No conspiracy here. Google is no longer the "Do No Evil" "Don't Be Evil" upstart with a minimalist aesthetic, inspiring ethos, and great tech. They haven't been that company for a long time now...
Exemplary
I don't want to go all conspiracy or anything, but it's very hard not to see this as a convenient way for Google to gimp extensions that directly contribute to a loss of revenue for the company. Maybe I'm not seeing the big picture?
No conspiracy here. Google is no longer the "Do No Evil" "Don't Be Evil" upstart with a minimalist aesthetic, inspiring ethos, and great tech. They haven't been that company for a long time now but still seem to coast based on the significant goodwill they garnered in their early years.
This kind of predatory, take everything without asking approach isn't new, and there are plenty of examples going back for a long time. Remember when it was revealed that their streetview cars weren't just taking pictures, but were also scanning the names and locations of all available wireless networks? Pretty invasive right? Well, they went beyond even that and were downloading payload data from open wireless networks. The cars were on the road in 2007, and they weren't caught hoovering up actual personal information until 2010. At the time, Google said that it was a simple error, as they always do. It took until 2012 and an FCC investigation that we learned that the code to extract payload data was intentionally programmed and known by the team of engineers. Not a good look, Google.
I can't be sure of intent nor can I ignore the possibility of other narratives being true, but from an outside, connect-the-dots perspective, it sure looks like Google
hired an engineer with a background in using cars to facilitate widespread data theft from wireless networks,
put him on a team that oversees a worldwide distribution of cars,
allowed him to write code for the cars,
helped him in editing and debugging said code,
and allowed said code to run on the cars they distributed across the world for years.
"Oops" would hardly be believable under normal circumstances, but it's downright patronizing here. Especially in light of the fact that Google also
lied about all of this when caught,
and intentionally obstructed the investigation thereafter.
They are not the "Do No Evil" "Don't Be Evil" company anymore. The Google that I and many others used to love is gone.
Google's business model pushes it to know everything about everyone, and Google is doing everything it can to make sure it has a constant feed of rich, relevant, and detailed information about as many people as possible. They also don't particularly care about us because they don't see us as customers but instead as the raw materials out of which they build their empire. Human behavior is their oil. They drill for it everywhere, extract it using any means necessary, and sell its derivative products.
If you start looking at Google's behavior through this lens, their actions start to make perfect sense. For example, why would Google shutter a previously beloved platform of theirs (e.g. Reader, Hangouts, Inbox, etc.)? It was either a misdig or the well was dried up. Look at Google Play Music. They're replacing it with YouTube Music. Why would they create a new service that's almost functionally identical to an old one? Because GPM's oil is dried up. Why did they close YouTube Gaming? It didn't strike oil. Both services failed at being behavioral data funnels. So they'll shut them down and try again in a different way. YTG didn't get them the gaming data they wanted, but maybe Stadia will.
Remember when Google Chat used the XMPP protocol and was interoperable with outside clients? How many new iterations of chat has Google tried since then? Each one has been more centralized and hooked into Google than the last. Each new platform or project they put forth is an attempt to extend the reach of their data gathering so that they can get even more information about even more people.
Relative to this topic, Google is of course going to dress up breaking ad-blocking and tracker-blocking as something other than what it is: an attempt to push even further into people's private lives so that they can monitor them and sell their findings. Based on their past behavior alone we shouldn't assume positive intent, but even more than that, we should not, under any circumstances, give an advertising company the benefit of the doubt on ad-blocking. They're simply digging for more oil, and this is one way for them to do it.
Unfortunately users are really bad at recognizing when something is the fault of the base app vs. add-ons they've added to it. We just had this thread the other day about developers asking distros...
Unfortunately users are really bad at recognizing when something is the fault of the base app vs. add-ons they've added to it. We just had this thread the other day about developers asking distros to stop theming their apps because they get blamed for it, and it happens in a lot of other areas as well. It was annoying at reddit all the time (and still is, I'm sure)—we'd change something that would break a feature in RES, and users would freak out at us about it. You can see it constantly with Beat Saber lately as well; whenever they update the game it breaks the mods, and users get angry at the Beat Saber devs.
I think it's a similar situation as I mentioned in this comment a couple of weeks ago: it has a justification that seems reasonable on the surface, but it also happens to have a significant benefit to Google, so it's most likely not altruistic and probably is only being done because of that benefit.
Hey, if it gets all the power users onto Chrome, plenty of the people in close proximity will switch, too, and hopefully give Firefox a neat lil boost. Sucks majorly for users who genuinely liked...
Hey, if it gets all the power users onto Chrome, plenty of the people in close proximity will switch, too, and hopefully give Firefox a neat lil boost.
Sucks majorly for users who genuinely liked Chrome, but that browser seems to be headed towards a point of no return with this and other recent news (like Google including an option to block trackers that's ineffective on Google's trackers.) They're definitely trying their hardest to abuse their dominant position in the browser ecosystem now. Even the browsers that aren't technically theirs are still nearly completely under their control.
