
Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users - estranhosidade
https://9to5google.com/2019/05/29/chrome-ad-blocking-enterprise-manifest-v3/
======
phiresky
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...](https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-
issues/issues/338#issuecomment-496009417)

~~~
user17843
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.

~~~
ljm
This is why it’s so unfortunate and frustrating that people are depending so
much on Chromium/Blink. Electron, various browsers that are just skins over
the embedded framework...

We were still dealing with legacy IE6 (and IE 7/8 by that point also) in 2013!
Almost a decade since we got Firefox and the first version of Chrome.

The web has empirically suffered through homogeneity and the lack of strong
competitors in the browser space, not helped by the underlying HTML/JS spec
becoming exponentially more convoluted to the point where building your own
renderer is nigh impossible.

And since everyone is standardising on a Google, their decisions on ad
blocking and supporting APIs are automatically going to flow down into every
dependent product.

It’s frustrating that MS copped out and went Chromium. Like we never learned
this lesson the first time.

We still have WebKit and Firefox and (sooner or later), more of Servo at
least. These need to be protected if we don’t want Google and the ad network
to totally control the browsing experience.

Although, controversially, we as a web dev collective have learned nothing if
we continue to only develop for a single browser. Not for the web itself, but
for one particular rendering engine. “Only works in Chrome,” is poor
engineering for anything more than a prototype or proof of concept.

~~~
amelius
> “Only works in Chrome,” is poor engineering for anything more than a
> prototype or proof of concept.

Can't we, developers, do the opposite? Like introduce a small annoyance, like
showing a pop-up, when visitors use Chrome? It could say something like "today
is free web day, upgrade your browser to Firefox or any other libre browser"

~~~
roca
What you, as Web developers, can do, is use Firefox while developing your site
to ensure it really works well on non-Chromium browsers. And do your level
best to encourage your developer friends to do the same. If they're on Mac and
would rather use Safari, that'll do too.

Then, every time you see any site or any Web developer satisfied with "works
in Chrome", do what you can to let them know that's not acceptable. In a
polite, loving, and extremely firm manner of course.

~~~
tomjen3
A decent idea of course, but you are going to run in to the same issue as
everybody else who tries that: unless Firefox has a significant market share,
it is just not worth throwing resources after it.

What you can do is develop automatic filters to make chrome specific CSS
prefixes general, etc. Those are probably worth using since a few hours/days
of engineering time easily is worth the larger market share.

~~~
roca
Firefox already implements a bunch of -webkit prefixed features for
compatibility reasons. Are there specific Chrome-only features that aren't yet
supported that you think should be? If so, file Firefox bugs!

------
SimonPStevens
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)

~~~
gzimhelshani
what do you think about the new Edge browser from Microsoft, its based on
Chromium. So you would get most benefits of chrome but its from Microsoft,
which personally, I trust more than I trust Google.

~~~
pier25
I installed the beta for macOS and I'm not happy about it.

It installed a daemon that updates Edge even when the browser is closed. Even
if you delete the .app the daemon keeps running and when there is a new update
it downloads it and installs it.

There are no settings to change this intrusive behavior.

I sent feedback and complained on Twitter. Apparently the team is looking on
it.

~~~
52AE8D47
> It installed a daemon that updates Edge even when the browser is closed.

They learned that trick from Google and Chrome; search for
`com.google.keystone.agent.plist` -- they install a Launch Agent for you.

------
redwards510

      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.

~~~
jchw
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.

~~~
milkytron
One of my favorite things with Firefox is the ability to “edit and resend”
requests in the browser devtools. I’m sure there are plugins that do something
similar on chrome/chromium. But I use it all the time and my colleagues are
always blown away when I show them this.

~~~
joshschreuder
Whoa, never knew that was a thing. I found FF's dev tools quite bulky and
clunky in the past, but I might have to give it another go.

~~~
King-Aaron
That's the only reason I keep falling back to Chrome, the dev tools are just
so much more refined.

~~~
jchw
The one thing I always liked about Chrome dev tools was the ability to
introspect WebSocket frames. Last I checked this couldn’t be done in Firefox
:(

Otherwise, I have found Firefox dev tools to be fairly competitive. I liked
the CSS Grid stuff they had around the launch of Quantum; it made it easier
for me to jump into Grid.

~~~
shoeboxam
I use Firefox personally, but develop with Chrome. I have a hard time getting
stack traces from Firefox reliably. Oftentimes one of the following occurs on
Firefox:

There is no error, but the page won't load. There is an error, but the error
message is generic. There is an error message, but no stack trace.

When I switch to chrome, I always get the error and stack trace without any
further code modifications.

I make sure to clean up for Firefox in releases. But it's just impossible to
develop without error messages and traces. I'm on Ubuntu using the latest
stable releases.

------
bArray
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-...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-launches-portals-a-new-web-page-
navigation-system-for-chrome/)

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

[3] [https://money.cnn.com/2018/09/26/technology/google-
dragonfly...](https://money.cnn.com/2018/09/26/technology/google-dragonfly-
senate-hearing/index.html)

------
notatoad
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.

~~~
anonymous5133
If google moves forward with this we should all start randomly clicking on ads
until advertisers start to realize that they're basically throwing their money
away on advertising that doesn't work :) Let's hit 'em where it hurts.

~~~
Gustomaximus
It would be I interesting to make this into an extension.

That said it probably wouldn't change marketing budgets, just what people pay
CPC/CPM etc to offset the percentage of users doing this.

~~~
PureParadigm
The AdNauseam extension [1] does exactly that, and Google really didn't like
it (banned it from the Chrome extension store [2]).

1\. [https://adnauseam.io/](https://adnauseam.io/) 2\.
[https://adnauseam.io/free-adnauseam.html](https://adnauseam.io/free-
adnauseam.html)

------
jedberg
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.

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

~~~
jedberg
Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it just restores some of
the tabs and windows. It's really inconsistent.

Also it lacks the granularity of session buddy, which has a list of every tab
and window configuration I've ever had.

~~~
roca
You should try reporting a bug. Session Restore always works for me, and I'm
on Nightly!

~~~
jedberg
I can't replicate it so I can't report it. :( It works like 95% of the time,
but that 5% is just really irritating.

~~~
colemickens
Have you tried hitting Ctrl+Shift+N to restore the previously closed windows?

