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Comment by rahuldottech | Hacker News Reader

Is anyone really surprised? Google makes all its revenue from ads. A couple months ago there was an incident where if I recall correctly, someone published a browser on the play store which allowed users to install desktop browser extensions, one of which was an adblocker for YouTube, and it was removed with vague reasons?

Google has been taking steps for a long time to make it harder for adblockers to work on Chrome, and this is only the latest in the trend.

uBO works just fine on Firefox, both on mobile and desktop.

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Not surprised, but a bit baffled why they allowed for uBO for such a long time in the first place?

It looks as if they misused the community's products and trust to build their monopoly and then kick us out once it's gotten hard enough to compete.

Perhaps this is a good thing in the long run, because now people will finally have to switch and maybe contribute to improving Firefox.

I am hopeful, but also I must say in my opinion Firefox is nowhere near Chrome when comparing performance, developer tooling and quality.

> I am hopeful, but also I must say in my opinion Firefox is nowhere near Chrome when comparing performance, developer tooling and quality.

I have the opposite experience. I use FF on all my computers and mobile, and when I sit behind some other dev's Chrome the tools are simply atrocious. Maybe it's not the quality that is different, but the way we use the tools? I might have "aligned" myself with FF, as you (and many others) have with Chrome.

Maybe that's part of it, yes.

I mean if I press Cmd+P to look up a source file and Firefox doesn't suggest the source mapped one before the ES5 compiled one, it's already beyond me how I should ever seriously work with that tooling. It's just a matter of speed and convenience. But my workflows of course might differ from what others do.

With quality I was referring to the actual code quality of Firefox, not so much the interface. See my post below about DOM events changing order when debugging. My instinct just tells me that something is deeply wrong under the hood if something like this can even happen.

Firefox has better tooling for CSS (really good flexbox for e.g.) but it lacks on the JS side.

One basic feature that is missing for e.g. is that one cannot open a file using the syntax filename:line:column in the source editor. You will need to navigate the line number manually after opening the file.

Thank goodness. Browsers are for browing the internet. File Managers are used for opening files. I lock down SeaMonkeys JS.

Personally I like SeaMonkey as it is community build Mozilla. Many of the "features" have settings in preferences.

It seems to me that the Mozilla Foundation is pushing the project in some weird spots(DoH) and while not ad revenue based, they do take money from companies.

Notice the Search Provides list? Who uses Ebay as their primary search provides? Heck who wants to search from the URL bar.

Otter-Browser is making great strides and I use it on untrusted sites. Please make the browser simple and not hide settings in about:config.

> Heck who wants to search from the URL bar.

Me? I love this feature.

>Heck who wants to search from the URL bar.

You've gone too far.

F6 + query + Enter ftw. D: It's how I've always done it.

>baffled why they allowed for uBO for such a long time

potential "10,000,000+ users" pissed at Google is the reason, but why if we made it look like extension author was dodgy/to blame? ... :(

> Not surprised, but a bit baffled why they allowed for uBO for such a long time in the first place?

because they weren't dominant in the market, and it was a feature the market leading browers supported

now they are dominant they can throw their weight around

> quality

Yeah, that feature is a must. /s

Saying "quality" doesn't actually mean anything. What exactly is "quality" in this case?

I'll give you an example:

If I place a breakpoint in a DOM mutation listener, I would like to have the same order of DOM events as if I wouldn't have placed it there.

You are going to love Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

>someone published a browser on the play store which allowed users to install desktop browser extensions, one of which was an adblocker for YouTube

Firefox lets you do that on Android and obviously it hasn't been removed from the Play Store. Do you remember any specifics?

Parent comment might be referring to Kiwi Browser, a closed source fork of Chromium for Android that allows desktop extensions.

Though it's currently available on the Android app store, and the reason it was briefly removed was because it included built-in background YouTube video playback, not ad-blocking.

Of course, you could always get the app from another store.

- Kiwi Browser (Play Store): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kiwibrowse...

- Kiwi Browser (XDA): https://labs.xda-developers.com/store/app/com.kiwibrowser.br...

"Though it's currently available on the Android app store, and the reason it was briefly removed was because it included built-in background YouTube video playback,"

Oh, so being anti-competitive as their native youtube app will NOT let you play in the background unless you pay for it. Bingo.

Eh, that's sort of like saying Spotify is being "anti-competitive" when they block apps that give you Spotify Premium features for free.

