
A uBlock Origin update was rejected from the Chrome Web Store - ismaildonmez
https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/745
======
kace91
I wonder if it's been on purpose or just, as always, their automatic
algorithms being imposible to contest when they're wrong.

Honestly, Google's (and general tech giants') willingness to let people's
lives be caught in the cracks of their algorithms in their pursue for
scalability scares me more than any ideology they could push.

More and more, we're seeing developers and content creators being banned or
demonetised, people being shadowbanned from dating apps that represent a
majority of your chances to find a significant other, and so on.

I think we need legislation to deal with these issues: people subjected to
punishment should be able to know the rules they're being subjected to, the
way they supposedly broke those laws, and have a non automated chance to
contest the ruling. Even if these businesses aren't public property, when they
represent an almost monopolistic chance to get the service they provided they
should be treated as if they are.

~~~
a-nikolaev
Google is famous for this type of attrition damage tactic. Read this:
[https://twitter.com/johnath/status/1116871231792455686](https://twitter.com/johnath/status/1116871231792455686)

It goes like this: Google bans or disables something, then they pretend they
made a mistake, but still delay fixing it for days or weeks while giving
amateurish explanations for these delays. In the end what this tactic
achieves, is hampering a software Google disapproves (or competes against).
The tired users switches to a different software (made by google?) or stop
using the software altogether. The same tactic targets competing developers.

~~~
nullc
This sort of evil behavior doesn't require intent or actual malice to form.

All it requires is that panic efforts to fix things be primarily allocated to
problems that hurt google and not primarily allocated to things that hurt
google's opponents. Or for infrastructure that has a history of hurting google
to get disabled while infrastructure that has a history of hurting others gets
ignored in favor of spending more time on new projects or fixing things that
hurt google.

IMO characterizing it as involving malice ('pretend') actually _understates_
the problem. Google's actions are sometimes explicitly malicious, but they're
even more often malicious OR indifferent, as that is a strict superset. If one
day they decided to stop being actively evil this problem would not go away.

Maybe it could be reduced with the right kind of attitude towards
introspecting and seeking out systemic causes of evil consequences even at
their own expense. I heard there was once a company with a "don't be evil"
mantra, but they abandoned it as they grew.

This also explains why the same evil conduct sometimes shows up in cases where
no one can figure out any way that google actually benefits. It's a lot easier
to cause harm through indifference than greed because greed requires that you
have a way to benefit. Most conceivable harmful acts don't have much of a
benefit for anyone.

~~~
raquo
There is no such thing as a megacorp's indifference to increasing their
profits and achieving their strategic goals.

You can't plausibly claim _indifference_ when Google's business processes that
took many millions of dollars to set up and optimize promote Google's success
by harming Google's competitors and taming Google's existential threats in
user-hostile ways that range from perhaps subtle to outrageously obvious.

They didn't start doing this yesterday. No amount of plausible deniability can
cover a gaping void this large.

Google's behaviour is entirely consistent with a huge company exercising its
monopolistic power in a largely unregulated environment. They do whatever they
can get away with.

------
dessant
Google must be forced to open up Chrome to third-party extension stores.

A monopoly deciding on the kind of browser extensions we get to distribute and
use is sickening. As Chrome is a dominant platform, our work is prevented from
reaching users if it does not align with the bussiness goals of Google, and
extensions that users _want_ on their devices are effectively censored out of
existence.

Again, the solution in the face of this company is not to ask them to behave
nicely, but to force them to open up their platforms, so that the future of
software we enjoy today does not depend on the whims of Google.

As an example of their behavior, I've shared my discussion [1] with Chrome Web
Store reviewers when the time came for one of my projects to be taken down.
You cannot expect them to respond properly and apply critical thinking, and
showing even slight resistance may lead to further retaliation from their
part.

The extension review process at Firefox is not flawless either, but you get to
talk to human beings who respond appropiately, offer sensible viewpoints,
listen to your feedback, and adjust their position during reviews.

[1] [https://github.com/dessant/search-by-
image/issues/57](https://github.com/dessant/search-by-image/issues/57)

~~~
echelon
Google must be forced to divest of its search business, Android business, ad
business, browser business, office software, and web properties into wholly
separate corporate entities.

The same should happen to Apple.

Both companies are anti-consumer monopolies.

~~~
mjevans
How would this actually improve competition? I agree there is a problem, but
in my view and opinion the solution is enforcing a regulated market that
protects consumers and allows for new competition to enter even lacking scale.

~~~
anoncake
It would reduce conflicts of interest. For example, The Chrome Company would
optimize for user experience rather than advertising profits.

~~~
0xEFF
No, the Chrome company would go out of business.

~~~
anoncake
If it will go out of business in a functioning market, it should.