For years I've been trying to figure out why exactly people like Chrome so much for them to have achieved such market share, even allowing for distribution with Android. Any time I've had to use...
For years I've been trying to figure out why exactly people like Chrome so much for them to have achieved such market share, even allowing for distribution with Android. Any time I've had to use it, I've found it very user-unfriendly (granted, I'm something of a tinkerer). Is it just integration with Google products?
Back when it was basically just a usable bundle of rendering engines that happened to be maintained by one of the richest and most powerful companies on the planet, Chrome was (a) damn-snappy fast...
For years I've been trying to figure out why exactly people like Chrome so much for them to have achieved such market share
Back when it was basically just a usable bundle of rendering engines that happened to be maintained by one of the richest and most powerful companies on the planet, Chrome was (a) damn-snappy fast and (b) basically devoid of all the 'crap you don't need' in a browser, which helped keep it damn-snappy fast. Razor-thin memory use, basically just gave you the content and some simplified-polished UI elements to manipulate them with, highly stable and able to race dropping plates for Google's ad campaign for how fast it was. For people annoyed with browser bloat, it was a solution which 'just gave you the web' as you wanted it.
Around when I got rid of it there was little or no reason by comparison. Its minimialism was gone, it'd gotten so sickeningly G-tied that even in the 'source' Chromium project there was no way to disable some ugly UI elements that integrated with their platform (not even in the feature switches, so probably "because Google willed it"), its memory footprint was a joke compared to what it was, it continued to bundle things I didn't want or need and if it was faster than my other browsers the difference seemed negligible.
Performance. I use chromium and it performs much better than Firefox on my Mac. On Linux I’ve found that gap to be even wider. Chromium dev build is the only browser to support VA-API on Linux...
Performance. I use chromium and it performs much better than Firefox on my Mac.
On Linux I’ve found that gap to be even wider. Chromium dev build is the only browser to support VA-API on Linux right now, and I don’t think that situation is going to change any time soon.
Firefox has never worked well for me - it's always been crash-happy on Windows. I've tried it on many computers, and Chrome always works great, while Firefox has never been particularly stable. On...
Firefox has never worked well for me - it's always been crash-happy on Windows. I've tried it on many computers, and Chrome always works great, while Firefox has never been particularly stable. On Linux, however, they're about equally stable.
Chrome manages large amounts of tabs better in my experience (and executes Flash content much quicker), and it is less buggy - there are fewer random CSS quirks, and Chrome properly supports the noscript tag. I can't get <noscript> working reliably in Firefox, but it behaves exactly how I expect in Chrome.
My biggest gripe with Firefox, though, is this shit. In 19 years, there is still no reliable way to work around CTRL+Q on Linux. Numerous patches have been proposed but justifications for shitty behavior like "each new dialog, each new pref diminishes the rest of them" and that CTRL+Q is apparently a "common shortcut" have prevented any from being merged in. This comment, made 18 years ago, was ahead of its time:
Even if, ala Opera, Moz could be enhanced to restart and reload all tabs using the URLs they last had loaded many pages would still would not be restored to the previous state. Also, some news sites expire pages. So not all page reloads will work.
So many pages maintain state with JS and force you to start over when you refresh the page (or quit the browser), it's a large setback every time I accidentally hit CTRL+Q instead of CTRL+W. Chrome has never had this "feature", and I cannot use Firefox for anything more than testing due to its insistence on keeping it around.
To me it boils down to keybinding configurations. On Firefox it’s pretty obvious they don’t want you to mess with that (you have “code it in”), while Chrome and Chromium have dedicated GUIs for it...
To me it boils down to keybinding configurations. On Firefox it’s pretty obvious they don’t want you to mess with that (you have “code it in”), while Chrome and Chromium have dedicated GUIs for it and extensions have access to more combinations.
Firefox also has trouble understanding my relatively complex xmodmap/xcape arrangement, so it reads my simulated esc either astab or alt. All other programs work fine.
In addition to the Firefox option, uBlock does exist for Safari/macOS. It's certainly got some problems, especially in the extension availability department. But I find Safari to use a lot less...
In addition to the Firefox option, uBlock does exist for Safari/macOS. It's certainly got some problems, especially in the extension availability department. But I find Safari to use a lot less battery than Chrome and saves me from the icky feeling of Google products. I was shocked to find that the plethora of Chrome extensions I was using really aren't all that helpful in the long run and Safari does the job just fine. RES might be the one extension I truly miss. Going Google-free has been one of the better decisions I've made in the last few years. I'd encourage others to give it a chance.
Oof that's sad. Perhaps the Chrome news will help put a spotlight (pun possibly intended) on the extension issues in that space. There are certainly paid options like OneBlockerX that come close...
Oof that's sad. Perhaps the Chrome news will help put a spotlight (pun possibly intended) on the extension issues in that space. There are certainly paid options like OneBlockerX that come close enough for comfort as well.
