Nobody could have possibly seen it coming that Google would abuse its market position to their own benefit...
I migrated off Chrome as soon as this BS story about improving privacy, a joke coming from Google. Then the excuse was "well it improves performance", which they could easily do by marking extensions as low performance.
If Google wanted to improve this they have an entire search engine where they could re-rank sites based on privacy and performance.
It was never about improving peoples web experience.
Been using uBlock Origin for so long I forgot what the raw internet actually looks like. Spent 3 minutes without an ad blocker last week when setting up a new machine and nearly lost my mind. Google knows exactly what they're taking away from us - a usable web. They've just decided that our sanity is less valuable than their ad revenue.
What boggles my mind is the fact that surely people working for Google also use Chrome. Are they not up in arms internally because of how awful the web is without ad blocker?
I have the same experience as you, every time I set up a new machine or watch friends/relatives browse the web, it just blows my mind how bad the unfiltered internet is.
I wouldn't be surprised if the people that did care about that internally at Google either used something like Firefox or had their private build that can run uBlock or similar ;)
In 2011, when I worked at Google (on ads, not on Chrome), I did use Firefox as my main browser. But back then, there was much less need for an ad blocker. I still remember asking my manager whether it was OK to click an ad (from a VPS provider) while browsing from the corporate desktop.
> Are they not up in arms internally because of how awful the web is without ad blocker?
Chrome still has many ad blockers. While I use chrome/chromium fairly little, ublock origin lite has worked well for me when I do. I'm aware older manifest V2 extensions are theoretically superior at blocking a wide variety of undesired content but if your main concern is not seeing ads, that is absolutely doable.
The core issue is that those ad blockers are easy to defeat. The only reason ad companies haven't invested energy in defeating them (yet) is because they're not popular enough.
Once they are the only option in Chrome, it's just a matter of time until Chrome becomes largely useless at blocking ads.
If you've never used an ad blocker, I guess it may just be the normal web rather than anything terrible. Because ad blocking isn't illegal, it may not be quite as bad as a Disney employee pirating all their movies, but I suspect it's still not that common (at least most people I knew while there didn't use one, and of course I was happy to install one again the day after leaving).
The list of things that can be done is way bigger than the liat of things that are in fact done in real life. A Google employee could voluntarily put his hands over an open flame, but it's just very improbable.
Well the crappy copy does come with some extra text. (No judgement from me on whether the extra text improves the comic here; just that someone might think it does, and there's no arguing about taste.)
It's also interesting to see that XKCD itself explicitly supports eg hotlinking, and the license makes putting it into your own crappy creations rather easy. (Though I think the example linked to fails the 'attribution' requirement.)
>Nobody could have possibly seen it coming that Google would abuse its market position to their own benefit...
Doesn't Safari have the same restriction, also ostensibly for "security/privacy" reasons? The only difference is that Apple doesn't have a web advertising presence, so you can't make the accusation that they're "abuse its market position to their own benefit".
People scratch their heads about how "just a default setting" can be worth an annual $20 billion payment from Google. It makes more sense if it's actually for a raft of wildly illegal under-the-table measures this.
Imagine what it would cost Google's bottom line if Apple was truly user-focused and enabled ad-blocking on desktop, mobile and embedded safari views by default. Someone do the napkin math please!
Defaults is exactly how Microsoft has been getting away with everything they did for forever. Anti-trust investigations? Irrelevant if you can just make it configurable but the default is Microsoft.
Most people don't change default settings unless prompted and guided. And adding a setting shuts up most of "us" coz we'll just change it.
The only reason they're remove the ability to configure something would've been if too many of us change the settings for too many of our friends and relatives for it to register negatively on their end and they'd try to get away with not allowing it to be configured / hiding it as much as possible until they actually get anti-trust investigated // convicted (Re: requiring Windows to ask if you want to install other browsers than Internet Explorer).
Heh, sometimes you feel pressed between “but it’s just a default” and “who uses settings anyway”. Because the first group is blind and deaf to network effects of a default and the second to the fact that workflows and preferences differ.
It's a revenue share deal where Google pays Apple 36% of the search revenue they get from Safari users [1].
In other words, Google pays Apple ~$20B per year to be default search engine because they make ~$53B in revenue from those searches. This is profitable for both Apple and Google -- no "wildly illegal under-the-table measures" required.
How much would Google even lose if Apple didn't make Google the default search engine? People would almost certainly just use Google anyway. If Apple switched to Bing most people would use it once, get pissed off, and then switch it back to Google.
It's not that weird that people are a bit suspicious that it's really worth Google $20B/year.
I couldn’t possibly disagree more. I’ve always worked with end users and I can say with confidence that the majority of people wouldn’t change it or more accurately wouldn’t feel like putting in the effort/dealing with the hassle of changing it, minor as it may be. Also a non-trivial segment of the population most likely wouldn’t be aware of that it is even an option.
The power of the default is just that, they it is the default.
Also Apple themself has only one incentive which is to get the best deal for themselves. Is Microsoft willing to offer more money than Google? The evidence points to no.
Back when I tried both more extensively a few years ago, Google was a lot better giving me results relevant in Europe and Asia. Bing and duck duck go used to be very US only focused. Which made me go back to Google.
This conspiracy theory doesn't make sense because safari's content blockers (ie. the nerfed version of adblock) block most ads just fine, especially from google ads. The only ads that get through are first party ads (eg. youtube), but as of a few years ago adblockers could block those as well, so it's a moot point.
Safari content blockers are awful compared to UBlock and I’m a Safari user. Not only does YouTube either get through or cause weird issues, YouTube now blocks you until you completely disable the extension. Content blockers often block cookie banners too which can often result in broken functionality - a nightmare when you’re trying to buy tickets to something and have to “reload without blockers” for the website to work.
If I go to buy something, I switch off ad blocking on that page, at the very least, on the checkout page. Ads can even be actually relevant there.
If the page is too ad-ridden to tolerate, I may consider to just close that page, and go search for other options.
I use Firefox + uBlock Origin, because going to the wide commercial internet without some form of ad blocking is like going out without an umbrella when it's raining heavily.
Usually checkout pages don't have pesky ads galore, or any. But such a page usually has a ton of anti-bot scripts, such as captchas and other privacy-invading checks.
Ad blockers usually block such stuff, for a good reason. But I don't mind it on a checkout page specifically though, because on a checkout page I wilfully disclose a ton of my private details, such as name, address, etc.
Good checkout pages work well with an ad blocker on.
They removed wording in their FAQ saying that they wouldn't sell data. It's a subtle distinction, and may or may not make a difference depending on your perspective.
It's just the paradox of when you present yourself as "the good guys" - people will hold you extra accountable for things that others easily get away with as nobody expects them to do better.
Unfortunately, Mozilla tends to shoot themselves in their foot this way somewhat often.
Suggest using a service like NextDNS or Pi-hole for DYI ad blocking at the DNS/network level. I started with pi-hole but the hassle of updates and most importantly not having it available outside of my home network pushed me to a service like NextDNS which works on any network (5G, work, etc)
If you think manifest v3's adblocking is bad, DNS-based adblockers (eg. NextDNS or Pi-hole) is even worse. It can't do any filtering based on urls or elements, so any first party ads will be able to get through.
First party ads aren't evil usually tho. If someone builds their own ad infrastructure they might as well build it properly because they know it's going to be their fault if someone uploads something fishy.
In my experience only the big ad networks let you post anything. Small specialized ad platforms usually have actual moderation.
Edit:// by the way it wasn't that hard to get ads trough ublocks filters by self hosting them either. But that's rarely really evil and I never saw that abused.
to get any actual work done with DNS based blocking (ie. visiting Google ads, or their other dashboards) you quickly have to start whitelisting a ton of sites, which applies everywhere.
Apparently, it doesn’t have the described issues. I also use AdGuard on iOS/Safari and see only occasionally desperate ads. I expect ad networks to target this with mv3-hard methods now that it will become widespread, but up until now it just worked.
Apple and google did everything for you to not know about it. It’s not the first thread where people either don’t know about it or will read but won’t try.
>Not only does YouTube either get through or cause weird issues, YouTube now blocks you until you completely disable the extension
Works fine on my machine. You might need to update your filter lists or try another content blocker app.
>Content blockers often block cookie banners too which can often result in broken functionality - a nightmare when you’re trying to buy tickets to something and have to “reload without blockers” for the website to work.
So don't enable the filter lists that try to block cookie banners?
YouTube has been playing a cat and mouse game, disabling some accounts until disabled, randomly re-enabling them. I personally think it's so when people talk about issues like this - people say "Well, it's been ok on my end". But it's definitely some kind of A/B testing.
For me the element blockers are the most important of all. It's not just about blocking ads. It's about making websites more usable. Ads are only one of those detrimental points. Many websites bombard you with big photos of their articles. I block all that with custom blocklists so the end result is a lot more like here at hacker news.
The webRequestBlocking api, which allows the extension to inspect all request/responses in real time and act on them. With manifest v3 the extension can only supply a list of expressions to block, and the expressions that can be used is very limited.
The main difference between this and current element blockers is that Web Defuser allows you to block annoying behaviors (by modifying requests/responses in flight) in addition to elements.
At the moment it's a bit lacking in the UI department, I'd appreciate early adopter feedback (you can contact me at gmail with my username).
I understand that nerfing adblocking is definitely a big draw for Google, but Apple went the ManifestV3 route many years before, specifically to increase extension performance and privacy.
Back then there was a big uproar too, but mostly because Safari extension developers charged for a new version because they had to rewrite the entire thing.
> specifically to increase extension performance and privacy
This reasoning is so bogus that it’s hard to believe anybody could believe it in good faith. Ad blockers are essential for performance and user privacy and security.
If Apple truly bought into this reasoning then they’d integrate an ad blocker like Brave does. Follow the money.
It is not bogus. It does increase privacy because the extension no longer sees what pages you load or your web content. And it is indeed more performant.
And Apple does care because later on they started to allow blockers to spread blocking rules over multiple sub-extensions. Initially they were limited on... 15 000 rules? Can't quite remember.
You're downvoted so much that I can't even read your text without copy and pasting it.
But you're right. When I'm using Safari with 1Blocker, I don't even notice that I'm not using Chrome with uBlock Origin. And it accomplishes that with static rules instead of with an API that reads every request.
You can still install uBlock Origin in Brave, assuming you don't mind the crypto stuff and how they pay it out (or, rather don't) to site owners. Even Firefox feels a little weird now with the advent of Mozilla Advertising.
You can, but ultimately Brave is downstream of Chrome and their stated intention of supporting Manifest V2 "for as long as [they're] able" doesn't inspire as much confidence.
Firefox is also the only open alternative to Chromium at the moment, so I prefer to endorse it instead.
Brave has its own Rust based Adblocker BUILD IN. That is at the very core of the Browser, uses the exact same filter lists uBlock Origin and all the other use. There is no point in using uBlock origin in Brave at all. I have been using Brave for years now and the adblocker pretty much like uBlock. Never looked back. I think it even inspired by uBlock but the fact they can even integrate it tighter with Chromium makes more then than an extension written in JS.
uBlock Origin does a bit more than applying community maintained filter lists though. I regularly use its capability to add custom filters for instance. Is that also possible in Brave?
We would not do that on principle, but imagine we're the mustache twirlers you fantasize we are: we'd light our brand on fire doing any such thing, lose all our lead users, stop growing and start shrinking. Think / Type / Post is the Ready / Aim / Fire analogue you seek.
I know that you probably went with Chromium based on the way your relationship with Mozilla ended, but man... I'll never have a Chromium based browser as my daily driver, I simply never trusted the ad company to not do what they ended up doing in the end (killing ad blockers). Brave will always be a no go for me for this reason. And now more than ever, we really need some company with real fire power to take the reins of the Firefox source code and create a real trustable fork.
This is a choice we made. As I wrote in my last reply, I think we would have died trying to get Gecko/Graphene with a Web front end up to competitive scratch vs. Chrome (nm Firefox).
A Firefox fork would have gone over badly with some potentially large number of Mozilla/Firefox fans, and we'd still lack key elements not part of the Mozilla open source (at the time, e.g., Adobe's CDM for HTML5 DRM). On the upside we'd have more UX customizability.
But our choice of Chromium/Blink (via Electron, so we had Web front end upside without Firefox extensions) was not a slam dunk choice. It involved trade-offs, as all engineering does. One downside is we have to audit and network-test for leaks and blunders, which often come from Chromium upstream:
No, we started with Gecko (on Graphene, a sandboxing multiprocessor framework from b2g/FirefoxOS). We switched for hard-nosed wins of Chromium (as part of Electron) because out of the box vs. Gecko, most rows in the spreadsheet favored Chromium decisively. This is covered in
Why do you write "probably... based on... relationship ended"? Brave as a startup does not have time for feels not realz, pathos-over-logos nonsense. I recommend you avoid it in your work efforts too.
Thanks for the replies. I did not knew that you started with Gecko. Anyway, Brave is my go to advice when a regular user asks for a mobile browser, it just works out of the box. Not for me, and I still hope to see a Firefox fork becoming the main Chrome competitor in the future.
I get it. I run FF as my primary browser (mostly because I don't want to see the internet devolve into a Blink mono-culture).
But, I always recommend Brave for less-technical folks. It just works! My FF setup includes a number of extensions, some of which need a bit of tuning to be useful. Then you have to deal with issues in websites that just don't properly support FF, etc. My grandmother can install Brave and simply start browsing. Things just work without extra config or tinkering.
What I specifically mean by 'large media elements' is that I currently have the uBlock option active to 'Block media elements larger than [50] KB'. (Where the 50 is a spinner so I can increase or decrease the size if I want.)
I would like to know this, too. It does not seem to be on the list of features unless they are referring to it via "cosmetic filtering". I often block particular elements on websites.
There is an Aggressive setting for Brave Shields, which you can set either per-site in the Shields menu from the URL bar, or globally in brave://settings/shields - that should take care of SERP ads and other first-party placements.
Brave has a native adblocker that lets basically nothing through, though it can be configured as desired. Crypto stuff is opt-in, though there is a little monochrome button for it on the browser that one can disable with a right click.
It is not a subtle insinuation, Brave is the defacto only browser apart from Chrome right now. All the rest are niche and irrelevant if you measure adblock, compatibility and widely subpar privacy protection.
There is some bitching about the ads crypto token, but that is entirely optional, so complaints are mostly fear and dogma. And to be honest, is a fascinating new approach to ads that suvberts the current state of affairs in the advertising market.
As I see it, Brave is the only Chromium-based browser with a competitive Mv2-deprecation-resistant adblocker. If adblocking is important to you - and it is, to many people - then Brave literally is the only one worth considering. Not to mention it is open source, unlike most of the others.
(I work on Brave's adblocker, and FWIW the folks who work for Brave are very open about their affiliation when commenting about it online)
Do you have thoughts about Kagi/Orion browser? I've been using it for a bit now and I've been pleased with the ad blocking capabilities and the ability to have ublock origin on my iPhone and iPad. The browser definitely has scales but it's usable for me at this point.
Your comment was downvoted into oblivion, but it's a very valid point. There is a significant number of GNU/Linux users who value the freedoms granted by FLOSS licensing, so I believe Orion not being a FLOSS project is a valid argument against it - specifically in context of GNU/Linux (as a part of Free Software movement).
At least it certainly leaves me (personally) having second thoughts, even though I'm no purist and use proprietary software (but try prefer free software if I can).
If the Google, Pocket and other ad money dries up, Mozilla the company may go away but the Firefox browser itself will continue on because it's open source. As an exclusively Firefox user for over 20 years, I suspect if Mozilla the company dies, it will won't negatively impact Firefox much, at least in any meaningful way. In fact, the browser may be somewhat better off managed like the Blender or MAME projects.
In the last five years or so Firefox has increasingly introduced controversial changes that make it (IMHO) less good, primarily around interface design. And, from what I understand, Mozilla employs full-time UX designers who've been driving much of that. Of course, with Firefox it's still possible to modify, fix and restore all these recent interface "improvements" with user CSS but it's a constant annoyance to need to keep fixing it. Fortunately, there's an active community effort around restoring the Firefox interface and usability, exemplified by the brilliant Lepton project https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix/releases.
My perception just watching the evolution of Firefox from the outside, is that it used to be a browser that celebrated the ethos of "Have it Your Way." However, Mozilla the company gets money to pay its executives and employees (millions in the case of more than one recent CEO) by actively driving users and eyeballs for Google, Pocket and other advertisers. So the company is highly incentivized to try myriad changes and redesigns to increase appeal to "the masses" of browser users. Thus, the UX keeps getting 'simplified' and 'de-cluttered' with advanced functionality 'de-prioritized' and add-on support demoted to second-class afterthought - instead of the shining key feature advanced users value most. Basically, in recent years the Firefox UX and end-user features have been pushed by the substantial payroll needs of the Mozilla company to become more like Chrome and Safari instead of embracing its unique position as a tool for power users who value advanced features, customization and extension. And it was all for naught because Firefox has continued to lose market share while ignoring (and even actively alienating) its niche community of fanatically devoted power users.
Do you think the open source community is capable of maintaining Firefox without Mozilla? I find that doubtful. Even if they did, without Mozilla, Cloudflare and friends would start trying to kill Firefox like they do to other independent browsers.
...so long as you're not in a market where they automatically opt you in to sending all your DNS requests to a for-profit company without asking, and if you are, you remember to set up a canary domain or go and update your settings for every new install and new profile.
It's working fine on Youtube in Optimal mode. If you still have issues, you will have to go through self-diagnosing steps[1] to rule out all the myriad other ways you could suffer such issues -- most commonly another extension is interfering negatively.
uBO being so good at blocking YouTube ads to the point where you didn't need to signup for Premium may have been the tipping point for Google that ended manifest V2.
i suspect that youtube mobile is responsible for more traffic than web. And that it's harder (but not impossible) to have adblocking on mobile (such as revanced).
It's time for a Google breakup from the DOJ / FTC.
They've gone well beyond what Microsoft did in the 2000s.
Google owns so many panes of glass and funnels them all through its search and advertising funnel. They've distorted how the web (and mobile) work to accomplish this massive market distortion.
Search, Ads, and Android should be broken up into separate units. Chrome shouldn't be placed with any of those units.
While we're cutting, YouTube should be its own entity and stand on its own legs too.
Apple, Amazon, and Meta need the same scrutiny. Grocery stores and primary care doctors should not be movie studios and core internet infrastructure. Especially when those units are wholly subsidized by other unrelated business units, and their under pricing the market is used to strangle out the incumbents and buy them up on the cheap.
Well, this country (the US) decided in November to go the exact opposite direction of having a government capable of, let alone willing to, pursuing litigation like this, so I hope we enjoy this digital feudalism only expanding, never receding, in the coming years.
>Well, this country (the US) decided in November to go the exact opposite direction of having a government capable of, let alone willing to, pursuing litigation like this
Okay, I'll retract my remarks when the new formation of the FTC actually goes after a tech giant. And frankly, I have doubt any DOJ filings of this type won't get repealed by force from above in short order. This is a case that was mostly handled by the prior DOJ, which is gone now, replaced by new management.
New management is aligned with breaking up big tech.
Founders Fund (Thiel), A16Z (Andressen [0], Horowitz), and YC (Gary Tan) have all been lobbying for some form of big tech breakup because it sucks up capital+oxygen needed for startups they funded to exit at respectable valuations.
Also, Andressen's Netscape was screwed over by Microsoft, so he has a grudge against large players.
Breaking up big tech would oxygenate the entire tech sector.
Startups would be able to grow larger. There would be less threat from big tech coming in to eat your market, and M&A wouldn't be the preferred exit strategy.
Tech talent would be able to get paid more without big tech setting wages and orchestrating coordinated layoffs. More successful startups = more money for venture and labor capital. Right now that money just goes to institutional shareholders which are not the innovation drivers of the economy.
Startups will actually get to compete for markets rather than having them won and subsidized by unrelated business units at the big tech titans. The solutions delivered will fit the market needs much better.
Even big tech itself might fetch a higher valuation and be greater than the sum of its parts. So much of big tech is inefficient, untethered from market realities (eg. Alexa), and a waste of talent and human capital on dead end projects. Having Jeff Bezos "pay whatever it takes" to acquire the rights to "007" is a sign of how bloated these market distorting companies have become.
This is coming from an Apple antagonist, but don't the Apple OSs have adblocking at a system level (implying Safari)? This does vindicate Apple (but doesn't help in the other legitimate scenarios that this API is needed, which I have been told do exist).
Apple is totally an advertising company. Have you missed the part about their stalling phone, tablet and laptop revenues, that they hope to compensate with "services" revenue, i.e. App Store 30% racketeering and App Store search ads?
>Apple is totally an advertising company. Have you missed the part about [...]
Have you missed the part of my comment of my comment where I specifically mentioned "web advertising presence"? That's relevant, because ublock would only work on web ads. It can't block ads in the app store, or any other app (eg. spotify).
Thus they also clearly have an incentive to sabotage uBO. It may be a much smaller piece of their revenue than at Google, but it is a huge proportion of their revenue growth. Don't believe Apple's marketing about their caring for privacy, belied by their actions.
>Here are the relevant built-in uBlock Origin filter rules:
Can you link to a specific rule that shows Apple has web ads? The search results you linked either removeparam filters (which I guess is "tracking", but probably the most benign kind), malware sites that contain "apple.com", or analytics domains that seemingly belong to apple. Moreover there's no evidence that Safari's content blocker restrictions make a difference here. The domains are trivially blocked so it's unclear how apple is materially gaining from their nerfed adblock.
Ads that apple serves (outside of marketing pages on apple.com) are ads that displayed on ad supported ads. uBO won't help you there. Luckily, every Apple device comes with an AdBlock for those ads - airplane mode.
Apple gets Google revenue for being their default search, and that is worth much less if the search ads pay less if Safari users were able to browse other sites untracked.
That's a BIG difference though, and makes the claim about security more believable, especially since it isn't a sole restriction. There are also a number of ad blockers available for Safari, although personally I'll stick with Firefox either way.
Google is an ad company restriction use of the primary ad-blocker on its browser, it's blatant.
It's not whataboutism. If the claim is that google's actions with manifest v3 is "abusing its market position to their own benefit", but Apple did the same thing when it didn't stand to benefit from it, then it severely undermines that claim.
Sure, it doesn't rule out google was secretly intending on doing it, only internal memos or whatever can prove that definitively. But at the same time, to immediately conclude that google was "abusing its market position", you would have to be maximally uncharitable to google. That's a sad way to see the world. Take for instance, the flak that google got for banning third party cookies. If this is done by anyone else (eg. Firefox), this would be seen as a good thing. However, cynics have opposed this on the basis that such change would disadvantage third party ad networks more than google, thus google was "abusing its market position to their own benefit" and therefore the change was bad.
You talk about Google as if it's a person. You should take a step back and think to yourself why the changes were made to Manifest V3 that broke backwards compatibility, weakening ability to ad-blocking. Rule set based modification is one of the first features I'd think of when developing a systems of extensibility in browser, and they removed it.
The reasoning is obvious, and "plausible deniability" is not enough to give Google charity. The more difficult you make it to block ads, the more impressions, and the more money made. Yet you believe people should be "charitable" to the same company that can't hire the manpower to defend their own users against bad faith DCMA takedown notices. Because they ran the analysis, and it wasn't worth the cost.
Best case scenario, Chromium loses market share, implements the parts removed from V2, Google likely kicks the can down the road to Manifest V4.
There's no reason to believe companies deserve charitability. Companies are systems designed to extract maximum value, and when the world around that system changes, the system adjusts itself. It's not the systems fault for trying to get more value, it's our fault for letting them.
Manifest v3 is not going to lose any meaningful marketshare. There continues to exist working adblock and most users won't notice any difference in functionality. I sure don't.
Manifest V3 has 100% market share for all "full featured" browsers. My understanding is that just yesterday, YouTube made a change that allows them to apply DRM to videos, with even the client side buffer maintaining encryption until playback. How long until we start seeing similar applied to websites/articles?
Eventually, there will be an overstep that make enough capable people mad, and those people will get together and make/mod something better.
I don't think those two can be compared at all. Safari didn't have proper plugin support at all, doesn't matter ad-blocking or not. Rich plugin ecosystem was one of the Chrome's selling point.
There was a time in Chrome when it didn't support extensions at all. If Google had release an extension API like manifest v3 then, would that have been abuse of market position?
The reason why Chrome waited for so long to add extensions was the danger they posed to users. I was at Google when Sergey often worried about what extensions would do to non technical and older users who get tricked into installing them, then I saw first hand that danger with my own grandparents. They had extensions intercepting every network request, redirecting certain sites to fake sites, and injecting code into pages. It was horrifying, and they were lucky that they didn't have significant money or identity theft.
So it's impossible for a company to make a mistake and rectify it? If they settle on the same approach as their major competitor, it's bait and switch?
it seems overly charitable to give Google, THE advertising company, the benefit of the doubt here when the biggest impact is it will now show way more advertising.
If it's really that big of a problem this can be addressed by locking extensions by default and hiding the on switch where casual users won't look. But come on, this is obviously a pretext. You expect people to believe that the most prolific adertising and surveilance company in history is crippling the ability to block ads and trackers for altruistic reasons?!
It's not "obviously" a pretext. I don't think that the change in ad revenue to Google is going to be significant between v2 and v3 ad blockers. It might be to ad networks and sites that employ significant ad blocker counter measures though.
And it's not "altruistic" - it's because eval() and webRequestBlocking are bad for security and performance, so they're bad for a lot of users. Users who will switch to Safari or another browser without that extension API, because the browser is faster or didn't exfiltrate their banking credentials.
Note: Edge is also gaining. They use Chromium but their stance on Manifest v3 is unclear to me. So far they don't seem to have any plans to deprecate v2 support
I know these numbers seem tiny, but if these trends were to continue, Chrome could be under 50% marketshare by June 2026 and overtaken by the end of 2027
As much as I dislike their Chrome practices, I am rather against the idea of forcing them to sell Chrome.
For one, they simply have had a better product, at least in the past. Part of their large monopoly is due to just being better outright for a large portion of users (presumably). Are we to punish making overly-good products?
For another, sell to whom? And why would they be a good steward?
And yet another, there's literally Chromium, which other browsers (built by other corps) use, e.g. Edge, Brave, etc.
Did Google have to open Chromium? No.
Disclaimer: I hold these opinions weakly and would love to learn more about why they might be ill-premised.
Google did not make Chromium from scratch, and so were obligated to use a license compatible with the previous source they used. That source can be traced back to KDE's Konqueror browser and its KHTML engine.
Your argument is that Google couldn't possibly have written their own web engine and browser at a time when Firefox and IE were the alternative options?
What’s wrong with V8? Had only pleasant interactions with it so far (maybe compiling takes long, can’t tell, whole webkit is a nightmare in that regard)
Oh it's perfectly fine, but Firefox was kind of the only illusion that the web does not rely on a single implementation, so discovering that even that depends on V8 is kind of funny :)
> Nobody could have possibly seen it coming that Google would abuse its market position to their own benefit...
What makes me sad is that if we go back a handful of years here in HN comments, there were tons of posts assuredly stating google would never do anything like this.
Even though it should have been obvious that a company who lives and dies by ad revenue will of course do everything to protect ad revenue and block users freedom.
I don't think killing actual, effective ad-blocking was the sole motivation of moving to Manifest V3, but it was certainly a nice side effect that was hard to resist.
People's web experience is in degradation for long time.
No point using 99% of the web due to the hostile, fraudolent, abusive approaches on top of the hollow (yeh, very very gentle world for the thing what it is) content. No point searching for advice, products, job, as crap is poured at you while your actions are registered, your profile is sold, just to pour dedicated crap on you by the highest bidder.
I have mail and 5 (7 with weather) pages I check regularly, and that's it. That's my online life. More like a hermit goes into town for tools and cans kind of digital solitary. Clicking on links only after reconsidering five times, if I am really interested in the possible content. Mostly here. So, so far away from the extremely curious me 20 or so years ago spending hours to the limit of my thirst and bladder, navigating all that is out there.
It is very sad what humanity made out of the Internet. It does not even hurt anymore. It is numb blob where the feeling about the rich common knowledge source this was and could have been should be.
> Chrome is their project, they should be free to do whatever they want with it.
Google has a long history of "accidentally" breaking gmail on firefox and funneling users to Chrome back in the day. It's beyond stupid to argue they should be able to do whatever they want with their vertically integrated monopoly.
Like, if you want to dig holes in your own driveway sure whatever, but if you own all the roads in Detroit and you want to dig holes in them, then make a killing selling new tires and suspension repair a fair society wouldn't move out of Detroit, they'd fucking run you out of town.
Why be bitter at the people dealing with the shit, why not be angry at the people making the world shit? My company uses gmail so I'm forced to use it.
How is your company forcing you to use gmail any worse than your company forcing you to use outlook? Is it your company that is making the world shit, or google.
Indeed. I'd like to. Except Google also make it nigh impossible for anyone hosting their own email (the original-internet ideal) to get email into gmail reliably enough to be useful. I have my own address on my own domain, but can't rely on it (yes, DKIM and DMARC and SPF are properly set up) not to be marked "spam" for opaque reasons, so gmail remains my "main" address. It's a network-effect problem: once enough people are "captured", then everyone else is forced to join - or else be unable to participate.
It's a collective action problem: you'll have to persuade millions and millions of "normies", who have no idea what's going on, or what internet privacy is, or what's broken about the system, and who don't care to learn, and won't listen to us - or you'll have to impose regulation. Those are the choices. The second seems more possible than the first. Us nerds saying "walk away" is idealistic; we will, and always will, get squished, because the corps have the power and most folks won't (ever) care.
GSuite/Workspace and consumer GMail is not the same thing in the slightest. They may use the same mail servers but that is about where the similarity ends.
I would recommend Google Workspace to any company because it gives them a ton of business productivity tools.
I would probably not recommend gmail as a users default personal email because frankly it's not that good.
The reality is most users have a Google account ans just use their Gmail account which is bundled.
Most of my circle which cares effectively use their Gmail account for sites that insist on it and never open that e-mail if they can get away with it.
True, and applies to many other things as well. Anyone claiming otherwise is shirking responsibility for their own actions. Every single sibling comment here suffers from this.
Arguments in the form of "other people do it, so I must also" are unpersuasive and pathetic.
GP Post:
> My company uses gmail so I'm forced to use it.
Your post:
> Everyone dealing with gmail is doing so because they chose to.
No, it's clear that not everyone dealing with Gmail is doing so because they chose to. Repeating your incorrect statement does not make it correct.
Further, everyone has to deal with its impacts on the email ecosystem as it's practically impossible for somebody who works a 9-5 to run their own mail server that Gmail will deign to not only accept mail from but also successfully deliver it to its intended recipient.
So even if I never use Gmail I still have to deal with replies going to / coming from it.
Except for anyone whose employer requires them to use Google services, since Google Apps (or whatever they call it these days) is a hugely popular offering for central company email/contacts/calendar/office suite. And frankly, it's better than dealing with Outlook and its unrelenting AI slop machine advertising.
You don't own the roads in Detroit; the government owns most of them.
Gmail is not a government service. Google is free to make that work with only one browser, if they want.
You can't assert that Google must make Gmail work with any browser whatsoever, because that means supporting someone using Windows 95 with Internet Explorer 5.5.
I'm not going to waste my time explaining to you what a metaphor is, but I will say this Firefox was the dominant player in the 00's 2010's when they did this, not the 2% market share it is now.
Actually I have a problem is both. Chrome/Chromium is Google's product and it's theirs to do with what they please, but if they do user-hostile things with it, that's enough to criticise them for me, even if they're honest about it.
Of course lying about why makes it worse, but I don't think it would've been that much more okay if Google was honest and said "users' ability to install highly effective ad blockers hurts our bottom line so we're removing them".
And I don't understand what is the benefit of lying as well - everyone on the internet knows what this is about, at least if they used ad blockers. A lot of people don't, but they will not be affected anyway.
I don’t work for Google and genuinely think it’s better for users. It’s always bugged me that ad blockers request arbitrary read write permissions for all websites I visit, and it didn’t seem like that was ever going to change until Chrome forced the issue.
Read/write permissions are necessary to effectively block ads. There's a lot of sites that will throw up a screen saying "please turn off your adblocker" and refuse to let you view the page if they detect ads aren't being loaded. Read/write permissions allows uBlock Origin to inject scripts into the page to fool the anti-adblock scripts into thinking that ads are being served.
Yea but, I think its a bit misplaced to be angry at Google for this. Surely its the content creators that place the ads in their content to blame for this.
I don't understand why they ads are not spliced into the stream. It would be undetectable by extensions at all.
Because ads are auctioned in nanoseconds. This isn't the newspaper were everyone saw the same as which was vetted by the editors.
You are seeing different ads than your neighbour. Everything is automated to cost as little money as possible.
At the platform level, you have to have a security model, and sometimes it will conflict with functionality. I’m sure there’s a lot of potentially interesting browser extensions you could build with the ability to read and write arbitrary files, but Chrome has decided (much less controversially) that the sandbox is key to their security model and extensions can’t ask to escape it.
If manifest V3 ad blockers were nonfunctional to the point of being broken, I’d be more concerned, but in my experience they’re perfectly OK.
It's my computer. I will run code that I choose and disallow code that I choose. If I choose to run code that blocks your code, that's my prerogative. Whether that's a full blown right is another topic.
You're just pissed because I've chosen to block your code in software you created. Next, you'll tell me I have to watch your programming on a TV I bought with your code on it.
The idea that we have to do anything that evilCorp wants us to do is just insane that people have come to the point of accepting that.
It really isn't. They can spend some of their billions of revenue to review changes when popular extensions are updated, just like Mozilla does. Every uBO update is vetted by Mozilla and is only then pushed out to users. But doing this is not in Google's interest at all.
Mozilla’s guidance on this (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tips-assessing-safety-e...) is that only some extensions are manually reviewed and you shouldn’t trust this as a guarantee of safety if you don’t trust the developer who owns the extension.
If I’m going to be the devil’s advocate, it’s probably better for performance.
When I maintained a hook-based plugin system, I learned that many programmers do not know data structures or algorithms and would slow down the whole software by writing plugins that looked up rules using extremely slow ways extremely often. And if users wanted to complain about the software being slow, they would always blame me first.
But when I replaced it with rule lists, now I was in control and could implement fast data structures.
I've seen a lot of their engineers here on HN defending Google's position, and very few of the anti-Google crowd here claim to be (x)googlers.
That said, I know a number of xooglers (myself included) who don't believe for a moment that this would have gotten off the ground if someone important hadn't opined on the usefulness WRT ad-serving.
If you're looking to move away from Chrome, Firefox + uBlock Origin is still your best bet IMO. Mozilla's committed to keeping the robust ad-blocking capabilities alive despite Google's changes.
Brave is decent too if you want something Chromium-based but more privacy-focused (comes with minor controversies).
Safari works well if you're in the Apple ecosystem.
I actually run a dual-browser setup these days - Firefox for most browsing, and only fire up Brave for those annoying sites that Google has mysteriously "optimized" to run poorly elsewhere. Not ideal but gets the job done!
100% agree with you. Unfortunately Chrome is damn near a requirement if you are interacting with the Google Cloud console. Try to use BigQuery studio in any other browser and you are in for a world of hurt.
Exactly the reason why I use https://choosy.app to always redirect everything Google Cloud to Chrome, but everything else to Firefox.
That way if I click on some random GCP link in Slack it opens the link in Chrome, but everything else stays in Firefox. I don't need ad blocking for GCP so that works fine.
I need this for Android pretty badly. I currently just don't set a default, and often use urlcheck in the middle to edit the URL if necessary, then pick my browser. I would love an app that automated this after the first use. I've submitted feedback to multiple apps that are halfway there, but none have seemed interested in getting the rest of the way there.
UrlCheck is currently the closest, it has single buttons to remove tracking parameters and paths like landing pages, and I think it remembers the browser based on domain, but it doesn't have a list of changeable per-domain settings, won't open it automatically, and doesn't show a launcher-style grid (it uses a scrolling list that has to be opened manually). Google doesn't make things easier either, since apps can no longer be inserted as a chooser, and setting a chooser app as default breaks things.
For various functionality, there's also NeoLinker, UntrackMe, Intent Intercept, unalix, LinkSheet, and Open Link With. I believe Lynket browser, which uses the custom tab protocol, also has some basic rules-based choosing but it only works with two browsers and the rules are based on the app making the request.
It looks like LinkSheet added many of the settings I'm looking for at some point, so I'll be trying that out.
I recently had cause to sign in to the Google Cloud console (not BigQuery specifically) and found it unusable on Firefox. It pegged a core at 100% and consumed memory at a prodigious rate. Basic UI actions were painfully slow.
I killed the tab and tried it in Chromium where the UI was... not snappy, but in range for my expectations of a heavyweight frontend.
Yeah, I use Chromium for anything Google made, and FF for everything else. Google makes sure that their pages work sloooowly on Firefox (e.g. Google Earth). No such problems elsewhere.
I use it all the time on multiple platforms and it is a DOG on anything but Chrome/Chromium. We have 30+ datasets each with many tables/views/functions etc tho so that could be part of the issue.
Same thing will happen in the billing portal or really any experience but I notice it the most in BQ.
Oh yes, but Google products are notoriously worse on Firefox, if one is to believe the numerous comments on HN on the topic (although I haven't tried myself recently so I can't be quoted on this), and that interpretation doesn't sit well with your comment.
But you know better than anyone's else what you meant :-)
They had the market position and option to do that for years now. "Told you so" whenever a patterns matches, and ignoring the times when it does not instead of providing a good model that encompasses both, is a fairly lame way to reason about the world.