------
joshka
Fixed:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/chrome/comments/dgoymg/warning_ubo_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/chrome/comments/dgoymg/warning_ubo_ublock_origin_will_possibly_be/f3fwlto/)

> Hey all, I'm Simeon, the developer advocate for Chrome extensions. This
> morning I heard from the review team; they've approved the current draft so
> next publish should go through. Unfortunately it's the weekend, so most
> folks are out, but I'm planning to follow up with u/gorhill4 with more
> details once I have them.

~~~
BuckRogers
For those of us on Microsoft Edge, it's time to uninstall uBlock Origin[0]
from the Chrome Store and install it from the Microsoft Store[1]. It's about
time someone seriously challenges and smokes Google's boots.

[0][https://i.imgur.com/ZGxI3xO.png](https://i.imgur.com/ZGxI3xO.png)

[1][https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/insider-
addons/detail/od...](https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/insider-
addons/detail/odfafepnkmbhccpbejgmiehpchacaeak)

~~~
ripdog
Or you could cease contributing to the Blink monopoly on the web and join us
of Firefox. Microsoft is no longer challenging Google in this space.

~~~
RcouF1uZ4gsC
You mean the browser developed by Mozilla which is basically bankrolled by
Google?

~~~
ripdog
Well yes, but technologically, it's the only non-KHTML descendant browser
engine in development. Mozilla is working on the revenue issue, though it is a
considerable concern. The best thing we can do to help Mozilla is to simply
use Firefox and try and bump its market share numbers up.

~~~
colejohnson66
Genuine question: what are they doing to alleviate the issues of Gecko
rendering compared to Blink? As I understand it, most developers target
Chrome, so they make it work with Blink, not Gecko.

~~~
ripdog
I don't think it's a major issue (yet?), but work around this area is tracked
under the "Web Compatibility" product in Bugzilla.

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?product=Web%20Compa...](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?product=Web%20Compatibility&bug_status=__open__)

Bugs are fixed where necessary, but I don't think they've stooped to
implementing Chrome's bugs yet. Most of the work is social - reaching out to
owners of websites which are broken in Firefox and asking them to fix them.

------
seanwilson
Wow, this scares me a lot. So if you upload an update to an existing extension
that has many users, if a human reviewer arbitrarily decides to reject the
update, the entire extension is removed from the store? Or just the recent
update?

If the entire extension is removed that makes updating an existing app a
terrifying process. Do they apply the same standards to top paid extensions
like LastPass and Grammarly?

I run a freemium SEO Chrome extension
([https://www.checkbot.io](https://www.checkbot.io)) with 30K active users -
if the extension got taken down suddenly it would anger + confuse existing
users and directly impact sales. As a backup, you could ask users to download
and install the extension in developer mode but this would crush the
conversion rate for the free version and you'd lose all organic traffic via
the Chrome Web Store.

Google already killed Chrome Apps (taking with it functionality you couldn't
do in Chrome extensions) and Manifest v3 is going to introduce yet to be
decided restrictions. At least these restrictions don't rely on the whims of
human reviewers though.

Right now, my stomach drops whenever I see a Chrome extension development
announcement.

~~~
troydavis
> Wow, this scares me a lot. So if you upload an update to an existing
> extension that has many users, if a human reviewer arbitrarily decides to
> reject the update, the entire extension is removed from the store? Or just
> the recent update?

I've had an extension in the Chrome Web Store for 5 years and it's been
unilaterally un-published with no warning at least 3 times. This is an
extension that has many thousands of active installs, is free with no ads, and
has specific simple functionality (defines a new tab page) and no access to
browsing history or other permissions. It's the absolute best case.

2 of the 3 times, no reason was given. The exact same version was later re-
published, after far too many emails. The 3rd time, a debatable reason was
given - though again, the same version had been up for many years and was
serving thousands of users.

Each time the extension gets un-published, it starts a days- or weeks-long
ticket thread with Google's painfully automated review process. There's not a
Google employee who simply explains what they did and why (and why no warning
was given). Google just chooses from a set of email templates. If you're lucky
and/or keep emailing over and over, they'll add 10 words about what was done.

I've had an IRS audit and, having experienced both, the IRS audit was easier,
more predictable/logical, and more enjoyable than any of the 3 attempts to get
my extension re-published.

(If anyone from the Chrome Web Store team wants help improving the publishing
and review process, feel free to contact me. It's so broken that I can't
imagine Google needs more input, but I'm willing.)

~~~
AJ007
None of this is surprising or remotely new for Google. As someone who has
dealt with Google’s moderation process from other products, it’s basically the
same shit as it was 15 years ago. This isn’t a Google Chrome Webstore specific
issue, this is a universal Google issue.

I imagine the sloppy processes were the result of keeping things automated
early in Google’s life and as they grew, to obfuscate spammers. Then, as
Google got bigger over the past decade and morphed into a dis-functional
bureaucracy, any hope of improving those processes was lost. Smaller companies
can get away with these sorts of things, but once you are under the lens of
politicians and anti-trust regulators, it starts to cause a material impact on
the business. The price is going to be paid eventually, by Google’s
stockholders.

In the short term this specific uBlock Origin issue may look good for Google.
Less ad blocking users for Chrome means higher revenue per install. Many of
the bad decisions the Chrome team made were probably strongly supported by
user cohorts and revenue data (like forcing Google logins on Chrome if you
logged in to Gmail.) That might be enough for some of Google’s executives and
middle managers to earn self directed bonus stock options. In the long term,
we all know what happens when the early adapters move on to other products.

------
rahuldottech
Is anyone really surprised? Google makes all its revenue from ads. A couple
months ago there was an incident where if I recall correctly, someone
published a browser on the play store which allowed users to install desktop
browser extensions, one of which was an adblocker for YouTube, and it was
removed with vague reasons?