I personally just prefer not to run additional software just to achieve one particular purpose. Ublock works so well, I would prefer not to have to miss it (as well as umatrix, but I don't know if...
I personally just prefer not to run additional software just to achieve one particular purpose. Ublock works so well, I would prefer not to have to miss it (as well as umatrix, but I don't know if that runs on safari)
AFAIK, which I don't know a lot, the Safari content blockers are not extra software running while you are browsing but a separate app configures them. This is the mechanism on iOS as well, which...
AFAIK, which I don't know a lot, the Safari content blockers are not extra software running while you are browsing but a separate app configures them. This is the mechanism on iOS as well, which certainly is not allowing 3rd party developers to run code on top of the Safari instance. It's basically what Chrome is doing in this case (noted elsewhere in this thread somewhere) but was created specifically for users to block content and does not share the exact same limits.
I'm kind of surprised at how many people are commenting without understanding the technicalities of this change. Manifest v3 brings both positives and negative tradeoffs. It does not however...
I'm kind of surprised at how many people are commenting without understanding the technicalities of this change. Manifest v3 brings both positives and negative tradeoffs. It does not however prevent adblocking.
Pros of Manifest V3:
It's faster. By not querying the extension on every URL load, it doesn't have to wait as often.
It offers better privacy. Extensions now have to provide a list to Chrome. This way an extension can't scan all your visited URLs and send that data to a third party.
Cons of Manifest V3:
It's not dynamic. This prohibits more complex blocking rules that current adblockers allow.
There's a limit on the number of rules. Though I almost consider this a plus because it forces us to clean up the old filter lists instead of perpetually adding to them. This paper found over 90% of rules on EasyList aren't even effective.
The new system works basically the same as Safari's. The goal is to be faster and more private. You can still block Google's ads fine in the new system, so the comments about anti-competitiveness or Google being "evil" are really missing the mark.
I'm of the opinion that Google should keep both systems but offer a stronger warning during install about the potential security implications. It seems they want to move everybody over to the new system though, and I can understand that as well.
I'm pretty sure someone ran some benchmarks (I'm searching now, having a hard time of it though) on the time it took for extensions to answer back with their replies. Results were beyond...
It's faster. By not querying the extension on every URL load, it doesn't have to wait as often.
I'm pretty sure someone ran some benchmarks (I'm searching now, having a hard time of it though) on the time it took for extensions to answer back with their replies. Results were beyond negligible, was easily lost in variances in the response from the network as far as page loading speed goes. There's not much performance to gain from this in the first place.
I think you're referring to uBlock Origin, right? It is pretty performant as far as adblockers go, and Gorhill is a very talented programmer. Others extensions like Adblock Plus work by applying a...
I think you're referring to uBlock Origin, right? It is pretty performant as far as adblockers go, and Gorhill is a very talented programmer.
Others extensions like Adblock Plus work by applying a large stylesheet with the rules instead. These are loaded on every page, and that has a significant footprint. I know Adblock Plus has lost favour among techies, but it's still a very popular extension in the real world. For that reason I wouldn't be surprised if Google are looking at the numbers and seeing room for improvement.
Honestly I'm surprised Google has allowed content blockers as long as it has; it's a clear conflict of interest for them. Well, this is good news for them and bad news for their users. Hopefully...
Honestly I'm surprised Google has allowed content blockers as long as it has; it's a clear conflict of interest for them.
Well, this is good news for them and bad news for their users. Hopefully most of the content-blocking crowd won't just roll over and surrender, but will switch to Firefox or some other privacy-friendly option instead.
Here's a story. My aunt is terrible with computers, so I'm occasionally drafted in to fix her problems. One time her browser was acting up and while fixing it I mentioned that you could get rid of...
Here's a story.
My aunt is terrible with computers, so I'm occasionally drafted in to fix her problems. One time her browser was acting up and while fixing it I mentioned that you could get rid of ads by installing an extension. Now she didn't have a clue what any of that meant, but her eyes lit up at the mention of "no more ads".
There's a desire among users to see less ads. Something like ublock origin is pretty simple to install and works out the box. It's within the realms of possibility for a non technical user to use.
Most people will not change the default browser that comes with their device. That's a huge reason why Chrome has such a high % of the market. But these blockers could put a dent in Google's revenue if more widely adopted by non technical users like my aunt. Hence the attempt to cut them off before that possibility becomes reality.
Which one would that be exactly? I've been using Firefox since it was called Firebird, but I'm overwhelmingly a Windows user. I've read far too many complaints about Firefox's performance on Mac...
Which one would that be exactly?
I've been using Firefox since it was called Firebird, but I'm overwhelmingly a Windows user. I've read far too many complaints about Firefox's performance on Mac and Linux to dismiss them out of hand.
As far as I can tell, picking a browser on Mac or Linux is a matter of picking the least bad option. They all suck to some extent.
