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Comment by BuckRogers | Hacker News Reader

For those of us on Microsoft Edge, it's time to uninstall uBlock Origin[0] from the Chrome Store and install it from the Microsoft Store[1]. It's about time someone seriously challenges and smokes Google's boots.

[0]https://i.imgur.com/ZGxI3xO.png

[1]https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/insider-addons/detail/od...

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Or you could cease contributing to the Blink monopoly on the web and join us of Firefox. Microsoft is no longer challenging Google in this space.

You could, unless you're like me and having never been on Blink. I've been using Firefox for almost 20 years straight, since it was Phoenix. Edge is my backup/secondary browser and it's great. If you want the benefits of Chrome without Google, Microsoft is the final boss that can't and won't be pushed around by Google.

I love how, despite even kowtowing to the pro-Mozilla brigade here with assurances that you’ve long been a faithful user of their product, the fact that you said anything good about MS Edge still caused your text to get disappeared. They must feel threatened by it.

The second MS Edge is on Ubuntu or Arch, I’m installing it! And I’m absolutely certain that if MS keeps adblocking facilities in place while Chrome drops them, they’ll gain a ton more users like me.

Maybe soon, Google will be paying Microsoft to make Google the default search engine! Funny thought, but I doubt it...

I am a Firefox diehard, but I have been using and following Edge since MS put out the first canary. It's definitely my second choice. Firefox has enough exclusive features (like containers) that keep me from moving to a Chromium browser. For me, everything is chosen based on merit, not some belief system that a Blink-only world would be a terrible thing. I'm not sure that matters at all, and don't buy into that narrative that we need it for choice. There are still major players all building off it, and could diverge again. The Microsoft executive that suggested Firefox join them as a Chromium variant was correct. If anything ever pulled me away from FF it will be Edge for sure, and mostly because it is Chromium based.

My intended audience with that original post was the legion of Chrome users, but I could see how the Firefox cult (which I've long been a part of, check my oldest HN posts) could see it as negative or the "wrong answer". I never found Chrome to be quite right in all the times I've kicked the tires over the years. But on Windows, Edge being the native browser will ensure it's optimized to get the absolute best battery life out of laptop, a huge perk, and is quite frankly on the merits just shaping up to be a great Chrome-alternative on all platforms. No reason to resist the right-answer just because Microsoft is the one that appears to be bringing it.

You mean the browser developed by Mozilla which is basically bankrolled by Google?

Well yes, but technologically, it's the only non-KHTML descendant browser engine in development. Mozilla is working on the revenue issue, though it is a considerable concern. The best thing we can do to help Mozilla is to simply use Firefox and try and bump its market share numbers up.

> he best thing we can do to help Mozilla is to simply use Firefox and try and bump its market share numbers up.

And donate...

I won't say no, but these donations go to Mozilla Foundation and are used to advance their tech evangelism work, such as their successful lawsuit over net neutrality in the US.

Mozilla Corporation develops Firefox with their income from sources like their contract with Google and other search engines. Donations are not used for Firefox dev.

So what software is the Mozilla Foundation developing that's costing them over $200 million a year that isn't Firefox?

Sorry, what? Mozilla Foundation doesn't do software development.

Their financial statement says they do.

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2017/

The way it's worded it sounds like they do it through the Mozilla Corporation, which they own wholly own.

Genuine question: what are they doing to alleviate the issues of Gecko rendering compared to Blink? As I understand it, most developers target Chrome, so they make it work with Blink, not Gecko.

I don't think it's a major issue (yet?), but work around this area is tracked under the "Web Compatibility" product in Bugzilla.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?product=Web%20Compa...

Bugs are fixed where necessary, but I don't think they've stooped to implementing Chrome's bugs yet. Most of the work is social - reaching out to owners of websites which are broken in Firefox and asking them to fix them.

Mozilla is using the a built-in add-on called Go Faster to resolve compatibility issues with poorly tested sites.

https://github.com/mozilla/webcompat-addon

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Compatibility/Go_Faster_Addon/Overr...

https://hacks.mozilla.org/2019/07/firefox-68-bigints-contras...

The add-on uses data from WebCompat, and there are several ways you can report site issues:

https://webcompat.com

https://webcompat.com/contributors/report-bug

Regardless of where Mozilla's money comes from, Chromium market share drives Google's control over the Web a lot more than Gecko does.

The MS Edge one is offered by "Nik Rolls" and not "Raymond Hill (gorhill)" like the one on the Chrome Web Store and Mozilla AMO. I'm guessing they're not the same person so why should I trust this extension instead?

I tracked this down earlier today while I was considering what I would tell people to switch to, looks like

- The official ublock repo links to it, so it's reasonably trustworthy, but it's explicitly not controlled by Gorhil. The author has what appears to be an open offer to give control of it to him.

- It's out of date.

- There is no real plan to make it up-to-date until edge finishes moving to being a chromium fork.

It's not out of date, source on that claim? It's 1.22.4 just as it is in the Chrome store. https://i.imgur.com/c2voeqg.png

Oh, curious, I just assumed that since this issue was still open nothing had changed

https://github.com/nikrolls/uBlock-Edge/issues/122

I think that's for the one in the legacy Edge store[0]. The Edge Insider store[1] is different. I'm sure the legacy extension is abandoned.

[0]https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/ublock-origin/9nblggh444l4...

[1]https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/insider-addons/detail/od...

If the chrome store version dies, you better be prepared to see the edge version get significant less attention. I love alternatives being available, but this only makes the situation somewhat less bad.

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