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Google will keep locking down Chrome and using corporate talk to hand wave it away, only recourse is to leave. First it’s “sign in” with obtuse ways to turn it

Google will keep locking down Chrome and using corporate talk to hand wave it away, only recourse is to leave. First it’s “sign in” with obtuse ways to turn it off. Then block Adblocking, once again with obtuse ways to disable... the end goal is pretty obvious, get the majority of Chrome users to turn on ads and tie their real names to their Chrome browser. Of course let “power users” (who’ll turn that crap off anyways) have their switches to do so. It gives Google plausible deniability. —— To those who say just fork Chrome adfm had a good article explaining why that doesn’t work: > And while you can use or adapt Chromium to your heart's content, your new browser won't work with most internet video unless you license a proprietary DRM component called Widevine from Google. The API that connects to Widevine was standardized in 2017 by the World Wide Web Consortium, whose members narrowly voted down a proposal to change the membership rules for the W3C to require members not to abuse the DMCA to prevent DRM from becoming a tool to undermine competition. https://boingboing.net/2019/05/29/hoarding-software-freedom.html https://boingboing.net/2019/05/29/hoarding-software-freedom....

bmurphy1976 7y ago
Widevine works with Firefox. Why couldn't it with Chromium?
- Eldt 7y ago
  I'm sure it could, but who would implement it?
  - bmurphy1976 7y ago
    The same people who were motivated enough to get it into Firefox?
  - magduf 7y ago
    Apparently someone has, because I was using Chromium on Linux to watch Netflix several years ago without any trouble (this was before Firefox got it working).
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      Are you sure it wasn't using Chrome's implementation?
      - magduf 7y ago
        Actually, you're right, it was Chrome now that I think about it. It's been a while. Before I canceled my Netflix subscription (due to lack of use), I was using Firefox to view it.
- sbov 7y ago
  You have to license it from Google. And they don't always say yes: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/04/03/googles_widevine_drm/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/04/03/googles_widevine_dr...
  - mantap 7y ago
    That's only if you are making a browser and want to distribute it. There's no way that Google is going to mail howlers to end-users who use widevine with chromium forks.
- lultimouomo 7y ago
  Widevine works with chromium just fine - by which I mean that like with everything chromium it gets broken without apparent reason every now and then, but after some time they fix it.
- thayne 7y ago
  Because you would need to get a widevine license from google. Mozilla was able to do that, but I know at least one chromium fork had it's application for a license rejected. It technically is possible to copy the widevine library from a chrome install to use with chromium, but non technical people won't know how to do that.
trufflepig 7y ago
I’ve quit chrome for a while now but... I’m pretty sure they have your real name as long as you signed in once from the same hw and browser footprint. Is real name that important for them? I think everyone’s digital signature is already out there
mrb 7y ago
«To those who say just fork Chrome adfm had a good article explaining why that doesn’t work: [Chromium, Widevine...]» To my knowledge Widevine DRM works with Chromium. You can watch DRM'd videos: https://forum.manjaro.org/t/how-to-install-widevine-on-chromium-to-wacth-netflix/4176 https://forum.manjaro.org/t/how-to-install-widevine-on-chrom...
- Yoric 7y ago
  I remember of projects that failed because Widevine explicitly didn't work in their Chromium. I assume that Widevine builds nicely but requires a Google-issued key to work.
  - Spivak 7y ago
    Yep! Which is why the Arch package just extracts it from Chrome and then puts it in the right place for Chromium. I mean if you could just build Widevine and decrypt content it wouldn't be very good DRM.
    - TheKarateKid 7y ago
      This is fine for power users who care enough to do it. But for the general public, as well as companies which would need to do this if they wanted to support DRM in their own kind of browser, it is not going to fly with Google and probably isn't legal.
  - mrb 7y ago
    You don't "build" Widevine. Google distributes a binary (libwidevinecdm.so) which implements a standard API that works with both Chrome and Chromium. The "master" DRM secret key is obfuscated and distributed in libwidevinecdm.so itself.
    - ummonk 7y ago
      And no pirate has been able to extract the key yet?
magnamerc 7y ago
I've only come across widevine for Netflix content. Are there others that require widevine?
- cpeterso 7y ago
  Amazon Prime, Hulu, and YouTube's paid content use Widevine DRM.
- mikeryan 7y ago
  It's usually going to be around any studio produced content Broadcast or Movie. YouTube TV uses it for live broadcasts. The Studios require DRM as part of their content licensing. PlayReady is the other primary DRM competitor.
