uBlock Origin is no longer available on the Chrome Store
chromewebstore.google.com
chromewebstore.google.com
I migrated off Chrome as soon as this BS story about improving privacy, a joke coming from Google. Then the excuse was "well it improves performance", which they could easily do by marking extensions as low performance.
If Google wanted to improve this they have an entire search engine where they could re-rank sites based on privacy and performance.
It was never about improving peoples web experience.
The most recent case before this was nearly 40 years ago under Reagan, and he certainly wasn't the first president guilty of it.
The "Main Stream Media" rhetoric really started with the teaparty stuff, powered by the internet, and championed both the right (tea party in america, faragists in the UK) and left (corbynistas in the uk, AOC types I assume in the states)
I never said it was?
But who told you that there is a Fourth Estate? Was it the very “Fourth Estate”?
Great. Very few companies do. What difference does it make?
We don't give bankrobbers credit for all the days they could've robbed a bank but didn't.
It seems to completely lose track of the face value significance of any individual instance of abuse because it gets lost in the comparative equation to hypothetical worst harms.
It also confusingly treats restraint as though X amount of restraint can then be cashed in for a certain amount of harm, rather than something that's supposed to happen by default under good stewardship.
And it shifts the whole question to whether or not that position is being abused when I think the criticisms are more fundamental about the fact that they shouldn't be in the position to have or not have that leverage in the first place.
So that, long and short, would be my detox from the assumptions at play here.
>Lawyer: Okay, let's say my client killed his wife. What about the people he didn't kill?! That's six billion people! Don't they matter? Don't they matter?!
>Caption: In an alternate universe, Jeffrey Dahmer has a thank you parade every year.
That's some fatalistic wording. How about:
Company that publishes a free product and business model relies on ads, stops distributing app that piggybacks on their free product while circumventing ads.
And it shouldn't take waiting until specific examples happen to understand the incentives and the possibilities that could ripen at some future date.
And just to throw in my little side hobby horse on this conversation, it's what I find personally frustrating about conversations with people who think that Brave counts as an alternative.
Being attached at the hip to the Chromium project is a ground level commitment to a long-term vulnerability, and it means that similar circumstances could "ripen" at some future date as the family of Chromium browsers become dependent on an increasingly vast foundation of code and web standards. To me, the combination of that capability and the incentive should be enough to be treated as a complete argument which disqualifies Chromium derived browsers from counting as alternatives.
But chrome is free to choose not to distribute that plugin. If you want you can download it elsewhere.
And regardless, using their ownership of the browser to shut down competitors is the very definition of "anti-competitive" "monopolistic" behavior.
That people claim it's impossible for a browser to survive without Google's funding demonstrates how broken the market is by ad money: of course people would pay for something like a web browser if it were illegal to make money by selling your users. The web is obviously valuable to people.
Call your senator and propose a bill, otherwise we'll keep doing what's legal.
Have we seen this movie before?
That way if I click on some random GCP link in Slack it opens the link in Chrome, but everything else stays in Firefox. I don't need ad blocking for GCP so that works fine.
Sucks, but better than using Chrome full time.
For various functionality, there's also NeoLinker, UntrackMe, Intent Intercept, unalix, LinkSheet, and Open Link With. I believe Lynket browser, which uses the custom tab protocol, also has some basic rules-based choosing but it only works with two browsers and the rules are based on the app making the request.
It looks like LinkSheet added many of the settings I'm looking for at some point, so I'll be trying that out.
That would at least save you from stuff like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17942252.
Same thing will happen in the billing portal or really any experience but I notice it the most in BQ.
I killed the tab and tried it in Chromium where the UI was... not snappy, but in range for my expectations of a heavyweight frontend.
Using Firefox and whatever for the Google cloud is kinda like running Windos applications in Wine or ReactOS.
Sometimes works better than on the original Windows? I assume that's not what you meant though :-)
But you know better than anyone's else what you meant :-)
Chrome is their project, they should be free to do whatever they want with it. People can use a different browser if they wish (I do).
This whole “better for users” bullshit is why I don’t respect Google as a company. Don’t piss on me and tell me it’s raining.
That said, I know a number of xooglers (myself included) who don't believe for a moment that this would have gotten off the ground if someone important hadn't opined on the usefulness WRT ad-serving.
Of course not all of them do, Google is a big company.
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...
Of course lying about why makes it worse, but I don't think it would've been that much more okay if Google was honest and said "users' ability to install highly effective ad blockers hurts our bottom line so we're removing them".
My mom, who has Ublock Origin installed on her Chrome by me, will never know these details.
I LOL every time I see it. Imagine the lengths they have to go to, to try to make people trust a product they have.
Google has a long history of "accidentally" breaking gmail on firefox and funneling users to Chrome back in the day. It's beyond stupid to argue they should be able to do whatever they want with their vertically integrated monopoly.
Like, if you want to dig holes in your own driveway sure whatever, but if you own all the roads in Detroit and you want to dig holes in them, then make a killing selling new tires and suspension repair a fair society wouldn't move out of Detroit, they'd fucking run you out of town.
The more things Google does to make gmail less useful, the better.
It’s no secret that Google is an ad company. Anyone still using gmail deserves what they get.
Let’s not pretend this was done unto them. Anyone can stop using gmail at any time.
If you're dealing with spam originating from Gmail, without any helpful action from Google, that's not really your choice.
If you're dealing with difficulties sending mail to Gmail users, without help from Google, that's also not really your choice.
If vast numbers of other people stopped using Gmail, those problems would mostly go away.
Your post: > Everyone dealing with gmail is doing so because they chose to.
No, it's clear that not everyone dealing with Gmail is doing so because they chose to. Repeating your incorrect statement does not make it correct.
Further, everyone has to deal with its impacts on the email ecosystem as it's practically impossible for somebody who works a 9-5 to run their own mail server that Gmail will deign to not only accept mail from but also successfully deliver it to its intended recipient.
So even if I never use Gmail I still have to deal with replies going to / coming from it.
Just going to copy/paste this part of the comment you replied to, because it seems like you may have missed it?
>My company uses gmail so I'm forced to use it.
I would recommend Google Workspace to any company because it gives them a ton of business productivity tools.
I would probably not recommend gmail as a users default personal email because frankly it's not that good.
The reality is most users have a Google account ans just use their Gmail account which is bundled.
Most of my circle which cares effectively use their Gmail account for sites that insist on it and never open that e-mail if they can get away with it.
It's a collective action problem: you'll have to persuade millions and millions of "normies", who have no idea what's going on, or what internet privacy is, or what's broken about the system, and who don't care to learn, and won't listen to us - or you'll have to impose regulation. Those are the choices. The second seems more possible than the first. Us nerds saying "walk away" is idealistic; we will, and always will, get squished, because the corps have the power and most folks won't (ever) care.
Who's your host, just in case that's the difference?
True, and applies to many other things as well. Anyone claiming otherwise is shirking responsibility for their own actions. Every single sibling comment here suffers from this.
Arguments in the form of "other people do it, so I must also" are unpersuasive and pathetic.
Not my wife - her school board mandates it.
Would Google be making the world shit if all its cloud services had only a few dozen thousand users?
What's forcing you to interact with Google isn't Google, but Google users.
Organizations I don't like = Monopoly!
Organizations I like = ...
Gmail is not a government service. Google is free to make that work with only one browser, if they want.
You can't assert that Google must make Gmail work with any browser whatsoever, because that means supporting someone using Windows 95 with Internet Explorer 5.5.
If manifest V3 ad blockers were nonfunctional to the point of being broken, I’d be more concerned, but in my experience they’re perfectly OK.
I don't understand why they ads are not spliced into the stream. It would be undetectable by extensions at all.
Maybe you're willing to pay the price, but that doesn't mean it was what's best for the ecosystem.
When I maintained a hook-based plugin system, I learned that many programmers do not know data structures or algorithms and would slow down the whole software by writing plugins that looked up rules using extremely slow ways extremely often. And if users wanted to complain about the software being slow, they would always blame me first.
But when I replaced it with rule lists, now I was in control and could implement fast data structures.
You're just pissed because I've chosen to block your code in software you created. Next, you'll tell me I have to watch your programming on a TV I bought with your code on it.
The idea that we have to do anything that evilCorp wants us to do is just insane that people have come to the point of accepting that.
They shouldn't be free to use all the money in the world to corner a market, rope in the conpetition and then abuse that position.
It only works because nobody can touch them, it's otherwise straight illegal in most markets.
https://arstechnica.com/google/2025/03/doj-google-must-sell-...
Yes, Tik Tok still needs to divest ownership or be banned in the US
For one, they simply have had a better product, at least in the past. Part of their large monopoly is due to just being better outright for a large portion of users (presumably). Are we to punish making overly-good products?
For another, sell to whom? And why would they be a good steward?
And yet another, there's literally Chromium, which other browsers (built by other corps) use, e.g. Edge, Brave, etc.
Did Google have to open Chromium? No.
Disclaimer: I hold these opinions weakly and would love to learn more about why they might be ill-premised.
Google did not make Chromium from scratch, and so were obligated to use a license compatible with the previous source they used. That source can be traced back to KDE's Konqueror browser and its KHTML engine.
However they chose to do it in the open, side benefit they also got to use a ton of preexisting code.
The modern web, as we all know, is all kinds of shit. Anybody here compile Firefox recently?
Doesn't Safari have the same restriction, also ostensibly for "security/privacy" reasons? The only difference is that Apple doesn't have a web advertising presence, so you can't make the accusation that they're "abuse its market position to their own benefit".
Very much a lesser of all evils situation.
Firefox is also the only open alternative to Chromium at the moment, so I prefer to endorse it instead.
But, I always recommend Brave for less-technical folks. It just works! My FF setup includes a number of extensions, some of which need a bit of tuning to be useful. Then you have to deal with issues in websites that just don't properly support FF, etc. My grandmother can install Brave and simply start browsing. Things just work without extra config or tinkering.
https://brianbondy.com/blog/174/the-road-to-brave-10
Why do you write "probably... based on... relationship ended"? Brave as a startup does not have time for feels not realz, pathos-over-logos nonsense. I recommend you avoid it in your work efforts too.
https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations-from-...
This is a choice we made. As I wrote in my last reply, I think we would have died trying to get Gecko/Graphene with a Web front end up to competitive scratch vs. Chrome (nm Firefox).
A Firefox fork would have gone over badly with some potentially large number of Mozilla/Firefox fans, and we'd still lack key elements not part of the Mozilla open source (at the time, e.g., Adobe's CDM for HTML5 DRM). On the upside we'd have more UX customizability.
But our choice of Chromium/Blink (via Electron, so we had Web front end upside without Firefox extensions) was not a slam dunk choice. It involved trade-offs, as all engineering does. One downside is we have to audit and network-test for leaks and blunders, which often come from Chromium upstream:
There's no need to do it, their built-in adblocker supports the same rule lists.
