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Just read Microsoft will allow ad blocker extensions (May build one in) in their new Chromium browser. Looks like I’m going to rewind 13 years and use IE again

Just read Microsoft will allow ad blocker extensions (May build one in) in their new Chromium browser. Looks like I’m going to rewind 13 years and use IE again(IE of today). Such a stupid move by the do no evil company! Now they do no stupid too. EDIT: Here is link... https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2019/06/16/microsoft-just-dealt-a-blow-to-googles-ad-blocking-plans/#459c060c16ff https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2019/06/16/micr...

Fat_Thor 7y ago
A little know fact about IE8 is that it came with a built in content blocking mechanism appropriately called Tracking Protection way back in 2009. IIRC it was the first browser to come with ad blocking built in, although not turn on by default. Opera came with content blocking a bit later. IE9 improved on it with what I think is one of the most impressive feature to this day. It had a heuristic tracking protection that block trackers once it's detected at a certain re-occurrence counts that you can config. So in theory it doesn't need to subscribed to an ad list like all browsers do today. IE took a lot of crap deservedly so, but that overshadowed a lot of pioneer works that later browsers adopted.
- XzetaU8 7y ago
  Speaking for Tracking Protection on IE, the Easylists TPL lists on the official IE gallery site is severely outdated[1] (Last updated Nov 7, 2017) This page from filterlists.com[2] offers an updated collection of TPL lists [1]https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/iegallery https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/iegallery [2]https://raw.githubusercontent.com/collinbarrett/FilterLists/master/data/TPLSubscriptionAssistant.html https://raw.githubusercontent.com/collinbarrett/FilterLists/...
joenathanone 7y ago
Link?
- jccalhoun 7y ago
  there was a reddit ama where someone asked about adblockers and they said: "we occasionally hear requests for a built in ad blocking experiences in Edge. For most users, we find that extensions (combined with strong defaults around tracking prevention) are the best option here because you can choose from a variety of experiences and defaults, but we absolutely want to hear from you if you think this should be built in." https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/c094uf/hi_reddit_were_the_team_behind_microsoft_edge_and/er34xbw/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/c094uf/hi_reddit_were...
  - nvrspyx 7y ago
    The quoted bit was about a built-in ad blocker specifically. I think the real major point is: “There are a couple components I want to touch on here - As mentioned elsewhere, we're still evaluating the adblock Manifest V3 changes, so we're not quite ready to commit to a statement one way or another on that issue.” And: “Second, we're committed to a strong extension ecosystem, including ad blocking. We're still evaluating some of the latest changes here in Chromium, but we're committed to the customer scenario as a principle. To be clear, we will not artificially restrict ad blocking for business reasons related to advertising.”
    - icebraining 7y ago
      That's mostly fluff. Google also says they're not restricting ad blocking for business reasons, but for performance, and they haven't banned all ad-blocking, just forced addons to use their new mechanism, so they can still claim to support an ecosystem that includes ad-blocking.
      - nvrspyx 7y ago
        Agreed. It doesn’t mean much, but I thought I would just point out the actual relevant bits even if they don’t hold much weight.
taurath 7y ago
Google has every incentive to believe ads and user surveillance is not evil
- TimTheTinker 7y ago
  Agreed. The problem with a mission statement like “do no evil” is that in today’s pluralistic world (especially in the west), there’s no generally agreed-upon definition of evil. Philosophically, defining “evil” requires defining “good” first, and a definition of “good” depends entirely on one’s notions of origin, meaning, morality, and destiny — one’s worldview. In google’s case, it’s probably better business to simply remove the motto than to risk offending large groups of people in the quest for philosophical rigor.
  - glyphist 7y ago
    And do they agree with you. Google actually dropped the motto sometimes in Q3 2018. https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct/ https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct/
    - joshuamorton 7y ago
      ctrl + f "don't be evil" > And remember… don’t be evil, and if you see something that you think isn’t right – speak up!
  - ulucs 7y ago
    > there’s no generally agreed-upon definition of evil. Philosophically, yes. But moral relativity does not hold well due to the existence of culture. For western countries, no one can defend the morality of slavery or genocide. While those are pretty extreme, we have also collectively (democratically) decided that screwing over customers for your own profit is also not moral and should not be allowed. That's why antitrust law exists.
vxNsr 7y ago
Do you have a link to that? My only issue is that chrome is great bec I can have multiple profiles on the same windows user account, but that’s kinda anathema to the paradigm of how Microsoft wants us to use Edge. I use chrome profiles the same way ppl use Firefox containers, my only hope is that edge builds something similar. I’ve also been using Vivaldi, I love it but I’m worried about using duh a small project that is still dependent on chromium.
- vasili111 7y ago
  Try also Brave. It is fully open source and based on Chromium.
  - WAHa_06x36 7y ago
    Don't. Brave has so many problematic sides. Just stay away from that one.
    - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
      Go on?
      - WAHa_06x36 7y ago
        Apart from the frankly horrendous political views of the founder, they have claimed to collect donations for creators who have never signed up for this. And, the business concept of blocking other people's ads and showing you their own is pretty despicable in its own right.
  - vermaden 7y ago
