung's open approach to blockers

Chrome for Android doesn't support extensions.

Google engineers will cite performance, security, and battery life. These are valid engineering concerns. But they are also convenient excuses.

I think the real reason is money.

The most popular browser extension in the world is an ad blocker. If Google allowed the 3 billion Android users to install an ad blocker on Chrome mobile with one tap, the advertising market would collapse overnight.

Samsung Internet breaks down this wall and supports blockers.

Now, ad blocking is often discussed as a convenience, but it is also a security feature.

Malvertising (malware delivered via ads) is a massive vector for infection. By blocking the ad networks, you are closing a door that malware uses to enter your phone.

Samsung Internet allows you to close that door. Chrome forces you to keep it open.

The challenge of switching from Chrome to Samsung Internet

I will not lie to you. Leaving Chrome hurts at first. The pain point is sync.

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Samsung Internet breaks this flow, and that is the hardest part of the switch. Samsung Internet does not have a desktop browser on Windows or Mac that matches Chrome's ubiquity.

Samsung recently launched a Samsung Internet for Windows app, and it is in beta and not the same as the native Chrome experience.

So for now, using Samsung Internet on your phone means that when you sit down at your PC, your browsing history isn't just there. You have to look it up again. You have to send the link to yourself.

Who pays for your browsing experience?

We often overcomplicate technology choices. The most important spec is the business model.

Every feature in Chrome is vetted against this question. "Does this hurt our ad revenue?"

The result is a mobile browser that bans extensions. The result is Incognito mode, which doesn't really hide you.

I trust Samsung Internet with my passwords because I know who pays the bills.

In the Samsung ecosystem, I am the customer. I paid for the phone. In the Google ecosystem, I am the product. The advertiser paid for my attention.