gosseyn 7y ago
I used to have Firefox and Vivaldi ...but honestly I used Vivaldi mainly...when I heard that even Microsoft was going to use chromium I realized...Firefox is literally the last front ! I installed Firefox and started using it as my main browser! What I miss the most is Vivaldi speed dial and bookmarks. Add-ons aren't always a solution ! I miss Netscape days...internet wasn't a megacorp business playground :( !
- danarmak 7y ago
  > I miss Netscape days...internet wasn't a megacorp business playground :( ! You mean "this website is optimized for Internet Explorer 6" days? Or the earlier "this website is optimized for Netscape 2.0" days? I think the nearest the web ever came to not being any megacorp's playground was when Firefox was at around 30% market share, and IE6 which had 60%+ market share had stopped moving. IOW, when MS still had the playground mostly to themselves, but chose to ignore it. And even then, the web / Firefox couldn't really innovate without breaking IE6 compatibility, so everyone was stuck.
- wishinghand 7y ago
  I looked up Vivaldi Speed Dial. It looks like the same sort of thing Firefox, Chrome, and Safari have where a new tab has a pinned list of favorite or most visited sites. What does Vivaldi do that I'm not seeing?
  - aquova 7y ago
    Having switched from Vivaldi back to Firefox about a year ago, the Vivaldi speed dial is similar to the pinned lists of favorites, but it's much more user friendly. You can customize how many sites you see, how many are in each column, number of columns, etc. You can also change the icon to be anything you like. It certainly wasn't a dealbreaker for me personally, and as you said, pinned favorites serve the same purpose, but it does feel more restrictive on FF.
    - keroton 7y ago
      Did you try Infinity Tab Pro (which is free)? Sounds kinda similar to what you are looking. It does No. of sites, custom columns, custom pictures, and custom backgrounds. It really gives you a lot of control compared to all the other extensions I tried.
amyjess 7y ago
I'd honestly be okay with using Vivaldi 99% of the time and then switching over to Chrome only to watch Netflix and the like. And honestly, when I watch Netflix, it's usually in my Surface, in which case I'll use the app.
- epicide 7y ago
  I don't think it would be hard to make an Electron Netflix app if one doesn't already exist.
  - alias_neo 7y ago
    Then you're just using Chrome... Isn't Electron basically just a Chrome tab as an app (to over simplify it? I presume it would afford Google the same level of tracking that Chrome does.
    - _underfl0w_ 7y ago
      Electron apps' Chrome stores its cookies separately from the user's installation of it, correct? That, plus the lack of a logged-in account within Electron's Chrome might help to mitigate user cookie correlation and the like, right? Not sure about in-browser IP tracking, though...
      - sound1 7y ago
        I wish someone with a lot more knowledge than me on this replies. You raise a very valid, practical and useful question, would love to hear the answer :-)
      - codedokode 7y ago
        But Electron app has full access to your system unlike normal web page. So it makes sense to run Electron apps from separate user account so that they cannot read your browser history, cookies, install you an extension etc.
    - pritambaral 7y ago
troels 7y ago
I wonder if that might backfire. I've been using Chromium for a while now, but whenever I need to see video, I copy paste the url over to Firefox. At some point, I'm going to be bothered enough to just switch permanently to Firefox.
- alias_neo 7y ago
  Now's the perfect time, it will even import all your stuff (see the link in OP). Make the switch.
  - ornitorrincos 7y ago
    I might be doing it wrong, but did't import passwords contrary to what it did promise. Minor annoyance, though. Still switched in desktop as I was on mobile
vbezhenar 7y ago
"Most internet videos" probably is overstatement. I'm watching youtube, pornhub and twitch and I don't think that it requires any DRM. The only service with DRM I'm aware of is Netflix and it's terrible anyway.
- RussianCow 7y ago
  > The only service with DRM I'm aware of is Netflix and it's terrible anyway. Ha! Tell that to their 150 million subscribers. :) More seriously, using a browser without DRM would be a deal-breaker to many users like myself solely because of Netflix, unfortunately. That said, if you're serious about using a DRM-free browser, there are other ways to watch Netflix (iOS/Android, smart TVs, etc).
  - JadeNB 7y ago
    > > The only service with DRM I'm aware of is Netflix and it's terrible anyway. > Ha! Tell that to their 150 million subscribers. :) I'm not sure that a large number of subscribers is a convincing argument of the non-terribleness of a service. A quick Google search suggests that Comcast, excuse me, Xfinity, has somewhere in the neighbourhood of 30 million subscribers. I don't think that you will find any argument telling them how terrible Xfinity is.
    - mwfunk 7y ago