I use Firefox on Linux as my main browser, and almost never notice any performance issues (and I do things like have 100+ tabs open constantly). They've made a lot of improvements.
I use Firefox on Linux as my main browser, and almost never notice any performance issues (and I do things like have 100+ tabs open constantly). They've made a lot of improvements.
The problem with Linux though (in my experience anyway) is that it's actually a loose collection of operating systems that share a name. I can say with some (not perfect, but some) confidence that...
The problem with Linux though (in my experience anyway) is that it's actually a loose collection of operating systems that share a name. I can say with some (not perfect, but some) confidence that "thing X works on Windows" in a way that I simply can't with Linux. The fact that Firefox works perfectly for you or I implies virtually nothing about whether it works for anyone else. I've never had a problem with Firefox on Linux either, but the number of complaints I read every time the subject comes up somewhere like Hacker News suggests that my experience is at the very least not universal.
Firefox has closed the performance gap between it's competitors significantly in the last couple of years. It even out-performs Chrome in many benchmarks.
Firefox has closed the performance gap between it's competitors significantly in the last couple of years. It even out-performs Chrome in many benchmarks.
Maybe for you. There are numerous comments that disagree on the Hackernews post for this announcement. Saying "Firefox has closed the performance gap" when that simply isn't true for a significant...
Maybe for you. There are numerous comments that disagree on the Hackernews post for this announcement. Saying "Firefox has closed the performance gap" when that simply isn't true for a significant portion of users isn't going to get you anywhere.
But how do we know some people complaining on HN are representative of most users? Those could just be a small minority with a bad experience and felt the need to be vocal about it. From a...
But how do we know some people complaining on HN are representative of most users? Those could just be a small minority with a bad experience and felt the need to be vocal about it.
From a scientific perspective, the performance between the two browsers is so close that any difference shouldn't be perceptible except in extreme use cases. And this goes without mentioning Chrome's legendary memory hogging.
I don't think they are representative of most users. I just think there are enough of them complaining of specific and severe performance issues that it's unwise to dismiss them out of hand. From...
I don't think they are representative of most users. I just think there are enough of them complaining of specific and severe performance issues that it's unwise to dismiss them out of hand. From what I've read, it seems that Firefox's Mac issues are long standing, only a problem on certain hardware configurations, and acknowledged by Mozilla. There's no such thing as "a scientific perspective" when it comes to Linux. There are far too many possible configurations, and behavior varies widely between them.
Firefox has been faster than Chrome for quite some time now, and that's on both Mac and Linux. Firefox runs faster than Chrome even on ChromeOS (which, to be fair, is Linux, but I still find it...
Firefox has been faster than Chrome for quite some time now, and that's on both Mac and Linux. Firefox runs faster than Chrome even on ChromeOS (which, to be fair, is Linux, but I still find it funny).
The nail and it's head you've hit.... I've spent the past year devoting a lot of time testing alternatives as well as playing with the Chromium source, and some libraries based on it, thinking I...
The nail and it's head you've hit.... I've spent the past year devoting a lot of time testing alternatives as well as playing with the Chromium source, and some libraries based on it, thinking I might just write my own. I played with Opera and Vivaldi mostly, but I haven't made the jump yet.
But my intention is to remove Google from my life just like I've done with Microsoft (as much as I could anyway, as I do develop Windows based software at times LOL).
Not meaning to start yet-another browser debate... but can I ask you which browser you use and how close does it come to not sucking? For me it's all about using the damn computer & internet the way I want, so flexibility & customization is huge. Lacking that, source code availability. :-)
Anything that isn't Firefox will really inherit Chrome's weaknesses. IMO it's best to cut off that entire family. As far as customizability now I've got some custom browser CSS set up to autohide...
Anything that isn't Firefox will really inherit Chrome's weaknesses. IMO it's best to cut off that entire family. As far as customizability now I've got some custom browser CSS set up to autohide my URL and bookmarks bar and only show them when I hover over my tab bar. Maximum viewing area for the websites. Can't really pull that off in any other browsers. The privacy-friendly syncing with my other devices is nice, and container tabs are excellent.
Firefox and it's many derivatives are the best way to go in my opinion. Apart from offering more customization than Chrome, you also get the benefit of not contributing to Blink's takeover of the...
Firefox and it's many derivatives are the best way to go in my opinion. Apart from offering more customization than Chrome, you also get the benefit of not contributing to Blink's takeover of the web. There are a lot of Firefox-based projects like Pale Moon that serve certain power user niches as well.
How do you get by with just one browser? Do you really sign into your financial accounts with a bunch of extensions installed/ active? I might be over complicating things. On the laptop I use...
How do you get by with just one browser?
Do you really sign into your financial accounts with a bunch of extensions installed/ active?
I might be over complicating things. On the laptop I use vanilla firefox to log into anything secure and I use chrome with a bunch of extensions to surf the web.
