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Here are browsers that aren't just 'not Chrome,' they are better. Brave: https://brave.com/ https://brave.com/ Firefox: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/

Here are browsers that aren't just 'not Chrome,' they are better. Brave: https://brave.com/ https://brave.com/ Firefox: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/

bdz 7y ago
Personally I use and can recommend ungoogled-chromium https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium
- ashishbindra 7y ago
  Can you elaborate as to why you recommend it? Thanks.
- dooglius 7y ago
  > ungoogled-chromium retains the default Chromium experience as closely as possible It sounds like they would also be removing ad-blocking then
tapoxi 7y ago
Maybe it's unfair, but I can't help but think of Brave as just a scheme to push their cryptocurrency. They're removing the website's ability to monetize and replacing it with their own system. That seems gross.
- axaxs 7y ago
  You're not wrong about what it boils down to, but, I'm all for it. I didn't mind ads, generally, until I did. Until they started hijacking your browser, redirecting you, doing popups. Ad people have shown they cannot be trusted on the whole. What Brave seems to be doing is doing their own 'safe ads' system, and sharing the money. It will likely be less for the content creators, but as a 'at-my-wits-end-with-ads' Brave user, I just don't care.
  - rayiner 7y ago
    If you look at the benchmark results, aggressively stripping ads and tracking can result in pages loading twice as fast and hours of extra battery life. I'm happy to pay money to view your website, but modern web ads are a ridiculous and punitive payment scheme.
    - jamiequint 7y ago
      What you're doing is the equivalent of walking into a store, picking up $100 of merchandise, slapping $10 on the counter and walking out because "I'm happy to buy your products, but your prices are ridiculous". It's not a very moral position to take.
      - xur17 7y ago
        It's really not.
      - justsee 7y ago
        gorhill makes a moral argument on the other side of yours [1]: That said, it's important to note that using a blocker is NOT theft. Don't fall for this creepy idea. The ultimate logical consequence of blocking = theft is the criminalisation of the inalienable right to privacy. Your analogy is flawed because it assumes the customer walking into the store retains their privacy and is not charged any hidden costs. A more accurate example would be one in which the customer walks into a store that: * data mines as much about that person as possible to profile them * sells that data without consent to unvetted global buyers * increases the risk that customer's devices are compromised (drive-by malware installs through ad placements on mainstream sites) * charges them a hidden surprise fee (in the form of increased data usage, battery usage etc from poorly-designed ad systems). Presenting naive analogies is harmful to our ability as a society to reason about the costs of systems like this. I'd urge anyone to have a read and/or follow Ad Fraud Historian to understand how bad / harmful the existing ad-tech ecosystem is. [2] It's truly awful, and anything that moves the internet away from this dystopian, incompetent and fraudulent monetisation approach to content is doing all of humanity a huge favor. [1]: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#philosophy https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#philosophy [2]: https://twitter.com/acfou https://twitter.com/acfou
- JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
  I mean we would be paid for viewing ads this way instead of being paid nothing as it is now, and losing all our privacy instead. Seems like a win/win to me. Advertisers would actually pay the eyeballs that should be paid for seeing ads instead of the middleman in the attention economy. The technology in the Basic Attention Token performs all the functions instead.
  - jamiequint 7y ago
    > instead of being paid nothing as it is now You get paid in the free content you consume as it is now. It's literally the reason you don't have to subscribe to every website you visit.
  - tty2300 7y ago
    I get paid for working a job. I don't want any ads on my screen.
    - dymk 7y ago
      "I get paid for working a job. I don't want to pay road tolls" "I get paid for working a job. I don't want to pay the grocery store for my food"
      - tty2300 7y ago
        My point was I don't need my browser injecting extra ads that I get paid for.
    - Gustomaximus 7y ago
      People want free YouTube, maps, email etc. Maybe you will pay, but the market as a whole has been very clear here. Free wins. Personally I dont mind either. I'd prefer to see ads relevant to me rather within some limitations of privacy. I feel government needs to set the limits here rather than expect business to self regulate. Nor will the market self regulate as this is more technical than most people are interested to understand, and back to free wins.
