Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Modifications to Google Chromium for removing Google integration

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 326 posts

Re: Modifications to Google Chromium for removing Google integration

#31

Post by kibwen »

shawn wrote: post #25
linkmotif wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Standing up to Google is meaningless if you’re not being smart. The number one feature of Google is their overwhelming intelligence. Throwing a fit and compiling some software semi-ignorantly doesn’t stand up to anything, much less this type of power.

Yes it does. Literally doing anything other than blindly using their products and not giving a shit is standing up to them. It doesn't matter whether you're smart or not – anyone can do this. It doubly stands up to them if you make a blogpost or a tweet saying "I did this. Here are the steps I followed." And this is less likely to happen if you discourage people from doing it. Honestly, it's a bit depressing how litt…

Rather one could attempt a protest of a higher denominator, for less effort, by using a non-Chrome-compatible browser, which also does more potential good in the long run by giving webmasters any reason to give a care for browsers that aren't unilaterally controlled by Google.

Re: Modifications to Google Chromium for removing Google integration

#32

Post by regecks »

vemv wrote: post #5
nadont8 wrote: post #2

Google Chromium, sans integration with Google, and sans updates. Thanks but no thanks.

Chromium updates are blobs and tend to have close ties with Google.

Yes, but they also come with Google's release engineering, so at least you can be somewhat confident they've not been subverted in some way not intended by the authors of the browser.

The way Ungoogled Chromium is distributed is way too yolo for my tastes. Would be nice if it had reproducible builds or was packaged into a reputable distro or thirdparty repo.

Re: Modifications to Google Chromium for removing Google integration

#33

Post by plg »

bootlooped wrote: post #19

This seems like one of the most difficult solutions to the problem of switching to a browser that's not Chrome. Not only are there other browsers like Firefox and Safari, but there are other Chromium-based browsers like Vivaldi and Opera. I would have liked to read about some expected use-cases in the readme.

why not Safari? Or is the issue non-MacOS OSs

Re: Modifications to Google Chromium for removing Google integration

#34

Post by GeekyBear »

ndnxhs wrote: post #21

Rather just use Firefox. Its an insanely good browser.

Especially for Firefoxes container functionality.

>Allows you to sign in to two different accounts on the same site.

Allows you to isolate your sites from one another, by containerizing tabs.

Allows you to avoid leaving a social networking footprint to keep those sites from tracking you.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.techrepublic.com/google-amp...

Re: Modifications to Google Chromium for removing Google integration

#35

Post by shawn »

kibwen wrote: post #31
shawn wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it does. Literally doing anything other than blindly using their products and not giving a shit is standing up to them. It doesn't matter whether you're smart or not – anyone can do this. It doubly stands up to them if you make a blogpost or a tweet saying "I did this. Here are the steps I followed." And this is less likely to happen if you discourage people from doing it. Honestly, it's a bit depressing how litt…

Rather one could attempt a protest of a higher denominator, for less effort, by using a non-Chrome-compatible browser, which also does more potential good in the long run by giving webmasters any reason to give a care for browsers that aren't unilaterally controlled by Google.

So for the past two weeks, there have been "hotel workers on strike!" protests in Chicago. They've been outside banging pots and pans, blowing whistles, and generally making a lot of noise to raise awareness for their cause.

Are you sure that quietly switching to Firefox is more effective than saying "Fuck you Google, I took your product and made it my own. Here's how anyone else can do the same thing. Stop abusing your users' trust"?

Re: Modifications to Google Chromium for removing Google integration

#36

Post by User23 »

vemv wrote: post #14
djrogers wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also as a word of caution, don't use ungoogled-chromium binaries Unless you’re reading every line of code yourself before compiling it, I’d say you’re no safer going you’re route than downloading the binaries offered from the same source.

Generally as a software developer I can assess which projects' source to trust, else I wouldn't be running thousands of transitive dependencies in my machine. Binaries which are unofficial to even ungoogled-chromium itself surpass my threshold of trust. But yes, one could take a further step and extract the interesting bits from this project and apply them to the official Chromium trunk.

How do you assess the trustworthiness of thousands of transitive dependencies with a far greater number of code contributors in a way that scales? This is a serious question, and it would be great if you shared the solution you found. Thanks.

Re: Modifications to Google Chromium for removing Google integration

#37

Post by floatingatoll »

“It also features some changes” says to me that this isn’t a safe fork to recommend to others. Rather than simply releasing a de-badged instance of the public Chrome product, it additionally includes “editorial” comments in the form of turning various switches on or off. Use at your own risk.

Re: Modifications to Google Chromium for removing Google integration

#38

Post by freeone3000 »

plg wrote: post #33
bootlooped wrote: post #19

This seems like one of the most difficult solutions to the problem of switching to a browser that's not Chrome. Not only are there other browsers like Firefox and Safari, but there are other Chromium-based browsers like Vivaldi and Opera. I would have liked to read about some expected use-cases in the readme.

why not Safari? Or is the issue non-MacOS OSs

That's a pretty significant issue. "Oh, it's a great browser! No, it doesn't work on 95% of computers."

Re: Modifications to Google Chromium for removing Google integration

#39

Post by ChristianBundy »

plg wrote: post #33
bootlooped wrote: post #19

This seems like one of the most difficult solutions to the problem of switching to a browser that's not Chrome. Not only are there other browsers like Firefox and Safari, but there are other Chromium-based browsers like Vivaldi and Opera. I would have liked to read about some expected use-cases in the readme.

why not Safari? Or is the issue non-MacOS OSs

I use Epiphany (aka GNOME Web) and it's like Safari: a minimal WebKit-based browser with no Google integration, but it's cross-platform, open source, and features Firefox sync integration for history/bookmarks/passwords/etc. I can't recommend it enough.
Post reply on HN