The only time I ever use a browser other than Firefox is to test my software in Chrome and Edge. Pretty much every browser has a private mode, and Firefox gives you control over which extensions...
The only time I ever use a browser other than Firefox is to test my software in Chrome and Edge. Pretty much every browser has a private mode, and Firefox gives you control over which extensions are enabled in it.
Firefox containers are also really cool, as they let you compartmentalize different sites into their own quarantined browser session. For example, I have all domains associated with Facebook set to open in a container I created exclusively for Facebook.
I've been successfully using Brave browser for a while. It works well just as a functional de-googled version of Chrome, which lets me use Chrome extensions, so works identically, except for...
I've been successfully using Brave browser for a while. It works well just as a functional de-googled version of Chrome, which lets me use Chrome extensions, so works identically, except for Google Sync. Also the Android app moved the menu bar to the bottom, making one-handed use much easier. Will this manifest change affect Brave, or other Chromium forks?
Unless they've changed plans, my understanding is that they also intend to take those ads they're selling and replace the actual ads on sites with them, effectively making Brave the ad distributor...
Unless they've changed plans, my understanding is that they also intend to take those ads they're selling and replace the actual ads on sites with them, effectively making Brave the ad distributor for sites instead of the one the site actually chose to use.
That's a pretty scummy approach in my opinion, and has the potential for sites to have issues with "their" Brave ads (the ones being shown on their site) that they have absolutely no insight into or ability to control.
It's also worth mentioning how they handle people's money and how their UX/UI imply that the people they're donating to are okay with it : This controversy comes to mind.
It's also worth mentioning how they handle people's money and how their UX/UI imply that the people they're donating to are okay with it :
Yes. Google controls Chromium, the changes will all flow downstream. As far as I understand it, uBlock Origin will no longer work in any of the downstream browsers. That means Opera, Vivaldi,...
Yes. Google controls Chromium, the changes will all flow downstream. As far as I understand it, uBlock Origin will no longer work in any of the downstream browsers. That means Opera, Vivaldi, Brave, now Edge. Some of them might come up with their own built-in alternatives, maybe somebody'll get ballsy and come up with a new API or re-implement or patch back in the old on their own, although odds are they're all too small compared to Chrome for them to consider it to be worth it. Ultimately Google's still the one building the browser that dominates the landscape currently. This is why so many people are sad to see Edge cave in and become another soulless Chrome reskin, even if they didn't use it.
While the changes will all flow downstream, my understanding is that Vivaldi (and most likely others) doesn't just blindly integrate them. I'm no browser expert nor do I have an inside track. But...
While the changes will all flow downstream, my understanding is that Vivaldi (and most likely others) doesn't just blindly integrate them. I'm no browser expert nor do I have an inside track. But I've read a fair bit about it since I'm a software engineer and forks of code is something I'm fairly familiar with.
Just fwiw :-)
No conspiracy here. Google is no longer the
"Do No Evil""Don't Be Evil" upstart with a minimalist aesthetic, inspiring ethos, and great tech. They haven't been that company for a long time now but still seem to coast based on the significant goodwill they garnered in their early years.They've been overreaching on privacy issues for quite some time, and, when called on it, will always say "Oops! Simple mistake!" and know that the problem will blow over. Recently it was not noting the existence of a microphone in the technical specs of the Nest. Before that it was Google continuing to track phones' locations even with the location service turned off.
This kind of predatory, take everything without asking approach isn't new, and there are plenty of examples going back for a long time. Remember when it was revealed that their streetview cars weren't just taking pictures, but were also scanning the names and locations of all available wireless networks? Pretty invasive right? Well, they went beyond even that and were downloading payload data from open wireless networks. The cars were on the road in 2007, and they weren't caught hoovering up actual personal information until 2010. At the time, Google said that it was a simple error, as they always do. It took until 2012 and an FCC investigation that we learned that the code to extract payload data was intentionally programmed and known by the team of engineers. Not a good look, Google.
But it actually gets even worse! The lead engineer they hired? Before working at Google he wrote "the world's first usable 'Wardriving' application for Windows". No wonder Google "deliberately impeded and delayed" the investigation!
I can't be sure of intent nor can I ignore the possibility of other narratives being true, but from an outside, connect-the-dots perspective, it sure looks like Google
"Oops" would hardly be believable under normal circumstances, but it's downright patronizing here. Especially in light of the fact that Google also
They are not the
"Do No Evil""Don't Be Evil" company anymore. The Google that I and many others used to love is gone.Google's business model pushes it to know everything about everyone, and Google is doing everything it can to make sure it has a constant feed of rich, relevant, and detailed information about as many people as possible. They also don't particularly care about us because they don't see us as customers but instead as the raw materials out of which they build their empire. Human behavior is their oil. They drill for it everywhere, extract it using any means necessary, and sell its derivative products.
