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Opera, Brave, Vivaldi to ignore Chrome's anti-ad-blocker changes

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Re: Opera, Brave, Vivaldi to ignore Chrome's anti-ad-blocker changes

#171
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's rather revisionist. At a point in time Chrome was way better than not just IE, but way better than Firefox. The performance was leaps and bounds ahead.

I’ve been using both Firefox and Chrome since they came out and they have always felt near each others performance. It would be interesting to see some data on the subject.

One huge advantage Chrome had was it's multi-process model. This was back in the day when stuff like Flash would often nuke your entire Firefox session.

Re: Opera, Brave, Vivaldi to ignore Chrome's anti-ad-blocker changes

#172

Damn Google! This is so short sighted. People/everyone just installed Chrome on whatever systems they could find and that's how Chrome become so prevalent. Not because it was a superior product, not because of technology but because everyone was anti IE. Google is painting Chrome into similar corner. In a way, this is a good indicator of decline of Google. Revenue not through innovation but by coercion

Because anti-IE? I doubt it was the driving motive for much people. People usually switch to something because it's better or at least because it's cool and popular.

I switched to Opera because it was so much better than anything in 2000. Then I tried Firefox because a friend switched to it and I sticked with it occasionally as it was becoming better and better and cool extensions emerged. Then I switched to Chrome because Firefox became so slow it was driving me crazy (yes, I always use obsolete hardware) and Chrome was ok (it lacked functionality I loved in Firefox extensions but I could tolerate this).

Now I actually am increasingly anti-Chrome because I don't want Google's monopolism and dictate so I feel like I want to switch back to Firefox and guide friends to do so but Firefox is still notably more slow than Chrome although not as slow as it used to be. I hope Mozilla guys are going to keep on improving its performance.

Re: Opera, Brave, Vivaldi to ignore Chrome's anti-ad-blocker changes

#173

The problem at this point isn't whether chrome will disable it... It can be added back, probably fairly easily as google intents to keep it around for "enterprise" anyway, so it's probably just gonna end up changing/removing one if-statement. If not, then the code already exists and has to be merged back in. The problem is distribution of the actual extensions, as Vivaldi kinda pointed out, as the other browsers most…

Brave has it's own ad blocking builtin.

Re: Opera, Brave, Vivaldi to ignore Chrome's anti-ad-blocker changes

#174

The problem at this point isn't whether chrome will disable it... It can be added back, probably fairly easily as google intents to keep it around for "enterprise" anyway, so it's probably just gonna end up changing/removing one if-statement. If not, then the code already exists and has to be merged back in. The problem is distribution of the actual extensions, as Vivaldi kinda pointed out, as the other browsers most…

This is an excellent opportunity for Microsoft to distinguish their Chromium-based Edge from Chrome. Leave the webRequest API intact, ensure that these adblocking extensions are available from their own store, and invite other Chromium-based browsers to use their store instead of Google's.

Re: Opera, Brave, Vivaldi to ignore Chrome's anti-ad-blocker changes

#175

Damn Google! This is so short sighted. People/everyone just installed Chrome on whatever systems they could find and that's how Chrome become so prevalent. Not because it was a superior product, not because of technology but because everyone was anti IE. Google is painting Chrome into similar corner. In a way, this is a good indicator of decline of Google. Revenue not through innovation but by coercion

Brave is good† and probably if Google tries to close down the Chromium open source project, a lot of resources will just instead go to whoever maintains the biggest open source fork.

† except fine-grained cookie blocking is a bit broken compared to stock Chromium (only works properly if you always allow first-party cookies, which I also want it to ask first about), script blocking is about the same.

Re: Opera, Brave, Vivaldi to ignore Chrome's anti-ad-blocker changes

#176
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's rather revisionist. At a point in time Chrome was way better than not just IE, but way better than Firefox. The performance was leaps and bounds ahead.

I’ve been using both Firefox and Chrome since they came out and they have always felt near each others performance. It would be interesting to see some data on the subject.

At least on Linux, I've found Chromium to be dramatically more responsive than Firefox every time I've tried switching (since about the time Chromium became usable on X11). Firefox still drops frames for me, which I find to be exceptionally jarring; and in combination with a UI that I'm not really that fond of, a backlog of basic standards compliance issues that I've been burned by as a developer (and as a user), and generally less-useful built-in fine-grained script and cookie controls, it's never really made sense for me to use Firefox.

Now I use Brave, and it's cool, it also encourages you to use interesting stuff like IPFS Companion, which I didn't know existed for Chromium until I switched to Brave.

I think even if Google ruins Chromium, it'll continue in the open somewhere else, and still be better than Firefox at the things that are important to me.

Re: Opera, Brave, Vivaldi to ignore Chrome's anti-ad-blocker changes

#177
post #154

Damn Google! This is so short sighted. People/everyone just installed Chrome on whatever systems they could find and that's how Chrome become so prevalent. Not because it was a superior product, not because of technology but because everyone was anti IE. Google is painting Chrome into similar corner. In a way, this is a good indicator of decline of Google. Revenue not through innovation but by coercion

I think that's rather revisionist. At a point in time Chrome was way better than not just IE, but way better than Firefox. The performance was leaps and bounds ahead.

I remember Chrome being way better than anything else at the time. I switched from Firefox to Chrome during that period because it was just so fast and lightweight in comparison. I think it was also the first time mainstream users had access to features like tabbed browsing, which was truly novel at the time.

Re: Opera, Brave, Vivaldi to ignore Chrome's anti-ad-blocker changes

#178

The problem at this point isn't whether chrome will disable it... It can be added back, probably fairly easily as google intents to keep it around for "enterprise" anyway, so it's probably just gonna end up changing/removing one if-statement. If not, then the code already exists and has to be merged back in. The problem is distribution of the actual extensions, as Vivaldi kinda pointed out, as the other browsers most…

Since Firefox support WebExtensions now (or will soon get it) which are very close to Chrome extensions, it wouldn't be unthinkable for all non-Chrome browsers to use Firefox store instead of the Chrome one. I think Mozilla could even be convinced to open it up as an "open web extensions" store or collaborate with others to build a new one. They certainly have the infrastructure and experience to run one.

Uh, Firefox already supports WebExtensions and it is like common knowledge. Mozilla barely has the experience to run a sync service, and even that is a disaster.

Re: Opera, Brave, Vivaldi to ignore Chrome's anti-ad-blocker changes

#179
So not only is Google introducing this change into the Chromium codebase, but it sounds like they aren't putting it behind a Chrome-only compiler flag. And if you're satisfied with Chrome as-is then too bad because the GoogleUpdater will automatically update Chrome and is harder to kill than a cockroach, and Chrome will give you an annoying popup 80-some days after that version's build date telling you to upgrade Chrome even if you have managed to block GoogleUpdater.

Re: Opera, Brave, Vivaldi to ignore Chrome's anti-ad-blocker changes

#180

Damn Google! This is so short sighted. People/everyone just installed Chrome on whatever systems they could find and that's how Chrome become so prevalent. Not because it was a superior product, not because of technology but because everyone was anti IE. Google is painting Chrome into similar corner. In a way, this is a good indicator of decline of Google. Revenue not through innovation but by coercion

People were anti-IE because IE was vastly inferior to other offerings. Firefox had been making steady but slow progress as tech-savvy folks would install it for their friends/family.

Chrome came out and it was even better than Firefox on speed (javascript especially, with v8), reliability (process isolation, websites would freeze all of your tabs if not your whole computer at the time), and usability (unified search/url bar). And it had Google marketing behind it, meaning non-tech folks knew and loved the company making it and don’t rely on their tech-savvy friends to hear about it.

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