There's also built in blocking under brave://settings/shields for Javascript and social features.
It doesn't have a specific feature to block fonts AFAIK but it does have fingerprint protection if that's your concern.
e.g. on DuckDuckGo.
(I work on Brave's adblocker, and FWIW the folks who work for Brave are very open about their affiliation when commenting about it online)
There is some bitching about the ads crypto token, but that is entirely optional, so complaints are mostly fear and dogma. And to be honest, is a fascinating new approach to ads that suvberts the current state of affairs in the advertising market.
At least it certainly leaves me (personally) having second thoughts, even though I'm no purist and use proprietary software (but try prefer free software if I can).
Your response: "I want to keep my cake and eat it too."
I have a solution for you, stop using YouTube if you feel so strongly that a video platform should be free to use.
I'm paraphrasing in the quotes, they aren't real quotes...
https://arstechnica.com/google/2025/03/doj-google-must-sell-...
Now, why do I have this feeling that it will be bought by some entity very close to the current US administration?
In the last five years or so Firefox has increasingly introduced controversial changes that make it (IMHO) less good, primarily around interface design. And, from what I understand, Mozilla employs full-time UX designers who've been driving much of that. Of course, with Firefox it's still possible to modify, fix and restore all these recent interface "improvements" with user CSS but it's a constant annoyance to need to keep fixing it. Fortunately, there's an active community effort around restoring the Firefox interface and usability, exemplified by the brilliant Lepton project https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix/releases.
My perception just watching the evolution of Firefox from the outside, is that it used to be a browser that celebrated the ethos of "Have it Your Way." However, Mozilla the company gets money to pay its executives and employees (millions in the case of more than one recent CEO) by actively driving users and eyeballs for Google, Pocket and other advertisers. So the company is highly incentivized to try myriad changes and redesigns to increase appeal to "the masses" of browser users. Thus, the UX keeps getting 'simplified' and 'de-cluttered' with advanced functionality 'de-prioritized' and add-on support demoted to second-class afterthought - instead of the shining key feature advanced users value most. Basically, in recent years the Firefox UX and end-user features have been pushed by the substantial payroll needs of the Mozilla company to become more like Chrome and Safari instead of embracing its unique position as a tool for power users who value advanced features, customization and extension. And it was all for naught because Firefox has continued to lose market share while ignoring (and even actively alienating) its niche community of fanatically devoted power users.
Do they also get outraged when Costco “abuses its monopoly” as soon as they stop providing free samples or cheap hotdogs?
Google is an ad company restriction use of the primary ad-blocker on its browser, it's blatant.
I haven't tried others like Ad Blocker etc...
No, content blockers are specific to Safari. Third party apps can show ads just fine.
They've gone well beyond what Microsoft did in the 2000s.
Google owns so many panes of glass and funnels them all through its search and advertising funnel. They've distorted how the web (and mobile) work to accomplish this massive market distortion.
Search, Ads, and Android should be broken up into separate units. Chrome shouldn't be placed with any of those units.
While we're cutting, YouTube should be its own entity and stand on its own legs too.
Apple, Amazon, and Meta need the same scrutiny. Grocery stores and primary care doctors should not be movie studios and core internet infrastructure. Especially when those units are wholly subsidized by other unrelated business units, and their under pricing the market is used to strangle out the incumbents and buy them up on the cheap.
New management is aligned with breaking up big tech.
Founders Fund (Thiel), A16Z (Andressen [0], Horowitz), and YC (Gary Tan) have all been lobbying for some form of big tech breakup because it sucks up capital+oxygen needed for startups they funded to exit at respectable valuations.
Also, Andressen's Netscape was screwed over by Microsoft, so he has a grudge against large players.
[0] - https://www.businessinsider.com/andreessen-more-tech-compani...
Startups would be able to grow larger. There would be less threat from big tech coming in to eat your market, and M&A wouldn't be the preferred exit strategy.
Tech talent would be able to get paid more without big tech setting wages and orchestrating coordinated layoffs. More successful startups = more money for venture and labor capital. Right now that money just goes to institutional shareholders which are not the innovation drivers of the economy.
Startups will actually get to compete for markets rather than having them won and subsidized by unrelated business units at the big tech titans. The solutions delivered will fit the market needs much better.
Even big tech itself might fetch a higher valuation and be greater than the sum of its parts. So much of big tech is inefficient, untethered from market realities (eg. Alexa), and a waste of talent and human capital on dead end projects. Having Jeff Bezos "pay whatever it takes" to acquire the rights to "007" is a sign of how bloated these market distorting companies have become.
This needs to happen and is long overdue.
That one is already being pursued.
Imagine what it would cost Google's bottom line if Apple was truly user-focused and enabled ad-blocking on desktop, mobile and embedded safari views by default. Someone do the napkin math please!
I understand that nerfing adblocking is definitely a big draw for Google, but Apple went the ManifestV3 route many years before, specifically to increase extension performance and privacy.
Back then there was a big uproar too, but mostly because Safari extension developers charged for a new version because they had to rewrite the entire thing.
This reasoning is so bogus that it’s hard to believe anybody could believe it in good faith. Ad blockers are essential for performance and user privacy and security.
If Apple truly bought into this reasoning then they’d integrate an ad blocker like Brave does. Follow the money.
And Apple does care because later on they started to allow blockers to spread blocking rules over multiple sub-extensions. Initially they were limited on... 15 000 rules? Can't quite remember.
Works fine on my machine. You might need to update your filter lists or try another content blocker app.
>Content blockers often block cookie banners too which can often result in broken functionality - a nightmare when you’re trying to buy tickets to something and have to “reload without blockers” for the website to work.
So don't enable the filter lists that try to block cookie banners?
There's also a new extension that was posted on hn a few weeks that's free and claims to have scriptlets to block youtube ads as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43204406#43208085
You can perform video search through DuckDuckGo, Invidious, or Piped.
The latter two are often blocked themselves, copy the video URL and feed to mpv to play through your preferred video player on the command-line:
Recent mpv / ytdl can almost always gain access. If you are blocked, check for updates to ytdl (which mpv typically uses for video/media downloading).
Apple and google did everything for you to not know about it. It’s not the first thread where people either don’t know about it or will read but won’t try.
In my experience only the big ad networks let you post anything. Small specialized ad platforms usually have actual moderation.
Edit:// by the way it wasn't that hard to get ads trough ublocks filters by self hosting them either. But that's rarely really evil and I never saw that abused.
You're telling me you block ads, but have to unblock ads to view your ad sales?
Is this in the DSM-V?
If the page is too ad-ridden to tolerate, I may consider to just close that page, and go search for other options.
I use Firefox + uBlock Origin, because going to the wide commercial internet without some form of ad blocking is like going out without an umbrella when it's raining heavily.
The big deal was allegedly these small shops exposed you to viruses, but Walmart, Kroger, and Lowes did not.
Make it make sense.
Ad blockers usually block such stuff, for a good reason. But I don't mind it on a checkout page specifically though, because on a checkout page I wilfully disclose a ton of my private details, such as name, address, etc.
Good checkout pages work well with an ad blocker on.
Wasn’t Mozilla accused of selling data they collected from Firefox users?
Correct me if I’m wrong.
It's just the paradox of when you present yourself as "the good guys" - people will hold you extra accountable for things that others easily get away with as nobody expects them to do better.
Unfortunately, Mozilla tends to shoot themselves in their foot this way somewhat often.
I almost exclusively use Safari and I havent seen a single ad in almost a decade
Ps changed the term to avoid confusion, thanks!
The webRequestBlocking api, which allows the extension to inspect all request/responses in real time and act on them. With manifest v3 the extension can only supply a list of expressions to block, and the expressions that can be used is very limited.
The main difference between this and current element blockers is that Web Defuser allows you to block annoying behaviors (by modifying requests/responses in flight) in addition to elements.
At the moment it's a bit lacking in the UI department, I'd appreciate early adopter feedback (you can contact me at gmail with my username).
But you're right. When I'm using Safari with 1Blocker, I don't even notice that I'm not using Chrome with uBlock Origin. And it accomplishes that with static rules instead of with an API that reads every request.
In other words, Google pays Apple ~$20B per year to be default search engine because they make ~$53B in revenue from those searches. This is profitable for both Apple and Google -- no "wildly illegal under-the-table measures" required.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/14/apple-gets-36percent-of-goog...
even when an outsider tries to think of the nastiest scam, an insider shows up to explain the boring day to day is already worse.
It's not that weird that people are a bit suspicious that it's really worth Google $20B/year.
I don't know if or how much that's changed.
I just gave Bing a quick try, and it seems to be a bit more useful (for Singapore) now than it used to be. I haven't tried all the other alternatives.
The power of the default is just that, they it is the default.
Also Apple themself has only one incentive which is to get the best deal for themselves. Is Microsoft willing to offer more money than Google? The evidence points to no.
Defaults is exactly how Microsoft has been getting away with everything they did for forever. Anti-trust investigations? Irrelevant if you can just make it configurable but the default is Microsoft.
Most people don't change default settings unless prompted and guided. And adding a setting shuts up most of "us" coz we'll just change it.
The only reason they're remove the ability to configure something would've been if too many of us change the settings for too many of our friends and relatives for it to register negatively on their end and they'd try to get away with not allowing it to be configured / hiding it as much as possible until they actually get anti-trust investigated // convicted (Re: requiring Windows to ask if you want to install other browsers than Internet Explorer).
I hate these arguments where people point to some other shitty thing a company is doing as some sort of gotcha.
Windows is split off from Lenovo/Dell. How's that working out for the Windows OS, or the Edge browser?
Edge is a perfectly good browser now? Probably should be its own company too if we are splitting Chrome off from Google.
I will tell you that we should split these companies into 100 parts if thats what you are asking.
Imagine if Apple licensed its chips out in competition with Qualcomm...
Have you missed the part of my comment of my comment where I specifically mentioned "web advertising presence"? That's relevant, because ublock would only work on web ads. It can't block ads in the app store, or any other app (eg. spotify).
https://github.com/search?q=repo%3AuBlockOrigin%2FuAssets+ap...
Thus they also clearly have an incentive to sabotage uBO. It may be a much smaller piece of their revenue than at Google, but it is a huge proportion of their revenue growth. Don't believe Apple's marketing about their caring for privacy, belied by their actions.
Can you link to a specific rule that shows Apple has web ads? The search results you linked either removeparam filters (which I guess is "tracking", but probably the most benign kind), malware sites that contain "apple.com", or analytics domains that seemingly belong to apple. Moreover there's no evidence that Safari's content blocker restrictions make a difference here. The domains are trivially blocked so it's unclear how apple is materially gaining from their nerfed adblock.