Google has been taking steps for a long time to make it harder for adblockers
to work on Chrome, and this is only the latest in the trend.

uBO works just fine on Firefox, both on mobile and desktop.

~~~
starbugs
Not surprised, but a bit baffled why they allowed for uBO for such a long time
in the first place?

It looks as if they misused the community's products and trust to build their
monopoly and then kick us out once it's gotten hard enough to compete.

Perhaps this is a good thing in the long run, because now people will finally
have to switch and maybe contribute to improving Firefox.

I am hopeful, but also I must say in my opinion Firefox is nowhere near Chrome
when comparing performance, developer tooling and quality.

~~~
babuskov
> quality

Yeah, that feature is a must. /s

Saying "quality" doesn't actually mean anything. What exactly is "quality" in
this case?

~~~
starbugs
I'll give you an example:

If I place a breakpoint in a DOM mutation listener, I would like to have the
same order of DOM events as if I wouldn't have placed it there.

------
diimdeep
Have been using Firefox Nightly for few weeks as only browser.

Rock solid.

Can recommend few extensions

\- [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto-tab-
disc...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto-tab-discard/)

\- [http://www.one-tab.com](http://www.one-tab.com)

\- [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/multi-
touch-z...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/multi-touch-zoom/)

~~~
tgv
Why Nightly? It's not guaranteed to be rock solid.

~~~
bigjimmyk3
Right now, nightly contains updates that are specific to energy usage on MacOS
(in a good way).

~~~
yoasif_
Those updates are also in beta, FWIW.

------
dooglius
The single-purpose excuse is the same one they used to ban AdNauseam:
[https://adnauseam.io/free-adnauseam.html](https://adnauseam.io/free-
adnauseam.html)

~~~
contravariant
It's not surprising they'd use that excuse as it allows them to reject
extensions on entirely subjective criteria.

------
agumonkey
Few monthes ago I forced myself to fully drop Chromium. Painful. But I don't
have chrome on any laptops (only my smartphone). I don't regret it.

Google is stringing bad news after bad news.

~~~
jokoon
what was painful?

~~~
jetrink
Having switched to Firefox three months ago, the three things that I miss most
are,

1\. The integration with Google Translate, which I understand would be
difficult for Firefox to replicate

2\. The ability to right-click on an image to search by image, which is
probably similarly difficult to add to Firefox. [Edit: Thanks, vatueil, I will
give that a try.]

3\. How Chrome is less picky about what text it identifies as a url. E.g. If
you highlight wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/qpf/day1-2.shtml in Chrome and right-click,
you can navigate to that address, but Firefox doesn't realize that it is a
url.

However, I only miss these conveniences a couple times a month, so I can live
without them.

~~~
vatueil
Image Search Options is an add-on for Firefox that lets you right-click an
image to search for it on Google as well as other image search sites. Also
available as a Chrome extension.

\- Firefox: [https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/image-search-
option...](https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/image-search-options/)

\- Chrome: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/image-search-
optio...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/image-search-
options/kljmejbpilkadikecejccebmccagifhl)

\- Website: [https://saucenao.com/tools/](https://saucenao.com/tools/)

------
tyingq
There should be a threshold of "number of active extension users" where Google
has a human provide an actual explanation when rejecting an update.

~~~
soup10
"Your extension prevents billions of ads from being showed and we want that
money."

~~~
TeMPOraL
They'd get +googol respect from me if they'd ever actually say that line. It
sucks that companies can't just communicate honestly about their intentions.

~~~
soup10
Not exactly a secret, this is a quote from their Q1 earnings call:

"Let me now turn to our segment financial results. Starting with the Google
segment, revenues were $36.2 billion, up 17% year-over-year. In terms of the
revenue detail, Google Sites revenues were $25.7 billion in the quarter, up
17% year-over-year. In terms of dollar growth, results were led again by
mobile search with a strong contribution from YouTube, followed by Desktop
Search. Network revenues were $5 billion, up 8% year-on-year, continuing to
reflect the performance of the primary drivers of growth, AdMob, followed by
Google Ad Manager."

~~~
TeMPOraL
Sure, but the words in the previous comment of yours were direct statement of
intent. That's different from talking about what are the drivers of revenue,
without mentioning what are the problems and whether they want to do something
about them.

~~~
soup10
Yea, the funniest thing is I bet a big percentage of Googlers use ublock
origin. Their entire business is based around pushing annoying ads that nobody
wants on people.

------
radicalbyte
It's time to switch to Firefox as my main web browser. It's faster and
generally more efficient than Chrome plus it has the most important
extensions.

The most surprising thing is that the Android version of Firefox is excellent.
So good that I switched from Chrome a few months ago when this expected news
first dropped. No ads on mobile is awesome.

~~~
ravenstine
Anyone thinking of installing Firefox should check out the Multi-Account
Containers addon. I'm pretty sure such functionality doesn't exist for Chrome,
and it makes it possible to isolate different sites and logins from each
other. It's one of the best reasons to switch to Firefox, in my opinion.

~~~
matheusmoreira
Thank you for posting this, never realized such a thing existed. Makes it easy
to maintain different identities. It's made by Mozilla too. Wonder why it
isn't a core feature of Firefox.