These will behave differently: (1) "Quitting" Firefox will multiple windows
open. (2) Using your WM to close both Firefox windows. The latter will cause
only the last-closed window to be restored, but you can pop the others off the
stack too with Ctrl+Shift+N.

~~~
jedberg
I tried that. I exhausted the stack and not all the windows were there.

------
blinkingled
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.

~~~
jupp0r
> we have to make Chrome the new IE fast.

Microsoft has literally done that already:
[https://www.microsoftedgeinsider.com/en-
us/](https://www.microsoftedgeinsider.com/en-us/)

------
irrational
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?

~~~
bradstewart
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.

~~~
ptmcc
> 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.

OMG I thought I was the only one running into this exact same problem! This
has been a deal killer for me.

~~~
nanny
Switch your DNS servers (I suggest 1.1.1.1). Chrome uses Google's DNS servers
by default, they're probably just faster than whatever you're using.

~~~
ptmcc
That isn't an effective solution on a corporate network that depends on
internal name resolution.

And FWIW I run into the same DNS-like issues with Firefox on my home network,
which uses Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 DNS. Perhaps it is something to do with the
way my company provisions my machine, I don't know. All I know is that Chrome
has no issues. I've made efforts to track down the issue but it's ultimately
not worth my time.

~~~
amaccuish
Double check it's not using or trying to autodetect a proxy?

------
userbinator
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](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.)

~~~
rjf72
As always, I think it's appropriate mention Brave here. They are very much
going in the opposite way of other browsers. They've now for a long time had
features such as being able to change scripts/third party cookies/tracking/etc
on a per site basis with a single click. As an example, you can get rid of all
bait and switch paywalls (such as NYT) by simply disabling scripts. In Brave
that's a two click change - Lion Icon -> Toggle Enable Scripts button.

They've also added features like built-in TOR support. Right click a link and
one of the context options is 'Open link in private window with Tor'. You can
then change 'identities' (Tor exit node -> IP/country) with a single click as
well. Absolutely awesome for geoblocked content or even just seeing what users
from other countries would see. Kind of fun to play 'Google Roulette' and
perform the same search from various places around the world.

And obviously there's built in ad blocking and all that good stuff. It's like
a Chrome that runs absurdly fast (in part because all the rubbish is removed)
and has put privacy as a #1 consideration. Of course the downside is that, as
mentioned, it uses Chromium as the renderer. If Google starts bringing this
stuff over to Chromium, which is probably a non-zero possibility, that's going
to pose major issues to browsers like Brave.

Incidentally I was also a long time Proxomitron user!

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

Brave: [https://brave.com/](https://brave.com/)

Firefox: [https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/](https://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/)

~~~
tapoxi
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.

~~~
JohnJamesRambo
I mean we would be paid for viewing ads this way instead of being paid nothing
as it is now, and losing all our privacy instead.

Seems like a win/win to me. Advertisers would actually pay the eyeballs that
should be paid for seeing ads instead of the middleman in the attention
economy. The technology in the Basic Attention Token performs all the
functions instead.

~~~
tty2300
I get paid for working a job. I don't want any ads on my screen.

~~~
dymk
"I get paid for working a job. I don't want to pay road tolls"

"I get paid for working a job. I don't want to pay the grocery store for my
food"

~~~
tty2300
My point was I don't need my browser injecting extra ads that I get paid for.

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

~~~
junar
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...](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservices/creating_a_content_blocker)

------
opan
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...](https://robinwils.gitlab.io/articles/sbcl-browser-engine.html)

~~~
spilk
Also, Mozilla is largely dependent on Google via their default-search
arrangement, so even if it's not Webkit/Blink based, Google still has
significant influence.

~~~
techntoke
Mozilla doesn't even put a priority on open-source operating systems. Chromium
actually supports hardware acceleration but Firefox doesn't.

------
enitihas
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
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.

~~~
ryan-c
A trivial way to check for Firefox in javascript:

    
    
        !!{}.toSource
    

There are many others, of course.

~~~
ryannevius
For others who may be wondering, this is because
`Boolean.prototype.toSource()` is a non-standard method that is only supported
by Firefox: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Boolean/toSource)

------
Despegar
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.

~~~
phs318u
Currently Safari complains that uBO will slow down your browser. But it still
lets you load it.

~~~
Despegar
Yes but as far as I understand it doesn't actually use the native API. The
Content Blocker API has benefits from a performance and privacy perspective.

~~~
kitsunesoba
Yes, content blocker extensions are many times more lightweight than old-style
blocker extensions (virtually zero negative impact on resource usage and site
load speed), can never be hijacked to do anything malicious, and know nothing
about you or your web traffic.

I use them on my iOS/macOS devices and the their effectiveness is quite
apparent, especially on the iPhone where CPU and bandwidth aren’t as abundant.

------
mackal
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.

~~~
tofof
Which features were removed in 74?

The only particular thing I can find is that hyperlink auditing can no longer
be disabled. I doubt this is what you meant when you said features you "depend
on".

~~~
mackal
Mute Tab and the place I was modifying to restore Ctrl+shift+q was removed. It
was too much effort to maintain these features.

------
estranhosidade
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.

~~~
kibwen
"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.

~~~
estranhosidade
Chrome serves me just fine nowadays. Unlike you, I'm not some kind of Gandhi
of the tech scene or anything like that. If it serves me fine I won't stop
using it. If Chrome ceases to support adblock extensions then I will go look
for some other browser, I would probably change to Vivaldi or anything like
that, or even Firefox, they sure as hell will be there.

~~~
isr
You totally missed his point. Which was:

For as long as you, I and everyone else continues to use Chrome, we
effectively support Google's ability to monopolise the browser space.

Google's continuing monopolisation of the browser space will (and is?) leading
to a dearth of alternatives.

So, by waiting for the time when Google finally puts that final straw on the
haystack which makes this whole thing too onerous to bear - and then you say
"right, now I've finally had enough - I'm switching ...."

... you may find that there's nothing left to switch to.

------
mises
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.

~~~
msla
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...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/7/17326184/firefox-ads-sponsored-
content-pocket-suggestions)

~~~
duckmysick
Which browser do you recommend then?

~~~
bshipp
Waterfox is good if you miss the old add-ons from pre-quantum Firefox. But it
is the old model, and one lagging page will still hose the whole browser.

I tolerate it because I need my Downloadthemall extension, amongst others.

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

~~~
redwards510
Don't forget there is a Firefox Developer version that includes additional
devtools.