    In https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20096868 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20096868 You asked: > Anyone uses FreeBSD on laptop? How is your impressions? I do since years and here are the tips you may find useful if You would also like to run FreeBSD on the desktop. https://vermaden.wordpress.com/freebsd-desktop/ https://vermaden.wordpress.com/freebsd-desktop/ ... and please stay away from Project Trident or TrueOS or Lumina, they are from from being ready. ... eventually GhostBSD is quite OK. ... sorry for hijacking the 'Brave' thread but I am not able to reply to the original comment (time).
jbigelow76 7y ago
I've been running it on the Edge Chromium Dev build for a few weeks now, works great!
- sundvor 7y ago
  Ditto. Google Meets didn't work for a while, then it did. Now it also has a dark theme. I've swapped to Edge Beta on my PCs and Brave on my Android.
- ryan-allen 7y ago
  Well, that's exciting! I didn't know there was a build [0]! [0] https://www.microsoftedgeinsider.com/en-us/ https://www.microsoftedgeinsider.com/en-us/
vasili111 7y ago
It is not quit clear what exactly they think regarding ad blocking. Edge team AMA on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/c094uf/hi_reddit_were_the_team_behind_microsoft_edge_and/er34xbw/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/c094uf/hi_reddit_were...
bdcravens 7y ago
> Looks like I’m going to rewind 13 years Well if you had asked your typical HN developer a few years ago whether they'd be using a Microsoft code editor ...
- quickthrower2 7y ago
  + Microsoft tool for compiling to JS + Microsoft Public/Private Git Hosting :-)
- scardine 7y ago
  Lets not forget WSL. I just got the WSL2 upgrade - it turns a Windows 10 desktop into a quite decent software developer workstation. Seriously guys, if the last time you used Windows was a few years ago it is time to give it a another shot.
  - de_watcher 7y ago
    > Seriously guys, if the last time you used Windows was a few years ago it is time to give it a another shot. What's the point? They do it all the time when things start going bad. It'll turn to garbage as soon as they have enough of mindshare. Why be among the ones who run back and forth?
  - earenndil 7y ago
    The last time I used windows was last week. It's still awful.
  - feanaro 7y ago
    Isn't the surveillance/telemetry problem still as much of a problem as it was on day zero? As far as I know, it hasn't been removed nor lessened. As far as I remember, it is absolutely overreaching, collecting your name, email address, browsing history, searches, application usage and more. Microsoft also keeps a copy of your full-disk encryption key. <https://theintercept.com/2015/12/28/recently-bought-a-windows-computer-microsoft-probably-has-your-encryption-key/> https://theintercept.com/2015/12/28/recently-bought-a-window...
pmoriarty 7y ago
The bright side of Google's anti-ad-blocking efforts is that ad-blocking is clearly no longer just an insignificant blip on their radar. There must be enough users of ad-blockers now to start to significantly affect their bottom line. There might even be a critical mass of people who are against advertising to attempt to make some legal headway on this issue in Washington. Just as there has been legal action against telemarketers, there might be something on the legal front that can be done against online advertisers, who could be considered just as much or even more of a nuisance than telemarketers ever were. In addition, online advertising has repeatedly been a vector of malware, and perhaps companies which try to circumvent or forbid ad-blockers could have some legal consequences -- and, if not, perhaps laws could be introduced to make such consequences a reality. IANAL, and this is just a pipe dream of mine at the moment -- but plenty of pro-consumer legislation has been made over the years. Perhaps the dawn of an unsolicited-advertising-free world is upon us.
- PostOnce 7y ago
  I would think it's more likely they legislate against us, i.e. making it a crime to circumvent advertising (see: circumventing DRM).
  - pepr 7y ago
    You wouldn't download a car, you wouldn't block an ad! :)
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      As always: I would download a car if I could :).
      - vimslayer 7y ago
        Fun fact: the line of the ad was twisted by internet people for meming purposes. The actual line is "You wouldn't steal a car".
finchisko 7y ago
Isn't Microsoft selling ads too? I believe they do (that's why bing was created). If so, I don't trust their ad blocking initiative any more then google's. Maybe in short term, as they want to steal users from Chrome, but in longterm, they'll in same position as google is now.
- apsdsm 7y ago
  They probably do, but Microsoft isn’t an ad company like Google, so that danger is probably fairly existential to them.
  - Fnoord 7y ago
    It is difficult to assess which company is more 'good' or 'evil' nowadays. Microsoft did a lot of good by competing with UNIX in the 90s (Windows NT was cheap compared to UNIX). They also did bad with their embrace & extend and other anti competitive behavior. Microsoft is a much older company who recently transitioned from being a proprietary software company selling licenses to a company who sell that but who also do services such as cloud (Azure) and who also do all kind of FOSS and tracking (Windows 10). I fear the future is going to be that the poor are paying with their privacy/time/focus (as a result of advertising and tracking), while the rich buy licenses to pay off the licenses. Heck, it is already like that. My Scrabble clone application (Wordfeud) costs ~3 EUR in the Play Store. The free version costs nothing, but shows ads (not sure about tracking). I figured 3 EUR is a good deal for me for a perpetual license to never see ads. However, 3 EUR for me could be a lot of money for someone who's more poor than me.
Proven 7y ago
Ad blockers (including uBO, unofficial build) have been working on Edge Dev from day 1
ePierre 7y ago
> Looks like I’m going to rewind 13 years and use IE again(IE of today). Why not using Firefox?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
Yizahi 7y ago
Yes, but only for as long as Google allows them to do it in their Chrome mod. Microsoft will keep away from centain Chrome features in Chromium as long as all they need to do is to turn them off. i.e. stay on the same trunk but without certain optional element. Key here is - optional elements. If Google will change something that will require to branch Chromium (and I mean really branch, with internal changes) to stay away from such changes, I highly doubt that MS will do it. They don't wan't or can't to maintain a separate different browser as they already shown with Edge.
aepiepaey 7y ago
Since it keeps being misquoted: the motto was "don't be evil", not "don't do evil".