If you start looking at Google's behavior through this lens, their actions start to make perfect sense. For example, why would Google shutter a previously beloved platform of theirs (e.g. Reader, Hangouts, Inbox, etc.)? It was either a misdig or the well was dried up. Look at Google Play Music. They're replacing it with YouTube Music. Why would they create a new service that's almost functionally identical to an old one? Because GPM's oil is dried up. Why did they close YouTube Gaming? It didn't strike oil. Both services failed at being behavioral data funnels. So they'll shut them down and try again in a different way. YTG didn't get them the gaming data they wanted, but maybe Stadia will.
Remember when Google Chat used the XMPP protocol and was interoperable with outside clients? How many new iterations of chat has Google tried since then? Each one has been more centralized and hooked into Google than the last. Each new platform or project they put forth is an attempt to extend the reach of their data gathering so that they can get even more information about even more people.
Relative to this topic, Google is of course going to dress up breaking ad-blocking and tracker-blocking as something other than what it is: an attempt to push even further into people's private lives so that they can monitor them and sell their findings. Based on their past behavior alone we shouldn't assume positive intent, but even more than that, we should not, under any circumstances, give an advertising company the benefit of the doubt on ad-blocking. They're simply digging for more oil, and this is one way for them to do it.
Unfortunately users are really bad at recognizing when something is the fault of the base app vs. add-ons they've added to it. We just had this thread the other day about developers asking distros to stop theming their apps because they get blamed for it, and it happens in a lot of other areas as well. It was annoying at reddit all the time (and still is, I'm sure)—we'd change something that would break a feature in RES, and users would freak out at us about it. You can see it constantly with Beat Saber lately as well; whenever they update the game it breaks the mods, and users get angry at the Beat Saber devs.
I think it's a similar situation as I mentioned in this comment a couple of weeks ago: it has a justification that seems reasonable on the surface, but it also happens to have a significant benefit to Google, so it's most likely not altruistic and probably is only being done because of that benefit.
Hey, if it gets all the power users onto Chrome, plenty of the people in close proximity will switch, too, and hopefully give Firefox a neat lil boost.
Sucks majorly for users who genuinely liked Chrome, but that browser seems to be headed towards a point of no return with this and other recent news (like Google including an option to block trackers that's ineffective on Google's trackers.) They're definitely trying their hardest to abuse their dominant position in the browser ecosystem now. Even the browsers that aren't technically theirs are still nearly completely under their control.
For years I've been trying to figure out why exactly people like Chrome so much for them to have achieved such market share, even allowing for distribution with Android. Any time I've had to use it, I've found it very user-unfriendly (granted, I'm something of a tinkerer). Is it just integration with Google products?
Back when it was basically just a usable bundle of rendering engines that happened to be maintained by one of the richest and most powerful companies on the planet, Chrome was (a) damn-snappy fast and (b) basically devoid of all the 'crap you don't need' in a browser, which helped keep it damn-snappy fast. Razor-thin memory use, basically just gave you the content and some simplified-polished UI elements to manipulate them with, highly stable and able to race dropping plates for Google's ad campaign for how fast it was. For people annoyed with browser bloat, it was a solution which 'just gave you the web' as you wanted it.
Around when I got rid of it there was little or no reason by comparison. Its minimialism was gone, it'd gotten so sickeningly G-tied that even in the 'source' Chromium project there was no way to disable some ugly UI elements that integrated with their platform (not even in the feature switches, so probably "because Google willed it"), its memory footprint was a joke compared to what it was, it continued to bundle things I didn't want or need and if it was faster than my other browsers the difference seemed negligible.
Performance. I use chromium and it performs much better than Firefox on my Mac.
On Linux I’ve found that gap to be even wider. Chromium dev build is the only browser to support VA-API on Linux right now, and I don’t think that situation is going to change any time soon.
Firefox has never worked well for me - it's always been crash-happy on Windows. I've tried it on many computers, and Chrome always works great, while Firefox has never been particularly stable. On Linux, however, they're about equally stable.
Chrome manages large amounts of tabs better in my experience (and executes Flash content much quicker), and it is less buggy - there are fewer random CSS quirks, and Chrome properly supports the noscript tag. I can't get
<noscript>working reliably in Firefox, but it behaves exactly how I expect in Chrome.My biggest gripe with Firefox, though, is this shit. In 19 years, there is still no reliable way to work around CTRL+Q on Linux. Numerous patches have been proposed but justifications for shitty behavior like "each new dialog, each new pref diminishes the rest of them" and that CTRL+Q is apparently a "common shortcut" have prevented any from being merged in. This comment, made 18 years ago, was ahead of its time:
So many pages maintain state with JS and force you to start over when you refresh the page (or quit the browser), it's a large setback every time I accidentally hit CTRL+Q instead of CTRL+W. Chrome has never had this "feature", and I cannot use Firefox for anything more than testing due to its insistence on keeping it around.
Incorrect, I'm afraid – until M70 (released in mid-October), ctrl-shift-Q would exit Chrome without a prompt.