[https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/developer/](https://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/developer/)

~~~
JMTQp8lwXL
Devtools are baked into standard chrome. I find it odd I'd have to download a
special version of Firefox made for developers.

~~~
pitterpatter
Devtools are also in standard firefox. The developer edition just includes new
features that haven't yet made it to the current release. The chrome analog is
Chrome Dev
([https://www.google.com/chrome/dev/](https://www.google.com/chrome/dev/))

Firefox: Nightly -> Developer -> Beta -> Stable -> Extended Support Release

Chrome: Canary -> Dev -> Beta -> Stable

~~~
anticensor
Firefox is actually Nightly->Beta->Stable->ESR, where Developer Edition is a
differently configured build of Beta.

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

~~~
anonymous5133
I will start doing this.

------
darklajid
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?

~~~
jdlshore
Seems unlikely. It's in opposition to Mozilla's clearly stated stance toward
privacy.

In addition, their reasons for deprecating their old extension API was purely
technical. Even then, they were _extremely_ conservative in their deprecation
timetable, waiting long past when the old API was massively harming
performance. But once they made the decision to replace it, it made sense that
they would choose an existing API as a base, not make a separate incompatible
API.

But do note that, while Firefox and Chrome share the same base extension API,
Firefox has APIs Chrome doesn't. It's reasonable to believe that this new
deprecation will just become another thing that Firefox has and Chrome
doesn't.

~~~
sfink
Yes, that sounds exactly right. But I would add that there _is_ a technical
reason for the more limited blocklist setup, in that it's much more reasonable
to do a simple list check asynchronously than to run JS code.

But to me, that just suggests that firefox might want to consider an
additional async API. I can think of many options that are more powerful than
what Chrome is moving to. eg use the exact logic uBO needs. Or register a WASM
function with no access to anything that would problematic to run async.

------
robbrown451
Chromium / Blink is open source, we should be doing everything we can to get
as many users using non-Google Chromium browsers. We really shouldn't be
having to worry so much about Google's conflicts of interests. Brave and
Blink-based Edge are looking to be better and better options.

Another is UnGoogled-Chromium: [https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-
chromium](https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium)

Would love to see this latter option becoming something that appeals to a very
large, mainstream market rather than just a few techies.

~~~
nacs
Another excellent browser that users should be switching to:

[https://firefox.com](https://firefox.com)

~~~
mantap
Unfortunately it is unbearably slow on MacOS.

~~~
LarryPage
Try again

------
Zelphyr
I’ve been hesitant to agree with calls in the past to break Google up, but now
it’s time. This is Google choosing what’s best for their investors over what’s
right for the community. This is Google doing evil.

------
whalesalad
I recently setup Pihole as the DNS server for my entire home network and said
farewell to my Adblock extensions. It's glorious.

~~~
palebluedot
My fear is something like pihole may end up being a temporary stopgap; it can
only help with DNS queries that go through it, and so it too may end up in the
same position as chrome + ublock origin. For instance, if chrome decides to
use a trr or dns-over-https and removes options to change it.

~~~
whalesalad
True, but at that point you can elect to stop using Chrome altogether.
#firefoxGang

------
joecot
> Firefox is available on all platforms (including Chrome OS via the Android
> or Linux app)

Maybe this is a viable solution on brand new chromebooks, but on my Acer R11
both Android apps and Linux containers run pretty poorly. I use an Android app
as my password tool just fine, but trying Firefox was a rather poor
experience. And the linux container just dogs trying to do anything.

I have Ubuntu loaded on via crouton (to use tools like GIMP or actual VLC),
but if chrome gets rid of ad blocking that removes much of the point of
ChromeOS for me entirely.

~~~
panarky
I run Firefox on my Chromebook in Ubuntu via Crostini, works pretty well and
appears right next to native ChromeOS apps on the screen.

------
Fulvianus
I'm starting to question whether it was such a good idea to make web browsers
virtual machines (for Javascript or WebAssembly apps).

It makes web browsers big and complex. I know both Chrome and Firefox are open
source, but does that really matter so much when the codebase is so big and
complex that only large and well-funded organizations are able to develop it?
I'm not sure if it's realistic anymore for a few guys to get together and
create a web browser (including rendering engine) in their spare time.

This centralization can lead to censorship, as we're starting to see here.

We also end up with a mono-culture (well, not quite there yet, since there are
still at least 2 web rendering engines), which is horrible for security. The
Irish potato famine is good example of what can happen when you have a mono
culture. These days, you often have to let strangers execute code on your
computer, if you just want to read an article or look at some pictures.

------
fencepost
And this pops up on the same evening that Google chooses to roll out
unblockable advertising in Android System App "Duo" in the form of an
unsolicited video message from Virat Kohli, apparently the lead player on an
Indian cricket team?

Way to work that Lily Tomlin "Ernestine" vibe Google.

Edit: also, "Oh, we're so _sorry_ that our 'security' update is going to gut
something that users love but our accountants hate (for anyone else). This is
completely an unintended consequence."

------
laminar_flow
Definitely time to ditch Chrome, but also even more of a reason to set up a
PiHole [https://pi-hole.net/](https://pi-hole.net/)

~~~
OrwellianChild
Can you help a newbie understand why I'd want to use this instead of Firefox +
uBlock Origin? Seems like a lot of extra maintenance overhead...

~~~
tgsovlerkhgsel
You only need to set it up once per network, instead of once per browser, and
it is capable of filtering (most) ads even on closed platforms (e.g. apps on
non-rooted phones).

The downside is that it is much less granular and harder to set up exceptions.

~~~
Chirael
The other downside is that if you have a laptop and take it outside your home
network, the ads will reappear.

------
Lazare
I've been meaning to give Firefox another try; I haven't used it actively in
years, and this is a good prompt.

And after a couple hours....

....Firefox is pretty impressive! I'm actually going to switch to using it as
my "daily driver".

------
bprasanna
Now they are at the position where they can make the users dance to their
tune. Im quite not sure if any decision makers at Google have a glance at HN
on whats the reflection on their decisions. They just know that users are
hooked to their platform all around (Search, Android, Chrome, Maps, GPay,
GMail, etc.,) and they can decide where to be a dictator and where to be a
humble servant. In the end, all they care is how much data can they harvest &
how to use that data to be more relevant for their service offerings
(advertisement). Monopoly at the best level! Also, when Google gives a
statement/blog post on their decision, it becomes a news for media & HN. But,
the reverse doesn't happen; whats the reaction across different blogs/media/HN
doesn't get much visibility.

