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Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

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Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#581

Post by nerdponx »

ljm wrote: post #98
user17843 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, almost the entire ad-blocking market is controlled by the company behind Adblock Plus (eyeo GmbH), who has contracts with Google. It appears they also own AdBlock, and uBlock (not confused with uBO), so during the last years they basically tried to capture the entire market. The fact that Eyeo has >150 employees tells us something about the amount of money to be made from ad blocking. Although they have only…

This is why it’s so unfortunate and frustrating that people are depending so much on Chromium/Blink. Electron, various browsers that are just skins over the embedded framework... We were still dealing with legacy IE6 (and IE 7/8 by that point also) in 2013! Almost a decade since we got Firefox and the first version of Chrome. The web has empirically suffered through homogeneity and the lack of strong competitors in t…

Why do people act like this is all some great big accident, the result of eternal human fallibility?

It's not. This was planned. It was the objective all along. Why else do you think Google Maps is free? Gmail? Why did they drive around 1,000s of cities with cameras on a car taking photos for Street View? Was it really just to become the world's most comprehensive search engine? Hell no, it was to get people into the ecosystem and to stay there, and be content with doing so. Just think how much money and manpower went into each of those free products we take for granted, not the least of which includes the Google search engine; now think about how they make so much money off your attention that they can offer it free of charge, because sucking you into the ecosystem is just that profitable.

Chrome is the same thing. Why would a for-profit company develop a web browser more or less unprompted and give it away for free? To draw people into the system and get them comfortable with staying there. Now that they have monopoly power, they can start tightening their grip with the good old embrace, extend, extinguish.

Google isn't unique in this. Similar arguments could be made about Facebook.

To be sure, Google and Facebook have produced tremendous advances in science and technology. But let's not forget what funded them, or why they were developed in the first place. Lest we forget why these things play out the way they do.

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#582

Post by ptman »

petjuh wrote: post #571
toddwprice wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came back to Firefox a while back - maybe a year or two? - and have never regretted it. It's a fast, modern, respectful browser. Maintained by a non-profit. I do all my front-end dev work in Firefox, and also test in Chrome. Never had a problem. Come on back folks!

I switched to Chrome the same day the beta was released mostly because of the speed. Nowadays I stay because I keep my passwords synced over my Google Account and I'm not sure if Firefox works with that.

More vendor lock-in. I keep my passwords in bitwarden, which has extensions for both firefox and chrome

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#583

Post by StudentStuff »

ubercow13 wrote: post #548
nh2 wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox has significant performance and correctness problems. * Multi-second UI jank/freeze ( https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1546847 ) * HTTP2 is broken, infinite-stalls and internal errors surface if you upload enough files ( https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1540574 ) * WebGL is very slow on Linux ( https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1010527 ) * High CPU on Linux even when in the…

I've certainly had something equivalent to the first one in Chrome frequently, seemingly when it's waiting for an unresponsive child process, often when closing a tab. It won't lock up as the UI seems to be separated from the other processes well enough to allow it to keep rendering loading animations etc. However every part of the browser will stop functioning including showing any tab content or opening any menu, f…

I wonder if Chrome is using Sqlite under the hood, I know Electron apps will lose their data entirely if any bit of the database is corrupt (Sqlite doesn't handle inconsistent states well :c).

On a slightly different tangent, you likely have a failing disk or RAM.

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#585

Post by icefo »

petjuh wrote: post #571
toddwprice wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came back to Firefox a while back - maybe a year or two? - and have never regretted it. It's a fast, modern, respectful browser. Maintained by a non-profit. I do all my front-end dev work in Firefox, and also test in Chrome. Never had a problem. Come on back folks!

I switched to Chrome the same day the beta was released mostly because of the speed. Nowadays I stay because I keep my passwords synced over my Google Account and I'm not sure if Firefox works with that.

Firefox has its own service to do that and it works well. I don't know if you can migrate your passwords easily though.

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#586

Post by mtgx »

It's such a shame Microsoft thought it will benefit more from piggybacking on the Chromium monopoly over building its next browser on top of Firefox.

If Microsoft would have donated only 50% of the Edge browser development budget to Firefox, Firefox would be in a much better position in the future to compete against Chrome.

Now, I fully expect Google to end its search contract with Firefox, or pay them much less, too, since it won't feel like it needs to fund its competitor anymore.

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#587

Post by sjwright »

dredmorbius wrote: post #507
johannkokos wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many tabs do you consider to be too many tabs? Most of the time I open up to 10 tabs, and Firefox is performing fine. But I have also seen people opening 40 tabs.

I recently found the scalars internal values, and discovered how many tabs I have open: 1,355. https://joindiaspora.com/posts/14824223 (Yes, I'm an infovore.) And performance (iMavc v.17 Retina) is usually accetable , at least initially. Somewhere between a few hours to days in, ahard kill becomes necessary. But; On Android or Linux, both older machines, even with just a tab or two open, within recent weeks, performa…

It is absurd to suggest that anyone needs more than a few dozen tabs. Once you get to the point where you're leaving tabs open for more than a couple of days, you should recognise that you're misusing tabs as a brittle form of bookmarking.

(In my opinion, Firefox and others could solve this by blurring the lines between bookmarks and tabs with some clever UI.)

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#588

Post by ubercow13 »

StudentStuff wrote: post #583
ubercow13 wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've certainly had something equivalent to the first one in Chrome frequently, seemingly when it's waiting for an unresponsive child process, often when closing a tab. It won't lock up as the UI seems to be separated from the other processes well enough to allow it to keep rendering loading animations etc. However every part of the browser will stop functioning including showing any tab content or opening any menu, f…

I wonder if Chrome is using Sqlite under the hood, I know Electron apps will lose their data entirely if any bit of the database is corrupt (Sqlite doesn't handle inconsistent states well :c). On a slightly different tangent, you likely have a failing disk or RAM.

Yep, certainly possible. I think Firefox avoids this by keeping a few complete profile backups to fall back on.

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#589

Post by antpls »

At the end of the day, it's their browser, their rules.

The only way this could be changed is through (EU?) law, but i'm not sure what would be the basis of such law. It would be like forcing every car manufacturers to implement free HEPA air filters in their cars.

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#590

Post by dotancohen »

rohan1024 wrote: post #467
jasonhansel wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

uBlock should really just instruct users to "switch to firefox for a fast, up-to-date ad-blocking experience"

Yes we can ditch chrome. But what about general population? Now that websites may choose to give incompatiblity prompts to Firefox since it impacts there revenue through ads. They will ask users to switch to chrome. This might affect Firefox in long run. It's market share might drop.

Google already blocks some of its features from working in Firefox. We discussed this in April: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19669586
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