Sure, it doesn't rule out google was secretly intending on doing it, only internal memos or whatever can prove that definitively. But at the same time, to immediately conclude that google was "abusing its market position", you would have to be maximally uncharitable to google. That's a sad way to see the world. Take for instance, the flak that google got for banning third party cookies. If this is done by anyone else (eg. Firefox), this would be seen as a good thing. However, cynics have opposed this on the basis that such change would disadvantage third party ad networks more than google, thus google was "abusing its market position to their own benefit" and therefore the change was bad.
The reasoning is obvious, and "plausible deniability" is not enough to give Google charity. The more difficult you make it to block ads, the more impressions, and the more money made. Yet you believe people should be "charitable" to the same company that can't hire the manpower to defend their own users against bad faith DCMA takedown notices. Because they ran the analysis, and it wasn't worth the cost.
Best case scenario, Chromium loses market share, implements the parts removed from V2, Google likely kicks the can down the road to Manifest V4.
There's no reason to believe companies deserve charitability. Companies are systems designed to extract maximum value, and when the world around that system changes, the system adjusts itself. It's not the systems fault for trying to get more value, it's our fault for letting them.
Note: I'm upset too that ublock origin stopped working. I switched to ublock origin lite and it's mostly working, though there are some ads sneaking through. I'm not sure if that just means
(1) it needs an update
(2) I should look for another blocker (IIUC ublock origin lite is not maintained much?)
(3) It's impossible in V3 to block these few things that are currently not blocked.
Eventually, there will be an overstep that make enough capable people mad, and those people will get together and make/mod something better.
I currently use Adguard as a content blocker for Safari on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. Does this mean that Safari will also start restricting access to these ad blockers?
I kinda appreciate that you still apply some benefit of the doubt.
What are you using instead?
Brave is decent too if you want something Chromium-based but more privacy-focused (comes with minor controversies).
Safari works well if you're in the Apple ecosystem.
I actually run a dual-browser setup these days - Firefox for most browsing, and only fire up Brave for those annoying sites that Google has mysteriously "optimized" to run poorly elsewhere. Not ideal but gets the job done!
Everyone will call them on it. Why not be straight with their intentions?
An advertising company optimizing their technology to better support their business while improving security.
| month | Chrome | Firefox | Safari |
| -- | -- | -- | -- |
| Jan '25 | -1.29 | +0.07 | +0.84 |
| Feb '25 | -0.75 | +0.08 | +0.03 |
I know these numbers seem tiny, but if these trends were to continue, Chrome could be under 50% marketshare by June 2026 and overtaken by the end of 2027
Disco Stu has something to say about that
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/extensions-...
The reason why Chrome waited for so long to add extensions was the danger they posed to users. I was at Google when Sergey often worried about what extensions would do to non technical and older users who get tricked into installing them, then I saw first hand that danger with my own grandparents. They had extensions intercepting every network request, redirecting certain sites to fake sites, and injecting code into pages. It was horrifying, and they were lucky that they didn't have significant money or identity theft.
And it's not "altruistic" - it's because eval() and webRequestBlocking are bad for security and performance, so they're bad for a lot of users. Users who will switch to Safari or another browser without that extension API, because the browser is faster or didn't exfiltrate their banking credentials.
Offering something then taking it away is materially different from never having offered it at all.
Abuse of extensions was certainly a problem with IE. But, Google was also happy to use IE controls for Google Toolbar and other functionality. It irks me when a company/tool makes use of another's more permissive policies/APIs in order to gain a foothold and then restricts others from doing the same with its products. It feels like pulling the ladder up behind you.
No point using 99% of the web due to the hostile, fraudolent, abusive approaches on top of the hollow (yeh, very very gentle world for the thing what it is) content. No point searching for advice, products, job, as crap is poured at you while your actions are registered, your profile is sold, just to pour dedicated crap on you by the highest bidder.
I have mail and 5 (7 with weather) pages I check regularly, and that's it. That's my online life. More like a hermit goes into town for tools and cans kind of digital solitary. Clicking on links only after reconsidering five times, if I am really interested in the possible content. Mostly here. So, so far away from the extremely curious me 20 or so years ago spending hours to the limit of my thirst and bladder, navigating all that is out there.
It is very sad what humanity made out of the Internet. It does not even hurt anymore. It is numb blob where the feeling about the rich common knowledge source this was and could have been should be.
https://programmerhumor.io/programming-memes/browsing-withou...
I feel really bad for less tech-savvy users who'll be stuck with this nightmare version of the internet.
Well the crappy copy does come with some extra text. (No judgement from me on whether the extra text improves the comic here; just that someone might think it does, and there's no arguing about taste.)
It's also interesting to see that XKCD itself explicitly supports eg hotlinking, and the license makes putting it into your own crappy creations rather easy. (Though I think the example linked to fails the 'attribution' requirement.)
I have the same experience as you, every time I set up a new machine or watch friends/relatives browse the web, it just blows my mind how bad the unfiltered internet is.
You realize these people pay check depend on that, right?
https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/23/tech/google-fires-employees-p...
June 2025: Chrome MV2 deprecation enterprise rollout
# defaults write com.google.Chrome.plist ExtensionManifestV2Availability -int 2
Now, because uBO is now disabled in the Chrome Web Store, you also need to install it as a "forced extension" (the way extensions are deployed in enterprise environments). Install the extension according to the section "Use a preferences file" in [2]:
- Create a file named cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm.json
- Place it in ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/External Extensions/
- With content:
{ "external_update_url": "https://clients2.google.com/service/update2/crx" }
The ExtensionManifestV2Availability definitely still works for now, but it's been a about a month since I used the preferences file way of installing the extension on a new device. YMMV.
[1] https://chromeenterprise.google/policies/#ExtensionManifestV... [2] https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/how-to/distribu...
I'm switching browsers, I hate ads more than I like Chrome.
Sounds like June 2025 is the real date when it'll no longer be possible to use manifest v2 extensions per https://blog.chromium.org/2024/05/manifest-v2-phase-out-begi...
Chrome still has many ad blockers. While I use chrome/chromium fairly little, ublock origin lite has worked well for me when I do. I'm aware older manifest V2 extensions are theoretically superior at blocking a wide variety of undesired content but if your main concern is not seeing ads, that is absolutely doable.
Once they are the only option in Chrome, it's just a matter of time until Chrome becomes largely useless at blocking ads.
Precisely why it should be broken up.
What makes me sad is that if we go back a handful of years here in HN comments, there were tons of posts assuredly stating google would never do anything like this.
Even though it should have been obvious that a company who lives and dies by ad revenue will of course do everything to protect ad revenue and block users freedom.
Thanks, now I have coffee on my keyboard.
Regardless, I'd love to see this give FF a big bounce in the stats. Something to reinforce that there are people out here that really want manifest v2, badly enough to switch!
My biggest DNS lag was before I used PiHole and was relying on my router, which upstream to 8.8.8.8. I've just assumed that little thing was overloaded or that Comcast was just having a "hiccup".
EDIT: I do not know why its an issue with firefox and not chrome, it's likely QUIC fucking up since it cant fragment and needs to fall back to TCP, chrome is probably error handling this better... dropping the MTU that low will make the fallback explicit: https://blog.apnic.net/2019/03/04/a-quick-look-at-quic/
EDIT2: Could also try disabling QUIC, instructions here: https://developers.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-one/policies/ga...
Whenever someone says how fast Chrome is I think about this.
Wiki: In 2020, after returning to the position of CEO, Baker's salary was more than $3 million. In 2021, her salary rose again to more than $5 million, and again to nearly $7 million in 2022.
The new CEO brings computing for AI money bleed that almost no one wants.
Do you know Firefox's handy new offline translation feature? That's AI a well. And Firefox is the only browser that doesn't leak your web page when translating it.
There are plenty of other uses for AI, such as describing images without alt-text for the blind, or summarization. I, for one, want AI in my browser, you can't really say that “nobody wants it”, when many people clearly do.
There's also an experimental chatbot integration in Firefox. It seems to be opt in at least for now.
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2024/
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2023/
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2022/
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2021/
etc
I'm not defending it at all, but I think it's worth pointing out this pay rate is below the rate most CEOs of tech companies of this size are making. I don't really know what the solution here is but I imagine any CEO they replace her with would also seek a high salary. I'd love for them to become a worker-owned cooperative like Igalia but I really don't see that happening any time soon
All they need is to accept donations that go strictly to the browser and not to the latest blockchain/AI hysteria.
Many people want AI in their browser. And what does Firefox have to do with crypto?
Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fundraising_statisti...
Still feels like it aught to be enough to make a browser.
*Although arguably the most important part of Wikipedia, and their other collaborative projects, are the volunteers maintaining and contributing to it, rather the developers.
Wikipedia has also been around as long as the internet itself and its current fundraising drives are the culmination of decades of momentum and cultivating a perception of the compact that exists between them and their users.
Also, I believe that even in the best of times Wikipedia is raising about half as much as it costs to run Firefox.
There's probably important caveats that relate to comparing software development projects with resources and content, because I think the most successful donation-driven examples are Wikipedia, NPR, and The Guardian. And what they seem to have in common is generating content to be consumed.
In terms of software development projects, to me the most natural analogy is something like VLC, which does indeed rely on donations and is orders of magnitudes smaller. Or maybe the Tor project which does rely on donations, but I think they're at the order of like 10 million or so, which is certainly promising, but not a like for like substitution for the revenue they get from Google.
Firefox is all AI this year, but they've been all blockchain when that was in fashion.
They've never been “all blockchain”, what are you talking about?
I don't think they did a whole lot with blockchain beyond some very preliminary dabbling in decentralized web stuff which if it could have gained traction I absolutely would have supported but it certainly doesn't seem like it was a significant drag on developer resources or finances so far as I could tell.
And wouldn't that have to be the argument for any of this to matter?
Those were very preliminary ventures and not anything that commanded substantial developer resources, so I don't know what you're talking about. And look. I obviously disagree with people who claim that side bets compromised Mozilla, but the arguments sort into different tiers with some being understandable (issues with adtech, CEO pay), some in the middle (the non profit Mozilla Foundation is bloated!), some that are one step up from utter nonsense because they're at least expressed in coherent sentences but have little to no supporting evidence or theory of cause and effect (e.g. "Mozilla lost all its market share due to their side bets being prohibitively expensive").
But we're at a point where apparently these arguments have been seen and repeated so many times that there's a new class of commenters who have been making the lowest effort versions of these arguments that I've yet seen, and are the least interested in anything like evidence or logic or responsiveness to questions or anything that I would associate with coherent thought. Which is where I would put the blockchain argument.
