22 ms·

Google Begins Testing Extension Manifest V3 in Chrome Canary

521 points by rahuldottech 7y ago

cotelletta 7y ago
I wonder how much of this is actually about Adblockers... vs Googlers just wanting to make some performance numbers go up in aggregate to make their own internal company stats better. Cos sure as hell no user is waiting for this.
- rootlocus 7y ago
  > Cos sure as hell no user is waiting for this. Why do you assume Google implements features that users want? They implement features that their clients want: the ones paying for ads.
  - cameronbrown 7y ago
    As someone who's used digital advertising in the past I wouldn't really care about forcing my content upon all customers. It's a self selected opt-out for someone who won't ever click anyway. The real problem is news websites don't show restraint and shovel (so, many) ads to customers, making impressions go up and clicks go down. IMO ads won't go away and adblockers won't kill them completely as too many market forces (privacy, performance, revenue) is making the industry adapt. Disclaimer: Personal opinion, Googler, not in ads or Chrome.
    - chungus_khan 7y ago
      This is absolutely the real thing hurting online advertising right now. Nobody wants their eyes molested by that many ads, and it makes the user's eyes glaze over. Fewer, better quality, better placed, and less obnoxious ads have consistently worked out better for my clients in terms of clicks.
- Freak_NL 7y ago
  It makes sense to me that a company that is heavily invested in an ad-driven internet economy would limit the use of ad-blockers in their very popular browser. They surely weighed the risks of losing some users to better browsers, and probably found that they were by now acceptable.
- dewey 7y ago
  As the browser is made by an ad company I'd probably go with "actually about adblockers" and not performance metrics.
- ignoramous 7y ago
  > Cos sure as hell no user is waiting for this. Most of the web browsing happens on mobile devices where Chrome has a staggering 5B+ installs (though possibly not all active) vs Firefox's 100M+. Chrome on mobile never did support extensions let alone content blockers. The manifest v3 offensive is meek compared to their hegemony already on display in the Android world which has 2B+ active users that almost exclusively use Chrome. I see an anti-trust case in here somewhere or for Mozilla to simply buckle up and sign deals with OEMs that makes them the default browser and webview on Android.
- cromwellian 7y ago
  Apple/Safari adopted pretty much the same architecture on Ad Blockers. Maybe just maybe the conspiracy theories are all wrong, and there was actually a legitimate, technical reason for choosing a restricted API.
  - pilif 7y ago
    Safari has a much larger limit for blocking list entries though.
    - my123 7y ago
      + the limit there is per-extension, not global
      - rmsaksida 7y ago
        And the limit is easily circumvented by having multiple extensions. I've seen Safari extensions that split themselves up to one extension per block list.
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      It’s not all that much larger; the limit is a combination of a hard cap of 50,000 rules and what Jetsam will let you get away with.
      - hombre_fatal 7y ago
        You can bundle many rule lists inside one extension. It's how 1Blocker works, and I did it myself for my own adblocking extension. I'm not sure if this is possible in Chrome's proposal though. Maybe this change will finally get people to prune Easylist which had 30% outdated cosmetic-filter cruft when I last sampled it along with hobby horse websites <0.00001% people would ever visit. Right now it's basically like an append-only legacy CSS file.
  - sha666sum 7y ago
    If there was, they could've communicated it clearly already a year ago. There is no reason to give Google the benefit of the doubt, since it's clear they're not trying to get it. If this rolls out, I'm going to very loudly tell my friends to use Fox, and not stop.
- onion2k 7y ago
  Google's internal motivation doesn't really matter.
- contravariant 7y ago
  Given that they added an arbitrary limit to the number of rules that is high but not quite high enough for modern adblockers I'm gonna assume this was intentional.
- kjaer 7y ago
  I don't know if this actually helps Google show more ads. With a 30k rule limit, I'm imagining most adblockers will prioritize the most common ad domains, and I'm pretty sure Google would be at the top of that list. This may really be a win for the long tail of smaller ad networks rather than the bigger players.
pragnesh 7y ago
time to move to firefox
- moomin 7y ago
  Way ahead of you...
  - petepete 7y ago
    I moved earlier this year, it's been a good experience overall. The dev tools, which were what was holding me back, are _excellent_ and improving all the time. Only thing I'd really love to see are container-specific windows, so 'Work' tabs would open by default in my 'Work' window.
    - PorkBoneSoup 7y ago
      Perhaps something along the lines of this? https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/multi-account... Full disclosure: I love this extension.
mda 7y ago
Does it really kill adblockers though?