To me it boils down to keybinding configurations. On Firefox it’s pretty obvious they don’t want you to mess with that (you have “code it in”), while Chrome and Chromium have dedicated GUIs for it and extensions have access to more combinations.
Firefox also has trouble understanding my relatively complex xmodmap/xcape arrangement, so it reads my simulated
esceither astaboralt. All other programs work fine.In addition to the Firefox option, uBlock does exist for Safari/macOS. It's certainly got some problems, especially in the extension availability department. But I find Safari to use a lot less battery than Chrome and saves me from the icky feeling of Google products. I was shocked to find that the plethora of Chrome extensions I was using really aren't all that helpful in the long run and Safari does the job just fine. RES might be the one extension I truly miss. Going Google-free has been one of the better decisions I've made in the last few years. I'd encourage others to give it a chance.
Next update ublock won't be supported by safari
Oof that's sad. Perhaps the Chrome news will help put a spotlight (pun possibly intended) on the extension issues in that space. There are certainly paid options like OneBlockerX that come close enough for comfort as well.
I personally just prefer not to run additional software just to achieve one particular purpose. Ublock works so well, I would prefer not to have to miss it (as well as umatrix, but I don't know if that runs on safari)
AFAIK, which I don't know a lot, the Safari content blockers are not extra software running while you are browsing but a separate app configures them. This is the mechanism on iOS as well, which certainly is not allowing 3rd party developers to run code on top of the Safari instance. It's basically what Chrome is doing in this case (noted elsewhere in this thread somewhere) but was created specifically for users to block content and does not share the exact same limits.
I'm kind of surprised at how many people are commenting without understanding the technicalities of this change. Manifest v3 brings both positives and negative tradeoffs. It does not however prevent adblocking.
Pros of Manifest V3:
Cons of Manifest V3:
The new system works basically the same as Safari's. The goal is to be faster and more private. You can still block Google's ads fine in the new system, so the comments about anti-competitiveness or Google being "evil" are really missing the mark.
I'm of the opinion that Google should keep both systems but offer a stronger warning during install about the potential security implications. It seems they want to move everybody over to the new system though, and I can understand that as well.
I'm pretty sure someone ran some benchmarks (I'm searching now, having a hard time of it though) on the time it took for extensions to answer back with their replies. Results were beyond negligible, was easily lost in variances in the response from the network as far as page loading speed goes. There's not much performance to gain from this in the first place.
I think you're referring to uBlock Origin, right? It is pretty performant as far as adblockers go, and Gorhill is a very talented programmer.
Others extensions like Adblock Plus work by applying a large stylesheet with the rules instead. These are loaded on every page, and that has a significant footprint. I know Adblock Plus has lost favour among techies, but it's still a very popular extension in the real world. For that reason I wouldn't be surprised if Google are looking at the numbers and seeing room for improvement.
Honestly I'm surprised Google has allowed content blockers as long as it has; it's a clear conflict of interest for them.
Well, this is good news for them and bad news for their users. Hopefully most of the content-blocking crowd won't just roll over and surrender, but will switch to Firefox or some other privacy-friendly option instead.
Here's a story.
My aunt is terrible with computers, so I'm occasionally drafted in to fix her problems. One time her browser was acting up and while fixing it I mentioned that you could get rid of ads by installing an extension. Now she didn't have a clue what any of that meant, but her eyes lit up at the mention of "no more ads".
There's a desire among users to see less ads. Something like ublock origin is pretty simple to install and works out the box. It's within the realms of possibility for a non technical user to use.
Most people will not change the default browser that comes with their device. That's a huge reason why Chrome has such a high % of the market. But these blockers could put a dent in Google's revenue if more widely adopted by non technical users like my aunt. Hence the attempt to cut them off before that possibility becomes reality.
Use Firefox!
What computers are shipping with Chrome as the default browser (besides Chromebooks)
Android phones.
Turning off automatic updates on the Mac... will buy you a few months, assuming you are OK with the security risks of having old software installed.
Or you could just install a browser that doesn't suck.
Which one would that be exactly?
I've been using Firefox since it was called Firebird, but I'm overwhelmingly a Windows user. I've read far too many complaints about Firefox's performance on Mac and Linux to dismiss them out of hand.
As far as I can tell, picking a browser on Mac or Linux is a matter of picking the least bad option. They all suck to some extent.
I use Firefox on Linux as my main browser, and almost never notice any performance issues (and I do things like have 100+ tabs open constantly). They've made a lot of improvements.
The problem with Linux though (in my experience anyway) is that it's actually a loose collection of operating systems that share a name. I can say with some (not perfect, but some) confidence that "thing X works on Windows" in a way that I simply can't with Linux. The fact that Firefox works perfectly for you or I implies virtually nothing about whether it works for anyone else. I've never had a problem with Firefox on Linux either, but the number of complaints I read every time the subject comes up somewhere like Hacker News suggests that my experience is at the very least not universal.
