
The end of uBlock origin for Google Chrome? - coleifer
https://www.ghacks.net/2019/10/12/the-end-of-ublock-origin-for-google-chrome/#comments
======
jonny383
Great time to switch to Firefox if you haven't already.
[https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/](https://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/new/)

And before you even begin to complain about it being "too slow", "slower than
Chrome", <other statement of the month>, tell us that after you're running
Chrome without an ad-blocker.

And even if it really is still slower by some miracle - this is a community
containing world-class software engineers. Donate some of your time to bring
it up to speed. Pun intended.

~~~
gnicholas
> _And before you even begin to complain about it being "too slow", "slower
> than Chrome", <other statement of the month>, tell us that after you're
> running Chrome without an ad-blocker._

I run Brave without an adblocker and have found it to be much faster than
Firefox (with adblocker and pi-hole).

Also, as someone whose startup has both Chrome and Firefox extensions, I have
to say the Firefox reviewers (who review releases and hold up the process —
not end user reviewers) can be hugely annoying, and we deploy there as
infrequently as possible. As a result, our Firefox customers don’t get all the
latest bells and whistles. Wish it weren’t that way, but the process takes
months!

Edit: clarified the annoying reviewers are not end users reviewers, but the
people who suck up months of time for every minor update, making confused
complaints about our code, and even UI implementation.

~~~
phalangion
Brave is an ad blocker

~~~
gnicholas
Yep, just pointing out that one cannot defend Firefox as the best just by
saying Chrome requires and adblocker. There are other browsers, like Brave.

And for the record, I used Firefox for decades, up until last year. I just
spend too much time in my browser to use anything other than Brave, given how
much time it saves me.

~~~
austhrow743
Does it have time saving features?

~~~
gnicholas
Have you tried it? It is insanely fast.

~~~
austhrow743
I haven't. Will give it a go.

------
TeMPOraL
There's a question mark in the title of the article, which is _kind of very
relevant here_.

The last sentence of the article starts with words "While it is certainly
possible that the stable extension update would be allowed by Google".

~~~
rubbingalcohol
Google has already expressed their intention to stop supporting ad blocking
extensions with Version 3 of their add-on manifest. So the writing has been on
the wall for awhile, they're just turning the screws now.

~~~
SquareWheel
Manifest v3 supports adblocking.

~~~
TeMPOraL
In the same way the Soviet Union supported freedom of expression.

~~~
SquareWheel
Can you name anything specific that v2 can do that v3 can't? And how important
is that to actually blocking ads?

------
xfitm3
Ad blocking is the only thing that makes the web bearable. I hope the
extension rejection was a mistake or over something unrelated to blocking
functionality.

~~~
alpaca128
Nowadays ad blocking isn't even enough anymore. It feels like every website
with news articles of any kind has some scrolling, autoplaying video embedded
into the site, sometimes even with audio enabled. Unfortunately I haven't seen
a blocker for that because it's not considered an ad. It is definitely more
annoying than most ads, though.

~~~
Santosh83
You can block both video and audio from autoplaying in Firefox by going into
about:config. It works. But in Chrome AFAIK you can only mute the audio and
not the video from autoplaying.

~~~
Klathmon
You can stop video from playing as well in Chrome settings. Either globally,
or on a site-per-site basis.

------
mantap
This is probably a good thing. Google is declaring war on adblockers, uBO is
their first target but not their last. Tech savvy people are going to end up
dumping Chrome en mass. Chrome has dominated the browser market by being so
good, but development of non-Google browsers is about to become exciting
again, and everybody benefits from that.

~~~
switch007
Firefox development has hardly been boring: Quantum (Rust) & container tabs
(and some big improvements to Dev Tools, I understand). Not a new development
but addons on mobile is pretty damn cool.

------
Geee
I recently switched to Safari on Mac. Safari has a native content blocking
mechanism (on Mac and iPhone) which works quite well without giving the
extension open access to the page content. It works simply by a JSON file that
describes the blocking rules, and doesn't require running any third-party code
on the web page.

So far, I've not missed any features of Chrome except opening accidentally
closed tab again. You might want to change few settings though: "show full
urls" and "show favicons".

Apple Pay also works remarkably well, just click "Pay with Apple", and the
authentication request pops up on your iPhone, requesting Touch ID / Face ID.

I've not seen anyone implement the new "Sign in with Apple", which
automatically generates burner email addresses, but that's another reason to
switch to Safari.

