estranhosidade 2019-05-29 19:56 UTC link

Google never wanted to have these adblock extensions on their store in the first place, it just turns out that when chrome was released and had zero market share they had to make this huge compromise to gain territory in the browser arena and eventually overthrow Firefox and the competition. And when (not if, when – it will eventually happen) they do that I will jump off from the Chrome bandwagon.

jressey 2019-05-29 20:22 UTC link

Here are browsers that aren't just 'not Chrome,' they are better.

Brave: https://brave.com/

Firefox: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/

this_user 2019-05-29 20:23 UTC link

This is not entirely surprising. There is a reason why mobile Chrome, unlike mobile Firefox, never allowed extensions in the first place.

droobles 2019-05-29 20:30 UTC link

Modern firefox is an awesome experience. The only reason I use Chrome is because the dev tools are that good.

jedberg 2019-05-29 20:35 UTC link

I'm glad I already made the switch to FireFox. I only use Chrome to access Google apps, because for some strange reason they work a lot better in Chrome...

The only thing I miss is a Session Buddy equivalent. When my computer crashes, it's nice to be able to restore all my tabs and windows, and also it's nice to be able to close a bunch of windows when I travel and then go back to my tab state from three weeks ago.

redwards510 2019-05-29 20:41 UTC link

  Google is essentially saying that Chrome will still have the   
  capability to block unwanted content, but this will be 
  restricted to only paid, enterprise users of Chrome.

Never heard of a paid version of Chrome before! Can anyone elaborate on this?

I gotta say I'm kind of glad Google is doing this. It will force me to finally abandon Chrome, something I should have done awhile ago.

phiresky 2019-05-29 21:07 UTC link

From the author of uBlock on this:

What we see are the public statements, for public consumption, they are designed to "sell" the changes to the wider public. What we do not see is what is being said in private meetings by officers who get to decide how to optimize the business. So we have to judge not by what is said for public consumption purpose, but by what in effect is being done, or what they plan to do.

This is how personally I see the deprecation of the blocking ability of the webRequest API in manifest v3:

In order for Google Chrome to reach its current user base, it had to support content blockers -- these are the top most popular extensions for any browser. Google strategy has been to find the optimal point between the two goals of growing the user base of Google Chrome and preventing content blockers from harming its business.

The blocking ability of the webRequest API caused Google to yield control of content blocking to content blockers. Now that Google Chrome is the dominant browser, it is in a better position to shift the optimal point between the two goals which benefits Google's primary business.

The deprecation of the blocking ability of the webRequest API is to gain back this control, and to further now instrument and report how web pages are filtered since now the exact filters which are applied to web page is information which will be collectable by Google Chrome.

https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338#iss...

Despegar 2019-05-29 21:34 UTC link

This should be good news for Firefox and Safari. I'd be interested to hear from Gorhill on whether uBlock Origin works with the Content Blocker API for Safari and if not what needs to change to make it possible.

enitihas 2019-05-29 21:39 UTC link

Another big issue is that if chrome makes it difficult to disable ads such that 99% of chrome users aren't able to do it, websites may simply choose to block Firefox as it would be easy to do so without losing a large part of user base while making sure no users are blocking ads. Right now there are far too many users using ad blockers.

mises 2019-05-29 21:58 UTC link

For what it's worth, I've had a great experience with firefox for the past year (since quantum convinced me to give it another chance). All though, it recently basically factory-reset itself. Signed out of sync, extensions gone, custom settings gone. Any one else have this happen?

It's also got a weird memory leak, which I think is related to the pdf viewer. Never really checked in detail or tried to measure.

irrational 2019-05-29 22:15 UTC link

I don't get it. I've used Firefox and Chrome for years. Firefox is easily as good and capable as Chrome. The barrier to switch from Chrome to Firefox is almost non-existent. Is Google counting on the majority of people not being knowledgeable enough or motivated enough to switch browsers?

mackal 2019-05-29 23:42 UTC link

I just switched back to Firefox after using Chrome since pretty the day it came out. I switched after updating to 74 and noticing how many features I depended on were removed. I originally intended to just revert some of the changes (using Chromium on Linux) but I decided that amount of work was silly. Switched back to Firefox. After this news, glad I did.

blinkingled 2019-05-30 00:50 UTC link

This is malice. Plain and simple. I will remove the last remaining installation of Chrome from my workstation.