~~~
hkai
You have just described business. A for-profit corporation is explicitly
required, by its fiduciary duty to shareholders, to do what you are
describing.

~~~
andygates
This is untrue. It's a particularly rapacious Wall Street meme, but a company
can do whatever its board dictates, including _not_ being a monopolizing
monster.

------
AaronFriel
I think it's time for Microsoft to rethink their decision to base Edge on
Chromium.

It's a painful decision, to be sure, but the Microsoft team has to make a
decision here: fork or adhere. The immediate benefit of forking and not
following Chromium on this change is obvious. However, the cost of the fork
will grow over time and it will be in Google's interest to deprecate and
replace all of the infrastructure that supports the webRequest API to make it
maximally painful to maintain the functionality in a fork.

On the other hand, had Microsoft decided to base Edge on Gecko, they wouldn't
be working off a forked codebase whose owner has a perverse incentive to make
the fork as painful and expensive as possible.

How many engineer hours, months, years are going to be wasted just shoring up
features like this?

~~~
OrangeManBad
Why wouldn't they just patch that part of the code? I'm seriously surprised
though Microsoft didn't build an adblock in IE much earlier, that would have
stopped google in the tracks.

~~~
AaronFriel
That part of the code doesn't exist in a vacuum, and it's baked in at a rather
low level in the browser. That's how it can block requests! In JavaScript!

Google will begin by deprecating the webRequest block API (that's in
progress). Then they will begin deprecating the code that supports it.

Then they will begin removing and deleting the "unnecessary" code. Then, at
some point in the future, they may make other breaking changes to the
webRequest flow that assume that requests cannot be blocked. Each time Google
writes new code that assumes webRequests cannot be blocked, Microsoft must
patch _that_ code too.

With each successive change, Microsoft will be forced to make a choice:

1\. Support both Google's webRequest API and the Microsoft's, at increasing
cost with every merge and rebase where Google has cut off or altered another
piece of functionality

2\. Adopt Google's API and break ad blockers

Google has a profit motive in shrinking the ad blocking market, and therefore
they have a perverse incentive to make their browser worse for users, and more
expensive for any forks that want to maintain ad blocking functionality.

~~~
Aeolun
Ostensibly Microsofts browser team is the size of Googles’. They could just
fork once and never look back.

Merging incompatible changes seems like a win compared to doing everything
themselves.

~~~
benatkin
That's what Apple did by forking KHTML and starting the Webkit project. KHTML
is still maintained and both KHTML and Webkit can be used in KDE.

~~~
halter73
And even more recently with Blink forking WebKit.

------
BearsAreCool
Is there a good way to convert chrome saved passwords/history to firefox?
Thinking I'll switch back to firefox.

~~~
teh_klev
I don't know how current this is:

[https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/switching-chrome-
firefo...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/switching-chrome-firefox)

------
KirinDave
Well, now is as good a time as any to switch back to Firefox. They've managed
to come out of a long stretch of mismanagement, technical debt and security
issues to a much better place.

------
cwkoss
Running Chrome without adblock is a security risk. Google has turned a blind
eye to malicious ad behavior for their own profit, and this is going to lead
to infected corporate networks.

~~~
pixl97
They dont care. That's your problem not theirs. Which is why I want to see
more data protection laws in the US. I want to give them problems.

------
gtirloni
Now that's an advantage my non-tech family and friends will appreciate if it
gets implemented and ad blockers stop being efficient in Chrome.

I'll install Firefox, they will see things are better and the switch is done.
No need to talk about Quantum, freedom, etc.

Mozilla should be sending one of those cakes to the Chrome team.

~~~
Krasnol
Have fun cleaning out Chrome if you are around again and they didn't even
realize that it came along some other software...

We need a chrome install blocker...

------
nicoburns
The new Chromium based Edge suddenly got a whole lot more relevant. I
certainly won't use Chrome if I can't have an ad-blocker!

~~~
roca
Did you miss the part where these Google decisions affect all Chromium
browsers?

~~~
thrower123
Microsoft might just have the horsepower to keep up with any particularly
shitty changes that Google might potentially try to push through, better than
some of the other Chromium skins. At least if they want to.

~~~
fiblye
Microsoft displays ads within their OS. They would join arms with Google if
they honestly decided to tackle adblocking.

~~~
hu3
Why settle for some petty ad revenue when Google is handing you the
opportunity to regain some browser marketshare in a silver plate ?

It's not like MS is dependent on ads as much as Google.

------
bad_user
For those of you not familiar with what is being proposed ...

Chrome engineers want to replace the ability to block any request with a
standardized ad-block functionality based on a list of provided rules and
inspired by Safari. In other words the ad-blocking functionality becomes
built-in.

However this facility excludes dynamic capabilities that plugins like uBlock
Origin or Privacy Badger need.

Also I’m speaking with first hand experience in this field: the ad-blocking
functionality provided but Safari sucks and can be easily fooled. That there
are publishers that don’t implement anti-ad-blocking measures, that’s only
because they either don’t have the resources or because they don’t want to
piss off users.

And at this point uBlock Origin is by far the most aggressive extension out of
the popular ones and the nightmare of advertisers, not only because of its
capabilities, but also because it doesn’t have a commercial entity behind it.

It is no accident that Google is hitting these extensions.

Switch to Firefox folks. The grass over here really is greener ;-)

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
Today it is, unfortunately history has shown that trusting Mozilla is also
foolish.

~~~
bad_user
Really? How so?

I've been a Firefox user ever since the beginning and I can't remember once
when they violated my trust.

It seems to me that Mozilla is held to much higher standards in this
community. I often see a huge double standard.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
The Looking Glass extension, the whole deal with pocket, and Studies being on
by default and allowing them to push changes remotely with no user action.

