
Google Just Gave 2B Chrome Users a Reason to Switch to Firefox - mhr_online
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2019/05/30/google-just-gave-2-billion-chrome-users-a-reason-to-switch-to-firefox/#1b219e42751f
======
suspectdoubloon
A dupe from the other day?
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20056864](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20056864)

------
delhanty
Dupe

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20056864](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20056864)

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

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20038872](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20038872)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20050173](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20050173)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20037562](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20037562)

~~~
yonkshi
Not only dupe, Forbes also has the most click baity title amongst them all.
Forbes is like buzzfeed now

~~~
teilo
Blame the Forbes Tech Council.

------
the_duke
Great to see mainstream media picking this up and giving Firefox some
exposure.

With Microsoft switching to Chromium, Firefox is now the only viable (cross
platform) alternative. FF gaining back a solid amount of market share is
critical for the browser ecosystem in the future.

(Personally I switched back to FF after the first Quantum release, which
brought performance back on par with Chrome. On mobile, the ad blocker is even
more essential to get somewhat acceptable load times...)

~~~
ljm
I hope to see Firefox eventually providing an embeddable framework,
considering that Chromium isn't just monopolising the web browser space...
it's spreading into desktop applications through Electron. Left unchecked,
Google will manage to poke its fingers into every pie within reach.

It seems like the ideal solution of using the OS's native web toolkit hasn't
been successful so far. So the next best offering (aside from building on Qt),
is to have an Electron competitor too.

~~~
dvfjsdhgfv
I regret XUL was abandoned - it was a great idea, but much ahead of its time.

~~~
mongol
That was before Firefox was born, right? Or was the success of Firefox the
demise of XUL?

~~~
cptskippy
XUL was the markup language used by the Mozilla Communicator Suite for
designing user interfaces. It was what Add-on development used.

Mozilla deprecated it not that long ago in favor of HTML but stalwarts have
clung to it and complained.

I use to maintain a couple Add-ons and developed some simple UIs for it. I was
never impressed by it and it was easy enough to use so I had no objections
either.

------
drevil-v2
Google is rapidly becoming persona non-grata in my view. There is something
really, for the lack of a better word, scummy about it in the last year or
two.

We partnered with them on their DialogueFlow platform (voice recognition) for
Google Home integration and voice command intent handling and they totally
screwed us over. I won't/can't go into the specifics but it was bizarre; we
had no recourse except taking a near trillion dollar company to court. We
decided it was not worth it and wrote off the cost and took a hit but never
again.

~~~
netman21
Last year or two? Read about Google censorship in China. This article is from
2006:
[http://www.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3749767](http://www.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3749767)

~~~
lern_too_spel
Google stopped censoring in China years ago, so in that respect, Google has
gotten better. Meanwhile, Apple has handed iCloud keys to the Chinese
government to access any Chinese user's data at will.

------
tjpnz
I switched 6 months ago to Firefox on all my mobile devices. Put simply I need
the ability to block ads. A lot has been written on privacy but the immediate
issue I was facing was around malware - a lot of it being delivered via
Google's own ad networks. There were certain sites (mostly tech related) that
I simply couldn't visit anymore due to frequent browser hijacking. Later
versions of Chrome for Android shipped with a setting that would prevent some
of it but it was disabled by default and hidden well away from the user. It
started to feel like Google was not only well aware of the problem but was
choosing to be complicit in all of it. I reported the ads but they clearly
didn't want to know about it. I would urge to anyone that cares about their
own security to make the move to Firefox, and to urge others to do the same
(be it family, friends or colleagues).

------
bambax
The state of the debate is unsatisfactory.

Google employees such as Justin Schuh are aggressively defending the move on
tech/security principles and denying commercial motivations, while uBlock
Origin dev (Raymond Hill) says the change will cripple or kill uBO on Chrome
and evil motives are its _raison d 'être_.

It's good that mainstream media articles raise the awareness of the issue, but
a good technical discussion by impartial analysts would also help.

Is it possible to fix the security issues of the existing webRequest API
without deprecating it? Or by replacing it with something safer but just as
powerful? There should be a simple answer to those questions.

(I'm tempted to side against Google because they keep invoking "performance
issues", which is a ridiculous argument: nothing helps Chrome's performance
more than efficient ad-blocking. But still, I'd like to know more.)

~~~
roblabla
> Is it possible to fix the security issues of the existing webRequest API
> without deprecating it?

The WebRequest API is not being deprecated though, only the ability to block
through it is. And I don't think blocking a request has very negative security
implications. It's hard to not attribute malice to this move when the status
quo was absolutely fine, and google is raising a strawman to try and justify
their changes.

