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Google Chrome update will close the door on ad blockers

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Re: Google Chrome update will close the door on ad blockers

#281

Post by bayesianbot »

polairscience wrote: post #40

And I won't even notice. Firefox is probably the most divisive topic on this website. Mozilla gets ripped to shreds any time they're discussed, but they keep the open internet alive. I don't see how any self-respecting Hacker could choose anything else. I'm a big fan of critique, critiquing the scaffolding of our lives is the best thing we can do. That said...... we have nearly lost the browser wars and if we do it w…

Once again I have to let people know about glide[0], fork of Firefox. I know a lot of people here like keyboard-driven and scriptable software, and glide shines at both. Keyboard control in it is so so much better than the extensions for Chrome or Firefox, and I'm quite happy how easily the API allows me do my own customizations. (as an example when I open HN in new tab with my bind ,sn , if I already have HN front page open it will refresh it, focus it and move it to the tab index where new tab would otherwise have opened. Really simple stuff in glide, not so much in others)

[0[ https://github.com/glide-browser/glide

Re: Google Chrome update will close the door on ad blockers

#282

Post by charcircuit »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #35
Legend2440 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. I'm still not seeing ads. I've realized over time that people on the internet love finding things to be mad about, because raging against evil is fun. They'll make up an injustice if they can't find one today.

They’re not “making up an injustice.” Google is actively trying to stop ad blocking, this is a fact. You can argue whether or not it’s as severe as some people make it sound or whether people should be upset at all (I think we should be), but let’s not act like this was made up whole cloth.

I've seen some teams in YouTube try and stop ad blocking, but I haven't seen Google, or more importantly Chromium try and stop it.

Re: Google Chrome update will close the door on ad blockers

#283

Post by szmarczak »

zb3 wrote: post #103

Stop suggesting this Firefox crap which is not only much slower but it also can't even properly manage RAM usage on mobile, leading to app being killed on my low-RAM device, chrome can deal with it even though that's a "desktop" version with extensions for a much newer high end device. Restricting webRequestBlocking (but it's not going away, just needs a policy extension) and synchronous executeScript did in practice…

You obviously don't know how Android works. When an app hasn't been open for a while and it has no background tasks, it gets put to sleep. Waking it up takes a second.

You can delay that by selecting the app in the settings and choosing its Battery setting to Unrestricted, however, despite its name, it will still get suspended

The checks are poorly coded. Even on Unrestricted, if you play music from a web player, the browser will get suspended after the song ends but before a new one starts playing because there's a point where it awaits data on the foreground task, Android sees it has no background tasks and suspends it.

Re: Google Chrome update will close the door on ad blockers

#284

Post by duskwuff »

systems wrote: post #195
entropie wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used brave a bit and really liked it. But its obvious that these guys are semi shady and they will show sooner or later. I liked chrome derviates and used them over a decade. I got tired of feeling forced to switch after vivaldi/brave so I went the firefox way last year. The circle is completed.

how are they obviously semi shady? whats shady about brave?

https://www.pcmag.com/news/brave-browser-caught-redirecting-...

Re: Google Chrome update will close the door on ad blockers

#285

Post by glenstein »

hyperbovine wrote: post #185
glenstein wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is confidently repeated but extremely misleading claim that seems to pop up ad nauseam in the comment sections. They spend more now on development than they ever have in their history, and the CEO spending is something like 1.6% of the budget, which I don't love, but which is not enough to sustain the narrative of all the money being siphoned into executives. They also break down spending into a pie chart of dif…

1.6% is insane though. That would be like Google, Apple, or MSFT paying their CEO $4-6 billion a year.

Which is why it's not normal or standard to represent pay that way. The whole reason for it in this context is to address claims that people keep making over and over that they ran out of money to develop the browser because they gave it all to the CEO.

Re: Google Chrome update will close the door on ad blockers

#286

Post by mschuster91 »

hyperbovine wrote: post #185
glenstein wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is confidently repeated but extremely misleading claim that seems to pop up ad nauseam in the comment sections. They spend more now on development than they ever have in their history, and the CEO spending is something like 1.6% of the budget, which I don't love, but which is not enough to sustain the narrative of all the money being siphoned into executives. They also break down spending into a pie chart of dif…

1.6% is insane though. That would be like Google, Apple, or MSFT paying their CEO $4-6 billion a year.

The problem is, the market price for executive leadership doesn't care about that, there is always a floor at the bottom that will make leadership compensation consume much more % of the budget of a smaller org than something the size of Google.

Besides... the real compensation for big-tech executives or for early startup employees isn't a fixed dollar amount, it's the stock options. Let these vest and cool down for 10 years or so, and when you look at them again, they can easily be worth a billion a year. That's how a bunch of "angel investors" in SV got their money, they profited massively off of a good exit event in the past and now invest a chunk of that profit.

