What about Microsoft edge?
You mean Google Chrome Edge?
Are you removing the infamous microsoft name to make it more frightening?
Microsoft is terrible. Google is bad. Combining them in a browser was an evil achievement.
DuckDuckGo Extension to Block FLoC, Google’s New Tracking Method in Chrome
221–230 of 259 posts
Re: DuckDuckGo Extension to Block FLoC, Google’s New Tracking Method in Chrome
#222Earlier post/discussion on this:
Re: DuckDuckGo Extension to Block FLoC, Google’s New Tracking Method in Chrome
#223I don't know man. I was really happy about DDG existing and making an effort (although I am not a user). But they now clearly shifted from a "Noble Actor" to a "Competitor" with this aggressive marketing. I don't appreciate these marketing campaigns that are directed at the competition. I never liked the "I'm a Mac"-campaigns, nor the all the "Bing"-fearmongering. It signals to me that you're not a fighter for a nobl…
Preventing noble actors from doing aggressive marketing causes them to stay small. Marketing is required to get market share nowadays. If the marketing causes people to find you to whom your are the better choice, then it is good marketing ⇒ https://www.draketo.de/anderes/honest-marketing
Maybe I was using too much understatement:
The kind of marketing is not only "aggressive", it is overly aggressive IMHO. It is vilifying, demonizing.
You can do aggressive marketing all you want, but in my eyes when arguments become hyperbolic, they get less and less believable.
The way they write their piece, FLoC is the worst thing that has ever happened, worse than everything that came before (how on earth is this worse than strictly personalized cookies all over the place?!) and only DDG and their extension can save you.
Re: DuckDuckGo Extension to Block FLoC, Google’s New Tracking Method in Chrome
#224Re: DuckDuckGo Extension to Block FLoC, Google’s New Tracking Method in Chrome
#225I generally am on the pro-Firefox, anti-Chrome train, but there is one practical exception: websites that make use of in-browser audio synthesis often (in my experience) just don't work in Firefox. Audible Genius's Building Blocks course has a in-browser DAW that you need to use Chrome for. Flowkey (browser-based piano lessons) also only works in Chrome, as far as I've been able to figure out. So to anyone with an in…
> websites that make use of in-browser audio synthesis often (in my experience) just don't work in Firefox. How recently have you tried this? Firefox added AudioWorklet in v76 [1] and it's very well done. [1] https://hacks.mozilla.org/2020/05/firefox-76-audio-worklets-...
Tried Audible Genius again just now to check, but still isn't supported, although now that I look at the console it looks like this may have something to do with their Meteor and analytics setup, so not audio related.
Tried Flowkey again now as well and although it required the Jazz-MIDI plugin (to permit the browser access to my MIDI controller), with that plugin I was able to use Flowkey in Firefox.
So it looks like my concerns were outdated.
Re: DuckDuckGo Extension to Block FLoC, Google’s New Tracking Method in Chrome
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That's a very reasonable determination for any privacy-respecting browser to make. Users should be able to have defaults that closely align with their preferred user-agent behavior. I understand this as "Microsoft produced a privacy-respecting browser and had their user's best interest on their mind", and I find it hard to engage that, because we seem to be living in wildly different realities. > We could do this a…
> and I find it hard to engage that Fair enough. If Firefox and Chrome enabled DNT by default, do you think the outcome would have been different? Ie, do you think that advertisers rebelled specifically because they thought Microsoft was hypocritical about tracking? I don't. I don't think there's evidence that advertisers were mad at Microsoft , and the reasoning I have for that is that they stopped respecting DNT ac…
> Ie, do you think that advertisers rebelled specifically because they thought Microsoft was hypocritical about tracking?
No, but I don't think Firefox would've done that, because they had no interest in killing the feature (which was predicted to happen soon as they announced, certainly their smart people were aware of the consequences of their actions -- and they have very good connections to ad-tech, they're part of it, hence their understanding of the response and interest for the events to play out exactly like they did).
For Mozilla, I would have had a much easier time to assume good faith, for Microsoft I find that very hard to believe, much like their Shenanigans with IE on Windows and not allowing removal, making browser install hard etc wasn't done because they thought IE was the best browser and users couldn't possibly want to switch.
Similarly, I don't believe Google suggests FLoC because they want to protect privacy by any means necessary. But that doesn't mean that it's not better for the average user than what we have today. And we won't get any movement without Google.
> But an arms race where browsers close tracking vectors where they find them is better than a legal status quo where browsers add new tracking vectors of their own volition.
Two of the four major browsers are built by ad-tech companies, another one is almost entirely funded by an ad-tech company. That leaves Safari, and Apple has no intention to offer it to all users.
Google will not fight against itself (and it's the only relevant player on both sides), there will be no arms race. As for US Senators: who in ad-tech has more to spend than Google, Facebook, and Microsoft?
Re: DuckDuckGo Extension to Block FLoC, Google’s New Tracking Method in Chrome
#227I don't like I won't use
Re: DuckDuckGo Extension to Block FLoC, Google’s New Tracking Method in Chrome
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google is trying to vilify browser cookies and slip in their proprietary tracking and profiling as a safe alternative. It's not better they simply want a monopoly on the dark arts of privacy intrusion, they want to build a moat and burn the bridges of the old way.
As does Apple. And any other hardware/software maker with a monopoly. This is the new playbook.
Sure.
Re: DuckDuckGo Extension to Block FLoC, Google’s New Tracking Method in Chrome
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
The "solution" of installing an extension is a bit shortsighted. Google can and will just remove the possibility for extensions to block FLOC in the future, when it's deemed profitable to do so.
That's what people have been saying for years about ad blockers. Did it happen yet?
Firefox on Android has adblocking extensions available for it. Chrome on Android doesn't have extensions because...
Re: DuckDuckGo Extension to Block FLoC, Google’s New Tracking Method in Chrome
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a web developer I don’t test in Chrome—I develop against Firefox and sanity check using Safari iOS. Therefore my site is explicitly optimised for Firefox. Chrome users might experience issues. Or they won’t. I have no idea.
So it is very likely that you do not live of being a web developer or have a very small niche market, given the market share of FF and the market share of chrome. No normal buisness can ignore how the vast majority of its users experience their site. Every user with issues is likely a lost user. But ... from a technical point of view, it is indeed very likely that what runs on FF will also run on chrome, but not nece…
> it is indeed very likely that what runs on FF will also run on chrome, but not necessarily the other way around.
Yes, one would expect that to be true. However, as a very heavy FF user I haven't noticed any breakage in pages at all. Might be there's small things in a side-by-side compare, but nothing annoying so far.