~~~
noir_lord
They have to raise a strawman though, their cash cow is advertising and often
advertising to people who don't want advertising, ublock origin and others
allows those people (including me) to block the advertising.

To put it in a simple form, I will not use a browser that can't run ublock
origin, full stop, I don't care what other features it has, ublock origin is
the single killer feature for me.

~~~
exergy
I think Google may be about to find that a non trivial number of people share
that last sentiment.

~~~
noir_lord
I'm sure they did the calculation of users lost vs advertising increase from
users who still use them after they break adblockers.

Honestly though it makes me glad that I never stopped using FF as my primary
browser, Chrome is used for dev/testing so this doesn't really affect me
directly, I'll just make sure that Chrome can only access sites under
dev/testing and carry on.

------
ignoramous
The article recommends Brave and Pi-Hole, as well.

For folks looking for simplest anti ads and tracking browser (for friends and
family, for instance) should consider Firefox Focus [0] instead of Brave. It
is light and works like a breeze on lowest of configurations.

And folks using Android not bothered enough to setup Pi-Hole should consider
using Intra with nextdns or adguard-dns [1].

I've installed Intra for friends and family on their phones, on their
AndroidTVs... It takes a quick one minute setup and another minute to show
them how to use it. Esp, nextdns' analytics dashboard is a real eye-opener for
them. When they actually _see_ the results, they start taking notice and are
bothered enough to figure out how to blacklist additional domains.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15049171](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15049171)

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20051049](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20051049)

~~~
tfigment
Agree completely for Android. I've used Focus since it came out and set as
primary browser because it is so light. It works great from Materialistic (HN
Reader) and Reddit App or for one time website browsing. It also allows
opening in Firefox or chrome if site is too broken though that is usually ad
or captcha related.

I setup DNS66 easily and that helped with some ad heavy apps as well. Only
issue is it cannot be used with actual VPNs.

I open Firefox manually if I want a heavier browser with tabs and ublock or
umatrix but focus is usually first.

------
ajnin
As the antitrust investigation of Google progresses, they must find a fine
line : get as much control as possible of the web while leaving enough margin
for competition to avoid an antitrust ruling. That move to limit adblockers
might be strategically required from Google at this point, and the fact that
they might lose market share an expected result. They've already reached 70%
market share, limiting adblockers will allow them to extract more value from
their current users and also avoid becoming too obviously hegemonic.

------
ebilodeau
The original article has an update (5/30) from a google spokesperson: “Chrome
supports the use and development of ad blockers. We’re actively working with
the developer community to get feedback and iterate on the design of a
privacy-preserving content filtering system that limits the amount of
sensitive browser data shared with third parties.”

[https://9to5google.com/2019/05/29/chrome-ad-blocking-
enterpr...](https://9to5google.com/2019/05/29/chrome-ad-blocking-enterprise-
manifest-v3/)

------
oedmarap
> Another option is using something like Pi-Hole, says Wright. “This works on
> the DNS level and has blacklists of adverts as well as malicious URLs.”

I think nextdns is fantastic for this purpose and has a barrier of entry that
makes it usable for non-tech folks as well.

I created an account recently and linked my WireGuard server's IP (when
connected) to a saved nextdns configuration.

Ads/trackers are now blocked on all my devices that use the WG egress when the
provided DNS server is set in each peer's conf.

This is obvious given the scale of their blocklists, but let me just say the
browsing experience and speed boost is utterly phenomenal. Does a better job
at blocking than both my old Pi-Hole server and my localhost AdGuard Home
daemon.

[0] [https://nextdns.io](https://nextdns.io)

------
agentofuser
I really want to use Firefox because of Quantum and other Rust goodness, but
until they catch up on usability I'm happy to stay with Brave. Tab-to-search
is sorely missing in Firefox, and the tab creation and switching experience on
Android is awful.

~~~
713233eb
Tab management is what keeping me from switching to FF on Android. The option
to use extensions and to customize the browser to the desktop level is amazing
though. I hope they will look into tabs' UX later when more people are going
to use it.

------
Funes-
>Another option is using something like Pi-Hole, says Wright. “This works on
the DNS level and has blacklists of adverts as well as malicious URLs.”

You can also run a ridiculously simple script from time to time (or create a
cron job that does it for you, for example) to update your hosts file
periodically, using the same blacklists[0]. No extra hardware needed.