~~~
simcop2387
They try to develop most new features as extensions first these days. It keeps
the release cycles from impacting each other and lets them make sure that the
extension APIs remain useful for other developers. If it turns out to be a
good feature they'll either bundle the extension or build it into the browser
from the extension. That's not always something people celebrate though, see
the pocket stuff.

------
ukyrgf
Firefox with the containers extensions powers all of my browsing. In a
bewildering turn of events, Microsoft Edge Dev powers my more intricate
development needs.

~~~
sgc
I am embarrassed to admit I hadn't heard of containers. Nice to see it is a
Mozilla extension. I am giving it a test right now.

~~~
mirkules
Hah, this is a really cool feature. For about two years, I managed this with
multiple Firefox profiles instead, but this is a nicer integration.

~~~
fireattack
Multiple-profile still has its advantage. Unfortunately it is pretty
inconvenient to do so on Firefox now after the revamp (pre-57 there are plenty
of extensions for that). It is much easier on Chrome, ironically.

------
jacquesm
An advertising company fielding a major distribution browser always was a
_really_ bad idea.

~~~
gtirloni
It was a pretty good idea for Google and, judging by the adoption, it serves
users very well too.

I think it's up to other browsers to offer better solutions.

~~~
jacquesm
The internet wasn't made for Google. And if you think it serves users very
well too then I suggest you read TFA, it is clear that what is good for Google
and what is good for users are not aligned.

~~~
gtirloni
I'm not talking from an idealist/paternalist point of view about what _I_
think is good for users. I'm talking about letting users decide. And they seem
to have decided, according to market share, that they like Chrome.

Yes, users could be clueless and be trading personal privacy unwittingly but
that's not what I mean about "serves users very well". I meant users look at
Chrome, Firefox and others and stick to Chrome. If they didn't like Chrome,
they would switch.

~~~
jacquesm
Users have not 'decided', they've had something rammed down their throats that
they might not have picked if not for some pretty obvious anti-competitive
behavior by Google.

By your book might makes right, because Google was able to push users to
convert in various ways - some of which should be or even are illegal - and it
worked for them they must be delivering something that people need. But it
wasn't a free choice.

------
koolba
>> Your item did not comply with the following section of our policy: An
extension should have a single purpose that is clear to users.

Any speculation on what the supposed multiple purposes would be?

From past experience, is that type of thing something that is automatically
flagged / determined programmatically or does a human reviewer of an extension
make the call?

~~~
alexandercrohde
I mean you would think their process would be smart enough to say "Hey, we
just rejected upload for product X that is THE MOST POPULAR PLUGIN. We haven't
rejected any of the prior versions. Maybe let's get a human review.

Certainly google employees and the chrome team will be aware of this within an
hour if they aren't already. You can bet it's intentional if we don't see a
reversal in the next 3 days."

~~~
zamadatix
> I mean you would think their process would be smart enough to say "Hey, we
> just rejected upload for product X that is THE MOST POPULAR PLUGIN. We
> haven't rejected any of the prior versions. Maybe let's get a human review.

The extension in question only has 9,000 users.

~~~
nvrspyx
As of January 2018, uBlock Origin has 10 million active users on Chrome. Where
did you get 9,000?

~~~
zamadatix
From TFA.

~~~
manquer
That’s the number of followers on github for the source code of the project
not actual end users ..you will have to go their chrome web store page to see
this .

~~~
zamadatix
For the love of all that is holy can people please read the actual linked post
we are talking about. It's only ~twice as long as this comment section and
even just looking at the screenshot at the end would explain the situation.

The number of GitHub followers isn't even close to 9000, you just assumed that
rather than bothering to look at the actual page.

------
prashnts
I have had similar rejections because my extension was asking for “broad host
permissions”, however, the “[https://*.<extension](https://*.<extension) api
domain>” was the only url we needed permission for, simply because that’s
required for extension.

The “single purpose” extension part makes no sense to be honest. If the
extension wants to provide a complete offline experience, you can’t do that.
You need to split it into n different extensions and glue them together
somehow.

And I won’t even start about the documentation which is basically 5 years in
past. Some pages describe apis available, give you examples and then you
realise it’s all deprecated!

Completely understand why uBlock maintainers aren’t keen to retry the
submission.

I’ve switched to firefox for all the development flow, and treat Chrome as
Second-Class citizen in this case by using “web-ext-polyfill” (thanks
Firefox!) to get chrome extension work.

------
blacklight86
I switched to Brave a few months ago because I knew that Google would have
done exactly a move like this. People should simply stop using Chrome because
there's not a single good reason left to use it. Once upon a time it used to
advertise its complete adherence to web standards, but nowadays it has now
become the new IE when it comes to breaking them. And from now on it'll do
everything not to harm Google's core business (i.e. ads revenue). And, unlike
10 years ago, there's plenty of comparable or better alternatives around.

~~~
elEAOALTBIG
> People should simply stop using Chrome because there's not a single good
> reason left to use it.

The convenience of being able to access your data between devices.

~~~
the_pwner224
Firefox sync works great. It's e2e encrypted too.

------
Barrin92
time to bring out the anti-trust hammer and separate chrome and other google
entities from the search and ad business. It really seems like they're asking
for it.

~~~
helpPeople
I don't understand.

Out of every company in tech, Google has made my life fantastic.

