macOS Packaging for Ungoogled-Chromium | Hacker News Reader

macOS Packaging for Ungoogled-Chromium

github.com

73 pointskeepamovin101 comments

A bit concerned about this warning (1):

"IMPORTANT: These binaries are provided by anyone who are willing to build and submit them, they are NOT official. Because these binaries generally not reproducible, authenticity cannot be guaranteed. For your consideration, each download page lists the GitHub user that submitted those binaries."

Given one does not compile their own version, wouldn't this make the privacy trade-off vis-à-vis generic Chromium unacceptable?

(1) https://ungoogled-software.github.io/ungoogled-chromium-bina...

Yea. Why cant github actions build these artifacts?

Because of the code signing for macOS

That is chef's kiss right there.

Security or authenticity is prevented by a security or authenticity policy.

This is common. Sometimes a security policy works (e.g. a password length requirement may cause people to come up with stronger password) and sometimes people consider it excessive and prefer to work around it (e.g. a password length requirement may cause people to write the password down on a sticky note and attach it to the computer screen).

I haven't tried it myself, but it seems like that should be possible?

> You can sign Xcode apps within your continuous integration (CI) workflow by installing an Apple code signing certificate on GitHub Actions runners.

https://docs.github.com/en/actions/use-cases-and-examples/de...

This costs money, requires some agreement signing and can "dox" developers, so not everyone wants a cert.

It needs way too much space to build with github actions

It's possible! I do it here: https://github.com/chromium-for-lambda/chromium-binaries/act...

According to the workflow file, you’re using self-hosted runners…

GitHub now offers "artifact attestation"[1], which would be ideal for this use case. It records what build process binaries originated from, so they can still be published elsewhere while remaining verifiable.

[1] https://github.blog/changelog/2024-06-25-artifact-attestatio...

It does! That warning is for a different repo that allows community contribution:

https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium-bin...

> Given one does not compile their own version

skill issue

Seems like a lot of effort to go to rather than just use Firefox or Safari...

Why would you use Firefox—that would be supporting Mozilla, or Safari—as they correctly pointed out in the comments—the IE of 2020's? Have you actually seen Firefox source code? It's horrible; not one bit surprising that Chromium won! This is also why there's rich ecosystem of browsers around it. Brave comes to mind; built-in ad-blocker is not half bad, not to mention they're committed to v2 extension APIs, deserving praise. I've been really happy with it. Not sold on most products they're trying to sneak in there like Search, or the AI things, however as occasional crypto user, I'd found the built-in Wallet real handy. Vivaldi? I was told it's quite popular with streamers and so on. Edge from Microsoft, too.

What does Firefox have going for it? LibreWolf? Tor Browser?

Edit: mobile Firefox is still superior, I think, because extensions.

Firefox and Safari are nothing like IE.

IE used to crash ALL the time, and a lot of those crashes could be triggered by really nasty vulnerabilities in ActiveX which had kennel level access in Windows.

I'd never suggested Firefox is akin to IE. Safari is, however, as it's tied to macOS. You cannot use it on Linux, and nobody really uses it on Windows. You cannot use it on Android. It's hopelessly behind on many modern Web standards, too. In that sense it's totally IE-like. Cross-platform is a must for a modern browser platform.

> It's hopelessly behind on many modern Web standards, too.

Chrome-only APIs are not "modern web standards".

> Cross-platform is a must for a modern browser platform.

I don’t understand why. I’m very happy with Safari, it works great. Yes, it’s not the fastest to implement web standards. But it just works very well in Apple ecosystem, and for common usage, it’s way more important and useful than to be the best to support web standards, users don’t care about this.

(And to be clear, the situation is really different than the IE6 era, WebKit respects standards, doesn’t invent its own standard and it doesn’t have a monopoly on web browser market)

> I'd never suggested Firefox is akin to IE. Safari is, however, as it's tied to macOS.

This analogy is strange, because Internet Explorer was cross-platform and indeed was the default web browser on Mac OS X until Safari was created.

Safari is a bit behind, but not hopelessly so.

You can check the Interop 2024 initiative to get a better understanding on where everyone is with standards: https://wpt.fyi/interop-2024?stable

Huh? The problem with IE6 wasn't its lack of cross-platform support.

Microsoft used a stifling dominance in desktop operating systems to achieve a stifling dominance in browsers. This browser dominance meant that a single entity (Microsoft) dictated the quality and rate of progress of the web as a platform (bad and slow) while developers treated IE6's broken implementations and Windows-exclusive features as de-facto standards.