The position is always, Google's position is so strong they can do whatever they want even if it isn't beneficial to users, this confirms that. I'm not sure the "they could have abused this sooner" defense is a good one.
Not only not a good defense, but practically indecipherable. What scale of abuse couldn't be excused by this? I'm not sure I even understand what the notion of abuse means to a person who thinks it could be excused by such a logic.
It seems to completely lose track of the face value significance of any individual instance of abuse because it gets lost in the comparative equation to hypothetical worst harms.
It also confusingly treats restraint as though X amount of restraint can then be cashed in for a certain amount of harm, rather than something that's supposed to happen by default under good stewardship.
And it shifts the whole question to whether or not that position is being abused when I think the criticisms are more fundamental about the fact that they shouldn't be in the position to have or not have that leverage in the first place.
So that, long and short, would be my detox from the assumptions at play here.
It's funny that this line of defense is sincerely attempted here, as it's so absurd that it's actually the punchline of an SMBC comic. And honestly, one of my favorite ones that I find genuinely very funny.
>Lawyer: Okay, let's say my client killed his wife. What about the people he didn't kill?! That's six billion people! Don't they matter? Don't they matter?!
>Caption: In an alternate universe, Jeffrey Dahmer has a thank you parade every year.
I view it as a symptom of the broader effort to villify the fourth estate and condition people to act(vote) on their emotions rather than a rational look at verifiable facts.
The "Main Stream Media" rhetoric really started with the teaparty stuff, powered by the internet, and championed both the right (tea party in america, faragists in the UK) and left (corbynistas in the uk, AOC types I assume in the states)
>If you think improving privacy is a joke, go look at how easily extensions can steal your browsing history and steal your passwords. uBlock Origin is the good one, but for every good one there are malicious ad blockers that do far worse things.
Except removing support for webRequestBlocking in manifest v3 doesn't really improve security. Nearly every extension require the "access your data for all sites" permission. The infamous Honey extension works just fine with manifest v3, for instance.
Ad blocking is a must. In a world without MV3, you choose between ad infested sites or extensions with have the potential to harm your privacy. Now you don't. It's a win for normal users, at the expense of power users for whom declarative request blocking does not suffice.
There are plenty of other reasons to hate Google. This isn't one of them. Sacrificing the "power" desired by couple thousand HN users in return for the safety of couple millions of normal users is the right thing to do. Of course HN users will disagree; let's just see how badly this post will be downvoted. Downvotes won't change my opinion.
"Nobody could have possibly seen it coming that Google would abuse its market position to their own benefit..."
That's some fatalistic wording. How about:
Company that publishes a free product and business model relies on ads, stops distributing app that piggybacks on their free product while circumventing ads.
Also true. But it’s a charitable way of putting a fundamentally broken contract on the open web since it was invented: you are in control of your browser. If you want reading mode, large text, anti-fingerprinting, disable autoplaying video, heck even banning popups, the browser is your tool and does what you tell it to. If Google or any other company comes between you and your browser then one part of the open web is discarded. I think extensions are gonna get nerfed even more in the future, for whatever reason large commercial interests have.
Right. I think people were alert to these possibilities long before the actual stuff happened with Manifest V3.
And it shouldn't take waiting until specific examples happen to understand the incentives and the possibilities that could ripen at some future date.
And just to throw in my little side hobby horse on this conversation, it's what I find personally frustrating about conversations with people who think that Brave counts as an alternative.
Being attached at the hip to the Chromium project is a ground level commitment to a long-term vulnerability, and it means that similar circumstances could "ripen" at some future date as the family of Chromium browsers become dependent on an increasingly vast foundation of code and web standards. To me, the combination of that capability and the incentive should be enough to be treated as a complete argument which disqualifies Chromium derived browsers from counting as alternatives.
Yes that is how the law views it. That’s not necessarily a good thing. I agree that I should have rights because I’m a person. As the crazy radical I am, I don’t agree that companies ”are free to X”, because they shouldn’t have freedoms, only entitlements that can be regulated to serve the purpose of the citizens.
Right, and that's why ad and spying funded products should be illegal. They don't just distort but destroy markets. It's an extremely unfair business practice.
That people claim it's impossible for a browser to survive without Google's funding demonstrates how broken the market is by ad money: of course people would pay for something like a web browser if it were illegal to make money by selling your users. The web is obviously valuable to people.
>Right, and that's why ad and spying funded products should be illegal. They don't just distort but destroy markets. It's an extremely unfair business practice.
Call your senator and propose a bill, otherwise we'll keep doing what's legal.
I hope Mozilla realizes (and still cares) that they have a huge opportunity here to be the power-browser where you can get awesome extensions, unlike the locked-down and hobbled Chromium ecosystem. I suspect they do realize this because they've been really leaning into extensions recently, but over the years I've worried that Mozilla's committment to Firefox isn't as serious as I would like.
Regardless, I'd love to see this give FF a big bounce in the stats. Something to reinforce that there are people out here that really want manifest v2, badly enough to switch!
> I hope Mozilla realizes (and still cares) that they have a huge opportunity here to be the power-browser where you can get awesome extensions,
The problem is that Mozilla's customers are not Firefox's users. Mozilla's customer is Google. They pay Mozilla to exist and they are paying Mozilla to intentionally drive Firefox into the ground.
I think it's pretty clear that the TOS change basically coincided with the removal of manifest v2 change in chrome.
Then they wouldn't be throwing money into open firepits on trash like a VPN service or how to comply with Google's advertising decisions.
Then they would let people contribute money to the browser (instead of to Mozilla Foundation which goes to enabling aforementioned trash fires) and to the salary of a multi-million dollar CEO after laying off developer staff and hiring more C-suite assistants.
Mozilla is a bad organization in every sense, a bad steward of Firefox, and the best thing that could happen is they do have their funding cut, they go out of business forever, and Firefox finds a good home chosen by the community.
>Then they wouldn't be throwing money into open firepits on trash like a VPN service
It's pants-on-head level of crazy talk to suggest that the VPN service is compromising Mozilla's finances.
It's a re-wrapped Mullvad VPN that probably was not expensive to roll out (it being inexpensive to deploy is probably precisely the reason they moved forward with it). It's like people are just workshopping arguments where they randomly claim these things are expensive without any substantiation whatsoever.
Mozilla is sitting on 1.2 billion in assets and investments. They're not underwater. They are indeed in a position where they need to diversify revenue, but the idea that the side bets have created running deficits is a narrative completely manufactured in comment sections.
This kind of thinking appears to be prevalent. "Firefox does one specific thing which I construe as evil. Therefore I use the competitor which also does this thing, plus dozens of others which are anti-competitive and generally destructive to the ecosystem."
"The coleslaw in the Jedi salad bar has raisins. Therefore I joined the Sith. Their coleslaw also has raisins."
You misunderstand. The vast majority of people who complain about Mozilla on HN are Firefox users. We're the ones with the highest level of investment in the idea of an open web, so we're the ones who've stuck it out until Firefox's market share is all but gone. But because we care so much, you'll also frequently find us on here complaining that Mozilla is drunk driving their company and does not seem to realize that the only thing they do that actually matters is maintain the one independent browser engine.
Nice speech, but the argument about VPN costs is just as spurious as it was a few comments ago. Why has this passionate concern drifted into nodding along to such ridiculous arguments?
I too am I Firefox user, I too am invested and concerned with, say, adtech. Somehow I've managed to avoid saying crazy things about VPNs.
= = =
Edit: replying here because it won't let me add a new comment. I'm not making the positive claim in the VPN argument. It's puzzling why "based on no information" would cut in favor of an argument asserting VPN has unprecedented costs without substantiation but not against it.
Also, as I've already pointed out and the other commenter has (as well as commenters in previous threads whenever this comes up), what we know of ordinary costs to run VPNs would not imply any expense on the order of magnitude necessary to make the argument work. Which is a legitimate challenge to speculation that would presume otherwise without substantiation.
And once again I have to emphasize that this is completely detached from any cause and effect argument about what missing browser feature would have otherwise been developed but for the resources spent on a VPN. The idea that there's a legitimate open question about whether a re-wrapped VPN is costing millions or tens of millions in losses is not the reasonable argument you seem to think it is. And it's not because reasons, like the ones mentioned here.
= = =
Edit 2: This was originally about whether the VPNs were a cost sink on the order of millions or tens of millions of dollars. But now it seems to have changed to whether the VPN generates enough revenue that it's a positive way to contribute. Not sure when that happened.
Your VPN argument is based on, as far as I can tell, no information. Do you have numbers for what percentage of the VPN subscription goes to Mozilla? If not, you have no reason to believe that it's an effective way to contribute to Firefox dev.
I want a way to contribute to Firefox, not a VPN, and if 90% of the subscription goes to Mullvad that's a waste of money.
Is it? Do you have a citation for this? From what I understand it's a white labeled Mullvad VPN, and I haven't been able to find numbers for what percentage of the revenue is taken by Mozilla and what percentage goes to Mullvad.
I don't know any details of the revenue split, but I'm talking about the act of running a VPN service itself as being low overhead compared to the costs. Paying mullvad obviously reduces the margins, but it doesn't have the kinds of organizational overhead that would come with say, running an advertising company on the side like Mozilla now does.
Previously the argument was that the VPN was an example of "throwing money into open firepits", but now we're talking about the extent to which it generates revenue.
Do you have a source for this? I'm a big fan of Mullvad and trust their service more than any. I wouldn't mind supporting Mozilla's independence from Google while getting the same VPN service I'm currently getting
Hopefully Mozilla's MDN Plus offering can grow to bring them a big source of revenue. MDN is a treasure for any web developer and, should Mozilla go under, this public service would be sorely missed for the open web.
The main problem with mozvpn is that they have a mozilla:mulvad account mapping. I'm unclear if my name goes to mulvad, but it does to mozilla.
Yes with mulvad you can pay anonymously via cash or bitcoin or whatever, but assuming you aren't doing that, using mozvpn seems potentially safer than mulvad - as you'd have to compromise both mulvad and mozilla to link my name/credit card with the vpn used.
I imagine their VPN service is financially viable if they've still stuck with it this long.
Aside from that, they've just about cut all other initiatives aside from "Firefox and AI". The latter gives me pause, but hopefully they really are more focused moving forward.
I think Mozilla has done alright, but I agree the folks is in charge of their business direction and especially PR are abysmal. Personally, I wish a company like Proton was at the helm.
> Then they would let people contribute money to the browser
People keep saying things like this, but the truth is that direct contributions to any ad-supported system contribute more like 1%-10% (at best) of their income.
It does not have to be the majority. It would suffice to produce enough funds to continue developing Firefox, with full-time engineers, infrastructure, etc.
The whole Mozilla foundation budget oscillated around $100-120M/y for last few years. Let's assume that half of it was dedicated to Firefox; e.g. $60M/y. It would take 500k users paying $120/y (aka $10/mo) to support their favorite browser. The current audience of Firefox is approx. 170M users; it would take about 0.3 percent of the audience to be paying users; 0.6% if you lower the rate to $5/mo.
This is how any freemium works.
Even more funnily, someone with a good reputation could just start an organization to accept the payments and direct them to Mozilla developers, both Mozilla employees and significant open-source contributors. Eventually the developers might stop needing the paycheck from Mozilla, and thus from Google.
> someone with a good reputation could just start an organization to accept the payments and direct them to Mozilla developers, both Mozilla employees and significant open-source contributors
I had the same thought. I dont think such an org would be able to pull in nearly the same amount of money as Mozilla does, but even a few million dollars a year would fund a lot of development work.
If we adjust to these numbers, we need to quadruple the number of paying users, up to some 1.2% of the total user base. Let's add a safety margin, and bump it to 2%.
Spotify makes over 80% of revenue off of paid subscribers, even though over 60% of users are on the free, ad-supported subscription.
Now that's not some optional donation scheme, there are real tangible benefits to being a paid subscriber, so idk how that could fit into something like Firefox.
Yup. Firefox Relay, their own VPN, MDN Plus, and many more.
The funny thing is that the same people on here that crow on about Mozilla needing to "just focus on Firefox" are the same ones who complains about its reliance on Google for income.
Based on their interop performances Mozilla seems to be doing the best they can to do both. Firefox interop has improved significantly in the past 4 years (surprisingly, so has Safari's) and they've also rolled out more new Mozilla offerings that could some day replace Google revenue
> The funny thing is that the same people on here that crow on about Mozilla needing to "just focus on Firefox" are the same ones who complains about its reliance on Google for income.
There's no inherent contradiction here. Mozilla still doesn't give me a way to donate to them to fund Firefox. They haven't even tried. I want to fund Firefox development, desperately, but they deliberately structured their organization to make that impossible without paying for some other random project that has its own overhead.
I want Mozilla to offer a Firefox+ subscription or donation or something, anything. Let me give you my money! Just give me a way to be confident that you'll take it as a signal to fund Firefox and not as a signal that what your customers really want is VPNs.
Taking your money creates a firmer expectation from them to stick to their main selling proposition of privacy which would make it more difficult for them to go after revenue streams that are more lucrative but less privacy-focused.
The only revenue stream they should be pursuing is interest on the endowment they built from the Google payouts. Anything else makes them dependent on someone else and corrupts the mission.
To little, too late. They underwent massive scope creep, throwing money at anything and everything, while neglecting the core task of maintaining a standards-compliant, user-friendly/non-hostile, privacy-respecting browser ... resulting in such incidents as Mr. Robot ad tie-in and the global add-on outage.
Oh ... and I still can't customize my controls fully. (Add-ons only take effect after a page load.)
Had they actually kept their scope small and focused, they could have put the difference into an endowment that would let them give the middle finger to the Chromes of the world forever. Yet here we are.
> They pay Mozilla to exist and they are paying Mozilla to intentionally drive Firefox into the ground.
I am trying to understand how this works? If they pay Mozilla to exist, yet their intention is to destroy their competitor, why even pay for them to begin with?
Do they? I thought Google significantly reduced their payments to Mozilla a few years back, which started Mozilla current random-walk.
Edit: As of 2023, they were as high as ever at 85% of Mozilla's finances coming from Google [1] . However the DoJ antitrust case against Google targets Google's payments to various entities (Mozilla, Apple) to make themselves the default search engine, thus threatening Mozilla's income. I did not immediately find sources for Mozilla's 2024 finances, but I can imagine they see the existential threat.
> and they are paying Mozilla to intentionally drive Firefox into the ground.
Part of what the DOJ is seeking against Google would severely impact Mozilla financially however, as they want to ban them from paying to be the default search engine.
Someone in an infosec podcast recently summed up the whole situation far better than I've been able to:
The vast majority of people won't pay for privacy.
Some people will pay for search. Some people will pay for content. It's really not many, though. Can you imagine if effectively everything on the internet was paywalled? I sure as hell don't know what the solution is, but we wouldn't've gotten to this spot right now, with all of the good and the bad of the internet, if the vast majority of sites and services on the internet charged for use.
(My best guess is that we can have the good that we have now with ads that aren't individually targeted. I literally have no guesses other than that.)
I have loved Kagi's "small web" where I find interesting items, almost like stumbleupon. It reminded me that not every site on the internet is optimizing for eyeballs.
That's enough to be (apparently) profitable. It doesn't matter if most people don't pay for search as long as enough people do that paid search can exist.
It's more like 0.005%-0.02% of queries and like 0.001% of users depending on what statistics for Google you go by, but of course still very insignificant.
Ah yes, the mystical 0.0073 units of people paying for search, assuming every person searches.
Over a year ago, Kagi hit 20k paying members. This puts monthly ARR between $200k and $500k ($10 to $25/head), roughly. That's 0.000273% of all people -- quite a jump!
Mozilla diversifies by increasing the CEO's salary for nothing.
Wiki:
In 2020, after returning to the position of CEO, Baker's salary was more than $3 million. In 2021, her salary rose again to more than $5 million, and again to nearly $7 million in 2022.
The new CEO brings computing for AI money bleed that almost no one wants.
I'm not defending it at all, but I think it's worth pointing out this pay rate is below the rate most CEOs of tech companies of this size are making. I don't really know what the solution here is but I imagine any CEO they replace her with would also seek a high salary. I'd love for them to become a worker-owned cooperative like Igalia but I really don't see that happening any time soon
I don't agree with Mozilla paying that huge CEO salary, but…
Do you know Firefox's handy new offline translation feature? That's AI a well. And Firefox is the only browser that doesn't leak your web page when translating it.
There are plenty of other uses for AI, such as describing images without alt-text for the blind, or summarization. I, for one, want AI in my browser, you can't really say that “nobody wants it”, when many people clearly do.
Thunderbird is doing pretty good. They actually have a surplus in donations they have to get rid of. Yet Mozilla abandoned it and refuses still to accept donation for Firefox.
I think it absolutely would be great if a Wikipedia-like model were viable, but Wikipedia is like the extreme high watermark for that, and they get five billion visits a month, which I think is an order of magnitude higher than what Firefox has access to. Ramping up to Wikipedia scale levels of donations would be a serious project and a significant gamble.
Wikipedia has also been around as long as the internet itself and its current fundraising drives are the culmination of decades of momentum and cultivating a perception of the compact that exists between them and their users.
Also, I believe that even in the best of times Wikipedia is raising about half as much as it costs to run Firefox.
There's probably important caveats that relate to comparing software development projects with resources and content, because I think the most successful donation-driven examples are Wikipedia, NPR, and The Guardian. And what they seem to have in common is generating content to be consumed.
In terms of software development projects, to me the most natural analogy is something like VLC, which does indeed rely on donations and is orders of magnitudes smaller. Or maybe the Tor project which does rely on donations, but I think they're at the order of like 10 million or so, which is certainly promising, but not a like for like substitution for the revenue they get from Google.
Similar to Mozilla & Firefox, there isn't an exact breakdown for Wikimedia expenditures to know the costs associated with Wikipedia. For Firefox, it's often stated its costs are ~200m but those are all expenses Mozilla categorizes under software development. For Wikimedia, within their operation expenses, ~3m were in hosting and ~84m in salaries (related to programs). The salaries are stated to be for multiple initiatives, among which platform development is mentioned*.
*Although arguably the most important part of Wikipedia, and their other collaborative projects, are the volunteers maintaining and contributing to it, rather the developers.
Note that $15 million is nowhere near enough to pay the number of employees who work on Firefox. As a for-profit (unlike the foundation), Mozilla the corporation has to pay folks market rates, and if you're paying an employee in the US, you're paying that same amount on top as taxes, insurance, benefits, etc. etc. so $15 million gets you a few dozen people at most. Mozilla employs a few hundred. So you'll have to add a zero to that number before it's in the same ballpark (e.g. wikipedia would be a good example).
Is the AI coming at a prohibitive cost? I'm not sure I understand what is going to come of those bets, and I'm not a fan of AI everything so I hope it's only used in measured ways that are beneficial, but I certainly would rather them continue innovating.
I don't think they did a whole lot with blockchain beyond some very preliminary dabbling in decentralized web stuff which if it could have gained traction I absolutely would have supported but it certainly doesn't seem like it was a significant drag on developer resources or finances so far as I could tell.
And wouldn't that have to be the argument for any of this to matter?
So you made this claim about the blockchain and I did a little bit of Googling to learn more. And so far as I can tell they barely did anything beyond some like papers and very preliminary demo implementations of stuff like IPFS and dabbling with Web3.
Those were very preliminary ventures and not anything that commanded substantial developer resources, so I don't know what you're talking about. And look. I obviously disagree with people who claim that side bets compromised Mozilla, but the arguments sort into different tiers with some being understandable (issues with adtech, CEO pay), some in the middle (the non profit Mozilla Foundation is bloated!), some that are one step up from utter nonsense because they're at least expressed in coherent sentences but have little to no supporting evidence or theory of cause and effect (e.g. "Mozilla lost all its market share due to their side bets being prohibitively expensive").
But we're at a point where apparently these arguments have been seen and repeated so many times that there's a new class of commenters who have been making the lowest effort versions of these arguments that I've yet seen, and are the least interested in anything like evidence or logic or responsiveness to questions or anything that I would associate with coherent thought. Which is where I would put the blockchain argument.
> Those were very preliminary ventures and not anything that commanded substantial developer resources, so I don't know what you're talking about.
Are you sure they intended them to be preliminary? Maybe they backed off when they saw their users' opinion about Web 3-4-5 or whatever number the blockchain "evangelists" picked out.
In 3-5 years if Firefox will still be around are you going to tell me their "AI" initiative was just preliminary too?
What I'm talking about is trust again. Easily lost, hard to gain back. As I said elsewhere, I want a guarantee that my money is only spent on the actual browser before I donate.
> everything I said about the relative quality of different Mozilla arguments
You see "they're trying this promising new technology" i see "they're running around like a headless chicken, trampling the poor browser's body with their boots in the process".
I'm not going to look for mitigating circumstances until I see a pattern of news that the Mozilla org is at least admitting to working on the browser and not whatever is evangelized this week.
This to me is the ultimate sign that Mozilla has zero values or principles.
They've long advocated that Big Tech is a problem, but as soon as somebody tries to actually address it and this coincidentally impacting Mozilla, they abandon any and all principles.
That would be a good thing.
If Firefox is funded by donations, rather than by Google, it ensures there is no enshittification in the future.
And yes, donations can fund a big project, as evidenced by Thunderbird and Ladybird.
Nobody uses Ladybird, at this point it's vaporware. And Thunderbird is still based on Firefox.
The development of Firefox costs around $200 million per year. That's more than what Wikimedia can get from donations, and Wikipedia is a website that everyone uses. And you want to rely on donations from people that ad-block YouTube instead of paying for Premium.
And let's say that it manages to bring those costs down to $100 million per year or less and manages to get it from donations (when pigs will fly) … it still has to compete with a Chrome whose estimated cost goes over $1 billion per year.
If it costs $200 million a year to develop Firefox, then their management team is guilty of gross incompetence.
I am betting this is really paying for the crappy side projects and HUGE pay for the Mozilla Foundation people (just like all the BS spending the Wikimedia foundation does) and has nothing to do with Firefox itself.
Maintaining a fully compliant, secure, cross-platform web browser that competes with the biggest companies on earth absolutely is going to have costs like that.
I think Mozilla Foundation receives something like 5 to 10%. I'm not against the argument that foundations can be bloated and inefficient, but at this point, this anti Mozilla narrative is completely out of control and almost purely speculation driven.
They spent $35 million in 2022 to establish a venture capital fund... they are definitely using a lot more than 10% for BS not related to developing Firefox.
It would have been 5.9% of that year's annual revenue in 2022. It's not even from their annual revenue streams to begin with, it was a one time pull from their $1.2 billion (at the time) of total assets which includes a big pile of investments. Those assets actually grew by more in one year than the entire than the amount put into the VC fund. Also I thought we wanted them to be making side bets to position them for success in the long term?
There's also no cause and effect connection between the VC fund and their market share. It didn't siphon resources away from developers, and there's no such thing as a missing browser feature that would have restored all the market share had they simply not invested in a VC fund.
The 5-10% figure was in reference to 2021 but I think I was overstating that and the Mozilla Foundation actually gets something like 2% annually.
More charitably, it's driven by frustration more than speculation. Browsers are old technology, and some people think that maybe hurling huge amounts of money at stuff like this is unreasonable because projects can/should be "finished" at some point. Forever-development is very often actively harmful, and if it's actually necessary then it might be hiding problems in the wider ecosystem.
It's good that we have alternatives to chrome, but on the other hand the alternatives are not winning, and they prevent any chance of regulation (or having a reasonable discussion about whether chrome sucks, as we see here). There's a strong argument that mozilla IS google's antitrust shield.
Also can we just take a minute to seriously try to imagine the leader of the "Makefile foundation" receiving $2.4M in compensation, and generally burning a lot more money on dead-end "innovations" and then rebranding as "OpenSource.. And Advertising". Make is 20 years older than Mozilla, but does it look like the browser project will be finished or moving in a great direction any time soon while there's big opportunities for grift and graft?
Signed, a grateful but nevertheless annoyed and skeptical firefox user
> Also can we just take a minute to seriously try to imagine the leader of the "Makefile foundation" receiving $2.4M in compensation, and generally burning a lot more money on dead-end "innovations" and then rebranding as "OpenSource.. And Advertising". Make is 20 years older than Mozilla, but does it look like the browser project will be finished or moving in a great direction any time soon while there's big opportunities for grift and graft?
Make is pretty slow which is why `ninja`, funnily enough, was invented to speed up Google Chrome build times.
I’m the cto of the fork foundation where we provide important alternatives to spoons and work hard to serve our community with the kind of necessary innovations that putting modern food into that hole in your face requires.
If you think about it spending a few billion a year on R+D is the least you could expect when modern food is changing at such a rapid pace! And aren’t you glad the whole world isn’t spoons? I decline to discuss personal compensation because I don’t see how that’s relevant to the issues here!
I think it's unfair to call Ladybird vaporware this early. There's nothing suspicious about their development schedule for the scope of the thing they're trying to build.
I agree I don't think it should be in the alternative browser discussion until they do produce something, however.
And also, I think there's a positive to say about Lady Bird here, which is that in the event they succeed, that's as much a narrative about an extraordinarily talented and committed developer, And if they're able to put forward a credible browser, it will be a soaring achievement for them. Not necessarily something I would expect as a kind of default status quo expectation.
I think if you get these alternative from the ground up browsers, you get extremely limited things like Net Surf, noble efforts that I respect, but not going against the billions of dollars Google can throw into modern browser development.
YouTube is a 1st party service for Google, so you can't ad-block their tracking. And you aren't ad-blocking YouTube due to the spying, so don't be disingenuous.
Yes, it really costs that much.
Given Chrome's vast market share, I'm pretty sure its users like it. And you know what? Most users won't mind switching to uBlock Origin Lite, and the elephant in the room is that “manifest v3” also increases security, with Chrome being indeed the most secure browser.
> And you aren't ad-blocking YouTube due to the spying, so don't be disingenuous.
I don't watch YouTube. If all those influencers want to reach me, they should give me a written summary, I don't have time to listen to talking heads for hours.
However, if I ever follow an youtube link, it will be ad blocked because i run firefox with uBlock Origin, for as long as uBlock Origin blocks youtube ads by default.
>Does it? Or that's what the mozilla organization wastes on harebrained initiatives overall?
Yes! They published their 990, and it's mostly software development, but also stuff like legal and compliance and marketing. I don't have the numbers off the top of my head, but last time I checked, if you really want to make this argument, I think it relates to the CEO pay and the Mozilla Foundation and its advocacy, which are something around the, you know, taken together something like 55 million or so. You can make the argument that administration and operations as well as marketing and legal and compliance are bloated in some sense, but then you'd still have to make the case that there was a viable path to reinvesting that into development in a way that would change the tide when it comes to market share. But I think that is a confused vision of how market share works because the real drivers are Google's dominant position in search and on Android in the ability to push Chrome on Chromebooks.
Back when these narratives about Mosio's mismanagement started, I just assumed that they were highly informed people who knew what they were talking about. And maybe they really were originally, but it seems to have socialized a new generation of commenters into just randomly speculating about things that completely fall apart upon closer examination.
Mozilla thus far have been very reluctant to take donations to Firefox specifically. AFAIK you can still only donate to the Foundation, not the Corp, which means that most if not all of the cash will get spent on random non-Firefox-related things that you probably couldn't care less about.
I mostly agree, but I am slightly worried that it would lead to slower progress in Firefox. As it stands, Google's funding of Firefox is enough to hire a bunch of engineers to make Firefox a pretty competitive browser.
It's like a never-ending horde of zombies that comes in and makes this cheap shot over and over. My understanding is the CEO makes slightly more than 1% of their revenues. And it's actually low compared to the typical tech CEO.
But what's the story of cause and effect here such that if they'd invested 1% of their revenue differently, they would jump from 3% market share back to 30% or wherever they were previously? Once you ask these questions out loud, it's clear that people aren't thinking through the steps of the argument.
My problem with extensions is it's another development team to trust and monitor. I need to know if the extension has been sold, taken over by a new lead, etc.
Yep while this manifest v3 ugly thing is putting me on the brink of jumping ship (I compromise by having two browsers), as for your concern I found that Chrome is going to allow blacklisting extensions for sites, so now I can turn them off for the few sites that I really worry to grant extension read access.
If you are fine with two browsers, maybe you could instead look into separate Firefox profiles with different sets of extensions. I have added "-p" to my Firefox shortcut so it always starts with the profile picker thing.
Yeah that's definitely fair, I have the same concern. Currently I've reduced my extensions to just a few that I either trust (like gorhill's) or that I wrote myself. But I think it would be huge if Mozilla built out the tooling needed to keep a better monitor on them. It's an extremely hard problem to be sure though.
Can you install your own personal extensions without getting permission from Mozilla yet? Or are they still banning that? Because that change drove me away from Firefox.
Firefox has some weird slowness with DNS that I have troubleshot to death. I still use it for almost everything, but sometimes I'll have an entire day of 30s page loading times.
I put this setting in ages ago on my FF profile and haven't seen DNS lag.
My biggest DNS lag was before I used PiHole and was relying on my router, which upstream to 8.8.8.8. I've just assumed that little thing was overloaded or that Comcast was just having a "hiccup".
This is almost certainly a fragmentation issue caused by lower MTU and broken path MTU on the VPN. Drop the system to 1280 to troubleshoot, if things work immediately there's the culprit, raise it up til it doesn't or don't, I keep my VPN's at 1280.
EDIT: I do not know why its an issue with firefox and not chrome, it's likely QUIC fucking up since it cant fragment and needs to fall back to TCP, chrome is probably error handling this better... dropping the MTU that low will make the fallback explicit: https://blog.apnic.net/2019/03/04/a-quick-look-at-quic/
Same here. Tends to be pretty inconsistent. DNS-over-HTTP(s) definitely disabled. 30s is a lot more than I've experienced, but there are times where it clearly struggles to look things up.
Unfortunately this would only be helpful to Apple customers, which itself comes with significant downsides IMHO. I'd much prefer a cross-platform solution
Fortunately, at least so far, uBlock Origin Lite works perfectly fine on Chrome.
I know people have made a lot of arguments as to why it might not be as good in theory, or why things might change in the future. But so far, ever since I was forced to switch, I have seen exactly zero difference. Lists are updated often enough that I haven't seen anything get through. Adblocking works on YouTube. If anything, pages seem to load even a little faster. I've had no complaints.
If you have fast internet you will probably not really notice the difference
The difference between v2 and v3 is that v3 will no longer allow uBlock to modify network calls. Previously one of the big savings of a adblocker is they can stop the calls from being made AT ALL. That means less tracking AND less of your internet bandwidth being used
Both v2 and v3 can block the actual elements from your screen so you will probably still not see most of the ads. But you will still be able to be tracked and your data will still be used in the background
V3 doesn't allow network calls to be modified, for privacy reasons. It still allows them to be blocked, which is how the adblocking works in the first place.
Contrary to what you say, v3 does block the tracking in the ad request as well as the bandwidth.
It only allows them to be blocked with static rulesets. And these rulesets have a maximum size of 50. There's no way this is large enough to cover all your websites. It's also trivial for an anti-adblock script to try a few different urls until it finds one that isn't in your static ruleset
I'm not well versed into adblocking, but shouldn't the extension also get access to the content of the request as well, to be able to either improve it's blocking accuracy (e.g. detect if the whitelisted content matches blocked content patterns) or decide to hide a resource after it was fetched ?
it's easy to see how people might say v3 is an adtech conspiracy. Ads are always served to the user now, expect a noticeable revenue increase by almost every adtech company.
I saw significant difference using the Lite version, enough that I switched to Firefox with Origin instead. I expected it to be good enough and was surprised to see the difference.
Same. I use the element picker tool all the time to rid the web of crap I don't care about. Example:
whatever_class:has-text(/YouTube Shorts/)
On Android you can even do this on your phone in Firefox. The UI is a bit tricky on such a small device, but it's so worth it. I went so far as to uninstall Chrome (well, disable it) on my Android.
For whatever reason, the UBOL creator chose not to include zapper/picker in order to make it as "lite" as possible. It wasn't a Manifest v3 thing, as they've explained.
I have no problem with using a separate extension for zapping.
I think people should be able to do whatever they want on their own machine. If the setting is there, then let me use it for whatever extension I see fit. Sure, make it harder to do so, but don't treat users like children. I can't even screenshot banking apps on my own damn Android phone now.
It's not about you being able to do whatever you want on your machine. It's extension authors being able to. Malicious Chrome extensions are a huge problem.
On the off chance that Google is truly benevolent and was just worried about users' security, then they could have easily hidden the required network-reading functionality behind a flag or "developer mode", or only allowed it for a small set of manually-audited extensions like uBlock Origin.
The fact that they provided absolutely none of these alternatives isn't a coincidence. Google is a for-profit company with 300+ billion of annual revenue, a giant chunk of which comes from their advertisement services. It's a blatant conflict of interest and there's no good reason to believe that they're acting in good faith here.
> then they could have easily hidden the required network-reading functionality behind a flag or "developer mode"
For all intents and purposes, that's basically equivalent to deleting uBlock Origin for 99.9% of the 29M users it currently has.
> only allowed it for a small set of manually-audited extensions like uBlock Origin
That would most definitely lead to accusation of favoritism. That would be just as annoying of a pipeline to maintain.
> The fact that they provided absolutely none of these alternatives isn't a coincidence
They delayed the release 3 times, it was first announced in 2020. The whole time, they were taking feedback and making changes. They made a ton of changes that made MV3 adblockers possible.
If they really were concerned about user security, they'd do a better job blocking scammy & misleading ads instead. uBO basically _saves_ users from installing dubious Chrome extensions and other malware only because they show up as ads or other annoyances.
Don't they have a vetting process for extensions? Even if they don't, you, the (power)user should be able to manually turn on whatever you want, should you so desire. What's stunning is that we're moving away from this, for our "security." And by then "use Firefox/something else" won't be helpful when entire websites will refuse to work on anything else but Chrome.
> Don't they have a vetting process for extensions?
No.
> Even if they don't, you, the (power)user should be able to manually turn on whatever you want, should you so desire.
It's not as simple as that. As long as it is possible for extensions to have no-holds-barred access to your browser then they'll make that a condition of use, and unsophisticated users (approximately everyone) will just say "eh ok".
Browser extensions are a particularly dangerous case because they auto-update by default. It is very common for popular extensions to get sold to bad actors who then update them to inject ads into everything you view, or worse.
If you make it impossible for extensions to do that, then they can no longer make it a condition of installation.
> It's not as simple as that. As long as it is possible for extensions to have no-holds-barred access to your browser then they'll make that a condition of use, and unsophisticated users (approximately everyone) will just say "eh ok".
Then make it complicated enough so the user has to click through several screens, type in that they know what they're doing and be warned that if extension/website X asks them to do Y, they're getting f'd and should stop. Beyond that, it's their fault.
Why can't we treat browsers like we used to treat PCs? Why do we have to have to make them so "safe" like we did with phones? Tons of scams happen on phones now, so it didn't quite work out, but we still gave up a lot.
Personally, I'm rarely a Chrome user. I'm most afraid of stuff not working in non-Chromium browsers, though.
> Then make it complicated enough so the user has to click through several screens, type in that they know what they're doing and be warned that if extension/website X asks them to do Y, they're getting f'd and should stop. Beyond that, it's their fault.
Yeah I mean... that's just an arms race. You now have to type "allow pasting" into the dev console to paste Javascript there. Guess why.
Browsers can't ever win that race. Malicious extensions will just say "go to settings and blah blah blah".
> You now have to type "allow pasting" into the dev console to paste Javascript there. Guess why.
Would you be content with Chrome (hypothetically) taking away the console instead? Your average user has no business using it anyway.
> Browsers can't ever win that race. Malicious extensions will just say "go to settings and blah blah blah".
You're absolutely right, they can't win the race. People have been plugging holes in software for decades and malware still hasn't been defeated. Taking features away just to plug more holes instead of restricting them doesn't seem right to me. One could argue (I haven't looked this up, though) that even more users fall victims to malware in spite of today's "locked" browsers (and phones) simply because there's an ever increasing number of people online. A lot of that malware is being spread through misleading ads and malicious code that uBO blocks.
With uBO vanishing, a lot of users will be left without an adblocker. Those who aren't tech-savvy enough won't know what to install instead (eg uBL). They'll go on browsing unprotected. Google will see a spike in ad revenue and will be pleased. They have no real interest in blocking scammy ads.
Putting security in scare quotes doesn’t make the actual risk go away. This is a blatant anti ad block move, but you aren’t making reasonable arguments either.
I'm not sure how not being able to use websites without Chrome is unreasonable, though. If it hasn't come to that already, it will soon.
One can find reasonable use cases for every security measure that takes away freedom. That doesn't mean that all such decisions are balanced, and I'm advocating that the user be the one deciding their level of security, knowingly. That's the most important part being taken away, actually. Until there's palpable resistance (or even doubt or endless debate), those taking things away have no reason to stop.
At no point did anyone argue you should be required to use chrome to use some websites. That is a complete strawman you made up here. No one is requiring you to use chrome.
As to your security argument: If you've never seen the past user's desktops filled with browser hijacking and ad / virus ware, then I'm happy for you, but ignoring serious security concerns isn't a valid approach to managing an end user product regardless of the nebulous slippery slope freedoms argument you're attempting to make.
This is not an advocation to ban all adblockers, but you are advocating for basically a free for all, and we've seen how that works. It doesn't and this entire discussion is a waste of time.
> the nebulous slippery slope freedoms argument you're attempting to make.