[0]:
[https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts](https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts).

------
jpangs88
Does anyone know the status of the Chrome native ad blocker, the one that
would block just the "obtrusive" ads? I remember hearing about it a while back
and if it comes out with this change I think it would solve the use case of
most people.

Not that I don't want people to switch to Firefox/other browsers, I just feel
like if Google implements their own solution I think most people won't mind...

------
sldjfkdsljffkjd
One thing I haven't seen mentioned: Chrome OS. I have two Chrome OS devices
that are useless without adblock. They can't handle the real internet. And who
would want to buy a Chrome OS device that could?

My Chromebox is my most used computer in my house (it powers the living room
TV) so this'll be a real inconvenience for my family.

~~~
civility
Newer versions of Chrome OS are able to run Linux in a container. You can
install Firefox with the "firefox-esr" package in that Linux. Unfortunately,
audio doesn't work yet (at least not on my PixelBook), so it's not really a
complete solution, but for (quiet) browsing it does work with uBlock Origin.
Apparently Linux audio under Chrome OS is coming soon.

------
blisterpeanuts
Maybe advertisers need to go back to the drawing board and devise a better way
to deliver their message. Ad blockers exist because ads are annoying and even
crippling.

Google's Adsense (or whatever you call those text ads that appear next to
search results) was a reasonable compromise, unobtrusive and often useful,
whereas full window timed ads that force you to click the "x", and similar
excessively animated distractions and pop-ups, are what motivate people to
install add blockers.

------
davidgerard
by the way - if you want adblocking on Android, Firefox accepts extensions,
including uBlockOrigin.

~~~
billysielu
IMO Brave is the best Android browser. Blocks ads by default and performs much
better than Firefox.

------
azangru
Are there web developers in this thread?

The only praise for a browser that I am hearing in this and similar threads is
about how a browser is superior for content consumption (browser X is faster,
etc.). It’s never about how one browser offers better developer experience
than others. And I have not yet found a browser that is nicer to develop in
than Chrom(e/ium).

~~~
Semaphor
Chrome's dev tools are quite a bit faster, but FF's dev tools give a better
overview. IMO. In general, I'd say it's mostly personal preference and
inertia.

------
CoffeeDregs
I've sort of switched: mobile is FF; desktop is Chrome. The thing that still
gets me with both is that memory usage is -insane- and I cannot figure out why
it is so high. After a few days of usage I'll close all but one tab and will
have a 4+GB process.

Thank you to FF for maintaining AdBlocking but memory usage needs love, too.

------
Syzygies
Being shown ads is a requirement for many web sites. Responding to them is
not. The focus of ad blockers is all wrong; the priority should be to appear
to see ads without actually seeing them, and to protect privacy.

A browser of the future will fail to display ads, while giving no hint of this
to the ad source; ads need to be downloaded as usual.

A browser of the future will cloak its identity by sandboxing each website,
manipulating browser signature and apparent IP address (some variation of VPN
services) to destroy tracking.

The issue isn't saving resources, it's winning the privacy wars.

------
Justsignedup
Glad to see people caring.

99% of people don't even know that adblockers exist. Those same people are
generally scared of computers.

Trust me, this isn't gonna matter. I saw these same arguments during the
IE/Firefox war. Didn't matter that much.

~~~
majewsky
> 99% of people don't even know that adblockers exist.

How can that be when mainstream publishers complain about 20% and more of
users using adblockers?

------
chank
Tried out Firefox again a few days ago. Still prefer chrome. If add blocking
becomes an issue with chrome, I'll definitely make the switch because of that
and just hate it or go back to safari and hate it just as much

~~~
bad_user
What don’t you like about Firefox?

Speaking as a FF user I have a hard time using Chrome too. In other words you
get used to what you use and FF is a decent option.

~~~
sanxchit
Not the original commenter, but Firefox has noticeably poorer performance on
my MacBook pro 2018, especially on react-heavy sites like the AWS Console or
Twitch.tv

~~~
chank
Mostly this, performance is atrocious on a lot of sites I use.

I also dislike its history management, download management, auto-complete,
search in address bar functionality, pocket integration, and much more. I'm
sure if I were forced to spend more time with it I could possibly find
configurations to customize all those things in a way I like, but even using
it for a few days the easily findable settings weren't flexible enough.

