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Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

9to5google.com

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Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#91

Post by junar »

this_user wrote: post #6

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

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...

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#92

Post by Krasnol »

gtirloni wrote: post #80

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.

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...

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#93

Post by bradstewart »

irrational wrote: post #85

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?

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.

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#94

Post by mlevental »

irrational wrote: post #85

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?

it's not true even if some wish it were. Firefox isn't as performant, has fewer extensions, and is less polished. not to mention Dev tools are inferior (but typical users don't care about that).

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#95

Post by [deleted] »

Despegar wrote: post #63
phs318u wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

[deleted]

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#96

Post by jchw »

milkytron wrote: post #90
jchw wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 anno…

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.

Ah yeah, on occasion I will boot Firefox at work for this capability.

Truth be told I know of nothing similar in Chrome/Chromium, but you can do something similar using the healthy number of “Copy Request As” context options. I like to copy as fetch and manipulate it in the console. It’s not perfect but it’s useful.

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#98

Post by ljm »

user17843 wrote: post #53
phiresky wrote: post #39

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 i…

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…

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.

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#99

Post by president »

laminar_flow wrote: post #41

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

I've thought about using pi-hole but wonder about ads being served from the same domains as the content providers. Is/has this been an issue at all?
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