I don't understand the Google hate, I don't know where it comes from. People
don't like getting relevant advertising, but they do like when Apple closes
off their App store 'for safety'.

I don't know why the double standard. I personally think this is a massive
advertising campaign from one of the FAANG companies and we are the tools that
discuss it.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _I don 't understand the Google hate, I don't know where it comes from._

Surveillance, advertising, bloat, ever worsening UX of their software, random
product shutdowns, random bans & lack of human support to resolve false
positives. I could go on.

What people like is software that lets them accomplish what they need
unobtrusively. People like Apple's store to the extent it doesn't let garbage
and adware in. But people also dislike Apple for not allowing sideloading.

Perfectly consistent position to have, IMO.

------
panpanna
HN needs a better search function :)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21232438](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21232438)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21231493](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21231493)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21233041](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21233041)

~~~
cameronbrown
Or not? Let's not bloat the website. Angolia HN works fine.

~~~
amenod
Or maybe HN needs an autosuggest function, something similar to what SO has?
"These news were posted recently and match yours pretty closely, are you sure
you want to post another one?"

------
fencepost
I didn't see a mention of this, but a review of the changes since the last
accepted version shows 2 things: a bunch of description text changes mostly
for character escaping and the hiding of one bar graph.

 _slow clap_ that's some dangerous stuff you're blocking there Google.

Are the gsuite components distributed through the CWS?

------
SparkleBunny
Welcome back to Firefox all!

Get NoScript while you're at it: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/noscript/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/noscript/)

------
taurath
Employees at Google - fix this now.

I’m rather disturbed that on HN of all places not a single comment is talking
about anything other than going to another browser. Google should fix this,
and there should be plenty of people here who can voice it internally.

~~~
on_and_off
already fixed by googlers :
[https://www.reddit.com/r/chrome/comments/dgoymg/warning_ubo_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/chrome/comments/dgoymg/warning_ubo_ublock_origin_will_possibly_be/f3fwlto/)

~~~
taurath
That is great news. Thank you.

------
14
I really hope this is Chrome shooting their selves in the foot. Like a fool I
am using Chrome as I type this, my excuse is Chrome has my banking numbers
saved and haven't taken the 2 seconds to enter it into firefox so it is ready
and convenient. But if I can't use an adblocker and if I don't have control
over what runs on my hardware then kiss me goodbye. I will finish the switch
today and uninstall Chrome.

~~~
hellcow
They're openly planning the end of UBlock Origin with their upcoming add-on
change (Manifest v3). Start moving now.

------
alexfromapex
Someone needs to create a rival search engine to Google. I have tried
switching but Bing and DuckDuckGo aren't anywhere near as good.

~~~
hrudham
I've been using DuckDuckGo as my default search engine for the last year or
so; it's certainly improved a lot. Something that can help this transition is
the bang support [0], with `!g` prefixed to your query. This redirects you to
google with same query if you find that the results are not satisfactory. I
used to use it a lot, but I've found I've needed it a lot less lately.

[0]: [https://duckduckgo.com/bang](https://duckduckgo.com/bang)

~~~
nvrspyx
I recommend using `!s` instead, which will use Startpage instead of Google.
But, since Startpage actually uses Google for search results in a private
manner (similar to DDG using Bing and Oath/Yahoo), you'll get the same results
as Google, but privately like DuckDuckGo.

Since !bangs are just using the URL search scheme of the site you're trying to
search, it's just redirecting you to Google when you use !g, which allows
Google to set cookies and use trackers. By using !g, one is sort of defeating
the purpose of using DDG, so that's why I always like to recommend using
Startpage and !s as a fallback instead.

------
SomeOtherThrow
You can still side load [https://adnauseam.io/](https://adnauseam.io/)

~~~
zamadatix
You get a bunch of nagging when you sideload.

------
lagadu
This was pretty inevitable, given the recent changes announced to Chrome that
Google created to fight ad blockers. Why would they limit their fight to just
that?

------
ignoramous
If you _have_ to use Chromium, at this point it is clear that Brave is a
better Chromium than Chrome [0][1] despite its BAT shenanigans. The UX is
super nice, and adblocking just works without having to install any
extensions. Hopefully Brave doesn't buy into the whole PrivacySandbox thing
Google proposed [2].

For everything else, Firefox should be the default [3][4].

It'd be great if Firefox bundles a content blocker like uBlockOrigin [5] in
its distributions and introduces First-Party Isolation [6]. DoH is a welcome
addition, esp since it can be used with AdGuard DNS [7] for another layer of
content blocking. Firefox Private Network [8] is yet another step in the right
direction, as are the anti-fingerprinting techniques [9] it has been
upstreaming from the Tor Browser. With WASM around the corner, it'd be
wonderful when native apps could be run from within a privacy-friendly sandbox
like Firefox. Imagine using WhatsApp/Instagram on Android within Firefox with
content blockers...

Next up: Strike partnerships with Android OEMs and bundle the browser as
default.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18052923](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18052923)

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19263649](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19263649)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20767891](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20767891)

[3]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20052623](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20052623)

[4]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17361168](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17361168)

[5]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20874006](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20874006)

[6]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20783339](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20783339)

[7]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18788410](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18788410)

[8]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20927832](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20927832)

[9]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20054831](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20054831)

~~~
bureaucrat
I’d rather trust Google than Brave.