      Sure but those 150 million people choose to subscribe to Netflix. Presumably they like it, otherwise why would they spend money on it every month? The people who use Comcast have no choice, because for nearly all of them, the alternative is no Internet access at home other than via cellular. The original statement was like saying, "nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded."
    - RussianCow 7y ago
      Sure, but many of those Xfinity customers don't have any reasonable alternatives, whereas there are now a handful of players in the video streaming space. If someone doesn't like Netflix, they can easily cancel their subscription and switch to another service. So even though you're partially right, the subscriber count in this case is a pretty good proxy of how good the service is.
everdrive 7y ago
>And while you can use or adapt Chromium to your heart's content, your new browser won't work with most internet video And genuinely, most people are choosing between privacy and convenience.
- yuvalr1 7y ago
  >And genuinely, most people are choosing between privacy and convenience. And with Firefox you don't need to choose.
3xblah 7y ago
There was a time when browsers did not have built-in media players. Seems like ffmpeg libraries, developed outside of the web browser, support nearly all video formats a user could encounter on the internet. Also, the part of the statement that reads "your new browser won't work with most internet video" is intriguing. Can we define "most internet video" as Amazon Video, BBC, Hulu, Netflix and Spotify? (Widevine users listed on its Wikipedia page) Seems like there is much, much more video on the internet that does not come from those sources.
- dpeck 7y ago
  | Can we define "most internet video" as Amazon Video, BBC, Hulu, Netflix and Spotify? Maybe you could in terms of unique videos, but in terms of the volume of watched video, not at all. Netflix itself is responsible for something in the range of 15% of the worlds bandwidth usage. Either way, it not going to win an end users to have something like that.
- chillacy 7y ago
  Probably depends how you define most: by number of videos or bandwidth.
dccoolgai 7y ago
The day the Web sold its soul. Such a disappointment when TBL came out in support of that. People who knew better tried to warn us, but they all got shouted down and told there "was no other choice" b/c content creators were going to try an lock down with extensions and it would somehow be worse.
- asadotzler 7y ago
  Not with extensions, with plug-ins, and they were already doing it. Flash and Silverlight came with DRM for any publisher that wanted to use it. Many did.
  - vetinari 7y ago
    Plugins would be fine; you could always point out, that they are non-standard. Now, if you fail to support the right EME plugin, it is the browsers fault.
    - asadotzler 7y ago
      Back in the day a browser without those plugins was not viable. Non-standard didn't matter.
      - vetinari 7y ago
        I know, but that's not the point. The point is, that the pain for the non-standard support had to be taken by the proponents of DRM. Now, it is up to the foss crowd. IOW, it was not about tech issue, but about social issue / blame-shifting.
- nyjah 7y ago
  TBL? Can you extrapolate? I google it and its "The Basketball League". I just think your comment had the opportunity to continue to educate me on something I have never heard of or about and to throw in an acronym without having used the the 3 words before is confusing.
gruez 7y ago
>your new browser won't work with most internet video "most internet video"... by what metric? Hours watched? Catalog size? I find it unlikely that DRM videos outnumber non-DRM videos by any reasonable metric.
- afiori 7y ago
  If I fail to watch a video I want to watch once a day is already too much
- Aeolun 7y ago
  If you build a true libre browser, who needs DRM video anyway? I guess you could call it a feature at that.
kumarharsh 7y ago
You know what's horrifying about the idea of "just fork Chrome"? Google can still hurt you by blocking your browser's access to their prime properties (YouTube, Gmail, Maps, etc). Just look at YouTube denying Chromium-based Edge the new redesigned experience for absolutely zero reason.
- codedokode 7y ago
  This is already happening. Web version of Skype refuses to work in Firefox, but if you change user-agent to Edge, it works.
  - hodder 7y ago
    This is risky behaviour though when dealing with other megacorps. Legal ramifications and antitrust suits come out of actions like that.
    - saidajigumi 7y ago
      It's like Google found developer goodwill burdensome, and decided to pack it all up into container trucks and ship it all to Microsoft.
      - hodder 7y ago
        I agree. It is truly unbelievable. Same with user goodwill. Microsoft is vaccuuming it all up. Meanwhile Microsoft is making tons of great moves to get devs and users back on their side.
        BlueTemplar 7y ago