Today, Google's dominance is being used to achieve a stifling dominance in browsers. This browser dominance means that a single entity (Google) dictates the quality and rate of progress of the web as a platform (whatever suits Google, as fast as possible) while developers are treating Chrome's firehose of features as de-facto standards.

The most IE6-like problem with today's ecosystem is people reflexively defining the web as being a single browser (then IE6, now Chrome). Complaining that Safari is bad because it isn't Chrome is proof that Chrome is the new IE6.

Not only is Safari not like IE6, it's actually the anti-IE6. It's the only thing left to remind web developers that the web is supposed to be based on standards. Safari for iOS is the last significant remnant of browser diversity in a market otherwise stiflingly dominated by Chrome.

> It's hopelessly behind on many modern Web standards, too.

Let’s put this narrative to rest, please. Web standards that Safari skips are usually PWA stuff that Google unilaterally declared a “standard”. On actual web features, Safari is behind only about as often as Chrome is, and both (and Firefox) are so far from bad it’s ridiculous to complain about. WEBP was the exception that was just very late, but in hindsight it wasn’t so good after all, which Apple might have known, and anyway at present JPEG XL is shipped by Safari, held back by Chrome.

What I do think is real, though, is developers living their lives in Chrome then only testing in Safari, which makes wherever Safari lags bite them in the ass, and wherever Chrome lags not even noticed.

There is a Linux build!

Safari is macOS-only afaik, but there totally are WebKit-based browsers, like Epiphany (now known as GNOME Web – kinda meh name I’d say)

Just curious, what is wrong with the Firefox source code specifically? I've used it for a couple years and haven't noticed anything awful, but if there's something I'm not aware of and it's as bad as you say I'll swap in a heartbeat.

It's many things; overall low-quality compared to Chromium. Thankfully they have deprecated XUL a few years back which was really holding people back in major ways, but yeah, it's not good. People don't like to hear that, but that's probably the reason why Chromium won. Much easier to patch it, & the inner layout of components, separation make more sense.

Sorry, could you be a bit more specific? As a user, not a developer, I'm curious if there's any flaws in the source code (potential security vulnerabilities, inefficient code that might cause slow / slower execution, dodgy third party data extraction, stuff like that.) that might affect day-to-day user experience. Personally, when I switched from Chrome to Firefox, I found I had much more control over each aspect of the browser experience and that's been the main reason I've stayed. I especially like the "about:config" page, chrome is sorely missing something similar.

Until recently, Firefox was quite slow but with the Quantum release they addressed it somewhat. From a user perspective, I say, if you like it, trust Mozilla, don't care about what they have become, you're fine. In my opinion, it's only downhill from here. That said, I think they did a good job over the years on security, the containers are neat, however the profile design in Chromium is probably superior. The majority of Web security research comes from Google, they invest deeply into security, although it doesn't matter as much because they're also cooperating with the industry, coordinated release is a thing, etc. The cache model specifically is more powerful in Chromium; memory usage is often touted as advantage for Firefox, but it's a statement on how Chromium cache model is superior more than anything.

I'm not sure what "aspects of the browser experience" you're referring to specifically, but I would guess it's probably marginal as in terms of Web standards Firefox is playing catch-up. It took them a long time to implement JIT in the engine at the point when V8 had it for years; touted as a huge accomplishment, and it was—considering how it's so hard to work with Firefox codebase. There's a dedicated group of developers punching above their weight, unfortunately they're at a disadvantage.

Hmm... alright, thank you. I'll stick with what I've got for now. You're right though, it seems like Mozilla is looking for a way to monetise their platform, at the expense of user experience.

You mentioning memory usage reminds me of this article, which was actually the reason I switched over. [https://www.pcmag.com/news/firefox-power-user-keeps-7400-plu...] Not sure if you could do that in Chrome!

Not a problem with the source code, but did you see that Mozilla has literally become an advertising company?

• https://archive.md/6Un3E (using archive.md to avoid a disappointing problem with the source website)

Mozilla seems to still claim they're "stewards of the open web", yet they're so far off topic it's just impossible they can believe that with a straight face. :(

>Mozilla has literally become an advertising company

How is this relevant? Assuming what you say is true. The alternative GP promotes is building browsers atop Google's engine. If Mozilla is "literally an ad company", what is Google with ~80% revenue off ads?