I don't use Firefox currently, so these are just what I recall from HN posts.

~~~
bad_user
I love Pocket, I love seeing them experiment with such services and I don’t
get what the big deal is.

Sure they could have pushed it as an extension instead, but note that nowadays
Mozilla owns it so the issue is irrelevant.

The source code for the Looking Glass extension was open source and was a
mistake, they are only human.

Nowadays every platform maker has the capability to push changes via updates.
This increases security for regular users and it’s what the default should be.
I agree that there needs to be a way to turn off these updates for power
users.

No, those issues haven’t violated my trust in them and when you compare it
with what companies like Google are doing, the double standard should be clear
as day.

------
user764743
Well I guess using a browser made by an ad company isn't a good idea after
all.

------
pmontra
One of those turning points when techies start recommending friends to use a
different technology and in a few years that technology wins?

In this case, Firefox again.

------
lajawfe
I hope that this makes browsing with Chrome so bloated with ads and tracking
that it is faster and efficient to browse with browsers that allow users to
get rid of unwanted cruft. That may be the selling point to switch from Chrome
in the future.

------
aikah
bait + switch.

I've been going back to Firefox for 6 month now, both on desktop and mobile.
I'm a developer so I still need to use Chrome for testing, but I'm never going
back to it as my main browser, for obvious reasons. There is an obvious
conflict of interest going on here, and I'm not going to give Google any more
money.

Firefox works fine now, didn't get any issue whatsoever. It used to be slower
than Chrome, yes, but it's not true anymore and it uses way less memory than
Google's browser.

That's why I don't trust Google with anything, Golang, Goggle PAAS, whatever,
they'll go full Oracle in a few years, mark my words.

------
teh_klev
For work stuff I rely on multiple profiles for different client work (I use
about ten of them...so far) and so I stick with Chrome.

If Mozilla didn't have such a demented mechanism to operate with multiple
profiles then I'd happily switch from Chrome. This is a feature that should be
upfront in the UI, not hidden behind about:profiles and it's generally janky
UI and behaviour. This needs to be a first class citizen, not what feels like
some half baked afterthought.

~~~
bigjimmyk3
Have you looked at the multi-account containers feature? I think it would do
what you are looking for, and it's not restricted to google profiles.

~~~
sonar_un
Sorry but multi account containers aren’t even close to the same thing as
having separate profiles. This is one of those things for me that keeps me
coming back to chrome.

------
khally
I switched to the Brave Browser a few months back (learned about it via
Coinbase Earn). Its a great alternative to chrome with solid ad-blocking & I
got $10 out of it.

~~~
xur17
I did the same a few weeks back, and the ad blocking's been great. Hasn't
behaved any different from Chrome + uBlock.

------
mehrdadn
So... is this the real reason why Google developed Chrome? So they can play
the long game and eventually prevent ad blocking from harming them?

------
concernedctzn
This makes sense from the viewpoint that google is entirely beholden to their
shareholders and has to maintain their insane growth. That doesn't make it ok.

It's a shame all these companies follow such a predictable pattern. Any
resources to help actively ungoogle? I've switched search, email, and browser
so far, and will be pushing everyone I know to avoid. Long time coming.

------
burtonator
I propose we create a new browser fork due to this issue and back it by the
main ad block developers.

The other issue is that Chrome on mobile doesn't support extensions.

They tried to away with not having ad-block on mobile this way. No extensions
means no ad-block.

Let's just have a new browser based on Chrome that supports mobile +
extensions and ad block and tell Google they can go pound sand.

~~~
Solvitieg
How about Brave or Dissenter?

Edit: I've just been informed this will effect all Chromium browsers. My
goodness.

~~~
justsee
Chrome restricting extension APIs won't affect Brave's ad-blocking.

See:
[https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1133878509342846977](https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1133878509342846977)

------
severine
To gorhill and all the people working in real privacy protection: Thank you, I
love you all, keep up the good fight, we rely on you!

------
ravenstine
Why exactly would anyone use the "enterprise" version of Chrome over the
regular one, or vice versa?

As far as I can tell, it's the same browser...

[https://cloud.google.com/chrome-
enterprise/browser/download/](https://cloud.google.com/chrome-
enterprise/browser/download/)

~~~
pedrocx486
It's mostly a thing for companies that deploy Chrome in their images and want
to retain control over it (group policies). It's not for your common end user.

------
junar
I found this post highly editorialized. Here's the actual response if you want
to understand the context, instead of simply seeing bits and pieces with a
journalist's spin.

[https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/chrom...](https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/chromium-
extensions/veJy9uAwS00%5B1-25%5D)

Also, the headline seems mostly incorrect. The gist of it, as I understand, is
that Chrome is enforcing a migration from the webRequest API to a new
declarativeNetRequest API. The latter API doesn't currently have all the
capabilities of the former, which is important for context blocking
extensions. However, features are still being added and the team states that
they are interested in more feedback from extension developers.

~~~
mbrumlow
And if those features happen to never be implemented?

I really think it is a bad practice to force adoption of a new API that can't
fulfill the same functions as the previous one.

Nobody would be here talking about this if they just made the new API without
breaking add blocking (useful add blocking), and then forced people to move.

Even more so given that it looks really bad when your main goal is to serve
people ads.

~~~
CmdrKrool
> I really think it is a bad practice to force adoption of a new API that
> can't fulfill the same functions as the previous one.

I agree, which incidentally is the reason I switched from Firefox to Chromium
a couple years back as Mozilla dropped XUL extensions for their own
development convenience, toward an ideal of cross-browser extension
compatibility, and in hoping to win over Chrome users by making Firefox more
alike in both looks and performance.

How many of those motivations have changed, and do we know that Mozilla aren't
actually going to follow suit with a similar restructuring of APIs some time
after such changes have settled into and been normalized in Chrome?

------
neilv
This sounds like a wonderful gift from Google, to Mozilla.

As you're deciding what browser to move to, consider using two browsers:
Firefox for any sites you need to log into or otherwise identify yourself, and
Tor Browser for everything else. I've been trying this a while, and it works
pretty well.

------
ineedasername
Will this change apply upstream to the entire Chromium project?

------
idlewords
I'm not a fan of antitrust as a tool to punish tech companies, but I think
there would be great benefit in cleaving Chrome off of Google. The tension
between Google's business model and what is good for users is just too great.

------
keithnz
So, in the new Edge, they could still support this?

Would be a good point of difference for them.

------
prirun
I use Firefox with NoScript and found that leaving most domains disabled by
default eliminates nearly all ads. I have to fiddle with enabling a few
domains on a new site, but if the site is one of those where it uses a million
3rd-party "X as a service" domains, I just leave.

This is the reason I quit using DigitalOcean: every page on their web site
required me to enable 5 new domains in NoScript. Other VPS providers just
required 1 or 2 enabled.

Or, if the site is coded so that it only works after enabling ad-looking
domains, I leave. Vote with your feet folks.

------
philprx
Clearly this is the line for me: let's sue them for abuse of their dominant
position, and get them toward antitrust lawsuit/procedure.

It's maybe not gonna fly in the US but definitely workable in Europe.

------
markbnj
>> Just remember to unblock sites you wish to support financially.

The way ad networks function, is unblocking a site you want to support any
different at all from unblocking everything?