        You have to read that comment from a long-time Microsoft developer : https://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/all/2019/05/24/github_is_independent_despite_microsoft_acquisition_insists_ceo/#c_3790513 https://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/all/2019/05/24/github...
insulanus 7y ago
Yes. And on top of the video codec issue, there is also the issue of getting Chrome to build, and integrating code changes from every upstream Chromium release, which is quite frequent. The build setup process is very manual for an outsider, and changes often.
TheKarateKid 7y ago
As a developer and power user, it's difficult for me to switch to Firefox. However for most average Joe's it's fine and won't make a difference, so I always install and recommend Firefox when I play IT guy for family/friends. Time to start doing this again like we did in 2005!! It worked then and it can now!
- dgellow 7y ago
  I’m a developer and power user, I switched to Firefox months ago. What is making difficult to switch? I found equivalent for all my plugins so far.
  - sailfast 7y ago
    Same here. I'd also highly recommend Firefox Focus for mobile. Now to convince my enterprise network admins... It would probably take me a bit to figure out exactly how to work with the FireFox advanced debugging tools, but it's familiar territory.
  - tomjen3 7y ago
    What is the equivalent for one tab? It is technically simple enough that I could develop one one my own, except I remember firefox extensions to be an unbelievable pain to install back in the day.
    - abdullahkhalids 7y ago
      If you want the ability to save lists of Tabs, Firefox has https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta... which makes tabs appear in the sidebar, which makes managing even dozens of tabs simple. Installing is one click - as simple as the chrome web store. If you want the ability to unload tabs, firefox struggles with it. The best addon is https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/unload-tabs/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/unload-tabs/ but it admits that it is buggy. Haven't tried it though.
    - depressedpanda 7y ago
logicallee 7y ago
Luckily for us, there's antitrust law. This isn't really possible: Reproduction steps: 1. Check that Google search is working by opening Chrome, navigating to www.google.com, and searching for any term (such as the name of a newspaper and clicking the link to verify that search works as expected.) 2. Open firefox.com and navigate to www.google.com You will receive a message: "It looks like you have Chrome installed! For the most secure experience, please visit this page using the Chrome browser or wait and try again later.." If you have not used Chrome in the past 1 hour from your same IP address, you receive the page as expected. The above repro steps should be pretty much impossible under antitrust law. (Due to search monopoly.) Which is a very good thing.
- thayne 7y ago
  Assuming antitrust law is enforced...
  - _emacsomancer_ 7y ago
    Which it hasn't been since Reagan become president.
mtgx 7y ago
It's a shame Microsoft didn't want to use Firefox's codebase instead of Chromium for its new Edge browser. I don't know what Microsoft thinks it gained by doing this, but I'm almost certain they'll regret it in the long run, because it's a trap by Google. Google, Microsoft new "bestie" in this collaboration, will screw them over once it's clear that Microsoft "can't turn back" from using Chromium or even fork it.
- phatfish 7y ago
  That would be declaring a full on browser war with Google. I expect MS don't want to do that yet. It remains an option in the future I suppose. As I understand it Chromium is a lot easier to wrap your own GUI around than Gecko. XUL is still not completely decoupled, separating them completely is an ongoing effort I think. Maybe when the embedded Gecko/Servo engine is production ready would be the time for MS to reconsider.
jiveturkey 7y ago
First, you are being overly critical. Automatic (forced) sign-in is actually useful. Second, why do you call leaving the "only" recourse? As if it's something completely horrid that you would never ever do freely. Leaving is a completely fine path to take. With webRequest, Google is "just" testing the waters. Just like with the forced sign-in, they will back down when they see the backlash. Based only on Google's description, they seem to have a valid reason to remove (even though they say "deprecate", they mean remove) the offending API. However, there's zero chance they can get away with this. For what reason I'm not sure, market share of Chrome is very important to them. So they'll have to keep it or implement some new, acceptable method.
- keypusher 7y ago
  If you are ever in the market for a bridge, let me know.
PatrolX 7y ago
I tried this, it's very painful and not worth the effort.
mda 7y ago
So you came up with 2 things, first one is actually a good feature and second one is meh and world is going down? HN is utter ridiculous nowadays.
- CaptainZapp 7y ago
  May I ask you to explain why you think that having to be signed in to Google in order not to gete fuxored in your Web experience is a good thing?
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