But it is a slippery slope and we're already sliding down, even if we don't want to. It's hard to make users switch to something else. I know it, I assume you know it, probably everyone on HN knows it. But, and this is key, Google knows it. People are resistant to change, especially if it means altering their workflow. Where said workflow depends on a monopolistic product that's key to unlocking even more ad revenue, do not think that those with incentive won't hesitate to push for more restrictions while claiming they have our own best interest in mind.
No one brought it up now, but there have been cases of websites being deliberately made slower on Firefox. I don't think it's unreasonable to think that this will continue happening. If you do, then let's agree to disagree.
> but you are advocating for basically a free for all, and we've seen how that works.
I'm not advocating for a "free for all." I'm advocating for a "free for the knowledgeable & responsible." I'm advocating for informed consent in computing. We've been moving away from that, more so because of greed than goodwill.
Absolutely. I have no idea if their store requires signing, but in any case, I think you should be able to sideload your own extensions after being lectured on how it might be dangerous. I'm not saying it should be easy, though.
To put it in the flatest way, it's not a given that users trust the platform owner more than some extension providers.
In theory that shouldn't be the case, and not trusting a platform that runs natively and has potential acccess to everything we do sounds crazy. But in practice there's only so many platforms, and depending on one's work or environement, not using Chrome isn't even an option.
In that context, extensions are the most direct tools the users have to get back some control.
My YouTube ad-blocking experience with uOL looks like a black/muted screen for 30s until the real video starts playing. No "Skip" button appears. I disabled the extension for YouTube so I can at least skip the video after 5s. Is it better for everyone else?
For certain sites, you need to click the extension and change it from "basic" to "complete". This seems to be a performance thing, so it's not doing slower more complete adblocking on sites that don't need it. I've only had to do it on a couple of sites.
I hear so many people IRL complaining about this. I tell them to switch to firefox, that the adblockers still work there, and they still won't switch to it because they are "used to chrome". I really feel like google won this battle. People will through a lot of abuse just to maintain their habits.
There is also Firefox Focus. Been using it on iOS since it came out a few years ago.
It integrates as an ad blocker for Safari, so I don't actually use Firefox itself (since as you mentioned, all browsers on iOS are just a wrapper to Safari anyways).
I just browse using Safari and ads are blocked by Firefox Focus. Pretty neat.
They can still block elements from appearing on your browser but in the background the network calls are still being made. That means you are no longer being protected from tracking and your internet is once again being slowed down by the loading of ads
But declarativeNetRequest is the alternative to the webRequest API which Chrome is removing. Using declarativeNetRequest means you have to rely on static rules instead of the dynamic logic that the webRequest API allowed. This is extremely trivial to bypass. So much so that it's basically nothing at all. Especially when you take into account the max ruleset sizes
Also in Chrome (and Chrome only) any images or iframes blocked are simply collapsed
Thanks for the correction. you're correct it's 50 rulesets. Originally the limit was 5,000 rules but it seems the Chrome team backed away from that
Regardless it doesn't change the fact that these are static rules. It's trivial for anti-adblockers to dynamically get a url that is not in a ruleset. Without the dynamic logic that is allowed by the webRequest API we are completely dependent on static rulesets that need to be updated by updating the entire extension itself
The size of the rulesets is a distraction from the fact that adblockers can no longer run dynamic logic to filter web requests and block tracking
They will continue to "work". Both v2 and v3 allows extensions to block elements from the DOM. However, only in v2 can they modify actual network calls. With v3, those network calls will still be made. Which means you are no longer protected from tracking and your web browsing experience is once again being slowed down by the loading of ads even if you don't see those ads
As I replied to your other comments, this is false. v3 block the network calls. They are not made. You are protected from tracking and nothing is slowed.
Posting this from firefox: most enterprise tools are only tested under Chrome, and many will break with no recourse when used on firefox.
And it's worse with extensions. For instance right now the OneLogin extension is dead on firefox, and while it's a crappy service, it's cheap and enterprise friendly...so employees in the contracting companies will only be able to log to corporate resources through Chrome.
It's not as hellish as the IE6 situation was, but boy we're pretty quickly approaching it.
While JS debugging seems to be a bit slower, I find their HTML/CSS debugging tools far superior to Chrome's. Neither browser engine is great for the whole package, but overall I really prefer Firefox when it comes to dev tools.
Well said. It also wasn't worse in any way. It was strictly better.
Firefox is definitely better than Chrome in some ways, but it is also worse in others. Notably performance and integration with Google's password manager.
They switched because Google bundled invisible Chrome installers in other software that would not only make its browser the default, but also invisibly steal IE clicks.
Must say it's really hard to find who might have paid for a bundled installer. Filezilla I remember had a lot of those and some forum threads will mention a specific "offer" they got, but there's no listing anywhere, and it's not in the source code history because they were (so I just read) dynamically fetched from advertisement servers upon launching the installer. Searching the web for Google Chrome bundling (phrased a few different ways), you get mostly present-day results about how to install Chrome or how to bundle it as sysadmin in a Windows group policy or something. This is the one thread I found where it sounds like computer manufacturers bundled it, but if there's many more then I'm not sure I'd have found it
From where I was sitting, Firefox grew from word of mouth. Friends old friends, or simply installed it for them and said “trust me”. And people were shamed for using IE.
Over time Firefox started to feel more bloated, and Chrome was new, lean, and fast.
Chrome then went through its own bloat phase, and now this.
Browser monopolies have toppled before, through various means. I see no reason why it can’t happen again. Currently Apple is pretty much single handedly keeping Google from having total control, by only allowing WebKit on iOS.
I have a feeling people would be more likely to switch to a new player than to run back to an old one they left once before.
Not only google seems to won this battle but ad industry as a whole. Youngest generation is nowadays so much conditioned to advertising disguised as content or being the content they won't oppose it.
Bookmarks, history, generally historical reliability, and (biggest reason for me) password manager.
I rarely have to type/remember passwords anymore on Android or web and it "just works". I know there are password managers out there that ostensibly handle the password-saving thing and are browser-agnostic but when I tried it in the past I had issues on some sites and, when it did work, it felt clunkier.
People say similar things about Google Search, and a few times I've tried not use Google Search but every time I've tried it's become clear that the reason I use Google Search isn't just habit, but that it's the best search engine for most queries I perform.
I've had a very different experience with browsers though... I switch browsers pretty often and with ease. I genuinely can't get my head around why someone would continue to use Google Chrome if they're unhappy with how they're treating their users. The UI between browsers is 99% identical. The most annoying thing about switching browser is just having to spend 10 minutes setting things up, but that isn't going to exceed the annoyance of having to see ads constantly for months or years.
There's really no good reason not to switch browsers. Your habits are not going to change between browsers. Unless you're a Chrome power user and using some very niche features in Chrome there is very, very little difference between Firefox and Chrome for the vast majority of tasks.
Well, today mostly yes. But at the same time, I've been an Opera user (if not fanboy) for a good decade, until they ditched their own engine and basically started from scratch with chrome as a base. It lost 99% of its features overnight.
I really struggled to switch to anything else. Firefox was definitely the most customizable, but finding extensions to replicate every feature of Opera, and properly at that, was a never-ending nightmare.
Only at that point did I realize how vital a browser has become for everyday tasks, and as a power user, how much you get accustomed to it. Maybe not if you're just running stock Chrome or Firefox with two extensions, but Opera was so feature-rich that I didn't ever install a single extension but needed about a dozen on Firefox to try and mimic it. In the end I just stayed on Opera 12 until it wasn't even funny anymore. It must've been about two years. Eventually so many sites broke that I just switched to Firefox and only installed uBO and greasemonkey. It hurt but over time I just gradually forgot what using opera was like. Sometimes I think back and really miss it. Some of it is just nostalgia by now, but the struggle switching was real.
I don't remember when I tried it for the first time, but I did like it much better than the new opera. At least they were adding new features much faster. It was still different enough and lacking (to me) important features from the old opera. I still have it installed today as the fallback for the exceedingly rare case that some site doesn't work in Firefox and I really need to access it. But I have to admit that I didn't really bother to evaluate it properly in a long time. An ex colleague doing webdev just recently told me it's his primary browser as it has some nice things to make his life easier that were just more cumbersome to set up in chrome. I just gave up and accepted that at least by using Firefox I'm fighting the engine-monopoly of chrome/blink. ;)
My only motivation is to help my friends who got the "uBlock Origin is no longer supported" notification get their ad blocking back in a way that sticks. To me that's the most important thing. Any what ifs about the future can be addressed then.
The browser that is a literal drop-in replacement is the best way to do this. I think it's cool that other browsers are trying new things but now isn't the time. People have to be be in a place where they want something different in order to accept change. All of them got the notification while trying to something else and "install Brave, import, move Brave to where the Chrome icon used to be, and continue with what you were doing" is alarmingly effective.
You have to take the CEO's philosophy into account when choosing technology tools unfortunately.
I personally dmd Eich on Twitter during 2019-2021 ish. He's opposed to censorship, tracking, government lockdowns during COVID, and authoritarianism.
That is exactly who you want running your browser and search company if you wish to use an open Internet. It's anti chat control, anti governments choosing which apps it's citizens can install, it's free speech for all, including "hate speech". Open and free wild West Internet culture.
> He's opposed to […] government lockdowns during COVID
> That is exactly who you want running your browser and search company
Yes. “Does the CEO have strong opinions on public health? Are those opinions based more on public health fundamentals or is it vibes?” is the first line of inquiry I pursue when I am looking to download a program on the computer
I think it's a good sign when someone making a browser is so uncompromising on the principle of individual autonomy and lack
of central control that they're still up there dying on that hill even when they're wrong.
It gives me confidence that there will never be a situation where some issue is of such grave importance that they feel like they must leverage their position and compromise on it, for the safety of children of course. Because we know what's best for you. Bleh. It reminds me of the libertarians who oppose seat belt laws. Like you're wrong and so you shouldn't be in a leadership position of the DoT but you believe so strongly that institutions shouldn't get a say in your life that I think you would do great if I tasked you with health insurance reform.
I like that forums user hnpolicestate saw Brave mentioned and found opportunity to start talking about vaccine passports and within three posts we have gotten to how libertarians should be in charge of health care.
This is the vital, vibrant discourse necessary when selecting a web browser
No. You don't want someone who believes in vaccine passports and lockdowns running your browser if you truly value an open and free internet with roadblocks to tracking, fingerprinting etc.
No CEO or developer is going to respect to software/hardware users if they believe that user should also use health verification software to go about public spaces. These are incompatible philosophies.
Exactly. When you want to use a program on the computer you want to make sure that the CEO of the company that makes it is very vocal about things completely unrelated to the computer. Like would you take your car to a mechanic who doesn’t post about the keto diet? Absolutely not. Would you buy a quiche from a man that does not have a dedicated page to perineum sunning? No one would, it would be insane to even consider such a purchase. Such a baker would be ostracized abd run out of business overnight
The connection between car maintenance and diet is exactly the same as the connection between the inclusion of ublock origin support in a chromium fork and public health policy during a pandemic — they are both fully and completely disconnected with no overlap whatsoever in any meaningful way _but_ they are things that make some folks very happy when they can point at a thing and say “This means this person is a member of my in-group of good-opinion-havers”
If one of my friends kept pitching cryptoscam shit to me I’d stop talking to them in short order. I suspect your IRL non-technical friends feel similarly.
It's used to steer people away from Brave because it's the lowest hanging fruit. Individuals can hide their true political motivations for trashing the browser.
Literally the first thing anyone who recommends Brave says is to avoid the stupid crypto thing, myself included. Look Firefox doesn't exactly come up smelling like a rose here, when you recommend Firefox you have to tell them to turn off the ads in the new tab page, ads in the URL bar (https://imgur.com/a/EXtzhg4), and Pocket, in Brave the crypto thing is opt-in.
I was using Firefox exclusively for years, but when I sold my Macbook and bought a Thinkpad and installed Linux on it, I grew pretty annoyed by Firefox.
Specifically, I couldn't view my 360 videos or photos on Google Images or Immich at anywhere near acceptable performance. The videos, recorded at 30fps, would get maybe 5fps. This was weird, because I have a fairly beefy laptop, it should be able to handle these videos just fine (especially since my iPhone handled it just fine).
After a bit of debugging, it appears that there's a bug in how it's writing for the shader cache, and as such there was no hardware acceleration. I found a bug filed about my issue [1], and I didn't really feel like trying to fix it, because I didn't want to mess with Mesa drivers. I just installed Chromium and that's what I'm using right now, and it worked with my 360 videos and photos absolutely fine.
I want Firefox to succeed, but that really left a bad taste in my mouth; it's not like it's weird to want my browser to be hardware accelerated.
How big is your monitor? I can only see about 10-15 tabs on my 4k monitor before Firefox starts scrolling them off the screen. I regularly have 2-3x that on Chrome before tabs stop showing up.
I have 54 tabs open right now. The Sideberry extension lets you view them in the left sidebar. They're nested so that collapsing a root tab will also collapse all child tabs. There are also super tabs (Sideberry calls them "Tabs panels") so you can switch between entire groups of tabs.
1,740 tabs open right now on my wife's Firefox and it seems to be operating just fine. Sounds like something's wrong with your Firefox. I recommend a refresh which can be found under about:support
10, 20, even 30 i can understand. More is the equivalent of forgetting to empty the kitchen trash can and still filling it until the smell is horrible.
someone got to tell her there is a cross on the right to close the tab.
I used to bookmark everything into Diigo. Then their Firefox extension stopped working... and I haven't got a cross-platform, cross-browser process up and running again.
Is there a tab session manager that does that, and lets me send tabs from my current session to another session? E.g. I'm on my "Writing C for a hobby" session and quickly search for something cooking related, and then need to send that to my cooking session?
757 is too many though. If nothing else, if you couldn't find an extension that works, you could just use different browser profiles, or save the links in text files. It's just so ridiculous to have that many open when, without any doubt, you don't need them open all at once.
I use tab session manager on firefox. It doesn't easily let me shift around tabs inside a session, if I want to combine sessions I have to open both and save as a new session. It does allow duplicating and trimming tabs from a session though.
If you need better session management capability, you could probably get an LLM to extend/fork an existing extension to add what you need with about 30 minutes work.
Firefox works great with dozens of open tabs. The only thing Chrome has going for it is tab groups. Firefox has Tab Style Tree, which is a decent substitute.
You don't need an extension. Right-click on a tab and "Select All Tabs". Right-click again and it has the option "Close 1,122 Tabs". Your number may be smaller.
That only works if you've got a single window open. For myself, I keep ~10+ windows open, with then ~8 tabs per window. Note this is only practical on a tiling window manager. Anyway, the tab count extension may still be the way to go.
You can't see all 50-70 tabs on a normal 27" monitor; Chrome will squish them almost indefinitely, and Firefox forces a large minimum tab width that makes the tab bar scroll forever and then you forget half the tabs you have going and everything's bad. I tried to switch and stopped because of this. I'll hang on until ubo really stops working, I guess, and then try to figure something else out.
I blacklisted Chrome in dnf (the Fedora system update manager) once we hit near the last version to allow manifest v2, but apparently it wasn't enough. They reached in to my system and deactivated/deleted my manifest v2 extensions anyway regardless, even though my version still "supports" them. I'm quite displeased to say the least. Ultimately it's probably for the best though as now my "slow fade" plan has to be accelerated. Time to rip the bandaid off.
Proton and Kagi have most of the services I've personally needed to de-Google. GCP is nicer than AWS, so will probably keep that around as a paying customer. Only thing I haven't found a great replacement yet for Google Docs (MS office is abysmal, but also lack of testing of alternatives so far :) ).
I love Kagi's Orion but it's still not good enough yet to switch off chrome completely. You realize this once you delve deeper, install extensions, and use it as your daily driver.
1) There are a lot of bugs, for starters. I've been using it for many months but had to switch back to Chrome about a year ago due to some unbearable bugs like tabs freezing and sync kept bringing back long-gone tabs. Don't get me wrong, I've reported a dozen issues (I have 50+ started threads on orionfeedback forums), but anyway, I felt like I spent more time reporting bugs than actually doing my stuff.
2) Some needed extensions are broken. It's not like I need that many with weird APIs. Bitwarden has been broken for some time, and Grammarly is still broken (3 years in).
I tried the latest version a few days ago given what's happening with chrome rn, there are some annoyances still. I like Orion (kudos to Kagi team for working on it) and want it to succeed, I believe it just needs more time, I guess.
After 10+ years as a primary browser, I've been 100% off of Chrome for about 1.5 years now as part of a broader effort to de-Google my life, and things have been going well.
It's interesting to notice how much my internal feelings have shifted over the years. There have been a few rare occasions where I had to use a Chromium-based browser, and I felt the same "ick" I used to feel when forced to use Internet Explorer for some reason.
Come to the Firefox (and variant) side. The water is warm.
You've voiced my sentiment exactly. I really wish Firefox was more at the forefront of innovation and development, and there's a lot to criticise Mozilla for, but I wouldn't change it back for Chromium for anything.
I have a completely custom minimal layout with address bar and tabs at the bottom, all the extensions I need, and I don't notice the performance or compatibility differences almost ever, with few rare exceptions. I feel it much more as "mine", and it's a joy to use.
I've done this around the same time and agree. Now google is used as a service (Firebase for example). The only thing I haven't been able to effectively shake off is their Calendar. I know lots of other options are available the issue is connectivity with others.
"And as I opened Chrome - Well, a substitute but still powered by Chromium - I felt my stomach churn as my vision started to blur. I feel both disgusting and disgusted at what I had done. As an act of repetenance I hastily jot down 'Come to Firefox, we have bacon!'"
This is why I mentioned (and variants). While I’m unhappy with the Mozilla situation, Firefox is still a significantly better option than Chrome at this point, and the various forks address any concerns with their privacy policy.
One can even self-host their own sync server if so inclined.
And Google never made that promise to being with. Hell, it's their primary business!
Mozilla has done plenty of bad things and they rightly deserve criticism, but options in the browser space are few and Mozilla is considerably less bad than Google. And other Chromium browsers perpetuate Google's control over the web. If you're going to complain about Mozilla when someone recommends Firefox, at least offer a non-Chromium alternative like LibreWolf (or maybe Ladybird someday).
Wow, the big one to my eyes is the 'removeparam=' which allowed uBlock to strip out parameters (e.g. tracking parameters) from the request, allowing you to visit e.g. affiliate links without being tracked as coming from a specific affiliate (if the affiliate info was in the query params at least). Stuff like that is really amazing, I'm glad that here on FireFox we've still got the full uBlock Origin.
I've been trying uBO Lite myself for a few months, and anyone who uses YouTube will absolutely notice that it's worse at blocking. Lite tends to delay playback at the start of a video for as long as the blocked ads would've been, making the site feel slower, and once in a while an ad will slip past the blocker anyway.
I am not so sure if that is the light version. In my (outdated) Ungoogled Chromium which still has classic uBlock, YouTube videos also have delays or do stop playing completely after a few seconds. So I have switched to the FreeTube software to watch YouTube videos. I can recommend that.
It would be nice if uBO automatically got replaced with uBL instead of requiring users to manually install it. A lot of users who might've had uBO installed by someone else won't know how or won't care enough to do it.
This is a trap. Extensions can still block elements in v3. If you use Lite you probably won't notice much of a difference. But in the background, it will no longer be able to modify network calls. That means you are no longer being protected from tracking AND your web browsing experience is once again being slowed down by the loading of ads (even if you don't see those ads)
The difference isn’t just in the network calls, it’s the relinquishing of the blocking to Chrome itself. The Lite extension is essentially reduced to just providing a blocklist to Chrome, and hopes that Chrome will honor the blocklist.
Google is surgically trying to dismantle adblocking, first by removing all the tools from the users under the guise of “it’s dangerous”, and then shutting it down by rendering them so ineffective they’re useless.
It's like a corporation shrinking the package size of your food by 10%, keeping the price the same and then claiming you still get the "majority" of the food.
Antisthenes I appreciate your "cynical" response but what I meant is I didn't yet notice any degradation of service compared to the original uBlock Origin.
You didn't have any idea with uBlock Origin either.
But since the very first blocklist UBOL uses is decribed as "Ads, trackers, miners, and more" I assume it's also blocking them just fine. The same way I assumed with UBO.
I've been running firefox on my laptop for the last year, with Chrome on my desktop, as a way to head-to-head them. For folks contemplating the switch, it hasn't been bad at all. Some better, some worse, but overall I rarely notice major differences except for a very small handful of sites that won't work with FF.
And I still have all of my uBlock origin happiness. :)
Be sure to use "Report broken site" in the main menu on that handful of sites. Often there are things folks can do to fix it for you, if many people are running into it - but only if it's known.
My biggest complaints with my switch is 1) no Chromecast functionality on Youtube and many other supported video platforms, 2) Very minimal page/text translation services (Arabic is missing), and 3) no search or translate from image (google lens) which I have gotten pretty used to. Oh and also, seeking videos is weird on FF, the mouse goes way past the scrubber when fast-forwarding or rewinding, just seems weird..
Add-on replacements:
- Linguist for translations.
- Search by Image for reverse image search (there are others that just use Google Lens directly, but I use this one).
Cast is a bit more cumbersome. There is fx_cast on GitHub, but it requires a companion app. Firefox seems to want to add cast based on a flag you used to be able to enable, but I'm guessing there are some restrictions from Google's end they ran into.
I can't login to the work-paid-for version of Microsoft Copilot with Firefox, for some reason. I've had one or two others - I think they were internal CMU website tools. And even more niche: My kids took a ski lesson last year at Snowbird and the website with their report card rejected anything that didn't identify as Chrome. It _worked_ with mobile FF, but it popped up a "YOU SHOULD USE CHROME" banner and wouldn't let me past.
So, small stuff. Maybe Copilot isn't working because of ublock, though.
In my experience if something isn't working in firefox, it's more likely that it's firefox antitracking setting much more often than ublock. You might try turning that off first.
I've been daily driving Firefox for several years. Everything I use on a daily basis works fine on FF, but every now and then you come across some random site that doesn't load or loads poorly.
Why? I can just temporarily launch Chrome if I need to join a meeting. There's no need to have MSware running in the background 24/7 doing god knows what.
Expedia doesn't render properly in Firefox - some of the sections are missing, but it's not immediately obvious what is missing. It took me a while to figure out why my wife kept having problems with that site, and I had to move her to Chrome to allow her to use it.
I continue to use Firefox because I know when to suspect a website problem might be the browser, but she doesn't have the ability to analyze a situation like this. I have this conundrum with other family members that I support. I want them to use Firefox, but I hate to have them run into an issue because of the browser I recommended.
Sticky desktop notifications don’t work on macOS on FF, which means event notifications from calendar apps disappear within a few seconds, leaving no time to snooze them or act on them in any other way. Queue missed meetings.
I subscribed to SlingTV a little over a year ago and it did not support Firefox, even with all the DRM enabled. Although that's a problem I blame on SlingTV, not Firefox. It was a known issue which they refused to address. I've since ended my subscription with them.
IIRC, there was also a time when Netflix did not support its highest streaming quality on Firefox. I'm not sure if that's still the case since I also ended my Netflix subscription.
Otherwise I cannot think of any major site which is not supported on Firefox. Outside my employer's fragile intranet, I can't think of any sites which do not support Firefox.
Bizzarely, Microsoft Word on web seems to be the only thing I've encountered which has FireFox problems, specifically it'll periodically "save" the document I'm typing and then delete the last sentence or two that I changed while it was saving. I think it's some kind of broken state management on the MS side (leave it to MS). That's the only site I've used though, and I've been a daily driver of FF for 10 years.
Just stop using chrome, fight the monopoly, don't be a sheep. It's inconvenient ?
Convenience is a trap, stop giving away your freedom and agency for convenience.
This sentiment precludes discussion of incentives, the individual's relationship to the group, and the practical limits of agency. If you said the same about smartphones, you would be locked out of many services, including governmental ones. You unthinkingly, tacitly shift the onus onto the individual, which is naive. There is a reason the 5-day work-week, fire codes, and so-forth had to be legislated, because "just find a better job" wasn't going to make a dent in the problem. "Just find a better browser" is similarly ineffectual.
I do not deny that the system need to change but I disagree with saying "we have no agency", I think that like everything in life it's a balance of the two and you definitively can, as an individual, decide to use less convenient options like waterfox or librewolf that respect your privacy and do not try to enforce propaganda (or ads) unto you.
And I think in this case, with one of the most powerful company in human history being the perpetrator, you can wait a long time for the system to change.
Being the change you want to see in the world is not a bad thing and should always be the first step before bringing up coercive force for others. There are better browsers and there are other options and not changing your own behavior first due to ignorance and acceptance of the status quo is not cool.
I feel the same way about smartphones, by the by, and it is very possible to live without them. I don't even carry a dumb phone with me. It's not impossible for me. It may be infeasible for you and your life situation. But I'm sure there's plenty of me's out there.
This. The fact that so called "hackers" would be using Chrome is the reason why the world is shit and tech is stagnant. They keep using Chrome and writing Javascript.
Related if anyone is switching over. I like to run Firefox Developer Edition[0] as my "work" browser, with work related bookmarks, etc. and then regular Firefox for nonwork. This makes it really easy to keep the two separate. I know there's a lot of ways to segment within the same browser but this works well for me.
You can achieve the same (or similar) thing with Firefox profiles. Just launch with "-p" and it'll give you a profile picker. You can have a work profile with separate extensions, bookmarks, settings, etc.
Same branch as beta, but with different build flags. Add-ons don't need to be signed to be installed on DevEdition, there's a DevTools button in the toolbar by default, etc.
Chromium has a concept of "user data directories" which in theory keep all data isolated to a single folder. You can use a launch parameter to specify what the user data directory you want to use is (so a shortcut). I'm pretty sure Firefox must have an equivalent.
Yes, I used to always use a work profile and a home profile in Firefox. Over time I simply made more containers and stopped using profiles altogether. But the option is still there.
Thanks. I didn't use uBlock but I will be switching due to Chrome removing support for non-subsituting keywords (search engines with no %s), which I used heavily as basically aliases for web addresses.
I just use multicontainers extension for that sort of thing. It keeps them siloed off from each other. Great for having multiple accounts on sites like bsky and reddit as well.
For now you can still bring back manifest v2 support (which re-enables ublock origin if you haven't removed it) by making registry changes. Obviously only a temporary solution, might buy you a few months.
1. United States v. Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey (1911)
- Duration: 7 years (1904–1911)
- Outcome: Standard Oil was ruled an illegal monopoly and broken up into 34 companies.
2. United States v. Microsoft Corp. (1998)
- Duration: 4 years (1998–2002)
- Outcome: Initially ordered to split, but after appeals, Microsoft avoided a breakup and instead agreed to business restrictions.
3. United States v. AT&T (Bell System) (1982)
- Duration: 8 years (1974–1982)
- Outcome: AT&T agreed to a settlement, leading to the 1984 breakup into seven "Baby Bells" to increase competition.
does google have a good relationship to the current administration?
I am not aware of a google-lobbyist being as close to trump as Zuckerberg and Musk are, and I definitely see the possibility of these two manipulating the administration against google.
This is the death of the hacker. We have allowed new heights of power and unchecked control decide they know better than us. We are no longer allowed or trusted to make choices in our best interests. Many practice apologetics for why this is necessary, pointing to Apple and Mozilla, as if that doesn’t make this change any less devastating. It was a great run.
The silver lining is it can be the birth of a new generation of hackers. This generation’s version of the printer inspiring those who refuse to accept the hostile hand they’ve been dealt. Tech doesn’t have to be this way. You don’t have to accept these changes. Rebel! Start hacking away. Don’t join these companies. Found new ones that prioritize valuing users first forever. It’s a difficult task. But all difficult tasks we’ve solved were.
Do you think ads are ethical? For a relevant example, how about an Apple ad that successfully uses emotion to convince you to buy a Mac instead of a Linux computer that would better suit your needs at a better price hypothetically?
I've eliminated Chrome from my personal systems when uBO stopped working. Blocking v2 manifests also broke a few extensions that were being developed for my day job: they've spent the last few weeks working on Firefox extensions and are almost at the point where they're getting ready to wipe Chrome from our corporate machines.
Just use Brave if you can't be bothered to use some extremely ethical alternative that's harder to set up. It blocks everything out of the box. Now, if you do worry about supporting more ethical browsers, try qutebrowser (with some greasemonkey scripts added in).
There are only two business models on the web: either you pay for your browser, or someone else does. This is why Orion is entirely user-funded, and can continue serving users by prioritizing privacy, control, and features like powerful, built-in ad-blocking. Not third party deals, ads, or any other incentive to corrupt the user experience and overall quality.
(Disclosure, I work for Kagi, creator of the Orion browser.)
There are only two business models on the web: either you pay for your content, or someone else does. And that someone is usually advertisers. Blocking ads while consuming content upsets that business model. That's why Brave Browser's BAT is a fundamentally good idea marred by terrible execution. On the other hand I do not believe built-in ad-blocking in the browser can ever become mainstream for that same reason.
I have moved to Firefox since the announcements that Chrome won't allow must have extensions such as uBlock. That Firefox allows extensions both on desktop and mobile is great.
But there are some things that I miss from Chrome, especially for web development. In Chrome it is possible to adjust the CSS of grid and flex containers within the developer window, which can be helpful. Firefox and Firefox Developer Edition don't have this. Firefox also seems to sometimes have problems with reloading a page when it is changed during development, whereas in Chrome this always was instant.
Then there are some small feature and UI differences, like the reading-mode on Firefox is nice, but the UI of Chrome feels just a bit nicer.
This was to be expected, however I am curious if Vivaldi, Brave and others will make their own webstore which will have plugins like ublock origin, and how long till Mozilla follows suit.
Google aggressively makes it hard for Chromium derivatives to not conform to Google's engineering choices.
They could try and keep manifestv2 support for a while, but they will have an increasingly large and hard to support patch se to make manifestv2 work still.
Indeed. When I tried to add LibRedirect (another extensions that are not possible under Manifest v3) to Vivaldi, DNS over HTTPS suddenly stopped working.
After checking the settings page, the settings to turn it on are completely disabled. Turn out this is one of few trap in all Chromioum browser that are hardcoded by Google.
Well after searching, you need to edit registry (yikes!) and add "DnsOverHttpsMode" and set it to "safe". Problem solved, right?
NO!!! Do that and suddenly your browser wouldn't load any page at all! Turn out you also need to set "DnsOverHttpsTemplates" too.
It just so happen, somehow, there is no documentation that mention this in "....Mode" help page.
Surely Google is not being evil in here, right? Right?
As a developer, the one feature I really love in Chrome is PWAs. But Firefox abandoned PWA support years ago, and seems to have no appetite for adding PWAs back[1]. Maybe I'll just have to split my usage across PWAs in Chrome (since I trust those apps/websites anyway) and Firefox for general browsing.
My dumb theory is that they’re trying to break up the “monopoly” allegations. But, I’m not sure what the stats are for how many people use ad block blockers like ublock, and are willing to migrate to a different browser because of its loss. On top of that, like others say there are still ad blockers available.
Terrible sample size: I moved to FF as soon as I couldn’t use a cookie cleaner for web dev work, and ublock origin.
Abandoned Chrome years ago. Am using Firefox and never looked back. Same with other Google products: Replaced Gmail with Fastmail, Google Docs with Office365 (yeah, I know, Microsoft).
I'm genuinely curious about why you find DDG sucking compared to Google Search? I've switched ~2 years ago, when I found DDG better in terms of less clutter and not showing ads as results - also, if there are no good results, it didn't push nonsense. But maybe GS improved in the meantime on the quality of results and I'm missing out?
For starters, they use a terrible custom font as default[1], and that tells me that they don't have their priorities straight in terms of product quality.
Wow, Kagi is just extremely good. Found old friends I couldn’t reach, found product infos where Google would pollute me with ads and garbage. This is awesome. Thanks for mentioning.
If it’s anything like Safari’s declarative blocklists:
Ad blocking on Youtube.
Youtube-blocking Safari extensions “solve” Youtube blocking by using non-declarative APIs that need full access to Youtube. Apple seems ok with that so far, but the APIs are not as goods, so their success rate is limited.
Whether Google will allow new extensions that block Youtube remains to be seen.
> uBlock Origin Lite blocks all ads on YouTube for me.
Someone else is saying uBlock Origin Lite leaves a "skippable blank" where the ad used to be, while I know for a fact uBlock Origin completely and transparently skipped over the ad.
I can recommend Wipr 2 - excellent blocker from a great developer. I've now switched to Safari for all my YouTube watching. Universal purchase works on macOS, ipadOS and iOS.
It works way better for Youtube than the one I had, and after some more testing I don't need the additional annoyance blockers I had. I might just go back to Safari!
As long as I have an alternative I would never choose the ad blocker that doesn’t let me block the elements I want.
For most websites I don’t care but there are many websites that I visit very often and removing annoying or useless elements and padding is practically mandatory at this point - I wouldn’t want to go back to not being able to do it.
So, answering your question, yes, “useless” was hyperbole.
also you'd think that the pushers of this agenda would get real-time updates to things like block lists metadata. God knows they do it themselves several times a day...
Hoping someone can point me to a Chrome browser extension that supports custom block rules. My strange situ involves an IT-managed laptop / browser that can't access certain websites because of their embedded resources (eg fonts) hosted on 3rd-party domains; firewall rules block the embedded content, breaking the (allowed) main site I'm trying to visit. uBlock Origin was perfect: I'd craft custom rules to disallow problematic embedded resources, problem solved.
I have a similar situation, though for more personal, first-world problems. I used custom rules for things like YT shorts, Jira's giant bar for emoji-responses in comments, etc. I'm not sure there's a good substitute on Chrome because Google's primary intent was to destroy the efficacy of this tooling.
Is it actually gone? I thought they just put that warning.
I just re-enabled the one already installed on my devices.
Once it's legit gone gone though yeah I'm going to Firefox or use Edge for web dev stuff
Edit: I will say I am a hypocrite though I am trying to build a following by posting on YouTube... I don't control the ads on there, maybe you do when you are monetizable but yeah sucks I feel bad for the viewers. At the same time... I'll spend weeks/months on a project and no one cares so idk.
I re-enabled it last week but they forced removed it again days later. I re-enabled it by force and it's still working, but it won't be for much longer, I'm certain.
This URL, shared elsewhere in this thread, seems to tell you how to get it back up and running if you cannot do it easily; that said, I'll be moving to FF if they continue their shenanigans.
The last Chrome update also disabled it for me because it's a manifest v2 extension. I use firefox on my personal computers, but might need to switch on my work PCs as well
I've been a happy user of Adguard for over 5 years, on all my devices, so I am luckily unaffected by this.
So far it seems to be the only general solution that can inject cosmetic filters into network requests while blocking on a request (not dns-only) level.
If uBlock Origin uses filters, would it not be possible to build a program that acts as a "proxy" for Linux/macOS/Windows, etc., that uses the same or similarly crafted filters to do something akin to what some of us did back in the Flash LSO supercookie days? I was a Linux user then and I recall creating a symlink from .macromedia and .adobe to /dev/null. The cookies were written to their folders but went into the event horizon of /dev/null and I never had to worry about them, but the websites worked like a charm.
Maybe I'm wrong, but would it not be possible to use filters similar, or even different than uBlocks, to "symlink" the addresses to /dev/null or other bit bucket like NULL on other OSes? I write automation code, so I don't have the chops to develop such a program/project, but I can see it in my head "how it might work". Thoughts, ideas, criticisms welcome.
I've also taken to using Violent Monkey and scripts to block quite a bit of nonsense on the web. Violent Monkey and the iFrame blockers work well with YouTube. I suppose it's also a matter of time before things like Violent Monkey are removed as well. There has to be a way to proxy the traffic through a filter list and /dev/null the offending objects.
As a person who switched constantly between browsers (except Chrome, never used it after 2015) in the past 10+ years, I can confirm that realigning the habits are not that difficult. Learn to use the web, not the tool to browse it.
So, switch to something which has privacy respecting attitude or at least tries to have it and ditch everything who does not. It is not just the browser itself, but also the services and tools that you use to do your job: browsing. After some time, you will realize how horrible browsing the web with Chrome was in this respect and how easy it is to just browse the web without a bloated piece of advertising machine.
Since Chrome discontinued support for Manifest V2 extensions, I’ve switched to Mullvad Browser for browsing ad-heavy websites. It comes with uBlock Origin pre-installed, is open source, and is developed by a reputable company.
Is there anything preventing the creation of an independent marketplace for chromium extensions?
I haven't used Chrome itself in years, but have had a hard time giving up Chromium-based browsers due to the rendering performance. It's always felt weird that the only way of getting extensions on these browsers was via the Chrome Web Store.
If there are viable alternatives I've not heard of, I hope folks let me know.
At least uBO can be replaced with AdGuard or uBO Lite but there are a LOT of extensions (over half of mine!) that are still not compatible with MV3. "Imagus Mod" for example or script managers like Violentmonkey. Which is why I switched to Firefox last summer.
The source code is available for Chrome. Suppose one downloads the source code, and then re-enables the Manifest v2? A bit of work, particularly when you have to do other things that probably allow it to co-exist with Manifest v3, and Manifest v4 when it comes. And prevent updates from taking it all out again. While working on it, flip the compiler's command-line switch that allows the executable to run on Windows 7.
How long after the announced Windows 10 end of life will it be before all the software companies say 'Windows 11 is the minimum' like was seen with Windows 7?
Keeping MV2 going is a massive and unrealistic effort for a small dev group while continuing to incorporate upstream changes. You cannot leave a browser without those upstream changes as they include security patches.
The source code is available for Chromium, not Chrome. You can always maintain a fork, but it's a lot of work, and it's not a great solution to the problem of "world's largest surveillance company makes world's most popular browser".