Fat_Thor 7y ago

A little know fact about IE8 is that it came with a built in content blocking mechanism appropriately called Tracking Protection way back in 2009. IIRC it was the first browser to come with ad blocking built in, although not turn on by default. Opera came with content blocking a bit later. IE9 improved on it with what I think is one of the most impressive feature to this day. It had a heuristic tracking protection that block trackers once it's detected at a certain re-occurrence counts that you can config. So in theory it doesn't need to subscribed to an ad list like all browsers do today. IE took a lot of crap deservedly so, but that overshadowed a lot of pioneer works that later browsers adopted.

XzetaU8 7y ago
Speaking for Tracking Protection on IE, the Easylists TPL lists on the official IE gallery site is severely outdated[1] (Last updated Nov 7, 2017) This page from filterlists.com[2] offers an updated collection of TPL lists [1]https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/iegallery https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/iegallery [2]https://raw.githubusercontent.com/collinbarrett/FilterLists/master/data/TPLSubscriptionAssistant.html https://raw.githubusercontent.com/collinbarrett/FilterLists/...

joenathanone 7y ago

Link?

jccalhoun 7y ago
there was a reddit ama where someone asked about adblockers and they said: "we occasionally hear requests for a built in ad blocking experiences in Edge. For most users, we find that extensions (combined with strong defaults around tracking prevention) are the best option here because you can choose from a variety of experiences and defaults, but we absolutely want to hear from you if you think this should be built in." https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/c094uf/hi_reddit_were_the_team_behind_microsoft_edge_and/er34xbw/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/c094uf/hi_reddit_were...
- nvrspyx 7y ago
  The quoted bit was about a built-in ad blocker specifically. I think the real major point is: “There are a couple components I want to touch on here - As mentioned elsewhere, we're still evaluating the adblock Manifest V3 changes, so we're not quite ready to commit to a statement one way or another on that issue.” And: “Second, we're committed to a strong extension ecosystem, including ad blocking. We're still evaluating some of the latest changes here in Chromium, but we're committed to the customer scenario as a principle. To be clear, we will not artificially restrict ad blocking for business reasons related to advertising.”
  - icebraining 7y ago
    That's mostly fluff. Google also says they're not restricting ad blocking for business reasons, but for performance, and they haven't banned all ad-blocking, just forced addons to use their new mechanism, so they can still claim to support an ecosystem that includes ad-blocking.
    - nvrspyx 7y ago
      Agreed. It doesn’t mean much, but I thought I would just point out the actual relevant bits even if they don’t hold much weight.