bmurphy1976 7y ago

Widevine works with Firefox. Why couldn't it with Chromium?

Eldt 7y ago
I'm sure it could, but who would implement it?
- bmurphy1976 7y ago
  The same people who were motivated enough to get it into Firefox?
- magduf 7y ago
  Apparently someone has, because I was using Chromium on Linux to watch Netflix several years ago without any trouble (this was before Firefox got it working).
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    Are you sure it wasn't using Chrome's implementation?
    - magduf 7y ago
      Actually, you're right, it was Chrome now that I think about it. It's been a while. Before I canceled my Netflix subscription (due to lack of use), I was using Firefox to view it.
sbov 7y ago
You have to license it from Google. And they don't always say yes: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/04/03/googles_widevine_drm/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/04/03/googles_widevine_dr...
- mantap 7y ago
  That's only if you are making a browser and want to distribute it. There's no way that Google is going to mail howlers to end-users who use widevine with chromium forks.
lultimouomo 7y ago
Widevine works with chromium just fine - by which I mean that like with everything chromium it gets broken without apparent reason every now and then, but after some time they fix it.
thayne 7y ago
Because you would need to get a widevine license from google. Mozilla was able to do that, but I know at least one chromium fork had it's application for a license rejected. It technically is possible to copy the widevine library from a chrome install to use with chromium, but non technical people won't know how to do that.

trufflepig 7y ago

I’ve quit chrome for a while now but... I’m pretty sure they have your real name as long as you signed in once from the same hw and browser footprint. Is real name that important for them? I think everyone’s digital signature is already out there

mrb 7y ago

«To those who say just fork Chrome adfm had a good article explaining why that doesn’t work: [Chromium, Widevine...]» To my knowledge Widevine DRM works with Chromium. You can watch DRM'd videos: https://forum.manjaro.org/t/how-to-install-widevine-on-chromium-to-wacth-netflix/4176 https://forum.manjaro.org/t/how-to-install-widevine-on-chrom...

Yoric 7y ago
I remember of projects that failed because Widevine explicitly didn't work in their Chromium. I assume that Widevine builds nicely but requires a Google-issued key to work.
- Spivak 7y ago
  Yep! Which is why the Arch package just extracts it from Chrome and then puts it in the right place for Chromium. I mean if you could just build Widevine and decrypt content it wouldn't be very good DRM.
  - TheKarateKid 7y ago
    This is fine for power users who care enough to do it. But for the general public, as well as companies which would need to do this if they wanted to support DRM in their own kind of browser, it is not going to fly with Google and probably isn't legal.
- mrb 7y ago
  You don't "build" Widevine. Google distributes a binary (libwidevinecdm.so) which implements a standard API that works with both Chrome and Chromium. The "master" DRM secret key is obfuscated and distributed in libwidevinecdm.so itself.
  - ummonk 7y ago
    And no pirate has been able to extract the key yet?

magnamerc 7y ago

I've only come across widevine for Netflix content. Are there others that require widevine?

cpeterso 7y ago
Amazon Prime, Hulu, and YouTube's paid content use Widevine DRM.
mikeryan 7y ago
It's usually going to be around any studio produced content Broadcast or Movie. YouTube TV uses it for live broadcasts. The Studios require DRM as part of their content licensing. PlayReady is the other primary DRM competitor.

gosseyn 7y ago

I used to have Firefox and Vivaldi ...but honestly I used Vivaldi mainly...when I heard that even Microsoft was going to use chromium I realized...Firefox is literally the last front ! I installed Firefox and started using it as my main browser! What I miss the most is Vivaldi speed dial and bookmarks. Add-ons aren't always a solution ! I miss Netscape days...internet wasn't a megacorp business playground :( !