Are you sure they intended them to be preliminary? Maybe they backed off when they saw their users' opinion about Web 3-4-5 or whatever number the blockchain "evangelists" picked out.
In 3-5 years if Firefox will still be around are you going to tell me their "AI" initiative was just preliminary too?
What I'm talking about is trust again. Easily lost, hard to gain back. As I said elsewhere, I want a guarantee that my money is only spent on the actual browser before I donate.
You're free to donate for "AI" of course.
>Lawyer: Diiiid... you kill her?!
>Judge: For the last time no!
>Caption: The defense was going poorly.
https://smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=210
Cut from the lawyer to you, saying "Are you sure they intended them to be preliminary?" Same thing.
You see "they're trying this promising new technology" i see "they're running around like a headless chicken, trampling the poor browser's body with their boots in the process".
I'm not going to look for mitigating circumstances until I see a pattern of news that the Mozilla org is at least admitting to working on the browser and not whatever is evangelized this week.
The Linux Foundation receives over $15m in corporate funding.
The development of Firefox costs around $200 million per year. That's more than what Wikimedia can get from donations, and Wikipedia is a website that everyone uses. And you want to rely on donations from people that ad-block YouTube instead of paying for Premium.
And let's say that it manages to bring those costs down to $100 million per year or less and manages to get it from donations (when pigs will fly) … it still has to compete with a Chrome whose estimated cost goes over $1 billion per year.
Does Google guarantee it won't spy on me if i pay for Premium?
... no, didn't think so.
Besides not everyone uses youtube to the point where paying for it is worth it.
> The development of Firefox costs around $200 million per year.
Does it? Or that's what the mozilla organization wastes on harebrained initiatives overall?
> it still has to compete with a Chrome whose estimated cost goes over $1 billion per year.
But that's to add features that benefit Google not the Chrome users.
Plus Google has money from their ad quasi monopoly so they can afford to be wasteful.
Yes, it really costs that much.
Given Chrome's vast market share, I'm pretty sure its users like it. And you know what? Most users won't mind switching to uBlock Origin Lite, and the elephant in the room is that “manifest v3” also increases security, with Chrome being indeed the most secure browser.
I don't watch YouTube. If all those influencers want to reach me, they should give me a written summary, I don't have time to listen to talking heads for hours.
However, if I ever follow an youtube link, it will be ad blocked because i run firefox with uBlock Origin, for as long as uBlock Origin blocks youtube ads by default.
Mozilla Foundation spent 260 million on software development in 2023. https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2024/mozilla-fdn-202...
That may include some software development on non-firefox products though.
Yes! They published their 990, and it's mostly software development, but also stuff like legal and compliance and marketing. I don't have the numbers off the top of my head, but last time I checked, if you really want to make this argument, I think it relates to the CEO pay and the Mozilla Foundation and its advocacy, which are something around the, you know, taken together something like 55 million or so. You can make the argument that administration and operations as well as marketing and legal and compliance are bloated in some sense, but then you'd still have to make the case that there was a viable path to reinvesting that into development in a way that would change the tide when it comes to market share. But I think that is a confused vision of how market share works because the real drivers are Google's dominant position in search and on Android in the ability to push Chrome on Chromebooks.
Back when these narratives about Mosio's mismanagement started, I just assumed that they were highly informed people who knew what they were talking about. And maybe they really were originally, but it seems to have socialized a new generation of commenters into just randomly speculating about things that completely fall apart upon closer examination.
(I'm using the royal you here, obviously, I don't know you)
People rarely pay when there isn't scarcity. Wikimedia can pull it off because it has billions of unique visitors per month.
I might care about the lesser cut that creators get. But not YouTube.
I agree I don't think it should be in the alternative browser discussion until they do produce something, however.
I think if you get these alternative from the ground up browsers, you get extremely limited things like Net Surf, noble efforts that I respect, but not going against the billions of dollars Google can throw into modern browser development.
I am betting this is really paying for the crappy side projects and HUGE pay for the Mozilla Foundation people (just like all the BS spending the Wikimedia foundation does) and has nothing to do with Firefox itself.
I think Mozilla Foundation receives something like 5 to 10%. I'm not against the argument that foundations can be bloated and inefficient, but at this point, this anti Mozilla narrative is completely out of control and almost purely speculation driven.
It's good that we have alternatives to chrome, but on the other hand the alternatives are not winning, and they prevent any chance of regulation (or having a reasonable discussion about whether chrome sucks, as we see here). There's a strong argument that mozilla IS google's antitrust shield.
Also can we just take a minute to seriously try to imagine the leader of the "Makefile foundation" receiving $2.4M in compensation, and generally burning a lot more money on dead-end "innovations" and then rebranding as "OpenSource.. And Advertising". Make is 20 years older than Mozilla, but does it look like the browser project will be finished or moving in a great direction any time soon while there's big opportunities for grift and graft?
Signed, a grateful but nevertheless annoyed and skeptical firefox user
Make is pretty slow which is why `ninja`, funnily enough, was invented to speed up Google Chrome build times.
If you think about it spending a few billion a year on R+D is the least you could expect when modern food is changing at such a rapid pace! And aren’t you glad the whole world isn’t spoons? I decline to discuss personal compensation because I don’t see how that’s relevant to the issues here!
There's also no cause and effect connection between the VC fund and their market share. It didn't siphon resources away from developers, and there's no such thing as a missing browser feature that would have restored all the market share had they simply not invested in a VC fund.
The 5-10% figure was in reference to 2021 but I think I was overstating that and the Mozilla Foundation actually gets something like 2% annually.
Over a year ago, Kagi hit 20k paying members. This puts monthly ARR between $200k and $500k ($10 to $25/head), roughly. That's 0.000273% of all people -- quite a jump!
The vast majority of people won't pay for privacy.
Some people will pay for search. Some people will pay for content. It's really not many, though. Can you imagine if effectively everything on the internet was paywalled? I sure as hell don't know what the solution is, but we wouldn't've gotten to this spot right now, with all of the good and the bad of the internet, if the vast majority of sites and services on the internet charged for use.
(My best guess is that we can have the good that we have now with ads that aren't individually targeted. I literally have no guesses other than that.)
I have loved Kagi's "small web" where I find interesting items, almost like stumbleupon. It reminded me that not every site on the internet is optimizing for eyeballs.
Depending on your threat model, paying (e.g. with credit card) destroys privacy.
They've long advocated that Big Tech is a problem, but as soon as somebody tries to actually address it and this coincidentally impacting Mozilla, they abandon any and all principles.
chrome://flags, "Extensions Menu Access Control" flag. https://developer.chrome.com/blog/new-extensions-menu-testin...
The problem is that Mozilla's customers are not Firefox's users. Mozilla's customer is Google. They pay Mozilla to exist and they are paying Mozilla to intentionally drive Firefox into the ground.
I think it's pretty clear that the TOS change basically coincided with the removal of manifest v2 change in chrome.
Then they would let people contribute money to the browser (instead of to Mozilla Foundation which goes to enabling aforementioned trash fires) and to the salary of a multi-million dollar CEO after laying off developer staff and hiring more C-suite assistants.
Mozilla is a bad organization in every sense, a bad steward of Firefox, and the best thing that could happen is they do have their funding cut, they go out of business forever, and Firefox finds a good home chosen by the community.
Aside from that, they've just about cut all other initiatives aside from "Firefox and AI". The latter gives me pause, but hopefully they really are more focused moving forward.
I think Mozilla has done alright, but I agree the folks is in charge of their business direction and especially PR are abysmal. Personally, I wish a company like Proton was at the helm.
Hopefully Mozilla's MDN Plus offering can grow to bring them a big source of revenue. MDN is a treasure for any web developer and, should Mozilla go under, this public service would be sorely missed for the open web.
[1]: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/subscription-services/
Yes with mulvad you can pay anonymously via cash or bitcoin or whatever, but assuming you aren't doing that, using mozvpn seems potentially safer than mulvad - as you'd have to compromise both mulvad and mozilla to link my name/credit card with the vpn used.
It's pants-on-head level of crazy talk to suggest that the VPN service is compromising Mozilla's finances.
It's a re-wrapped Mullvad VPN that probably was not expensive to roll out (it being inexpensive to deploy is probably precisely the reason they moved forward with it). It's like people are just workshopping arguments where they randomly claim these things are expensive without any substantiation whatsoever.
Mozilla is sitting on 1.2 billion in assets and investments. They're not underwater. They are indeed in a position where they need to diversify revenue, but the idea that the side bets have created running deficits is a narrative completely manufactured in comment sections.
Is it? Do you have a citation for this? From what I understand it's a white labeled Mullvad VPN, and I haven't been able to find numbers for what percentage of the revenue is taken by Mozilla and what percentage goes to Mullvad.
"The coleslaw in the Jedi salad bar has raisins. Therefore I joined the Sith. Their coleslaw also has raisins."
I too am I Firefox user, I too am invested and concerned with, say, adtech. Somehow I've managed to avoid saying crazy things about VPNs.
= = =
Edit: replying here because it won't let me add a new comment. I'm not making the positive claim in the VPN argument. It's puzzling why "based on no information" would cut in favor of an argument asserting VPN has unprecedented costs without substantiation but not against it.
Also, as I've already pointed out and the other commenter has (as well as commenters in previous threads whenever this comes up), what we know of ordinary costs to run VPNs would not imply any expense on the order of magnitude necessary to make the argument work. Which is a legitimate challenge to speculation that would presume otherwise without substantiation.
And once again I have to emphasize that this is completely detached from any cause and effect argument about what missing browser feature would have otherwise been developed but for the resources spent on a VPN. The idea that there's a legitimate open question about whether a re-wrapped VPN is costing millions or tens of millions in losses is not the reasonable argument you seem to think it is. And it's not because reasons, like the ones mentioned here.
= = =
Edit 2: This was originally about whether the VPNs were a cost sink on the order of millions or tens of millions of dollars. But now it seems to have changed to whether the VPN generates enough revenue that it's a positive way to contribute. Not sure when that happened.
I want a way to contribute to Firefox, not a VPN, and if 90% of the subscription goes to Mullvad that's a waste of money.
I'm just going to note that for whatever reason the goalposts appear to have shifted here. Originally, I was replying to a commenter who was claiming without substantiation that the VPN was a massive financial sink that was part of the reason for Mozilla's loss of market share.
Meanwhile, the argument you seem to be making is that you want information that supports the contention that it's a significant revenue raiser for Mozilla which is not the claim that I was responding to. If you're also doubting that the VPN is a huge money losing bet, then we're probably in agreement.
So yeah, my beef with the VPN as a solution for monetization is different than OP's, and I wouldn't try to defend a position that claims that it's an active money sink. My argument is just that unless they have an extremely favorable deal with Mullvad it's most likely an extremely inefficient way to make money from someone like me who would be straight-up donating monthly if it were an option.
