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uBlock Origin is no longer available on the Chrome Store

chromewebstore.google.com

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Re: uBlock Origin is no longer available on the Chrome Store

#471

Post by HumblyTossed »

bearjaws wrote: post #4

Nobody could have possibly seen it coming that Google would abuse its market position to their own benefit... I migrated off Chrome as soon as this BS story about improving privacy, a joke coming from Google. Then the excuse was "well it improves performance", which they could easily do by marking extensions as low performance. If Google wanted to improve this they have an entire search engine where they could re-ran…

Please don't forget the part developers played in this by enabling Chrome/Google to become so very dominant.

Re: uBlock Origin is no longer available on the Chrome Store

#472

Post by wintermutestwin »

dewey wrote: post #83
whalesalad wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% agree with you. Unfortunately Chrome is damn near a requirement if you are interacting with the Google Cloud console. Try to use BigQuery studio in any other browser and you are in for a world of hurt. Have we seen this movie before?

Exactly the reason why I use https://choosy.app to always redirect everything Google Cloud to Chrome, but everything else to Firefox. That way if I click on some random GCP link in Slack it opens the link in Chrome, but everything else stays in Firefox. I don't need ad blocking for GCP so that works fine. Sucks, but better than using Chrome full time.

That's a useful app for people who use different browsers for different tasks -thanks!

Re: uBlock Origin is no longer available on the Chrome Store

#473

Post by wkat4242 »

gruez wrote: post #446
wkat4242 wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me the element blockers are the most important of all. It's not just about blocking ads. It's about making websites more usable. Ads are only one of those detrimental points. Many websites bombard you with big photos of their articles. I block all that with custom blocklists so the end result is a lot more like here at hacker news.

If you're talking about element blocking, that's still doable in manifest v3 with injected css elements. That's how it was done in manifest v2.

Is it? I didn't realise. I always use Firefox anyway. So which part isn't possible now? JavaScript injection?

Ps changed the term to avoid confusion, thanks!

Re: uBlock Origin is no longer available on the Chrome Store

#474

Post by chillingeffect »

inertiatic wrote: post #57
phito wrote: post #51

I hear so many people IRL complaining about this. I tell them to switch to firefox, that the adblockers still work there, and they still won't switch to it because they are "used to chrome". I really feel like google won this battle. People will through a lot of abuse just to maintain their habits.

I use Firefox as my main browser and it's not a viable alternative to Chrome if you have the very common usage pattern of keeping tens of tabs open.

I keep 100s of tabs open for months in Firefox. Chromium regulaly crashes after about 10-20.

Re: uBlock Origin is no longer available on the Chrome Store

#475

Post by AceJohnny2 »

jordanb wrote: post #188
freedomben wrote: post #16

I hope Mozilla realizes (and still cares) that they have a huge opportunity here to be the power-browser where you can get awesome extensions, unlike the locked-down and hobbled Chromium ecosystem. I suspect they do realize this because they've been really leaning into extensions recently, but over the years I've worried that Mozilla's committment to Firefox isn't as serious as I would like. Regardless, I'd love to s…

> I hope Mozilla realizes (and still cares) that they have a huge opportunity here to be the power-browser where you can get awesome extensions, The problem is that Mozilla's customers are not Firefox's users. Mozilla's customer is Google. They pay Mozilla to exist and they are paying Mozilla to intentionally drive Firefox into the ground. I think it's pretty clear that the TOS change basically coincided with the rem…

> They pay Mozilla to exist

Do they? I thought Google significantly reduced their payments to Mozilla a few years back, which started Mozilla current random-walk.

Edit: As of 2023, they were as high as ever at 85% of Mozilla's finances coming from Google [1] . However the DoJ antitrust case against Google targets Google's payments to various entities (Mozilla, Apple) to make themselves the default search engine, thus threatening Mozilla's income. I did not immediately find sources for Mozilla's 2024 finances, but I can imagine they see the existential threat.

> and they are paying Mozilla to intentionally drive Firefox into the ground.

That's just conspiracy-thinking.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#Finances

Re: uBlock Origin is no longer available on the Chrome Store

#476

Post by spankalee »

bearjaws wrote: post #4

Nobody could have possibly seen it coming that Google would abuse its market position to their own benefit... I migrated off Chrome as soon as this BS story about improving privacy, a joke coming from Google. Then the excuse was "well it improves performance", which they could easily do by marking extensions as low performance. If Google wanted to improve this they have an entire search engine where they could re-ran…

There was a time in Chrome when it didn't support extensions at all. If Google had release an extension API like manifest v3 then, would that have been abuse of market position?

