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Google Has Removed MV2 Extensions from the Chrome Web Store, Including UBO

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Re: Google Has Removed MV2 Extensions from the Chrome Web Store, Including UBO

#71
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox was amazing even when Chrome was released

No need to be revisionist. Chrome brought amazing work to the table. The multiprocess, sandboxed system was incredible - it's not to say that Chrome was the first (IE did it earlier) but it was certainly way ahead of Firefox for a long time. Chrome is the reason we have Seccomp V2 on Linux. Chrome made "software is always up to date" the standard. Before Chrome, Blackhole and PoisonIvy absolutely ruined people's comp…

Chrome's multiprocess sandboxing wasn't unambiguously good. It carried a steep cost in overhead.

Back when Chrome was new, you could run Firefox with a decent selection of add-ons to get security benefits of similar magnitude through different mechanisms. The NoScript extension was at the forefront, providing a lot of functionality way beyond just blocking JavaScript per domain. And Firefox with extensions always had better privacy controls.

Re: Google Has Removed MV2 Extensions from the Chrome Web Store, Including UBO

#72
post #7

I remember in 2010 when Chrome made the web so much better for everyone. All the early adopters were singing its praise and encouraging friends and family to use it. Now, I encourage people to use anything but Chrome. Firefox is really great these days.

Yep, Chrome was great but the past few years they're obviously moving the wrong way. I'm completely off of Chrome, back to Firefox and Brave.

Re: Google Has Removed MV2 Extensions from the Chrome Web Store, Including UBO

#73
post #34
post #22

Serious question: why do people use non-OS browsers? Most devs I know are on Mac. Why not just use Safari? Works in most cases, helps you catch issues earlier on, looks beautiful and is super customizable, still supports UBlock, has vertical tabs, syncs profiles to your focus, is way more memory efficient, etc. I've daily driven Safari for ~3y after Arc got sunset and the only site that gives me issues is Hulu (but n…

My number one reason. Safari won’t let me customize the search engine. If I had that I would use safari all day long.

It's such a silly limitation. There are extensions, but they're all imperfect hacks.

Re: Google Has Removed MV2 Extensions from the Chrome Web Store, Including UBO

#74
post #7

I remember in 2010 when Chrome made the web so much better for everyone. All the early adopters were singing its praise and encouraging friends and family to use it. Now, I encourage people to use anything but Chrome. Firefox is really great these days.

Funny enough I never left Firefox. It’s always been great.

Re: Google Has Removed MV2 Extensions from the Chrome Web Store, Including UBO

#75
post #34
post #22

Serious question: why do people use non-OS browsers? Most devs I know are on Mac. Why not just use Safari? Works in most cases, helps you catch issues earlier on, looks beautiful and is super customizable, still supports UBlock, has vertical tabs, syncs profiles to your focus, is way more memory efficient, etc. I've daily driven Safari for ~3y after Arc got sunset and the only site that gives me issues is Hulu (but n…

My number one reason. Safari won’t let me customize the search engine. If I had that I would use safari all day long.

I see 5 choices for search engine in Settings? Are you saying you want one not listed?

Re: Google Has Removed MV2 Extensions from the Chrome Web Store, Including UBO

#76

I know Firefox's share of browser share has dwindled to almost nothing. I know sooner or later, well within my lifetime, it will be gone. But I will keep using it until they pry it from my hands. And if they do, I'll use forks until those break down too. I can't stand Google, or what Chrome has become. No single company should have such unilateral control over the internet and its information.

I use firefox on all devices, but there are two notches against it in my book:

Firefox on Android lags during scrolling on multiple sites that do not lag on Chrome. The only extension I have is UBO, and I don't know if that is the cause of it or not - I haven't tested thoroughly. One way or another there is a performance issue there by default.

Second, GrapheneOS has this to say about Firefox on mobile:

>Worst of all, Firefox does not have internal sandboxing on Android. This is despite the fact that Chromium semantic sandbox layer on Android is implemented via the OS isolatedProcess feature, which is a very easy to use boolean property for app service processes to provide strong isolation with only the ability to communicate with the app running them via the standard service API. Even in the desktop version, Firefox's sandbox is still substantially weaker (especially on Linux) and lacks full support for isolating sites from each other rather than only containing content as a whole. The sandbox has been gradually improving on the desktop but it isn't happening for their Android browser yet.

I'd love for both of these issues to be resolved at some point. But I stand by it because I like UBO and because I'm a bit contrarian.

Re: Google Has Removed MV2 Extensions from the Chrome Web Store, Including UBO

#77

I know Firefox's share of browser share has dwindled to almost nothing. I know sooner or later, well within my lifetime, it will be gone. But I will keep using it until they pry it from my hands. And if they do, I'll use forks until those break down too. I can't stand Google, or what Chrome has become. No single company should have such unilateral control over the internet and its information.

They are in a tough place. They dont have the advantage of owning the OS (android/chrome and iOS / Safari) nor the advantage of advertising on the google home page like chrome. The "customers" they are courting are security/privacy zealots who constantly want them "just work on the browser" but never seem to have an answer on how to pay for that. I am hoping the advent of LLMs allows more entrants into the space at a…

> how to pay for that

I would not mind to pay for the browser, but they will not let me.

Re: Google Has Removed MV2 Extensions from the Chrome Web Store, Including UBO

#78

I know Firefox's share of browser share has dwindled to almost nothing. I know sooner or later, well within my lifetime, it will be gone. But I will keep using it until they pry it from my hands. And if they do, I'll use forks until those break down too. I can't stand Google, or what Chrome has become. No single company should have such unilateral control over the internet and its information.

I stopped using Firefox when it had massive performance issues (CPU and memory) to the point it was unusable. Chrome in comparison was lightning fast and since then I somehow cannot get myself to use Firefox though I know they likely have fixed those issues long time ago. I have Firefox installed but never open it.

Re: Google Has Removed MV2 Extensions from the Chrome Web Store, Including UBO

#79
post #67
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alphabet needs to be broken up. Chrome, Search, Android, Youtube need to be separate companies. It's not the only company that needs this treatment.

We had a glimpse of that antitrust future on the horizon with the previous admin. This spooked all the big tech weirdos so much that they put their weight behind the other guy and, well, they won. Antitrust is dead for another generation. Yay.

Lina Khan is lying in wait.

Re: Google Has Removed MV2 Extensions from the Chrome Web Store, Including UBO

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AND try to not use Google, Facebook, Amazon, OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft, Oracle and other similar products made by asshole companies.

Honestly, at what point do we just throw our kit in the trash and go back to pen & paper?

That is up to you but I don't see why. Just ignore whatever these entities do, run you free OS with your free software when and how you want it and 'your kit' is yours without interference by hostile entities. You won't be able to access much of what those entities put out there but that doesn't matter once you realise their offerings aren't worth their cost.

The 'net is a big place with a lot of things going on. Drop the hostile actors and it is still a big place with a lot of things going on. The only problem you might encounter is once created by authorities which insist on you interacting with them through those hostile entities. I have thus far managed to use their applications - Swedish BankID and Dutch DigiD being the main ones - without needing to resort to any hostile entities - no Google accounts or Google services on my devices yet everything still works once I get rid of the nag screens telling me things won't work without the aforementioned.

In short, drop hostile entities and keep 'your kit'.

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