You have no problem with Google being an ad company?

Oh damn that sucks, still nothing affecting user experience... yet. Reminds me of a nightly build I saw where they tested forcibly putting fakespot products on the frontpage. [https://blog.nightly.mozilla.org/2024/11/19/experimental-add...]. I think they knew this was gonna be controversial, you'd think the blog title would mention something like this but they choose to focus on smaller bug fixes and tuck the literal forced advertising near the bottom. For now I'll stick around, but if this stuff ever gets released / impacts the way the browser functions I'll have to find something else.

If you're using macOS, then Orion might be a good option:

https://kagi.com/orion/

>This is also why there's rich ecosystem of browsers around it.

The initial releases of Brave, Vivaldi, and Edge (Chrome-based) were in 2016, 2015, and 2018, respectively. In 2015, Chrome already had a ~50% usage share, followed by Safari and IE, at ~10%, and Firefox at ~5%. Now the choice is between basing your browser on one with ~50% usage share and one with ~5%. Here's the first reason MS provided for the decision to migrate their browser to Chrome base:

>Although Microsoft Edge has very high web compatibility for both standards-based HTML and for capabilities added by highly-used browsers like Chrome, our unique web-platform codebase still faces occasional compatibility problems as web developers focus less on HTML standards and rationally focus on widely used platforms like Chrome to develop and validate experiences for their customers.

The "rich" ecosystem you're talking about could be due to technical merit but could also be irrelevant to it.

> Have you actually seen Firefox source code?

Yes.

> It's horrible; not one bit surprising that Chromium won!

Nope. It's just old (maybe older than you, even, IDK). It's Netscape, actually. It's very commendable that the codebase we're talking about has been successfully evolved up to that point [0].

[0]: https://arewefastyet.com

> maybe older than you, even

Okay so what? I appreciate good code, not old code. I needed to patch _some_ web browser a few years back, and had attempted Firefox first for kicks. It was a very painful experience, a few weeks no gain. The system design is arcane, all over the place. I later attempted the same with Chromium, and it worked out beautifully. I'd eventually opted for QtWebKit at the time.

There's no beating around the bush; Firefox code is horrible. You could make an argument that it is "tradition", of course. I'm not convinced.

> I'm not convinced.

I have not written that to convince you about anything. My aim was to tell the truth, as is.

Like it or not, Mozilla Firefox as we know it is almost 24 years old that point. Before that it was living as Netscape Navigator (which was born in 1994), and tried to be cross platform since get go.

This means it has born in a place there was no version control, almost no modern programming language facilities, and you had to pull a lot of "neat" tricks to be able to run the same code on very different architectures. On top of that these guys invented "push" and Javascript along the way.

Also, codebases rot. This is another reality of software. As a codebase lives longer than their primary caretakers, even if people document everything, new maintainers have different opinions on how to do things, and things evolve in a way that primary designers didn't anticipate.

This is reality of the software. You don't have to like it, but you can't prevent it. Actually, everything rots in the stack. From hardware architectures to OSes, and everything on top of these...

> I'd eventually opted for QtWebKit at the time.

The funny thing is QtWebKit is a fork of Apple's WebKit, which is a fork of KDE's KHTML browser engine, which also Chrome has forked (from Apple), and evolved. So they had a lot of time to redesign something which was working very well from the get go. They didn't write something from scratch like Netscape guys, and they had an advantage here. Plus, the initial devs were from Mozilla, so they knew the shortcomings of Gecko, and avoided the problems.

All in all, Chrome had a second mover advantage with the added benefit of carrying learnt lessons of the first mover.

> There's no beating around the bush; Firefox code is horrible. You could make an argument that it is "tradition", of course.

There's no beating around the bush; Firefox code is old. You could make an argument that you didn't work with legacy systems in your life ever, of course.

I'm not convinced.

Are you serious dude?

> Have you actually seen Firefox source code? It's horrible

That's the first time in many years I have seen anyone saying something like this (on HN, reddit or other forums where I waste my time). It's so elitist and ridiculous that it's almost funny -- really? You read (likely a very small portion of) a product's source code and use very short-sighted, biased and subjective understanding of the code to determine whether it's a good product? How is that any better or more meaningful than flipping a coin?