The reason why Chrome waited for so long to add extensions was the danger they posed to users. I was at Google when Sergey often worried about what extensions would do to non technical and older users who get tricked into installing them, then I saw first hand that danger with my own grandparents. They had extensions intercepting every network request, redirecting certain sites to fake sites, and injecting code into pages. It was horrifying, and they were lucky that they didn't have significant money or identity theft.

Re: uBlock Origin is no longer available on the Chrome Store

#477

Post by winwang »

blockme69 wrote: post #114
bearjaws wrote: post #4

Nobody could have possibly seen it coming that Google would abuse its market position to their own benefit... I migrated off Chrome as soon as this BS story about improving privacy, a joke coming from Google. Then the excuse was "well it improves performance", which they could easily do by marking extensions as low performance. If Google wanted to improve this they have an entire search engine where they could re-ran…

Well hopefully Google will pay the price for their greed soon enough. https://arstechnica.com/google/2025/03/doj-google-must-sell-...

As much as I dislike their Chrome practices, I am rather against the idea of forcing them to sell Chrome.

For one, they simply have had a better product, at least in the past. Part of their large monopoly is due to just being better outright for a large portion of users (presumably). Are we to punish making overly-good products?

For another, sell to whom? And why would they be a good steward?

And yet another, there's literally Chromium, which other browsers (built by other corps) use, e.g. Edge, Brave, etc.

Did Google have to open Chromium? No.

Disclaimer: I hold these opinions weakly and would love to learn more about why they might be ill-premised.

Re: uBlock Origin is no longer available on the Chrome Store

#478

Post by vvpan »

phito wrote: post #51

I hear so many people IRL complaining about this. I tell them to switch to firefox, that the adblockers still work there, and they still won't switch to it because they are "used to chrome". I really feel like google won this battle. People will through a lot of abuse just to maintain their habits.

Wanted to note that uBlock works on Firefox mobile browser too - it is excellent.

Re: uBlock Origin is no longer available on the Chrome Store

#479

Post by glenstein »

nottorp wrote: post #161
bad_user wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody uses Ladybird, at this point it's vaporware. And Thunderbird is still based on Firefox. The development of Firefox costs around $200 million per year. That's more than what Wikimedia can get from donations, and Wikipedia is a website that everyone uses. And you want to rely on donations from people that ad-block YouTube instead of paying for Premium. And let's say that it manages to bring those costs down to $…

> And you want to rely on donations from people that ad-block YouTube instead of paying for Premium. Does Google guarantee it won't spy on me if i pay for Premium? ... no, didn't think so. Besides not everyone uses youtube to the point where paying for it is worth it. > The development of Firefox costs around $200 million per year. Does it? Or that's what the mozilla organization wastes on harebrained initiatives ove…

>Does it? Or that's what the mozilla organization wastes on harebrained initiatives overall?

Yes! They published their 990, and it's mostly software development, but also stuff like legal and compliance and marketing. I don't have the numbers off the top of my head, but last time I checked, if you really want to make this argument, I think it relates to the CEO pay and the Mozilla Foundation and its advocacy, which are something around the, you know, taken together something like 55 million or so. You can make the argument that administration and operations as well as marketing and legal and compliance are bloated in some sense, but then you'd still have to make the case that there was a viable path to reinvesting that into development in a way that would change the tide when it comes to market share. But I think that is a confused vision of how market share works because the real drivers are Google's dominant position in search and on Android in the ability to push Chrome on Chromebooks.

Back when these narratives about Mosio's mismanagement started, I just assumed that they were highly informed people who knew what they were talking about. And maybe they really were originally, but it seems to have socialized a new generation of commenters into just randomly speculating about things that completely fall apart upon closer examination.

Re: uBlock Origin is no longer available on the Chrome Store

#480

Post by TiredOfLife »

ngomez wrote: post #345
caminante wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. 90% of users won't notice a difference. Here's the feature diff. [0] [0] https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/Frequently-as...

I've been trying uBO Lite myself for a few months, and anyone who uses YouTube will absolutely notice that it's worse at blocking. Lite tends to delay playback at the start of a video for as long as the blocked ads would've been, making the site feel slower, and once in a while an ad will slip past the blocker anyway.

I have used Youtube and uBlock Origin lite for the past couple of months and have not noticed that. Are you using the complete filtering mode?
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