It's still good that I can run Firefox on Android but we have to make Chrome the new IE fast.

notatoad 2019-05-30 00:58 UTC link

Not only is this enough to get me switching back to firefox, it's enough that my next laptop purchase won't be another chromebook

the internet without an adblocker is simply not usable for me.

brianzelip 2019-05-30 01:16 UTC link

A good time to suggest everyone here commit to using FireFox and DuckDuckGo. You can manage, even with any initial bumps. It’s ok.

opan 2019-05-30 01:43 UTC link

I see a lot of comments saying to switch to Firefox, or people saying they're already using Firefox. This is fine, but I don't think people should be totally comfortable with this. Switching to the one other choice still leaves us in danger of the whole web being controlled by a few programs. We should encourage other browser projects as well. I've seen some cool browser projects, but mostly they use webkit still. I'm not sure what you call that part. The core maybe. We need more browser cores. I think this[1] is one, I encourage people to share more that they know of.

[1] https://robinwils.gitlab.io/articles/sbcl-browser-engine.htm...

userbinator 2019-05-30 02:28 UTC link

I am not surprised. If you look at the direction in which browsers have been "evolving" (or perhaps devolving...) especially over the last decade, especially after Google first introduced Chrome, the message has been pretty clear: gradually hide and remove functionality that helps users take control of how they consume content, and silence opposition by explaining that it's "for your security".

Chrome isn't the only guilty one here; it just happens to be the most user-hostile, maybe because it started the trend (good example being https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7329855), but all the other ones have made similar decisions. Firefox made extension signing mandatory (many people think Mozilla is benevolent, but that doesn't mean their views will continue to align with yours), and more recently IE, which could be said to have been the last reasonably popular browser with a per-zone configuration and site whitelisting/blacklisting feature by default, was deprecated for the far more dumbed-down (and now becoming even more Chrome-like) Edge.

But as long as you can still install a custom CA and set a proxy server, you're still in complete control over the content your machine receives; there have been many changes to frustrate that (first HTTPS, now DoH --- to protect, not just from attackers, but you), but it is still possible to MITM and control your experience. There's been a strong opposition to them ostensibly for "security" reasons, however, the way things are going, you will give up your freedom and security.

(I'm a long-time Proxomitron user. It's far more fine-grained than DNS-level blocking, although I also use a HOSTS file, and I can do more than just block. The best part is, it works for all browsers, even the ones embedded in other apps.)

darklajid 2019-05-30 03:07 UTC link

I've been a Firefox user throughout - never made the switch to Chrome.

But here's what worries me, what I'm wondering now: As far as I'm aware, Mozilla/Firefox tried to follow Google for extensions, deprecated their own API for Google's/Chrome's instead.

How likely is it that Mozilla will further "follow the spec" so to speak, doing a change like this for compatibility or whatever?

bArray 2019-05-30 09:41 UTC link

This kind of crap is why we need to be cautious in allowing Google too much control over web standards, including AMP and their not-iframe element (portals [1]). Whilst the engineers mean well when creating them, Google's main objective is to make money, not to make a better web.

At the moment you have awesome projects like Project Zero [2], but how long till they start strategically handling exploits for monetary gain? Contrast Project Zero to Project Dragonfly [3]. Nobody should be relying on them being good actors.

[1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-launches-portals-a-new-...

[2] https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/

[3] https://money.cnn.com/2018/09/26/technology/google-dragonfly...

SimonPStevens 2019-05-30 12:16 UTC link

I say this all the time when this kind of thing comes up.

Please use Firefox!

Even if it's worse. Even if its slower[1]. Even if it doesn't have that one feature or bug fix that you personally consider really important. Just use Firefox anyway. Find a workaround. Suffer whatever it is you dislike about Firefox because in the end if we don't act as individuals against the chrome monopoly then google are going to own the web and we'll suffer a far worse period of monoculture than the IE6 ever was.

If you can't go all the way, going part of the way is still valuable. I personally have chrome installed still because there are a couple if internal sites at my work that have problems on Firefox, so I use Chrome for those but Firefox for everything else.

Firefox for Android is also solid browser, and as a bonus you don't see any AMP stuff.

If you're a website/app maintainer, check for compatibility in Firefox.

It's worth supporting Firefox to keep the web the way it should be. I know they make mistakes sometimes, but we need a viable alternative or it will be too late.

([1] I don't think it is, it's made soild improvements in recent years, but lots of people seem to have their own specific issue they hold dear against it)

kibwen 2019-05-29 20:35 UTC link

"When" they do that, it will be because they have judged that they have, by then, thoroughly extinguished all competition. If you (the royal "you") want there to exist an alternative browser to which to jump to when the time comes, then consider making the jump today, when your influence might still make some small contribution to the competitiveness of the browser market.

hardwaresofton 2019-05-29 20:40 UTC link

Do you have some reasons you prefer chrome dev tools to FF? I consider FF to have the more featureful devtools, for example the sheer amount of stuff under the styles tab, you can tweak fonts in browser.

I do remember back when I used chrome there would be new `console.x` features that were chrome only from time to time, but after I switched to FF I never really looked back

redwards510 2019-05-29 20:43 UTC link

Don't forget there is a Firefox Developer version that includes additional devtools.