I can't agree that it's mischaracterized given that it literally was the source of comments in this thread and just one of numerous instances of that argument I've seen across HN (if you check my user profile, at this point the first two or three pages of my comment history are responding to arguments of this type) and even you seemed to think it was close enough to something you agreed with to be a suitable jumping off point for a different argument borrowing from the same rhetorical momentum.
Sometimes it's the VPN sometimes it's AI, sometimes it's Pocket, sometimes it's about the blockchain, sometimes it's about their VC fund. Generally the idea is that these side bets supposedly siphoned away developer resources and are there reason for the loss of market share which involves a critical misunderstanding of real drivers of market share. So it's quite a prevalent argument. And so far as I can tell, baseless.
So as I said previously, I too care about Firefox and I too am concerned about issues related to ad tech and somehow I don't end up going off the deep end and nodding along to crazy arguments about the VPN.
People keep saying things like this, but the truth is that direct contributions to any ad-supported system contribute more like 1%-10% (at best) of their income.
You are not the majority you think you are.
The whole Mozilla foundation budget oscillated around $100-120M/y for last few years. Let's assume that half of it was dedicated to Firefox; e.g. $60M/y. It would take 500k users paying $120/y (aka $10/mo) to support their favorite browser. The current audience of Firefox is approx. 170M users; it would take about 0.3 percent of the audience to be paying users; 0.6% if you lower the rate to $5/mo.
This is how any freemium works.
Even more funnily, someone with a good reputation could just start an organization to accept the payments and direct them to Mozilla developers, both Mozilla employees and significant open-source contributors. Eventually the developers might stop needing the paycheck from Mozilla, and thus from Google.
Firefox is under corporation, not foundation. Mozilla Corporation expenses are $400M+, not $100M.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#Finances
(I don't enough knowledge about freemium economics to figure out if the stated numbers would work out or not)
If we adjust to these numbers, we need to quadruple the number of paying users, up to some 1.2% of the total user base. Let's add a safety margin, and bump it to 2%.
Still does not look impossible to attain.
I had the same thought. I dont think such an org would be able to pull in nearly the same amount of money as Mozilla does, but even a few million dollars a year would fund a lot of development work.
Now that's not some optional donation scheme, there are real tangible benefits to being a paid subscriber, so idk how that could fit into something like Firefox.
who is going to support, maintain and develop Firefox in your scenario ?
The funny thing is that the same people on here that crow on about Mozilla needing to "just focus on Firefox" are the same ones who complains about its reliance on Google for income.
Based on their interop performances Mozilla seems to be doing the best they can to do both. Firefox interop has improved significantly in the past 4 years (surprisingly, so has Safari's) and they've also rolled out more new Mozilla offerings that could some day replace Google revenue
There's no inherent contradiction here. Mozilla still doesn't give me a way to donate to them to fund Firefox. They haven't even tried. I want to fund Firefox development, desperately, but they deliberately structured their organization to make that impossible without paying for some other random project that has its own overhead.
I want Mozilla to offer a Firefox+ subscription or donation or something, anything. Let me give you my money! Just give me a way to be confident that you'll take it as a signal to fund Firefox and not as a signal that what your customers really want is VPNs.
I would still like to see Proton fork Firefox and operate their own browser once they've matured further.
Oh ... and I still can't customize my controls fully. (Add-ons only take effect after a page load.)
Had they actually kept their scope small and focused, they could have put the difference into an endowment that would let them give the middle finger to the Chromes of the world forever. Yet here we are.
Do they? I thought Google significantly reduced their payments to Mozilla a few years back, which started Mozilla current random-walk.
Edit: As of 2023, they were as high as ever at 85% of Mozilla's finances coming from Google [1] . However the DoJ antitrust case against Google targets Google's payments to various entities (Mozilla, Apple) to make themselves the default search engine, thus threatening Mozilla's income. I did not immediately find sources for Mozilla's 2024 finances, but I can imagine they see the existential threat.
> and they are paying Mozilla to intentionally drive Firefox into the ground.
That's just conspiracy-thinking.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#Finances
Come on, that is just crazy talk. I get that Mozilla has made some boneheaded decisions but this is baseless conjecture.
I am trying to understand how this works? If they pay Mozilla to exist, yet their intention is to destroy their competitor, why even pay for them to begin with?
Source: pure speculation on my part
Don't worry, they won't. They have more important endeavors like funding some new bullshit virtue signalling campaign and paying huge CEO bonuses.
But what's the story of cause and effect here such that if they'd invested 1% of their revenue differently, they would jump from 3% market share back to 30% or wherever they were previously? Once you ask these questions out loud, it's clear that people aren't thinking through the steps of the argument.
See: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/find-and-install-add-on... and look under "How do I find and install add-ons?" > "For Advanced User"
> You can also install a signed add-on from a file
This means that unlike Chrome Firefox doesn't support the simple case of downloading an extension repo, tweaking a few things, and loading it
I know people have made a lot of arguments as to why it might not be as good in theory, or why things might change in the future. But so far, ever since I was forced to switch, I have seen exactly zero difference. Lists are updated often enough that I haven't seen anything get through. Adblocking works on YouTube. If anything, pages seem to load even a little faster. I've had no complaints.
Putting security in scare quotes doesn’t make the actual risk go away. This is a blatant anti ad block move, but you aren’t making reasonable arguments either.
One can find reasonable use cases for every security measure that takes away freedom. That doesn't mean that all such decisions are balanced, and I'm advocating that the user be the one deciding their level of security, knowingly. That's the most important part being taken away, actually. Until there's palpable resistance (or even doubt or endless debate), those taking things away have no reason to stop.
As to your security argument: If you've never seen the past user's desktops filled with browser hijacking and ad / virus ware, then I'm happy for you, but ignoring serious security concerns isn't a valid approach to managing an end user product regardless of the nebulous slippery slope freedoms argument you're attempting to make.
This is not an advocation to ban all adblockers, but you are advocating for basically a free for all, and we've seen how that works. It doesn't and this entire discussion is a waste of time.
But it is a slippery slope and we're already sliding down, even if we don't want to. It's hard to make users switch to something else. I know it, I assume you know it, probably everyone on HN knows it. But, and this is key, Google knows it. People are resistant to change, especially if it means altering their workflow. Where said workflow depends on a monopolistic product that's key to unlocking even more ad revenue, do not think that those with incentive won't hesitate to push for more restrictions while claiming they have our own best interest in mind.
No one brought it up now, but there have been cases of websites being deliberately made slower on Firefox. I don't think it's unreasonable to think that this will continue happening. If you do, then let's agree to disagree.
> but you are advocating for basically a free for all, and we've seen how that works.
I'm not advocating for a "free for all." I'm advocating for a "free for the knowledgeable & responsible." I'm advocating for informed consent in computing. We've been moving away from that, more so because of greed than goodwill.
No.
> Even if they don't, you, the (power)user should be able to manually turn on whatever you want, should you so desire.
It's not as simple as that. As long as it is possible for extensions to have no-holds-barred access to your browser then they'll make that a condition of use, and unsophisticated users (approximately everyone) will just say "eh ok".
Browser extensions are a particularly dangerous case because they auto-update by default. It is very common for popular extensions to get sold to bad actors who then update them to inject ads into everything you view, or worse.
If you make it impossible for extensions to do that, then they can no longer make it a condition of installation.
Then make it complicated enough so the user has to click through several screens, type in that they know what they're doing and be warned that if extension/website X asks them to do Y, they're getting f'd and should stop. Beyond that, it's their fault.
Why can't we treat browsers like we used to treat PCs? Why do we have to have to make them so "safe" like we did with phones? Tons of scams happen on phones now, so it didn't quite work out, but we still gave up a lot.
Personally, I'm rarely a Chrome user. I'm most afraid of stuff not working in non-Chromium browsers, though.
Yeah I mean... that's just an arms race. You now have to type "allow pasting" into the dev console to paste Javascript there. Guess why.
Browsers can't ever win that race. Malicious extensions will just say "go to settings and blah blah blah".
Would you be content with Chrome (hypothetically) taking away the console instead? Your average user has no business using it anyway.
> Browsers can't ever win that race. Malicious extensions will just say "go to settings and blah blah blah".
You're absolutely right, they can't win the race. People have been plugging holes in software for decades and malware still hasn't been defeated. Taking features away just to plug more holes instead of restricting them doesn't seem right to me. One could argue (I haven't looked this up, though) that even more users fall victims to malware in spite of today's "locked" browsers (and phones) simply because there's an ever increasing number of people online. A lot of that malware is being spread through misleading ads and malicious code that uBO blocks.
With uBO vanishing, a lot of users will be left without an adblocker. Those who aren't tech-savvy enough won't know what to install instead (eg uBL). They'll go on browsing unprotected. Google will see a spike in ad revenue and will be pleased. They have no real interest in blocking scammy ads.
The fact that they provided absolutely none of these alternatives isn't a coincidence. Google is a for-profit company with 300+ billion of annual revenue, a giant chunk of which comes from their advertisement services. It's a blatant conflict of interest and there's no good reason to believe that they're acting in good faith here.
For all intents and purposes, that's basically equivalent to deleting uBlock Origin for 99.9% of the 29M users it currently has.
> only allowed it for a small set of manually-audited extensions like uBlock Origin
That would most definitely lead to accusation of favoritism. That would be just as annoying of a pipeline to maintain.
> The fact that they provided absolutely none of these alternatives isn't a coincidence
They delayed the release 3 times, it was first announced in 2020. The whole time, they were taking feedback and making changes. They made a ton of changes that made MV3 adblockers possible.
The change in v3 is that uBlock cannot even ask for more permissions any more
To put it in the flatest way, it's not a given that users trust the platform owner more than some extension providers.
In theory that shouldn't be the case, and not trusting a platform that runs natively and has potential acccess to everything we do sounds crazy. But in practice there's only so many platforms, and depending on one's work or environement, not using Chrome isn't even an option.
In that context, extensions are the most direct tools the users have to get back some control.
whatever_class:has-text(/YouTube Shorts/)
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/click-to-remove-ele...
For whatever reason, the UBOL creator chose not to include zapper/picker in order to make it as "lite" as possible. It wasn't a Manifest v3 thing, as they've explained.
I have no problem with using a separate extension for zapping.
For certain sites, you need to click the extension and change it from "basic" to "complete". This seems to be a performance thing, so it's not doing slower more complete adblocking on sites that don't need it. I've only had to do it on a couple of sites.