Also, one feature which I like is the automatic generation of strong
passwords.

~~~
Zarel
For the record, Chrome is switching to the same content blocking mechanism
(declarative blocking) as Safari is currently using.

I do personally think this lends some plausibility to Google's assertions that
they're doing it for performance reasons rather than to make adblockers worse.
It's not like Apple's doing it for the ad revenue.

~~~
msbarnett
> I do personally think this lends some plausibility to Google's assertions
> that they're doing it for performance reasons rather than to make adblockers
> worse.

I don’t know that I buy this.

Chrome has a bunch of restrictions that Safari doesn’t, which make ad-blocking
in particular impractical.

Safari has, iirc, a hard 100,000 rule limit per blocker rule list. 1Blocker
splits itself into 7 such lists to have enough room for all of the rules
needed to be effective.

Chrome has a hard _global_ limit of 150,000 across all extensions. Multiple
adblock authors have indicated that’s probably too tight.

Safari also lets content blockers reconfigure rules on the fly, so I can add a
rule or make an exception for a site as I browse as a user.

Chrome requires the lists to be totally static and pre-approved by reviewers.
Change a rule requires resubmitting the extension for reapproval.

All-in-all it looks to me like Chrome’s changes are designed to look like what
Safari does on the surface, while actually adding onerous new conditions that
effectively cripple the effectiveness and usefulness of adblockers.

------
jchw
A lot of people are probably only reading the headline and assuming uBlock
Origin was removed from Chrome Webstore, but what actually happened was a
version update to the dev extension entry was rejected. We have yet to see if
this is just a flake, but reading the issue it seems gorhill intends to just
see what happens next dev version.

~~~
SergeAx
Talks about ad blockers prohibition in Chrome are here for a good half of the
year. So there is a rather large possibility it's beginning.

~~~
jchw
I work for Google so I am biased.

However, I think most of that debate surrounds Manifest v3 is misleading. I’m
not a huge fan of Manifest v3s limitations, but it’s basically the same
limitations as Safari as far as I understand, and the justification does make
some sense. So I am hoping that things will work out. I don’t know about any
other things that would impact adblocking on Chrome.

Personally, I am happy with Firefox on desktop, and Safari on iPhone, and I
don’t think there are any threats, perceived or actual, towards adblocking on
those platforms.

------
SquareWheel
It's an older rule[1]. It does technically apply here, but it's not a great
look that they're only enforcing it now.

If Gorhill needed to, some of that extra functionality could be moved out into
a separate extension. uBlock has done this before with uBlock Origin Extra[2].
Most of the extra features (eg. remote font blocking) aren't a huge deal, in
my opinion.

[1] [https://blog.chromium.org/2013/12/keeping-chrome-
extensions-...](https://blog.chromium.org/2013/12/keeping-chrome-extensions-
simple.html)

[2] [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin-
extr...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin-
extra/pgdnlhfefecpicbbihgmbmffkjpaplco?hl=en)

~~~
MR4D
Why doesn’t “blocking” just mean blocking?

I shouldn’t need separate extensions to each block css, JavaScript, fonts,
cookies, pixels, etc.

Remote fonts can be used for tracking and fingerprinting (hence why private
browsing modes aren’t private).

Am I missing something here?

~~~
dictum
> Remote fonts can be used for tracking and fingerprinting

Isn't it the reverse, local fonts can be used for fingerprinting?

(There are some snags with remote fonts — rendering bugs/exploits — but
they're not exactly low hanging fruit anymore)

EDIT: I see what you mean by tracking. If the fonts are loaded with a third
party script, this is indeed a problem. If the font files are served by a
third party directly (without some intermediate script), this could be
remedied with an extension that strips headers. It would obviously run afoul
of this _only do one thing_ rule from Google, the company that once attached
Google+ to its search results.

~~~
vanadium
Actually, my Creative Director and I have noticed some Google Fonts have
changed over time, producing significant enough (read: negative) changes to
the UI of clients’ experiences we have out there that we decided to start
downloading and storing them locally to lock in state (and for perf, but
that’s another topic). The average user who comes to the site once will never
notice it, but we have.

It wouldn’t surprise me if it were a hidden vector of some sort, but I haven’t
put effort into digging into it.

------
baybal2
I worked in a few AdShops for few short projects when I had to leave
electronics for some time after my last employer in Canada was unable to
secure a new work visa.

All and every were very very aware how adblocks can block double digits of
their revenue with each new release, and it was considered an issue of
_existential_ importance. C-levels had weekly conference calls on dealing with
adblocks.

In one of those companies, a senior was calling Google, and was pretty much
receiving directions like "you can get around this block if you randomise this
part of URL," "next months we will change this and that API, this will give
you some breathing room."

Google is well aware of UBO, and for years tried to covertly subvert it.