~~~
flukus
Yes and no. With uBlock you can allow ads at the site level, the problem is
that half the reason to block them is the tracking they do, even if I like I
site I don't like it enough to unblock google's spyware.

------
goombastic
Between pihole, firefox and addons, I see no ads. The way the ad industry is
going, they will at some point prevent people from blinking.

A big thank you to the developers at pihole, mozilla and the plugin devs.

------
EastSmith
I wonder what MS will do with Edge(Chromium)?

I've been using it for couple of weeks now as a secondary browser to Brave
(separate sessions etc) and it is looks and behave like a normal Chrome.

Hope MS fight this.

~~~
hu3
This is a big opportunity for MS to keep this functionality as a side-patch
that's maintained and applied to every new version of Chromium they use.

------
aussieguy1234
You could always run pi-hole on your network, no extensions needed
[https://pi-hole.net/](https://pi-hole.net/)

------
Tsubasachan
Chrome is faster! Yeah but FF blocks ads, trackers, analytics and social media
buttons. Basically half of the shitty internet. That saves some time I would
think.

------
fesoliveira
Will these changes affect the pure Chromium? I really don't want to move to
Firefox, all my settings, auto-fills and stuff is in Chrome, and Chromium
seems like a better alternative if it still supports ad-blocking. I know that
Firefox has improved a lot over the years, but I still have a few too many
issues whenever I try using it, whereas Chrome and Chromium "just works".

------
sys_64738
How will this affect Vivaldi and Chrome-based Edge? It's a worrying thing
unless Microsoft and Vivaldi can provide a safe alternative.

------
iobug
Is this a chrome API or chromium API? For the later case we have Chromium
Edge([https://www.microsoftedgeinsider.com](https://www.microsoftedgeinsider.com)),
which is just as good! If it's chromium API then Microsoft may actually end up
taking a fork off chromium codebase right away and decide to keep that alive.

------
dreamcompiler
All the more reason to use Pi-Hole. Works with any browser, incurs less
overhead than an extension, and Google can't stop it.

------
newscracker
This is a good move by Google to promote Firefox. We should use this
opportunity to inform laypersons about Firefox and the freedom it provides
with ad blocking (which includes protecting oneself from malware too).

Mozilla should use this for a PR move (even though the bulk of its revenues
come from having Google as the default search engine in many geographies).

------
dbg31415
DNS-based and hosts-based blocking should still work.

[https://pi-hole.net/](https://pi-hole.net/)

[https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/h...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/hosts)

------
deafcalculus
I've been a Firefox/Safari user for a long time now because of concerns about
Google, but I don't really get what this outrage is all about. As I understand
it, Chrome is moving to the Safari rules-based model? Can someone explain why
this is such a bad thing? It's not like Chrome is stopping all ad blocking.

------
benbristow
Hoping Microsoft keep the APIs enabled on the new Edge-ium. Solid browser. If
they port it over to Linux (they're already doing OSX) and keep the APIS
required for ad-blocking enabled I see it picking up speed very quickly.

Opera has it built-in to the browser so I think they'll be safe too.

Wonder if this will apply to Chromium or just Google Chrome?

------
renlo
Might be a silly question, but is the block list per extension or is it a
global block list? Ie, if each extension can have 30k rules, and the current
block list requires 70k rules, could there be 3 extensions, 2 with 30k rules
and 1 with 10k rules? This would surely be an inconvenience, just wondering

------
janpot
That's it, Getting myself a pi-hole.

------
gwbas1c
This just means that ad blockers will need to work with a natively-installed
proxy.

Remember, with https you can install a certificate and man-in-the-middle
yourself. This is how tools like Fiddler and Charles allow inspecting and
debugging HTTPS.

In this case, a natively-installed proxy can deny requests to blacklisted
domains.

------
antpls
At the end of the day, it's their browser, their rules.

The only way this could be changed is through (EU?) law, but i'm not sure what
would be the basis of such law. It would be like forcing every car
manufacturers to implement free HEPA air filters in their cars.

------
rmtech
This is the final straw for me, I just installed firefox and changed it to my
default browser.

------
pgl
This will probably get lost, but Raymond Hill confirmed that he will keep
developing uBO and uMatrix for Brave (and any other Chromium-based browser
that exposes access to webRequest) after Chrome deprecates webRequest for non-
Enterprise users.

------
raveenb
more reason to use the Brave browser instead of Chrome. Essentially the Chrome
browser without the Google bindings. Use the crypto features or not, it has
been working for me and my mac runs way more cooler when i had been using
Chrome.

------
phreack
Well, I find this to be great news! Now I have a great way to convince my non
tech friends to switch to Firefox. "It lets you install a thing so you don't
see ads anymore, unlike Chrome where you have to pay for it"

------
jaimex2
This is great news for Firefox.

~~~
techntoke
Not if you want hardware acceleration support in Linux. Not that most Firefox
users care about open source operating systems.

~~~
jaimex2
I thought it had hardware acceleration? Alas hidden away in advanced settings.

~~~
techntoke
No, Firefox doesn't support hardware acceleration for video decoding at all.

------
tempodox
Apparently, some misguided folks seem to think there is room for more than one
browser in the world, and a non-Google one to boot. If you smell the scent of
roasting flesh, those heretics are being burned at the stake.