The difference between v2 and v3 is that v3 will no longer allow uBlock to modify network calls. Previously one of the big savings of a adblocker is they can stop the calls from being made AT ALL. That means less tracking AND less of your internet bandwidth being used
Both v2 and v3 can block the actual elements from your screen so you will probably still not see most of the ads. But you will still be able to be tracked and your data will still be used in the background
V3 doesn't allow network calls to be modified, for privacy reasons. It still allows them to be blocked, which is how the adblocking works in the first place.
Contrary to what you say, v3 does block the tracking in the ad request as well as the bandwidth.
https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/reference/api/d...
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...
The actual minimum (not maximum) number of supported rules is 30,000:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...
In reality, Chrome supports over 10x that. And UBOL doesn't even use/need the minimum, sticking to around 17,000.
So that's plenty to cover all your websites. Which is why UBOL works perfectly fine in practice.
More news at 7.
Right now I'm at 181 and it's still buttery smooth.
Specifically, I couldn't view my 360 videos or photos on Google Images or Immich at anywhere near acceptable performance. The videos, recorded at 30fps, would get maybe 5fps. This was weird, because I have a fairly beefy laptop, it should be able to handle these videos just fine (especially since my iPhone handled it just fine).
After a bit of debugging, it appears that there's a bug in how it's writing for the shader cache, and as such there was no hardware acceleration. I found a bug filed about my issue [1], and I didn't really feel like trying to fix it, because I didn't want to mess with Mesa drivers. I just installed Chromium and that's what I'm using right now, and it worked with my 360 videos and photos absolutely fine.
I want Firefox to succeed, but that really left a bad taste in my mouth; it's not like it's weird to want my browser to be hardware accelerated.
[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1921742 Looks like it might be fixed now, or at least they figured out it was an issue with Mesa
Firefox copes fine. Me? Not so much (:
Use some kind of tab session manager addon, and start organizing things - no need to have them all open concurrently.
I used to bookmark everything into Diigo. Then their Firefox extension stopped working... and I haven't got a cross-platform, cross-browser process up and running again.
Is there a tab session manager that does that, and lets me send tabs from my current session to another session? E.g. I'm on my "Writing C for a hobby" session and quickly search for something cooking related, and then need to send that to my cooking session?
I use tab session manager on firefox. It doesn't easily let me shift around tabs inside a session, if I want to combine sessions I have to open both and save as a new session. It does allow duplicating and trimming tabs from a session though.
If you need better session management capability, you could probably get an LLM to extend/fork an existing extension to add what you need with about 30 minutes work.
Searchable. Works with sync. Stores the tabs as bookmarks.
EDIT: and recommended so it gets vetted by Mozilla.
10, 20, even 30 i can understand. More is the equivalent of forgetting to empty the kitchen trash can and still filling it until the smell is horrible.
someone got to tell her there is a cross on the right to close the tab.
Edit: Instead of downvoting actually try convincing a normal person to switch to Firefox and see how well it goes. I've been recommending it for 10+ years and they're all still on Chrome. But in two days I have 4 new Brave users.
I personally dmd Eich on Twitter during 2019-2021 ish. He's opposed to censorship, tracking, government lockdowns during COVID, and authoritarianism.
That is exactly who you want running your browser and search company if you wish to use an open Internet. It's anti chat control, anti governments choosing which apps it's citizens can install, it's free speech for all, including "hate speech". Open and free wild West Internet culture.
> That is exactly who you want running your browser and search company
Yes. “Does the CEO have strong opinions on public health? Are those opinions based more on public health fundamentals or is it vibes?” is the first line of inquiry I pursue when I am looking to download a program on the computer
No CEO or developer is going to respect to software/hardware users if they believe that user should also use health verification software to go about public spaces. These are incompatible philosophies.
It gives me confidence that there will never be a situation where some issue is of such grave importance that they feel like they must leverage their position and compromise on it, for the safety of children of course. Because we know what's best for you. Bleh. It reminds me of the libertarians who oppose seat belt laws. Like you're wrong and so you shouldn't be in a leadership position of the DoT but you believe so strongly that institutions shouldn't get a say in your life that I think you would do great if I tasked you with health insurance reform.
This is the vital, vibrant discourse necessary when selecting a web browser
What happens when adtech decides this is a problem because the hoi polloi have arrived? Have you thought about that as you're cluing in normies?
The browser that is a literal drop-in replacement is the best way to do this. I think it's cool that other browsers are trying new things but now isn't the time. People have to be be in a place where they want something different in order to accept change. All of them got the notification while trying to something else and "install Brave, import, move Brave to where the Chrome icon used to be, and continue with what you were doing" is alarmingly effective.
They switched because it was MUCH, MUCH better.
(And was part of the ecosystem, profiles, bookmarks, passwords, etc.)
---
For better or worse, no such disparity exists currently.
Firefox is definitely better than Chrome in some ways, but it is also worse in others. Notably performance and integration with Google's password manager.
A move that was widely celebrated at the time.
Must say it's really hard to find who might have paid for a bundled installer. Filezilla I remember had a lot of those and some forum threads will mention a specific "offer" they got, but there's no listing anywhere, and it's not in the source code history because they were (so I just read) dynamically fetched from advertisement servers upon launching the installer. Searching the web for Google Chrome bundling (phrased a few different ways), you get mostly present-day results about how to install Chrome or how to bundle it as sysadmin in a Windows group policy or something. This is the one thread I found where it sounds like computer manufacturers bundled it, but if there's many more then I'm not sure I'd have found it
> Google bundled invisible Chrome installers in other software that would not only make its browser the default, but also invisibly steal IE clicks.
An anecdote from someone who "bought a second hand laptop off ebay" and found Chrome preinstalled isn't relevant.
Must say I read over the bit about invisibly stealing IE clicks. That's obviously nonsense, Chrome was never malware
From where I was sitting, Firefox grew from word of mouth. Friends old friends, or simply installed it for them and said “trust me”. And people were shamed for using IE.
Over time Firefox started to feel more bloated, and Chrome was new, lean, and fast.
Chrome then went through its own bloat phase, and now this.
Browser monopolies have toppled before, through various means. I see no reason why it can’t happen again. Currently Apple is pretty much single handedly keeping Google from having total control, by only allowing WebKit on iOS.
I have a feeling people would be more likely to switch to a new player than to run back to an old one they left once before.
Pretty sure people are figuring out to switch to uBlock Origin Lite and ads -- including on YouTube -- are still being blocked just fine.
https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...
https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/reference/api/d...
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...
But declarativeNetRequest is the alternative to the webRequest API which Chrome is removing. Using declarativeNetRequest means you have to rely on static rules instead of the dynamic logic that the webRequest API allowed. This is extremely trivial to bypass. So much so that it's basically nothing at all. Especially when you take into account the max ruleset sizes
Also in Chrome (and Chrome only) any images or iframes blocked are simply collapsed
The maximum number of rule sets is 50, not rules, as your own link clearly and unambiguously states.
The actual minimum (not maximum) number of supported rules is 30,000:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...
In reality, Chrome supports over 10x that. And UBOL doesn't even use/need the minimum, sticking to around 17,000.
Regardless it doesn't change the fact that these are static rules. It's trivial for anti-adblockers to dynamically get a url that is not in a ruleset. Without the dynamic logic that is allowed by the webRequest API we are completely dependent on static rulesets that need to be updated by updating the entire extension itself
The size of the rulesets is a distraction from the fact that adblockers can no longer run dynamic logic to filter web requests and block tracking
I rarely have to type/remember passwords anymore on Android or web and it "just works". I know there are password managers out there that ostensibly handle the password-saving thing and are browser-agnostic but when I tried it in the past I had issues on some sites and, when it did work, it felt clunkier.
I've had a very different experience with browsers though... I switch browsers pretty often and with ease. I genuinely can't get my head around why someone would continue to use Google Chrome if they're unhappy with how they're treating their users. The UI between browsers is 99% identical. The most annoying thing about switching browser is just having to spend 10 minutes setting things up, but that isn't going to exceed the annoyance of having to see ads constantly for months or years.
There's really no good reason not to switch browsers. Your habits are not going to change between browsers. Unless you're a Chrome power user and using some very niche features in Chrome there is very, very little difference between Firefox and Chrome for the vast majority of tasks.
I really struggled to switch to anything else. Firefox was definitely the most customizable, but finding extensions to replicate every feature of Opera, and properly at that, was a never-ending nightmare.
Only at that point did I realize how vital a browser has become for everyday tasks, and as a power user, how much you get accustomed to it. Maybe not if you're just running stock Chrome or Firefox with two extensions, but Opera was so feature-rich that I didn't ever install a single extension but needed about a dozen on Firefox to try and mimic it. In the end I just stayed on Opera 12 until it wasn't even funny anymore. It must've been about two years. Eventually so many sites broke that I just switched to Firefox and only installed uBO and greasemonkey. It hurt but over time I just gradually forgot what using opera was like. Sometimes I think back and really miss it. Some of it is just nostalgia by now, but the struggle switching was real.
did you give a try, is it even remotely comparable ?
iOS users are able to download browser extensions as well. They just have to be for WebKit. Which there are plenty of.
The iOS version of Firefox uses WebKit under the hood (for now at least)
It integrates as an ad blocker for Safari, so I don't actually use Firefox itself (since as you mentioned, all browsers on iOS are just a wrapper to Safari anyways).
I just browse using Safari and ads are blocked by Firefox Focus. Pretty neat.
No luck, and not for lack of trying. I’m not entirely certain what feature is missing in WebKit that results in the hamstringed adblocking capacity, but it’s definitely much worse than you’d hope for. You can get adblocking extensions on iOS that will block ads on most websites, but when it comes to the truly shady ads that do not even try to masquerade as being legitimate, iOS falls short. It’s likely something I could handle on the DNS layer if I wanted to dedicate a day or two towards, but I’ve similarly travelled down that rabbit hole to no avail as well.
People also seem to think switching over is some kind of involved process for some reason.
And it's worse with extensions. For instance right now the OneLogin extension is dead on firefox, and while it's a crappy service, it's cheap and enterprise friendly...so employees in the contracting companies will only be able to log to corporate resources through Chrome.
It's not as hellish as the IE6 situation was, but boy we're pretty quickly approaching it.
I still have no idea why Firefox/Mozilla think they need to compete with the other browsers. None of their '10 Principals' is "win the browser wars"
I went back to Chrome, re-enabled uBlock for now, and will probably switch to the lite mode when it is completely removed.
It's interesting to notice how much my internal feelings have shifted over the years. There have been a few rare occasions where I had to use a Chromium-based browser, and I felt the same "ick" I used to feel when forced to use Internet Explorer for some reason.
Come to the Firefox (and variant) side. The water is warm.
Mostly because they're peeing in the pool. Mozilla deleted their promise to never sell its users' personal data.
One can even self-host their own sync server if so inclined.