taurath 7y ago

Google has every incentive to believe ads and user surveillance is not evil

TimTheTinker 7y ago
Agreed. The problem with a mission statement like “do no evil” is that in today’s pluralistic world (especially in the west), there’s no generally agreed-upon definition of evil. Philosophically, defining “evil” requires defining “good” first, and a definition of “good” depends entirely on one’s notions of origin, meaning, morality, and destiny — one’s worldview. In google’s case, it’s probably better business to simply remove the motto than to risk offending large groups of people in the quest for philosophical rigor.
- glyphist 7y ago
  And do they agree with you. Google actually dropped the motto sometimes in Q3 2018. https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct/ https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct/
  - joshuamorton 7y ago
    ctrl + f "don't be evil" > And remember… don’t be evil, and if you see something that you think isn’t right – speak up!
- ulucs 7y ago
  > there’s no generally agreed-upon definition of evil. Philosophically, yes. But moral relativity does not hold well due to the existence of culture. For western countries, no one can defend the morality of slavery or genocide. While those are pretty extreme, we have also collectively (democratically) decided that screwing over customers for your own profit is also not moral and should not be allowed. That's why antitrust law exists.

vxNsr 7y ago

Do you have a link to that? My only issue is that chrome is great bec I can have multiple profiles on the same windows user account, but that’s kinda anathema to the paradigm of how Microsoft wants us to use Edge. I use chrome profiles the same way ppl use Firefox containers, my only hope is that edge builds something similar. I’ve also been using Vivaldi, I love it but I’m worried about using duh a small project that is still dependent on chromium.

vasili111 7y ago
Try also Brave. It is fully open source and based on Chromium.
- WAHa_06x36 7y ago
  Don't. Brave has so many problematic sides. Just stay away from that one.
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    Go on?
    - WAHa_06x36 7y ago
      Apart from the frankly horrendous political views of the founder, they have claimed to collect donations for creators who have never signed up for this. And, the business concept of blocking other people's ads and showing you their own is pretty despicable in its own right.
- vermaden 7y ago
  In https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20096868 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20096868 You asked: > Anyone uses FreeBSD on laptop? How is your impressions? I do since years and here are the tips you may find useful if You would also like to run FreeBSD on the desktop. https://vermaden.wordpress.com/freebsd-desktop/ https://vermaden.wordpress.com/freebsd-desktop/ ... and please stay away from Project Trident or TrueOS or Lumina, they are from from being ready. ... eventually GhostBSD is quite OK. ... sorry for hijacking the 'Brave' thread but I am not able to reply to the original comment (time).

jbigelow76 7y ago

I've been running it on the Edge Chromium Dev build for a few weeks now, works great!

sundvor 7y ago
Ditto. Google Meets didn't work for a while, then it did. Now it also has a dark theme. I've swapped to Edge Beta on my PCs and Brave on my Android.
ryan-allen 7y ago
Well, that's exciting! I didn't know there was a build [0]! [0] https://www.microsoftedgeinsider.com/en-us/ https://www.microsoftedgeinsider.com/en-us/

vasili111 7y ago

It is not quit clear what exactly they think regarding ad blocking. Edge team AMA on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/c094uf/hi_reddit_were_the_team_behind_microsoft_edge_and/er34xbw/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/c094uf/hi_reddit_were...

bdcravens 7y ago

> Looks like I’m going to rewind 13 years Well if you had asked your typical HN developer a few years ago whether they'd be using a Microsoft code editor ...

