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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

#191

Post by jasode »

TylerE wrote: post #154
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

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.

>Not because it was a superior product, not because of technology but because everyone was anti IE.

>>>I think that's rather revisionist.

I agree with the sibling comments that remembered the past differently: Back in 2008, Chrome was actually the superior product -- for both users and developers.

- Chrome had a better partitioned process for each tab. IE and Firefox 3.x didn't so they often crashed on buggy web pages or bad Javascript. In Firefox, that would also take down all the other tabs one had open which obviously frustrated users.

- Chrome with V8 had the fastest Javascript engine at the time. This translated to faster UI on Gmail, Google Maps, Google Docs, etc.

- Chrome had a built in PDF viewer which was convenient. In IE, clicking on a pdf link triggered a disruptive "Save file as" prompt or if one had Adobe installed, it would launch Adobe Reader which was a jarring UI experience. (Also add that Chrome included ability to print to PDF. To duplicate that functionality in IE required buying the full Adobe Acrobat Professional for $300 or installing a similar PDF printer driver such as Bullzip.)

- Chrome had very good dev tools included. With Firefox, you had to install the Firebug plugin which was slower and buggier

It's fascinating how Google's recent controversy has caused widespread amnesia of Chrome browser's real technical advantages in 2008.

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

#192

Post by tty2300 »

TylerE wrote: post #171
whatpreventsit wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Firefox has had this for years.

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

#194

Post by girvo »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #124
guelo wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically Firefox killed their extension API to be compatible with Chrome's extensions. Now they probably don't want to be compatible with the new Chrome API.

> Ironically Firefox killed their extension API to be compatible with Chrome's extensions. This is misleading. They deprecated the old API primarily to be able to do multi-process and get rid of XUL.

Which honestly makes sense. Komodo is one of my favourite editors, but Christ working with XUL is painful!

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

#195

Post by davidp »

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.

You're right that this is potentially anticompetitive, but

    “Companies will regulate themselves” is a cute libertarian bedtime story.
I've never heard libertarians say that. Rather, they say that consumers have the potential to regulate companies if they choose to do so, by voting with their feet. We should do so more often than we do; when there's a free market (monopolies are not free markets) it feels pretty good to tell a company to go screw themselves.

Personally I switched back to Firefox when Chrome tried to force login to my Google account, and I haven't missed a thing (other than some dev tools, e.g. websocket inspection). Firefox Quantum is really good, and their bookmark sync has replaced my previous usage of the now-defunct Xmarks.

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

#196

Post by xaduha »

pier25 wrote: post #100
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…

Opera blocks ads wihout the need of an extension. It's just a setting.

Well internally it shows as an extension, you can check yourself. Didn't use to, but does now.

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

#197

Post by wnevets »

TylerE wrote: post #154
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

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.

Chrome still has the fastest start up times from what I've seen.

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

#198

Post by lsiebert »

I switched to Chrome years ago. Recently I switched back to Firefox.

It's changed dramatically. Speed, security, and stuff that you can't do in Chrome, like extensions like Facebook Container.

To me this isn't about Chrome Vs Firefox though. It's about the benefits of a healthy marketplace for software, and the dangers of near monopolies to consumer choice.

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

#199

Post by josh2600 »

lsiebert wrote: post #198

I switched to Chrome years ago. Recently I switched back to Firefox. It's changed dramatically. Speed, security, and stuff that you can't do in Chrome, like extensions like Facebook Container. To me this isn't about Chrome Vs Firefox though. It's about the benefits of a healthy marketplace for software, and the dangers of near monopolies to consumer choice.

The world is changing. People are starting to care about things they didn’t before. I think the pendulum is swinging towards privacy and I like it.

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

#200

Post by caymanjim »

bgorman wrote: post #182
jorgesborges wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Chrome was the first to give each tab its own thread, which helped prevent rogue pages from bringing the whole browser down (not completely, but it was a dramatic improvement).
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