Mozilla has done plenty of bad things and they rightly deserve criticism, but options in the browser space are few and Mozilla is considerably less bad than Google. And other Chromium browsers perpetuate Google's control over the web. If you're going to complain about Mozilla when someone recommends Firefox, at least offer a non-Chromium alternative like LibreWolf (or maybe Ladybird someday).
I have a completely custom minimal layout with address bar and tabs at the bottom, all the extensions I need, and I don't notice the performance or compatibility differences almost ever, with few rare exceptions. I feel it much more as "mine", and it's a joy to use.
Not sure I understand the statement - what are you using?
It's a browser.
90% of users won't notice a difference.
Here's the feature diff. [0]
[0] https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/Frequently-as...
Manifest v3 removed access to certain APIs that where used to alter the websites to block ads
> Not really.
In general, uBOL will be less effective at dealing with websites using anti-content blocker or minimizing website breakage.
LOL! You know that's bad faith.
Socialfixer won't work anymore too.
It's like a corporation shrinking the package size of your food by 10%, keeping the price the same and then claiming you still get the "majority" of the food.
UBOL is still blocking all the ads for me. It hasn't gone from 100% to 90%. It's still at 100%.
But since the very first blocklist UBOL uses is decribed as "Ads, trackers, miners, and more" I assume it's also blocking them just fine. The same way I assumed with UBO.
Google is surgically trying to dismantle adblocking, first by removing all the tools from the users under the guise of “it’s dangerous”, and then shutting it down by rendering them so ineffective they’re useless.
it's also trivial for anti-adblockers to dynamically try alternative domains till they find one that isn't blocked.
And I still have all of my uBlock origin happiness. :)
IIRC, there was also a time when Netflix did not support its highest streaming quality on Firefox. I'm not sure if that's still the case since I also ended my Netflix subscription.
Otherwise I cannot think of any major site which is not supported on Firefox. Outside my employer's fragile intranet, I can't think of any sites which do not support Firefox.
So, small stuff. Maybe Copilot isn't working because of ublock, though.
I continue to use Firefox because I know when to suspect a website problem might be the browser, but she doesn't have the ability to analyze a situation like this. I have this conundrum with other family members that I support. I want them to use Firefox, but I hate to have them run into an issue because of the browser I recommended.
One crap product forcing me to use another crap product! ;)
Cast is a bit more cumbersome. There is fx_cast on GitHub, but it requires a companion app. Firefox seems to want to add cast based on a flag you used to be able to enable, but I'm guessing there are some restrictions from Google's end they ran into.
More info: https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1de7bu1/were_the_f...
I didn't know this existed but will totally use it now! Thanks!
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43099417 ("uBlock Origin Has Been Disabled", 19 days ago, 40 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43299886 ("The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome", 2 days ago, 663 comments)
I feel the same way about smartphones, by the by, and it is very possible to live without them. I don't even carry a dumb phone with me. It's not impossible for me. It may be infeasible for you and your life situation. But I'm sure there's plenty of me's out there.
Powershell commands to set them:
1. New-Item -Path "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Chrome" -Force
2. New-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Chrome" -Name "ExtensionManifestV2Availability" -Value 2 -PropertyType DWORD -Force
The silver lining is it can be the birth of a new generation of hackers. This generation’s version of the printer inspiring those who refuse to accept the hostile hand they’ve been dealt. Tech doesn’t have to be this way. You don’t have to accept these changes. Rebel! Start hacking away. Don’t join these companies. Found new ones that prioritize valuing users first forever. It’s a difficult task. But all difficult tasks we’ve solved were.
Sadly, on HN, of all places...
Ironically (or not) this is the Apple side of the Android/iOS debate. And most people are happier with iOS. (And use Macs over Linux, FWIW.)
[I probably shouldn't mention that I personally think adblockers are unethical :) ]
Source?
> And use Macs over Linux, FWIW.
This could be explained by marketing.
> I personally think adblockers are unethical
Do you think ads are ethical? For a relevant example, how about an Apple ad that successfully uses emotion to convince you to buy a Mac instead of a Linux computer that would better suit your needs at a better price hypothetically?
Generally, yes. Ads are an important function of commerce, tbh.
False ads, of course, are not ethical. But we do have laws in that area (not that people don't break them.)
If so: how do you think people will find out about new things? Even, like, a new movie or productivity product?
However, the majority of ads I’m discussing don’t adhere to that. Overall, people are pretty good about finding out about things! If it’s really desired, some will seek it out. Others will learn via word of mouth. Steam is a good example I think where people find games without having to see ads on TV, online, or other areas.
IMHO, something like "Show HN" is not much different than an ad. In some sense, neither is your resume. They are all about letting people know about options. But I can understand that those can be more contextual than other ads.
HN can obviously be gamed, but I think when people ask or share tools they use to solve certain problems, that demonstrates a desire to discover something new showing that there are ways to discover valuable tools without ads. That type of discovery is a lot different from an ad on Instagram for a drop ship company advertising its US roots while repackaging cheap Chinese manufactured products. In the latter example, I feel the ad exists entirely to sell something that is completely unneeded rather than to inform about something the person genuinely could find valuable.
> In the latter example, I feel the ad exists entirely to sell something that is completely unneeded rather than to inform about something the person genuinely could find valuable.
Ironically, this is why "targeted ads" are (in theory) beneficial to both sides. Companies certainly would love to sell you their product -- whether you want it or not. But advertisers would rather show ads to people who will want their product (versus those that don't). This is why Instagram is a powerful platform: it knows a lot about you.
The common privacy concern (which is real, but sometimes overstated) is that the more the advertisers know about you, the worse it is. But "Show HN" is kinda the opposite. That's why you like it more.
In any case, I'm not trying to convince you of anything. I personally see ads as a component of commerce. I'm willing to pay to see fewer ads (like Youtube premium) because I value my time. But I accept that websites that earn money from ads deserve to have them seen.
When you let marketing run things, you get what’s currently happening with Apple. A decline in software quality alongside products designed to be replaced more frequently than they need to be. It’s worse for consumers as well as the environment.
I certainly align with you on paying for YouTube premium to avoid ads. I’m perfectly happy to pay for goods and services. I just wish I could traverse my city without seeing billboards crammed everywhere and someone always trying to sell me something. It’s a wonder why I enjoy The Rolling Stones’ Satisfaction so much haha.
Okay, I’ll bite. How are adblockers unethical?
There is an implicit agreement that using those websites (for free) means you watch ads. I think: if you don't agree with that, then you shouldn't go to those sites.
We complain about "enshitification" -- but then we take away all potential sources of revenue (and refuse to pay). So the only companies that can provide "free" services are ones that are already monetizing you in other ways.
Interestingly, ChromeOS (Linux) has a higher market share than MacOS.
Being forced to run random code and be tracked is unethical. But I should probably mention I'm a big supporter of the small web.
1. United States v. Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey (1911)
- Duration: 7 years (1904–1911)
- Outcome: Standard Oil was ruled an illegal monopoly and broken up into 34 companies.
- Duration: 4 years (1998–2002)
- Outcome: Initially ordered to split, but after appeals, Microsoft avoided a breakup and instead agreed to business restrictions.
- Duration: 8 years (1974–1982)
- Outcome: AT&T agreed to a settlement, leading to the 1984 breakup into seven "Baby Bells" to increase competition.I am not aware of a google-lobbyist being as close to trump as Zuckerberg and Musk are, and I definitely see the possibility of these two manipulating the administration against google.
[0] https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/Frequently-as...
But Kagi made that part so easy it's unbelievable.
That said, here's my current go to example: do an image search for "pixel 9".
Almost every picture DDG shows is wrong. That blue color all over the results doesn't exist. Nearly half the results are just the Pixel 8. Maybe a third are "leaked renders". Finding actual correct photos is a needle in a haystack and what's scary is this is a simple case to discern but what other results am I being mislead on.
I mainly use DDG but I do believe it is worse.
But.. nobody tests on it anymore I think. Lots of popular sites are very slow and laggy with it, including sites I need for work. I don't think this is because of inferior technology, I think I just think nobody spends the time to make sure things work well on firefox. I could split-brain and use chrome for github and some other stuff but that is such a pain when clicking links.
The other issue is I think firefox support will only get worse. Their market share is back to where it was in IE6 days and dropping.
(Disclosure, I work for Kagi, creator of the Orion browser.)
But there are some things that I miss from Chrome, especially for web development. In Chrome it is possible to adjust the CSS of grid and flex containers within the developer window, which can be helpful. Firefox and Firefox Developer Edition don't have this. Firefox also seems to sometimes have problems with reloading a page when it is changed during development, whereas in Chrome this always was instant. Then there are some small feature and UI differences, like the reading-mode on Firefox is nice, but the UI of Chrome feels just a bit nicer.
They could try and keep manifestv2 support for a while, but they will have an increasingly large and hard to support patch se to make manifestv2 work still.
After checking the settings page, the settings to turn it on are completely disabled. Turn out this is one of few trap in all Chromioum browser that are hardcoded by Google.
Well after searching, you need to edit registry (yikes!) and add "DnsOverHttpsMode" and set it to "safe". Problem solved, right?
NO!!! Do that and suddenly your browser wouldn't load any page at all! Turn out you also need to set "DnsOverHttpsTemplates" too.
It just so happen, somehow, there is no documentation that mention this in "....Mode" help page.
Surely Google is not being evil in here, right? Right?
[1] https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/bring-back-pwa-progress...
[1] https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/how-can-firefox-c...
After the install, Chrome will disable the extension on the next restart but it can be re-enabled .. for now.
We had mainframes and dumb terminals where the work was done in a remote data centre you connected to
Then we had the personal computer revolution where the work was done on the box you owned and controlled on your desk
Then we moved to the cloud where work is done in a remote data centre you connect to
Ignore the crypto; enjoy the integrated ad-blocking.
Most seamless ad-blocking I've ever experienced.
https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/Frequently-as...
For most websites I don’t care but there are many websites that I visit very often and removing annoying or useless elements and padding is practically mandatory at this point - I wouldn’t want to go back to not being able to do it.
So, answering your question, yes, “useless” was hyperbole.
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/click-to-remove-ele...
Ad blocking on Youtube.
Youtube-blocking Safari extensions “solve” Youtube blocking by using non-declarative APIs that need full access to Youtube. Apple seems ok with that so far, but the APIs are not as goods, so their success rate is limited.
Whether Google will allow new extensions that block Youtube remains to be seen.
On iPad I just use Brave and haven't seen an ad yet.
It works way better for Youtube than the one I had, and after some more testing I don't need the additional annoyance blockers I had. I might just go back to Safari!
Thanks for the recommendation.
uBlock Origin Lite blocks all ads on YouTube for me.
why didn't you notice before? ublock origin has a special quick fixes list which updates very frequently, without Google's involvement
but with manifest v3: Google are now in charge and have to approve all "definition" updates
which they will only do once they've got a new detection method ready
and this is the entire point of manifest v3
No, they don't. MV3 extensions are allowed to fetch remote data which definition updates would be.