quickthrower2 7y ago
+ Microsoft tool for compiling to JS + Microsoft Public/Private Git Hosting :-)
scardine 7y ago
Lets not forget WSL. I just got the WSL2 upgrade - it turns a Windows 10 desktop into a quite decent software developer workstation. Seriously guys, if the last time you used Windows was a few years ago it is time to give it a another shot.
- de_watcher 7y ago
  > Seriously guys, if the last time you used Windows was a few years ago it is time to give it a another shot. What's the point? They do it all the time when things start going bad. It'll turn to garbage as soon as they have enough of mindshare. Why be among the ones who run back and forth?
- earenndil 7y ago
  The last time I used windows was last week. It's still awful.
- feanaro 7y ago
  Isn't the surveillance/telemetry problem still as much of a problem as it was on day zero? As far as I know, it hasn't been removed nor lessened. As far as I remember, it is absolutely overreaching, collecting your name, email address, browsing history, searches, application usage and more. Microsoft also keeps a copy of your full-disk encryption key. <https://theintercept.com/2015/12/28/recently-bought-a-windows-computer-microsoft-probably-has-your-encryption-key/> https://theintercept.com/2015/12/28/recently-bought-a-window...

pmoriarty 7y ago

The bright side of Google's anti-ad-blocking efforts is that ad-blocking is clearly no longer just an insignificant blip on their radar. There must be enough users of ad-blockers now to start to significantly affect their bottom line. There might even be a critical mass of people who are against advertising to attempt to make some legal headway on this issue in Washington. Just as there has been legal action against telemarketers, there might be something on the legal front that can be done against online advertisers, who could be considered just as much or even more of a nuisance than telemarketers ever were. In addition, online advertising has repeatedly been a vector of malware, and perhaps companies which try to circumvent or forbid ad-blockers could have some legal consequences -- and, if not, perhaps laws could be introduced to make such consequences a reality. IANAL, and this is just a pipe dream of mine at the moment -- but plenty of pro-consumer legislation has been made over the years. Perhaps the dawn of an unsolicited-advertising-free world is upon us.

PostOnce 7y ago
I would think it's more likely they legislate against us, i.e. making it a crime to circumvent advertising (see: circumventing DRM).
- pepr 7y ago
  You wouldn't download a car, you wouldn't block an ad! :)
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    As always: I would download a car if I could :).
    - vimslayer 7y ago
      Fun fact: the line of the ad was twisted by internet people for meming purposes. The actual line is "You wouldn't steal a car".

finchisko 7y ago

Isn't Microsoft selling ads too? I believe they do (that's why bing was created). If so, I don't trust their ad blocking initiative any more then google's. Maybe in short term, as they want to steal users from Chrome, but in longterm, they'll in same position as google is now.

apsdsm 7y ago
They probably do, but Microsoft isn’t an ad company like Google, so that danger is probably fairly existential to them.
- Fnoord 7y ago
  It is difficult to assess which company is more 'good' or 'evil' nowadays. Microsoft did a lot of good by competing with UNIX in the 90s (Windows NT was cheap compared to UNIX). They also did bad with their embrace & extend and other anti competitive behavior. Microsoft is a much older company who recently transitioned from being a proprietary software company selling licenses to a company who sell that but who also do services such as cloud (Azure) and who also do all kind of FOSS and tracking (Windows 10). I fear the future is going to be that the poor are paying with their privacy/time/focus (as a result of advertising and tracking), while the rich buy licenses to pay off the licenses. Heck, it is already like that. My Scrabble clone application (Wordfeud) costs ~3 EUR in the Play Store. The free version costs nothing, but shows ads (not sure about tracking). I figured 3 EUR is a good deal for me for a perpetual license to never see ads. However, 3 EUR for me could be a lot of money for someone who's more poor than me.

Proven 7y ago

Ad blockers (including uBO, unofficial build) have been working on Edge Dev from day 1

ePierre 7y ago

> Looks like I’m going to rewind 13 years and use IE again(IE of today). Why not using Firefox?

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

Yizahi 7y ago

Yes, but only for as long as Google allows them to do it in their Chrome mod. Microsoft will keep away from centain Chrome features in Chromium as long as all they need to do is to turn them off. i.e. stay on the same trunk but without certain optional element. Key here is - optional elements. If Google will change something that will require to branch Chromium (and I mean really branch, with internal changes) to stay away from such changes, I highly doubt that MS will do it. They don't wan't or can't to maintain a separate different browser as they already shown with Edge.

aepiepaey 7y ago

Since it keeps being misquoted: the motto was "don't be evil", not "don't do evil".