- prepend 7y ago
  I use Brave and have never bought any cryptocurrency, nor do I intend to. I think it will be a net positive if every targeted ad company stops using that model, so Brave shutting this down is a huge plus for me. Note, I used a similar setup in chrome and Firefox that some might find gross as well as it removed the ability for websites to monetize me using ads or data from surveillance.
  - jamiequint 7y ago
    > I think it will be a net positive if every targeted ad company stops using that model So you want an internet dominated by large players only and full of subscription walls everywhere?
    - prepend 7y ago
      No, certainly not. I want an Internet with lots of business models including paywalls and large players, but also OSS, amateur bloggers, publicly funded sites, etc. I remember an Internet back when there were only university sites and personal sites. It had a lot of flaws, but was better, I think than our situation where our data are sold and resold with no way of customer control.
badloginagain 7y ago
The original creators of Opera have been building out Vivaldi for a while, which has the specific design goal of being a browser for power users https://vivaldi.com/ https://vivaldi.com/
- mixedCase 7y ago
  Without source available, it seems like it's targeted for a section of power users.
  - chadcatlett 7y ago
    I have no idea if it would compile and is actually complete, but Vivaldi does do sourcecode tarballs. https://vivaldi.com/source/ https://vivaldi.com/source/
    - mixedCase 7y ago
      These are the changes made to Chromium. The code for the UI (made with web technologies) is easy to access, but it's under a proprietary license.
- rasz 7y ago
  UI in javascript = still to this day it can take 2-3 seconds when opening new tabs or going fullscreen. Plus they released a statement about "observing" Google adblock decisions instead of going hard in with "we will not deprecate webrequest usability in our fork".
- lone_haxx0r 7y ago
  What's their business model?
  - jccalhoun 7y ago
    the same business model as all the other free browsers: search referrals
ljoshua 7y ago
Does the webRequest API deprecation also impact Chromium, and therefore Brave as well? Brave seems like it's willing to backfill in changes to Chromium, but I'm wondering how this impacts the browser overall. I use Brave as my daily driver (with Shields Up and uBlock Origin), but I'm not sure what the actual impact will be when it comes.
- csharp 7y ago
  It won't effect Brave. Brave is a Chromium fork, not an extension, so have full control over the browser/APIs.
  - ducttape12 7y ago
    Brave isn't a fork, they take the tagged build of Chromium and apply their own patches. I'm guessing this will make its way into Brave, but their built in ad and privacy blockers should continue to function.
roca 7y ago
I love Brendan, but if Google's browser domination concerns you, use Firefox or Safari. Using Chromium browsers leaves Google firmly in control.
- zdragnar 7y ago
  I'm not an apple user, so sorry if this is way off but... ... isn't the direction Google's taking here the same as what Apple already did with Safari? Is Safari actually any better in this particular regard?
  - roca 7y ago
    I seem to recall that the Safari content blocking API is like the proposed Chromium API, but that doesn't alarm people because a) Apple is less of an ad company than Google, so less of a perceived conflict of interest b) Google is perceived to break stuff that is already working c) Safari/Webkit aren't dominant outside of iOS where they're mandatory
Improvotter 7y ago
The only thing I'm missing on Firefox is when I am on my Macbook, is that fling when using my touchpad. It's essential to any MacOS app and it feels weird not to have it. I'm used to it on Linux and Windows though.
- mediocrejoker 7y ago
  By fling, do you mean the two-finger horizontal scroll to move back and forward through history? If so, I miss it too.
  - the_pwner224 7y ago
    I've enabled this on my Linux laptops (settings are the same regardless of OS) to get that functionality in FF: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Touchpad_Synaptics#Firefox_and_special_touchpad_events https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Touchpad_Synaptics#Fire...
  - jonnytran 7y ago
    That's in macOS System Preferences. I use it all the time. Go to Trackpad / More Gestures and check "Swipe between pages". You can also control how many fingers you want to use. I set it to three fingers so that it doesn't conflict with horizontal scrolling.
  - Improvotter 7y ago
    I mean the bouncing when you overscroll vertically.
techntoke 7y ago
Brave still uses Chromium. I already use Chromium.