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/developer/

tapoxi 2019-05-29 20:44 UTC link

Maybe it's unfair, but I can't help but think of Brave as just a scheme to push their cryptocurrency. They're removing the website's ability to monetize and replacing it with their own system. That seems gross.

asymmetric 2019-05-29 20:47 UTC link

Firefox has session restore, which also works when the browser is closed abruptly. Is it now working for you?

badloginagain 2019-05-29 20:54 UTC link

The original creators of Opera have been building out Vivaldi for a while, which has the specific design goal of being a browser for power users

https://vivaldi.com/

jchw 2019-05-29 21:02 UTC link

Googler here, but I do not work on Chrome and I’m speaking on a personal capacity.

I believe this is a misnomer. The enterprise deployment stuff I’m aware of in Chrome/Chromium is accessible by any user, as far as I know, and in the past I’ve used it to force private browsing on always for my own personal usage.

That said, I switched to Firefox when Quantum came out and haven’t looked back. Mozilla has done some annoying stuff over time, but imo the browser itself is really solid, and with some tweaks is very good.

panarky 2019-05-29 21:03 UTC link

This is essentially not true.

Content can still be blocked with extensions, but it will be more difficult to handle large block lists.

See this comment from the author of uBlock Origin and uMatrix.

https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338#iss...

zerocrates 2019-05-29 21:04 UTC link

> Never heard of a paid version of Chrome before!

Is there such a thing? The "paid" part comes from the article's gloss, not from Google. I could see it instead being "this is a switch you can turn on in Group Policy."

GraemeL 2019-05-29 21:04 UTC link

I use a Firefox addon called Session Boss. It might be what you're looking for.

ljoshua 2019-05-29 21:16 UTC link

Does the webRequest API deprecation also impact Chromium, and therefore Brave as well? Brave seems like it's willing to backfill in changes to Chromium, but I'm wondering how this impacts the browser overall.

I use Brave as my daily driver (with Shields Up and uBlock Origin), but I'm not sure what the actual impact will be when it comes.

user17843 2019-05-29 21:35 UTC link

Indeed, almost the entire ad-blocking market is controlled by the company behind Adblock Plus (eyeo GmbH), who has contracts with Google. It appears they also own AdBlock, and uBlock (not confused with uBO), so during the last years they basically tried to capture the entire market. The fact that Eyeo has >150 employees tells us something about the amount of money to be made from ad blocking. Although they have only published the numbers from 2016, it seems they are quickly approaching around €50 million yearly revenue, with almost 50% of pure profit. For Google this Acceptable Ads Program may be more than a 100 million dollar business.

The only real nuisance is uBO and the future possibility that someone comes along and uses Google's own software to eliminate their core business model.

Basically in this entire environment if an extension does not take part in extracting money out of people, it becomes a problem for most parties involved.

Someone at Google in the higher ups probably realized at one point that giving the user so much freedom and control could theoretically backfire enourmously.

Google indirectly controls ABP, but they want the ABP model to apply to all blockers, so that they both get money from non-blocking users as well as from blocking-users.

In the perfect world of Google content-blocking does not exist beyond mere visual ad-blocking of the most annoying ads.

ABP already allows cookies and network connections, so google still knows everything about those users.

Personally I use a combination of pi-hole, third-party cookie blocking and uBO, which takes care of basically all cross-site tracking. But when I recently had a look at another system of someone who uses ABP I noticed that the blocking really is only visual, theres still a profile that is being sold to data brokers, you just don't see the stuff they recommend to you.

The default settings of ABP are also extremely anti-user.

ABP/Eyeo is a wolf in sheep's clothing.

uBO users on the other hand are basically invisible to the survaillance capitalists.

phs318u 2019-05-29 21:52 UTC link

Currently Safari complains that uBO will slow down your browser. But it still lets you load it.

100100010001 2019-05-29 21:55 UTC link

That is rich!!! There are far too many companies selling my private information without my consent. As long as companies can sell user information, it is only fair for users to block access to such information.

roca 2019-05-29 21:56 UTC link

I love Brendan, but if Google's browser domination concerns you, use Firefox or Safari. Using Chromium browsers leaves Google firmly in control.

junar 2019-05-29 21:56 UTC link

Safari has essentially the same content blocking model that Chrome wants to adopt.

> Apps tell Safari in advance what kinds of content to block. Because Safari doesn't have to consult with the app during loading, and because Xcode compiles Content Blockers into bytecode, this model runs efficiently. Additionally, Content Blockers have no knowledge of users' history or the websites they visit.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservices/cre...

mises 2019-05-29 22:00 UTC link

Blocking a user agent? Oh no, whatever shall we do? Thankfully, we can still just change it, though I suppose a really insidious web site could use feature checks.

c0wb0yc0d3r 2019-05-29 22:08 UTC link

If you're talking about the issue Mozilla had with add-ons at the beginning of May, yes! Everyone did, haha!