I'd like to know some statistics from before and after this event. Change in browser share if such a thing is recordable (unsure if ungoogled-chromium has a different user agent), received download counts of different uBlock versions (Origin and Lite), difference in Google's revenue as a result of wiping uBlock Origin.
AddBlock is still available. I was wondering if there is some issue with the extension itself that it got flagged? Maybe an update to the codebase would make the extension installe-able again?
Wasn't Adblock Plus the plugin to be shunned because they allowed certain ads as long as the advertisers paid them money? I remember a scandal like that a few years ago, but I might be mistaken since there are many similarly named plugins.
uBlock Origin didn't have this problem, which is why it got recommended so much.
Chrome has been randomly turning off my ublock origin and I've had to manually turn it back on. Don't you take away my adblock or you'll get the boot! I am willing to escalate this indefinitely, to the point of just not going on to any part of the internet with ads.
The only chrome browser I'm using is on a cheap chromebook I bought.
It looks like I could turn on the linux vm and run firefox, but it "only" has a 16GB ssd of which like 12GB is "system space" (ridiculous) and I only have 1GB left which isn't enough to enable the linux dev environment.
I could look into seeing if I can get native linux on the hardware, but it's probably not worth the time and trouble for it.
Note that Google Chrome contains features that allow sharing your interests with advertisers and "measuring" ads performance. It looks more and more as ad browsing client rather than a web browser: https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/13355898
I've been personally enjoying Ghostery extension for the past year, block all ads, youtube, any HTML5 player, banners, popups – really clean and tidy browsing experience.
It didn't even catch any hype regarding this manifest support issue uBlock origin has, and it keeps silently working good without any interruptions, I wonder why is that?
Honest question - let's say you can't physically experience ads. Why do you care about your data being sold? This is a problem only if you can see ads, but remember, you can't.
I have it installed on Arc and it still works, I guess that's expected but it will degrade soon? I love Arc but I'd better not see an ad or that will be reason to jump ship. I pay for quite a few web services I like (eg, Youtube) but I'd drop a bollock if I saw a display ad on the open web.
If you like Arc, I suggest trying Zen Browser. It looks and behaves just like Arc, but it has the benefit of upgrades and support. Arc Browser has almost been abandoned because they are working on a new product.
How long until other chromium browsers follow suit? I'm currently using Edge.
I also wonder when someone one will "hack" chromium to run whatever extensions they want - I could build my own extension, or build uBlock Origin from the source (if available) and execute the extension regardless of the store.
After the enterprise grace period the code will be deleted from the project. You can expect a fork to appear that patches it back in (I doubt ungoogled chromium would be where that is done), but eventually that will become a nontrivial process. You have a year, maybe two. There are many chromium-based browsers that have built-in blocking.
When Google nuked the (manifest V2) extensions I had on Chrome, without letting me export their settings (custom filters for ublock origin, RSS reader feeds), I bit the bullet and switched to Firefox.
Consider discontinuing the use of Google, AWS/Amazon, X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and ChatGPT if you value freedom. There are numerous excellent alternatives available.
When I click the link for this story, Edge (stop laughing. Please.) pops up "uBlock Origin works on Microsoft Edge." (It's already there, Edge, but thank you).
Edge is based on Chromium, so would that mean this breakage will eventually apply to Edge as the Manifest changes, uhm, manifest to Chromium-based products? Or is this just a Google Chrome thing?
FWIW I keep Firefox around but I have to admit I like Edge's smooth sync of bookmarks and settings across machines and even different platforms. I switched about two years ago when Edge was clearly faster and lighter. It's no longer as lightweight and there are slowly accumulating annoyances coming mostly from some Microsoft Clippy-esque attempts to make some tasks "easier" (mostly via Copilot) but I still prefer it to Firefox. My former employer/retiree benefits site, for example, won't open at all in Firefox. I've considered other Chromium based browsers like Brave but haven't (yet) been sufficiently motivated to switch. (Give Microsoft some time, I expect they'll eshit Edge eventually).
Many Chromium-based browsers will keep Manifest v2 support for a while. But eventually the upstream Chromium codebase will diverge enough that it becomes too much work to keep it and they will be forced to drop it as well.
The manifest situation simply doesn't apply to Brave in relation to adblockers specifically. That is, Brave will function like uBlock without having to install uBlock as an extension - that's kinda the whole point of Brave (blocking ads / making them opt in only). That said, it is true extensions one may use that are affected by the manifest version change may be affected in Brave.
what ll it take to convert 80% of the world wide web users from chrome to firefox. can we write a super duper complicated migrator of sorts that literally installs firefox on behalf of the user, migrates all their data, migrates all extensions from chrome to firefox, even suggests alternative extensions for the ones that are not available and market the hell out of this migrator across x, bluesky, reddit etc?, One click migration from chrome to firefox, 0 tinkering
The largest web properties pushing Firefox to users, or perhaps social media campaigns. It's an outreach effort, the technical details are already solved. Make the Google/Chrome brand toxic.
This is how Internet Explorer (via Windows), Chrome (via Google Search and YouTube) and Safari (via iOS) gained significant market share. Through another platform or service that they owned, that they could use to promote their browser.
But large Web properties do not gain anything by promoting Firefox. Many are ad-supported, so getting rid of uBlock Origin is a good thing for them. Only having to test on Google Chrome (and maybe Safari) is cheaper for them. There has to be something in it for them to promote Firefox or an alternative browser.
To migrate, the average user will need to see the problem first. Most people wouldn't care enough about it even if they magically could press a button and migrate.
In the attention economy the browser and the mobile OS (and soon your LLM/Perplexity agent) are the most important points to control the aggregate user data. So it's a lost battle.
For a sub 0.01% of the nerds there would be alternatives for the non-DRM content, but this wouldn't change the big picture.
It's like the junk food business. Yes it's bad for people, but it's so addictive...
Having the passwords available automatically when logging in to gmail on a new device feels simpler and easier since I'd be doing that anyway, as opposed to needing to DL a new app
I don't mean "the same plugin published on extension stores", I mean "copy the extension files from Chrome to Firefox" compatibility. They're both WebEx standard, and the API compatibility between the two is huge. If there's a Chrome extension that you don't find published for Firefox, there is a solid chance the author just didn't bother publishing it on the Firefox Addons repo.
On Firefox, I use a uBlock Origin script to block Twitch ads. (Normal filters don't work on Twitch.) Is it possible to block Twitch ads with uBO-Lite as well?
I am coming from a place of ignorance, but could uBlock have worked on Manifest v3?
It seems like it would have worked, but the danger was over time Google report less and less information to the extension, but as it is today, the extension would have worked the same on v3 as v2?
As I say - I am ignorant sorry, its hard to search for an answer to this specific question
That’s not enough. Many sites serve ads from the same domains that they serve content from. Google, meta, etc. You need to have extensions that can parse the DOM and remove content from it.
I've moved from chrome to ff because of ublock extension, but I also have an app that remembers of stuff set as my default homepage, the other day I realized that ff don't allow for a custom home page. That why I left the comment above, I think they are somewhat related
Timely updates, team defending manifest V2, no user data stealing or background scanning b/s, browser as it should be. Got a 10 year old machine with Intel iGPU and even video acceleration in the browser works.
I doubt they're benchmarking things properly. Most likely some flawed "ad blocking speed" that doesn't measure ads and tracking scripts that are loaded / parsed etc.
Not even sure it's a valid comparison; are you even an ad blocker that can be compared with another ad blocker if you don't block ads properly. You can get a lot more speedup with an ad blocker that blocks nothing. Ad blocking speed would be 0 microseconds :P
The quiet part which none of us are saying out loud (bec. we love UBO) is that it's insane to allow extensions to have that much power.
uBlock Origin is obv a great great extension and I'm considering switching to FF just for that one extension, but consider what some newfangled AI extension developed by a random dude can do to the webpage you're viewing - anything UBO can do! So I think they have a decent case but I wish there was a carveout for UBO
I switched to firefox a few months ago because of this. However, I just switched back last week. Overall firefox is a better browser. The ability to screenshot in the browser is so useful and I used it 10x per day, not having it in chrome is a real pain.
But.. nobody tests on it anymore I think. Lots of popular sites are very slow and laggy with it, including sites I need for work. I don't think this is because of inferior technology, I think I just think nobody spends the time to make sure things work well on firefox. I could split-brain and use chrome for github and some other stuff but that is such a pain when clicking links.
The other issue is I think firefox support will only get worse. Their market share is back to where it was in IE6 days and dropping.
We really need a Slashdot-style meta-moderation system. Certain things always get brigaded, especially anything about the relative merits of browsers. It would be nice to flag people who only show up to downvote and reduce their impact.
Use Brave browser - both on phones and laptops. The ad-free experience will change your perspective on what internet looks like. You won't miss Google.
It's amazing that every post about Brave gets downvoted. I wish the downvoters would explain why they're doing this, but I guess they aren't very... brave.
I moved to Adguard years ago when I found that uBlock Origin Lite doesn't support custom filter lists. If Adguard can support that on MV3 then uBlock Origin is artificially gimping uBOL on Edge/Chrome.
works fine here, though it says it "may soon no longer be supported"
Edge store doesn't even mention that, in fact it's featured.
I switched to edge canary on my phone because the dev options allow you to install extensions by id/crx, which I've used to get ublock origin, though it crashes sometimes, and doesn't work when you reload the whole browser, until you refresh the page or manually reactivate the extension....
Depending on how long ago that was, it might be worth checking back in with it. It had a complete rewrite a few years back and it's now just as good as chrome mobile - I use IronFox, but there are also a few other forks.
Instead, they create a Terms of Use giving them rights to your data and remove the promise not to sell personal data. I love Firefox, but Mozilla either does not understand their users or just loves shooting themselves in the foot. Every time I think they have learned their lesson, they make another stupid decision.
It's funny people try to avoid Brave because of the crypto stuff init - like you can totally ignore that (it's not even enabled by default). So in daily usage, it behaves as if uBlock was a browser (rather than a Browser extension). It's great.
Still the same engine as Chrome, so it doesn't do anything against the monoculture of Chromium. Firefox works just as well, admittedly they'd have to install an extension instead of ad blocking being there by default.
This post is about UBlock being blocked on CHROME. Naturally, the folks interested in this development are likely interested in a chromium based browser that does allow blocking ads. Brave is a solid solution here.
What's frustrating to me is how predictable all this is if you analyze the world with a materialist understanding.
To boil it down, the most dominant philosophy, whether peole know it or not, is idealism. In idealism, people, nations, corporations, etc have some inherent quality beyond their physical make up. It's almost spiritual in that way. Even the concept of a soul is an idealist position. It's largely a circular argument that doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
So, the USA on the world stage is the good guy because we are the good guys, regardless of our actions or the consequences thereof. So an awful lot of effort is spent to label certain actors as "good" or "bad" to suit some objective. Superhero movies and a perfect example of idealism and it's no coincidence that they've had a renaissance since 9/11.
Materialism is simply the view that the physical world is all there is. The consequence of this is that we affect the material world and it affects us. There are no inherent qualities like being "good" or "bad". Instead, those are simply labels you apply to the actions of an entity.
My point here is that for years Google pushed this good guy narrative (ie "don't be evil") but any materialist understands that Google is a corporation so ultimately will act like any other corporation.
Google makes money selling ads. Ad blockers affect Google's bottom line. The relentless pursuit of increasing profits means fighting ad blockers was always an inevitability. Nobody should be surprised by that.
Now some will point to Google's control of Chrome as an antitrust issue and it probably is but that misses the point. A corporation that solely owns Chrome will ultimately act in a user-hostile way too because that's what corporations do.
The only long-term successful model for something like Chrome is to be something like the Wikimedia Foundation. The profit motive will always ultimately destroy it otherwise. If you can even find a business model for a browser, which I have serious doubts about.
A materialist knows all this because of how the workers relate to the means of production. A collective (which Wikimedia Foundation is, basically) is where the workers own the means of production. A corporation introduces capital owners whose interests are in direct opposition to that of the users.
Nobody could have possibly seen it coming that Google would abuse its market position to their own benefit...
I migrated off Chrome as soon as this BS story about improving privacy, a joke coming from Google. Then the excuse was "well it improves performance", which they could easily do by marking extensions as low performance.
If Google wanted to improve this they have an entire search engine where they could re-rank sites based on privacy and performance.
It was never about improving peoples web experience.
Been using uBlock Origin for so long I forgot what the raw internet actually looks like. Spent 3 minutes without an ad blocker last week when setting up a new machine and nearly lost my mind. Google knows exactly what they're taking away from us - a usable web. They've just decided that our sanity is less valuable than their ad revenue.
https://programmerhumor.io/programming-memes/browsing-withou...
I feel really bad for less tech-savvy users who'll be stuck with this nightmare version of the internet.
What boggles my mind is the fact that surely people working for Google also use Chrome. Are they not up in arms internally because of how awful the web is without ad blocker?
I have the same experience as you, every time I set up a new machine or watch friends/relatives browse the web, it just blows my mind how bad the unfiltered internet is.
I wouldn't be surprised if the people that did care about that internally at Google either used something like Firefox or had their private build that can run uBlock or similar ;)
In 2011, when I worked at Google (on ads, not on Chrome), I did use Firefox as my main browser. But back then, there was much less need for an ad blocker. I still remember asking my manager whether it was OK to click an ad (from a VPS provider) while browsing from the corporate desktop.
Enterprise editions of Chrome continue to have manifest v2 support, so this doesn't necessarily affect Google employees.
Guess I know what I'm deploying in my enterprise of one seat.
If anyone finds a good guide, this would be a great place to share it.
People will do anything not to get eating, except getting rid of the beast.
According to https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/develop/migrate... the message is this:
June 2025: Chrome MV2 deprecation enterprise rollout
> Are they not up in arms internally because of how awful the web is without ad blocker?
Chrome still has many ad blockers. While I use chrome/chromium fairly little, ublock origin lite has worked well for me when I do. I'm aware older manifest V2 extensions are theoretically superior at blocking a wide variety of undesired content but if your main concern is not seeing ads, that is absolutely doable.
The core issue is that those ad blockers are easy to defeat. The only reason ad companies haven't invested energy in defeating them (yet) is because they're not popular enough.
Once they are the only option in Chrome, it's just a matter of time until Chrome becomes largely useless at blocking ads.
ublock origin lite is mv3 compatible and not nearly as good at blocking ads as the original, for instance.
If you've never used an ad blocker, I guess it may just be the normal web rather than anything terrible. Because ad blocking isn't illegal, it may not be quite as bad as a Disney employee pirating all their movies, but I suspect it's still not that common (at least most people I knew while there didn't use one, and of course I was happy to install one again the day after leaving).
> Are they not up in arms internally because of how awful the web is without ad blocker?
You realize these people pay check depend on that, right?
"It is very hard to get a man to understand something when his job depends on him not understanding it." —Upton Sinclair
Employees can disagree with their employers.
The list of things that can be done is way bigger than the liat of things that are in fact done in real life. A Google employee could voluntarily put his hands over an open flame, but it's just very improbable.
Google employees have quite literally protested decisions of Google’s in the past, which sometimes cost them their jobs.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/23/tech/google-fires-employees-p...
Yep. It isn't just a less usable web, it's a less safe web. But anything for those sweet ad dollars.
You linked to a crappy copy of an XKCD comic. Here's the orginal. https://xkcd.com/624/
Thanks for the link to the original.
Well the crappy copy does come with some extra text. (No judgement from me on whether the extra text improves the comic here; just that someone might think it does, and there's no arguing about taste.)
It's also interesting to see that XKCD itself explicitly supports eg hotlinking, and the license makes putting it into your own crappy creations rather easy. (Though I think the example linked to fails the 'attribution' requirement.)
They even edited the image to insert their own name.
Makes you feel naked. I am running Firefox now, but there is a debacle on that now.
>Nobody could have possibly seen it coming that Google would abuse its market position to their own benefit...
Doesn't Safari have the same restriction, also ostensibly for "security/privacy" reasons? The only difference is that Apple doesn't have a web advertising presence, so you can't make the accusation that they're "abuse its market position to their own benefit".
People scratch their heads about how "just a default setting" can be worth an annual $20 billion payment from Google. It makes more sense if it's actually for a raft of wildly illegal under-the-table measures this.
Imagine what it would cost Google's bottom line if Apple was truly user-focused and enabled ad-blocking on desktop, mobile and embedded safari views by default. Someone do the napkin math please!
Oh, people just don't understand the value of default settings. It's a constant theme even on this forum.
It's really surprising but also not.
Defaults is exactly how Microsoft has been getting away with everything they did for forever. Anti-trust investigations? Irrelevant if you can just make it configurable but the default is Microsoft.
Most people don't change default settings unless prompted and guided. And adding a setting shuts up most of "us" coz we'll just change it.
The only reason they're remove the ability to configure something would've been if too many of us change the settings for too many of our friends and relatives for it to register negatively on their end and they'd try to get away with not allowing it to be configured / hiding it as much as possible until they actually get anti-trust investigated // convicted (Re: requiring Windows to ask if you want to install other browsers than Internet Explorer).
Heh, sometimes you feel pressed between “but it’s just a default” and “who uses settings anyway”. Because the first group is blind and deaf to network effects of a default and the second to the fact that workflows and preferences differ.
It's a revenue share deal where Google pays Apple 36% of the search revenue they get from Safari users [1].
In other words, Google pays Apple ~$20B per year to be default search engine because they make ~$53B in revenue from those searches. This is profitable for both Apple and Google -- no "wildly illegal under-the-table measures" required.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/14/apple-gets-36percent-of-goog...
How much would Google even lose if Apple didn't make Google the default search engine? People would almost certainly just use Google anyway. If Apple switched to Bing most people would use it once, get pissed off, and then switch it back to Google.
It's not that weird that people are a bit suspicious that it's really worth Google $20B/year.
I couldn’t possibly disagree more. I’ve always worked with end users and I can say with confidence that the majority of people wouldn’t change it or more accurately wouldn’t feel like putting in the effort/dealing with the hassle of changing it, minor as it may be. Also a non-trivial segment of the population most likely wouldn’t be aware of that it is even an option.
The power of the default is just that, they it is the default.
Also Apple themself has only one incentive which is to get the best deal for themselves. Is Microsoft willing to offer more money than Google? The evidence points to no.
I use ddg, have basically since it was released, what's wrong with bing?
Back when I tried both more extensively a few years ago, Google was a lot better giving me results relevant in Europe and Asia. Bing and duck duck go used to be very US only focused. Which made me go back to Google.
I don't know if or how much that's changed.
that's unfortunate, really. Is there no other options for those regions? I'm not suggesting yandex, but others exist, right?
This was all about ten years or so ago.
I just gave Bing a quick try, and it seems to be a bit more useful (for Singapore) now than it used to be. I haven't tried all the other alternatives.
That's a fair question, but even if Google makes an extra $21B/year because of that default setting it's still a good deal for Google.
ah the advertising ecosystem.
even when an outsider tries to think of the nastiest scam, an insider shows up to explain the boring day to day is already worse.
This conspiracy theory doesn't make sense because safari's content blockers (ie. the nerfed version of adblock) block most ads just fine, especially from google ads. The only ads that get through are first party ads (eg. youtube), but as of a few years ago adblockers could block those as well, so it's a moot point.
Safari content blockers are awful compared to UBlock and I’m a Safari user. Not only does YouTube either get through or cause weird issues, YouTube now blocks you until you completely disable the extension. Content blockers often block cookie banners too which can often result in broken functionality - a nightmare when you’re trying to buy tickets to something and have to “reload without blockers” for the website to work.
If I go to buy something, I switch off ad blocking on that page, at the very least, on the checkout page. Ads can even be actually relevant there.
If the page is too ad-ridden to tolerate, I may consider to just close that page, and go search for other options.
I use Firefox + uBlock Origin, because going to the wide commercial internet without some form of ad blocking is like going out without an umbrella when it's raining heavily.
Ad networks are a high traffic way to spread malware. I would never recommend disabling a blocker, especially on commerce sites.
Usually checkout pages don't have pesky ads galore, or any. But such a page usually has a ton of anti-bot scripts, such as captchas and other privacy-invading checks.
Ad blockers usually block such stuff, for a good reason. But I don't mind it on a checkout page specifically though, because on a checkout page I wilfully disclose a ton of my private details, such as name, address, etc.
Good checkout pages work well with an ad blocker on.
If I go buy something and it requires me to disable my adblocker or my VPN I just look for another place to buy.
Yep, I absolutely will not play these stupid games with retailers. If you want my business, don't expose me to malware.
Local shops don't generally expose you to malware.
The big deal was allegedly these small shops exposed you to viruses, but Walmart, Kroger, and Lowes did not.
Make it make sense.
Yeah, I had large corporations in mind.
>I use Firefox + uBlock Origin
Wasn’t Mozilla accused of selling data they collected from Firefox users?
Correct me if I’m wrong.
Even with all the drama Firefox is still an excellent browser, definitely better for privacy and uBlock than Chrome.
They removed wording in their FAQ saying that they wouldn't sell data. It's a subtle distinction, and may or may not make a difference depending on your perspective.
Zen, LibreWolf, and Waterfox are privacy minded Firefox forks.
It was overblown.
It's just the paradox of when you present yourself as "the good guys" - people will hold you extra accountable for things that others easily get away with as nobody expects them to do better.
Unfortunately, Mozilla tends to shoot themselves in their foot this way somewhat often.
Suggest using a service like NextDNS or Pi-hole for DYI ad blocking at the DNS/network level. I started with pi-hole but the hassle of updates and most importantly not having it available outside of my home network pushed me to a service like NextDNS which works on any network (5G, work, etc)
If you think manifest v3's adblocking is bad, DNS-based adblockers (eg. NextDNS or Pi-hole) is even worse. It can't do any filtering based on urls or elements, so any first party ads will be able to get through.
First party ads aren't evil usually tho. If someone builds their own ad infrastructure they might as well build it properly because they know it's going to be their fault if someone uploads something fishy.
In my experience only the big ad networks let you post anything. Small specialized ad platforms usually have actual moderation.
Edit:// by the way it wasn't that hard to get ads trough ublocks filters by self hosting them either. But that's rarely really evil and I never saw that abused.
Though it might be a good second layer of defense.
to get any actual work done with DNS based blocking (ie. visiting Google ads, or their other dashboards) you quickly have to start whitelisting a ton of sites, which applies everywhere.
Okay. Step back a second.
You're telling me you block ads, but have to unblock ads to view your ad sales?
Is this in the DSM-V?
What blocker do you use? I don’t have these problems with AdGuard in Safari
I’ve used Wipr for a long time. And Wipr 2. Will checkout AdGuard.
1Blocker also gives me a good YouTube experience.
In Safari, how is AdGuard better than AdBlock?
Apparently, it doesn’t have the described issues. I also use AdGuard on iOS/Safari and see only occasionally desperate ads. I expect ad networks to target this with mv3-hard methods now that it will become widespread, but up until now it just worked.
Apple and google did everything for you to not know about it. It’s not the first thread where people either don’t know about it or will read but won’t try.
Me too, but shhh.
>Not only does YouTube either get through or cause weird issues, YouTube now blocks you until you completely disable the extension
Works fine on my machine. You might need to update your filter lists or try another content blocker app.
>Content blockers often block cookie banners too which can often result in broken functionality - a nightmare when you’re trying to buy tickets to something and have to “reload without blockers” for the website to work.
So don't enable the filter lists that try to block cookie banners?
Can you recommend a blocker? I have one (adblock pro), but I cant seem to find where to update the lists and sometimes YT does weird things :)
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/adguard-adblock-privacy/id1047...
There's also a new extension that was posted on hn a few weeks that's free and claims to have scriptlets to block youtube ads as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43204406#43208085
Bypass the YT website entirely.
You can perform video search through DuckDuckGo, Invidious, or Piped.
The latter two are often blocked themselves, copy the video URL and feed to mpv to play through your preferred video player on the command-line:
<https://mpv.io/>
Clarifying: Invidious/Piped video playback (and often the video webpage itself) may be blocked, even if the search pages work.
Recent mpv / ytdl can almost always gain access. If you are blocked, check for updates to ytdl (which mpv typically uses for video/media downloading).
YouTube has been playing a cat and mouse game, disabling some accounts until disabled, randomly re-enabling them. I personally think it's so when people talk about issues like this - people say "Well, it's been ok on my end". But it's definitely some kind of A/B testing.
Oh absolutely. YouTube will 100% try new ad blocking technology for only a specific strata.
Nit, but "stratum" is the singular.
Firefox Focus' integration with Safari works well for ad blocking while general browsing.
That’s nonsense. AdGuard + SponsorBlock.
I almost exclusively use Safari and I havent seen a single ad in almost a decade
For me the element blockers are the most important of all. It's not just about blocking ads. It's about making websites more usable. Ads are only one of those detrimental points. Many websites bombard you with big photos of their articles. I block all that with custom blocklists so the end result is a lot more like here at hacker news.
If you're talking about element blocking, that's still doable in manifest v3 with injected css elements. That's how it was done in manifest v2.
Is it? I didn't realise. I always use Firefox anyway. So which part isn't possible now? JavaScript injection?
Ps changed the term to avoid confusion, thanks!
>So which part isn't possible now?
The webRequestBlocking api, which allows the extension to inspect all request/responses in real time and act on them. With manifest v3 the extension can only supply a list of expressions to block, and the expressions that can be used is very limited.
Taking this as an opportuinty to pitch an extension I developed to do that and more: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/web-defuser/
The main difference between this and current element blockers is that Web Defuser allows you to block annoying behaviors (by modifying requests/responses in flight) in addition to elements.
At the moment it's a bit lacking in the UI department, I'd appreciate early adopter feedback (you can contact me at gmail with my username).
Yup.
I understand that nerfing adblocking is definitely a big draw for Google, but Apple went the ManifestV3 route many years before, specifically to increase extension performance and privacy.
Back then there was a big uproar too, but mostly because Safari extension developers charged for a new version because they had to rewrite the entire thing.
> specifically to increase extension performance and privacy
This reasoning is so bogus that it’s hard to believe anybody could believe it in good faith. Ad blockers are essential for performance and user privacy and security.
If Apple truly bought into this reasoning then they’d integrate an ad blocker like Brave does. Follow the money.
It is not bogus. It does increase privacy because the extension no longer sees what pages you load or your web content. And it is indeed more performant.
And Apple does care because later on they started to allow blockers to spread blocking rules over multiple sub-extensions. Initially they were limited on... 15 000 rules? Can't quite remember.
You're downvoted so much that I can't even read your text without copy and pasting it.
But you're right. When I'm using Safari with 1Blocker, I don't even notice that I'm not using Chrome with uBlock Origin. And it accomplishes that with static rules instead of with an API that reads every request.
Safari content blockers are not enabled in embedded Web Views.
Neither is uBlock Origin.
I get uBlock origin whenever apps open a browser view that uses my default android browser (Firefox) e.g. when I click links in the reddit app.
Firefox and its derivatives remain the only true alternative at this point.
You can still install uBlock Origin in Brave, assuming you don't mind the crypto stuff and how they pay it out (or, rather don't) to site owners. Even Firefox feels a little weird now with the advent of Mozilla Advertising.
Very much a lesser of all evils situation.
You can, but ultimately Brave is downstream of Chrome and their stated intention of supporting Manifest V2 "for as long as [they're] able" doesn't inspire as much confidence.
Firefox is also the only open alternative to Chromium at the moment, so I prefer to endorse it instead.
Brave has its own Rust based Adblocker BUILD IN. That is at the very core of the Browser, uses the exact same filter lists uBlock Origin and all the other use. There is no point in using uBlock origin in Brave at all. I have been using Brave for years now and the adblocker pretty much like uBlock. Never looked back. I think it even inspired by uBlock but the fact they can even integrate it tighter with Chromium makes more then than an extension written in JS.
uBlock Origin does a bit more than applying community maintained filter lists though. I regularly use its capability to add custom filters for instance. Is that also possible in Brave?
Yes
For now. We’ll see how long it takes for them to integrate their Brave Bucks for either enabling the blocker or whitelisting ads.
We would not do that on principle, but imagine we're the mustache twirlers you fantasize we are: we'd light our brand on fire doing any such thing, lose all our lead users, stop growing and start shrinking. Think / Type / Post is the Ready / Aim / Fire analogue you seek.
I know that you probably went with Chromium based on the way your relationship with Mozilla ended, but man... I'll never have a Chromium based browser as my daily driver, I simply never trusted the ad company to not do what they ended up doing in the end (killing ad blockers). Brave will always be a no go for me for this reason. And now more than ever, we really need some company with real fire power to take the reins of the Firefox source code and create a real trustable fork.
Separate reply that ritual impurity or blind black-box rejection of open source Chromium/Blink seems also to suffer from emotionalism over reason. See
https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations-from-...
This is a choice we made. As I wrote in my last reply, I think we would have died trying to get Gecko/Graphene with a Web front end up to competitive scratch vs. Chrome (nm Firefox).
A Firefox fork would have gone over badly with some potentially large number of Mozilla/Firefox fans, and we'd still lack key elements not part of the Mozilla open source (at the time, e.g., Adobe's CDM for HTML5 DRM). On the upside we'd have more UX customizability.
But our choice of Chromium/Blink (via Electron, so we had Web front end upside without Firefox extensions) was not a slam dunk choice. It involved trade-offs, as all engineering does. One downside is we have to audit and network-test for leaks and blunders, which often come from Chromium upstream:
https://x.com/BrendanEich/status/1898529583546421322
No, we started with Gecko (on Graphene, a sandboxing multiprocessor framework from b2g/FirefoxOS). We switched for hard-nosed wins of Chromium (as part of Electron) because out of the box vs. Gecko, most rows in the spreadsheet favored Chromium decisively. This is covered in
https://brianbondy.com/blog/174/the-road-to-brave-10
Why do you write "probably... based on... relationship ended"? Brave as a startup does not have time for feels not realz, pathos-over-logos nonsense. I recommend you avoid it in your work efforts too.
Thanks for the replies. I did not knew that you started with Gecko. Anyway, Brave is my go to advice when a regular user asks for a mobile browser, it just works out of the box. Not for me, and I still hope to see a Firefox fork becoming the main Chrome competitor in the future.
Firefox reborn will be a tough turnaround job —- Ladybird could be the better path.
I get it. I run FF as my primary browser (mostly because I don't want to see the internet devolve into a Blink mono-culture).
But, I always recommend Brave for less-technical folks. It just works! My FF setup includes a number of extensions, some of which need a bit of tuning to be useful. Then you have to deal with issues in websites that just don't properly support FF, etc. My grandmother can install Brave and simply start browsing. Things just work without extra config or tinkering.
> install uBlock Origin in Brave
There's no need to do it, their built-in adblocker supports the same rule lists.
https://github.com/brave/adblock-rust
But does it support blocking JavaScript, large media elements, social widgets, and fonts?
Yes, you can block elements directly from the context menu. I use it all the time on Reddit.
There's also built in blocking under brave://settings/shields for Javascript and social features.
It doesn't have a specific feature to block fonts AFAIK but it does have fingerprint protection if that's your concern.
Brave's adblocker supports the standard `$font` resource type modifier on adblock rules as well.
What I specifically mean by 'large media elements' is that I currently have the uBlock option active to 'Block media elements larger than [50] KB'. (Where the 50 is a spinner so I can increase or decrease the size if I want.)
I would like to know this, too. It does not seem to be on the list of features unless they are referring to it via "cosmetic filtering". I often block particular elements on websites.
You can block elements, there's an option on the right click context menu to do it visually.
I switched to Brave last week after the whole Firefox fiasco. I installed uBlock Origin after there were some ads that got through.
e.g. on DuckDuckGo.
There is an Aggressive setting for Brave Shields, which you can set either per-site in the Shields menu from the URL bar, or globally in brave://settings/shields - that should take care of SERP ads and other first-party placements.
Luckily, Firefox has several forks that strip that telemetry.
Brave has a native adblocker that lets basically nothing through, though it can be configured as desired. Crypto stuff is opt-in, though there is a little monochrome button for it on the browser that one can disable with a right click.
Another day, another subtle insinuation that Brave is the only Chrome fork anyone uses. Are you people being paid to do this?
It is not a subtle insinuation, Brave is the defacto only browser apart from Chrome right now. All the rest are niche and irrelevant if you measure adblock, compatibility and widely subpar privacy protection.
There is some bitching about the ads crypto token, but that is entirely optional, so complaints are mostly fear and dogma. And to be honest, is a fascinating new approach to ads that suvberts the current state of affairs in the advertising market.
As I see it, Brave is the only Chromium-based browser with a competitive Mv2-deprecation-resistant adblocker. If adblocking is important to you - and it is, to many people - then Brave literally is the only one worth considering. Not to mention it is open source, unlike most of the others.
(I work on Brave's adblocker, and FWIW the folks who work for Brave are very open about their affiliation when commenting about it online)
Or maybe it's just popular? Recommend something else if you don't like it rather than just insinuating crap about people who do.
Do you have thoughts about Kagi/Orion browser? I've been using it for a bit now and I've been pleased with the ad blocking capabilities and the ability to have ublock origin on my iPhone and iPad. The browser definitely has scales but it's usable for me at this point.
Not open source.
Your comment was downvoted into oblivion, but it's a very valid point. There is a significant number of GNU/Linux users who value the freedoms granted by FLOSS licensing, so I believe Orion not being a FLOSS project is a valid argument against it - specifically in context of GNU/Linux (as a part of Free Software movement).
At least it certainly leaves me (personally) having second thoughts, even though I'm no purist and use proprietary software (but try prefer free software if I can).
macOS only
Linux is coming, but that still leaves Windows and Android (and iOS?) out.
There is an iOS version https://apps.apple.com/app/id1484498200
How long will Mozilla be around for, though?
If the Google, Pocket and other ad money dries up, Mozilla the company may go away but the Firefox browser itself will continue on because it's open source. As an exclusively Firefox user for over 20 years, I suspect if Mozilla the company dies, it will won't negatively impact Firefox much, at least in any meaningful way. In fact, the browser may be somewhat better off managed like the Blender or MAME projects.
In the last five years or so Firefox has increasingly introduced controversial changes that make it (IMHO) less good, primarily around interface design. And, from what I understand, Mozilla employs full-time UX designers who've been driving much of that. Of course, with Firefox it's still possible to modify, fix and restore all these recent interface "improvements" with user CSS but it's a constant annoyance to need to keep fixing it. Fortunately, there's an active community effort around restoring the Firefox interface and usability, exemplified by the brilliant Lepton project https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix/releases.
My perception just watching the evolution of Firefox from the outside, is that it used to be a browser that celebrated the ethos of "Have it Your Way." However, Mozilla the company gets money to pay its executives and employees (millions in the case of more than one recent CEO) by actively driving users and eyeballs for Google, Pocket and other advertisers. So the company is highly incentivized to try myriad changes and redesigns to increase appeal to "the masses" of browser users. Thus, the UX keeps getting 'simplified' and 'de-cluttered' with advanced functionality 'de-prioritized' and add-on support demoted to second-class afterthought - instead of the shining key feature advanced users value most. Basically, in recent years the Firefox UX and end-user features have been pushed by the substantial payroll needs of the Mozilla company to become more like Chrome and Safari instead of embracing its unique position as a tool for power users who value advanced features, customization and extension. And it was all for naught because Firefox has continued to lose market share while ignoring (and even actively alienating) its niche community of fanatically devoted power users.
Do you think the open source community is capable of maintaining Firefox without Mozilla? I find that doubtful. Even if they did, without Mozilla, Cloudflare and friends would start trying to kill Firefox like they do to other independent browsers.
As long as Google pays them to remain alive to reinforce the narrative that Chrome isn't a monopoly.
That deal is on the chopping block as part of the DOJ's lawsuit.
Yep, very likely.
https://arstechnica.com/google/2025/03/doj-google-must-sell-...
Now, why do I have this feeling that it will be bought by some entity very close to the current US administration?
...so long as you're not in a market where they automatically opt you in to sending all your DNS requests to a for-profit company without asking, and if you are, you remember to set up a canary domain or go and update your settings for every new install and new profile.
It's easy to block ads on an entire system DNS level, instead of using browser plugins.
This way you're missing out on specific js patches for sites with hard to block ads (like YouTube)
That's a special case, which can be solved by buying YouTube premium. For general ad-blocking, the DNS filters work great.
What incentives does this enforce in the market? Strangling smaller players and reinforcing the dominant ones.
"We understand some users don't want ads so to monetize our product we allow those users to pay and not see ads"
Your response: "I want to keep my cake and eat it too."
I have a solution for you, stop using YouTube if you feel so strongly that a video platform should be free to use.
I'm paraphrasing in the quotes, they aren't real quotes...
How does that work on a smartphone?
You install NextDNS from the App Store.
And ublock origin lite works just fine for me
it's a good base level, but misses dynamic updates, custom rules and interactive element picker/blocker.
Not working as well on YouTube. The ad is blocked, but you still need to skip it. You didn't need to do this with UBO.
It's working fine on Youtube in Optimal mode. If you still have issues, you will have to go through self-diagnosing steps[1] to rule out all the myriad other ways you could suffer such issues -- most commonly another extension is interfering negatively.
[1] https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues/27415
uBO being so good at blocking YouTube ads to the point where you didn't need to signup for Premium may have been the tipping point for Google that ended manifest V2.
i suspect that youtube mobile is responsible for more traffic than web. And that it's harder (but not impossible) to have adblocking on mobile (such as revanced).
Is all this “privacy” and “monopoly” outrage about a loud group of people wanting to watch YouTube videos without watching ads or paying a dime?
Do they also get outraged when Costco “abuses its monopoly” as soon as they stop providing free samples or cheap hotdogs?