Here are browsers that aren't just 'not Chrome,' they are better. Brave: https://brave.com/ https://brave.com/ Firefox: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/

bdz 7y ago

Personally I use and can recommend ungoogled-chromium https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium

ashishbindra 7y ago
Can you elaborate as to why you recommend it? Thanks.
dooglius 7y ago
> ungoogled-chromium retains the default Chromium experience as closely as possible It sounds like they would also be removing ad-blocking then

tapoxi 7y ago

Maybe it's unfair, but I can't help but think of Brave as just a scheme to push their cryptocurrency. They're removing the website's ability to monetize and replacing it with their own system. That seems gross.

axaxs 7y ago
You're not wrong about what it boils down to, but, I'm all for it. I didn't mind ads, generally, until I did. Until they started hijacking your browser, redirecting you, doing popups. Ad people have shown they cannot be trusted on the whole. What Brave seems to be doing is doing their own 'safe ads' system, and sharing the money. It will likely be less for the content creators, but as a 'at-my-wits-end-with-ads' Brave user, I just don't care.
- rayiner 7y ago
  If you look at the benchmark results, aggressively stripping ads and tracking can result in pages loading twice as fast and hours of extra battery life. I'm happy to pay money to view your website, but modern web ads are a ridiculous and punitive payment scheme.
  - jamiequint 7y ago
    What you're doing is the equivalent of walking into a store, picking up $100 of merchandise, slapping $10 on the counter and walking out because "I'm happy to buy your products, but your prices are ridiculous". It's not a very moral position to take.
    - xur17 7y ago
      It's really not.
    - justsee 7y ago
      gorhill makes a moral argument on the other side of yours [1]: That said, it's important to note that using a blocker is NOT theft. Don't fall for this creepy idea. The ultimate logical consequence of blocking = theft is the criminalisation of the inalienable right to privacy. Your analogy is flawed because it assumes the customer walking into the store retains their privacy and is not charged any hidden costs. A more accurate example would be one in which the customer walks into a store that: * data mines as much about that person as possible to profile them * sells that data without consent to unvetted global buyers * increases the risk that customer's devices are compromised (drive-by malware installs through ad placements on mainstream sites) * charges them a hidden surprise fee (in the form of increased data usage, battery usage etc from poorly-designed ad systems). Presenting naive analogies is harmful to our ability as a society to reason about the costs of systems like this. I'd urge anyone to have a read and/or follow Ad Fraud Historian to understand how bad / harmful the existing ad-tech ecosystem is. [2] It's truly awful, and anything that moves the internet away from this dystopian, incompetent and fraudulent monetisation approach to content is doing all of humanity a huge favor. [1]: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#philosophy https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#philosophy [2]: https://twitter.com/acfou https://twitter.com/acfou
JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
I mean we would be paid for viewing ads this way instead of being paid nothing as it is now, and losing all our privacy instead. Seems like a win/win to me. Advertisers would actually pay the eyeballs that should be paid for seeing ads instead of the middleman in the attention economy. The technology in the Basic Attention Token performs all the functions instead.
- jamiequint 7y ago
  > instead of being paid nothing as it is now You get paid in the free content you consume as it is now. It's literally the reason you don't have to subscribe to every website you visit.
- tty2300 7y ago
  I get paid for working a job. I don't want any ads on my screen.
  - dymk 7y ago
    "I get paid for working a job. I don't want to pay road tolls" "I get paid for working a job. I don't want to pay the grocery store for my food"
    - tty2300 7y ago
      My point was I don't need my browser injecting extra ads that I get paid for.
  - Gustomaximus 7y ago
    People want free YouTube, maps, email etc. Maybe you will pay, but the market as a whole has been very clear here. Free wins. Personally I dont mind either. I'd prefer to see ads relevant to me rather within some limitations of privacy. I feel government needs to set the limits here rather than expect business to self regulate. Nor will the market self regulate as this is more technical than most people are interested to understand, and back to free wins.
prepend 7y ago
I use Brave and have never bought any cryptocurrency, nor do I intend to. I think it will be a net positive if every targeted ad company stops using that model, so Brave shutting this down is a huge plus for me. Note, I used a similar setup in chrome and Firefox that some might find gross as well as it removed the ability for websites to monetize me using ads or data from surveillance.
- jamiequint 7y ago
  > I think it will be a net positive if every targeted ad company stops using that model So you want an internet dominated by large players only and full of subscription walls everywhere?
  - prepend 7y ago
    No, certainly not. I want an Internet with lots of business models including paywalls and large players, but also OSS, amateur bloggers, publicly funded sites, etc. I remember an Internet back when there were only university sites and personal sites. It had a lot of flaws, but was better, I think than our situation where our data are sold and resold with no way of customer control.