- steventhedev 7y ago
  Yes[0] [0]: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338 https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338
- reagent_finder 7y ago
  In current form, yes. The article pretty clearly states: >Instead Google wants developers to use the declarativeNetRequest API, which has the browser, not the extension, strip content or resources from a visited web sites. This API, though, has a limit of 30,000 rules that can be created. >Unfortunately, this change will break popular ad blockers such as uBlock Origin, which rely on the original functionality of the webRequest API and need more rules than are available in the declarativeNetRequest API. Looking at an old picture of ublock origin block lists: https://www.bleepstatic.com/images/news/u/1100723/uBlockOrigin-content-blocker.png https://www.bleepstatic.com/images/news/u/1100723/uBlockOrig... we can see 150,000 rules. The whole point of a rules list (easylist/easyprivacy) is that they're easy to maintain, since it should be a surprise to no one that adding new ad domains is trivially trivial. EasyList alone is 30,000 rules and it alone is woefully insufficient for a modern-day browser. The declarativeNetRequest only allows for ONE type of filter to work. The static kind, i.e. the old, deprecated, bad, insufficient kind. Recommended reading: uBlock Origin developer's comments on this change (unanswered by google ofc) https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=896897&desc=2#c23 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=896897...
  - onion2k 7y ago
    The way ad-blockers work at the moment is that the authors of ad-blockers work hard to not break the websites they block adverts on. This is good for users. This change means ad-blockers will need a different, simpler approach that probably will break far more websites. For example, you could write a very simple ad-blocking script that just denied requests to load JS from any third-party domain. That would break a lot of websites, but you wouldn't see many adverts. I'd rather have lots of broken websites than websites with adverts. I suspect a lot of web users feel the same way.
moomin 7y ago
This is the point in the dominance cycle where the dominant player decides they no longer need to be the fastest or the most secure and that their dominance will allow them to coast along doing their thing. There’s nothing particularly inevitable about what happens next, but let’s hope they get an IE6-sized kick in the teeth.
- sqrt17 7y ago
  > they get an IE6-sized kick in the teeth. as in: people will continue to suffer for about a decade while good alternatives readily spring up but suffer slow adoption?
  - moomin 7y ago
    Yeah, let’s hope that it’s IE6-sized, but not IE6-speed. Although I’m not ruling out a lost decade of web tech happening again.
  - Nuzzerino 7y ago
    Why does an alternative have to be widely adopted to be seen as good? Tech has an obsession with "popular or bust" and that's the ultimate cause of the lack of choices IMO.
  - wbl 7y ago
    Firefox is already here.
    - claudeganon 7y ago
      Since Firefox is already dependent on Google for a great deal of their funding, I’d say the next phase in Google’s strategy will be scaling that back.
      - pnako 7y ago
        They still need to keep Firefox alive, because it allows them to control market concentration and avoid the antitrust issues that MS had to fight.
EsssM7QVMehFPAs 7y ago
Couldn't some kind of graph compression algorithm preprocess the subscribed rulesets into what fits 30k rules? I have no idea about the domain but 30k rules seems more than sufficient to map from a 150k set of uncompressed wildcard patterns.
- fenk85 7y ago
  No the company which has solved some incredible technical/algorithmic problems is not capable of offering any technical solutions which might impact its own bottom line
- kretor 7y ago
  The 30k rules limit is not final. > we are currently planning to change the rule limit from maximum of 30k rules per extension to a global maximum of 150k rules. (https://blog.chromium.org/2019/06/web-request-and-declarative-net-request.html https://blog.chromium.org/2019/06/web-request-and-declarativ...)
  - GraemeL 7y ago
    I currently have 135k network rules active in uBlock Origin without having all of their lists active. Your 150k proposal is nowhere near enough.
- dao- 7y ago
  You seem to be assuming that the people maintaining the rules have been somewhat lazy so far. uBlock origin has the reputation of being pretty performant though, so I'd assume the engine and rules are already well optimized. That aside, I wouldn't want to bend backwards just to comply with how Google wants the world to work. I'd rather use Firefox.
- dividuum 7y ago
  "Nice ad blocker you still have working there. Would be a shame if this arbitrarily chosen limit of 30k would be reduced to 15k"
- saagarjha 7y ago
jruz 7y ago
Classic cat and mouse moves. Adblockers will move to OS level so google cant do anything about it. Pi-hole and Network level blockers should also see a rise.
- catalogia 7y ago
  DNS-based blocking schemes lack fine grained control. They're simply less capable than uBlock Origin/uMatrix.
