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Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

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

#281

Post by axaxs »

jamiequint wrote: post #199
rayiner wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at the benchmark results, aggressively stripping ads and tracking can result in pages loading twice as fast and hours of extra battery life. I'm happy to pay money to view your website, but modern web ads are a ridiculous and punitive payment scheme.

What you're doing is the equivalent of walking into a store, picking up $100 of merchandise, slapping $10 on the counter and walking out because "I'm happy to buy your products, but your prices are ridiculous". It's not a very moral position to take.

What you're describing is clear theft. Blocking ads is much grayer, since there's no real cost being charged by the site. I'd say it's closer as an analogy to say going to a store and using the bathroom but not buying anything.

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

#282

Post by ethbro »

bhtru wrote: post #239
Klonoar wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kinda erases history. IE was riddled with security flaws and stagnant beyond belief when Firefox usurped it. There was a compelling reason to use an IE alternative back then - they actually offered something IE couldn't give. Chrome doesn't have that problem.

With this course of action it may be compelling enough to give consumer users a reason to ditch Chrome.

No significant number of users have ever ditched anything useful over invisible tracking.

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

#283

Post by JMTQp8lwXL »

whalesalad wrote: post #127

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

Sub-optimal for laptop users who might connect to various networks (home, office, the coffee shop) throughout a single day.

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

#284

Post by JMTQp8lwXL »

redwards510 wrote: post #14
droobles wrote: post #7

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

Don't forget there is a Firefox Developer version that includes additional devtools. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/developer/

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

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

#285

Post by pixl97 »

cwkoss wrote: post #97

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.

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.

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

#286

Post by lacampbell »

microcolonel wrote: post #153
ljm wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

> This is why it’s so unfortunate and frustrating that people are depending so much on Chromium/Blink Chromium is generally fine, until Google packages it as Chrome. The issues are not inherent to Chromium, they're failures of principle at Google. I know people like the idea, in concept, of engine diversity on the web, but the alternatives are terrible. Anyone who says that Firefox runs anywhere near as well as Chrom…

Anyone who says that Firefox runs anywhere near as well as Chromium on Linux is either incredibly lucky, extremely knowledgeable about custom building Firefox, or just lying.

Firefox used to be much sluggish on linux, but I tried out quantum and it seemed just as snappy as chromium. This announcement is enough to make it my daily driver, I think (I'll have to figure out the dev tools, hopefully it's straightforward).

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

#288

Post by xur17 »

notatoad wrote: post #260

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.

Agreed. This is making me reconsider all of the Google services and products I use.

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

#289

Post by amelius »

ljm wrote: post #98
user17843 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

> “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"

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

#290

Post by oefrha »

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 trying to force Firefox (latest Firefox Developer Edition) upon myself yet again for the past week, and aside from performance problems which still seem to exist on the Mac (initial rendering of pages is slow), some things just annoy the hell out of me:

- Search results are not highlighted on the scroll bar, which means no information on grouping at a glance, and can't just scroll to the relevant part. I have to go through matches one by one.

- Font rendering is subtly broken as always. A specific example is font-variant-numeric: tabular-nums, which seems completely broken at least for -apple-system (.SF NS Text); as a result a data aggregation site of mine which I read all the time looks awful, larger numbers may be narrower and vice versa. (Oddly, font-variant-numeric: tabular-nums seems to work for "Fira Sans" on MDN; I haven't found another font it works on.)

- With developer tools open, pages are really slow.

I'm probably forgetting something else.

(I should add that I also forced Safari upon myself, which is a shitshow, problems too numerous to list. Until Google completely removes ad-blocking capabilities I need, Chrome is simply the best there is.)

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