danarmak 7y ago
> I miss Netscape days...internet wasn't a megacorp business playground :( ! You mean "this website is optimized for Internet Explorer 6" days? Or the earlier "this website is optimized for Netscape 2.0" days? I think the nearest the web ever came to not being any megacorp's playground was when Firefox was at around 30% market share, and IE6 which had 60%+ market share had stopped moving. IOW, when MS still had the playground mostly to themselves, but chose to ignore it. And even then, the web / Firefox couldn't really innovate without breaking IE6 compatibility, so everyone was stuck.
wishinghand 7y ago
I looked up Vivaldi Speed Dial. It looks like the same sort of thing Firefox, Chrome, and Safari have where a new tab has a pinned list of favorite or most visited sites. What does Vivaldi do that I'm not seeing?
- aquova 7y ago
  Having switched from Vivaldi back to Firefox about a year ago, the Vivaldi speed dial is similar to the pinned lists of favorites, but it's much more user friendly. You can customize how many sites you see, how many are in each column, number of columns, etc. You can also change the icon to be anything you like. It certainly wasn't a dealbreaker for me personally, and as you said, pinned favorites serve the same purpose, but it does feel more restrictive on FF.
  - keroton 7y ago
    Did you try Infinity Tab Pro (which is free)? Sounds kinda similar to what you are looking. It does No. of sites, custom columns, custom pictures, and custom backgrounds. It really gives you a lot of control compared to all the other extensions I tried.

amyjess 7y ago

I'd honestly be okay with using Vivaldi 99% of the time and then switching over to Chrome only to watch Netflix and the like. And honestly, when I watch Netflix, it's usually in my Surface, in which case I'll use the app.

epicide 7y ago
I don't think it would be hard to make an Electron Netflix app if one doesn't already exist.
- alias_neo 7y ago
  Then you're just using Chrome... Isn't Electron basically just a Chrome tab as an app (to over simplify it? I presume it would afford Google the same level of tracking that Chrome does.
  - _underfl0w_ 7y ago
    Electron apps' Chrome stores its cookies separately from the user's installation of it, correct? That, plus the lack of a logged-in account within Electron's Chrome might help to mitigate user cookie correlation and the like, right? Not sure about in-browser IP tracking, though...
    - sound1 7y ago
      I wish someone with a lot more knowledge than me on this replies. You raise a very valid, practical and useful question, would love to hear the answer :-)
    - codedokode 7y ago
      But Electron app has full access to your system unlike normal web page. So it makes sense to run Electron apps from separate user account so that they cannot read your browser history, cookies, install you an extension etc.
  - pritambaral 7y ago

troels 7y ago

I wonder if that might backfire. I've been using Chromium for a while now, but whenever I need to see video, I copy paste the url over to Firefox. At some point, I'm going to be bothered enough to just switch permanently to Firefox.

alias_neo 7y ago
Now's the perfect time, it will even import all your stuff (see the link in OP). Make the switch.
- ornitorrincos 7y ago
  I might be doing it wrong, but did't import passwords contrary to what it did promise. Minor annoyance, though. Still switched in desktop as I was on mobile

vbezhenar 7y ago

"Most internet videos" probably is overstatement. I'm watching youtube, pornhub and twitch and I don't think that it requires any DRM. The only service with DRM I'm aware of is Netflix and it's terrible anyway.

RussianCow 7y ago
> The only service with DRM I'm aware of is Netflix and it's terrible anyway. Ha! Tell that to their 150 million subscribers. :) More seriously, using a browser without DRM would be a deal-breaker to many users like myself solely because of Netflix, unfortunately. That said, if you're serious about using a DRM-free browser, there are other ways to watch Netflix (iOS/Android, smart TVs, etc).
- JadeNB 7y ago
  > > The only service with DRM I'm aware of is Netflix and it's terrible anyway. > Ha! Tell that to their 150 million subscribers. :) I'm not sure that a large number of subscribers is a convincing argument of the non-terribleness of a service. A quick Google search suggests that Comcast, excuse me, Xfinity, has somewhere in the neighbourhood of 30 million subscribers. I don't think that you will find any argument telling them how terrible Xfinity is.
  - mwfunk 7y ago
    Sure but those 150 million people choose to subscribe to Netflix. Presumably they like it, otherwise why would they spend money on it every month? The people who use Comcast have no choice, because for nearly all of them, the alternative is no Internet access at home other than via cellular. The original statement was like saying, "nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded."
  - RussianCow 7y ago
    Sure, but many of those Xfinity customers don't have any reasonable alternatives, whereas there are now a handful of players in the video streaming space. If someone doesn't like Netflix, they can easily cancel their subscription and switch to another service. So even though you're partially right, the subscriber count in this case is a pretty good proxy of how good the service is.