~~~
Slikey
AdBlockers are the modern Anti-Virus. It's the same cat'n'mouse game. The next
step will be isolating "sponsored content" in news articles and educational
content.

------
tastroder
dupe of
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21231493](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21231493)
\- this one just links to the comments section

------
Santosh83
Chrome has the user share and momentum to do whatever they want at this point,
and since the majority of end users are unaware of developmental & software
details and will continue using Chrome, their overwhelming user share will
mean developers will continue to develop for Chrome whether or not they like
the direction the browser is going. While ad blocking is the most widely used
extension functionality remember that there _are_ other adequate replacements
in the Chrome store. Most users are probably already using the more popular
(numerically) ones and even if every Chrome's uBlock Origin user migrated to
another browser it will probably not make a significant blip on the radar.
Only a corporate rival can challenge Chrome at this point and practically the
only one who can do so is Microsoft's Edge team, and they will most likely
establish a duopoly with Chrome instead of holding out for the sake of user
freedom.

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

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

------
faissaloo
If this keeps up I might just give up and stick to Links2 or something for my
daily browsing. There's Firefox for now but I'm really increasingly
pessimistic about the state of the web.

------
g8oz
Personally I'm more attached to uBlock origin than I am to Chrome.

------
EastSmith
Given the situation Chrome should not be called Web Browser anymore. User
Tracker seems better category.

------
hprotagonist
“how do i sideload my own extensions onto my web browser” is a really weird
sentence to say out loud.

~~~
rasz
With v3 implemented there will be nothing to sideload.

------
DoctorOetker
The double standards are getting way out of proportion here:

The functionality of the advertising browser is a bundling of functionality as
well: one one hand the browser functionality to let the user browse and view
what he wants, and on the other hand the functionality that lets
advertisements and trackers function on the user's browser willy nilly.

So we have a functionality bundler (Chrome) demanding a lower level unbundler
plug-in (uBO) stop bundling it's unbundling features together, while the only
reason the latter exists is because of the organised bundling at a higher
level...

------
dwheeler
Solution: Firefox.

------
protomikron
So the endgame is probably that we have to switch from "adblockers" to
"contentallowers": Filter everything and whitelist content?

------
emilengler
Google Chrome only allows to install extensions from there web store, his
would be the end of uBlock Origin for Chrome

Even if I am a Firefox user I don't see a sense in using Chrome. The
'features' that Chrome can but Chromium cannot are these that we everyone
love:

* DRM * Centralized extension managment

------
SergeAx
Switched to Firefox on Android just to have a luxury of ad absence, will do
the same on a desktop the moment uBO turned off by Chrome. There was a day or
two when all extensions stopped to work because of some certificate expiration
- it was a horrible experience, never again.

------
kyriakos
Will it still work in Edge chromium?

~~~
zamalek
The credge people on Twitter have been engaging in adblocking discussions, but
credge currently uses the chrome store.

~~~
partiallypro
It currently uses the Microsoft Store, but it -can- use the Chrome store.

[https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/insider-addons?hl=en-
US](https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/insider-addons?hl=en-US)

------
haolez
Damn! I've recently switched to a Chromebook as my daily driver, so Chrome is
my only choice of browser available.

I hope this is a mistake, since I can't imagine browsing the web without
uBlock Origin.

~~~
ymolodtsov
You can always install any extension outside of the store by enabling the
developer mode in Chrome.

~~~
girvo
With the new manifest V3, it’s sounding like this won’t be enough sometime in
the future

------
stebann
Mozilla is the real hero here. GO with the good guys!

------
karlh
Never stopped using Firefox. Chrome came from Google, the conflicts of
interest were obvious.

------
mounram
Chrome is still one of the best browser for the time being, but if uBlock will
ne be available anymore, it’s time to change, Firefox most likely.

~~~
rahuldottech
Chrome might be "one of" the best. If so, Firefox is definitely another.

------
Yetanfou
More "The end of Chromium for not being able to run uBlock Origin". Running a
browser without a functional ad blocker is like running around without
vaccinations - you're bound to catch something nasty.

I used to use Chromium and Firefox side by side but stopped doing so when they
started acting up in this way. When I need to test with Blink I use Vivaldi
(which still supports uBlock Origin), Firefox otherwise.