I happened to have read the HTML page source of some random Amazon product page and Apple product page a while ago. Wow that seems a horrible unmaintainable mess with lots of waste of bandwidth. But that's just my very uneducated opinion by quickly scanning the code without more context and could be completely wrong. Even that's "true", it doesn't matter -- it does not affect my shopping experience a single bit, and they are both great websites to use in the end.

Developers should do at least some testing in every reasonably popular browser engine.

I feel like that's true only because we have a culture of making needlessly complex websites on the level of OS drivers, mostly to artificially grab attention due to the sickness of SEO.

Web browsers could have 1/10th of the features, basically enough for markdown, forms, forums, displaying media, and minimal styling.

Yes, and that would be enough to make a useful internet. Unfortunately, out of control capitalistic tendencies push for maximum features for no real benefit at all.

How am I supposed to break the back button, "improve" scrolling, and make links you can't open in a new tab without at least 5mb of Javascript?

Hahah. Don't forget paywalls. More websites should have those.

Why would you need a whole Ungoogled Chrome project for testing and not doing any "real" browsing?

agree. but why wouldn't you just use stock chrome? even if you're doing something sensitive it's not hard to block dataflows to the GOOG, and in all likelihood it doesn't matter for most testing.

One could just as easily ask the inverse: why not use Ungoogled Chromium when it's readily available and easy to install?

I can't speak for anyone else, but I favor things that are more removed from big tech.

In the context of testing, the "why not" is obviously because most of the users are using Google Chrome and not Ungoogled Chromium.

Or Brave.

Or Edge, which just works.

which spies even more than Chrome

Even though I use Firefox and upvoted your comment, I will also say that it's good for this to exist.

A monoculture of Firefox would be just as bad. In fact there are already right now reasons to use various "de-mozilla'd Firefox" forks instead of Firefox.

Ie the same effort as this even while using Firefox, so that effort doesn't actually factor into anything.

We’re so far aware from a non-Chrome monoculture, though, that this feels like saying an ice age could be as disruptive as global warming. Right now Google can dictate what happens on the web, and using Safari or Firefox is better than any browser engine which is controlled by Google, including this one.

I personally use Safari for performance (going back to Chrome adds noticeable jank even on an M2 Max) after using Firefox for the 2010s but the key part here really is centering on web standards.

It doesn't matter that we're not in danger of a FF monoculture. Totally irrelevant.

At one point Chrome was new and people said "just use Chrome" and at that time they were far away from a Chrome monoculture. It also doesn't matter that Google then and Mozilla now are in different universes of scale.

It is a value to the world to have even a mere proof of concept chrome compatible browser that has as little Google or MS special input as possible, even if that isn't 0%.

I use Firefox as my main browser on a Mac. A lot, every day - I have about 30 Firefox windows open now. But there are a number of things that only work in Chrome or Safari.

So I also use Ungoogled Chromium. I have about 3 Ungoogled Chromium windows open now.

Occasionally a banking, financial service, shopping or video meeting site doesn't work right in Firefox. I've had some site logins just spin forever in Firefox, and work immediately in Chromiun.

For example, for work with one company we use Google video meetings a lot. In theory this works in Firefox, but in practice sometimes the audio doesn't work. The microphone volume gets set to zero, unpredictably. It's flaky enough that I switched to Ungoogled Chromium for those, and decided to use it for all the Google Workspace linked services for that company, as well as AWS, Hetzner etc accounts linked with that company.

Chromium's profiles are good, with clear separation and a reasonable UI. So are Firefox containers, but in different ways.

Firefox automatic per-site container selection doesn't work at all well when you have multiple accounts on the same site, though. It doesn't group container-switching according to working context. So I have a couple of Ungoogled Chromium profiles for work with different companies.

Finally, Chrome renders print-to-PDF better for some use-cases, so I use Ungoogled Chromium to generate invoices and similar documents. Firefox print-to-PDF works, but I could never get ruled lines to be.a good thickness on the printed page. They were always too thick, or invisible. Firefox did better pagination last time tried it, though.

I might be out of touch, wasn't Chromium itself originally "ungoogled Chrome"?

Chromium still includes features and integrations with Google, and telemetry going to Google.

Chromium is merely Chrome with only the open source parts. Chromium components are still implemented in a Google-controlled repo. So it has Google-oriented features and defaults.

1. Google Chrome

2. Chromium

3. Ungoogled Chrome?

4. Ungoogled Chromium?

5. Googled Chromium?

How does it differ from regular Chromium?

Note I work for Google and I've contributed to Chromium, though I'm not necessarily an expert on Chromium forks.

