Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

uBlock Origin is no longer available on the Chrome Store

chromewebstore.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

811–820 of 1001 posts

Re: uBlock Origin is no longer available on the Chrome Store

#811

Post by lern_too_spel »

culi wrote: post #689
HumblyTossed wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't forget the part developers played in this by enabling Chrome/Google to become so very dominant.

And developers can play a part in reversing that. It seems like it might already be happening: | month | Chrome | Firefox | Safari | | -- | -- | -- | -- | | Jan '25 | -1.29 | +0.07 | +0.84 | | Feb '25 | -0.75 | +0.08 | +0.03 | Note: Edge is also gaining. They use Chromium but their stance on Manifest v3 is unclear to me. So far they don't seem to have any plans to deprecate v2 support I know these numbers seem tiny,…

Safari is even worse at ad blocking, basically ManifestV3 with fewer rules, so this is moving in the wrong direction.

Re: uBlock Origin is no longer available on the Chrome Store

#812

Post by nine_k »

agiacalone wrote: post #636
nine_k wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I go to buy something, I switch off ad blocking on that page, at the very least, on the checkout page. Ads can even be actually relevant there. If the page is too ad-ridden to tolerate, I may consider to just close that page, and go search for other options. I use Firefox + uBlock Origin, because going to the wide commercial internet without some form of ad blocking is like going out without an umbrella when it's…

Ad networks are a high traffic way to spread malware. I would never recommend disabling a blocker, especially on commerce sites.

Usually checkout pages don't have pesky ads galore, or any. But such a page usually has a ton of anti-bot scripts, such as captchas and other privacy-invading checks.

Ad blockers usually block such stuff, for a good reason. But I don't mind it on a checkout page specifically though, because on a checkout page I wilfully disclose a ton of my private details, such as name, address, etc.

Good checkout pages work well with an ad blocker on.

Re: uBlock Origin is no longer available on the Chrome Store

#813

Post by doright »

I'd like to know some statistics from before and after this event. Change in browser share if such a thing is recordable (unsure if ungoogled-chromium has a different user agent), received download counts of different uBlock versions (Origin and Lite), difference in Google's revenue as a result of wiping uBlock Origin.

Re: uBlock Origin is no longer available on the Chrome Store

#814

Post by efreak »

dewey wrote: post #83
whalesalad wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% agree with you. Unfortunately Chrome is damn near a requirement if you are interacting with the Google Cloud console. Try to use BigQuery studio in any other browser and you are in for a world of hurt. Have we seen this movie before?

Exactly the reason why I use https://choosy.app to always redirect everything Google Cloud to Chrome, but everything else to Firefox. That way if I click on some random GCP link in Slack it opens the link in Chrome, but everything else stays in Firefox. I don't need ad blocking for GCP so that works fine. Sucks, but better than using Chrome full time.

I need this for Android pretty badly. I currently just don't set a default, and often use urlcheck in the middle to edit the URL if necessary, then pick my browser. I would love an app that automated this after the first use. I've submitted feedback to multiple apps that are halfway there, but none have seemed interested in getting the rest of the way there. UrlCheck is currently the closest, it has single buttons to remove tracking parameters and paths like landing pages, and I think it remembers the browser based on domain, but it doesn't have a list of changeable per-domain settings, won't open it automatically, and doesn't show a launcher-style grid (it uses a scrolling list that has to be opened manually). Google doesn't make things easier either, since apps can no longer be inserted as a chooser, and setting a chooser app as default breaks things.

For various functionality, there's also NeoLinker, UntrackMe, Intent Intercept, unalix, LinkSheet, and Open Link With. I believe Lynket browser, which uses the custom tab protocol, also has some basic rules-based choosing but it only works with two browsers and the rules are based on the app making the request.

It looks like LinkSheet added many of the settings I'm looking for at some point, so I'll be trying that out.