All my other settings seem fine, however.

tacosx 2019-05-29 22:10 UTC link

People were predicting this as the Chrome endgame years ago. It's playing out exactly as everyone cynically expected.

It's time to eliminate Google from your life as much as possible if you haven't already. Too many wake up calls. They are not a tech company, they are data monopolists. Stop giving them your data.

rococode 2019-05-29 22:14 UTC link

Yes!!! I've had this happen several times, and it's incredibly annoying! I was just about to comment on this issue before I saw your post (as a "this is a good opportunity for Firefox but they still have some seriously irritating bugs").

It seems like my entire profile (about:profiles) got switched out several times with a brand new one. Exact same symptoms as you - bookmarks, custom UI tweaks, extensions, etc. all gone (basically consistent with creating a new profile yourself). For a regular user, I think that only needs to happen once for them to uninstall and never come back.

Most of the time I've been able to restore it to my old profile, but one time a file was corrupted and I had to start from scratch again. It happened before the extension signing fiasco, and those two things combined led me to explore new options (Vivaldi, Chromium, etc.) although those didn't pan out for me so here I am, still on Firefox and crossing my fingers hoping it won't happen again.

Perhaps relevant: I do have Nightly and Developer Edition installed alongside the regular version. I used to use Nightly as my daily driver, but switched to the regular version after the first time my profile got messed up.

Krasnol 2019-05-29 22:20 UTC link

Yes, I'm pretty sure this is what they count on. Everyone who is knowledgeable or motivated enough, did already change. The rest obviously didn't so even if a part of those will change, they can keep on pushing it through bundling or advertising to regain a part of them. The bulk will just stay. This is the "internet program" for them.

_eht 2019-05-29 22:21 UTC link

Yep. Can confirm this exact experience from an update yesterday. Dislike.

junar 2019-05-29 22:23 UTC link

I mean, mobile Safari doesn't allow extensions, and only recently allowed content blockers. Safari also has essentially the same model that Chrome wants to adopt:

> Apps tell Safari in advance what kinds of content to block. Because Safari doesn't have to consult with the app during loading, and because Xcode compiles Content Blockers into bytecode, this model runs efficiently. Additionally, Content Blockers have no knowledge of users' history or the websites they visit.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservices/cre...

bradstewart 2019-05-29 22:27 UTC link

I've been using Firefox for the last two weeks or so. It's fine, but noticeably slower (on a 2018 MacBook Pro) when opening new tabs and especially dragging tabs into new windows. It also seems to get stuck resolving DNS sometimes, which is probably an artifact of the corporate network, but Chrome doesn't have that problem.

filchermcurr 2019-05-29 22:50 UTC link

There's also Tab Session Manager, which I've been using with great success for hundreds of years!

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-session-m...

Improvotter 2019-05-29 23:06 UTC link

The only thing I'm missing on Firefox is when I am on my Macbook, is that fling when using my touchpad. It's essential to any MacOS app and it feels weird not to have it. I'm used to it on Linux and Windows though.

Torwald 2019-05-29 23:07 UTC link

> I only use Chrome to access Google apps, because for some strange reason they work a lot better in Chrome...

DOS 2.1 ain't done until Lotus won't run

msla 2019-05-29 23:32 UTC link

Firefox has been doing a few rather questionable things. They had the Mr Roboto add-on which was pushed out to advertise a TV show, they stuck ads in the "Recommendations" [1], they proactively destroyed peoples' bookmarks when they dropped support for RSS, they dropped support for RSS (because, apparently, a decentralized way to track website updates is anti-Google), and they destroyed a lot of useful add-ons.

I basically can't trust them anymore.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/7/17326184/firefox-ads-spons...

o10449366 2019-05-29 23:37 UTC link

It's not "as good." I've tried every release of Firefox for the past decade. On Linux and Mac the video performance is noticeably worse than Chrome with significant frame drops, lag, and tearing. Yes, I've tried enabling/disabling hardware acceleration, flash, and all sorts of other flags and options, but the two are still incomparable. Furthermore, even with the quantum update Firefox is still slower for general web browsing and usage than Chrome. I've measured both dropped frames and load times to confirm this.

mccr8 2019-05-30 00:17 UTC link

The new version that just came out added a new feature where different channels (Release, Nightly, etc.) have different profiles, and for some people it seems to have not picked the right profile for the channel they use. You can try looking at about:profiles. Your old profile might be in there, and then I think you can switch back to it.

Editorial Channel

What the content says

Structural Channel

What the site does