Click on the extension icon and move the slider to the right.
Alright? Split iOS off from Apple, then split Apple Music off too?
I hate these arguments where people point to some other shitty thing a company is doing as some sort of gotcha.
>Alright? Split iOS off from Apple, then split Apple Music off too?
Windows is split off from Lenovo/Dell. How's that working out for the Windows OS, or the Edge browser?
Largest OS share in the market? Seems to be working out pretty good?
Edge is a perfectly good browser now? Probably should be its own company too if we are splitting Chrome off from Google.
I will tell you that we should split these companies into 100 parts if thats what you are asking.
Imagine if Apple licensed its chips out in competition with Qualcomm...
It's time for a Google breakup from the DOJ / FTC.
They've gone well beyond what Microsoft did in the 2000s.
Google owns so many panes of glass and funnels them all through its search and advertising funnel. They've distorted how the web (and mobile) work to accomplish this massive market distortion.
Search, Ads, and Android should be broken up into separate units. Chrome shouldn't be placed with any of those units.
While we're cutting, YouTube should be its own entity and stand on its own legs too.
Apple, Amazon, and Meta need the same scrutiny. Grocery stores and primary care doctors should not be movie studios and core internet infrastructure. Especially when those units are wholly subsidized by other unrelated business units, and their under pricing the market is used to strangle out the incumbents and buy them up on the cheap.
Well, this country (the US) decided in November to go the exact opposite direction of having a government capable of, let alone willing to, pursuing litigation like this, so I hope we enjoy this digital feudalism only expanding, never receding, in the coming years.
>Well, this country (the US) decided in November to go the exact opposite direction of having a government capable of, let alone willing to, pursuing litigation like this
No? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43299886
Okay, I'll retract my remarks when the new formation of the FTC actually goes after a tech giant. And frankly, I have doubt any DOJ filings of this type won't get repealed by force from above in short order. This is a case that was mostly handled by the prior DOJ, which is gone now, replaced by new management.
> replaced by new management.
New management is aligned with breaking up big tech.
Founders Fund (Thiel), A16Z (Andressen [0], Horowitz), and YC (Gary Tan) have all been lobbying for some form of big tech breakup because it sucks up capital+oxygen needed for startups they funded to exit at respectable valuations.
Also, Andressen's Netscape was screwed over by Microsoft, so he has a grudge against large players.
[0] - https://www.businessinsider.com/andreessen-more-tech-compani...
Breaking up big tech would oxygenate the entire tech sector.
Startups would be able to grow larger. There would be less threat from big tech coming in to eat your market, and M&A wouldn't be the preferred exit strategy.
Tech talent would be able to get paid more without big tech setting wages and orchestrating coordinated layoffs. More successful startups = more money for venture and labor capital. Right now that money just goes to institutional shareholders which are not the innovation drivers of the economy.
Startups will actually get to compete for markets rather than having them won and subsidized by unrelated business units at the big tech titans. The solutions delivered will fit the market needs much better.
Even big tech itself might fetch a higher valuation and be greater than the sum of its parts. So much of big tech is inefficient, untethered from market realities (eg. Alexa), and a waste of talent and human capital on dead end projects. Having Jeff Bezos "pay whatever it takes" to acquire the rights to "007" is a sign of how bloated these market distorting companies have become.
This needs to happen and is long overdue.
This is coming from an Apple antagonist, but don't the Apple OSs have adblocking at a system level (implying Safari)? This does vindicate Apple (but doesn't help in the other legitimate scenarios that this API is needed, which I have been told do exist).
> but don't the Apple OSs have adblocking at a system level (implying Safari)?
No, content blockers are specific to Safari. Third party apps can show ads just fine.
It's easy to install system level ad-blocking in MacOS and iOS.
Apple is totally an advertising company. Have you missed the part about their stalling phone, tablet and laptop revenues, that they hope to compensate with "services" revenue, i.e. App Store 30% racketeering and App Store search ads?
>Apple is totally an advertising company. Have you missed the part about [...]
Have you missed the part of my comment of my comment where I specifically mentioned "web advertising presence"? That's relevant, because ublock would only work on web ads. It can't block ads in the app store, or any other app (eg. spotify).
Apple also serves ads and trackers on the web, not just in-app or on the App Store. Here are the relevant built-in uBlock Origin filter rules:
https://github.com/search?q=repo%3AuBlockOrigin%2FuAssets+ap...
Thus they also clearly have an incentive to sabotage uBO. It may be a much smaller piece of their revenue than at Google, but it is a huge proportion of their revenue growth. Don't believe Apple's marketing about their caring for privacy, belied by their actions.
>Here are the relevant built-in uBlock Origin filter rules:
Can you link to a specific rule that shows Apple has web ads? The search results you linked either removeparam filters (which I guess is "tracking", but probably the most benign kind), malware sites that contain "apple.com", or analytics domains that seemingly belong to apple. Moreover there's no evidence that Safari's content blocker restrictions make a difference here. The domains are trivially blocked so it's unclear how apple is materially gaining from their nerfed adblock.
Ads that apple serves (outside of marketing pages on apple.com) are ads that displayed on ad supported ads. uBO won't help you there. Luckily, every Apple device comes with an AdBlock for those ads - airplane mode.
Apple gets Google revenue for being their default search, and that is worth much less if the search ads pay less if Safari users were able to browse other sites untracked.
That's a BIG difference though, and makes the claim about security more believable, especially since it isn't a sole restriction. There are also a number of ad blockers available for Safari, although personally I'll stick with Firefox either way.
Google is an ad company restriction use of the primary ad-blocker on its browser, it's blatant.
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Whataboutism is so lazy.
It's not whataboutism. If the claim is that google's actions with manifest v3 is "abusing its market position to their own benefit", but Apple did the same thing when it didn't stand to benefit from it, then it severely undermines that claim.
Sure, it doesn't rule out google was secretly intending on doing it, only internal memos or whatever can prove that definitively. But at the same time, to immediately conclude that google was "abusing its market position", you would have to be maximally uncharitable to google. That's a sad way to see the world. Take for instance, the flak that google got for banning third party cookies. If this is done by anyone else (eg. Firefox), this would be seen as a good thing. However, cynics have opposed this on the basis that such change would disadvantage third party ad networks more than google, thus google was "abusing its market position to their own benefit" and therefore the change was bad.
You talk about Google as if it's a person. You should take a step back and think to yourself why the changes were made to Manifest V3 that broke backwards compatibility, weakening ability to ad-blocking. Rule set based modification is one of the first features I'd think of when developing a systems of extensibility in browser, and they removed it.
The reasoning is obvious, and "plausible deniability" is not enough to give Google charity. The more difficult you make it to block ads, the more impressions, and the more money made. Yet you believe people should be "charitable" to the same company that can't hire the manpower to defend their own users against bad faith DCMA takedown notices. Because they ran the analysis, and it wasn't worth the cost.
Best case scenario, Chromium loses market share, implements the parts removed from V2, Google likely kicks the can down the road to Manifest V4.
There's no reason to believe companies deserve charitability. Companies are systems designed to extract maximum value, and when the world around that system changes, the system adjusts itself. It's not the systems fault for trying to get more value, it's our fault for letting them.
Manifest v3 is not going to lose any meaningful marketshare. There continues to exist working adblock and most users won't notice any difference in functionality. I sure don't.
Manifest V3 has 100% market share for all "full featured" browsers. My understanding is that just yesterday, YouTube made a change that allows them to apply DRM to videos, with even the client side buffer maintaining encryption until playback. How long until we start seeing similar applied to websites/articles?
Eventually, there will be an overstep that make enough capable people mad, and those people will get together and make/mod something better.
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I don't think those two can be compared at all. Safari didn't have proper plugin support at all, doesn't matter ad-blocking or not. Rich plugin ecosystem was one of the Chrome's selling point.
There was a time in Chrome when it didn't support extensions at all. If Google had release an extension API like manifest v3 then, would that have been abuse of market position?
The reason why Chrome waited for so long to add extensions was the danger they posed to users. I was at Google when Sergey often worried about what extensions would do to non technical and older users who get tricked into installing them, then I saw first hand that danger with my own grandparents. They had extensions intercepting every network request, redirecting certain sites to fake sites, and injecting code into pages. It was horrifying, and they were lucky that they didn't have significant money or identity theft.
Yes, "abuse of market position" is path dependent.
Offering something then taking it away is materially different from never having offered it at all.
It wouldn't have been a bait and switch then.
So it's impossible for a company to make a mistake and rectify it? If they settle on the same approach as their major competitor, it's bait and switch?
it seems overly charitable to give Google, THE advertising company, the benefit of the doubt here when the biggest impact is it will now show way more advertising.
If it's really that big of a problem this can be addressed by locking extensions by default and hiding the on switch where casual users won't look. But come on, this is obviously a pretext. You expect people to believe that the most prolific adertising and surveilance company in history is crippling the ability to block ads and trackers for altruistic reasons?!
It's not "obviously" a pretext. I don't think that the change in ad revenue to Google is going to be significant between v2 and v3 ad blockers. It might be to ad networks and sites that employ significant ad blocker counter measures though.
And it's not "altruistic" - it's because eval() and webRequestBlocking are bad for security and performance, so they're bad for a lot of users. Users who will switch to Safari or another browser without that extension API, because the browser is faster or didn't exfiltrate their banking credentials.
Yeah right blocking ads and trackers helps performance.
Please don't forget the part developers played in this by enabling Chrome/Google to become so very dominant.
And developers can play a part in reversing that. It seems like it might already be happening:
Note: Edge is also gaining. They use Chromium but their stance on Manifest v3 is unclear to me. So far they don't seem to have any plans to deprecate v2 supportI know these numbers seem tiny, but if these trends were to continue, Chrome could be under 50% marketshare by June 2026 and overtaken by the end of 2027
Microsoft intend to deprecate V2 and move fully to V3 basically as soon as they can, pretty much in lockstep with Google:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/extensions-...
Thanks for the link. Definitely sad to hear
> but if these trends were to continue
Disco Stu has something to say about that
Hey, Disco Stu doesn’t advertise
Safari is even worse at ad blocking, basically ManifestV3 with fewer rules, so this is moving in the wrong direction.
Well hopefully Google will pay the price for their greed soon enough.
https://arstechnica.com/google/2025/03/doj-google-must-sell-...
They won't under the trump admin
It depends on whether Google bends the knee, as Amazon and Facebook have done.
The Tech coup has already happened and tech has switched sides to red. Google will bend the knee as everybody else did.
Gulf of America would like a word...
The trump admin got this ball rolling way back in 2017.
Just like the TikTok ban they also got the ball rolling on?
The TikTok ban is still happening, some trump donator will end up owning majority of tiktok.
Funny you should mention that: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/mar/10/trump-tik...
Yes, Tik Tok still needs to divest ownership or be banned in the US
I do hope that other countries ban american saas products which are not majority owned by that country.
Would you describe yourself as isolationist?
just pay $10 million to have a sit with him and all your troubles disappear
Be sure to wear your 100k Trump-Watch for the sitdown outside of the Pork Store.
The Biden admin pursued antitrust in tech even more seriously than Trump. That's part of why big tech rallied behind Trump in 2024
It's almost like giving your estates too much power will result in a coup by the estate. A story as old as time but keeps repeating none the less.
>article dated Mar 10, 2025
Trump's DoJ just submitted basically the same remedy proposal last Friday, it's on
As much as I dislike their Chrome practices, I am rather against the idea of forcing them to sell Chrome.
For one, they simply have had a better product, at least in the past. Part of their large monopoly is due to just being better outright for a large portion of users (presumably). Are we to punish making overly-good products?
For another, sell to whom? And why would they be a good steward?
And yet another, there's literally Chromium, which other browsers (built by other corps) use, e.g. Edge, Brave, etc.
Did Google have to open Chromium? No.
Disclaimer: I hold these opinions weakly and would love to learn more about why they might be ill-premised.
>Did Google have to open Chromium? No.
Google did not make Chromium from scratch, and so were obligated to use a license compatible with the previous source they used. That source can be traced back to KDE's Konqueror browser and its KHTML engine.
Your argument is that Google couldn't possibly have written their own web engine and browser at a time when Firefox and IE were the alternative options?
I'm simply saying that they didn't, and thus they did have to "open" it, or rather keep it "open".
Emacs Web Wowser for the most part, for me, and it basically works... except when it fucking does not.
The modern web, as we all know, is all kinds of shit. Anybody here compile Firefox recently?
Gentoo user here: all the time. Worst part is that Firefox depends on NodeJS which takes a good day to compile on my 2c/4t 3250U.
The NodeJS dependency is purely for running some tests. You shouldn't need it to actually build Firefox.
If that was the case I'm sure someone would've turned it into a test-only dependency in gentoo.
So actually even Firefox depends on V8...
What’s wrong with V8? Had only pleasant interactions with it so far (maybe compiling takes long, can’t tell, whole webkit is a nightmare in that regard)
Oh it's perfectly fine, but Firefox was kind of the only illusion that the web does not rely on a single implementation, so discovering that even that depends on V8 is kind of funny :)
Why would you? Firefox is a spyware nowadays.
> Nobody could have possibly seen it coming that Google would abuse its market position to their own benefit...
What makes me sad is that if we go back a handful of years here in HN comments, there were tons of posts assuredly stating google would never do anything like this.
Even though it should have been obvious that a company who lives and dies by ad revenue will of course do everything to protect ad revenue and block users freedom.
I don't think killing actual, effective ad-blocking was the sole motivation of moving to Manifest V3, but it was certainly a nice side effect that was hard to resist.
It's funny how this behavior resembles the Chinese Party.
The CCP is much better organized with its “Do nothing. Win.” strategy. If Trump did nothing as well as they do, America would still be a superpower.
> Nobody could have possibly seen it coming that Google would abuse its market position to their own benefit...
Thanks, now I have coffee on my keyboard.
Pretty sure they do rank sites based on performance: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/page-ex...
Let’s hope it still works at least on ungoogled chromium with manual setup. As soon as this stops working i’m back to only using firefox for good.
People's web experience is in degradation for long time.
No point using 99% of the web due to the hostile, fraudolent, abusive approaches on top of the hollow (yeh, very very gentle world for the thing what it is) content. No point searching for advice, products, job, as crap is poured at you while your actions are registered, your profile is sold, just to pour dedicated crap on you by the highest bidder.
I have mail and 5 (7 with weather) pages I check regularly, and that's it. That's my online life. More like a hermit goes into town for tools and cans kind of digital solitary. Clicking on links only after reconsidering five times, if I am really interested in the possible content. Mostly here. So, so far away from the extremely curious me 20 or so years ago spending hours to the limit of my thirst and bladder, navigating all that is out there.
It is very sad what humanity made out of the Internet. It does not even hurt anymore. It is numb blob where the feeling about the rich common knowledge source this was and could have been should be.
The issue I have is not that they did it; it’s that they lied about why.
Chrome is their project, they should be free to do whatever they want with it. People can use a different browser if they wish (I do).
This whole “better for users” bullshit is why I don’t respect Google as a company. Don’t piss on me and tell me it’s raining.
> Chrome is their project, they should be free to do whatever they want with it.
Google has a long history of "accidentally" breaking gmail on firefox and funneling users to Chrome back in the day. It's beyond stupid to argue they should be able to do whatever they want with their vertically integrated monopoly.
Like, if you want to dig holes in your own driveway sure whatever, but if you own all the roads in Detroit and you want to dig holes in them, then make a killing selling new tires and suspension repair a fair society wouldn't move out of Detroit, they'd fucking run you out of town.
Not even "back in the day". Youtube and Gsuite constantly break on firefox.
If people don’t like this, they can stop using gmail. Neither Chrome, nor Gmail is a monopoly.
The more things Google does to make gmail less useful, the better.
It’s no secret that Google is an ad company. Anyone still using gmail deserves what they get.
Why be bitter at the people dealing with the shit, why not be angry at the people making the world shit? My company uses gmail so I'm forced to use it.
Ah, but who is really making the world shit? Google and their ilk? Or the millions of sheep who use their stuff?
Would Google be making the world shit if all its cloud services had only a few dozen thousand users?
What's forcing you to interact with Google isn't Google, but Google users.
How is your company forcing you to use gmail any worse than your company forcing you to use outlook? Is it your company that is making the world shit, or google.
Everyone dealing with gmail is doing so because they chose to.
Let’s not pretend this was done unto them. Anyone can stop using gmail at any time.
Indeed. I'd like to. Except Google also make it nigh impossible for anyone hosting their own email (the original-internet ideal) to get email into gmail reliably enough to be useful. I have my own address on my own domain, but can't rely on it (yes, DKIM and DMARC and SPF are properly set up) not to be marked "spam" for opaque reasons, so gmail remains my "main" address. It's a network-effect problem: once enough people are "captured", then everyone else is forced to join - or else be unable to participate.
It's a collective action problem: you'll have to persuade millions and millions of "normies", who have no idea what's going on, or what internet privacy is, or what's broken about the system, and who don't care to learn, and won't listen to us - or you'll have to impose regulation. Those are the choices. The second seems more possible than the first. Us nerds saying "walk away" is idealistic; we will, and always will, get squished, because the corps have the power and most folks won't (ever) care.
This used to be true, but isn’t now. I self-host and can deliver to gmail just fine without being part of the deliverability cartel.
OK, good to know. It's been a couple of years since the last time I made a serious effort. I may give it another try.
Who's your host, just in case that's the difference?
No, not for all types of "dealing with".
If you're dealing with spam originating from Gmail, without any helpful action from Google, that's not really your choice.
If you're dealing with difficulties sending mail to Gmail users, without help from Google, that's also not really your choice.
If vast numbers of other people stopped using Gmail, those problems would mostly go away.
>Anyone can stop using gmail at any time.
Just going to copy/paste this part of the comment you replied to, because it seems like you may have missed it?
>My company uses gmail so I'm forced to use it.
GSuite/Workspace and consumer GMail is not the same thing in the slightest. They may use the same mail servers but that is about where the similarity ends.
I would recommend Google Workspace to any company because it gives them a ton of business productivity tools.
I would probably not recommend gmail as a users default personal email because frankly it's not that good.
The reality is most users have a Google account ans just use their Gmail account which is bundled.
Most of my circle which cares effectively use their Gmail account for sites that insist on it and never open that e-mail if they can get away with it.
Not me - it's work mandated.
Not my wife - her school board mandates it.
i think you underestimate the effort for change of the average user with a @gmail.com address.
> Anyone can stop using gmail at any time
True, and applies to many other things as well. Anyone claiming otherwise is shirking responsibility for their own actions. Every single sibling comment here suffers from this.
Arguments in the form of "other people do it, so I must also" are unpersuasive and pathetic.
GP Post: > My company uses gmail so I'm forced to use it.
Your post: > Everyone dealing with gmail is doing so because they chose to.
No, it's clear that not everyone dealing with Gmail is doing so because they chose to. Repeating your incorrect statement does not make it correct.
Further, everyone has to deal with its impacts on the email ecosystem as it's practically impossible for somebody who works a 9-5 to run their own mail server that Gmail will deign to not only accept mail from but also successfully deliver it to its intended recipient.
So even if I never use Gmail I still have to deal with replies going to / coming from it.
Except for anyone whose employer requires them to use Google services, since Google Apps (or whatever they call it these days) is a hugely popular offering for central company email/contacts/calendar/office suite. And frankly, it's better than dealing with Outlook and its unrelenting AI slop machine advertising.
The only thing that can stop a monopoly is a bigger monopoly, the government.
You're behind with the times, words have new meanings
Organizations I don't like = Monopoly!
Organizations I like = ...
You don't own the roads in Detroit; the government owns most of them.
Gmail is not a government service. Google is free to make that work with only one browser, if they want.
You can't assert that Google must make Gmail work with any browser whatsoever, because that means supporting someone using Windows 95 with Internet Explorer 5.5.
I'm not going to waste my time explaining to you what a metaphor is, but I will say this Firefox was the dominant player in the 00's 2010's when they did this, not the 2% market share it is now.
Actually I have a problem is both. Chrome/Chromium is Google's product and it's theirs to do with what they please, but if they do user-hostile things with it, that's enough to criticise them for me, even if they're honest about it.
Of course lying about why makes it worse, but I don't think it would've been that much more okay if Google was honest and said "users' ability to install highly effective ad blockers hurts our bottom line so we're removing them".
Where I live, Google rented out a huge Billboard to advertise Chrome, and it cites Chrome as "the world's most trusted browser"
I LOL every time I see it. Imagine the lengths they have to go to, to try to make people trust a product they have.
Trusted is known to not be the same as trustworthy.
The Bible is a widely trusted source on topics such as the origin of the world, and life.
Repeat the lie often enough and loud enough, it becomes accepted as truth. A billboard is pretty loud in this context.
Like Chomsky said: (corporate) propaganda is incredibly widespread but about an ankle deep.
> Chrome is their project, they should be free to do whatever they want with it.
They shouldn't be free to use all the money in the world to corner a market, rope in the conpetition and then abuse that position.
It only works because nobody can touch them, it's otherwise straight illegal in most markets.
And I don't understand what is the benefit of lying as well - everyone on the internet knows what this is about, at least if they used ad blockers. A lot of people don't, but they will not be affected anyway.
Only users who are tech-savy know they are lying.
My mom, who has Ublock Origin installed on her Chrome by me, will never know these details.
I don’t work for Google and genuinely think it’s better for users. It’s always bugged me that ad blockers request arbitrary read write permissions for all websites I visit, and it didn’t seem like that was ever going to change until Chrome forced the issue.
Read/write permissions are necessary to effectively block ads. There's a lot of sites that will throw up a screen saying "please turn off your adblocker" and refuse to let you view the page if they detect ads aren't being loaded. Read/write permissions allows uBlock Origin to inject scripts into the page to fool the anti-adblock scripts into thinking that ads are being served.
It's not ideal, but if that's what it takes to block ads as well as uBlock Origin does, then that's a price I'm willing to pay.
uBO Lite exists and I can't see any visible difference in how well it works. So, it's not a price you need to pay at all.
In my testing, UBO Lite is not working as well on YouTube. It blocks the ad, but you still have to skip it. Original UBO didn't require this.
Yea but, I think its a bit misplaced to be angry at Google for this. Surely its the content creators that place the ads in their content to blame for this.
I don't understand why they ads are not spliced into the stream. It would be undetectable by extensions at all.
Because ads are auctioned in nanoseconds. This isn't the newspaper were everyone saw the same as which was vetted by the editors. You are seeing different ads than your neighbour. Everything is automated to cost as little money as possible.
Anyone with a mildly popular extension that has read/write * would be offered lots of money to sell it to, usually, scammers or hackers.
Maybe you're willing to pay the price, but that doesn't mean it was what's best for the ecosystem.
At the platform level, you have to have a security model, and sometimes it will conflict with functionality. I’m sure there’s a lot of potentially interesting browser extensions you could build with the ability to read and write arbitrary files, but Chrome has decided (much less controversially) that the sandbox is key to their security model and extensions can’t ask to escape it.
If manifest V3 ad blockers were nonfunctional to the point of being broken, I’d be more concerned, but in my experience they’re perfectly OK.
My content blocker on Safari blocks all the same ads as ublock origin in Chrome, with no supposedly no risk of outbound data.
It's my computer. I will run code that I choose and disallow code that I choose. If I choose to run code that blocks your code, that's my prerogative. Whether that's a full blown right is another topic.
You're just pissed because I've chosen to block your code in software you created. Next, you'll tell me I have to watch your programming on a TV I bought with your code on it.
The idea that we have to do anything that evilCorp wants us to do is just insane that people have come to the point of accepting that.
It really isn't. They can spend some of their billions of revenue to review changes when popular extensions are updated, just like Mozilla does. Every uBO update is vetted by Mozilla and is only then pushed out to users. But doing this is not in Google's interest at all.
Mozilla’s guidance on this (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tips-assessing-safety-e...) is that only some extensions are manually reviewed and you shouldn’t trust this as a guarantee of safety if you don’t trust the developer who owns the extension.
If I’m going to be the devil’s advocate, it’s probably better for performance.
When I maintained a hook-based plugin system, I learned that many programmers do not know data structures or algorithms and would slow down the whole software by writing plugins that looked up rules using extremely slow ways extremely often. And if users wanted to complain about the software being slow, they would always blame me first.
But when I replaced it with rule lists, now I was in control and could implement fast data structures.
Their engineers genuinely believe that shit too, which is just absurd bullshit.
Perfect time to read again The Gervais Principle!
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...
Ah yes, "determinedly deluded loyalty to the company that will never be loyal to him".
Do they really? Or are you assuming?
I've seen a lot of their engineers here on HN defending Google's position, and very few of the anti-Google crowd here claim to be (x)googlers.
That said, I know a number of xooglers (myself included) who don't believe for a moment that this would have gotten off the ground if someone important hadn't opined on the usefulness WRT ad-serving.
I have seen engineers defend that position here and on Github, so unless you assume they're lying, I would take them at their word.
Of course not all of them do, Google is a big company.
More like the willfully blind engineers, disingenuously claim to believe that absurd bullshit. There's not a lot genuine left in that company.
A company optimises for profit. Real shocker.
s/company/monopoly/
Wrong. Every company exists to be profitable; how ethically they go about it is a different topic. Companies aren't charities.
> I migrated off Chrome as soon as this BS story about improving privacy
What are you using instead?
This is the most important question. What's the best practice? Firefox? Something else?
If you're looking to move away from Chrome, Firefox + uBlock Origin is still your best bet IMO. Mozilla's committed to keeping the robust ad-blocking capabilities alive despite Google's changes.
Brave is decent too if you want something Chromium-based but more privacy-focused (comes with minor controversies).
Safari works well if you're in the Apple ecosystem.
I actually run a dual-browser setup these days - Firefox for most browsing, and only fire up Brave for those annoying sites that Google has mysteriously "optimized" to run poorly elsewhere. Not ideal but gets the job done!
Librewolf is also pretty good, better privacy than Firefox. If you using firefox, might as well just use that instead.
I’m happy with Zen.
Ungoogled Chromium!
Librewolf
> It was never about improving peoples web experience.
I kinda appreciate that you still apply some benefit of the doubt.
I'm surprised anyone expected anything different. Why would an ad company support something that assaults its main source of profit?
100% agree with you. Unfortunately Chrome is damn near a requirement if you are interacting with the Google Cloud console. Try to use BigQuery studio in any other browser and you are in for a world of hurt.
Have we seen this movie before?
Exactly the reason why I use https://choosy.app to always redirect everything Google Cloud to Chrome, but everything else to Firefox.
That way if I click on some random GCP link in Slack it opens the link in Chrome, but everything else stays in Firefox. I don't need ad blocking for GCP so that works fine.
Sucks, but better than using Chrome full time.
I need this for Android pretty badly. I currently just don't set a default, and often use urlcheck in the middle to edit the URL if necessary, then pick my browser. I would love an app that automated this after the first use. I've submitted feedback to multiple apps that are halfway there, but none have seemed interested in getting the rest of the way there. UrlCheck is currently the closest, it has single buttons to remove tracking parameters and paths like landing pages, and I think it remembers the browser based on domain, but it doesn't have a list of changeable per-domain settings, won't open it automatically, and doesn't show a launcher-style grid (it uses a scrolling list that has to be opened manually). Google doesn't make things easier either, since apps can no longer be inserted as a chooser, and setting a chooser app as default breaks things.
For various functionality, there's also NeoLinker, UntrackMe, Intent Intercept, unalix, LinkSheet, and Open Link With. I believe Lynket browser, which uses the custom tab protocol, also has some basic rules-based choosing but it only works with two browsers and the rules are based on the app making the request.
It looks like LinkSheet added many of the settings I'm looking for at some point, so I'll be trying that out.
That's a useful app for people who use different browsers for different tasks -thanks!
Other Chromium-based browsers don’t work?
That would at least save you from stuff like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17942252.
I haven't tried anything but Chrome/Chromium (nightly dev). Brave is my dedicated porn browser I won't use it for anything else.
Your loss. Chromium is the shittiest Chromium-based browser, basically anything else is better than the original.
Like most browsers, Brave can be used with multiple user profiles in parallel.
Wtf
BAHAHAAHAHAHAH. Do you get bitcoins for watching the porn ads?
I use BigQuery studio often in Firefox and haven’t noticed anything being worse than Chrome. What problems do you see?
I recently had cause to sign in to the Google Cloud console (not BigQuery specifically) and found it unusable on Firefox. It pegged a core at 100% and consumed memory at a prodigious rate. Basic UI actions were painfully slow.
I killed the tab and tried it in Chromium where the UI was... not snappy, but in range for my expectations of a heavyweight frontend.
Yeah, I use Chromium for anything Google made, and FF for everything else. Google makes sure that their pages work sloooowly on Firefox (e.g. Google Earth). No such problems elsewhere.
I use it all the time on multiple platforms and it is a DOG on anything but Chrome/Chromium. We have 30+ datasets each with many tables/views/functions etc tho so that could be part of the issue.
Same thing will happen in the billing portal or really any experience but I notice it the most in BQ.
Yes; the movie where running genuine Microsoft Windows is damn near a requirement if you want to interact with Windows applications.
Using Firefox and whatever for the Google cloud is kinda like running Windos applications in Wine or ReactOS.
> kinda like running Windos applications in Wine
Sometimes works better than on the original Windows? I assume that's not what you meant though :-)
I could have meant that. Doesn't Firefox sometimes work better than Chrome?
Oh yes, but Google products are notoriously worse on Firefox, if one is to believe the numerous comments on HN on the topic (although I haven't tried myself recently so I can't be quoted on this), and that interpretation doesn't sit well with your comment.
But you know better than anyone's else what you meant :-)
It is the gaslighting that is so annoying and insulting. An entity of such power and reach resorting to manipulation is disconcerting.
Everyone will call them on it. Why not be straight with their intentions?
An advertising company optimizing their technology to better support their business while improving security.
Improving the security of their income stream :)
They had the market position and option to do that for years now. "Told you so" whenever a patterns matches, and ignoring the times when it does not instead of providing a good model that encompasses both, is a fairly lame way to reason about the world.
"They didn't immediately abuse their market power!"
Great. Very few companies do. What difference does it make?
We don't give bankrobbers credit for all the days they could've robbed a bank but didn't.
The position is always, Google's position is so strong they can do whatever they want even if it isn't beneficial to users, this confirms that. I'm not sure the "they could have abused this sooner" defense is a good one.
Not only not a good defense, but practically indecipherable. What scale of abuse couldn't be excused by this? I'm not sure I even understand what the notion of abuse means to a person who thinks it could be excused by such a logic.
It seems to completely lose track of the face value significance of any individual instance of abuse because it gets lost in the comparative equation to hypothetical worst harms.
It also confusingly treats restraint as though X amount of restraint can then be cashed in for a certain amount of harm, rather than something that's supposed to happen by default under good stewardship.
And it shifts the whole question to whether or not that position is being abused when I think the criticisms are more fundamental about the fact that they shouldn't be in the position to have or not have that leverage in the first place.
So that, long and short, would be my detox from the assumptions at play here.
The point is, that always looking for abuse is maybe not the right model to explain what is really going on.
I've never killed anyone, should I get your gratitude for it?
It's funny that this line of defense is sincerely attempted here, as it's so absurd that it's actually the punchline of an SMBC comic. And honestly, one of my favorite ones that I find genuinely very funny.
>Lawyer: Okay, let's say my client killed his wife. What about the people he didn't kill?! That's six billion people! Don't they matter? Don't they matter?!
>Caption: In an alternate universe, Jeffrey Dahmer has a thank you parade every year.
https://smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=299
People have come to accept dishonesty and sociopathy from corporations as normal and even acceptable unfortunately.
I view it as a symptom of the broader effort to villify the fourth estate and condition people to act(vote) on their emotions rather than a rational look at verifiable facts.
Nearly 20 years of attacks, from both the left and the right, across the anglosphere.
It goes back waaaaaaay further than 20 years.
The most recent case before this was nearly 40 years ago under Reagan, and he certainly wasn't the first president guilty of it.
This isn't a Trump thing.
The "Main Stream Media" rhetoric really started with the teaparty stuff, powered by the internet, and championed both the right (tea party in america, faragists in the UK) and left (corbynistas in the uk, AOC types I assume in the states)
Villifying normal people is more nefarious.
But who told you that there is a Fourth Estate? Was it the very “Fourth Estate”?
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>If you think improving privacy is a joke, go look at how easily extensions can steal your browsing history and steal your passwords. uBlock Origin is the good one, but for every good one there are malicious ad blockers that do far worse things.
Except removing support for webRequestBlocking in manifest v3 doesn't really improve security. Nearly every extension require the "access your data for all sites" permission. The infamous Honey extension works just fine with manifest v3, for instance.
It does. I just don't install any extension that requires access to my data on all sites.
That would also mean you avoid any extension that would have been able to (ab)use webRequestBlocking, so removing it wouldn't have increased security.
Ad blocking is a must. In a world without MV3, you choose between ad infested sites or extensions with have the potential to harm your privacy. Now you don't. It's a win for normal users, at the expense of power users for whom declarative request blocking does not suffice.
There are plenty of other reasons to hate Google. This isn't one of them. Sacrificing the "power" desired by couple thousand HN users in return for the safety of couple millions of normal users is the right thing to do. Of course HN users will disagree; let's just see how badly this post will be downvoted. Downvotes won't change my opinion.
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"Where there's a will, there's a way."
"Nobody could have possibly seen it coming that Google would abuse its market position to their own benefit..."
That's some fatalistic wording. How about:
Company that publishes a free product and business model relies on ads, stops distributing app that piggybacks on their free product while circumventing ads.
Also true. But it’s a charitable way of putting a fundamentally broken contract on the open web since it was invented: you are in control of your browser. If you want reading mode, large text, anti-fingerprinting, disable autoplaying video, heck even banning popups, the browser is your tool and does what you tell it to. If Google or any other company comes between you and your browser then one part of the open web is discarded. I think extensions are gonna get nerfed even more in the future, for whatever reason large commercial interests have.
Right. I think people were alert to these possibilities long before the actual stuff happened with Manifest V3.
And it shouldn't take waiting until specific examples happen to understand the incentives and the possibilities that could ripen at some future date.
And just to throw in my little side hobby horse on this conversation, it's what I find personally frustrating about conversations with people who think that Brave counts as an alternative.
Being attached at the hip to the Chromium project is a ground level commitment to a long-term vulnerability, and it means that similar circumstances could "ripen" at some future date as the family of Chromium browsers become dependent on an increasingly vast foundation of code and web standards. To me, the combination of that capability and the incentive should be enough to be treated as a complete argument which disqualifies Chromium derived browsers from counting as alternatives.
Sure. You are free to modify your browser.
But chrome is free to choose not to distribute that plugin. If you want you can download it elsewhere.
Yes that is how the law views it. That’s not necessarily a good thing. I agree that I should have rights because I’m a person. As the crazy radical I am, I don’t agree that companies ”are free to X”, because they shouldn’t have freedoms, only entitlements that can be regulated to serve the purpose of the citizens.
It was never free. The revenue streams are just hidden. It has always collected and sold huge amounts of data about every user.
And regardless, using their ownership of the browser to shut down competitors is the very definition of "anti-competitive" "monopolistic" behavior.
Right, and that's why ad and spying funded products should be illegal. They don't just distort but destroy markets. It's an extremely unfair business practice.
That people claim it's impossible for a browser to survive without Google's funding demonstrates how broken the market is by ad money: of course people would pay for something like a web browser if it were illegal to make money by selling your users. The web is obviously valuable to people.
>Right, and that's why ad and spying funded products should be illegal. They don't just distort but destroy markets. It's an extremely unfair business practice.
Call your senator and propose a bill, otherwise we'll keep doing what's legal.
To me it’s just another decision rooted in greed, to take away more Agency from the User Agent.
I hope Mozilla realizes (and still cares) that they have a huge opportunity here to be the power-browser where you can get awesome extensions, unlike the locked-down and hobbled Chromium ecosystem. I suspect they do realize this because they've been really leaning into extensions recently, but over the years I've worried that Mozilla's committment to Firefox isn't as serious as I would like.
Regardless, I'd love to see this give FF a big bounce in the stats. Something to reinforce that there are people out here that really want manifest v2, badly enough to switch!
> I hope Mozilla realizes (and still cares) that they have a huge opportunity here to be the power-browser where you can get awesome extensions,
The problem is that Mozilla's customers are not Firefox's users. Mozilla's customer is Google. They pay Mozilla to exist and they are paying Mozilla to intentionally drive Firefox into the ground.
I think it's pretty clear that the TOS change basically coincided with the removal of manifest v2 change in chrome.
My understanding is Mozilla contracted its footprint substantially to remain sustainable in a future without Google's monetary contribution.
https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/10/mozillas-ceo-doubles-down-o...
Then they wouldn't be throwing money into open firepits on trash like a VPN service or how to comply with Google's advertising decisions.
Then they would let people contribute money to the browser (instead of to Mozilla Foundation which goes to enabling aforementioned trash fires) and to the salary of a multi-million dollar CEO after laying off developer staff and hiring more C-suite assistants.
Mozilla is a bad organization in every sense, a bad steward of Firefox, and the best thing that could happen is they do have their funding cut, they go out of business forever, and Firefox finds a good home chosen by the community.
>Then they wouldn't be throwing money into open firepits on trash like a VPN service
It's pants-on-head level of crazy talk to suggest that the VPN service is compromising Mozilla's finances.
It's a re-wrapped Mullvad VPN that probably was not expensive to roll out (it being inexpensive to deploy is probably precisely the reason they moved forward with it). It's like people are just workshopping arguments where they randomly claim these things are expensive without any substantiation whatsoever.