------
hazzamanic
Will this affect just Chrome or will browsers built on top of chromium also
get manifest V3? If so, I assume they can implement the old web request API
themselves to keep as blockers working?

~~~
zwaps
You could fork Chromium, but then Google will prevent you from watching videos
like netflix and amazon online, which means no one is gonna use this browser

------
betimsl
I think this is a positive thing. Somebody has to accelerate FF popularity,
and this is a start of a big push. Combination of this and FF efficiency
equals more users on FF.

So, hey, thanks google :)

------
Stay_frostJebel
That's ok Google. You may not force me to look at your stupid advertising.
Plenty of decent browsers out there that take my privacy seriously. You just
shot your selves in foot

------
jensvdh
Time to try the new Edge!

~~~
dijit
New Edge is Chromium, the change will apply.

------
chewz
Google is in a position to disrupt ad-blocking in Chrome (via webRequest API)
and on Android (via DNS over https).

This makes both mBlock Origin and PieHole obsolete. Where do we go from here?

~~~
Blackstone4
Firefox?

~~~
chewz
On Android it won't work I think. Some DNS queries will go exclusively through
Google DNS - ads mostly I am afraid.

And I am also worried because my main desktop platform is ChromeOS. And my
main adblocking strategy had been DNS based. That sucks.

~~~
pserwylo
The Android Firefox browser is great. Not only does it do everything you
expect a modern mobile browser to do, but also supports extensions, including
uBlock Origin.

------
chimen
Can't use ff on linux unfortunately. It has this weird bug where it clicks on
the first item automatically if I right click on anything. It's a super
annoying bug.

~~~
kosma
I'm having the same problem on macOS. Might be HiDPI related as I run on non-
standard settings (1.5x scaling).

------
malandrew
I just modify etc/hosts with this file:

[http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm](http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm)

------
cutler
The only place I use Chrome these days is
[http://localhost:x000](http://localhost:x000) for Chrome Dev Tools.

------
swah
I actually enjoyed the original Google search result ads, a tiny text based
thing that would side on the right side of the results...

------
microcolonel
I guess my Chromebook will not be running Chrome.

~~~
hawski
Yeah, it's time to unscrew the write protect screw.

I'm wondering how Firefox for Android manages on ChromeOS. For now it's too
slow on Crostini. But my cheap Chromebook is not performing well with both
Crostini and Android containers. So straight up Linux should be hopefully
better.

It's certainly harder for my old Tegra K1 Chromebook.

~~~
microcolonel
> _I 'm wondering how Firefox for Android manages on ChromeOS_

I've done this before, it works pretty well, but Firefox for Android doesn't
have a great extension experience as far as I've seen, though it could have
improved since last I tried.

------
romanovcode
Going as planned I presume.

Step 1: Enable "Built-In Ad-Blocker"

Step 2: Disable all other ad-blocks from store for some reason

Step 3: Allow only ads from Google ad-network

~~~
lossolo
> Step 3: Allow only ads from Google ad-network

They can't do that, this is an anti-trust lost case for them.

~~~
romanovcode
Aren't they already doing this with theyr "Acceptable Ads Program"?

------
cyanbane
Can't suggest pi-hole enough for a small personal network. Happily donate to
them. On a larger scale, I am not sure...

------
eqtn
Is this applicable to chromium too or just chrome? Would like to see how
Microsoft approaches this with their new browser

------
alimbada
Firefox Quantum is pretty good now. I've switched back recently and rarely use
Chrome now as my personal browser.

------
kexx
Every time when I see Google is advancing into this bs, i donate some money to
mozilla foundation to counterbalance.

------
sekasi
How is the FireFox experience on OSX these days compared to Safari? This is
100% a nail in the Chrome coffin for me.

------
kokojie
Let's all use the web browser made by the world's biggest ad company, what
could go wrong right?

------
haolez
I wonder if it will be too difficult to maintain downstream patches for
Chromium that reverts this change.

------
Swivekth18
Edge is looking more appealing now. Although PiHole is still the bomb because
it also blocks in app adds.

------
vectorEQ
google slowly showing it's grip with it's android 'open' model falling over
and it's chrome now going corporate... :')... soon you will need to pay-per-
search not to get only advertisements and nonsense results. enjoy your
internet ppl..

------
RenRav
I wonder how many regular people even use adblockers or would care, enough to
see a migration soon?

------
heinrichhartman
I don't get it. Is Chrome not open-source? Can't we create a fork that keeps
that API?

~~~
philliphaydon
Chrome itself is not. Chromium is opensource. That's what Brave, Edge, and
what ever others are using.

------
xtat
[https://brave.com/](https://brave.com/)

------
ravenstine
Slightly off topic, I'm finding it very disingenuous that people in this
thread(and any other threads that come up about Firefox) have _actually_ had
significant performance issues with Firefox. No bugs that are noteworthy, sans
that fiasco with the expired certificate that disabled addons briefly.

I've been using Firefox since "quantum" on both my MacBooks(one of which is
old AF) and on Linux. I've yet to have problems playing video, streaming, or
anything of the sort. I keep tons of tabs open. I just can't really say
anything wrong about Firefox at this point.

It was once the case that Firefox had significant disadvantages in contrast to
Chrome, but now the only reason I have to still keep Chrome installed is when
work forces me to use some Google-proprietary page that doesn't work in other
browsers.

If you had problems with Firefox 2 years ago, try it again before bringing up
performance when people are considering it as an alternative to deleting
Chrome. The more people who uninstall Chrome, the better.

~~~
esturk
My issue with Firefox is essentially one bug where they refuse to fix. In
private mode, previously closed tabs are, for some reasons, restorable. This
doesn't happen for Safari or Chrome.

~~~
ubercow13
That's a feature. Chrome will refuse to remember history so that you can
reopen the tab, however it will remember all other data from the closed tab
such as cookies. If you log into a website in an incognito window, close all
tabs of that website and then open a new tab and navigate to the site again,
you'll still be logged in.

It tricks you into thinking that session state is kept only per-tab by
disabling a useful feature (history), however the incognito session's state is
actually scoped per-window and not properly cleared/forgotten until you close
the window.

Firefox knows how to have temporary window-local cookies/site data _and_
history. Chrome doesn't know how to keep the history. It's a missing feature
IMHO.

