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Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

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Re: Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

#251

Post by easton »

philipov wrote: post #159
teekert wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never left. But then I again, I replaced everything Google with paid or self-hosted alternatives about 10 years ago. From what I hear, the Google ecosystem itself can be pain on Firefox. Although I check my old Gmail once every couple of weeks and I find it to work well enough. Maybe if you live in things like Google Docs, you start getting annoyed by accumulating papercuts? No idea..

The nuisances are minor. They're enough that if you're just thinking of switching, you might notice them and not do it. But after a while, you forget about them. I couldn't tell you what they were anymore. And there are advantages as well, such as better autoplay avoidance.

As I understand it, the autoplay avoidance is the same but Chrome has a list of sites that they allow to bypass the policy. YouTube, Netflix, Disney+, etc.

about://media-engagement according to the docs (which implies engaging with the site is required, but I don’t think it is for YouTube).

Re: Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

#252

Post by Gareth321 »

maccard wrote: post #84
hsbauauvhabzb wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d prefer Firefox, but some functionality works inarguably better in chrome. One example is YouTube, which slams my processor due to the lack of hardware decoding.

So swap to chrome for those 1-2 websites that require it and use Firefox for everything else?

"Don't use the product" is ALWAYS a poor rebuttal. Few people like having to utilise multiple browsers.

Re: Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

#253

Post by amcoastal »

smaddock wrote: post #19

As someone who is intimately familiar with the Chrome extensions internals and is not employed by a big tech company, I believe most of the changes seem like a step in the right direction.* I've been working towards implementing greater support for Chrome extensions in Electron which has involved reading and interacting with Chromium code [0]. - Using service workers instead of a hidden background webpage is more idi…

You're right my browser is too slow! Webpages only load nearly instantly, I'm sure bringing back all the ads will make everything even better!

Re: Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

#254

Post by rchaud »

joelthelion wrote: post #114

I don't understand why this (and all the rest) is not driving people back to Firefox. Are we really going to wait for Mozilla to die, and then lament that Google has taken over the web?

I was driven back to Firefox the second I noticed that Chrome had started logging me into my Google account.

Been using it happily ever since (FF on MacOS). The only time I open Chrome now is to test websites I'm working on.

Re: Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

#255

Post by jefftk »

vehemenz wrote: post #246
jefftk wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ad blockers on Chrome block Google's ads too. The ad script doesn't even run, so it's not getting as far as collecting any data. (I work on ads at Google, speaking only for myself)

In Chrome and Safari, Google search injects analytics via the ping attribute on tags. This sends some additional ping-to and ping-from headers. So Google is still collecting data from who use its search, provided they are not on Firefox. I would assume it does the same for its other products, such as Google Analytics, but I haven't checked.

The "ping" attribute is available to all sites and many content blocking extensions (including ad blockers) block these pings. This isn't changing with Manifest V3: extensions will still be able to block them.

Note that on Firefox and other browsers that do not support "ping", Google Search still tracks which links you click on, but it uses URL rewriting. There are also extensions that block this.

Re: Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

#256

Post by 5560675260 »

ikt wrote: post #71
RheingoldRiver wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because they keep making stupid UI)UX choices than alienate their users Cannot overstate this enough. They keep randomly changing their UI constantly , and it's especially frustrating when you have a bunch of custom CSS. I'm a bunch of versions behind & dreading updating because I don't want to spend the hours it'll take to fix my shit for their new version. I honestly hate this browser so much at this point, but e…

but you recognise you are in likely a sub 0.5% of users with custom css? chrome gained a lot for two reasons, it was a hell of a lot better than firefox and they advertised the crap out of it. Firefox has caught up significantly since then but doesn't have the advertising the adblock debate will push a lot of users back to firefox and it feels like the ui is in a much better place than it was

I've heard this justification numerous times. Yes, there might be only 0.1%-5% users relying on any given UI feature, but with a constant stream of poorly thought out changes and feature cuts Mozilla will keeps pissing off more and more users until none are left.

Re: Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

#257

Post by NelsonMinar »

smaddock wrote: post #19

As someone who is intimately familiar with the Chrome extensions internals and is not employed by a big tech company, I believe most of the changes seem like a step in the right direction.* I've been working towards implementing greater support for Chrome extensions in Electron which has involved reading and interacting with Chromium code [0]. - Using service workers instead of a hidden background webpage is more idi…

Good things mixed with hamstringing web blocking. The two slices of bread might be delicious but it's still a shit sandwich.

Re: Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

#258

Post by sumtechguy »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #46
glanzwulf wrote: post #43

I've always used Chrome but recently I've been trying out Brave and its been quite interesting. I still use chrome, but if they were to remove adblock i'd move for good.

Everyone should use the last bastion of free Web: Firefox. (which is actually pretty great, and I have a way better browsing experience with it that with that chrome monstrosity)

I personally as an end user can not tell the difference. I have both installed and use firefox almost all the time for home usage. For work I use chrome. Day to day usage is nearly identical. There are a few bits here and there on some pages where someone did something chrome specific. But that is rarely an issue. If I switched it out either way on all of my families computers I doubt they would notice. Never once have I got a call from a family member saying "I need browser X". For dev usage chrome is slightly better, but that is just an opinion. Even that is not that big of deal anymore as many people are just using transpilers and their JS is some sort of mangled form out of that. Also they should peal off a few bucks and donate to Mozilla or Mozilla will always be bound to google.

Re: Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

#259

Post by zeku »

rchaud wrote: post #254
joelthelion wrote: post #114

I don't understand why this (and all the rest) is not driving people back to Firefox. Are we really going to wait for Mozilla to die, and then lament that Google has taken over the web?

I was driven back to Firefox the second I noticed that Chrome had started logging me into my Google account. Been using it happily ever since (FF on MacOS). The only time I open Chrome now is to test websites I'm working on.

I use Firefox on all devices since sometime around 2002 or 2003. Never been upset with it and usually my friends throughout that time all slowly go to Firefox.

Re: Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

#260

Post by ptman »

gnomewascool wrote: post #229
JohnWhigham wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla's main source of revenue has always been the money Google gives them to have Google as the default search engine. They could stop this at any time to effectively kill Mozilla. So, why haven't they? Because there's this case called United States v. Microsoft Corporation that deals with this very issue of browser monopolies. Now usually a lawsuit wouldn't mean dick to Google because they already have a litany o…

"Money-wasters" like FirefoxOS were a gamble to get onto the mobile phone bandwagon, to reduce Google's Android/Chrome moat. If they had worked, it'd have been a huge gain both for Firefox and for users. > And then there's stuff like acquiring Pocket, something completely antithetical to Firefox's core values. Pocket itself isn't antithetical to Firefox's values. It not being open source is, but from what I understan…

Boot2Gecko seems to have worked for KaiOS
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