Mozilla is sitting on 1.2 billion in assets and investments. They're not underwater. They are indeed in a position where they need to diversify revenue, but the idea that the side bets have created running deficits is a narrative completely manufactured in comment sections.
This kind of thinking appears to be prevalent. "Firefox does one specific thing which I construe as evil. Therefore I use the competitor which also does this thing, plus dozens of others which are anti-competitive and generally destructive to the ecosystem."
"The coleslaw in the Jedi salad bar has raisins. Therefore I joined the Sith. Their coleslaw also has raisins."
You misunderstand. The vast majority of people who complain about Mozilla on HN are Firefox users. We're the ones with the highest level of investment in the idea of an open web, so we're the ones who've stuck it out until Firefox's market share is all but gone. But because we care so much, you'll also frequently find us on here complaining that Mozilla is drunk driving their company and does not seem to realize that the only thing they do that actually matters is maintain the one independent browser engine.
Nice speech, but the argument about VPN costs is just as spurious as it was a few comments ago. Why has this passionate concern drifted into nodding along to such ridiculous arguments?
I too am I Firefox user, I too am invested and concerned with, say, adtech. Somehow I've managed to avoid saying crazy things about VPNs.
= = =
Edit: replying here because it won't let me add a new comment. I'm not making the positive claim in the VPN argument. It's puzzling why "based on no information" would cut in favor of an argument asserting VPN has unprecedented costs without substantiation but not against it.
Also, as I've already pointed out and the other commenter has (as well as commenters in previous threads whenever this comes up), what we know of ordinary costs to run VPNs would not imply any expense on the order of magnitude necessary to make the argument work. Which is a legitimate challenge to speculation that would presume otherwise without substantiation.
And once again I have to emphasize that this is completely detached from any cause and effect argument about what missing browser feature would have otherwise been developed but for the resources spent on a VPN. The idea that there's a legitimate open question about whether a re-wrapped VPN is costing millions or tens of millions in losses is not the reasonable argument you seem to think it is. And it's not because reasons, like the ones mentioned here.
= = =
Edit 2: This was originally about whether the VPNs were a cost sink on the order of millions or tens of millions of dollars. But now it seems to have changed to whether the VPN generates enough revenue that it's a positive way to contribute. Not sure when that happened.
Your VPN argument is based on, as far as I can tell, no information. Do you have numbers for what percentage of the VPN subscription goes to Mozilla? If not, you have no reason to believe that it's an effective way to contribute to Firefox dev.
I want a way to contribute to Firefox, not a VPN, and if 90% of the subscription goes to Mullvad that's a waste of money.
The one thing that is both expensive to maintain and that its users don’t pay a dime to use
Mozilla hasn't tried to get users to pay for or donate to Firefox. They can't complain users don't pay for it when they haven't once asked them to.
The VPN service is probably the most sensible thing they could lean into. It's basically all margin and it works nicely with the privacy messaging.
> It's basically all margin
Is it? Do you have a citation for this? From what I understand it's a white labeled Mullvad VPN, and I haven't been able to find numbers for what percentage of the revenue is taken by Mozilla and what percentage goes to Mullvad.
I don't know any details of the revenue split, but I'm talking about the act of running a VPN service itself as being low overhead compared to the costs. Paying mullvad obviously reduces the margins, but it doesn't have the kinds of organizational overhead that would come with say, running an advertising company on the side like Mozilla now does.
Previously the argument was that the VPN was an example of "throwing money into open firepits", but now we're talking about the extent to which it generates revenue.
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Isn't Mozilla's VPN just a thin UI over Mullvad's servers? I don't think it costs them much and probably brings in some decent revenue.
Do you have a source for this? I'm a big fan of Mullvad and trust their service more than any. I wouldn't mind supporting Mozilla's independence from Google while getting the same VPN service I'm currently getting
Hopefully Mozilla's MDN Plus offering can grow to bring them a big source of revenue. MDN is a treasure for any web developer and, should Mozilla go under, this public service would be sorely missed for the open web.
The privacy notice for Mozilla VPN [1] briefly mentions their partnership with Mullvad.
[1]: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/subscription-services/
The main problem with mozvpn is that they have a mozilla:mulvad account mapping. I'm unclear if my name goes to mulvad, but it does to mozilla.
Yes with mulvad you can pay anonymously via cash or bitcoin or whatever, but assuming you aren't doing that, using mozvpn seems potentially safer than mulvad - as you'd have to compromise both mulvad and mozilla to link my name/credit card with the vpn used.
I imagine their VPN service is financially viable if they've still stuck with it this long.
Aside from that, they've just about cut all other initiatives aside from "Firefox and AI". The latter gives me pause, but hopefully they really are more focused moving forward.
I think Mozilla has done alright, but I agree the folks is in charge of their business direction and especially PR are abysmal. Personally, I wish a company like Proton was at the helm.
> Then they would let people contribute money to the browser
People keep saying things like this, but the truth is that direct contributions to any ad-supported system contribute more like 1%-10% (at best) of their income.
You are not the majority you think you are.
It does not have to be the majority. It would suffice to produce enough funds to continue developing Firefox, with full-time engineers, infrastructure, etc.
The whole Mozilla foundation budget oscillated around $100-120M/y for last few years. Let's assume that half of it was dedicated to Firefox; e.g. $60M/y. It would take 500k users paying $120/y (aka $10/mo) to support their favorite browser. The current audience of Firefox is approx. 170M users; it would take about 0.3 percent of the audience to be paying users; 0.6% if you lower the rate to $5/mo.
This is how any freemium works.
Even more funnily, someone with a good reputation could just start an organization to accept the payments and direct them to Mozilla developers, both Mozilla employees and significant open-source contributors. Eventually the developers might stop needing the paycheck from Mozilla, and thus from Google.
> someone with a good reputation could just start an organization to accept the payments and direct them to Mozilla developers, both Mozilla employees and significant open-source contributors
I had the same thought. I dont think such an org would be able to pull in nearly the same amount of money as Mozilla does, but even a few million dollars a year would fund a lot of development work.
> The whole Mozilla foundation budget oscillated around $100-120M/y for last few years.
Firefox is under corporation, not foundation. Mozilla Corporation expenses are $400M+, not $100M.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#Finances
(I don't enough knowledge about freemium economics to figure out if the stated numbers would work out or not)
Thank you for the correction!
If we adjust to these numbers, we need to quadruple the number of paying users, up to some 1.2% of the total user base. Let's add a safety margin, and bump it to 2%.
Still does not look impossible to attain.
Spotify makes over 80% of revenue off of paid subscribers, even though over 60% of users are on the free, ad-supported subscription.
Now that's not some optional donation scheme, there are real tangible benefits to being a paid subscriber, so idk how that could fit into something like Firefox.
Is Mozilla that rich that it can ignore a 10% bump in income?
> they go out of business forever, and Firefox finds a good home chosen by the community.
who is going to support, maintain and develop Firefox in your scenario ?
Yup. Firefox Relay, their own VPN, MDN Plus, and many more.
The funny thing is that the same people on here that crow on about Mozilla needing to "just focus on Firefox" are the same ones who complains about its reliance on Google for income.
Based on their interop performances Mozilla seems to be doing the best they can to do both. Firefox interop has improved significantly in the past 4 years (surprisingly, so has Safari's) and they've also rolled out more new Mozilla offerings that could some day replace Google revenue
> The funny thing is that the same people on here that crow on about Mozilla needing to "just focus on Firefox" are the same ones who complains about its reliance on Google for income.
There's no inherent contradiction here. Mozilla still doesn't give me a way to donate to them to fund Firefox. They haven't even tried. I want to fund Firefox development, desperately, but they deliberately structured their organization to make that impossible without paying for some other random project that has its own overhead.
I want Mozilla to offer a Firefox+ subscription or donation or something, anything. Let me give you my money! Just give me a way to be confident that you'll take it as a signal to fund Firefox and not as a signal that what your customers really want is VPNs.
Taking your money creates a firmer expectation from them to stick to their main selling proposition of privacy which would make it more difficult for them to go after revenue streams that are more lucrative but less privacy-focused.
Yes, that's the only conclusion I've been able to come to. The recent ToS changes make that even more clear.
The only revenue stream they should be pursuing is interest on the endowment they built from the Google payouts. Anything else makes them dependent on someone else and corrupts the mission.
To little, too late. They underwent massive scope creep, throwing money at anything and everything, while neglecting the core task of maintaining a standards-compliant, user-friendly/non-hostile, privacy-respecting browser ... resulting in such incidents as Mr. Robot ad tie-in and the global add-on outage.
Oh ... and I still can't customize my controls fully. (Add-ons only take effect after a page load.)
Had they actually kept their scope small and focused, they could have put the difference into an endowment that would let them give the middle finger to the Chromes of the world forever. Yet here we are.
> They pay Mozilla to exist and they are paying Mozilla to intentionally drive Firefox into the ground.
I am trying to understand how this works? If they pay Mozilla to exist, yet their intention is to destroy their competitor, why even pay for them to begin with?
> They pay Mozilla to exist
Do they? I thought Google significantly reduced their payments to Mozilla a few years back, which started Mozilla current random-walk.
Edit: As of 2023, they were as high as ever at 85% of Mozilla's finances coming from Google [1] . However the DoJ antitrust case against Google targets Google's payments to various entities (Mozilla, Apple) to make themselves the default search engine, thus threatening Mozilla's income. I did not immediately find sources for Mozilla's 2024 finances, but I can imagine they see the existential threat.
> and they are paying Mozilla to intentionally drive Firefox into the ground.
That's just conspiracy-thinking.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#Finances
> They pay Mozilla to exist and they are paying Mozilla to intentionally drive Firefox into the ground.
Come on, that is just crazy talk. I get that Mozilla has made some boneheaded decisions but this is baseless conjecture.
Part of what the DOJ is seeking against Google would severely impact Mozilla financially however, as they want to ban them from paying to be the default search engine.
Indeed. Kagi proves users are willing to pay for search (me included, recently).
Someone in an infosec podcast recently summed up the whole situation far better than I've been able to:
The vast majority of people won't pay for privacy.
Some people will pay for search. Some people will pay for content. It's really not many, though. Can you imagine if effectively everything on the internet was paywalled? I sure as hell don't know what the solution is, but we wouldn't've gotten to this spot right now, with all of the good and the bad of the internet, if the vast majority of sites and services on the internet charged for use.
(My best guess is that we can have the good that we have now with ads that aren't individually targeted. I literally have no guesses other than that.)
I appreciate your thoughts.
I have loved Kagi's "small web" where I find interesting items, almost like stumbleupon. It reminded me that not every site on the internet is optimizing for eyeballs.
>>The vast majority of people won't pay for privacy.
Depending on your threat model, paying (e.g. with credit card) destroys privacy.
At the moment it has only proven that 0.00000000001% of users are willing to pay for search.
That's enough to be (apparently) profitable. It doesn't matter if most people don't pay for search as long as enough people do that paid search can exist.
https://blog.kagi.com/what-is-next-for-kagi
Agreed. But let's not say that it's evidence that "people" in the aggregate are willing to pay for web search.
It's more like 0.005%-0.02% of queries and like 0.001% of users depending on what statistics for Google you go by, but of course still very insignificant.
Ah yes, the mystical 0.0073 units of people paying for search, assuming every person searches.
Over a year ago, Kagi hit 20k paying members. This puts monthly ARR between $200k and $500k ($10 to $25/head), roughly. That's 0.000273% of all people -- quite a jump!
Which is why Mozilla are getting desperate to diversify their revenue.
Mozilla diversifies by increasing the CEO's salary for nothing.
Wiki: In 2020, after returning to the position of CEO, Baker's salary was more than $3 million. In 2021, her salary rose again to more than $5 million, and again to nearly $7 million in 2022.
The new CEO brings computing for AI money bleed that almost no one wants.
We know this because of Mozilla's commitment to transparency. These figures come from their annual reports
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2024/
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2023/
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2022/
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2021/
etc
I'm not defending it at all, but I think it's worth pointing out this pay rate is below the rate most CEOs of tech companies of this size are making. I don't really know what the solution here is but I imagine any CEO they replace her with would also seek a high salary. I'd love for them to become a worker-owned cooperative like Igalia but I really don't see that happening any time soon
I don't agree with Mozilla paying that huge CEO salary, but…
Do you know Firefox's handy new offline translation feature? That's AI a well. And Firefox is the only browser that doesn't leak your web page when translating it.
There are plenty of other uses for AI, such as describing images without alt-text for the blind, or summarization. I, for one, want AI in my browser, you can't really say that “nobody wants it”, when many people clearly do.
Really? Fire the Rust Servo team and double the CEO's salary in the same year? Almost the same money.
I said I don't agree with them wasting that much money on the CEO, maybe I wasn't clear (perhaps it's due to English not being my first language).
You were clear. Mailtemi is just talking past the point of your comment, rather than engage with it.
What's the news on them getting into AI?
Firefox translate uses an on device language model to do webpage translations.
There's also an experimental chatbot integration in Firefox. It seems to be opt in at least for now.
If only their goal would be to provide an excellent privacy browser, instead of getting revenue :)
All they need is to accept donations that go strictly to the browser and not to the latest blockchain/AI hysteria.
Name a project whose development costs as much as Firefox and that survives from donations.
Many people want AI in their browser. And what does Firefox have to do with crypto?
Thunderbird is doing pretty good. They actually have a surplus in donations they have to get rid of. Yet Mozilla abandoned it and refuses still to accept donation for Firefox.
Thunderbird is built on Firefox. Thunderbird is not nearly as big as Firefox is.
> Name a project whose development costs as much as Firefox and that survives from donations.
Wikipedia.
I think it absolutely would be great if a Wikipedia-like model were viable, but Wikipedia is like the extreme high watermark for that, and they get five billion visits a month, which I think is an order of magnitude higher than what Firefox has access to. Ramping up to Wikipedia scale levels of donations would be a serious project and a significant gamble.
Wikipedia has also been around as long as the internet itself and its current fundraising drives are the culmination of decades of momentum and cultivating a perception of the compact that exists between them and their users.
Also, I believe that even in the best of times Wikipedia is raising about half as much as it costs to run Firefox.
There's probably important caveats that relate to comparing software development projects with resources and content, because I think the most successful donation-driven examples are Wikipedia, NPR, and The Guardian. And what they seem to have in common is generating content to be consumed.
In terms of software development projects, to me the most natural analogy is something like VLC, which does indeed rely on donations and is orders of magnitudes smaller. Or maybe the Tor project which does rely on donations, but I think they're at the order of like 10 million or so, which is certainly promising, but not a like for like substitution for the revenue they get from Google.
Similar to Mozilla & Firefox, there isn't an exact breakdown for Wikimedia expenditures to know the costs associated with Wikipedia. For Firefox, it's often stated its costs are ~200m but those are all expenses Mozilla categorizes under software development. For Wikimedia, within their operation expenses, ~3m were in hosting and ~84m in salaries (related to programs). The salaries are stated to be for multiple initiatives, among which platform development is mentioned*.
*Although arguably the most important part of Wikipedia, and their other collaborative projects, are the volunteers maintaining and contributing to it, rather the developers.
Wikimedia does not raise $200 million per year.
You're right. They only raise $180 million a year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fundraising_statisti...
Still feels like it aught to be enough to make a browser.
Linux?
Linux is massively funded by companies like IBM and Red Hat.
The Linux Foundation receives over $15m in corporate funding.
Note that $15 million is nowhere near enough to pay the number of employees who work on Firefox. As a for-profit (unlike the foundation), Mozilla the corporation has to pay folks market rates, and if you're paying an employee in the US, you're paying that same amount on top as taxes, insurance, benefits, etc. etc. so $15 million gets you a few dozen people at most. Mozilla employs a few hundred. So you'll have to add a zero to that number before it's in the same ballpark (e.g. wikipedia would be a good example).
The Linux Foundation basically exists to pay Linus. Now add the billions companies like Red Hat pay their employees to work on Linux dev.
> And what does Firefox have to do with crypto?
Firefox is all AI this year, but they've been all blockchain when that was in fashion.
Is the AI coming at a prohibitive cost? I'm not sure I understand what is going to come of those bets, and I'm not a fan of AI everything so I hope it's only used in measured ways that are beneficial, but I certainly would rather them continue innovating.
I don't think they did a whole lot with blockchain beyond some very preliminary dabbling in decentralized web stuff which if it could have gained traction I absolutely would have supported but it certainly doesn't seem like it was a significant drag on developer resources or finances so far as I could tell.
And wouldn't that have to be the argument for any of this to matter?
It depends if having the organization chasing the latest fad as it changes yearly inspires you trust or the opposite...
So you made this claim about the blockchain and I did a little bit of Googling to learn more. And so far as I can tell they barely did anything beyond some like papers and very preliminary demo implementations of stuff like IPFS and dabbling with Web3.
Those were very preliminary ventures and not anything that commanded substantial developer resources, so I don't know what you're talking about. And look. I obviously disagree with people who claim that side bets compromised Mozilla, but the arguments sort into different tiers with some being understandable (issues with adtech, CEO pay), some in the middle (the non profit Mozilla Foundation is bloated!), some that are one step up from utter nonsense because they're at least expressed in coherent sentences but have little to no supporting evidence or theory of cause and effect (e.g. "Mozilla lost all its market share due to their side bets being prohibitively expensive").
But we're at a point where apparently these arguments have been seen and repeated so many times that there's a new class of commenters who have been making the lowest effort versions of these arguments that I've yet seen, and are the least interested in anything like evidence or logic or responsiveness to questions or anything that I would associate with coherent thought. Which is where I would put the blockchain argument.
> Those were very preliminary ventures and not anything that commanded substantial developer resources, so I don't know what you're talking about.
Are you sure they intended them to be preliminary? Maybe they backed off when they saw their users' opinion about Web 3-4-5 or whatever number the blockchain "evangelists" picked out.
In 3-5 years if Firefox will still be around are you going to tell me their "AI" initiative was just preliminary too?
What I'm talking about is trust again. Easily lost, hard to gain back. As I said elsewhere, I want a guarantee that my money is only spent on the actual browser before I donate.
You're free to donate for "AI" of course.
Guess you just completely tuned out from everything I said about the relative quality of different Mozilla arguments. Let's try pictures.
>Lawyer: Diiiid... you kill her?!
>Judge: For the last time no!
>Caption: The defense was going poorly.
https://smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=210
Cut from the lawyer to you, saying "Are you sure they intended them to be preliminary?" Same thing.
> everything I said about the relative quality of different Mozilla arguments
You see "they're trying this promising new technology" i see "they're running around like a headless chicken, trampling the poor browser's body with their boots in the process".
I'm not going to look for mitigating circumstances until I see a pattern of news that the Mozilla org is at least admitting to working on the browser and not whatever is evangelized this week.
> they've been all blockchain when that was in fashion
They've never been “all blockchain”, what are you talking about?
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This to me is the ultimate sign that Mozilla has zero values or principles.
They've long advocated that Big Tech is a problem, but as soon as somebody tries to actually address it and this coincidentally impacting Mozilla, they abandon any and all principles.
That would be a good thing. If Firefox is funded by donations, rather than by Google, it ensures there is no enshittification in the future. And yes, donations can fund a big project, as evidenced by Thunderbird and Ladybird.
Nobody uses Ladybird, at this point it's vaporware. And Thunderbird is still based on Firefox.
The development of Firefox costs around $200 million per year. That's more than what Wikimedia can get from donations, and Wikipedia is a website that everyone uses. And you want to rely on donations from people that ad-block YouTube instead of paying for Premium.
And let's say that it manages to bring those costs down to $100 million per year or less and manages to get it from donations (when pigs will fly) … it still has to compete with a Chrome whose estimated cost goes over $1 billion per year.
If it costs $200 million a year to develop Firefox, then their management team is guilty of gross incompetence.
I am betting this is really paying for the crappy side projects and HUGE pay for the Mozilla Foundation people (just like all the BS spending the Wikimedia foundation does) and has nothing to do with Firefox itself.
Maintaining a fully compliant, secure, cross-platform web browser that competes with the biggest companies on earth absolutely is going to have costs like that.
I think Mozilla Foundation receives something like 5 to 10%. I'm not against the argument that foundations can be bloated and inefficient, but at this point, this anti Mozilla narrative is completely out of control and almost purely speculation driven.
They spent $35 million in 2022 to establish a venture capital fund... they are definitely using a lot more than 10% for BS not related to developing Firefox.
It would have been 5.9% of that year's annual revenue in 2022. It's not even from their annual revenue streams to begin with, it was a one time pull from their $1.2 billion (at the time) of total assets which includes a big pile of investments. Those assets actually grew by more in one year than the entire than the amount put into the VC fund. Also I thought we wanted them to be making side bets to position them for success in the long term?
There's also no cause and effect connection between the VC fund and their market share. It didn't siphon resources away from developers, and there's no such thing as a missing browser feature that would have restored all the market share had they simply not invested in a VC fund.
The 5-10% figure was in reference to 2021 but I think I was overstating that and the Mozilla Foundation actually gets something like 2% annually.
More charitably, it's driven by frustration more than speculation. Browsers are old technology, and some people think that maybe hurling huge amounts of money at stuff like this is unreasonable because projects can/should be "finished" at some point. Forever-development is very often actively harmful, and if it's actually necessary then it might be hiding problems in the wider ecosystem.
It's good that we have alternatives to chrome, but on the other hand the alternatives are not winning, and they prevent any chance of regulation (or having a reasonable discussion about whether chrome sucks, as we see here). There's a strong argument that mozilla IS google's antitrust shield.
Also can we just take a minute to seriously try to imagine the leader of the "Makefile foundation" receiving $2.4M in compensation, and generally burning a lot more money on dead-end "innovations" and then rebranding as "OpenSource.. And Advertising". Make is 20 years older than Mozilla, but does it look like the browser project will be finished or moving in a great direction any time soon while there's big opportunities for grift and graft?
Signed, a grateful but nevertheless annoyed and skeptical firefox user
> Also can we just take a minute to seriously try to imagine the leader of the "Makefile foundation" receiving $2.4M in compensation, and generally burning a lot more money on dead-end "innovations" and then rebranding as "OpenSource.. And Advertising". Make is 20 years older than Mozilla, but does it look like the browser project will be finished or moving in a great direction any time soon while there's big opportunities for grift and graft?
Make is pretty slow which is why `ninja`, funnily enough, was invented to speed up Google Chrome build times.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninja_(build_system)
I’m the cto of the fork foundation where we provide important alternatives to spoons and work hard to serve our community with the kind of necessary innovations that putting modern food into that hole in your face requires.
If you think about it spending a few billion a year on R+D is the least you could expect when modern food is changing at such a rapid pace! And aren’t you glad the whole world isn’t spoons? I decline to discuss personal compensation because I don’t see how that’s relevant to the issues here!
I read way to far into that before realizing it was sarcasm.
I think it's unfair to call Ladybird vaporware this early. There's nothing suspicious about their development schedule for the scope of the thing they're trying to build.
I agree I don't think it should be in the alternative browser discussion until they do produce something, however.
And also, I think there's a positive to say about Lady Bird here, which is that in the event they succeed, that's as much a narrative about an extraordinarily talented and committed developer, And if they're able to put forward a credible browser, it will be a soaring achievement for them. Not necessarily something I would expect as a kind of default status quo expectation.
I think if you get these alternative from the ground up browsers, you get extremely limited things like Net Surf, noble efforts that I respect, but not going against the billions of dollars Google can throw into modern browser development.
I don't block ads on YouTube because I can't afford Premium.
You probably block ads on YouTube to get stuff for free. I never said that you can't afford it.
(I'm using the royal you here, obviously, I don't know you)
People rarely pay when there isn't scarcity. Wikimedia can pull it off because it has billions of unique visitors per month.
What’s your point? I’m past the point of caring about freeloading on/off Google of all companies.
I might care about the lesser cut that creators get. But not YouTube.
I do, but I would still block it if I could.
> And you want to rely on donations from people that ad-block YouTube instead of paying for Premium.
Does Google guarantee it won't spy on me if i pay for Premium?
... no, didn't think so.
Besides not everyone uses youtube to the point where paying for it is worth it.
> The development of Firefox costs around $200 million per year.
Does it? Or that's what the mozilla organization wastes on harebrained initiatives overall?
> it still has to compete with a Chrome whose estimated cost goes over $1 billion per year.
But that's to add features that benefit Google not the Chrome users.
Plus Google has money from their ad quasi monopoly so they can afford to be wasteful.
YouTube is a 1st party service for Google, so you can't ad-block their tracking. And you aren't ad-blocking YouTube due to the spying, so don't be disingenuous.
Yes, it really costs that much.
Given Chrome's vast market share, I'm pretty sure its users like it. And you know what? Most users won't mind switching to uBlock Origin Lite, and the elephant in the room is that “manifest v3” also increases security, with Chrome being indeed the most secure browser.
> And you aren't ad-blocking YouTube due to the spying, so don't be disingenuous.
I don't watch YouTube. If all those influencers want to reach me, they should give me a written summary, I don't have time to listen to talking heads for hours.
However, if I ever follow an youtube link, it will be ad blocked because i run firefox with uBlock Origin, for as long as uBlock Origin blocks youtube ads by default.
>Does it? Or that's what the mozilla organization wastes on harebrained initiatives overall?
Yes! They published their 990, and it's mostly software development, but also stuff like legal and compliance and marketing. I don't have the numbers off the top of my head, but last time I checked, if you really want to make this argument, I think it relates to the CEO pay and the Mozilla Foundation and its advocacy, which are something around the, you know, taken together something like 55 million or so. You can make the argument that administration and operations as well as marketing and legal and compliance are bloated in some sense, but then you'd still have to make the case that there was a viable path to reinvesting that into development in a way that would change the tide when it comes to market share. But I think that is a confused vision of how market share works because the real drivers are Google's dominant position in search and on Android in the ability to push Chrome on Chromebooks.
Back when these narratives about Mosio's mismanagement started, I just assumed that they were highly informed people who knew what they were talking about. And maybe they really were originally, but it seems to have socialized a new generation of commenters into just randomly speculating about things that completely fall apart upon closer examination.
> Does it? Or that's what the mozilla organization wastes on harebrained initiatives overall?
Mozilla Foundation spent 260 million on software development in 2023. https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2024/mozilla-fdn-202...
That may include some software development on non-firefox products though.
Mozilla thus far have been very reluctant to take donations to Firefox specifically. AFAIK you can still only donate to the Foundation, not the Corp, which means that most if not all of the cash will get spent on random non-Firefox-related things that you probably couldn't care less about.
I mostly agree, but I am slightly worried that it would lead to slower progress in Firefox. As it stands, Google's funding of Firefox is enough to hire a bunch of engineers to make Firefox a pretty competitive browser.
I don't see how donations ensures that there is no enshittification.
I hope Mozilla realizes (and still cares) that they have a huge opportunity here to be the power-browser where you can get awesome extensions
Don't worry, they won't. They have more important endeavors like funding some new bullshit virtue signalling campaign and paying huge CEO bonuses.
It's like a never-ending horde of zombies that comes in and makes this cheap shot over and over. My understanding is the CEO makes slightly more than 1% of their revenues. And it's actually low compared to the typical tech CEO.
But what's the story of cause and effect here such that if they'd invested 1% of their revenue differently, they would jump from 3% market share back to 30% or wherever they were previously? Once you ask these questions out loud, it's clear that people aren't thinking through the steps of the argument.
It's weird to me how this salary is being normalized. A "typical tech CEO" is incompatible with the mission of Mozilla.
Mozilla is by any estimation executing a mission within the tech industry space so I'm not sure what you are talking about.
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My problem with extensions is it's another development team to trust and monitor. I need to know if the extension has been sold, taken over by a new lead, etc.
Yep while this manifest v3 ugly thing is putting me on the brink of jumping ship (I compromise by having two browsers), as for your concern I found that Chrome is going to allow blacklisting extensions for sites, so now I can turn them off for the few sites that I really worry to grant extension read access.
chrome://flags, "Extensions Menu Access Control" flag. https://developer.chrome.com/blog/new-extensions-menu-testin...
If you are fine with two browsers, maybe you could instead look into separate Firefox profiles with different sets of extensions. I have added "-p" to my Firefox shortcut so it always starts with the profile picker thing.
Yeah that's definitely fair, I have the same concern. Currently I've reduced my extensions to just a few that I either trust (like gorhill's) or that I wrote myself. But I think it would be huge if Mozilla built out the tooling needed to keep a better monitor on them. It's an extremely hard problem to be sure though.
They already did? The have a list pf extension that are monitored by them as well authoring a few ones
Luckily there's an extension for that: [Under New Management | Chrome Web Store](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/under-new-managemen...)
After the Great Suspender debacle, I feel the same. I try to limit plugins/extensions to as many minimal use cases as possible.
This is why I prefer Safari's content blockers. As far as I understand, there is no risk of content blockers sending out information.
Can you install your own personal extensions without getting permission from Mozilla yet? Or are they still banning that? Because that change drove me away from Firefox.
You mean inatalling from local files? This isn't ever going away, we have to test what we develop somehow
It already went away, you need a special Firefox version to do that (that's the somehow part)
This is just flat out wrong. I am on regular Firefox and can install extensions from files.
See: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/find-and-install-add-on... and look under "How do I find and install add-ons?" > "For Advanced User"
Nope
> You can also install a signed add-on from a file
This means that unlike Chrome Firefox doesn't support the simple case of downloading an extension repo, tweaking a few things, and loading it
Firefox has some weird slowness with DNS that I have troubleshot to death. I still use it for almost everything, but sometimes I'll have an entire day of 30s page loading times.
Apologies if this is elementary, but have you tried turning off DoH?
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/dns-over-https#w_off
I put this setting in ages ago on my FF profile and haven't seen DNS lag.
My biggest DNS lag was before I used PiHole and was relying on my router, which upstream to 8.8.8.8. I've just assumed that little thing was overloaded or that Comcast was just having a "hiccup".
I see glacial DNS resolution regularly when hitting the AWS authorization page with DoH disabled on my company's VPN. Resolves instantly in Chrome.
This is almost certainly a fragmentation issue caused by lower MTU and broken path MTU on the VPN. Drop the system to 1280 to troubleshoot, if things work immediately there's the culprit, raise it up til it doesn't or don't, I keep my VPN's at 1280.
EDIT: I do not know why its an issue with firefox and not chrome, it's likely QUIC fucking up since it cant fragment and needs to fall back to TCP, chrome is probably error handling this better... dropping the MTU that low will make the fallback explicit: https://blog.apnic.net/2019/03/04/a-quick-look-at-quic/
EDIT2: Could also try disabling QUIC, instructions here: https://developers.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-one/policies/ga...
Same here. Tends to be pretty inconsistent. DNS-over-HTTP(s) definitely disabled. 30s is a lot more than I've experienced, but there are times where it clearly struggles to look things up.
Disable DNS over HTTPS I guess.
I wonder how much time not experiencing advertising on the internet saves?
Whenever someone says how fast Chrome is I think about this.
It would be enough if Apple realized the same thing. They're in a position to have the best browser, and coast along ignoring the opportunity.
Unfortunately this would only be helpful to Apple customers, which itself comes with significant downsides IMHO. I'd much prefer a cross-platform solution
If this doesn't give FF a noticeable bounce, FF really is a lost cause.
FF is supporting V2 and V3 on purpose, so they are doing what you want
Google will just slip in a few more “improvements” to Gmeet, Gmail and YouTube that happen to not work or perform very poorly on Firefox.
Fortunately, at least so far, uBlock Origin Lite works perfectly fine on Chrome.
I know people have made a lot of arguments as to why it might not be as good in theory, or why things might change in the future. But so far, ever since I was forced to switch, I have seen exactly zero difference. Lists are updated often enough that I haven't seen anything get through. Adblocking works on YouTube. If anything, pages seem to load even a little faster. I've had no complaints.
If you have fast internet you will probably not really notice the difference
The difference between v2 and v3 is that v3 will no longer allow uBlock to modify network calls. Previously one of the big savings of a adblocker is they can stop the calls from being made AT ALL. That means less tracking AND less of your internet bandwidth being used
Both v2 and v3 can block the actual elements from your screen so you will probably still not see most of the ads. But you will still be able to be tracked and your data will still be used in the background
That's wrong.
V3 doesn't allow network calls to be modified, for privacy reasons. It still allows them to be blocked, which is how the adblocking works in the first place.
Contrary to what you say, v3 does block the tracking in the ad request as well as the bandwidth.
https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/reference/api/d...
It only allows them to be blocked with static rulesets. And these rulesets have a maximum size of 50. There's no way this is large enough to cover all your websites. It's also trivial for an anti-adblock script to try a few different urls until it finds one that isn't in your static ruleset
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...
The maximum number of rule sets is 50, not rules, as your own link clearly and unambiguously states.
The actual minimum (not maximum) number of supported rules is 30,000:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...
In reality, Chrome supports over 10x that. And UBOL doesn't even use/need the minimum, sticking to around 17,000.
So that's plenty to cover all your websites. Which is why UBOL works perfectly fine in practice.
330k. https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/Frequently-as...
I'm not well versed into adblocking, but shouldn't the extension also get access to the content of the request as well, to be able to either improve it's blocking accuracy (e.g. detect if the whitelisted content matches blocked content patterns) or decide to hide a resource after it was fetched ?
it's easy to see how people might say v3 is an adtech conspiracy. Ads are always served to the user now, expect a noticeable revenue increase by almost every adtech company.
"Conspiracy"? There's only one dominant player, you don't need a conspiracy for that. Just Google abusing its massive power.
I saw significant difference using the Lite version, enough that I switched to Firefox with Origin instead. I expected it to be good enough and was surprised to see the difference.
Same. I use the element picker tool all the time to rid the web of crap I don't care about. Example:
On Android you can even do this on your phone in Firefox. The UI is a bit tricky on such a small device, but it's so worth it. I went so far as to uninstall Chrome (well, disable it) on my Android.Does "Click to Remove Element" not work for you?
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/click-to-remove-ele...
For whatever reason, the UBOL creator chose not to include zapper/picker in order to make it as "lite" as possible. It wasn't a Manifest v3 thing, as they've explained.
I have no problem with using a separate extension for zapping.
I was not aware of this extension, thanks for pointing it out.
It's also great to not give basically unlimited permissions to an extension.
I think people should be able to do whatever they want on their own machine. If the setting is there, then let me use it for whatever extension I see fit. Sure, make it harder to do so, but don't treat users like children. I can't even screenshot banking apps on my own damn Android phone now.
It's not about you being able to do whatever you want on your machine. It's extension authors being able to. Malicious Chrome extensions are a huge problem.
On the off chance that Google is truly benevolent and was just worried about users' security, then they could have easily hidden the required network-reading functionality behind a flag or "developer mode", or only allowed it for a small set of manually-audited extensions like uBlock Origin.
The fact that they provided absolutely none of these alternatives isn't a coincidence. Google is a for-profit company with 300+ billion of annual revenue, a giant chunk of which comes from their advertisement services. It's a blatant conflict of interest and there's no good reason to believe that they're acting in good faith here.
> then they could have easily hidden the required network-reading functionality behind a flag or "developer mode"
For all intents and purposes, that's basically equivalent to deleting uBlock Origin for 99.9% of the 29M users it currently has.
> only allowed it for a small set of manually-audited extensions like uBlock Origin
That would most definitely lead to accusation of favoritism. That would be just as annoying of a pipeline to maintain.
> The fact that they provided absolutely none of these alternatives isn't a coincidence
They delayed the release 3 times, it was first announced in 2020. The whole time, they were taking feedback and making changes. They made a ton of changes that made MV3 adblockers possible.
If they really were concerned about user security, they'd do a better job blocking scammy & misleading ads instead. uBO basically _saves_ users from installing dubious Chrome extensions and other malware only because they show up as ads or other annoyances.
Don't they have a vetting process for extensions? Even if they don't, you, the (power)user should be able to manually turn on whatever you want, should you so desire. What's stunning is that we're moving away from this, for our "security." And by then "use Firefox/something else" won't be helpful when entire websites will refuse to work on anything else but Chrome.
> Don't they have a vetting process for extensions?
No.
> Even if they don't, you, the (power)user should be able to manually turn on whatever you want, should you so desire.
It's not as simple as that. As long as it is possible for extensions to have no-holds-barred access to your browser then they'll make that a condition of use, and unsophisticated users (approximately everyone) will just say "eh ok".
Browser extensions are a particularly dangerous case because they auto-update by default. It is very common for popular extensions to get sold to bad actors who then update them to inject ads into everything you view, or worse.
If you make it impossible for extensions to do that, then they can no longer make it a condition of installation.
> It's not as simple as that. As long as it is possible for extensions to have no-holds-barred access to your browser then they'll make that a condition of use, and unsophisticated users (approximately everyone) will just say "eh ok".
Then make it complicated enough so the user has to click through several screens, type in that they know what they're doing and be warned that if extension/website X asks them to do Y, they're getting f'd and should stop. Beyond that, it's their fault.
Why can't we treat browsers like we used to treat PCs? Why do we have to have to make them so "safe" like we did with phones? Tons of scams happen on phones now, so it didn't quite work out, but we still gave up a lot.
Personally, I'm rarely a Chrome user. I'm most afraid of stuff not working in non-Chromium browsers, though.
> Then make it complicated enough so the user has to click through several screens, type in that they know what they're doing and be warned that if extension/website X asks them to do Y, they're getting f'd and should stop. Beyond that, it's their fault.
Yeah I mean... that's just an arms race. You now have to type "allow pasting" into the dev console to paste Javascript there. Guess why.
