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

Google Just Gave 2B Chrome Users a Reason to Switch to Firefox

forbes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–66 of 66 posts

Re: Google Just Gave 2B Chrome Users a Reason to Switch to Firefox

#61

Post by Ayesh »

delhanty wrote: post #36
chanwitkepha wrote: post #8

I use Adguard DNS. It can help because it work at DNS Level to block Advertiser Domain. https://adguard.com/en/adguard-dns/overview.html

This was insightful from Pieter Levels Twitter: https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1054985994838130688 > The accidental thing nobody noticed is how @Cloudflare is suddenly in the best position now to take over the Web Analytics industry now that adblockers are all blocking JS-level Google Analytics, since Cloudflare can track users on the DNS-level So once DNS blocking becomes the norm, the power to do evil will swi…

DNS analytics are pretty much useless for web analytics due to wildcard records, multi layer caching,etc.

Re: Google Just Gave 2B Chrome Users a Reason to Switch to Firefox

#62

Post by Mirioron »

_bxg1 wrote: post #46
Mirioron wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they basically get read/write permissions on every web page you visit. But you can select on which sites the extension is active. You can even make it only active when you click on it.

This isn't a browser feature, it's an AdBlock Plus feature. You're just switching off the blocking for certain sites, not turning off the extension itself in any meaningful way.

No, I'm talking about the browser feature in Chrome that can be applied to all extensions.

Re: Google Just Gave 2B Chrome Users a Reason to Switch to Firefox

#63

Post by trickstra »

devoply wrote: post #32
_bxg1 wrote: post #18

It is worth noting that revamping the browser extension permissions model is something that should definitely be done. Browser extensions up until this point have been a massive security hole: they basically get read/write permissions on every web page you visit. Of course, content blocking could've been part of that new security model. As Google tightens its grip, I wouldn't be surprised if someone starts a genuine…

I think Huawei should start an open-source community-based fork of Chrome and Android as an offset to Google and American monopoly on the web. (kidding, sort of).

No need to be kidding IMHO. This could be a perfect opportunity for Huawei to show that there is life without google. Basically the only thing ROMs like Cyanogenmod were lacking was the support of a hardware maker, coming preinstalled by default. Today with F-Droid, Nextcloud, Openstreetmaps and Mastodon it would be doable.

Re: Google Just Gave 2B Chrome Users a Reason to Switch to Firefox

#64

Post by steve76 »

If you don't want to be tracked, improve your life yourself please.

So much of violence, I think is a request. World! Show me something I don't know.

It is up to the cultured to answer that request. To limit violence, not create it.

All that's missing is a role for the hobbyist, the local presence, down to the individual of what those sensors do, and what the response is.

Every dollar spent stopping you from descending into barbarity and rampine killing is a dollar not spent on metabolic timing of phytonutrients.

Make humanity great again.

Re: Google Just Gave 2B Chrome Users a Reason to Switch to Firefox

#65

Post by r00fus »

yhoneycomb wrote: post #2

Before I opened this, I really couldn't think of ANYTHING that would be big enough for me to care enough about to switch. But disabling ad block? That's insane. If that really comes to fruition, there is no way I'm sticking around.

> But disabling ad block?

That's the fear. The reality is they want to use the AdBlock+ (ABP) model of getting a trickle cashflow of adblocking users (and allowing so-called "Acceptable Ads").

If you are seeing this as the thin edge of a very hard wedge into the concept of adblocking, you're in good company.

Google/ABP need to start small, offend as few users as possible then make it acceptable and move the conversation to "which ads should/n't be blocked" instead of "all ads should be blocked", all while preserving their revenue stream.

Re: Google Just Gave 2B Chrome Users a Reason to Switch to Firefox

#66

Post by rstuart4133 »

blacksmith_tb wrote: post #3

That's a bit hyperbolic though. I imagine a high percentage of HN users block ads, but the overall rate is more like 25%[1] I suppose Forbes' editors weren't so excited about "Google gives about 500M Chrome users a reason to switch..." 1: https://www.statista.com/statistics/804008/ad-blocking-reach...

As far as I know on Android Firefox is the only one that does ad blocking well. That't because it supports plugins, including uBlock Origin. It's market share is 0.36%

It was ad blocking that drove me to Firefox on Android. Screen space is precious on mobile, and ads taking up a lot of it drove me nuts. I found I preferred the UI but sorely missed Chrome's "translate page option". (I changed my search engine to DuckDuckGo for the same reason - google search now shows so much "useful" ancillary information I have to scroll past to get to the actual search results I switched to DuckDuckGo just to avoid the scrolling).

But at 0.36% I'm in the noise region as far as browsers concerned, which I assume means most people don't care about ad blocking or noisy search results, apparently.

Post reply on HN