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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

#181

Post by techntoke »

bongobongo wrote: post #160
partiallypro wrote: post #149

I don't see how Chrome's new anti-ad blocking isn't seen as anti-competitive, considering Google basically runs the ad business on non-Google sites, etc. Sure, Facebook and Amazon also serve up ads...but Google is by far the company that is hurt the most by ad blocking. Then at the same time Chrome is essentially blocking "intrusive" ads by default...and by intrusive they basically mean non-Google ads that have the s…

It is absolutely anti-competitive garbage, and you should be prepared to see more and more of it (and increasingly anti-consumer iterations if it) until people wake up and start demanding that their political leaders do something about it. “Companies will regulate themselves” is a cute libertarian bedtime story.

Google never said they were blocking ad-blockers. It was the hyperbole Firefox crowd who used some post by Raymond Hill from the creator of uBlock Origin as a reason to start another "Switch to Firefox" campaign.

However, Hill admitted that adblockers aren't going away and it is just a proposed change in the WebRequest API to make things more akin to Safari to help adblockers operate in a standard in speedy way.

Mozilla on the other hand did expose a bunch of users to ads and malicious sites recently though when they didn't renew a certificate and didn't push out a fix for over 24 hours in which all addons were disabled in their browser and the configurations were lost as well.

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

#182

Post by bgorman »

jorgesborges wrote: post #177
TylerE wrote: 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 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.

Firefox, Opera and IE7 had tabbed browsing years before Chrome was released.

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

#183

Post by techntoke »

cfarm wrote: post #101

When Chrome did this they quickly highlighted how much control they have over what people view. Privacy focused open browsers will gain marketshare because of it.

What did Chrome do exactly? Cause they never said they were disabling ad-blocker extensions. That was the grapevine effect from the Firefox crowd.

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

#184

Post by techntoke »

haecceity wrote: post #3
SanchoPanda wrote: post #2

I wonder if that is sustainable as features are built on top of the new system and their codebase diverges further and further from chrome as a result.

Google said that the adblocking would still be available for entreprise customers so it should be as simple as flipping a switch. Maintenance should be easy if that's true.

Google never said they were removing ad-blocking. Not sure where you are getting your information.

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

#185

Post by fwn »

dblohm7 wrote: post #134
fwn wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it is certain to stay, as they seem to avoid commiting to the extension capability in their future Versions of Firefox for Android. So AFAIK it might be that they want to get rid of it.

That isn't true.

It would be great if you were right, but I don't think you are. Do you have sources?

I got the idea from this [1] reddit comment made by someone with an Mozilla Employee flair:

> [...] There is not yet a concrete plan (feature) to bring Web Extensions to Fenix. That does not mean it is not going to happen. It does mean we have some things to figure out first.

and this [2] github issue where they state

> Not for MVP, will look at it for further versions

I fear that what they'll want to figure out first is whether not implementing them will hurt adoption.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/b4bhzs/will_firefo...

[2] https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/574

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

#186

Post by nine_k »

directional wrote: post #174
rndgermandude wrote: post #42

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.

This would be a very funny inversion!

2004: M$ is so greedy, Google is so pro-user.

2019: Google is so greedy, MS is so pro-user.

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

#187

Post by robbrown451 »

SanchoPanda wrote: post #2

I wonder if that is sustainable as features are built on top of the new system and their codebase diverges further and further from chrome as a result.

I don't see that as a problem. Sure it takes effort, but especially since Google has the feature in their enterprise version, it shouldn't be too hard to just turn it on.

Regardless, I'm sure a company like Brave or Microsoft can handle the engineering necessary to keep this working. You don't have to fork the whole thing.

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

#188

Post by ggregoire »

negamax wrote: post #146

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

> Not because it was a superior product

Pardon? For years it was the best option out there. Its dev tools are still the best imo.

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

#190

Post by userbinator »

red_admiral wrote: post #33

I tried opera a while back, and while it's fast and looks good, it has a new tab page with "recommended" sites that you can't turn off - I tried, but it's protected by DRM (opera will refuse to start if the file doesn't have a valid digital signature). So if I'm going to switch browsers because of privacy/advertising concerns, it's not going to be Opera.

I tried, but it's protected by DRM (opera will refuse to start if the file doesn't have a valid digital signature).

Not too long ago, that situation would just cause someone to crack it and share how, or at least a patch.

Then again, that was also a time when there was an actual choice between browsers, and not just "Firefox or WebKit/Chrome(/ium) shell."

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