Browsers can't ever win that race. Malicious extensions will just say "go to settings and blah blah blah".
> You now have to type "allow pasting" into the dev console to paste Javascript there. Guess why.
Would you be content with Chrome (hypothetically) taking away the console instead? Your average user has no business using it anyway.
> Browsers can't ever win that race. Malicious extensions will just say "go to settings and blah blah blah".
You're absolutely right, they can't win the race. People have been plugging holes in software for decades and malware still hasn't been defeated. Taking features away just to plug more holes instead of restricting them doesn't seem right to me. One could argue (I haven't looked this up, though) that even more users fall victims to malware in spite of today's "locked" browsers (and phones) simply because there's an ever increasing number of people online. A lot of that malware is being spread through misleading ads and malicious code that uBO blocks.
With uBO vanishing, a lot of users will be left without an adblocker. Those who aren't tech-savvy enough won't know what to install instead (eg uBL). They'll go on browsing unprotected. Google will see a spike in ad revenue and will be pleased. They have no real interest in blocking scammy ads.
Not really, no.
Putting security in scare quotes doesn’t make the actual risk go away. This is a blatant anti ad block move, but you aren’t making reasonable arguments either.
I'm not sure how not being able to use websites without Chrome is unreasonable, though. If it hasn't come to that already, it will soon.
One can find reasonable use cases for every security measure that takes away freedom. That doesn't mean that all such decisions are balanced, and I'm advocating that the user be the one deciding their level of security, knowingly. That's the most important part being taken away, actually. Until there's palpable resistance (or even doubt or endless debate), those taking things away have no reason to stop.
At no point did anyone argue you should be required to use chrome to use some websites. That is a complete strawman you made up here. No one is requiring you to use chrome.
As to your security argument: If you've never seen the past user's desktops filled with browser hijacking and ad / virus ware, then I'm happy for you, but ignoring serious security concerns isn't a valid approach to managing an end user product regardless of the nebulous slippery slope freedoms argument you're attempting to make.
This is not an advocation to ban all adblockers, but you are advocating for basically a free for all, and we've seen how that works. It doesn't and this entire discussion is a waste of time.
> the nebulous slippery slope freedoms argument you're attempting to make.
But it is a slippery slope and we're already sliding down, even if we don't want to. It's hard to make users switch to something else. I know it, I assume you know it, probably everyone on HN knows it. But, and this is key, Google knows it. People are resistant to change, especially if it means altering their workflow. Where said workflow depends on a monopolistic product that's key to unlocking even more ad revenue, do not think that those with incentive won't hesitate to push for more restrictions while claiming they have our own best interest in mind.
No one brought it up now, but there have been cases of websites being deliberately made slower on Firefox. I don't think it's unreasonable to think that this will continue happening. If you do, then let's agree to disagree.
> but you are advocating for basically a free for all, and we've seen how that works.
I'm not advocating for a "free for all." I'm advocating for a "free for the knowledgeable & responsible." I'm advocating for informed consent in computing. We've been moving away from that, more so because of greed than goodwill.
Do you think Firefox should let me install an unsigned extension?
Absolutely. I have no idea if their store requires signing, but in any case, I think you should be able to sideload your own extensions after being lectured on how it might be dangerous. I'm not saying it should be easy, though.
This is becoming more and more complex I think.
To put it in the flatest way, it's not a given that users trust the platform owner more than some extension providers.
In theory that shouldn't be the case, and not trusting a platform that runs natively and has potential acccess to everything we do sounds crazy. But in practice there's only so many platforms, and depending on one's work or environement, not using Chrome isn't even an option.
In that context, extensions are the most direct tools the users have to get back some control.
You can choose the permissions on v2 as well.
The change in v3 is that uBlock cannot even ask for more permissions any more
How about giving unlimited permissions to Google on the web and your computer?
My YouTube ad-blocking experience with uOL looks like a black/muted screen for 30s until the real video starts playing. No "Skip" button appears. I disabled the extension for YouTube so I can at least skip the video after 5s. Is it better for everyone else?
Are you using the "complete" filtering mode?
For certain sites, you need to click the extension and change it from "basic" to "complete". This seems to be a performance thing, so it's not doing slower more complete adblocking on sites that don't need it. I've only had to do it on a couple of sites.
I am now, and that works great. Thanks!
It's just a matter of time. Now that anti adblocks are way more effective, they'll become common.
LLM/AI had perfect timing
Perfect timing to steal all content and then flood the web with slop making me want to spend less time online altogether.
I hear so many people IRL complaining about this. I tell them to switch to firefox, that the adblockers still work there, and they still won't switch to it because they are "used to chrome". I really feel like google won this battle. People will through a lot of abuse just to maintain their habits.
Wanted to note that uBlock works on Firefox mobile browser too - it is excellent.
Only the Android version has uBlock just fyi. Also, I've never been able to watch movies on a plane with Firefox mobile.
AbBlockers work on iOS too. Safari/WebKit has no plans to deprecate Manifest V2
I don't doubt you are incorrect, but that's a response for a different conversation altogether.
You said "only the Android version"
iOS users are able to download browser extensions as well. They just have to be for WebKit. Which there are plenty of.
The iOS version of Firefox uses WebKit under the hood (for now at least)
There is also Firefox Focus. Been using it on iOS since it came out a few years ago.
It integrates as an ad blocker for Safari, so I don't actually use Firefox itself (since as you mentioned, all browsers on iOS are just a wrapper to Safari anyways).
I just browse using Safari and ads are blocked by Firefox Focus. Pretty neat.
The adblockers still work on Chrome though.
Pretty sure people are figuring out to switch to uBlock Origin Lite and ads -- including on YouTube -- are still being blocked just fine.
They "work", but not well.
https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...
They can still block elements from appearing on your browser but in the background the network calls are still being made. That means you are no longer being protected from tracking and your internet is once again being slowed down by the loading of ads
That's not true. The requests themselves are blocked:
https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/reference/api/d...
Lol yeah with a max number of rules being 50
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...
But declarativeNetRequest is the alternative to the webRequest API which Chrome is removing. Using declarativeNetRequest means you have to rely on static rules instead of the dynamic logic that the webRequest API allowed. This is extremely trivial to bypass. So much so that it's basically nothing at all. Especially when you take into account the max ruleset sizes
Also in Chrome (and Chrome only) any images or iframes blocked are simply collapsed
330k, not 50 https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/Frequently-as...
I try to assume good intentions, but at this point you seem to be simply trying to spread misinformation, and I don't know why.
The maximum number of rule sets is 50, not rules, as your own link clearly and unambiguously states.
The actual minimum (not maximum) number of supported rules is 30,000:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...
In reality, Chrome supports over 10x that. And UBOL doesn't even use/need the minimum, sticking to around 17,000.
Thanks for the correction. you're correct it's 50 rulesets. Originally the limit was 5,000 rules but it seems the Chrome team backed away from that
Regardless it doesn't change the fact that these are static rules. It's trivial for anti-adblockers to dynamically get a url that is not in a ruleset. Without the dynamic logic that is allowed by the webRequest API we are completely dependent on static rulesets that need to be updated by updating the entire extension itself
The size of the rulesets is a distraction from the fact that adblockers can no longer run dynamic logic to filter web requests and block tracking
Until those things don't work any longer. Slowly the frog is boiled here.
They will continue to "work". Both v2 and v3 allows extensions to block elements from the DOM. However, only in v2 can they modify actual network calls. With v3, those network calls will still be made. Which means you are no longer protected from tracking and your web browsing experience is once again being slowed down by the loading of ads even if you don't see those ads
As I replied to your other comments, this is false. v3 block the network calls. They are not made. You are protected from tracking and nothing is slowed.
For now. Advertisers now know ways to bypass all blockers for Chrome.
Right, google knows not to turn up the temp too fast, else the frog might jump out!
Posting this from firefox: most enterprise tools are only tested under Chrome, and many will break with no recourse when used on firefox.
And it's worse with extensions. For instance right now the OneLogin extension is dead on firefox, and while it's a crappy service, it's cheap and enterprise friendly...so employees in the contracting companies will only be able to log to corporate resources through Chrome.
It's not as hellish as the IE6 situation was, but boy we're pretty quickly approaching it.
In the end sighing and going "stupid Google" is a lot easier than changing even the smallest of habits.
People also seem to think switching over is some kind of involved process for some reason.
It's not so much 'Chrome won' as 'Firefox lost'
I still have no idea why Firefox/Mozilla think they need to compete with the other browsers. None of their '10 Principals' is "win the browser wars"
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/
Debugging on Firefox has always been awkward with sourcemaps. The sourcemaps load late, so breakpointing is hard at load time.
While JS debugging seems to be a bit slower, I find their HTML/CSS debugging tools far superior to Chrome's. Neither browser engine is great for the whole package, but overall I really prefer Firefox when it comes to dev tools.
People didn't switch from IE to Chrome because it was better.
They switched because it was MUCH, MUCH better.
(And was part of the ecosystem, profiles, bookmarks, passwords, etc.)
---
For better or worse, no such disparity exists currently.
Well said. It also wasn't worse in any way. It was strictly better.
Firefox is definitely better than Chrome in some ways, but it is also worse in others. Notably performance and integration with Google's password manager.
They switched because Google bundled invisible Chrome installers in other software that would not only make its browser the default, but also invisibly steal IE clicks.
A move that was widely celebrated at the time.
Source?
https://www.reddit.com/r/windows/comments/w9fd1g/new_compute...
Must say it's really hard to find who might have paid for a bundled installer. Filezilla I remember had a lot of those and some forum threads will mention a specific "offer" they got, but there's no listing anywhere, and it's not in the source code history because they were (so I just read) dynamically fetched from advertisement servers upon launching the installer. Searching the web for Google Chrome bundling (phrased a few different ways), you get mostly present-day results about how to install Chrome or how to bundle it as sysadmin in a Windows group policy or something. This is the one thread I found where it sounds like computer manufacturers bundled it, but if there's many more then I'm not sure I'd have found it
GP said:
> Google bundled invisible Chrome installers in other software that would not only make its browser the default, but also invisibly steal IE clicks.
An anecdote from someone who "bought a second hand laptop off ebay" and found Chrome preinstalled isn't relevant.
I remember it being IE -> Firefox -> Chrome.
From where I was sitting, Firefox grew from word of mouth. Friends old friends, or simply installed it for them and said “trust me”. And people were shamed for using IE.
Over time Firefox started to feel more bloated, and Chrome was new, lean, and fast.
Chrome then went through its own bloat phase, and now this.
Browser monopolies have toppled before, through various means. I see no reason why it can’t happen again. Currently Apple is pretty much single handedly keeping Google from having total control, by only allowing WebKit on iOS.
I have a feeling people would be more likely to switch to a new player than to run back to an old one they left once before.
The Stockholm Syndrome.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome
Not only google seems to won this battle but ad industry as a whole. Youngest generation is nowadays so much conditioned to advertising disguised as content or being the content they won't oppose it.
What's in Chrome that they are so used to? I use Vivaldi, Chrome, Firefox on every day basis, and can barely see a difference.
Bookmarks, history, generally historical reliability, and (biggest reason for me) password manager.
I rarely have to type/remember passwords anymore on Android or web and it "just works". I know there are password managers out there that ostensibly handle the password-saving thing and are browser-agnostic but when I tried it in the past I had issues on some sites and, when it did work, it felt clunkier.
People say similar things about Google Search, and a few times I've tried not use Google Search but every time I've tried it's become clear that the reason I use Google Search isn't just habit, but that it's the best search engine for most queries I perform.
I've had a very different experience with browsers though... I switch browsers pretty often and with ease. I genuinely can't get my head around why someone would continue to use Google Chrome if they're unhappy with how they're treating their users. The UI between browsers is 99% identical. The most annoying thing about switching browser is just having to spend 10 minutes setting things up, but that isn't going to exceed the annoyance of having to see ads constantly for months or years.
There's really no good reason not to switch browsers. Your habits are not going to change between browsers. Unless you're a Chrome power user and using some very niche features in Chrome there is very, very little difference between Firefox and Chrome for the vast majority of tasks.
Well, today mostly yes. But at the same time, I've been an Opera user (if not fanboy) for a good decade, until they ditched their own engine and basically started from scratch with chrome as a base. It lost 99% of its features overnight.
I really struggled to switch to anything else. Firefox was definitely the most customizable, but finding extensions to replicate every feature of Opera, and properly at that, was a never-ending nightmare.
Only at that point did I realize how vital a browser has become for everyday tasks, and as a power user, how much you get accustomed to it. Maybe not if you're just running stock Chrome or Firefox with two extensions, but Opera was so feature-rich that I didn't ever install a single extension but needed about a dozen on Firefox to try and mimic it. In the end I just stayed on Opera 12 until it wasn't even funny anymore. It must've been about two years. Eventually so many sites broke that I just switched to Firefox and only installed uBO and greasemonkey. It hurt but over time I just gradually forgot what using opera was like. Sometimes I think back and really miss it. Some of it is just nostalgia by now, but the struggle switching was real.
i keep seeing some people pretend Vivaldi is the new opera, made from the same developer.
did you give a try, is it even remotely comparable ?
I don't remember when I tried it for the first time, but I did like it much better than the new opera. At least they were adding new features much faster. It was still different enough and lacking (to me) important features from the old opera. I still have it installed today as the fallback for the exceedingly rare case that some site doesn't work in Firefox and I really need to access it. But I have to admit that I didn't really bother to evaluate it properly in a long time. An ex colleague doing webdev just recently told me it's his primary browser as it has some nice things to make his life easier that were just more cumbersome to set up in chrome. I just gave up and accepted that at least by using Firefox I'm fighting the engine-monopoly of chrome/blink. ;)
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> But in two days I have 4 new Brave users.
What happens when adtech decides this is a problem because the hoi polloi have arrived? Have you thought about that as you're cluing in normies?
My only motivation is to help my friends who got the "uBlock Origin is no longer supported" notification get their ad blocking back in a way that sticks. To me that's the most important thing. Any what ifs about the future can be addressed then.
The browser that is a literal drop-in replacement is the best way to do this. I think it's cool that other browsers are trying new things but now isn't the time. People have to be be in a place where they want something different in order to accept change. All of them got the notification while trying to something else and "install Brave, import, move Brave to where the Chrome icon used to be, and continue with what you were doing" is alarmingly effective.
You have to take the CEO's philosophy into account when choosing technology tools unfortunately.
I personally dmd Eich on Twitter during 2019-2021 ish. He's opposed to censorship, tracking, government lockdowns during COVID, and authoritarianism.
That is exactly who you want running your browser and search company if you wish to use an open Internet. It's anti chat control, anti governments choosing which apps it's citizens can install, it's free speech for all, including "hate speech". Open and free wild West Internet culture.
> He's opposed to […] government lockdowns during COVID
> That is exactly who you want running your browser and search company
Yes. “Does the CEO have strong opinions on public health? Are those opinions based more on public health fundamentals or is it vibes?” is the first line of inquiry I pursue when I am looking to download a program on the computer
I think it's a good sign when someone making a browser is so uncompromising on the principle of individual autonomy and lack of central control that they're still up there dying on that hill even when they're wrong.
It gives me confidence that there will never be a situation where some issue is of such grave importance that they feel like they must leverage their position and compromise on it, for the safety of children of course. Because we know what's best for you. Bleh. It reminds me of the libertarians who oppose seat belt laws. Like you're wrong and so you shouldn't be in a leadership position of the DoT but you believe so strongly that institutions shouldn't get a say in your life that I think you would do great if I tasked you with health insurance reform.
I like that forums user hnpolicestate saw Brave mentioned and found opportunity to start talking about vaccine passports and within three posts we have gotten to how libertarians should be in charge of health care.
This is the vital, vibrant discourse necessary when selecting a web browser
No. You don't want someone who believes in vaccine passports and lockdowns running your browser if you truly value an open and free internet with roadblocks to tracking, fingerprinting etc.
No CEO or developer is going to respect to software/hardware users if they believe that user should also use health verification software to go about public spaces. These are incompatible philosophies.
Exactly. When you want to use a program on the computer you want to make sure that the CEO of the company that makes it is very vocal about things completely unrelated to the computer. Like would you take your car to a mechanic who doesn’t post about the keto diet? Absolutely not. Would you buy a quiche from a man that does not have a dedicated page to perineum sunning? No one would, it would be insane to even consider such a purchase. Such a baker would be ostracized abd run out of business overnight
Because a keto diet wouldn't have anything to do with using an open internet. My examples, think free speech, absolutely do.
The connection between car maintenance and diet is exactly the same as the connection between the inclusion of ublock origin support in a chromium fork and public health policy during a pandemic — they are both fully and completely disconnected with no overlap whatsoever in any meaningful way _but_ they are things that make some folks very happy when they can point at a thing and say “This means this person is a member of my in-group of good-opinion-havers”
If one of my friends kept pitching cryptoscam shit to me I’d stop talking to them in short order. I suspect your IRL non-technical friends feel similarly.
At this point the backlash to crypto is more ridiculous than the actual crypto scams.
[dead]
It's used to steer people away from Brave because it's the lowest hanging fruit. Individuals can hide their true political motivations for trashing the browser.
Literally the first thing anyone who recommends Brave says is to avoid the stupid crypto thing, myself included. Look Firefox doesn't exactly come up smelling like a rose here, when you recommend Firefox you have to tell them to turn off the ads in the new tab page, ads in the URL bar (https://imgur.com/a/EXtzhg4), and Pocket, in Brave the crypto thing is opt-in.
It's learned helplessness, laziness, bordering on cowardice.
I use Firefox as my main browser and it's not a viable alternative to Chrome if you have the very common usage pattern of keeping tens of tabs open.
I was using Firefox exclusively for years, but when I sold my Macbook and bought a Thinkpad and installed Linux on it, I grew pretty annoyed by Firefox.
Specifically, I couldn't view my 360 videos or photos on Google Images or Immich at anywhere near acceptable performance. The videos, recorded at 30fps, would get maybe 5fps. This was weird, because I have a fairly beefy laptop, it should be able to handle these videos just fine (especially since my iPhone handled it just fine).
After a bit of debugging, it appears that there's a bug in how it's writing for the shader cache, and as such there was no hardware acceleration. I found a bug filed about my issue [1], and I didn't really feel like trying to fix it, because I didn't want to mess with Mesa drivers. I just installed Chromium and that's what I'm using right now, and it worked with my 360 videos and photos absolutely fine.
I want Firefox to succeed, but that really left a bad taste in my mouth; it's not like it's weird to want my browser to be hardware accelerated.
[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1921742 Looks like it might be fixed now, or at least they figured out it was an issue with Mesa
I use Firefox as my main browser and having "tens of tabs open" is something I do and there's zero issues with that.
I regularly have 200+ tabs open in FF, no idea what the parent is talking about.
Right now I'm at 181 and it's still buttery smooth.
Goodness just install a tab session manager.
How big is your monitor? I can only see about 10-15 tabs on my 4k monitor before Firefox starts scrolling them off the screen. I regularly have 2-3x that on Chrome before tabs stop showing up.
I have 54 tabs open right now. The Sideberry extension lets you view them in the left sidebar. They're nested so that collapsing a root tab will also collapse all child tabs. There are also super tabs (Sideberry calls them "Tabs panels") so you can switch between entire groups of tabs.
1,740 tabs open right now on my wife's Firefox and it seems to be operating just fine. Sounds like something's wrong with your Firefox. I recommend a refresh which can be found under about:support
what the hell is she doing with 1740 tabs ? :)
10, 20, even 30 i can understand. More is the equivalent of forgetting to empty the kitchen trash can and still filling it until the smell is horrible.
someone got to tell her there is a cross on the right to close the tab.
751 tabs open right now and growing.
Firefox copes fine. Me? Not so much (:
751 tabs open is just ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous.
Use some kind of tab session manager addon, and start organizing things - no need to have them all open concurrently.
757 now.
I used to bookmark everything into Diigo. Then their Firefox extension stopped working... and I haven't got a cross-platform, cross-browser process up and running again.
Is there a tab session manager that does that, and lets me send tabs from my current session to another session? E.g. I'm on my "Writing C for a hobby" session and quickly search for something cooking related, and then need to send that to my cooking session?
757 is too many though. If nothing else, if you couldn't find an extension that works, you could just use different browser profiles, or save the links in text files. It's just so ridiculous to have that many open when, without any doubt, you don't need them open all at once.
I use tab session manager on firefox. It doesn't easily let me shift around tabs inside a session, if I want to combine sessions I have to open both and save as a new session. It does allow duplicating and trimming tabs from a session though.
If you need better session management capability, you could probably get an LLM to extend/fork an existing extension to add what you need with about 30 minutes work.
I use the Tab Groups Addon on Chrome.
Firefox works great with dozens of open tabs. The only thing Chrome has going for it is tab groups. Firefox has Tab Style Tree, which is a decent substitute.
Tab groups landed in Firefox Nightly 3 months ago,[1] I‘d expect them pretty soon in the release version.
[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1938187
Oh, amazing! Thanks for sharing
I have no problem with hundreds of tabs on Firefox.
There is a "tab count" extension. Install it only if you want to learn some awful truths about yourself.
You don't need an extension. Right-click on a tab and "Select All Tabs". Right-click again and it has the option "Close 1,122 Tabs". Your number may be smaller.
That only works if you've got a single window open. For myself, I keep ~10+ windows open, with then ~8 tabs per window. Note this is only practical on a tiling window manager. Anyway, the tab count extension may still be the way to go.
Surely this is hyperbole? I usually have hundreds of tabs open on firefox.
I keep 100s of tabs open for months in Firefox. Chromium regulaly crashes after about 10-20.
I constantly have way more than that open. On mobile it's also over 100 tabs.
What? Why? That's me, I use FF.
You can't see all 50-70 tabs on a normal 27" monitor; Chrome will squish them almost indefinitely, and Firefox forces a large minimum tab width that makes the tab bar scroll forever and then you forget half the tabs you have going and everything's bad. I tried to switch and stopped because of this. I'll hang on until ubo really stops working, I guess, and then try to figure something else out.
There's a alternative: the dropdown menu with all tabs.
This doesn't fix the "you can't see all your tabs by just moving your eyes" problem, does it?
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I blacklisted Chrome in dnf (the Fedora system update manager) once we hit near the last version to allow manifest v2, but apparently it wasn't enough. They reached in to my system and deactivated/deleted my manifest v2 extensions anyway regardless, even though my version still "supports" them. I'm quite displeased to say the least. Ultimately it's probably for the best though as now my "slow fade" plan has to be accelerated. Time to rip the bandaid off.
Spyware doing malware things. I guess it is unexpected in this case, but in hindsight just confirming its malware character.
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Proton and Kagi have most of the services I've personally needed to de-Google. GCP is nicer than AWS, so will probably keep that around as a paying customer. Only thing I haven't found a great replacement yet for Google Docs (MS office is abysmal, but also lack of testing of alternatives so far :) ).
I love Kagi's Orion but it's still not good enough yet to switch off chrome completely. You realize this once you delve deeper, install extensions, and use it as your daily driver.
Looking forward to their Linux port. I should have added FF/Vivaldi to the list.
I'm curious what you're missing. I don't use many extensions, but it's been my daily driver for a year now, with minimal complaints.
1) There are a lot of bugs, for starters. I've been using it for many months but had to switch back to Chrome about a year ago due to some unbearable bugs like tabs freezing and sync kept bringing back long-gone tabs. Don't get me wrong, I've reported a dozen issues (I have 50+ started threads on orionfeedback forums), but anyway, I felt like I spent more time reporting bugs than actually doing my stuff. 2) Some needed extensions are broken. It's not like I need that many with weird APIs. Bitwarden has been broken for some time, and Grammarly is still broken (3 years in). I tried the latest version a few days ago given what's happening with chrome rn, there are some annoyances still. I like Orion (kudos to Kagi team for working on it) and want it to succeed, I believe it just needs more time, I guess.
After 10+ years as a primary browser, I've been 100% off of Chrome for about 1.5 years now as part of a broader effort to de-Google my life, and things have been going well.
It's interesting to notice how much my internal feelings have shifted over the years. There have been a few rare occasions where I had to use a Chromium-based browser, and I felt the same "ick" I used to feel when forced to use Internet Explorer for some reason.
Come to the Firefox (and variant) side. The water is warm.
You've voiced my sentiment exactly. I really wish Firefox was more at the forefront of innovation and development, and there's a lot to criticise Mozilla for, but I wouldn't change it back for Chromium for anything.
I have a completely custom minimal layout with address bar and tabs at the bottom, all the extensions I need, and I don't notice the performance or compatibility differences almost ever, with few rare exceptions. I feel it much more as "mine", and it's a joy to use.
> but I wouldn't change it back for Chromium for anything.
Not sure I understand the statement - what are you using?
I've done this around the same time and agree. Now google is used as a service (Firebase for example). The only thing I haven't been able to effectively shake off is their Calendar. I know lots of other options are available the issue is connectivity with others.
"And as I opened Chrome - Well, a substitute but still powered by Chromium - I felt my stomach churn as my vision started to blur. I feel both disgusting and disgusted at what I had done. As an act of repetenance I hastily jot down 'Come to Firefox, we have bacon!'"
It's a browser.
>The water is warm.
Mostly because they're peeing in the pool. Mozilla deleted their promise to never sell its users' personal data.
This is why I mentioned (and variants). While I’m unhappy with the Mozilla situation, Firefox is still a significantly better option than Chrome at this point, and the various forks address any concerns with their privacy policy.
One can even self-host their own sync server if so inclined.
And Google never made that promise to being with. Hell, it's their primary business!
Mozilla has done plenty of bad things and they rightly deserve criticism, but options in the browser space are few and Mozilla is considerably less bad than Google. And other Chromium browsers perpetuate Google's control over the web. If you're going to complain about Mozilla when someone recommends Firefox, at least offer a non-Chromium alternative like LibreWolf (or maybe Ladybird someday).
The new uBlock Origin Lite is compatible with Manifest v3 and has the featured flag on the Chrome Web Store: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublock-origin-lite/...
But is less capable than uBlock origin.
https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/Frequently-as...
Wow, the big one to my eyes is the 'removeparam=' which allowed uBlock to strip out parameters (e.g. tracking parameters) from the request, allowing you to visit e.g. affiliate links without being tracked as coming from a specific affiliate (if the affiliate info was in the query params at least). Stuff like that is really amazing, I'm glad that here on FireFox we've still got the full uBlock Origin.
I would have said, use ClearURLs, but it is blocked too: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/clearurls/lckanjgmi...
Socialfixer won't work anymore too.
And also requires far less intrusive permissions.
Which is why it is far less effective
Capable enough for most users, however I made the jump as it no longer fit my needs.
Not really.
90% of users won't notice a difference.
Here's the feature diff. [0]
[0] https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/Frequently-as...
I've been trying uBO Lite myself for a few months, and anyone who uses YouTube will absolutely notice that it's worse at blocking. Lite tends to delay playback at the start of a video for as long as the blocked ads would've been, making the site feel slower, and once in a while an ad will slip past the blocker anyway.
I am not so sure if that is the light version. In my (outdated) Ungoogled Chromium which still has classic uBlock, YouTube videos also have delays or do stop playing completely after a few seconds. So I have switched to the FreeTube software to watch YouTube videos. I can recommend that.
Just use Freetube to browse Youtube. It's a better experience in every respect.
I have used Youtube and uBlock Origin lite for the past couple of months and have not noticed that. Are you using the complete filtering mode?
I really really miss Zapper Mode
It would be nice if uBO automatically got replaced with uBL instead of requiring users to manually install it. A lot of users who might've had uBO installed by someone else won't know how or won't care enough to do it.
You scroll past multiple paragraphs that say "maybe. maybe not" and "it depends on your browsing" to cherrypick a quote qualified with "in general."
LOL! You know that's bad faith.
Yes pedantically, not really. :)
i mean what's the breaking point? why is ublock no longer in the store whole the lite is?
ublock is manifest v2, lite is v3.
Manifest v3 removed access to certain APIs that where used to alter the websites to block ads
This is a trap. Extensions can still block elements in v3. If you use Lite you probably won't notice much of a difference. But in the background, it will no longer be able to modify network calls. That means you are no longer being protected from tracking AND your web browsing experience is once again being slowed down by the loading of ads (even if you don't see those ads)
The difference isn’t just in the network calls, it’s the relinquishing of the blocking to Chrome itself. The Lite extension is essentially reduced to just providing a blocklist to Chrome, and hopes that Chrome will honor the blocklist.
Google is surgically trying to dismantle adblocking, first by removing all the tools from the users under the guise of “it’s dangerous”, and then shutting it down by rendering them so ineffective they’re useless.
A blocklist with a limited size. I believe its 50 rules
it's also trivial for anti-adblockers to dynamically try alternative domains till they find one that isn't blocked.
Lite version works for me the same as the original. Blocks majority of ads.
Slippery slope corporate apologism.
It's like a corporation shrinking the package size of your food by 10%, keeping the price the same and then claiming you still get the "majority" of the food.
Antisthenes I appreciate your "cynical" response but what I meant is I didn't yet notice any degradation of service compared to the original uBlock Origin.
Or just accurately describing reality?
UBOL is still blocking all the ads for me. It hasn't gone from 100% to 90%. It's still at 100%.
You have no idea if it is blocking the trackers or not.
You didn't have any idea with uBlock Origin either.
But since the very first blocklist UBOL uses is decribed as "Ads, trackers, miners, and more" I assume it's also blocking them just fine. The same way I assumed with UBO.
I've been running firefox on my laptop for the last year, with Chrome on my desktop, as a way to head-to-head them. For folks contemplating the switch, it hasn't been bad at all. Some better, some worse, but overall I rarely notice major differences except for a very small handful of sites that won't work with FF.
And I still have all of my uBlock origin happiness. :)
Be sure to use "Report broken site" in the main menu on that handful of sites. Often there are things folks can do to fix it for you, if many people are running into it - but only if it's known.
More info: https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1de7bu1/were_the_f...
I was confused by "main menu" so I took a look and it is in the Help menu, for those wondering (I'm on Mac).
I didn't know this existed but will totally use it now! Thanks!
My biggest complaints with my switch is 1) no Chromecast functionality on Youtube and many other supported video platforms, 2) Very minimal page/text translation services (Arabic is missing), and 3) no search or translate from image (google lens) which I have gotten pretty used to. Oh and also, seeking videos is weird on FF, the mouse goes way past the scrubber when fast-forwarding or rewinding, just seems weird..
Add-on replacements: - Linguist for translations. - Search by Image for reverse image search (there are others that just use Google Lens directly, but I use this one).
Cast is a bit more cumbersome. There is fx_cast on GitHub, but it requires a companion app. Firefox seems to want to add cast based on a flag you used to be able to enable, but I'm guessing there are some restrictions from Google's end they ran into.
What sites don't work with FF?
I can't login to the work-paid-for version of Microsoft Copilot with Firefox, for some reason. I've had one or two others - I think they were internal CMU website tools. And even more niche: My kids took a ski lesson last year at Snowbird and the website with their report card rejected anything that didn't identify as Chrome. It _worked_ with mobile FF, but it popped up a "YOU SHOULD USE CHROME" banner and wouldn't let me past.
So, small stuff. Maybe Copilot isn't working because of ublock, though.
You can also disable ublock on specific 'trusted' domains.
In my experience if something isn't working in firefox, it's more likely that it's firefox antitracking setting much more often than ublock. You might try turning that off first.
I've been daily driving Firefox for several years. Everything I use on a daily basis works fine on FF, but every now and then you come across some random site that doesn't load or loads poorly.
The Teams web app doesn't work (I refuse to install the OS level app)
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seems like you're cutting off your nose to spite your face
Why? I can just temporarily launch Chrome if I need to join a meeting. There's no need to have MSware running in the background 24/7 doing god knows what.
Expedia doesn't render properly in Firefox - some of the sections are missing, but it's not immediately obvious what is missing. It took me a while to figure out why my wife kept having problems with that site, and I had to move her to Chrome to allow her to use it.
I continue to use Firefox because I know when to suspect a website problem might be the browser, but she doesn't have the ability to analyze a situation like this. I have this conundrum with other family members that I support. I want them to use Firefox, but I hate to have them run into an issue because of the browser I recommended.
Do you have Enhanced Tracking Protection on? It often blocks this kind of third party content
I always turn off firefox's blockers and just use ublock origin with a few more lists like the annoyance and cookie lists
Sticky desktop notifications don’t work on macOS on FF, which means event notifications from calendar apps disappear within a few seconds, leaving no time to snooze them or act on them in any other way. Queue missed meetings.
Amazon properties (the storefront, Prime) have been quite flaky for a long time now, but that may just be me.
Certainly no major site.
with firefox I had trouble with netflix and youtube. These two sites worked much smoother and consistent on chrome.
I subscribed to SlingTV a little over a year ago and it did not support Firefox, even with all the DRM enabled. Although that's a problem I blame on SlingTV, not Firefox. It was a known issue which they refused to address. I've since ended my subscription with them.
IIRC, there was also a time when Netflix did not support its highest streaming quality on Firefox. I'm not sure if that's still the case since I also ended my Netflix subscription.
Otherwise I cannot think of any major site which is not supported on Firefox. Outside my employer's fragile intranet, I can't think of any sites which do not support Firefox.
I can't get ticketmaster to work reliably on Firefox. I guess it thinks I'm a bot. I can use Chrome on the same computer and book tickets just fine.
One crap product forcing me to use another crap product! ;)
Bizzarely, Microsoft Word on web seems to be the only thing I've encountered which has FireFox problems, specifically it'll periodically "save" the document I'm typing and then delete the last sentence or two that I changed while it was saving. I think it's some kind of broken state management on the MS side (leave it to MS). That's the only site I've used though, and I've been a daily driver of FF for 10 years.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43262531 ("uBlock Origin forcefully disabled by Chrome", 5 days ago, 204 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43099417 ("uBlock Origin Has Been Disabled", 19 days ago, 40 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43299886 ("The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome", 2 days ago, 663 comments)
Just stop using chrome, fight the monopoly, don't be a sheep. It's inconvenient ? Convenience is a trap, stop giving away your freedom and agency for convenience.
This sentiment precludes discussion of incentives, the individual's relationship to the group, and the practical limits of agency. If you said the same about smartphones, you would be locked out of many services, including governmental ones. You unthinkingly, tacitly shift the onus onto the individual, which is naive. There is a reason the 5-day work-week, fire codes, and so-forth had to be legislated, because "just find a better job" wasn't going to make a dent in the problem. "Just find a better browser" is similarly ineffectual.
I do not deny that the system need to change but I disagree with saying "we have no agency", I think that like everything in life it's a balance of the two and you definitively can, as an individual, decide to use less convenient options like waterfox or librewolf that respect your privacy and do not try to enforce propaganda (or ads) unto you. And I think in this case, with one of the most powerful company in human history being the perpetrator, you can wait a long time for the system to change.
Being the change you want to see in the world is not a bad thing and should always be the first step before bringing up coercive force for others. There are better browsers and there are other options and not changing your own behavior first due to ignorance and acceptance of the status quo is not cool.
I feel the same way about smartphones, by the by, and it is very possible to live without them. I don't even carry a dumb phone with me. It's not impossible for me. It may be infeasible for you and your life situation. But I'm sure there's plenty of me's out there.
This. The fact that so called "hackers" would be using Chrome is the reason why the world is shit and tech is stagnant. They keep using Chrome and writing Javascript.
Related if anyone is switching over. I like to run Firefox Developer Edition[0] as my "work" browser, with work related bookmarks, etc. and then regular Firefox for nonwork. This makes it really easy to keep the two separate. I know there's a lot of ways to segment within the same browser but this works well for me.
[0] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/developer/
You can achieve the same (or similar) thing with Firefox profiles. Just launch with "-p" and it'll give you a profile picker. You can have a work profile with separate extensions, bookmarks, settings, etc.
FYI developer edition has a ton of additional data collection that I don't believe can be disabled, if that matters to you.
Isn't Developer Edition just a rebranded Firefox Beta that uses a different profile by default?
Same branch as beta, but with different build flags. Add-ons don't need to be signed to be installed on DevEdition, there's a DevTools button in the toolbar by default, etc.
Chromium has a concept of "user data directories" which in theory keep all data isolated to a single folder. You can use a launch parameter to specify what the user data directory you want to use is (so a shortcut). I'm pretty sure Firefox must have an equivalent.
It does, it's just called profiles. And they have a setting to always launch sthe profile selector on start.
Yes, I used to always use a work profile and a home profile in Firefox. Over time I simply made more containers and stopped using profiles altogether. But the option is still there.
Thanks. I didn't use uBlock but I will be switching due to Chrome removing support for non-subsituting keywords (search engines with no %s), which I used heavily as basically aliases for web addresses.
https://issues.chromium.org/issues/397720842?pli=1
You can also just use Firefox containers. Or if you don't want to send all the data with dev use a fork of firefox
I just use multicontainers extension for that sort of thing. It keeps them siloed off from each other. Great for having multiple accounts on sites like bsky and reddit as well.
Containers are firefox's killer feature, highly encourage you to try them. I wish Mozilla would invest more in developing that feature.
For now you can still bring back manifest v2 support (which re-enables ublock origin if you haven't removed it) by making registry changes. Obviously only a temporary solution, might buy you a few months.
Powershell commands to set them:
1. New-Item -Path "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Chrome" -Force
2. New-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Chrome" -Name "ExtensionManifestV2Availability" -Value 2 -PropertyType DWORD -Force
Thanks! Good to know.
Major DOJ Antitrust Cases
1. United States v. Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey (1911)
2. United States v. Microsoft Corp. (1998) 3. United States v. AT&T (Bell System) (1982)does google have a good relationship to the current administration?