~~~
rofrol
I don't think that is true. I am using incognito all the time for web dev to
test without cookies.

~~~
ubercow13
It's trivial to check that it's true for yourself

------
floatingatoll
There’s a lot of bias in this article title. I’m kind of disappointed in them
for it. “Complex ad blockers” would have been just as informative but without
the blocker-favoring tilt.

Bonus irony for realizing that a properly configured blocker as they’re
favoring with this title would reduce their site’s revenue, being both
JavaScript and ad-heavy.

------
rkagerer
What a jerk move. I hope enough users are outraged by this to force them to
rethink it.

------
plg
what is "enterprise users of chrome"? Does this mean paid GSuite accounts?

------
baal80spam
Ditched Chrome a few years ago and switched to Vivaldi. Couldn't be happier.

~~~
smaddock
Vivaldi builds on top of Chromium. All Chromium browsers will eventually
receive these extensions changes as well unless they fork their codebase. Most
of them support extensions via the Chrome Web Store though which means they'll
need to adopt Manifest V3.

------
magnamerc
I switched over to Brave (chromium skin) and I'll never go back to Chrome.

------
nottorp
That's okay, I switched to Firefox (+uBlock Origin) a while ago.

------
rajesh-s
Does this include "Chromium" browsers as well like Vivaldi?

------
Amboto2205
Well, glad I never started using Chrome instead of Safari on my Mac.

------
rashthedude
This is what I needed to finally abort Chrome altogether.

------
sandeatr
Well I'm done with Chrome then, Firefox it is.

------
modzu
and hopefully this shall be the high water mark of the chrome browser. rise
firefox, rise!!!

------
xdasf
Google is not what it used to be

------
baq
every day i'm happier that I've changed my browser to firefox last year.

------
oxfordmale
Bye bye Chrome...it was good while it lasted, although you have become a bit
of a resource hog in recent years.

------
minusf
iridium is another chrome based browser without some of the googleisms.

------
collyw
Does this affect Chromium?

------
hestefisk
Easy. Just use Firefox.

------
sieabahlpark
I wonder if a browser Monopoly could bring an antitrust lawsuit against
Google.

------
justinclift
Abusive. Monopoly.

------
whatamidoingyo
Awesome. Mozilla should be happy. Let Chrome die.

------
hyperpallium
Surprise!

------
BLKNSLVR
How long until Google starts threatening to disable your account if you're
detected using a 3rd party ad blocker?

Essentially building a paywall around their services, where receiving their
ads is the subscription cost.

Is this a realistic extrapolation of the direction they're moving?

------
gcb0
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace%2C_extend%2C_and_extin...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace%2C_extend%2C_and_extinguish)

If you are not using/contributing to firefox, you sold yourself short.

~~~
xvector
Unfortunately, Firefox’s resistFingerprinting is nowhere near as good as
Safari’s. I still use Firefox on Windows, though.

------
mtgx
It's such a shame Microsoft thought it will benefit more from piggybacking on
the Chromium monopoly over building its next browser on top of Firefox.

If Microsoft would have donated only 50% of the Edge browser development
budget to Firefox, Firefox would be in a much better position in the future to
compete against Chrome.

Now, I fully expect Google to end its search contract with Firefox, or pay
them much less, too, since it won't feel like it needs to fund its competitor
anymore.

------
diminoten
When will this actually kick in? Just wanna know how much longer I have on
Chrome.

Wait, will Chromium have the same problem?

~~~
roca
Yes, this is a Chromium change.

------
emilfihlman
Okay so is Chromium safe? Can I switch to that?

~~~
techntoke
Do you need permission? Just cause Firefox users have turned into the new
hipster Mac fanclub doesn't mean you have to join them.

------
eatonphil
Is this effectively paying to remove ads? That is a compromise I'm willing to
make.

------
Causality1
Ugh. Now I'm going to have to switch my passel of family members, neighbors,
and friends who rely on me for tech support over to Firefox.

Not that Firefox isn't going the same way eventually. Firefox crippled the
ability for real customization with Firefox 57 and it's only gotten worse
since then.

~~~
shadofx
Pale Moon exists if you want the old school Firefox add-in capabilities

~~~
Causality1
It'd be lovely if I could get the speed of Firefox Quantum while still being
able to put the damn tabs and address bar wherever I want them.

------
_dmurph
I'm confused about the difference between what people are saying here, and
what chromium is working on. Referring to the email discussion of the feature:
[https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msg/chromium-
exte...](https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msg/chromium-
extensions/veJy9uAwS00/AppqR6u-GgAJ)

" It's really unfortunate how many people seem to be commenting here without
understanding what the proposed changes even are. To be clear:

1\. This change _IS NOT INTENDED TO GIMP AD BLOCKERS_. Rather, it is designed
to make them faster and more secure. (Yes, even despite the limitations that
might impact uBlock.)

2\. The new proposed content blocking API _is not final_ and can/will be
changed.

3\. Threatening to switching to Firefox is not helpful and _WILL NOT CHANGE
GOOLE'S MIND ABOUT THIS_.

If you don't understand this, please refrain from commenting as you'll only be
decreasing the signal-to-noise ratio in this thread and thus making it more
likely that the entire thread (including those who are expressing actual
legitimate concerns about the limitations of the new API) gets ignored.

If you want to help:

1\. Explain a specific use case that the new API can't handle (including a
technical explanation of _why_ it can't handle that use-case)

2\. Suggest constructive changes to manifest V3's API that will improve its
capabilities _while still adhering to the stated goals of manifest V3_

3\. If you can't do any of the above, please refrain from commenting so you
don't just make things worse

Sorry if I sound aggressive. It just really frustrates me when constructive
technical discussions get hijacked by large volumes of unconstructive,
uniformed comments. It makes it way harder to get real work done. "

I know the anti-google bandwagonning is strong, but seriously, I doubt most
people actually tried to understand what is being changed here, and it's sad.

~~~
zorpner
Don't yell.

 _1\. Explain a specific use case that the new API can 't handle (including a
technical explanation of _why_ it can't handle that use-case)_

The maximum number of rules is 30k, which will break HTTPSEverywhere (I'm
assuming you don't need that explained).

 _Suggest constructive changes to manifest V3 's API that will improve its
capabilities _while still adhering to the stated goals of manifest V3__

If Google wants me to do work, they can pay me.

There was a time in the past when Google would have deserved the benefit of
the doubt with changes like these. That time is long, long gone.

~~~
_dmurph
FYI I'm quoting the email list, that might not have been clear.