everdrive 7y ago

>And while you can use or adapt Chromium to your heart's content, your new browser won't work with most internet video And genuinely, most people are choosing between privacy and convenience.

yuvalr1 7y ago
>And genuinely, most people are choosing between privacy and convenience. And with Firefox you don't need to choose.

3xblah 7y ago

There was a time when browsers did not have built-in media players. Seems like ffmpeg libraries, developed outside of the web browser, support nearly all video formats a user could encounter on the internet. Also, the part of the statement that reads "your new browser won't work with most internet video" is intriguing. Can we define "most internet video" as Amazon Video, BBC, Hulu, Netflix and Spotify? (Widevine users listed on its Wikipedia page) Seems like there is much, much more video on the internet that does not come from those sources.

dpeck 7y ago
| Can we define "most internet video" as Amazon Video, BBC, Hulu, Netflix and Spotify? Maybe you could in terms of unique videos, but in terms of the volume of watched video, not at all. Netflix itself is responsible for something in the range of 15% of the worlds bandwidth usage. Either way, it not going to win an end users to have something like that.
chillacy 7y ago
Probably depends how you define most: by number of videos or bandwidth.

dccoolgai 7y ago

The day the Web sold its soul. Such a disappointment when TBL came out in support of that. People who knew better tried to warn us, but they all got shouted down and told there "was no other choice" b/c content creators were going to try an lock down with extensions and it would somehow be worse.

asadotzler 7y ago
Not with extensions, with plug-ins, and they were already doing it. Flash and Silverlight came with DRM for any publisher that wanted to use it. Many did.
- vetinari 7y ago
  Plugins would be fine; you could always point out, that they are non-standard. Now, if you fail to support the right EME plugin, it is the browsers fault.
  - asadotzler 7y ago
    Back in the day a browser without those plugins was not viable. Non-standard didn't matter.
    - vetinari 7y ago
      I know, but that's not the point. The point is, that the pain for the non-standard support had to be taken by the proponents of DRM. Now, it is up to the foss crowd. IOW, it was not about tech issue, but about social issue / blame-shifting.
nyjah 7y ago
TBL? Can you extrapolate? I google it and its "The Basketball League". I just think your comment had the opportunity to continue to educate me on something I have never heard of or about and to throw in an acronym without having used the the 3 words before is confusing.

gruez 7y ago

>your new browser won't work with most internet video "most internet video"... by what metric? Hours watched? Catalog size? I find it unlikely that DRM videos outnumber non-DRM videos by any reasonable metric.

afiori 7y ago
If I fail to watch a video I want to watch once a day is already too much
Aeolun 7y ago
If you build a true libre browser, who needs DRM video anyway? I guess you could call it a feature at that.

kumarharsh 7y ago

You know what's horrifying about the idea of "just fork Chrome"? Google can still hurt you by blocking your browser's access to their prime properties (YouTube, Gmail, Maps, etc). Just look at YouTube denying Chromium-based Edge the new redesigned experience for absolutely zero reason.

codedokode 7y ago
This is already happening. Web version of Skype refuses to work in Firefox, but if you change user-agent to Edge, it works.
- hodder 7y ago
  This is risky behaviour though when dealing with other megacorps. Legal ramifications and antitrust suits come out of actions like that.
  - saidajigumi 7y ago
    It's like Google found developer goodwill burdensome, and decided to pack it all up into container trucks and ship it all to Microsoft.
    - hodder 7y ago
      I agree. It is truly unbelievable. Same with user goodwill. Microsoft is vaccuuming it all up. Meanwhile Microsoft is making tons of great moves to get devs and users back on their side.
      - BlueTemplar 7y ago
        You have to read that comment from a long-time Microsoft developer : https://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/all/2019/05/24/github_is_independent_despite_microsoft_acquisition_insists_ceo/#c_3790513 https://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/all/2019/05/24/github...

insulanus 7y ago

Yes. And on top of the video codec issue, there is also the issue of getting Chrome to build, and integrating code changes from every upstream Chromium release, which is quite frequent. The build setup process is very manual for an outsider, and changes often.