1. Google Chrome

This is offical Chrome you download from google.com and also comes on ChromeOS devices.

2. Chromium

This is what you get when someone builds Chromium from the official repo without access to confidential source.

Source is confidential for various reasons, and some code that seems should be confidential actually isn't, like Android-for-ChromeOS integration, some of which is here: https://crsrc.org/c/chrome/browser/ash/arc/

3. Ungoogled Chrome?

This seems a contradiction of terms. Only Google can build Chrome, so they are not likely to e.g. set Bing as default or remove Google password manager support.

4. Ungoogled Chromium?

A particular project run by a particular team which forks Chromium and removes pro-Google behavior and settings.

5. Googled Chromium?

I don't know the original context of the use of this term, but possibly this just refers to official Chrome.

I've been grabbing macOS builds of Chromium from the Playwright project (https://playwright.dev)

The download URL follows this template

    https://playwright.azureedge.net/builds/chromium/{revision}/chromium-mac.zip

To find the current revision, look in

    https://raw.githubusercontent.com/microsoft/playwright/main/packages/playwright-core/browsers.json

Today I'm seeing

    {
      "name": "chromium",
      "revision": "1151",
      "installByDefault": true,
      "browserVersion": "132.0.6834.32"
    },

So I'd grab

    https://playwright.azureedge.net/builds/chromium/1151/chromium-mac.zip

After unzipping, mark the file as runnable with

    xattr -d com.apple.quarantine Chromium.app

There's also https://github.com/macchrome/macstable/releases (which offers ungoogled Chrome, not Chromium). Not signed.

Just use Safari.

you mean the IE of the 2020s?

Have used most browsers since 1993. As an end user Safari is not comparable to how IE was.

Safari has been my daily driver for a decade. Clean, integrated well into MacOS. Just works. I only have to crack out Chrome for the odd awkward website that’s usually terrible in all sorts if other ways, apart from poor testing. Like a bad bank.

Safari is great if your idea of a browser is from 2010's. Safari is not really on top of modern Web standards which is a shame because it really does have clean UI, albeit not too many options for power-users. No extension ecosystem, etc. They were right to question _some_ standards, but other than that they're simply behind. There's a reason Chromium moved on from WebKit, and many misgivings of Safari could probably be traced back to it being hard to develop / maintain.

How is Safari "behind" modern standards? Seems pretty up to date, if not ahead in come cases, to me.

https://caniuse.com/?compare=chrome+134,safari+18.2,firefox+...

See the last table. By what extent of imagination it is "up to date"? Not to mention that many "Partials" in the second table are really more on the "No" side, like Push API. But yeah, it's not even the matter of WebGPU, or whatever, Safari doesn't support SVG favicons still...

P.S. Surprised how far back Firefox had fallen, actually.

The last table is an awful lot of chrome only bits, many of which are a pretty bad idea on the web.

Ah yes, the "Vibration API", I really wish Safari had that. And the Web MIDI API, and Web Bluetooth, Web Serial, etc etc.

The vast majority of these are APIs that I explicitly do not want websites to use. Especially things like "touch events", which would serve to allow websites to implement their own dumbass broken scroll implementations (again, this is very intentionally not supported.) It would seem Apple is very intentional in choosing not to support most of these.

There is only one reason these APIs exist at all, and it is that Google has decided to make their browser into an OS (chromeOS) and so they need to invent a web API for everything a normal OS may need to do, so that "everything is a webapp" can be a sorta half-true thing. They exist because Google crammed them through standards committees that they have essentially a majority vote on.

I have no interest in developing "native" applications and engaging with the two-party app stores. So yes, I really wish Safari had implemented Push API, so that iOS users are able to use the same capabilities that my other users are already enjoying. However, they have no choice; as Apple disallows any browser engines besides Safari WebView, they're only allowed to have capabilities that Apple deems worth implementing themselves. I'm even more interested in WebUSB so that iOS users could use USB security hardware like my other users can, and the best iOS users can do for the time being is Yubikey, and they cannot even do PGP, or PIV without installing walled software. That said, I'm up for whatever, ANYTHING, as long as I don't have to interact with Google/Apple to deliver my code.

I mean, I totally get the benefits of having the web have so many API’s that the browser is basically an entire OS.

But the fact that a browser decides not to be an entire OS just because google’s doing it, I don’t think that means they’re the “new IE”. It means it’s a browser and not an entire operating system, and I’m ok with that.

