A list of recent hostile moves by Google's Chrome team • Hacker News Board

Re: A list of recent hostile moves by Google's Chrome team

#491

Post by gen220 » Thu, Aug 03, 2023, 3:55 PM UTC

consentreality wrote: post #336

sph wrote: post #142

What is the excuse of all people reading this thread in agreement and still using Chrome? As I mentioned elsewhere, this is preaching to the choir. A choir of Chrome users. Google wouldn't be so dominant if tech people like us would stop making lazy excuses to continue its hegemony. In Dante's Divina Commedia , there is a circle of hell for those too lazy to take a stance [1]. If it were written today, it would inclu…

The biggest blocker for me has been the lack of convenient profile switching. It's an important part of my workflow to have a separate profile for home/work/other, with history, bookmarks, etc. Container tabs are not a good replacement. Worse, I get irritated with the fact that Firefox fully supports this under the hood, but seems to push back against actually implementing a convenient way to use it. I'm currently do…

You might want to try out Arc if you're a Mac user – this was top on my wishlist from Firefox, too, and they're hitting it out of the park.

Re: A list of recent hostile moves by Google's Chrome team

#492

Post by insanitybit » Thu, Aug 03, 2023, 3:58 PM UTC

wzdd wrote: post #449

insanitybit wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Manifest v3 has been delayed and was/is pretty legitimate, I don't think most people really know wtf they're talking about when it comes to v3. JPEGXL doesn't exactly seem like that big of a deal and is now being developed again - sounds fine, Chrome went "seems like no one wants this" and then people said "we want this" and now it's being worked on. WEI isn't even properly proposed yet, it's so early. So these 3 thi…

I rely mostly on the discussion around the implications for ublock origin when looking at manifest v3, because gorhill seems to be engaging with it in good faith. Browsing the issue about it ( https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338 ), it seems that manifest v3 blocks quite a lot of stuff out of the box. The fundamental issue seems to be that by mv3 prevents you from running arbitrary code to do filt…

I think it's worth noting that MV3 also solves problems. Like, the fact that an extension can do arbitrary things is obviously very dangerous. The ability to intercept arbitrary API calls and scripts is very powerful.

So the goal is to remove that power, so that it can not be abused. Then the question is "and how do we solve the legitimate use cases?" - hence the years of working with people like Gorhill to help build a better API to serve the ad blocking use case.

MV3 was delayed because, despite the numerous changes made to MV3 to satisfy these use cases, it's clear that there needs to be more work to do so.

Re: A list of recent hostile moves by Google's Chrome team

#493

Post by gtk40 » Thu, Aug 03, 2023, 4:01 PM UTC

profmonocle wrote: post #311

sph wrote: post #142

What is the excuse of all people reading this thread in agreement and still using Chrome? As I mentioned elsewhere, this is preaching to the choir. A choir of Chrome users. Google wouldn't be so dominant if tech people like us would stop making lazy excuses to continue its hegemony. In Dante's Divina Commedia , there is a circle of hell for those too lazy to take a stance [1]. If it were written today, it would inclu…

For me it's the ecosystem. I like my desktop browser syncing with my Android browser, and I really like built in chromecast support in my browser. I know that Firefox has a mobile version with sync, but last time I tried it, I didn't care for it. I know there have been some attempts to bring chromecast support to Firefox via extensions, but last I tried it it was very buggy. But it's been many years since I tried eit…

Honestly Firefox is the biggest thing I miss on Android since switching to iOS. It supports uBlock Origin which makes mobile browsing so much nicer. I haven't found a better mobile web experience on iOS yet.

Re: A list of recent hostile moves by Google's Chrome team

#494

Post by wzdd » Thu, Aug 03, 2023, 4:03 PM UTC

insanitybit wrote: post #492

wzdd wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I rely mostly on the discussion around the implications for ublock origin when looking at manifest v3, because gorhill seems to be engaging with it in good faith. Browsing the issue about it ( https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338 ), it seems that manifest v3 blocks quite a lot of stuff out of the box. The fundamental issue seems to be that by mv3 prevents you from running arbitrary code to do filt…

I think it's worth noting that MV3 also solves problems. Like, the fact that an extension can do arbitrary things is obviously very dangerous. The ability to intercept arbitrary API calls and scripts is very powerful . So the goal is to remove that power, so that it can not be abused. Then the question is "and how do we solve the legitimate use cases?" - hence the years of working with people like Gorhill to help bui…

Yes, I look forward to a modified MV3 which addresses the concerns above.

