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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

#691

Post by opan »

winwang wrote: post #477
blockme69 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Did Google have to open Chromium? No.

Google did not make Chromium from scratch, and so were obligated to use a license compatible with the previous source they used. That source can be traced back to KDE's Konqueror browser and its KHTML engine.

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

#692

Post by culi »

AstralSerenity wrote: post #213
jordanb wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

My understanding is Mozilla contracted its footprint substantially to remain sustainable in a future without Google's monetary contribution.

Yup. Firefox Relay, their own VPN, MDN Plus, and many more.

The funny thing is that the same people on here that crow on about Mozilla needing to "just focus on Firefox" are the same ones who complains about its reliance on Google for income.

Based on their interop performances Mozilla seems to be doing the best they can to do both. Firefox interop has improved significantly in the past 4 years (surprisingly, so has Safari's) and they've also rolled out more new Mozilla offerings that could some day replace Google revenue

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

#693

Post by culi »

bilalq wrote: post #349
drpossum wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then they wouldn't be throwing money into open firepits on trash like a VPN service or how to comply with Google's advertising decisions. Then they would let people contribute money to the browser (instead of to Mozilla Foundation which goes to enabling aforementioned trash fires) and to the salary of a multi-million dollar CEO after laying off developer staff and hiring more C-suite assistants. Mozilla is a bad orga…

Isn't Mozilla's VPN just a thin UI over Mullvad's servers? I don't think it costs them much and probably brings in some decent revenue.

Do you have a source for this? I'm a big fan of Mullvad and trust their service more than any. I wouldn't mind supporting Mozilla's independence from Google while getting the same VPN service I'm currently getting

Hopefully Mozilla's MDN Plus offering can grow to bring them a big source of revenue. MDN is a treasure for any web developer and, should Mozilla go under, this public service would be sorely missed for the open web.

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

#694

Post by froddd »

theteapot wrote: post #72
dgacmu wrote: post #39

I've been running firefox on my laptop for the last year, with Chrome on my desktop, as a way to head-to-head them. For folks contemplating the switch, it hasn't been bad at all. Some better, some worse, but overall I rarely notice major differences except for a very small handful of sites that won't work with FF. And I still have all of my uBlock origin happiness. :)

What sites don't work with FF?

Sticky desktop notifications don’t work on macOS on FF, which means event notifications from calendar apps disappear within a few seconds, leaving no time to snooze them or act on them in any other way. Queue missed meetings.

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

#695

Post by sfblah »

johnsillings wrote: post #424
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…

> I migrated off Chrome as soon as this BS story about improving privacy What are you using instead?

This is the most important question. What's the best practice? Firefox? Something else?

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

#697

Post by roywiggins »

jonas21 wrote: post #664
Fluorescence wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People scratch their heads about how "just a default setting" can be worth an annual $20 billion payment from Google. It makes more sense if it's actually for a raft of wildly illegal under-the-table measures this. Imagine what it would cost Google's bottom line if Apple was truly user-focused and enabled ad-blocking on desktop, mobile and embedded safari views by default. Someone do the napkin math please!

It's a revenue share deal where Google pays Apple 36% of the search revenue they get from Safari users [1]. In other words, Google pays Apple ~$20B per year to be default search engine because they make ~$53B in revenue from those searches. This is profitable for both Apple and Google -- no "wildly illegal under-the-table measures" required. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/14/apple-gets-36percent-of-goog...

How much would Google even lose if Apple didn't make Google the default search engine? People would almost certainly just use Google anyway. If Apple switched to Bing most people would use it once, get pissed off, and then switch it back to Google.

It's not that weird that people are a bit suspicious that it's really worth Google $20B/year.

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

#698

Post by simpaticoder »

grimblee wrote: post #559

Just stop using chrome, fight the monopoly, don't be a sheep. It's inconvenient ? Convenience is a trap, stop giving away your freedom and agency for convenience.

This sentiment precludes discussion of incentives, the individual's relationship to the group, and the practical limits of agency. If you said the same about smartphones, you would be locked out of many services, including governmental ones. You unthinkingly, tacitly shift the onus onto the individual, which is naive. There is a reason the 5-day work-week, fire codes, and so-forth had to be legislated, because "just find a better job" wasn't going to make a dent in the problem. "Just find a better browser" is similarly ineffectual.

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

#699

Post by adityeah »

basisword wrote: post #392
gruez wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This conspiracy theory doesn't make sense because safari's content blockers (ie. the nerfed version of adblock) block most ads just fine, especially from google ads. The only ads that get through are first party ads (eg. youtube), but as of a few years ago adblockers could block those as well, so it's a moot point.

Safari content blockers are awful compared to UBlock and I’m a Safari user. Not only does YouTube either get through or cause weird issues, YouTube now blocks you until you completely disable the extension. Content blockers often block cookie banners too which can often result in broken functionality - a nightmare when you’re trying to buy tickets to something and have to “reload without blockers” for the website to…

Firefox Focus' integration with Safari works well for ad blocking while general browsing.

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

#700

Post by carlosjobim »

tomrod wrote: post #294
bdcravens wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of what the DOJ is seeking against Google would severely impact Mozilla financially however, as they want to ban them from paying to be the default search engine.

Indeed. Kagi proves users are willing to pay for search (me included, recently).

At the moment it has only proven that 0.00000000001% of users are willing to pay for search.
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