~~~
mentalpiracy
I realize your comment says you’ve already switched back, but should you ever
try Firefox again most of these can be tweaked directly from about:config

~~~
chank
I know, but not enough to my preferences at least from as far as I dug into
those settings.

------
chris_wot
Man, the backlash against Google is extreme. It's much faster than the
backlash against Microsoft back in the day - at least, that's my feeling. Note
I'm not saying it's not well deserved!

~~~
kstenerud
Actually, it's far more muted than the backlash against Microsoft was, in
public as well as by government officials. The memes were far more mainstream
in nature [1]. Hell, even my non tech-savvy parents were aware of it and
worried by it. In fact, Chrome's success owes a lot to the public backlash and
antitrust lawsuits against Microsoft.

[1]
[http://www.tjscafe.com/tjs/gallery/billborg.htm](http://www.tjscafe.com/tjs/gallery/billborg.htm)

------
Nursie
I have one system I still use chrome on - my late-2013 Macbook Pro.

The reason I use chrome as my main browser there is because Firefox and Slack
do not seem to be friends on MacOS. I use slack in the browser rather than the
native app and FF seems to get copy and paste functionality all messed up.

I would use Safari, but some quirk of the office webmail (Outlook of some
sort) means that email from Safari gets flagged and blocked as potential spam
by an outbound mail server :/

But everywhere else, Android phone included, it's Firefox because they don't
pull these kinds of shenanigans.

~~~
zkomp
See this comment a lot but absolutely disagree. Firefox works and is only
getting better on MacOS. (And if being friends with MacOS is the point, then
why not use Safari, does not get more friendly than that)

~~~
Nursie
I love FF, really do, but as I said I have two specific issues keeping me on
chrome right now.

I hope they can be sorted out.

------
InafuSabi
I've downloaded firefox __ESR __and am migrating my important addons to
firefox equivalents. Up to now all of them, apart from _authy_ (a crucial one)
have native versions.

For me extentions like _uBlock Origin BitWarden_ & _LastPass_ are vital

Now I have to look if the latest incarnations are not as CPU hungry as the
ones that forced me to stop in 2013.

If it is good on this ageing #DAW, I have my response to google's FU to us,
their users

Update: Firefox still uses much more CPU on my machine, that will create a
problem when google pushes their crap through our throats

------
ashelmire
The title of the article (which is different from the title here, which is
merely clickbaity) is misleading, though there is the potential that ad
blocking becomes much worse due to the deprecation of the webRequest api
mentioned in the article. If that does have a significant impact on ad
blocking, I would expect many users (both devs and casual users) to switch to
Firefox.

------
easymodex
Firefox has always been my weapon of choice, I used both chrome and firefox
with a lot of tabs loaded so I can be logged into different accounts on the
same Saas. I'm actually switching chrome out with Brave browser, so far it has
been a pleasant experience.

~~~
cosarara
Look into firefox containers.

------
keymone
just switched two days ago. it's been nice ten years, see you google.

my main hurdle was absence of decent support for multiple isolated profiles in
firefox and it's still not great but multi-account containers are good enough
for now.

~~~
nsomaru
What limitations have you found with containers? I use them all the time and
they work great especially when you set domains to open in a container by
default.

Did chrome have better support for that?

~~~
keymone
cmd+t opens new tabs in default profile, i'd like to either be able to assign
which profile is default for each window (have a "work" window with some tabs,
"personal" window with other tabs, etc) or for container to be inherited from
current tab.

i've also tried native firefox profiles but they are somehow too isolated.
chrome has this behavior where clicking a url outside the browser would open
in new tab in most recently used chrome profile window. in firefox it's always
the first(?) profile window that you opened.

------
Maro
After the story I installed Firefox. I got it configured, and was happy to see
that it's as good as Chrome. For now I'll keep using Chrome, but the moment
the adblockers stop working, I'll be on Firefox.

------
fulafel
Chrome already banned adblocking on mobile, since many years. Interesting (but
good!) that this relatively minor api change now gets even mainstream media to
barricades.

------
kerng
The big question: Will Microsoft fork or take the change also?

~~~
dictum
Something tells me they'll take the change.

[https://twitter.com/ericlaw/status/1134573349043081217](https://twitter.com/ericlaw/status/1134573349043081217)
[https://twitter.com/ericlaw/status/1134909845042335744](https://twitter.com/ericlaw/status/1134909845042335744)

------
agumonkey
talk about branch sawing..

------
pgt
A valuable lesson I learned from @dhh was: never put your customer back in a
buying position[^1]. For example, if you discontinue your legacy[^2] 1.0
product, and force them to _switch_ to your shiny/better/faster 2.0 product,
when 1.0 was working just fine for them, you are forcing them back into a
buying position. And this time, they might choose your competitor.