By the most reasonable extent of my imagination: daily usage, the browser is the best of all available. It’s super fast, super stable and not spyware. It’s also great fit for the ecosystem.

This is my experience also. I do use Chrome for one use case: I run all Google properties on Chrome, and the rest of the web on Safari.

I enjoy Google products, but I am also careful to tune my Google privacy, etc. settings. Keeping the use of all Google properties on Chrome keeps things clear, for an old man like myself. BTW, I seldom use Google search, but everything else except for GMail I pay for: GCP, YouTube Plus, Gemini (love the large context size, and almost free API use), etc.

Off topic, but almost everything of value I use on the web is something I pay for. Adding in buying books to read, user experience is better than reading or using random junk on the web.

And what about the 90%+ of the world not using an Apple OS?

You’re commenting in a thread about a MacOS Chromium version.

The previous page behavior with the weird animation and reload is too horrible for that.

That follows your system setting for the back gesture (mouse clicks immediately go back). If you use "Swipe Left or Right with Two Fingers" for the "Swipe between pages" setting, there is no animation. If you don't use a Magic Mouse or Magic Trackpad I don't think you'd see it at all.

That's the issue - I want to keep the default settings but disable this animation when using the trackpad.

Just use Firefox.

It is also a better browser.

I recommend Orion from the magi guys. Blazing fast - and webextensions

i miss the old opera with presto engine. they had the best web browser in times when IE was still the king. then firefox took over and was good. then google got involved, took over khtml and made chrome and now there is only chrome with different skins and icons and firefox is not that good any more.

only after ungoogled-chromium I realised how dumb chrome omnibar without glued google autocomplete is, it not configurable at all and visited/bookmarked local search simply does not work.

it is abismal compared to librewolf (firefox)

but chromium feels faster and with better video files handling compared to firefox

Can anyone explain to me why? I can see that I can already install it from the original repository as well?

Google's interests don't align with yours so taking something that infeasible to rewrite yourself like a modern browser and only ripping out the worst parts is a useful alternative?

Not sure why this is an HN post at all, but I think the link points to the packaging build setup for the ungoogled binaries, rather than the binaries themselves.

Isn't the original repo linking to this one? The only thing I notice, is that this one is notarized by Apple.

Ungoogled Chromium is a project originating from China and maintained there.

The main reason it originally exists is because Google services are unavailable there, but you still want to use Chrome.

Some of the developers are really skilled and passionated there because they need this tool themselves.

> Ungoogled Chromium is a project originating from China and maintained there.

I don't know Eloston well enough to comment on the first half of that statement but the second half is certainly not true for the core repo!

I needed some Chromium devs for a project so I contacted a few of the active maintainers on different platforms.

Eventually had to give up: "sorry no I'm living in China, too complicated", which is sad because some of the people seemed really nice and smart.

From the public information, you can only guess based on the names:

One example: https://web.archive.org/web/20200920040602/https://mentors.d...

or https://space.bilibili.com/439205819 (seems also smart and nice).

I'm sure there are many counter-examples as well.

It's not good or bad, just very logical that people who don't want Google are the ones who get a HTTP timeout or a lockup every time they try to send a request to Google.

I switched back to firefox works fine

What would be a driving reason to use this versus Brave?

According to Mozilla's "Firefox vs Brave" page, the foremost reason is Brave's ad blocking might be too good and block pages you don't want to block.

The ones that give Google money to Mozilla, presumably - but there are other problems with Brave.

Because brave has a questionable business model where they, on one hand, block third party ads and trackers, and on the other inject their own ads, tied to their BAT cryptocurrency (the latter part being opt-in IIRC).

They also:

- added their own affiliate codes when visiting some sites [1]

- installed VPNs without consent [2]

which also taints their privacy focused posture.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/8/21283769/brave-browser-aff...

[2] https://www.androidpolice.com/brave-browser-windows-vpn-with...

I think it'd be better just to use Firefox, because it's still a better platform for uBlock origin.

This ^^^^. For those who want increased data privacy and ad blocking with extensions, Firefox continues to provide proper support for manifest V2 (MV2).

Yeah, my only hope is that it stays that way. Unfortunately, the web has become so complex that browsers continually have to be updated for security reasons, and hence we are at the mercy of Mozilla not to weaken at the behest of Google.

Fortunately in this regard, Google will soon be legally barred from paying Mozilla, and Mozilla will cease to exist.

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