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Comment by pythonaut_16 | Hacker News Reader

This is somewhat concerning to me. While I'm all for blocking obtrusive and obnoxious ads, I'm not sure I want Google using it's position as a web giant and browser vendor to push these standards by default via Chrome.

An open web means I can host whatever (legal content) I want on my website and people are free to view it or not view it if they find it undesirable. Current ad blockers play well into this scheme because they protect the end user's right to view content in the way that they want.

This move by Google on the other hand is telling websites that they have to play by Google's content rules or have their website broken by default.

I'm not sure that's the web that I want to live in.

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This move is mainly about making sure their own ads don't get blocked because of people trying to escape the bad behavior of others. But like you, I have doubts about an ad blocker created by an advertising company.

I have doubts about an ad blocker created by an advertising company.

Right. Once Google gets this deployed, watch them remove ad-blocking add-ons from the Google Store.

i'm concerned about this as well, but i'm fine letting Chrome function simply as a dev tool and actually browse with Firefox, Opera, Servo, etc. w/uBlock Origin & uMatrix

Firefox has some pretty nice dev tool extensions.

It won't for long when they deprecate their extension API and move to Chromes...

Presumably that won't mean that Firefox will only install extensions from the Chrome Web Store, though. addons.mozilla.org will continue to exist.

The dev tools are built into Firefox by default. So what do you base your claim on?

pretty sure he was talking about the extensions that extend them though. firebug comes to mind.

Firefox DevTools was built from Firebug, which is why they no longer develop Firebug. See the Firebug website: http://getfirebug.com/

And here's some more history: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2016/12/firebug-lives-on-in-firefo...

No, Firefox Dev Tools is a completely seperate project historically. Firebug version 3 and up built on top of it, but that’s the only connection (beyond commonality in tool function).

They're sadly moving towards interoperability/feature-parity with WebExtensions, but I don't think they'll change entirely at any point.

I think they've explicitly stated that they're planning to entirely remove XUL from the codebase, eventually.

> i'm fine letting Chrome function simply as a dev tool and actually browse with Firefox, Opera, Servo, etc. w/uBlock Origin & uMatrix

I'm definitely in the same boat. That makes me wonder if it would be a bad long-term move for Chrome. Just guessing here based on personal anecdata, developers are more likely to use ad blockers, which could alienate the developer community. If that's true, I wonder if we would see a resurgence in Firefox and other browsers.

Firefox needs to improve its dev tools first. I love Firefox as a browser but I find myself forced to use chromium devtools because I can't figure out how to get our source maps to work with Firefox :(

This is going to get a whole lot better. Try nightly now to see what's coming.

I don't think this would will be the case as it will only make people who know how to install an ad-blocker move to firefox. I think they target the users not having an ad-blocker installed.

If it doesn't block Youtube's ads then I don't see any motivation to switch to it, and I can't imagine it will. I think YouTube is the only site with quality content that I'd find unusable without a blocker.

So Google is going to be picking winners and losers here? In some instances, the ad company in question may behave better than Google (The Deck was one before they folded). In a worse case scenario this could lead to anti-competitive behavior where Google is essentially blocking out competition while still enabling its own tracking/ad placement.

Replace the word "ads" with "popups" in your comment and you would be making an argument for a return to a horrible era.

In fact this "ad blocker" is more of a popup and auto play blocker. It doesn't really mean to block ads. And worse than that, it does nothing to block or even reduce the tracking of users. In fact I haven't seen a single new feature in Chrome that would make tracking more difficult. Rather the contrary.

> it does nothing to block or even reduce the tracking of users. In fact I haven't seen a single new feature in Chrome that would make tracking more difficult.

Of course not. Google makes their money through ads; they wouldn't do anything that would hurt their money-making abilities.

Popups and popunders were due to a browser feature (window.open) which was open to horrible abuse, and browsers were right to make this feature more restricted over time.

Browsers fixing their own UI mistakes and browsers setting and enforcing rules for content are two entirely different things.

Chrome already has its TLS version treadmill and a blacklist of evil sites, so this is not really the first step down that slope.

no but it is a huge step. using your platform to block competitors is the definition of anti-trust.

Well... It's the sort of thing so-called anti-trust laws were designed to prevent but it's the definition of anti-competitive, not anti-trust.

These are ad standards agreed upon a consortium of companies.

Were consumer advocacy groups included in that consortium?

Of course not. But even if they were, it'd be only for show. They wouldn't have a say in anything.

Of which Google is a founding member and the only traditional ad publisher (AdSense/AdX/etc) who serves ads to 3rd party properties. [1] I'm sure they have plenty of control to shape the standards to their benefit. In other words, the "consortium" is biased by Google themselves.

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/coaltion-for-better-ads-launc...

Are you sure about that?

https://www.betterads.org/members/

edit: I see you stealth edited your post.

The Wall Street Journal is a member of the group, and on page load it covered the article with an ad.

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