Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users • Hacker News Board

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

#761

Post by WilliamEdward » Thu, May 30, 2019, 1:15 PM UTC

nothis wrote: post #700

Drup wrote: post #678

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an alternative data-point: My firefox session is persistent (tab are restored when I open firefox again). Apparently, I'm around 500 right now, which is a bit above average for me (I usually stay around 300). Firefox's lazy loading is very good, which means I only have 10 to 100 tabs that are actually loaded. Firefox is still fast in these conditions. Since I use tree-style-tabs, most of the tabs are neatly sorted…

You guys seriously have _500_ tabs open?!

Ive never gotten anywhere near 500, but if a legitimate number of users are needing 500 tabs open that's a perfectly reasonable use case for a browser that fails to support it.

It's kind of like saying "oh no, people are trying to do x with our platform but it's not built for that..." Well, now enough people are doing this, so it's time to change up your UI / performance.

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

#762

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet » Thu, May 30, 2019, 1:16 PM UTC

tpxl wrote: post #729

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #718

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another gripe I have with Firefox (which I only use on the Lubuntu laptops I have) is that when it wants to update it insists that you restart it and won't let you open another page until you do.

Huh? This never happens to me and I usually don't restart when it nags me to for weeks, because it has a tendency to forget the previous session on updates.

It definitely does it. I'll be looking in to some issue (because that's 90% of using Linux on a device) and suddenly I won't be able to open any new tabs until I restart the browser.

https://techdows.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/visit-about-...

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

#763

Post by kokojie » Thu, May 30, 2019, 1:20 PM UTC

Let's all use the web browser made by the world's biggest ad company, what could go wrong right?

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

#764

Post by yjftsjthsd-h » Thu, May 30, 2019, 1:23 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #706

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #701

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My ISP has told people they're tracking users , and can get away with it because there's effectively no competition. The bar is low. I am, indeed, necessarily careful about VPN providers.

Have you personally audited your VPN provider? Or did you go by a pinky promise that they would track you and sell your data? On a practical note, which VPN provider can reliably not reduce the speed of my gigabit up/down connection?

In my personal case, yes I have because I'm running it myself on a VPS. In general, though, the commercial providers that I would use have stood up to court orders / warrants, so I reckon they're fine.

Unfortunately, I don't have a fast enough uplink to comment on speed concerns.

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

#765

Post by TimTheTinker » Thu, May 30, 2019, 1:25 PM UTC

shstalwart wrote: post #525

TimTheTinker wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “workspace” and “blackbox script” features in Chrome devTools are real paradigm shifters and a huge productivity boost for me when developing/debugging in JS/TS or SCSS/CSS. With Workspaces, most changes to source files are reflected immediately without reloading (no LiveReload-type tooling is needed). Firefox has yet to release either of those features, as far as I know. I’ll switch dev browsers as soon as they…

There will always be a trinket to keep you on the plantation.

This is more like the GPS guidance on modern, DRM’ed tractors than trinkets given to plantation slaves.

It’s not integral to my work, but it does contribute significantly to my productivity.

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

#766

Post by shawnz » Thu, May 30, 2019, 1:27 PM UTC

SquareWheel wrote: post #743

shawnz wrote: post #629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not for privacy, the people who were saying that are either mistaken or intentionally lying. It's clear to see because the observational capabilities of the API aren't being removed -- only the blocking capabilities. So the privacy issue is still there. Supposedly, this change is just for performance.

>It's not for privacy, the people who were saying that are either mistaken or intentionally lying. They're not lying. This was listed as one of the reasons by Google. >The declarativeNetRequest API provides better privacy to users because extensions can't actually read the network requests made on the user's behalf. https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/declarativeNetReques...

What I mean is the fact that they are deprecating the blocking API. That wasn't an action taken for privacy's sake. Otherwise, why wouldn't they deprecate the observational API too?

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

#767

Post by baggachipz » Thu, May 30, 2019, 1:28 PM UTC

gzimhelshani wrote: post #737

SimonPStevens wrote: post #727

I say this all the time when this kind of thing comes up. Please use Firefox! Even if it's worse. Even if its slower[1]. Even if it doesn't have that one feature or bug fix that you personally consider really important. Just use Firefox anyway. Find a workaround. Suffer whatever it is you dislike about Firefox because in the end if we don't act as individuals against the chrome monopoly then google are going to own t…

what do you think about the new Edge browser from Microsoft, its based on Chromium. So you would get most benefits of chrome but its from Microsoft, which personally, I trust more than I trust Google.

> but its from Microsoft, which personally, I trust more than I trust Google.

Wow, how the worm turns.

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

#768

Post by andrethegiant » Thu, May 30, 2019, 1:29 PM UTC

pps wrote: post #722

bad_user wrote: post #714

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't Opera and Vivaldi just a re-skinning of Chromium? If yes, then it probably won’t save you. And here you have the actual problem with Chrome — unless you fork it and have resources to maintain that fork, its open source nature is absolutely irrelevant. And even if you manage to fork it, you’re not operating at Google’s scale so your fork will be irrelevant. PS: I use Firefox on top of MacOS and works just fine…

I don't know how much different they need to be from Chrome/Chromium to not be affected (and if some built-in blocker like in Opera still will be fine), that's why I'm asking :) There is also Safari, but I would rather cook my CPU with FF than use Safari.

What don't you like about Safari?

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

#769

Post by andrethegiant » Thu, May 30, 2019, 1:32 PM UTC

auiya wrote: post #752

ravenstine wrote: post #269

Slightly off topic, I'm finding it very disingenuous that people in this thread(and any other threads that come up about Firefox) have actually had significant performance issues with Firefox. No bugs that are noteworthy, sans that fiasco with the expired certificate that disabled addons briefly. I've been using Firefox since "quantum" on both my MacBooks(one of which is old AF) and on Linux. I've yet to have problem…

I only keep Firefox around as a back up for when there's a one-off website that doesn't work properly with Safari. Otherwise Safari is my default. It just performs better than anything else on OSX/iOS.

Safari is my default too. The UX for its devtools is far better than Chrome's IMO.

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

#770

Post by JoshMnem » Thu, May 30, 2019, 1:36 PM UTC

brlewis wrote: post #731

kumarvvr wrote: post #667

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think you're giving them too much credit, bordering on a conspiracy theory. There's no way they knew all of this would happen and that they would now be in the position to dictate the plug-ins we use. Think about it. The time when Chrome came around, Firefox was poised to become the dominant player in the market, barring Safari, which was big on mobile but small on traditional desktops. To some extent, Mozilla de…

Alternate motivation: People stay engaged on the web more when pages are faster. One thing that makes pages faster is a faster browser. When people stay engaged on the web more, Google makes more money. Chrome's initial big selling point was being faster. Disclaimer: ex-googler.

The core motivation wasn't speed -- it was ads. Chrome was designed to send people to Google Search instead of websites. The address bar auto-completion in Firefox would always suggest actual URLs, but Chrome's would send people to Google Search to click on ads on the way to their desired destinations. The ads started to become camouflaged so that most users couldn't tell them from organic results, and Google continued to make the ads harder to distinguish over time. I'm sure that Google also had long-term worries about ad-blocking and wanted to control the browser.

"We just want to make the Web faster" is what they tell their employees so that otherwise ethical people will write code that does unethical things. (AMP/portals is another example.)