~~~
unityByFreedom
Same. Plus, even with Brave, you'd still need to install the latest uBO from
github, so there's no benefit aside from "I hate Google but I'll still use a
fork of their open source browser"

~~~
_-o-_
Is there anything that uBO blocks that isn't covered by Brave's integrated
adblocker?

~~~
catalogia
Yes,

uBO is a wide-spectrum blocker, not merely an adblocker. It has powerful
context-sensitive blocking that's surpassed only by uMatrix (also from
gorhill), as well as cosmetic filters that I find invaluable for cleaning up
the dumpster fire being passed off as "the web" these days.

Floating header bar that follows you down the page of an article you're trying
to read, wasting your vertical screen space? Remove it permanently with uBO's
cosmetic filters and never see it again. Tired of the sidebar with links to
clickbait articles on the site? Cosmetic filter. Wikipedia nagging for
donations despite a history of irresponsible spending and ample cash reserves?
Cosmetic filter.

~~~
BrendanEich
We don't have uBO's cosmetic filters. That's about it.

In other words, Brave is "wide-spectrum" too. We block tracking,
fingerprinting, and other bad scripts -- not ads _per se_. This has the effect
of blocking 3rd party ads and most 1st party (since 1st party ads still rely
on tracking "pixels" AKA scripts for confirmation).

We don't block 1st party ads by default where they work without tracking
cookies and scripts. A prime example are the search ads you find on Google and
other search engine result pages. These are about as clean as you can get, and
yet some of our users want to block them on principle, for aesthetic reasons,
etc. So we are adding options to do so.

Cosmetic filters have a high performance cost that we have not been willing to
take by default, but we're working on them.

------
unnouinceput
Quote: "Since the next uBO release will essentially be what 1.22.5rc2 is,
consider that uBO is probably coming to an end of life in the Chrome Web Store
-- there is no good reason to believe uBO 1.22.5rc2 would no longer be
rejected with only changing the version number to 1.23.0.

Those who still want to use uBO will have to find another browser for which
uBO will still be available."

Hell yeah, Brave or Firefox. I dumped Chrome half a year ago, switched to
Firefox and DuckDuckGo. I love my uBO + NoScript + PrivacyBadger extensions on
Firefox.

------
kerng
It's probably a good thing long term. Tech savvy folks will leave Chrome
behind like we did with IE. It will encourage alternatives and the web and
browsers might get exciting again!

------
bronlund
I'm using Firefox Developer Edition as my main browser, but anytime I have to
work with the Google ecosystem I use Vivaldi - and I only use it for that.

------
hailhash
This is the lamest excuse to block UBO. Do you need more reasons to ditch
Chrome?

------
megous
Compare this with GNU/Linux distribution model, from the developer PoV. It's
so nice, compared to this arbitrary arrogant gatekeeper non-sense that happens
with Google/Apple/...

You write a useful app, publish it on your own web page, and distributors will
actually come to your website, check the app, review it, build it for you,
even for multiple archs sometimes, and distribute it via worldwide network of
mirrors. There are even many competing distributions, so no single one has
power to exclude you, users can download your app from your website and use it
too, etc. Nobody will be able to stop them.

For projects where there's no money in distribution, like those mentioned
here, it's like a developer heaven.

And next time someone will talk to me about how fragmentation in the Linux
distribution ecosystem is bad, and that there are too many distributions,
etc... I'm really glad there are, because if alternative is this amount of
power accumullated in single hands, and this kind of behavior, then that is
not desirable.

------
rvnx
"Hey all, I'm Simeon, the developer advocate for Chrome extensions. This
morning I heard from the review team; they've approved the current draft so
next publish should go through. Unfortunately it's the weekend, so most folks
are out, but I'm planning to follow up with u/gorhill4 with more details once
I have them."

------
finchisko
It's about time Mozilla to release FF with nightly macOS optimizations and I'm
ready to switch on all platforms I use.

I moved from Safari back to Chrome week ago, because Apple basically did same
thing - killed uBlock in Safari 13. I was expecting to move to FF soon or
later, but didn't expect it will be in less than a month. :)

------
devwastaken
If that's the hill chrome wants to die on then they can watch everyone install
Firefox. The internet is unusable without an adblocker. It's very simple to
just use Firefox, I've had no negative differences or learning curves from it,
and previously would just swap between the two.

------
2ion
No surprise; after the manifest v3 discussion, this development was to be
expected and only a matter of time.

~~~
rvnx
One of the main "advantages" (for Google) of manifest v3, is that there is,
not only a blacklist, but also a whitelist of domains bundled with Google
Chrome. So the logic is to restrict adblockers, to use the internal Chrome
adblock so Google can decide what ads are acceptable or not.

An independent study shows that YouTube ads and Search Ads are the ones that
the users enjoy the most and wouldn't want to block ;)

~~~
rvnx
Link to the results: [https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/4231068/Mobile-Web-Ad-
Experie...](https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/4231068/Mobile-Web-Ad-Experiences-
Ranking-02-18.jpg)

Of course, everybody loves video ads, don't we all ?

~~~
Ygg2
Yeah. I especially love 1hr 35min ad on a 5min video. /Sarcasm

But search ads are ok. Since you can both ignore them easily and are often the
thing you look for.