Third-party apps for streaming services aren't meant to be a competitive market. At least with YouTube you can still download third-party apps elsewhere, such as youtube-dl for desktops or NewPipe on F-Droid, even if apps that violate YouTube's TOS are removed from Google's own app stores.

> Eh, that's sort of like saying Spotify is being "anti-competitive" when they block apps that give you Spotify Premium features for free.

Blocking it on Spotify is fine. If they merged with... let's say Medium, and now blocked articles about such apps, that would be a problem.

Youtube's TOS should not get special treatment in unrelated products.

What does blocking "on Spotify" mean? It's not as if Spotify is blocking songs within its own catalog or something: these pirate apps exist outside of Spotify, except they hijack Spotify's streaming service.

They're dealt with in the same way, by getting legitimate app stores such as Apple's to take down the pirate apps: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/ne...

Spotify has also threatened to ban users caught using these third-party apps: https://torrentfreak.com/spotify-emails-warning-to-pirates-u...

At least YouTube doesn't go that far.

> If they merged with... let's say Medium, and now blocked articles about such apps, that would be a problem.

Writing about piracy, as TorrentFreak or a Medium blog might do, is not the same as piracy itself. The former is journalism, protected by free speech; the latter is not.

> What does blocking "on Spotify" mean?

Detecting and blocking those apps from accessing the Spotify servers.

> They're dealt with in the same way, by getting legitimate app stores such as Apple's to take down the pirate apps

Those are modified versions of the official app, violating its copyright. That's not the same thing as blocking a third-party app because it doesn't work the way Spotify likes.

In other words, the app itself is being pirated. That's a completely separate issue from "Spotify Premium features for free".

> Writing about piracy, as TorrentFreak or a Medium blog might do, is not the same as piracy itself. The former is journalism, protected by free speech; the latter is not.

Sure. I thought you were talking about third party apps, since your second paragraph was about third party apps... A pirated official app is piracy itself. A third party app is not piracy.

It's a distinction without a difference. Whether you use legal or technical means, blocking an offending app that violates the terms of streaming service is not "anti-competitive", as the parent comment accused. Neither Spotify nor YouTube is obliged to offer bandwidth.

I'd rather YouTube use legal means to remove offending apps from app stores, rather than technical means that would interfere with apps outside of app stores as well. I like having youtube-dl available, thanks.

> It's a distinction without a difference. Whether you use legal or technical means, blocking an offending app that violates the terms of streaming service is not "anti-competitive", as the parent comment accused. Neither Spotify nor YouTube is obliged to offer bandwidth.

I think you're missing what the argument is.

Youtube blocking something that violates Youtube TOS: completely fine

One part of a massive conglomerate company blocking something because it violates the TOS of an unrelated part: anti-competitive

> I'd rather YouTube use legal means to remove offending apps from app stores, rather than technical means that would interfere with apps outside of app stores as well. I like having youtube-dl available, thanks.

Youtube isn't using legal means, in general. They get apps taken down that don't do anything illegal. So the distinction does matter.

That's not "anti-competitive". What sort of competition is being blocked? No court is going to side with third-party apps that depend on YouTube's servers while violating the terms on which they're allowed to use its streaming services.

And what does it matter how the company is organized? YouTube is in fact a direct subsidiary of Google, not just a sibling company under Alphabet, but so what? Would calling it "Google Video" make a difference?

The problem with the earlier hypothetical example (of Spotify acquiring Medium and blocking articles about apps that violate Spotify's ToS) was not cooperation between Spotify and Medium, but issues regarding free speech, insofar as that applies to a private platform.

The analogous situation with YouTube would be content on Google platforms discussing third-party YouTube apps... and in fact, there are plenty of videos on YouTube itself discussing youtube-dl or apps such as NewPipe.

> Youtube isn't using legal means, in general.

That's semantics. Call it technical vs. non-technical means, then, or whatever.

The problem with that line of ideological reasoning is that it implies YouTube should use technical means, such as locking down its API, rather than just booting offending apps off the company's own app stores. The end result would be worse for users.

I just looked it up, and apparently I misremembered a bit, it was actually because the app allowed YouTube background playback: https://www.androidpolice.com/2019/05/08/kiwi-browser-remove...

The fact remains that Google was acting as a total monopoly when this decision was made.

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