Someone else is saying uBlock Origin Lite leaves a "skippable blank" where the ad used to be, while I know for a fact uBlock Origin completely and transparently skipped over the ad.
Could you confirm?
But you have to change the toggle from basic filtering mode to complete filtering mode.
I think some people just haven't realized that.
So, switch to something which has privacy respecting attitude or at least tries to have it and ditch everything who does not. It is not just the browser itself, but also the services and tools that you use to do your job: browsing. After some time, you will realize how horrible browsing the web with Chrome was in this respect and how easy it is to just browse the web without a bloated piece of advertising machine.
If uBlock Origin uses filters, would it not be possible to build a program that acts as a "proxy" for Linux/macOS/Windows, etc., that uses the same or similarly crafted filters to do something akin to what some of us did back in the Flash LSO supercookie days? I was a Linux user then and I recall creating a symlink from .macromedia and .adobe to /dev/null. The cookies were written to their folders but went into the event horizon of /dev/null and I never had to worry about them, but the websites worked like a charm.
Maybe I'm wrong, but would it not be possible to use filters similar, or even different than uBlocks, to "symlink" the addresses to /dev/null or other bit bucket like NULL on other OSes? I write automation code, so I don't have the chops to develop such a program/project, but I can see it in my head "how it might work". Thoughts, ideas, criticisms welcome.
I've also taken to using Violent Monkey and scripts to block quite a bit of nonsense on the web. Violent Monkey and the iFrame blockers work well with YouTube. I suppose it's also a matter of time before things like Violent Monkey are removed as well. There has to be a way to proxy the traffic through a filter list and /dev/null the offending objects.
Microsoft missed a lot by not keeping ManifestV2 in Edge.
I just re-enabled the one already installed on my devices.
Once it's legit gone gone though yeah I'm going to Firefox or use Edge for web dev stuff
Edit: I will say I am a hypocrite though I am trying to build a following by posting on YouTube... I don't control the ads on there, maybe you do when you are monetizable but yeah sucks I feel bad for the viewers. At the same time... I'll spend weeks/months on a project and no one cares so idk.
https://www.neowin.net/guides/google-turned-off-ublock-in-ch...
This URL, shared elsewhere in this thread, seems to tell you how to get it back up and running if you cannot do it easily; that said, I'll be moving to FF if they continue their shenanigans.
So far it seems to be the only general solution that can inject cosmetic filters into network requests while blocking on a request (not dns-only) level.
https://adguard.com/en/blog/mv2-extensions-no-longer-alterna...
Terrible sample size: I moved to FF as soon as I couldn’t use a cookie cleaner for web dev work, and ublock origin.
And you can, I believe, still just modify your hosts table to block out ads in Chrome. https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts
Or your router's DNS using something like NextDNS. https://nextdns.io/
Ads suck. Support content where you can, but even when you pay they still serve ads / tracking scripts. So fuck 'em. Block all the ads.
How long after the announced Windows 10 end of life will it be before all the software companies say 'Windows 11 is the minimum' like was seen with Windows 7?
uBlockOrigin “Lite” is a good(?) replacement afaict
https://adguard.info/en/blog/review-issues-in-chrome-web-sto...
They did say they'll get the issue resolved in time. I use another extension that requires a filter list or things start to go haywire. I'd probably give up that problematic extension before going back to Firefox.
Reading that, I am still sticking with Adguard over uBO because it does sound like they are at least trying to implement these things. uBO is just pointing people towards FF.
>Switch to Chrome to install extensions and themes
"DOJ: Google must sell Chrome, Android could be next"
<https://arstechnica.com/google/2025/03/doj-google-must-sell-...>
HN discussion: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43323485>
AddBlock is still available. I was wondering if there is some issue with the extension itself that it got flagged? Maybe an update to the codebase would make the extension installe-able again?
uBlock Origin didn't have this problem, which is why it got recommended so much.
Edge store doesn't even mention that, in fact it's featured.
I switched to edge canary on my phone because the dev options allow you to install extensions by id/crx, which I've used to get ublock origin, though it crashes sometimes, and doesn't work when you reload the whole browser, until you refresh the page or manually reactivate the extension....
https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/1i86ybn/kiwi_brows...
Still doesn't do mhtml though.
It looks like I could turn on the linux vm and run firefox, but it "only" has a 16GB ssd of which like 12GB is "system space" (ridiculous) and I only have 1GB left which isn't enough to enable the linux dev environment.
I could look into seeing if I can get native linux on the hardware, but it's probably not worth the time and trouble for it.
I haven't used Chrome itself in years, but have had a hard time giving up Chromium-based browsers due to the rendering performance. It's always felt weird that the only way of getting extensions on these browsers was via the Chrome Web Store.
If there are viable alternatives I've not heard of, I hope folks let me know.
Like one day Wikipedia inserts ads on their pages to keep the lights on. We bash Google for blocking uBlock?
I feel like I'm missing out on something. Please help me understand.
[1] https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublock-origin-lite/...
It didn't even catch any hype regarding this manifest support issue uBlock origin has, and it keeps silently working good without any interruptions, I wonder why is that?
(Old habits die hard)
There's https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium - is it a sound choice nowadays?
The Firefox UI is honestly very close to chrome.
I also wonder when someone one will "hack" chromium to run whatever extensions they want - I could build my own extension, or build uBlock Origin from the source (if available) and execute the extension regardless of the store.
If it's too expensive to develop a viable alternative to chromium, just say that.
The Firefox that has been trundling along for years is really just an excuse to keep the chromium monopoly afloat.
I am getting high CPU usage with uBO since yesterday but I do have a lot of tabs so I was wondering if thats a bug that will get fixed.
Download and setup Brave browser on their device. I haven't seen an ad in years.
Edge is based on Chromium, so would that mean this breakage will eventually apply to Edge as the Manifest changes, uhm, manifest to Chromium-based products? Or is this just a Google Chrome thing?
FWIW I keep Firefox around but I have to admit I like Edge's smooth sync of bookmarks and settings across machines and even different platforms. I switched about two years ago when Edge was clearly faster and lighter. It's no longer as lightweight and there are slowly accumulating annoyances coming mostly from some Microsoft Clippy-esque attempts to make some tasks "easier" (mostly via Copilot) but I still prefer it to Firefox. My former employer/retiree benefits site, for example, won't open at all in Firefox. I've considered other Chromium based browsers like Brave but haven't (yet) been sufficiently motivated to switch. (Give Microsoft some time, I expect they'll eshit Edge eventually).
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/privacy-security/how-to-switch-f...
But large Web properties do not gain anything by promoting Firefox. Many are ad-supported, so getting rid of uBlock Origin is a good thing for them. Only having to test on Google Chrome (and maybe Safari) is cheaper for them. There has to be something in it for them to promote Firefox or an alternative browser.
In the attention economy the browser and the mobile OS (and soon your LLM/Perplexity agent) are the most important points to control the aggregate user data. So it's a lost battle.
For a sub 0.01% of the nerds there would be alternatives for the non-DRM content, but this wouldn't change the big picture.
It's like the junk food business. Yes it's bad for people, but it's so addictive...
Either Python or PowerShell would work for the scripting.
It seems like it would have worked, but the danger was over time Google report less and less information to the extension, but as it is today, the extension would have worked the same on v3 as v2?
As I say - I am ignorant sorry, its hard to search for an answer to this specific question
Edit: Sorry the answer is here: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/Frequently-as...
If it could work in v3 it would have been updated. There are some alternate v3 versions that don't work as well.
Chrome is dead. Long live Firefox.
Safari on the Mac and Firefox on Linux and Windows it is for me.
> Switch to Chrome to install extensions and themes
See: https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/08/new-doj-proposal-still-cal...
uBlock Origin Lite still blocks ads on Chrome, but it's faster than uBlock Origin.
I don't expect Google's ad revenue has changed meaningfully at all, assuming people switch to uBlock Origin Lite.
Not even sure it's a valid comparison; are you even an ad blocker that can be compared with another ad blocker if you don't block ads properly. You can get a lot more speedup with an ad blocker that blocks nothing. Ad blocking speed would be 0 microseconds :P
uBlock Origin is obv a great great extension and I'm considering switching to FF just for that one extension, but consider what some newfangled AI extension developed by a random dude can do to the webpage you're viewing - anything UBO can do! So I think they have a decent case but I wish there was a carveout for UBO
If you are on Arch Linux, try ungoogled-chromium:
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/ungoogled-chromium or precompiled https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/ungoogled-chromium-bin possibly with https://github.com/NeverDecaf/chromium-web-store and possibly using a .config/chromium-flags.conf like this:
--extension-mime-request-handling=always-prompt-for-install --enable-features=AcceleratedVideoDecodeLinuxGL --wm-window-animations-disabled --animation-duration-scale=0
Timely updates, team defending manifest V2, no user data stealing or background scanning b/s, browser as it should be. Got a 10 year old machine with Intel iGPU and even video acceleration in the browser works.
https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...
To boil it down, the most dominant philosophy, whether peole know it or not, is idealism. In idealism, people, nations, corporations, etc have some inherent quality beyond their physical make up. It's almost spiritual in that way. Even the concept of a soul is an idealist position. It's largely a circular argument that doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
So, the USA on the world stage is the good guy because we are the good guys, regardless of our actions or the consequences thereof. So an awful lot of effort is spent to label certain actors as "good" or "bad" to suit some objective. Superhero movies and a perfect example of idealism and it's no coincidence that they've had a renaissance since 9/11.
Materialism is simply the view that the physical world is all there is. The consequence of this is that we affect the material world and it affects us. There are no inherent qualities like being "good" or "bad". Instead, those are simply labels you apply to the actions of an entity.
My point here is that for years Google pushed this good guy narrative (ie "don't be evil") but any materialist understands that Google is a corporation so ultimately will act like any other corporation.
Google makes money selling ads. Ad blockers affect Google's bottom line. The relentless pursuit of increasing profits means fighting ad blockers was always an inevitability. Nobody should be surprised by that.
Now some will point to Google's control of Chrome as an antitrust issue and it probably is but that misses the point. A corporation that solely owns Chrome will ultimately act in a user-hostile way too because that's what corporations do.
The only long-term successful model for something like Chrome is to be something like the Wikimedia Foundation. The profit motive will always ultimately destroy it otherwise. If you can even find a business model for a browser, which I have serious doubts about.
A materialist knows all this because of how the workers relate to the means of production. A collective (which Wikimedia Foundation is, basically) is where the workers own the means of production. A corporation introduces capital owners whose interests are in direct opposition to that of the users.