Video ads are annoying interuptions I hate with passion of a burning sun.

Most site ads are just sleazy shit, that serves as vector for malicious
actors. I hate that with passion of an exploding supernova.

------
sodosopa
Hopefully despite Google's fuckups about uBO, there will still be a way to
load this on Brave even after it stops being available for Chrome. Chrome's
speed on my 2012 mac is still faster than any build of Firefox and Safari is
just not as good.

~~~
BrendanEich
Yes, we said we will keep webRequest extensions working even when Google kills
them (except for paying enterprise customers who group-admin some into a
whitelist).

------
white-moss
I've donated Mozilla. I love Firefox. I love freedom of Internet. Don't be
evil, Google!

~~~
white-moss
Typo : donated -> donated money to

Sorry for my bad English :(

------
quotemstr
Over the past few years, it's become normal for a tiny number of people at a
tiny number of companies to make decisions about which software packages
ordinary people can run on devices that they own. When this practice started,
a few people, myself included, said it would lead to a dark place. We were
ignored. Can we revisit this decision now? As a general principle, if you own
a device, you should be able to override any west-coast meeting room and run
any package you want on it. If necessary, we should guarantee this freedom
with legislation. The alternative is an inevitable shift toward banning things
that this tiny group of software supervisors finds inconvenient.

------
prirun
Here's what freaks me out:

"Important Note Repeated or egregious violations of the policies may result in
your developer account being banned from the store. This may also result in
the suspension of related Google services associated with your Google
account."

Google is into all these different services and wants them all managed from
one Google ID. But if you have a problem with one of their services, it can
screw you on all of their services.

------
thinkloop
Why this constant painful guessing game? Why don't they just tell you what
they detected you did wrong? What portion of our society is broken that does
not allow for this?

~~~
k1e
It can be automated response. They use automated testing for extensions and
they want to make it harder to guess how it works.

------
vezycash
Monopoly

~~~
scarface74
For Windows there is Firefox, and IE Edge. For the Mac their are both of those
plus Safari.

Not to mention Chromium based browsers.

~~~
zaarn
Doesn't mean that Chrome isn't a monopoly, with their current marketshare, if
Chrome introduces a new feature or changes how some feature works, all
competitors have no choice but to implement that change or websites stop
working.

~~~
cookie_monsta
That's not really how it worked pre-2010 when IE had the monopoly.

And for all of Chrome (and Google's) faults, it does seem to be reasonably
standards- compliant and even open to experimentation. If they want to spend
some of their piles of cash developing new features that other browsers can
then adopt and then standardise, I don't see the problem.

If developers choose to use Chrome-only features and their pages break on
other browsers, that's on them

~~~
Santosh83
You will by definition be standards compliant if you _are_ the main mover
behind the eternally moving standard. Chrome powers the living standard. Other
browser engines follow.

~~~
cookie_monsta
So Google powers WHATWG and Apple, Microsoft and Mozilla just tag along?

~~~
Santosh83
They cooperate for now, but the balance of power and momentum is heavily in
favour of Google as it stands. This will only matter when one of the others
wants to hold out on some critical feature and find that they effectively
can't if they don't want to see their already minor market share plummet.
Apple though do have some clout since they own the entire vertical...

~~~
cookie_monsta
So we have gone from Google powering the living standard to the prediction
that they will be able to dominate it at some hypothetical point in the
future.

Well, maybe. Who's to say? But if we're theorising, I'd say that Google
probably learnt a lot from IE's demise and most likely sees the advantage of
making sure that the web dev community at least does not actively hate them.

~~~
Santosh83
Yes but we're talking about end user hostile behaviour from Google. The web
dev community will not directly hate them for that...

~~~
cookie_monsta
I thought we were talking about other browsers "wanting to hold out on some
critical feature and finding that they effectively can't if they don't want to
see their already minor market share plummet"?

Which is kind of a weird thing to be arguing for anyway. If a company wants to
innovate isn't that a good thing?

------
daniel_iversen
If you’re into having a more privacy-by-default Conscious browsing experience
I strongly suggest you try Brave. It’s awesome and for 6+ months all my work
and home stuff and chrome plugins have worked flawlessly in it (all I had to
google was how to enable chromecast). It’s fast, delightful, private, low
battery consumption!

------
caseydonahue
Would it be possible to create a desktop app that acted as a third party
chrome extension store? Chrome let's you installed developer zip files without
needing approval, could you make a desktop app that automatically downloaded
the latest version and uploaded it to all devices as a zip file in chrome?

------
torstenvl
This is truly unfortunate. So much of life today involves using the web, it's
disheartening that there are so few usable web browsers anymore (and before
someone chimes in, Firefox broke their PKI functionality sometime in the last
two years or so, so it's a non-starter).

------
surfsvammel
I love my Pi-hole. Best thing since sliced bread. Google will have a hard time
outmanoeuvring that one.

~~~
callmeal
Well, that's why they're pushing so hard for DoH (DNS over HTTPS) in the name
of "security". There's no easy way for pi-hole to work around that.

------
blfr
Chrome has always been best as a Google client. You can browse Maps in it, use
Google Apps, they always work well.

For regular browsing it had some nice security features but always lacked an
equivalent to Tree Style Tabs. And will soon become useless without a decent
ad blocker.

