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Google proposes changes to Chromium which would disable uBlock Origin

bugs.chromium.org

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Re: Google proposes changes to Chromium which would disable uBlock Origin

#451

Post by tyingq »

dominotw wrote: post #215
darkpuma wrote: post #26

So we have a browser with nearly 70% market share, made by an advertising company that's arguably the most powerful business on the internet, interfering with ad blocking. And of course there is no regulatory body that is able or willing to step in. Great.

> And of course there is no regulatory body that is able or willing to step in. On basis of what exactly? What is google doing wrong? I am curious to hear. Don't downvote me.

I suspect a reply to your comment isn't going to change your stance on whether Google is dancing around in the anti-trust/monopoly area.

Maybe you would concede that some reasonable people think they have in the past?

Like FTC investigators (albeit overruled by their bosses): http://graphics.wsj.com/google-ftc-report/

Or Eric Schmidt: https://www.businessinsider.com/is-google-a-monopoly-were-in...

Re: Google proposes changes to Chromium which would disable uBlock Origin

#452

Post by profalseidol »

edwintorok wrote: post #317
metalliqaz wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the design document only mentions retaining the old API for features that aren't possible with the new API, such as onAuthRequired. So it would still cripple uBlock

What if someone would create a pull request to implement unlock origin natively inside chromium, instead of an extension. If such a PR met all technical criteria, would Chromium project accept it?

If you want something like that, get Brave. It's Chromium-based that has privacy and ad-blocking built-in.

Re: Google proposes changes to Chromium which would disable uBlock Origin

#454

Post by angott »

AznHisoka wrote: post #371
happybuy wrote: post #244

To defend Google a bit, it looks like the change is being put in place so that users would have more privacy – by stopping extensions accessing all active URLs. In essence they are copying what Apple did with Safari and their content blocking APIs. In this model, content blockers provide the browser with a set of blocking rules and the browser executes them against pages during render & load. Ad blocking can occur an…

A question: Would this proposed change mean all Chrome extensions can no longer know what URL I am currently visiting? if so, I guess one company (whose name starts with a S) is gonna be dreading this.

No, only the blocking API is concerned. Observational capacity will remain.

Re: Google proposes changes to Chromium which would disable uBlock Origin

#455

Post by BLKNSLVR »

WkndTriathlete wrote: post #435
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you should aim regulators at the advertising industry Yes, yes, yes, and more yes. That's the cause that needs treating. Apologies if I wasn't clear, that's definitely where I think the regulation should be looking towards.

It's impossible to aim regulators at every single country on the planet.

Aaah, the Homer Simpson position: Can't win, don't try.

Regulate what's within your jurisdiction. That's all any government can do in any circumstance. If regulation results in more friendly advertising that's less likely to have users reaching for the blockers, then those advertisers are going to be more successful, and so even those in unregulated countries will need to conform in order to compete.

That's assuming that the number of users that have already reached for the blockers are of a significant enough percentage to make a difference to website ad revenue.

Start somewhere or stay nowhere.

Re: Google proposes changes to Chromium which would disable uBlock Origin

#456

Post by jammygit »

feikname wrote: post #383
sodosopa wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in the same boat. I'm not a fan of Firefox at all. Leadership, code, marketing, UI, etc. I'll probably move to Safari

Could you explain more about your dislike of Firefox's leadership?

IIRC, the complaints I've read online are along the lines of: Mozilla ran a Mr Robot ad campaign with browser integration, partnered with an ad company for some research in a seemingly-sneaky way, made their CEO resign (now the CEO of Brave) because he donated personal money to an anti-gay marriage lobby effort, forced pocket integration for ad revenue purposes, and they deprecated their extension api which broke most extensions that did not get updated.

I'm not saying anything in favour of or against these decisions, they're just what I remember reading people complain about over the last year.

edit: typo and clarification

Re: Google proposes changes to Chromium which would disable uBlock Origin

#457

Post by ChrisSD »

jbigelow76 wrote: post #445
berbec wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Next to no one uses Chromium. The integrations usually start in Chrome, leaving Chromium pure, allowing Opera etc to forge their own path. This is a disturbing trend to change the course of the project, likely due to Edge being based on Chromium.

I bet a decent chunk of the MS engineers lobbied to adopt Gecko instead of Chromium when they decided to move away from EdgeHtml. I wonder what the reasoning was for not going that route, it seems like a huge miss and a total acceptance of a browser monoculture.

Gecko is deep in to a transitional phase. Once it comes out the other end it may be simple to embed but it's currently far too early for that.

On the other hand Chromium is relatively simple to adapt with many real world examples to learn from.

(Personally I think they should stick with EdgeHtml but it seems that ship has sailed).

Re: Google proposes changes to Chromium which would disable uBlock Origin

#458

Post by staticassertion »

dylan604 wrote: post #403
staticassertion wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the person you're responding to, but no. Until uMatrix actually breaks for me, I'm not switching to Firefox. Switching is a pain, and I don't like Firefox's UI/UX. I'd switch if they did this because I value the extension very highly, but I wouldn't be happy about it.

> and I don't like Firefox's UI/UX Maybe I'm not as critical about the UI, but I have both browsers open at the same time so I took a second to compare them. Both browsers have a row of tabs. Below that is a second row. The left most set of buttons is navigation (back, forward, refresh, etc), then the address bar, then on the very right of the row is a set of buttons for extensions, settings, etc. The remaining porti…

On the surface they're quite similar, I agree. I won't pretend that Firefox has some whole separate UX decision process that's ruining it for me. It is, like all decisions between similar products, a matter of my own pet nit.

I dislike Firefox's zooming behavior. I have to zoom into websites because I have poor vision. Chrome's zoom behavior has been extremely natural for me, and easy to adjust to. When I used Firefox I attempted to use 'vanilla' as well as an extension that aimed to improve the zooming behavior by separating scale of text from scale of other elements, etc.

I was unable to find a solution that worked for me. I hated using the extension, which itself had a pretty bad UX, and I couldn't get preferences to save properly for individual webpages.

I can't use a browser with poor zooming behavior, I rely on it too much. As I write this I am zoomed in 250% in Chrome, for example.

Those pet-bugs or pet-nits are, in my opinion, the huge thing that keeps people from moving (alongside the perceived friction of moving data over). I wouldn't read too much into mine.

Re: Google proposes changes to Chromium which would disable uBlock Origin

#459

Post by LamaOfRuin »

scarface74 wrote: post #448
notafraudster wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally use an adblocker not only to block ads, but also to block literally everything I don't like. In most websites, this means the social buttons, the comments section, all search functionality, anything in the header or navigation I won't click, related articles, top articles, other recommended articles, footers, links to privacy policies, parts of bylines that I don't care about, header images when I don't…

1Blocker for iOS can block everything you mentioned and doesn’t get access to your browsing activity to do it.

according to https://1blocker.com/faq/ to have full functionality it gets access to your browsing activity.

Re: Google proposes changes to Chromium which would disable uBlock Origin

#460

Post by sekasi »

I'm surprised at the lack of support (hacker news) for Safari. It's a fantastic browser, made by people who have a track record of not being evil with data. I know that might seem like a big statement, but in the face of Google I will happily trust Apple.
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