Firefox has closed the performance gap between it's competitors significantly in the last couple of years. It even out-performs Chrome in many benchmarks.
Maybe for you. There are numerous comments that disagree on the Hackernews post for this announcement. Saying "Firefox has closed the performance gap" when that simply isn't true for a significant portion of users isn't going to get you anywhere.
But how do we know some people complaining on HN are representative of most users? Those could just be a small minority with a bad experience and felt the need to be vocal about it.
From a scientific perspective, the performance between the two browsers is so close that any difference shouldn't be perceptible except in extreme use cases. And this goes without mentioning Chrome's legendary memory hogging.
I don't think they are representative of most users. I just think there are enough of them complaining of specific and severe performance issues that it's unwise to dismiss them out of hand. From what I've read, it seems that Firefox's Mac issues are long standing, only a problem on certain hardware configurations, and acknowledged by Mozilla. There's no such thing as "a scientific perspective" when it comes to Linux. There are far too many possible configurations, and behavior varies widely between them.
Firefox has been faster than Chrome for quite some time now, and that's on both Mac and Linux. Firefox runs faster than Chrome even on ChromeOS (which, to be fair, is Linux, but I still find it funny).
The nail and it's head you've hit.... I've spent the past year devoting a lot of time testing alternatives as well as playing with the Chromium source, and some libraries based on it, thinking I might just write my own. I played with Opera and Vivaldi mostly, but I haven't made the jump yet.
But my intention is to remove Google from my life just like I've done with Microsoft (as much as I could anyway, as I do develop Windows based software at times LOL).
Not meaning to start yet-another browser debate... but can I ask you which browser you use and how close does it come to not sucking? For me it's all about using the damn computer & internet the way I want, so flexibility & customization is huge. Lacking that, source code availability. :-)
Anything that isn't Firefox will really inherit Chrome's weaknesses. IMO it's best to cut off that entire family. As far as customizability now I've got some custom browser CSS set up to autohide my URL and bookmarks bar and only show them when I hover over my tab bar. Maximum viewing area for the websites. Can't really pull that off in any other browsers. The privacy-friendly syncing with my other devices is nice, and container tabs are excellent.
Firefox and it's many derivatives are the best way to go in my opinion. Apart from offering more customization than Chrome, you also get the benefit of not contributing to Blink's takeover of the web. There are a lot of Firefox-based projects like Pale Moon that serve certain power user niches as well.
How do you get by with just one browser?
Do you really sign into your financial accounts with a bunch of extensions installed/ active?
I might be over complicating things. On the laptop I use vanilla firefox to log into anything secure and I use chrome with a bunch of extensions to surf the web.
The only time I ever use a browser other than Firefox is to test my software in Chrome and Edge. Pretty much every browser has a private mode, and Firefox gives you control over which extensions are enabled in it.
Firefox containers are also really cool, as they let you compartmentalize different sites into their own quarantined browser session. For example, I have all domains associated with Facebook set to open in a container I created exclusively for Facebook.
Interesting. Do you diligently use private mode before signing into anything that needs extra security?
I've been successfully using Brave browser for a while. It works well just as a functional de-googled version of Chrome, which lets me use Chrome extensions, so works identically, except for Google Sync. Also the Android app moved the menu bar to the bottom, making one-handed use much easier. Will this manifest change affect Brave, or other Chromium forks?
Unless they've changed plans, my understanding is that they also intend to take those ads they're selling and replace the actual ads on sites with them, effectively making Brave the ad distributor for sites instead of the one the site actually chose to use.
That's a pretty scummy approach in my opinion, and has the potential for sites to have issues with "their" Brave ads (the ones being shown on their site) that they have absolutely no insight into or ability to control.
It's also worth mentioning how they handle people's money and how their UX/UI imply that the people they're donating to are okay with it :
This controversy comes to mind.
Yes. Google controls Chromium, the changes will all flow downstream. As far as I understand it, uBlock Origin will no longer work in any of the downstream browsers. That means Opera, Vivaldi, Brave, now Edge. Some of them might come up with their own built-in alternatives, maybe somebody'll get ballsy and come up with a new API or re-implement or patch back in the old on their own, although odds are they're all too small compared to Chrome for them to consider it to be worth it. Ultimately Google's still the one building the browser that dominates the landscape currently. This is why so many people are sad to see Edge cave in and become another soulless Chrome reskin, even if they didn't use it.
Totally agree. Edge sucked but at least it represented some diversity in the ecosystem.
While the changes will all flow downstream, my understanding is that Vivaldi (and most likely others) doesn't just blindly integrate them. I'm no browser expert nor do I have an inside track. But I've read a fair bit about it since I'm a software engineer and forks of code is something I'm fairly familiar with.
Just fwiw :-)
I'm not sure how much I actually trust Brave on privacy, since they are for-profit.
After all the bad that's being done people still cling to Chrome.
Once upon a time long ago Google had a simple policy of "Don't Be Evil".
Whelp, that's long dead.