Hacker News Reader

Comment by milkytron | Hacker News Reader

I would love to hear/read the dialogue that occurred when the first person pitched this idea at Google.

> Also since people wouldn't use third party blockers as much those companies would go out business more likely.

I'm sure a few might, and it'll likely discourage others from entering the market as well. But I do think that open source alternatives would live on and continue to be used if your guess is correct.

And your guess does seem very plausible.

View on HN

Ublock Origin is extremely popular and it's open source model keeps it from playing favorites with some "acceptable" ads.

I do not consider dropping Ublock any time soon.

That's ok. If this plan works, a few years down the road Ublock will get dropped/disabled for you under some pretense when Google can claim they've got you covered for "ad blocking".

You're thinking far too 1984 when the answer is much more Brave New World - if the ad blocker in Chrome is good enough, people will just stop supporting UBlock.

No one supports uBlock. Browsers would have to specifically block the extension if they wanted to keep people from using it.

> Browsers would have to specifically block the extension if they wanted to keep people from using it.

Which Google have done to other extensions many times.

Yes, it's possible—I would say probable—that after introducing their "impartial" ad blocker, whose rules for acceptable ads just so happen to allow all of their ads through, and after enabling it by default on their browser, they will actively block all other ad blockers, on "privacy and security" grounds.

Naw, Google has precedent for this sort of behavior, going so far as removing plugins from their web store and quietly uninstalling them from Chrome with no notification when the plugin interfered with their business model. They actively uninstalled video download plugins without notification to the user a couple years back. Nefarious.

* Download Ublock zip

* Enable Developer Options

* Add Ublock package zip

* Enable in Incognito as well

TL;DR: Them removing it would be a dick move, but not end of the world. We can still install any packages we want.

I think you are severely misunderstanding the situation. Google can do whatever they want. They've already demonstrated that they have no problem installing things on your computer that you never would have otherwise agreed to. That, and they don't take no for an answer with updates.

Do they? I just downgraded Chrome for Android to 56, because the latest one would crash when playing live video streams. Granted, Play Store didn't have that option, so I had to download the APK from a third-party site and disable automatic updates for it, but nothing prevented me from doing either thing.

Yes, you still can on Android. But Google has shown that they don't see anything morally wrong with using misleading updating tactics. And the range of what you have control over is shrinking.

I commented about it about a month ago[1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13950975

You can also use other web browsers.

Like Chromium if you happen to like Chrome. Or Iridium browser which is a privacy enhanced Chromium.

Or Brave[1], which already includes a lot of ad blocking and anti-tracking features by default.

[1] https://www.brave.com

These privacy forks generally lag behind upstream by at least a few weeks, thereby providing enormous attack surface in unfixed bugs. They're terrible for security. Chromium is just too large and fast-moving for a small team to maintain a changeset. I'd love if it was different, but the reality is that these forks do more harm than good for most users.

I can say from experience that there are plugins which Chrome actively removes even if installed this way.

I think if it is an unpacked one, it does as it assumes you don't want it all the time. Not sure why it does that if dev mode is on.

Have you tried Packing them? I have yet to experience this.

If, by any chance, someone decide that its browser is already covered as far as adblockering goes, we will simply move to a different browser/adblocker/adblocking solution.

As long as there is tech savy people there will be plenty of solutions around.

AdBlock Plus is also open-source. Same license as uBlock Origin and everything.

They just haven't pissed off anyone enough to get a big fork going. Or their code just wasn't good enough, as obviously uBlock Origin is currently doing the same and was written from scratch.

I'm not sure why everyone in this thread is just assuming this is true. The only source the article provides is "according to people familiar with the company’s plans". And it's from the WSJ... the same people that went behind Google's back and went to their advertisers trying to ruin their reputation. I don't know, I feel like this is another attempt by them to stir shit.

Surely Google will next come out with a "Fake News" filter for browsers that will just block wsj.com for all Chrome users.

The Wall Street Journal employs highly reputable journalists with excellent sources. Basic journalism standards for this would require confirmation from three separate sources before publishing. And it's the WSJ -- they don't publish it on a whim, they publish it because it's news they believe to be true.

– I just learned that there are people using our Web browser who don't see our ads. And even worse, they might be seeing our competitors' ads!

– Maybe we could act as gatekeepers so our competitors have to go through us to advertise on our browser? We could wrap it as "only letting in the nice ads" or whatever…

– Brilliant!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com