TheKarateKid 7y ago

As a developer and power user, it's difficult for me to switch to Firefox. However for most average Joe's it's fine and won't make a difference, so I always install and recommend Firefox when I play IT guy for family/friends. Time to start doing this again like we did in 2005!! It worked then and it can now!

dgellow 7y ago
I’m a developer and power user, I switched to Firefox months ago. What is making difficult to switch? I found equivalent for all my plugins so far.
- sailfast 7y ago
  Same here. I'd also highly recommend Firefox Focus for mobile. Now to convince my enterprise network admins... It would probably take me a bit to figure out exactly how to work with the FireFox advanced debugging tools, but it's familiar territory.
- tomjen3 7y ago
  What is the equivalent for one tab? It is technically simple enough that I could develop one one my own, except I remember firefox extensions to be an unbelievable pain to install back in the day.
  - abdullahkhalids 7y ago
    If you want the ability to save lists of Tabs, Firefox has https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta... which makes tabs appear in the sidebar, which makes managing even dozens of tabs simple. Installing is one click - as simple as the chrome web store. If you want the ability to unload tabs, firefox struggles with it. The best addon is https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/unload-tabs/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/unload-tabs/ but it admits that it is buggy. Haven't tried it though.
  - depressedpanda 7y ago

logicallee 7y ago

Luckily for us, there's antitrust law. This isn't really possible: Reproduction steps: 1. Check that Google search is working by opening Chrome, navigating to www.google.com, and searching for any term (such as the name of a newspaper and clicking the link to verify that search works as expected.) 2. Open firefox.com and navigate to www.google.com You will receive a message: "It looks like you have Chrome installed! For the most secure experience, please visit this page using the Chrome browser or wait and try again later.." If you have not used Chrome in the past 1 hour from your same IP address, you receive the page as expected. The above repro steps should be pretty much impossible under antitrust law. (Due to search monopoly.) Which is a very good thing.

thayne 7y ago
Assuming antitrust law is enforced...
- _emacsomancer_ 7y ago
  Which it hasn't been since Reagan become president.

mtgx 7y ago

It's a shame Microsoft didn't want to use Firefox's codebase instead of Chromium for its new Edge browser. I don't know what Microsoft thinks it gained by doing this, but I'm almost certain they'll regret it in the long run, because it's a trap by Google. Google, Microsoft new "bestie" in this collaboration, will screw them over once it's clear that Microsoft "can't turn back" from using Chromium or even fork it.

phatfish 7y ago
That would be declaring a full on browser war with Google. I expect MS don't want to do that yet. It remains an option in the future I suppose. As I understand it Chromium is a lot easier to wrap your own GUI around than Gecko. XUL is still not completely decoupled, separating them completely is an ongoing effort I think. Maybe when the embedded Gecko/Servo engine is production ready would be the time for MS to reconsider.

jiveturkey 7y ago

First, you are being overly critical. Automatic (forced) sign-in is actually useful. Second, why do you call leaving the "only" recourse? As if it's something completely horrid that you would never ever do freely. Leaving is a completely fine path to take. With webRequest, Google is "just" testing the waters. Just like with the forced sign-in, they will back down when they see the backlash. Based only on Google's description, they seem to have a valid reason to remove (even though they say "deprecate", they mean remove) the offending API. However, there's zero chance they can get away with this. For what reason I'm not sure, market share of Chrome is very important to them. So they'll have to keep it or implement some new, acceptable method.

keypusher 7y ago
If you are ever in the market for a bridge, let me know.

PatrolX 7y ago

I tried this, it's very painful and not worth the effort.

mda 7y ago

So you came up with 2 things, first one is actually a good feature and second one is meh and world is going down? HN is utter ridiculous nowadays.

CaptainZapp 7y ago
May I ask you to explain why you think that having to be signed in to Google in order not to gete fuxored in your Web experience is a good thing?

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