badloginagain 7y ago

The original creators of Opera have been building out Vivaldi for a while, which has the specific design goal of being a browser for power users https://vivaldi.com/ https://vivaldi.com/

mixedCase 7y ago
Without source available, it seems like it's targeted for a section of power users.
- chadcatlett 7y ago
  I have no idea if it would compile and is actually complete, but Vivaldi does do sourcecode tarballs. https://vivaldi.com/source/ https://vivaldi.com/source/
  - mixedCase 7y ago
    These are the changes made to Chromium. The code for the UI (made with web technologies) is easy to access, but it's under a proprietary license.
rasz 7y ago
UI in javascript = still to this day it can take 2-3 seconds when opening new tabs or going fullscreen. Plus they released a statement about "observing" Google adblock decisions instead of going hard in with "we will not deprecate webrequest usability in our fork".
lone_haxx0r 7y ago
What's their business model?
- jccalhoun 7y ago
  the same business model as all the other free browsers: search referrals

ljoshua 7y ago

Does the webRequest API deprecation also impact Chromium, and therefore Brave as well? Brave seems like it's willing to backfill in changes to Chromium, but I'm wondering how this impacts the browser overall. I use Brave as my daily driver (with Shields Up and uBlock Origin), but I'm not sure what the actual impact will be when it comes.

csharp 7y ago
It won't effect Brave. Brave is a Chromium fork, not an extension, so have full control over the browser/APIs.
- ducttape12 7y ago
  Brave isn't a fork, they take the tagged build of Chromium and apply their own patches. I'm guessing this will make its way into Brave, but their built in ad and privacy blockers should continue to function.

roca 7y ago

I love Brendan, but if Google's browser domination concerns you, use Firefox or Safari. Using Chromium browsers leaves Google firmly in control.

zdragnar 7y ago
I'm not an apple user, so sorry if this is way off but... ... isn't the direction Google's taking here the same as what Apple already did with Safari? Is Safari actually any better in this particular regard?
- roca 7y ago
  I seem to recall that the Safari content blocking API is like the proposed Chromium API, but that doesn't alarm people because a) Apple is less of an ad company than Google, so less of a perceived conflict of interest b) Google is perceived to break stuff that is already working c) Safari/Webkit aren't dominant outside of iOS where they're mandatory

Improvotter 7y ago

The only thing I'm missing on Firefox is when I am on my Macbook, is that fling when using my touchpad. It's essential to any MacOS app and it feels weird not to have it. I'm used to it on Linux and Windows though.

mediocrejoker 7y ago
By fling, do you mean the two-finger horizontal scroll to move back and forward through history? If so, I miss it too.
- the_pwner224 7y ago
  I've enabled this on my Linux laptops (settings are the same regardless of OS) to get that functionality in FF: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Touchpad_Synaptics#Firefox_and_special_touchpad_events https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Touchpad_Synaptics#Fire...
- jonnytran 7y ago
  That's in macOS System Preferences. I use it all the time. Go to Trackpad / More Gestures and check "Swipe between pages". You can also control how many fingers you want to use. I set it to three fingers so that it doesn't conflict with horizontal scrolling.
- Improvotter 7y ago
  I mean the bouncing when you overscroll vertically.

techntoke 7y ago

Brave still uses Chromium. I already use Chromium.