Chrome was way ahead, but by overreaching against ad-blockers, they forced
their users back in a buying position, and this time Firefox had gotten way
better. Unless Google messed with the status quo, their users would never
consider switching. The only thing pushing me toward Fastmail is that Google
keeps messing with Gmail/Inbox.

This death-cycle seems to be unavoidable for MBA-types who inherit working
products, and I bet you could build a business around this idea, or at least
design a consistent enterprise takeover strategy.

[^1]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJkiCpPeYuI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJkiCpPeYuI)
[^2]: Legacy = any code you can't (safely) change.

------
moocowtruck
i think its time to replace pichai

------
timbit42
It needs to be dupe'd every day until Chrome is fixed or goes under 50% market
share.

~~~
izacus
Can we not turn HN into even more of a political soapbox than it already is?
It's fm fine that you have a cause to fight for but this is seriously getting
tiring.

------
781
Google is famous for measuring everything. If you think they did this without
extensive testing/polling/... you are naive.

~~~
tjoff
You think they went all in on google+ without extensive research?

------
The_rationalist
All of this "debate" is pretty absurd.

Yes the webrequest v3 proposal seems problematic for scripts /malware / crypto
/ ad / etc blockers. This is consensual.

Chromium is open source and has those two main actors: opera and Microsoft.

Almost everybody seems to consider chromium in the debate as a proprietary
software owned by Google. And thus argue to switch to Firefox. Let's be clear,
when you look at the technical, chromium is a far superior browser. Chromium
has far more active devs, far more features (look at caniuse.com) and has
almost systematically better performance. And it has many others kinds of
advantages. All of the stated advantages are sufficent to consider chromium as
the best browser.

So instead of arguing that opera or Microsoft or simply open source community
will simply stay in sync with chromium master but keep the patchs for keeping
the current webrequest api. You want people to choose a poorer, less
featureful browser which has real consequences on what web devs can offer as
user experiences. This is forgive me, dumb.

What everybody should ask for is to mozilla to get rational and to migrate
Firefox to chromium while backportikng the best parts of gecko to chromium 1)
and to ensure the respect of privacy in the chromium source code 2) This would
lead us to a web that evolve far more quickly, to the fastest browser and to
an implementation which satisfy every interests (the ones of Googles and the
one of Microsoft/mozilla) If Google and mozilla disagreed on something,
mozilla should maintain a set of patchs for applying their custom changes (a
micro fork)

That's simple but there's still a long way for the medias and the people to
understand that. I would have hoped that hackernews community, wanting to be
like the pre-eternal September would debate with intellectual riguour in the
common goal of seeking true, sound progress.

~~~
klez
I find parts of your post quite offensive, to be honest, but let's have a
debate anyway.

The way I see it is that my (and other's) interests are not aligned with
yours.

You want a web that evolves quickly, I want a web that is not a constantly
moving target.

You want one web engine implementation to rule them all, I want an open web
where standards are respected, not constantly changed by a single conflicted
(as in conflict of interests) actor, where multiple implementations can thrive
and where users can still expect every website to work independently of the
user agent they use.

Is this enough for intellectual rigour?

------
carlsborg
A chunk of users (Linux desktops mainly) are locked into chrome because of
h.264 / mp4 video.

~~~
shakna
On Linux, I have "OpenH264 Video Codec by Cisco" and "Widevine Content
Decryption Module by Google" as Firefox addons.

This seems to be the norm [0], as Firefox will download them on-demand so long
as the user agrees.

[0] [https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enable-
drm](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enable-drm)

~~~
carlsborg
Says here the Cisco codec allows you to use H.264 in WebRTC with gstreamer and
Firefox. It does not enable generic H.264 playback, only WebRTC.

[https://github.com/cisco/openh264/issues/2835](https://github.com/cisco/openh264/issues/2835)
[https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/OpenH264](https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/OpenH264)

~~~
shakna
Because generic support for H264 in Firefox came in Firefox 43, four years
ago. If Firefox finds ffmpeg, it uses it.

~~~
carlsborg
True but it’s a poor experience getting it to work. It breaks every few
upgrades, poorly documented and mainly in the the bugtracker, and is
unofficial hack because it’s not a licensed decoder.

------
GnwbZHiU
"For now, Wright thinks people should use Brave instead: “Brave is built upon
Chromium so all existing Chrome plugins and even themes work on it. This is
perhaps why it's seen an increase in user numbers.”"