~~~
sgc
Unfortunately it has created an Internet Explorer effect, and weekly there is
a site I need to load into Chromium because they never tested their JS on FF.
Hopefully FF picks up user share and that begins to change again.

------
Vaslo
I use Firefox and the new Chromium Edge. Haven’t use Chrome in a few years and
don’t miss it.

------
FpUser
Chrome free (except checking if my web stuff works) for over 3 month already

------
thefsb
I switched to FF after Prism was publicized. It's good. Go for it.

------
jasonvorhe
I'm willing to bet this is just completely blown out of proportion and that
the next release will come through again.

It's not like UBO was completely blocked from the Chrome Store.

------
avl999
Firefox is a superior product and has been for a few years now even
discounting all these shenanigans by Google. I urge anyone who is still on
Chrome to switch.

------
qwerty456127
I don't mind installing uBlock Origin manually from GitHub or whatever yet I'm
certainly not going to use a browser without uBlock Origin.

------
ktaube
The only thing that I really miss from the firefox is possibility to pinch to
zoom. Has anyone heard about any plans for it to be implemented?

~~~
pkulak
[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/multi-
touch-z...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/multi-touch-zoom/)

------
Jimmc414
I really want to use FF over Chrome and I generally do, but I find it more of
a memory hog than Chrome, which is saying a lot.

------
ivanhoe
What are the options for manual installation?

~~~
rvnx
chrome://extensions Enter Developer Mode and Load from folder (also valid on
Kiwi Browser for Android and Yandex Browser)

~~~
prashnts
Note that extensions installed this way will be disabled whenever the browser
is restarted. (In chrome, not in Brave based on my experience)

------
zelly
Mozilla has a lot of employees focused on making a libre browser. Instead of
wasting time on the Gecko sinking ship, they should really be maintaining a
fork of Chromium without the cancer. The world isn't any better off because
you can't get over a massive sunk cost. What the world needs is a free
Chromium fork (with all the Mozilla integrations like sync and the addons)
that is professionally maintained for widespread use.

------
anoplus
Switched to FF and DDG a while ago. I am happy and very rarely use Chrome or
Google search.

------
outside1234
Edge on Chromium is a great browser! Been using it for three months now and am
never going back.

Also, while I am here, you should all be using a Pi Hole instead of uBlock
Origin anyway. Much less detectable by sites, covers all of your devices...

Seriously, spend the 1 hour it takes to set up the Pi Hole - you won’t regret
it.

~~~
armitron
Pi Hole is a very poor substitute for uBlock origin, it doesn't block Youtube
or Twitch ads for example or do anything dynamic. Plus it's full of false
positives since DNS rules can be very coarse or change continuously. Not to
mention the trouble you have to go to when sites break due to that coarseness
or that in many cases it degrades functionality that's not immediately
obvious.

uBlock origin is the king of adblocking, and suffers from none of these
issues. Use anything else and you're severely compromising. I'd go as far as
to say that DNS adblocking is basically a waste of resources, a gimmick, the
wrong solution to a well-defined problem.

~~~
somebehemoth
You make good points but it sounds very silly to claim DNS adblocking is a
waste of resources. One, to each his own. Two, no false positives in our home
and 10%-15% of DNS queries blocked is definitely not the "wrong solution" for
me and many, many others. Why trivialize legitimate use cases to make your
point.

Furthermore, you can't install ublock origin on IoT devices and smart TV's so
your claim of "waste of resources" is even more questionable.

Better still, why not both pihole and ublock origin?

------
RedComet
Google is a villainous monstrosity. Maybe these sort of events will finally
wake the tech crowd up to this since it personally affects them. Dear US/EU
gov: BREAK UP GOOGLE.

------
fyijbcxas
a couple issues with firefox is password support and it just doesn’t work well
with many Google services like GCP

------
truth_seeker
Sad news. I am happy with Brave though.

------
randompi
Does that mean the end of uBO in Chrome?

~~~
hannasanarion
No, it means that there's no update for people using the development branch.
We shouldn't start worrying unless Google also rejects the next commit.

------
dethos
So it begins...

------
techslave
no love for safari here? everything is great about it except for lack of
profiles

------
zaphod420
I use FireFox as my primary browser, but I'm also a big fan of Brave.

------
netfl0
I am constantly surprised that anyone is surprised by this.

------
sabujp
switch to brave

------
darkhorn
Use Firefox. It has build-in ad blocker.

------
vdfs
This is a development version that was blocked, the main extension was not
blocked.

~~~
_Microft
They expect to be no longer able to update it.

"Since the next uBO release will essentially be what 1.22.5rc2 is, consider
that uBO is probably coming to an end of life in the Chrome Web Store -- there
is no good reason to believe uBO 1.22.5rc2 would no longer be rejected with
only changing the version number to 1.23.0.",
[https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-
issues/issues/745#iss...](https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-
issues/issues/745#issuecomment-539962215)

------
finchisko
I hope, that Google will not put pressure on Mozilla to do same thing - remove
uBlock Origin from Firefox extensions, since they still have leverage on
Mozilla - hefty amounts for being first in their search list. Not sure if
Mozilla is able to survive without Google (but hope they can).