I am not aware of a google-lobbyist being as close to trump as Zuckerberg and Musk are, and I definitely see the possibility of these two manipulating the administration against google.
And the DOJ is still holding that Google must break up
This is the death of the hacker. We have allowed new heights of power and unchecked control decide they know better than us. We are no longer allowed or trusted to make choices in our best interests. Many practice apologetics for why this is necessary, pointing to Apple and Mozilla, as if that doesn’t make this change any less devastating. It was a great run.
The silver lining is it can be the birth of a new generation of hackers. This generation’s version of the printer inspiring those who refuse to accept the hostile hand they’ve been dealt. Tech doesn’t have to be this way. You don’t have to accept these changes. Rebel! Start hacking away. Don’t join these companies. Found new ones that prioritize valuing users first forever. It’s a difficult task. But all difficult tasks we’ve solved were.
> We are no longer allowed or trusted to make choices in our best interests.
Ironically (or not) this is the Apple side of the Android/iOS debate. And most people are happier with iOS. (And use Macs over Linux, FWIW.)
[I probably shouldn't mention that I personally think adblockers are unethical :) ]
> And most people are happier with iOS.
Source?
> And use Macs over Linux, FWIW.
This could be explained by marketing.
> I personally think adblockers are unethical
Do you think ads are ethical? For a relevant example, how about an Apple ad that successfully uses emotion to convince you to buy a Mac instead of a Linux computer that would better suit your needs at a better price hypothetically?
> Many practice apologetics for why this is necessary
Sadly, on HN, of all places...
I've eliminated Chrome from my personal systems when uBO stopped working. Blocking v2 manifests also broke a few extensions that were being developed for my day job: they've spent the last few weeks working on Firefox extensions and are almost at the point where they're getting ready to wipe Chrome from our corporate machines.
Try uBO Lite [0]
[0] https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/Frequently-as...
Just use Brave if you can't be bothered to use some extremely ethical alternative that's harder to set up. It blocks everything out of the box. Now, if you do worry about supporting more ethical browsers, try qutebrowser (with some greasemonkey scripts added in).
Brave has a history of very concerning behavior: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_(web_browser)#Controvers....
Wouldn’t trust those folks at all TBH. Too much sketchy sketch
This made me go back to Firefox after 15 years of using Chrome personally.
Zen is a much better fork.
There are only two business models on the web: either you pay for your browser, or someone else does. This is why Orion is entirely user-funded, and can continue serving users by prioritizing privacy, control, and features like powerful, built-in ad-blocking. Not third party deals, ads, or any other incentive to corrupt the user experience and overall quality.
(Disclosure, I work for Kagi, creator of the Orion browser.)
There are only two business models on the web: either you pay for your content, or someone else does. And that someone is usually advertisers. Blocking ads while consuming content upsets that business model. That's why Brave Browser's BAT is a fundamentally good idea marred by terrible execution. On the other hand I do not believe built-in ad-blocking in the browser can ever become mainstream for that same reason.
I have moved to Firefox since the announcements that Chrome won't allow must have extensions such as uBlock. That Firefox allows extensions both on desktop and mobile is great.
But there are some things that I miss from Chrome, especially for web development. In Chrome it is possible to adjust the CSS of grid and flex containers within the developer window, which can be helpful. Firefox and Firefox Developer Edition don't have this. Firefox also seems to sometimes have problems with reloading a page when it is changed during development, whereas in Chrome this always was instant. Then there are some small feature and UI differences, like the reading-mode on Firefox is nice, but the UI of Chrome feels just a bit nicer.
I have Firefox for normal use and then Chrome for Web development. Simple enough.
Now you are a real developer.
This was to be expected, however I am curious if Vivaldi, Brave and others will make their own webstore which will have plugins like ublock origin, and how long till Mozilla follows suit.
Google aggressively makes it hard for Chromium derivatives to not conform to Google's engineering choices.
They could try and keep manifestv2 support for a while, but they will have an increasingly large and hard to support patch se to make manifestv2 work still.
Indeed. When I tried to add LibRedirect (another extensions that are not possible under Manifest v3) to Vivaldi, DNS over HTTPS suddenly stopped working.
After checking the settings page, the settings to turn it on are completely disabled. Turn out this is one of few trap in all Chromioum browser that are hardcoded by Google.
Well after searching, you need to edit registry (yikes!) and add "DnsOverHttpsMode" and set it to "safe". Problem solved, right?
NO!!! Do that and suddenly your browser wouldn't load any page at all! Turn out you also need to set "DnsOverHttpsTemplates" too.
It just so happen, somehow, there is no documentation that mention this in "....Mode" help page.
Surely Google is not being evil in here, right? Right?
Time to reply to https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/91160/vivaldi-s-own-extensio... or something.
As a developer, the one feature I really love in Chrome is PWAs. But Firefox abandoned PWA support years ago, and seems to have no appetite for adding PWAs back[1]. Maybe I'll just have to split my usage across PWAs in Chrome (since I trust those apps/websites anyway) and Firefox for general browsing.
[1] https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/bring-back-pwa-progress...
My dumb theory is that they’re trying to break up the “monopoly” allegations. But, I’m not sure what the stats are for how many people use ad block blockers like ublock, and are willing to migrate to a different browser because of its loss. On top of that, like others say there are still ad blockers available.
Terrible sample size: I moved to FF as soon as I couldn’t use a cookie cleaner for web dev work, and ublock origin.
Coincidentally Google Chrome is no longer available on a single computing device I own.
There is still a DOM hack to allow installation by re-enabling the "Add to Chrome" button on the linked page. See "Download and install uBlock Origin in Chrome" on this page: https://www.neowin.net/guides/google-turned-off-ublock-in-ch...
After the install, Chrome will disable the extension on the next restart but it can be re-enabled .. for now.
Abandoned Chrome years ago. Am using Firefox and never looked back. Same with other Google products: Replaced Gmail with Fastmail, Google Docs with Office365 (yeah, I know, Microsoft).
The hardest thing to replace was always search to me, because the usually alternatives (DuckDuckGo, Ecosia etc) always suck.
But Kagi made that part so easy it's unbelievable.
I'm genuinely curious about why you find DDG sucking compared to Google Search? I've switched ~2 years ago, when I found DDG better in terms of less clutter and not showing ads as results - also, if there are no good results, it didn't push nonsense. But maybe GS improved in the meantime on the quality of results and I'm missing out?
For starters, they use a terrible custom font as default[1], and that tells me that they don't have their priorities straight in terms of product quality.
[1] https://bsky.app/profile/ssg.dev/post/3lhftw36rac2x
Wow, Kagi is just extremely good. Found old friends I couldn’t reach, found product infos where Google would pollute me with ads and garbage. This is awesome. Thanks for mentioning.
Ever looked into Perplexity? Will check out Kagi.
Thanks for keeping me safe, Google! You know better than me what software I should be running on my computer.
What goes around...
We had mainframes and dumb terminals where the work was done in a remote data centre you connected to
Then we had the personal computer revolution where the work was done on the box you owned and controlled on your desk
Then we moved to the cloud where work is done in a remote data centre you connect to
Brave, fork of Chrome. https://brave.com/
Ignore the crypto; enjoy the integrated ad-blocking.
Most seamless ad-blocking I've ever experienced.
Yeah, ignore the crypto and tons of other stuff about phoning home or doing malicious 'oopsies' things.
For the unaware: https://old.reddit.com/r/browsers/comments/1j1pq7b/list_of_b...
How were they phoning home?
Amen
There are other browsers you know Brave and such? It really saves you money from all the blocked ads traffic and is not a backdoor/spyware
Goodbye Chrome, good night
At the time of writing this comment, 53 minutes after OP, I am able to install- and use- uBlock Origin from the Chrome Web Store. What am I missing?
I have been using Brave and that has in-built adblocker, I suppose. I have not faced any huge problem yet, and the browsing has been super smooth.
uBlock Origin Lite is still available, thankfully.
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublock-origin-lite/...
But for how long? I'm sure Google is hard at work on Manifest V4.
What is lost by going to this version?
The wiki outlines the differences.
https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/Frequently-as...
If it’s anything like Safari’s declarative blocklists:
Ad blocking on Youtube.
Youtube-blocking Safari extensions “solve” Youtube blocking by using non-declarative APIs that need full access to Youtube. Apple seems ok with that so far, but the APIs are not as goods, so their success rate is limited.
Whether Google will allow new extensions that block Youtube remains to be seen.
> Ad blocking on Youtube.
uBlock Origin Lite blocks all ads on YouTube for me.
Google push out updates at regular intervals that detect the adblocker
why didn't you notice before? ublock origin has a special quick fixes list which updates very frequently, without Google's involvement
but with manifest v3: Google are now in charge and have to approve all "definition" updates
which they will only do once they've got a new detection method ready
and this is the entire point of manifest v3
Just saying, I've been using Lite for months. It's been fine.
they'd have to be really, really stupid to start doing it before their main countermeasure has been removed
>but with manifest v3: Google are now in charge and have to approve all "definition" updates
No, they don't. MV3 extensions are allowed to fetch remote data which definition updates would be.
> uBlock Origin Lite blocks all ads on YouTube for me.
Someone else is saying uBlock Origin Lite leaves a "skippable blank" where the ad used to be, while I know for a fact uBlock Origin completely and transparently skipped over the ad.
Could you confirm?
It completely blocks it.
But you have to change the toggle from basic filtering mode to complete filtering mode.
I think some people just haven't realized that.
Could you please tell me what "Youtube-blocking Safari extensions" are you referring? Are they MacOS only or can be installed on IPad? Thanks!
I can recommend Wipr 2 - excellent blocker from a great developer. I've now switched to Safari for all my YouTube watching. Universal purchase works on macOS, ipadOS and iOS.
I just downloaded it.
It works way better for Youtube than the one I had, and after some more testing I don't need the additional annoyance blockers I had. I might just go back to Safari!
Thanks for the recommendation.
Sure! AdBlock Pro blocks video ads for me, but it shows non-video ads that you gotta skip.
On iPad I just use Brave and haven't seen an ad yet.
custom filters / block lists
Realistically, how often is this functionality used en' mass? I remember using it once or twice throughout my lifetime of using this extension.
An ad blocker is useless to me if I can’t block whatever I want with it.
It's useless if it blocks 99.9% of what you need, but not the custom 0.1% you want on top?
As long as I have an alternative I would never choose the ad blocker that doesn’t let me block the elements I want.
For most websites I don’t care but there are many websites that I visit very often and removing annoying or useless elements and padding is practically mandatory at this point - I wouldn’t want to go back to not being able to do it.
So, answering your question, yes, “useless” was hyperbole.
I use different extensions for blocking individual elements on pages, like sticky headers or other custom divs. They're still working fine, e.g.:
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/click-to-remove-ele...
also you'd think that the pushers of this agenda would get real-time updates to things like block lists metadata. God knows they do it themselves several times a day...
dignity
Firefox is the way. Chrome may as well be Edge.
I've been using Firefox for years now after being an avid chrome user and I do not miss it at all.
Hoping someone can point me to a Chrome browser extension that supports custom block rules. My strange situ involves an IT-managed laptop / browser that can't access certain websites because of their embedded resources (eg fonts) hosted on 3rd-party domains; firewall rules block the embedded content, breaking the (allowed) main site I'm trying to visit. uBlock Origin was perfect: I'd craft custom rules to disallow problematic embedded resources, problem solved.
I have a similar situation, though for more personal, first-world problems. I used custom rules for things like YT shorts, Jira's giant bar for emoji-responses in comments, etc. I'm not sure there's a good substitute on Chrome because Google's primary intent was to destroy the efficacy of this tooling.
Isn't there a lite version of ublock origin that works with manifest v3?
only gets updated when published and doesn't support custom rules or element picking :(
Is it actually gone? I thought they just put that warning.
I just re-enabled the one already installed on my devices.
Once it's legit gone gone though yeah I'm going to Firefox or use Edge for web dev stuff
Edit: I will say I am a hypocrite though I am trying to build a following by posting on YouTube... I don't control the ads on there, maybe you do when you are monetizable but yeah sucks I feel bad for the viewers. At the same time... I'll spend weeks/months on a project and no one cares so idk.
I re-enabled it last week but they forced removed it again days later. I re-enabled it by force and it's still working, but it won't be for much longer, I'm certain.
https://www.neowin.net/guides/google-turned-off-ublock-in-ch...
This URL, shared elsewhere in this thread, seems to tell you how to get it back up and running if you cannot do it easily; that said, I'll be moving to FF if they continue their shenanigans.
what does sock I've written a few of my own extensions and they're manifest v2 ugh... but thankfully I was able to turn them back on
gone for some... many... most.
The last Chrome update also disabled it for me because it's a manifest v2 extension. I use firefox on my personal computers, but might need to switch on my work PCs as well
I've been a happy user of Adguard for over 5 years, on all my devices, so I am luckily unaffected by this.
So far it seems to be the only general solution that can inject cosmetic filters into network requests while blocking on a request (not dns-only) level.
https://adguard.com/en/blog/mv2-extensions-no-longer-alterna...
Idea/Question/Possibility
If uBlock Origin uses filters, would it not be possible to build a program that acts as a "proxy" for Linux/macOS/Windows, etc., that uses the same or similarly crafted filters to do something akin to what some of us did back in the Flash LSO supercookie days? I was a Linux user then and I recall creating a symlink from .macromedia and .adobe to /dev/null. The cookies were written to their folders but went into the event horizon of /dev/null and I never had to worry about them, but the websites worked like a charm.
Maybe I'm wrong, but would it not be possible to use filters similar, or even different than uBlocks, to "symlink" the addresses to /dev/null or other bit bucket like NULL on other OSes? I write automation code, so I don't have the chops to develop such a program/project, but I can see it in my head "how it might work". Thoughts, ideas, criticisms welcome.
I've also taken to using Violent Monkey and scripts to block quite a bit of nonsense on the web. Violent Monkey and the iFrame blockers work well with YouTube. I suppose it's also a matter of time before things like Violent Monkey are removed as well. There has to be a way to proxy the traffic through a filter list and /dev/null the offending objects.
Invitation to come join the Firefox side. We have cookies!
As a person who switched constantly between browsers (except Chrome, never used it after 2015) in the past 10+ years, I can confirm that realigning the habits are not that difficult. Learn to use the web, not the tool to browse it.
So, switch to something which has privacy respecting attitude or at least tries to have it and ditch everything who does not. It is not just the browser itself, but also the services and tools that you use to do your job: browsing. After some time, you will realize how horrible browsing the web with Chrome was in this respect and how easy it is to just browse the web without a bloated piece of advertising machine.
Since Chrome discontinued support for Manifest V2 extensions, I’ve switched to Mullvad Browser for browsing ad-heavy websites. It comes with uBlock Origin pre-installed, is open source, and is developed by a reputable company.
Is there anything preventing the creation of an independent marketplace for chromium extensions?
I haven't used Chrome itself in years, but have had a hard time giving up Chromium-based browsers due to the rendering performance. It's always felt weird that the only way of getting extensions on these browsers was via the Chrome Web Store.
If there are viable alternatives I've not heard of, I hope folks let me know.
At least uBO can be replaced with AdGuard or uBO Lite but there are a LOT of extensions (over half of mine!) that are still not compatible with MV3. "Imagus Mod" for example or script managers like Violentmonkey. Which is why I switched to Firefox last summer.
Surprising to see that happen just as Google is entering an antitrust breakup.
Get it in while they still can, I guess?
Yep, in a negotiation, it usually helps to establish a status quo favorable to you if possible.
The source code is available for Chrome. Suppose one downloads the source code, and then re-enables the Manifest v2? A bit of work, particularly when you have to do other things that probably allow it to co-exist with Manifest v3, and Manifest v4 when it comes. And prevent updates from taking it all out again. While working on it, flip the compiler's command-line switch that allows the executable to run on Windows 7.
How long after the announced Windows 10 end of life will it be before all the software companies say 'Windows 11 is the minimum' like was seen with Windows 7?
Keeping MV2 going is a massive and unrealistic effort for a small dev group while continuing to incorporate upstream changes. You cannot leave a browser without those upstream changes as they include security patches.
The source code is available for Chromium, not Chrome. You can always maintain a fork, but it's a lot of work, and it's not a great solution to the problem of "world's largest surveillance company makes world's most popular browser".
I'd like to know some statistics from before and after this event. Change in browser share if such a thing is recordable (unsure if ungoogled-chromium has a different user agent), received download counts of different uBlock versions (Origin and Lite), difference in Google's revenue as a result of wiping uBlock Origin.
The banner at the top is really selling it
>Switch to Chrome to install extensions and themes
An interesting day on which to impose this restriction, given:
"DOJ: Google must sell Chrome, Android could be next"
<https://arstechnica.com/google/2025/03/doj-google-must-sell-...>
HN discussion: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43323485>
This happened to me so I just switched over to Adblock Plus. https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/adblock-plus-free-a...
AddBlock is still available. I was wondering if there is some issue with the extension itself that it got flagged? Maybe an update to the codebase would make the extension installe-able again?
Wasn't Adblock Plus the plugin to be shunned because they allowed certain ads as long as the advertisers paid them money? I remember a scandal like that a few years ago, but I might be mistaken since there are many similarly named plugins.
uBlock Origin didn't have this problem, which is why it got recommended so much.
You're not mistaken. They had a default enabled whitelist of advertisers that were paying them to be there. Basically a racket.
Chrome has been randomly turning off my ublock origin and I've had to manually turn it back on. Don't you take away my adblock or you'll get the boot! I am willing to escalate this indefinitely, to the point of just not going on to any part of the internet with ads.
The only chrome browser I'm using is on a cheap chromebook I bought.
It looks like I could turn on the linux vm and run firefox, but it "only" has a 16GB ssd of which like 12GB is "system space" (ridiculous) and I only have 1GB left which isn't enough to enable the linux dev environment.
I could look into seeing if I can get native linux on the hardware, but it's probably not worth the time and trouble for it.
Note that Google Chrome contains features that allow sharing your interests with advertisers and "measuring" ads performance. It looks more and more as ad browsing client rather than a web browser: https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/13355898
This removal can be bypassed until June (edit: or possibly even August) by changing some flags or setting enterprise policies: https://old.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/1itw1bz/end_o...
https://mitmproxy.org/
Either Python or PowerShell would work for the scripting.
Will uBlock Origin Lite[1] a good alternative to uBlock Origin? It is one of the alternatives recommended by the uBlock Origin tea.
[1] https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublock-origin-lite/...
I've been personally enjoying Ghostery extension for the past year, block all ads, youtube, any HTML5 player, banners, popups – really clean and tidy browsing experience.
It didn't even catch any hype regarding this manifest support issue uBlock origin has, and it keeps silently working good without any interruptions, I wonder why is that?
Because Ghostery belongs to an analytics company that sells your data so they are working round the clock to keep it running
Honest question - let's say you can't physically experience ads. Why do you care about your data being sold? This is a problem only if you can see ads, but remember, you can't.
The data can be used for more than ads - it can be used to adjust prices, etc.
I have it installed on Arc and it still works, I guess that's expected but it will degrade soon? I love Arc but I'd better not see an ad or that will be reason to jump ship. I pay for quite a few web services I like (eg, Youtube) but I'd drop a bollock if I saw a display ad on the open web.
If you like Arc, I suggest trying Zen Browser. It looks and behaves just like Arc, but it has the benefit of upgrades and support. Arc Browser has almost been abandoned because they are working on a new product.
https://zen-browser.app
The US Department of Justice has a proposal that Google sell off Chrome to prevent a monopoly. This might be a great approach to solve the problem.
How long until other chromium browsers follow suit? I'm currently using Edge.
I also wonder when someone one will "hack" chromium to run whatever extensions they want - I could build my own extension, or build uBlock Origin from the source (if available) and execute the extension regardless of the store.
A lot of Chromium browsers use Google's extension store, so even if they're not as strict about it now, you won't be able to install it anyway.
What's the best next choice if I don't want to move away from a Chrome-like experience?
(Old habits die hard)
There's https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium - is it a sound choice nowadays?
After the enterprise grace period the code will be deleted from the project. You can expect a fork to appear that patches it back in (I doubt ungoogled chromium would be where that is done), but eventually that will become a nontrivial process. You have a year, maybe two. There are many chromium-based browsers that have built-in blocking.
The Firefox UI is honestly very close to chrome.
Switched to Firefox a year ago, no regrets. Only flashing devices via webserial (Meshtastic etc) is missing for me.
For the moment I can still see the "Add to Chrome"-Button on that page in Ungoogled Chromium :)
Today marks my last day as a Chrome user. And fellas I encourage y’all to switch away from Chrome
This is why I run Firefox and will continue to do so. Google Chrome sucks I only have to to test stuff.
When Google nuked the (manifest V2) extensions I had on Chrome, without letting me export their settings (custom filters for ublock origin, RSS reader feeds), I bit the bullet and switched to Firefox.
We have to put some of this on Firefox for failing to remain competitive in the engineering arena.
If it's too expensive to develop a viable alternative to chromium, just say that.
The Firefox that has been trundling along for years is really just an excuse to keep the chromium monopoly afloat.
Same with uMatrix: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/umatrix/ogfcmafjalg...
Chrome is no longer available on my machine. It hasn't been for some years now but still.
Consider discontinuing the use of Google, AWS/Amazon, X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and ChatGPT if you value freedom. There are numerous excellent alternatives available.
Out of the loop. What's the story with WhatsApp? Backdoors?
Some say it's enough it landed in meta hands few years ago.
Good luck with AWS. You need to stop using the internet. Are you going to check IP address of each website's web server you visit?
The adblock I use[0] (based on uBlock) hasn't been available on the Chrome store nearly since day 1.
[0] https://adnauseam.io/
When I click the link for this story, Edge (stop laughing. Please.) pops up "uBlock Origin works on Microsoft Edge." (It's already there, Edge, but thank you).
Edge is based on Chromium, so would that mean this breakage will eventually apply to Edge as the Manifest changes, uhm, manifest to Chromium-based products? Or is this just a Google Chrome thing?
FWIW I keep Firefox around but I have to admit I like Edge's smooth sync of bookmarks and settings across machines and even different platforms. I switched about two years ago when Edge was clearly faster and lighter. It's no longer as lightweight and there are slowly accumulating annoyances coming mostly from some Microsoft Clippy-esque attempts to make some tasks "easier" (mostly via Copilot) but I still prefer it to Firefox. My former employer/retiree benefits site, for example, won't open at all in Firefox. I've considered other Chromium based browsers like Brave but haven't (yet) been sufficiently motivated to switch. (Give Microsoft some time, I expect they'll eshit Edge eventually).
Many Chromium-based browsers will keep Manifest v2 support for a while. But eventually the upstream Chromium codebase will diverge enough that it becomes too much work to keep it and they will be forced to drop it as well.
The manifest situation simply doesn't apply to Brave in relation to adblockers specifically. That is, Brave will function like uBlock without having to install uBlock as an extension - that's kinda the whole point of Brave (blocking ads / making them opt in only). That said, it is true extensions one may use that are affected by the manifest version change may be affected in Brave.
Hey there, nice shilling for brave. 1 thread, 4 comments!
what ll it take to convert 80% of the world wide web users from chrome to firefox. can we write a super duper complicated migrator of sorts that literally installs firefox on behalf of the user, migrates all their data, migrates all extensions from chrome to firefox, even suggests alternative extensions for the ones that are not available and market the hell out of this migrator across x, bluesky, reddit etc?, One click migration from chrome to firefox, 0 tinkering
The largest web properties pushing Firefox to users, or perhaps social media campaigns. It's an outreach effort, the technical details are already solved. Make the Google/Chrome brand toxic.
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/privacy-security/how-to-switch-f...
This is how Internet Explorer (via Windows), Chrome (via Google Search and YouTube) and Safari (via iOS) gained significant market share. Through another platform or service that they owned, that they could use to promote their browser.
But large Web properties do not gain anything by promoting Firefox. Many are ad-supported, so getting rid of uBlock Origin is a good thing for them. Only having to test on Google Chrome (and maybe Safari) is cheaper for them. There has to be something in it for them to promote Firefox or an alternative browser.
To migrate, the average user will need to see the problem first. Most people wouldn't care enough about it even if they magically could press a button and migrate.
In the attention economy the browser and the mobile OS (and soon your LLM/Perplexity agent) are the most important points to control the aggregate user data. So it's a lost battle.
For a sub 0.01% of the nerds there would be alternatives for the non-DRM content, but this wouldn't change the big picture.
It's like the junk food business. Yes it's bad for people, but it's so addictive...
What's keeping me from moving away from Chrome is the password storage & autofilling. Is Firefox's password manager just as good?
Yup. Sync across all devices, auto fill works a exactly as expected, and it's a couple click process to port over all your saved info from Chrome.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/manage-your-logins-fire...
Why not use an agnostic one like LastPass or one of the others?
Having the passwords available automatically when logging in to gmail on a new device feels simpler and easier since I'd be doing that anyway, as opposed to needing to DL a new app
Opening FF with my existing 3 windows and 100 open tabs would be all it took :-)
I'm just hoping for AI coding to get competent enough in next few years to throw in deprecated chrome extensions code and get it converted to firefox.
The vast majority of Chrome extensions work on Firefox. Up until Manifest V2 being deprecated, the reverse was true, too.
Yes but Chrome has many niche extensions that prevents me from migrating, I've tried since the manifest v2 news.
I don't mean "the same plugin published on extension stores", I mean "copy the extension files from Chrome to Firefox" compatibility. They're both WebEx standard, and the API compatibility between the two is huge. If there's a Chrome extension that you don't find published for Firefox, there is a solid chance the author just didn't bother publishing it on the Firefox Addons repo.
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On Firefox, I use a uBlock Origin script to block Twitch ads. (Normal filters don't work on Twitch.) Is it possible to block Twitch ads with uBO-Lite as well?
Do you mind sharing which uBlock Origin script you use for blocking ads on Twitch? I tried one a while ago but didn't get it to work.
Yup they finally got me to switch to Firefox
And that is precisely the moment I migrated to Firefox, together with my entire family.
Chrome is dead. Long live Firefox.
I am coming from a place of ignorance, but could uBlock have worked on Manifest v3?
It seems like it would have worked, but the danger was over time Google report less and less information to the extension, but as it is today, the extension would have worked the same on v3 as v2?
As I say - I am ignorant sorry, its hard to search for an answer to this specific question
Edit: Sorry the answer is here: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/Frequently-as...
The ability to run code to decide if a request should be blocked was removed in v3.
If it could work in v3 it would have been updated. There are some alternate v3 versions that don't work as well.
Why not swap to dns blocking with NextDNS or something similar? Take it out of the browsers hands?
That’s not enough. Many sites serve ads from the same domains that they serve content from. Google, meta, etc. You need to have extensions that can parse the DOM and remove content from it.
What happened to web standards? Why are we all slaves to Google and Chrome anyway?
Time to try Brave. Out of the box, it's very nice.
It's been like this for quite a while already
Without ad blockers, I will not even browse the internet.
How is it still running on Brave then?
https://brave.com/blog/brave-shields-manifest-v3/
On kinda related news: Firefox don't allow you to set the default homepage. What's up with that?
Works fine for me. Settings > Home > Homepage > Custom URL
I've moved from chrome to ff because of ublock extension, but I also have an app that remembers of stuff set as my default homepage, the other day I realized that ff don't allow for a custom home page. That why I left the comment above, I think they are somewhat related
The future and maximum freedom lies in open source, where a team of dedicated users or developers actively de-enshittifies products.
If you are on Arch Linux, try ungoogled-chromium:
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/ungoogled-chromium or precompiled https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/ungoogled-chromium-bin possibly with https://github.com/NeverDecaf/chromium-web-store and possibly using a .config/chromium-flags.conf like this:
--extension-mime-request-handling=always-prompt-for-install --enable-features=AcceleratedVideoDecodeLinuxGL --wm-window-animations-disabled --animation-duration-scale=0
Timely updates, team defending manifest V2, no user data stealing or background scanning b/s, browser as it should be. Got a 10 year old machine with Intel iGPU and even video acceleration in the browser works.
Monopolists gonna use every anti-competitive tactic in the book to protect their racket.
I use skipvids.com now. No ads and background playback
Firefox sucks and doesn’t work for me. Maybe I will give Brave with ublock a try.
You don't need uBlock installed on Brave. Brave basically is uBlock (if uBlock where a browser).
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If you do not interfere in politics, eventually politics will interfere with you.
Is there any justification for this beyond increasing Google's ad revenue?
Performance. For faster page loads.
uBlock Origin Lite still blocks ads on Chrome, but it's faster than uBlock Origin.
I don't expect Google's ad revenue has changed meaningfully at all, assuming people switch to uBlock Origin Lite.
The difference is negligible: https://nitter.net/gorhill/status/1792648742752981086 (uBOL appears as adblox).
It blocks less ads, it's not surprising that it's faster.
I thought the browser would be faster when blocking more ads, not fewer ads.
I doubt they're benchmarking things properly. Most likely some flawed "ad blocking speed" that doesn't measure ads and tracking scripts that are loaded / parsed etc.
Not even sure it's a valid comparison; are you even an ad blocker that can be compared with another ad blocker if you don't block ads properly. You can get a lot more speedup with an ad blocker that blocks nothing. Ad blocking speed would be 0 microseconds :P
Funny thing is: It’s to prepare for when Chrome is spun off from Google, due to increasing US government pressure.
See: https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/08/new-doj-proposal-still-cal...
The quiet part which none of us are saying out loud (bec. we love UBO) is that it's insane to allow extensions to have that much power.
uBlock Origin is obv a great great extension and I'm considering switching to FF just for that one extension, but consider what some newfangled AI extension developed by a random dude can do to the webpage you're viewing - anything UBO can do! So I think they have a decent case but I wish there was a carveout for UBO
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I was here, I saw the crime
The crime has been years in the making, this is just burning the body.
Just curious, has google solved the ads-as-malware-vector of infection?
So they really want to get broken up due to shady advertising deals. :-)
I switched to firefox a few months ago because of this. However, I just switched back last week. Overall firefox is a better browser. The ability to screenshot in the browser is so useful and I used it 10x per day, not having it in chrome is a real pain.
But.. nobody tests on it anymore I think. Lots of popular sites are very slow and laggy with it, including sites I need for work. I don't think this is because of inferior technology, I think I just think nobody spends the time to make sure things work well on firefox. I could split-brain and use chrome for github and some other stuff but that is such a pain when clicking links.
The other issue is I think firefox support will only get worse. Their market share is back to where it was in IE6 days and dropping.
I'm pretty sure I'm being brigaded haha, why would this comment get downmodded?
We really need a Slashdot-style meta-moderation system. Certain things always get brigaded, especially anything about the relative merits of browsers. It would be nice to flag people who only show up to downvote and reduce their impact.
I desperately want to pay for a browser that caters to me
Google is betting hundreds of billions of dollars against you being able to do that.
The shareholders will be grateful! A great victory for google!
sideload it! mine is working fine still.
Time to set up Pi-Hole on my Rapsberry Pi 4
https://pi-hole.net/
just run a pihole. superior to a browser plugin in every way
Until you want to allow a site.
Use Brave browser - both on phones and laptops. The ad-free experience will change your perspective on what internet looks like. You won't miss Google.
It's amazing that every post about Brave gets downvoted. I wish the downvoters would explain why they're doing this, but I guess they aren't very... brave.
Use Brave, it’s been many years and people have few complaints.
I moved to Adguard years ago when I found that uBlock Origin Lite doesn't support custom filter lists. If Adguard can support that on MV3 then uBlock Origin is artificially gimping uBOL on Edge/Chrome.
Re Custom filter lists
https://adguard.info/en/blog/review-issues-in-chrome-web-sto...
It's still working on edge, but I wonder how long that will last.
https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/releases
uBlockOrigin “Lite” is a good(?) replacement afaict
It's faster and safer and blocks pretty much everything.
It is a good ad blocker!
Meanwhile scam cookie stuffing extensions like Honey are 'featured'
Stop using Chrome.
How fitting: I am also no longer available for Chrome.
Safari on the Mac and Firefox on Linux and Windows it is for me.
how about vivaldi? original developers from Opera? I totally forgot about it in last 5 years, ayone using it?
works fine here, though it says it "may soon no longer be supported"
Edge store doesn't even mention that, in fact it's featured.
I switched to edge canary on my phone because the dev options allow you to install extensions by id/crx, which I've used to get ublock origin, though it crashes sometimes, and doesn't work when you reload the whole browser, until you refresh the page or manually reactivate the extension....
Kiwi browser is also good for adblocking on Android.
Kiwi Browser is officially discontinued
https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/1i86ybn/kiwi_brows...
Oh no! Thanks for the info. I'm assuming Edge on Android has all the crappy tracking and dark patterns of the desktop version?
FF mobile has mv2 support, as does its many forks.
Yes. I used Firefox on Android for a long time, but I was annoyed by the performance and inability to save page as MHTML (that's a very niche peeve).
Depending on how long ago that was, it might be worth checking back in with it. It had a complete rewrite a few years back and it's now just as good as chrome mobile - I use IronFox, but there are also a few other forks.
Still doesn't do mhtml though.
https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/el/reports/com.microso...
But hey! We got command and commandfor in HTML! Progress, amirite?
Do no evil!
How long do you reckon before firefox/mozilla follow suit? Weeks? Months? Years? A year is my guess.
Makes me happy I never used chrome.
uBlock Origin still works in Firefox. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin...
And you can, I believe, still just modify your hosts table to block out ads in Chrome. https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts
Or your router's DNS using something like NextDNS. https://nextdns.io/
Ads suck. Support content where you can, but even when you pay they still serve ads / tracking scripts. So fuck 'em. Block all the ads.
It's funny how on Safari, the webstore link shows a message:
> Switch to Chrome to install extensions and themes
If I owned Mozilla I'd be blasting commercials full-force about this until all my marketing budget runs out.
Instead, they create a Terms of Use giving them rights to your data and remove the promise not to sell personal data. I love Firefox, but Mozilla either does not understand their users or just loves shooting themselves in the foot. Every time I think they have learned their lesson, they make another stupid decision.
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Curiously, it is still working in Chrome on my laptop (running Linux Mint) right now.
if you are in tech do your friends and family a favor:
Download and setup Brave browser on their device. I haven't seen an ad in years.
https://brave.com/
It's funny people try to avoid Brave because of the crypto stuff init - like you can totally ignore that (it's not even enabled by default). So in daily usage, it behaves as if uBlock was a browser (rather than a Browser extension). It's great.
Still the same engine as Chrome, so it doesn't do anything against the monoculture of Chromium. Firefox works just as well, admittedly they'd have to install an extension instead of ad blocking being there by default.
This post is about UBlock being blocked on CHROME. Naturally, the folks interested in this development are likely interested in a chromium based browser that does allow blocking ads. Brave is a solid solution here.
Does this mean it won't be able to get updates to extension code(not block lists) anymore?
I am getting high CPU usage with uBO since yesterday but I do have a lot of tabs so I was wondering if thats a bug that will get fixed.
Switch to UBL, the manifest v3 successor to UBO, to continue to get updates, the performance is better too.
the internet is unusable without uBlock origin. I would never use a browser that did not support uBlock.
If are unfortunate enough to still use Chrome, please read:
https://contrachrome.com/
Uh, do Brave users need to sideload now? What about updates? Any official guidance from Brave on this?
uBlock Origin is available from brave://settings/extensions/v2; see https://brave.com/blog/brave-shields-manifest-v3/
uBlock Origin always worked best in Firefox anyhow:
https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...
What's frustrating to me is how predictable all this is if you analyze the world with a materialist understanding.
To boil it down, the most dominant philosophy, whether peole know it or not, is idealism. In idealism, people, nations, corporations, etc have some inherent quality beyond their physical make up. It's almost spiritual in that way. Even the concept of a soul is an idealist position. It's largely a circular argument that doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
So, the USA on the world stage is the good guy because we are the good guys, regardless of our actions or the consequences thereof. So an awful lot of effort is spent to label certain actors as "good" or "bad" to suit some objective. Superhero movies and a perfect example of idealism and it's no coincidence that they've had a renaissance since 9/11.
Materialism is simply the view that the physical world is all there is. The consequence of this is that we affect the material world and it affects us. There are no inherent qualities like being "good" or "bad". Instead, those are simply labels you apply to the actions of an entity.
My point here is that for years Google pushed this good guy narrative (ie "don't be evil") but any materialist understands that Google is a corporation so ultimately will act like any other corporation.
Google makes money selling ads. Ad blockers affect Google's bottom line. The relentless pursuit of increasing profits means fighting ad blockers was always an inevitability. Nobody should be surprised by that.
Now some will point to Google's control of Chrome as an antitrust issue and it probably is but that misses the point. A corporation that solely owns Chrome will ultimately act in a user-hostile way too because that's what corporations do.
The only long-term successful model for something like Chrome is to be something like the Wikimedia Foundation. The profit motive will always ultimately destroy it otherwise. If you can even find a business model for a browser, which I have serious doubts about.
A materialist knows all this because of how the workers relate to the means of production. A collective (which Wikimedia Foundation is, basically) is where the workers own the means of production. A corporation introduces capital owners whose interests are in direct opposition to that of the users.
just another reason to break up the monopoly
Chrome will now be sold to TotallyNotGoogle, we're saved.
that's how it works, there are legal ramifications otherwise
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You are still allowed and able to block advertisements with extensions.
It was the pre-roll youtube ad that made me realise ublock was dead :-(
seeing your first YT ad in a decade is quite the shock!
It is absolutely bonkers how many ads are in YouTube now. Nearly unusable without an ad blocker.
"Don't be evil"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_be_evil