After the story I installed Firefox. I got it configured, and was happy to see that it's as good as Chrome. For now I'll keep using Chrome, but the moment the adblockers stop working, I'll be on Firefox.
Google Just Gave 2B Chrome Users a Reason to Switch to Firefox
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Re: Google Just Gave 2B Chrome Users a Reason to Switch to Firefox
#92As the antitrust investigation of Google progresses, they must find a fine line : get as much control as possible of the web while leaving enough margin for competition to avoid an antitrust ruling. That move to limit adblockers might be strategically required from Google at this point, and the fact that they might lose market share an expected result. They've already reached 70% market share, limiting adblockers will allow them to extract more value from their current users and also avoid becoming too obviously hegemonic.
Re: Google Just Gave 2B Chrome Users a Reason to Switch to Firefox
#93Great to see mainstream media picking this up and giving Firefox some exposure. With Microsoft switching to Chromium, Firefox is now the only viable (cross platform) alternative. FF gaining back a solid amount of market share is critical for the browser ecosystem in the future. (Personally I switched back to FF after the first Quantum release, which brought performance back on par with Chrome. On mobile, the ad block…
> With Microsoft switching to Chromium, Firefox is now the only viable I'm not sure I understand your point. Is there a public statement from Microsoft that they are following Google on this? I don't know what Microsoft is going to do, but nothing stops them from keeping the API fully working. And if Firefox was based on Chromium too, nothing would stop Mozilla from keeping the API working either. Although I expect s…
I'd rather use (and build for) any WebKit browser over Firefox, so I'm hoping Microsoft Edge does not implement the "Chrome extension manifest v3" and that they release Edge for Linux ASAP.
Aside from my feelings about the technical qualities of their products - Mozilla is clearly not more trustworthy than Google or Microsoft either since they put non-removable ads and tracking extensions directly into Firefox and lock developers out of their extension store for purely political reasons.
Re: Google Just Gave 2B Chrome Users a Reason to Switch to Firefox
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ok that's fair. From a developer's PoV, Safari is a terrible browser. It's old and buggy and stifles innovation on iOS in the same way ie did on windows.
As a web developer, I find this to be anything be true. Safari supports loads of cool features that clients ask for, like native css carousels (css snap points), and blur effects (backdrop-filter). Chrome, does not.
As a web developer, I like my browser to implement internet standards correctly so websites actually work. People aren't trashing Safari because it's cool.. generally Apple provides a great software experience. But Safari is a bug ridden mess.
Here's an example that broke many many sites that use OAuth2 Auth Code Flow for login (including the main UI portal my company provides clients): https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=194906
There's also been issues with the handling of 3rd party cookies that create issues for login systems, js stdlib functions being incorrectly implemented, etc.
Re: Google Just Gave 2B Chrome Users a Reason to Switch to Firefox
#95The state of the debate is unsatisfactory. Google employees such as Justin Schuh are aggressively defending the move on tech/security principles and denying commercial motivations, while uBlock Origin dev (Raymond Hill) says the change will cripple or kill uBO on Chrome and evil motives are its raison d'être . It's good that mainstream media articles raise the awareness of the issue, but a good technical discussion b…
There have been extensions out there that are close to amusing the current behavior.
Example: https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-cuts-fake-ad-blockers-f...
My understanding of the current behavior is that an extension like uBlock can programmatically read requests. Extensions will be made to abuse an API and people will install them unwittingly.
Re: Google Just Gave 2B Chrome Users a Reason to Switch to Firefox
#96The state of the debate is unsatisfactory. Google employees such as Justin Schuh are aggressively defending the move on tech/security principles and denying commercial motivations, while uBlock Origin dev (Raymond Hill) says the change will cripple or kill uBO on Chrome and evil motives are its raison d'être . It's good that mainstream media articles raise the awareness of the issue, but a good technical discussion b…
Are they removing url-rewriting requests as well? Perhaps adblockers could modify the URL of the ad to go to a different domain (example.com) rather than blocking it entirely.
Re: Google Just Gave 2B Chrome Users a Reason to Switch to Firefox
#97A chunk of users (Linux desktops mainly) are locked into chrome because of h.264 / mp4 video.
Could you elaborate? Firefox doesn't seem to have any problems with h264 to me
Re: Google Just Gave 2B Chrome Users a Reason to Switch to Firefox
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
> With Microsoft switching to Chromium, Firefox is now the only viable I'm not sure I understand your point. Is there a public statement from Microsoft that they are following Google on this? I don't know what Microsoft is going to do, but nothing stops them from keeping the API fully working. And if Firefox was based on Chromium too, nothing would stop Mozilla from keeping the API working either. Although I expect s…
I'd rather use (and build for) any WebKit browser over Firefox, so I'm hoping Microsoft Edge does not implement the "Chrome extension manifest v3" and that they release Edge for Linux ASAP. Aside from my feelings about the technical qualities of their products - Mozilla is clearly not more trustworthy than Google or Microsoft either since they put non-removable ads and tracking extensions directly into Firefox and lo…
Citation? I've never heard of that.
Re: Google Just Gave 2B Chrome Users a Reason to Switch to Firefox
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
No it doesn't. For example to tap a link you have to tap it directly, links don't have a halo around them to make them easier to tap. Tapping things like the [-] buttons here in HN is very hard. It's stupid shit like that that makes it unusable for me. I don't believe for a second the developers of Firefox for Android use it every day and haven't fixed that. And if they don't dogfood what hope is there for that softw…
> I don't believe for a second the developers of Firefox for Android use it every day and haven't fixed that. Why is that so unbelievable? I use Firefox every day and haven't even considered that this might be a problem. I don't have difficulty hitting the [-] on HN, but if I did, I would simply zoom in until it becomes large enough.
Yes I suppose that's what the Firefox developers think to themselves. Let's ignore basic usability issues. That's why Firefox is a failure.
Re: Google Just Gave 2B Chrome Users a Reason to Switch to Firefox
#100just switched two days ago. it's been nice ten years, see you google.
my main hurdle was absence of decent support for multiple isolated profiles in firefox and it's still not great but multi-account containers are good enough for now.