Re: Google Chrome update will close the door on ad blockers

#287

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

polairscience wrote: post #40

And I won't even notice. Firefox is probably the most divisive topic on this website. Mozilla gets ripped to shreds any time they're discussed, but they keep the open internet alive. I don't see how any self-respecting Hacker could choose anything else. I'm a big fan of critique, critiquing the scaffolding of our lives is the best thing we can do. That said...... we have nearly lost the browser wars and if we do it w…

"Mozilla gets ripped to shreds any time they're discussed, but they keep the open internet alive."

That "keep the web open" nonsense is a myth, spread by Mozilla press releases

People who use Firefox, not all of them, "keep open internet [read: www] alive"

If Firefox exists and does the job for them, then they'll use it. These users write the add-ons to do "ad blocking", not Mozilla

If Mozilla closes the door on "ad blockers" then these users will move to another solution, maybe a Firefox fork, maybe a non-browser method, who knows

Mozilla gets ripped because ultimately they are "in it for the money", not Firefox users, and the money, they believe, is in online ad services. Mozilla advocates for having all www content supported by ads. Effectively they advocate for companies like Google

By pure coincidence I'm sure, Mozilla relies on dollars from Google to line their own (management's) pockets. Without an ad services company like Google to partner with, Mozilla's business, sending search queries and possibly other data about Firefox users to Google, cannot survive

But Mozilla communications reframes this operation as something like "we take money from advertising services companies like Google to keep the web open"

Except they will not mention the money from Google part

Then they will lead off press releases with some bizarre assumption like "a healthy online ads ecosystem is essential for the www to exist"

This might make sense to Mozilla but it makes no sense for www users who don't like ads

Re: Google Chrome update will close the door on ad blockers

#288

Post by upfrog »

ldom66 wrote: post #256
throwatdem12311 wrote: post #16

Firefox is the only sane option. It’s not perfect but it’s better than the alternatives. Chromium forks are at the mercy of Google doing everything they can to stop ad blocking. Firefox forks are often maintain by just “some dude”. If they decide they don’t want to maintain it anymore, it’s done. If everyone switches to a fork and then Firefox goes away because nobody is using the browser anymore, it’s done.

I see a lot of people saying that Firefox is not as good as Chrome. Do you have any examples of things Chrome does that Firefox doesn't? Genuinely curious, I have been alternating between Chrome and Firefox for the past two decades and last time I switched back to Firefox was 2 years ago, and I haven't had any performance/compability/feature concerns at all. (Full disclosure I use Zen, not vanilla Firefox)

Two things that I noticed: - Firefox did crash on me more frequently. It wasn't a daily, or even a weekly thing, but it was more of a problem. - Firefox limits how small I can shrink my tabs in the tab bar. Chrome also has a limit, but it is much less restrictive.

That last one was the killer difference for me. Firefox wants me to be able to see (at least part of) the title of each tab, even if that means I can't see all my tabs at once. I want to see all of my tabs at once, and I don't care if I can see the title - the favicon is enough.

I did try configuring Firefox to let me shrink the tabs more, and even tried messing with its GTK configuration, but no luck.

So I do feel a bit bad for using Brave instead of Firefox, but after months of dealing with Firefox's UI I lost patience.

Re: Google Chrome update will close the door on ad blockers

#289

Post by mschuster91 »

ldom66 wrote: post #256
throwatdem12311 wrote: post #16

Firefox is the only sane option. It’s not perfect but it’s better than the alternatives. Chromium forks are at the mercy of Google doing everything they can to stop ad blocking. Firefox forks are often maintain by just “some dude”. If they decide they don’t want to maintain it anymore, it’s done. If everyone switches to a fork and then Firefox goes away because nobody is using the browser anymore, it’s done.

I see a lot of people saying that Firefox is not as good as Chrome. Do you have any examples of things Chrome does that Firefox doesn't? Genuinely curious, I have been alternating between Chrome and Firefox for the past two decades and last time I switched back to Firefox was 2 years ago, and I haven't had any performance/compability/feature concerns at all. (Full disclosure I use Zen, not vanilla Firefox)

Web USB and Web NFC immediately come to my mind, it took ages until they at least implemented Web Serial in Firefox a few weeks ago.

And the devtools are nowhere near comparable to Chrome's, although I admit this might be a matter of personal experience.

Re: Google Chrome update will close the door on ad blockers

#290

Post by [deleted] »

aleqs wrote: post #46
OptionOfT wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And sadly, Firefox on iOS is the only browser that doesn't have a the possibility to run an Adblocker. Safari can run uBlock Origin. Brave had one built-in. Hell, even Edge has Adblock Plus. Does Mozilla have a contract with Google to not build one in as part of the search contract?

Firefox on Android supports ublock, not sure why it wouldn't support it on iOS

[deleted]
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