Re: uBlock Origin is no longer available on the Chrome Store

#815

Post by dankwizard »

haswell wrote: post #124

After 10+ years as a primary browser, I've been 100% off of Chrome for about 1.5 years now as part of a broader effort to de-Google my life, and things have been going well. It's interesting to notice how much my internal feelings have shifted over the years. There have been a few rare occasions where I had to use a Chromium-based browser, and I felt the same "ick" I used to feel when forced to use Internet Explorer…

"And as I opened Chrome - Well, a substitute but still powered by Chromium - I felt my stomach churn as my vision started to blur. I feel both disgusting and disgusted at what I had done. As an act of repetenance I hastily jot down 'Come to Firefox, we have bacon!'"

It's a browser.

Re: uBlock Origin is no longer available on the Chrome Store

#816

Post by SilasX »

AstralSerenity wrote: post #213
jordanb wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hope Mozilla realizes (and still cares) that they have a huge opportunity here to be the power-browser where you can get awesome extensions, The problem is that Mozilla's customers are not Firefox's users. Mozilla's customer is Google. They pay Mozilla to exist and they are paying Mozilla to intentionally drive Firefox into the ground. I think it's pretty clear that the TOS change basically coincided with the rem…

My understanding is Mozilla contracted its footprint substantially to remain sustainable in a future without Google's monetary contribution.

To little, too late. They underwent massive scope creep, throwing money at anything and everything, while neglecting the core task of maintaining a standards-compliant, user-friendly/non-hostile, privacy-respecting browser ... resulting in such incidents as Mr. Robot ad tie-in and the global add-on outage.

Oh ... and I still can't customize my controls fully. (Add-ons only take effect after a page load.)

Had they actually kept their scope small and focused, they could have put the difference into an endowment that would let them give the middle finger to the Chromes of the world forever. Yet here we are.

Re: uBlock Origin is no longer available on the Chrome Store

#817

Post by mvnuweucxqokii »

spankalee wrote: post #476
bearjaws wrote: post #4

Nobody could have possibly seen it coming that Google would abuse its market position to their own benefit... I migrated off Chrome as soon as this BS story about improving privacy, a joke coming from Google. Then the excuse was "well it improves performance", which they could easily do by marking extensions as low performance. If Google wanted to improve this they have an entire search engine where they could re-ran…

There was a time in Chrome when it didn't support extensions at all. If Google had release an extension API like manifest v3 then, would that have been abuse of market position? The reason why Chrome waited for so long to add extensions was the danger they posed to users. I was at Google when Sergey often worried about what extensions would do to non technical and older users who get tricked into installing them, the…

Yes, "abuse of market position" is path dependent.

Offering something then taking it away is materially different from never having offered it at all.

Re: uBlock Origin is no longer available on the Chrome Store

#818

Post by SilasX »

noisy_boy wrote: post #776
lolinder wrote: post #708

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The funny thing is that the same people on here that crow on about Mozilla needing to "just focus on Firefox" are the same ones who complains about its reliance on Google for income. There's no inherent contradiction here. Mozilla still doesn't give me a way to donate to them to fund Firefox. They haven't even tried. I want to fund Firefox development, desperately, but they deliberately structured their organizatio…

Taking your money creates a firmer expectation from them to stick to their main selling proposition of privacy which would make it more difficult for them to go after revenue streams that are more lucrative but less privacy-focused.

The only revenue stream they should be pursuing is interest on the endowment they built from the Google payouts. Anything else makes them dependent on someone else and corrupts the mission.

Re: uBlock Origin is no longer available on the Chrome Store

#820

Post by EasyMark »

dgacmu wrote: post #186
theteapot wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What sites don't work with FF?

I can't login to the work-paid-for version of Microsoft Copilot with Firefox, for some reason. I've had one or two others - I think they were internal CMU website tools. And even more niche: My kids took a ski lesson last year at Snowbird and the website with their report card rejected anything that didn't identify as Chrome. It _worked_ with mobile FF, but it popped up a "YOU SHOULD USE CHROME" banner and wouldn't l…

In my experience if something isn't working in firefox, it's more likely that it's firefox antitracking setting much more often than ublock. You might try turning that off first.
Post reply on HN