Re: A list of recent hostile moves by Google's Chrome team

#495

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Aug 03, 2023, 4:06 PM UTC

treis wrote: post #369

mrtksn wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple probably have similar motives to MS when it comes to crippling the browser and enforcing its own rendering engine in iOS and that is to protects its app market. However, Apple did not attempt to divide the web then use its dominant position to make all the content only compatible with their stuff. With the IE situation, you couldn't just download Firefox and live happy thereafter because every website was made…

>you couldn't just download Firefox ... Apple hasn't done that Apple has banned any browser engine except Safari from iOS.

[deleted]

Re: A list of recent hostile moves by Google's Chrome team

#496

Post by nequo » Thu, Aug 03, 2023, 4:08 PM UTC

insanitybit wrote: post #471

nequo wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you essentially saying that you refuse to use Firefox because most people don’t use Firefox? What do Firefox’s enterprise market share and Mozilla’s initiatives that are unrelated to Firefox have to do with whether Firefox would work for you as a browser?

I was answering this question: > What childish nonsense has you all up in arms for a product you don't pay for?

3 out of your 4 points were about the low market share of Mozilla's products. The remaining one was about Mozilla's CEO firing employees and taking in 2.2 percent of the compensation of Google's CEO.

If this is your argument for not using Firefox, then it does read like the reason you're not using it is that it isn't popular with others.

Re: A list of recent hostile moves by Google's Chrome team

#497

Post by asddubs » Thu, Aug 03, 2023, 4:10 PM UTC

joshstrange wrote: post #257

mrtksn wrote: post #57

Remember the "Safari is the new IE" narrative? Just because Safari doesn't support some API doesn't make it IE, IE wasn't an inferior browser at the beginning either. What made IE the IE everyone hates was its departure from standards(?) and enforcing its own vision of the web thanks to its enormous market share. On IE's case, MS probably stagnated it to prevent competition against its desktop Apps business and on Go…

I’ve been saying this for years (on HN and elsewhere). In my mind, there are two types of “IEs”. There is the IE that didn’t follow standards and did whatever they wanted and there is the IE that was slow to adopt new standards. Chrome is the former and Safari is the latter. Also, Safari is no where near as slow as IE was to adopt standards so I don’t find it great comparison.

Yeah, people just mean different things when they put the label on chrome and safari. It gets a little tiring to have this pointless discussion about what is in essence a metaphor that is being interpreted differently over and over again.

Re: A list of recent hostile moves by Google's Chrome team

#498

Post by barbazoo » Thu, Aug 03, 2023, 4:12 PM UTC

mrtksn wrote: post #57

Remember the "Safari is the new IE" narrative? Just because Safari doesn't support some API doesn't make it IE, IE wasn't an inferior browser at the beginning either. What made IE the IE everyone hates was its departure from standards(?) and enforcing its own vision of the web thanks to its enormous market share. On IE's case, MS probably stagnated it to prevent competition against its desktop Apps business and on Go…

I don't expect my almost 70 year old mother to know the history of internet browsers. She just wants to browse the internet.

I blame Google instead.

Re: A list of recent hostile moves by Google's Chrome team

#499

Post by notjoshjames » Thu, Aug 03, 2023, 4:14 PM UTC

Across the dozens of Chrome threads over the last week, I haven't seen discussion about the impact of businesses' usage of Google Workspace. I'm sure this is relevant to the discussion on moving away en masse from Chrome; I use Firefox primarily but need to use Chrome for various organizations.

There's quite a few really useful features for Workspace org admins, from blocklists and telemetry to provisioning browser extensions and adding bookmarks, and most of these features require end users to use Chrome. In fact, you can configure security policy such that end users can only use Chrome to login to their company account, and there are multiple reasons from a corporation's perspective to enforce these types of policies.

Microsoft 365 is the most dominant player, and I assume Google Workspace is second in enterprise user account management. Are there any prominent, stable open-source business cloud stacks that meaningfully compete here?

Re: A list of recent hostile moves by Google's Chrome team

#500

Post by asddubs » Thu, Aug 03, 2023, 4:15 PM UTC

dbish wrote: post #3

The problem is there are almost 0 alternatives beyond Firefox so if you don’t like their UX you’re stuck. All the “new” browsers are just chromium skins (edge, arc, etc.) Are there any real competitors building a new browser?

"Real" competitors as in having any amount of market share, no. But there are a few projects, like ladybird, palemoon (which is a fork of ancient FF which does have original implementations of things that came since) and Servo is being revived.