- mantap 7y ago
  Pi-hole can't filter out ads that are embedded into the page though. I think adblockers have to be a browser extension to work conprehensively.
  - rozab 7y ago
    I generally don't mind ads that are embedded into the page (at the moment). It would solve a lot of the big problems people have with ads right now. Anyway, this change only prevents extensions from blanket blocking web requests, and will make no difference to adblockers which manipulate DOM content. I think the same thing that happened with popup blockers will happen again. Advertisers will be forced to listen to the consumers and the internet will be better for it. Have you turned off your popup blocker recently? You can surf around even to fairly sketchy sites, and I bet you won't see a pop up. The consumer won. With tracking, we'll win again.
  - adrianN 7y ago
    Pi-hole can switch from magicking the DNS to being a proxy that rewrites HTML.
    - koolba 7y ago
      TLS makes that tricky as you need a MITM proxy.
      - TeMPOraL 7y ago
9dl 7y ago
Well hello my dear Firefox ms thought that ie will be at the top forever too
Kipters 7y ago
I've given up on Chrome a long time ago (using Firefox now), but I think the best way to block ads for good is to use Pi Hole as DNS. I've set it up a couple months ago at my home, plus a Wireguard tunnel so that all connections from my laptop and phones go through that DNS (with the added benefit of encrypting all my traffic over unsecured networks).
- 9dl 7y ago
  DNS blockers are nuclear option Sometimes they are useful but in most cases you need more flexible solution
  - Kipters 7y ago
    Why should it? Most ads are toxic. Even if the site is well-intended and doesn't put too many of them, the few ads are still going to track you and disregard your privacy.
    - 9dl 7y ago
      This is tech limitation If site has ads served from main domain you can't block them You can block ads with some static files on subdomains/domains, and this drastically change content (like how is image sites looks like without images?) So, using DNS filtering for big ads providers is OK For small and smart ads providers will not work And I mean ads and tracking the same thing. While you can block all kind of "analytics", at the same time you can't block web-server logs with your IP (cookies, etc)
      - Kipters 7y ago
        That's why I use it in conjunction with Firefox (set to the strictest anti-tracking level) and uBlock Origin
        9dl 7y ago
        And this is right way to use it
vkizl 7y ago
Off-topic: because of this, I was thinking of moving to Vivaldi and it's really sad how unpolished and slow their UI is... it's almost as if it was a beta, still. I wonder if they use it themselves... It seems to me that they want to reinvent the entire Chrome UI but they don't have the necessary manpower to do it properly.
me_me_me 7y ago
Meanwhile me laughing in Firefox. I hope no one here is surprised by this G was more and more anti ad-blocking for years now. This is only natural conclusion after u are a de-facto browser monopoly.
- Craighead 7y ago
  Is it better to send all dns requests to a private company that harbors and protects racists and pedophiles?
- gnom69 7y ago
  Google captcha makes some sites almost unusable on firefox if you dare to resist fingerprinting for full traceability. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20147015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20147015
  - romanovcode 7y ago
    Can you surpass it by faking user-agent and pretend to be Chrome?
    - GuB-42 7y ago
      It is not about Chrome vs Firefox. It is about how much information they can get about you. The idea behind the "I am not a robot" captcha is that if you act like a human, then you don't need to be shown pictures for further confirmation. The more you allow tracking, the more info they have to figure it out. A big one is being logged in to your Google account. Having access to all your history really helps. And because Chrome heavily encourage you to setup a Google account, Chrome users are more likely to be logged in than Firefox (or other) users. Spoofing your user-agent is likely to be worse. If you have a Chrome user-agent but your browser don't act like Chrome, that's a big red flag. Bots often spoof their user agents.
  - pmlnr 7y ago
    I see recaptcha, I walk. There's nothing else I can do. BTW if I turn on 1st party isolation in FF, I keep feeding the fire hydrant monster for hours.
bufferoverflow 7y ago
That's how you make people switch to Firefox, Brave, Opera, etc.
- the8472 7y ago
  The last two are chromium-based and thus will likely follow chrome's extension system too.
  - codehalo 7y ago
    Brave has built in ad blocking.
    - IGotThroughIt 7y ago
      I use brave but some brave allowed ads seep through. I have no issue with ads; I just don't like tracking and insane JavaScript pop ups taking over the browser without the user invoking a deliberate action.
  - DiabloD3 7y ago
    Both of them have already said they will not implement these changes in their Chromium branches. Unfortunately for Google, Chrome is open source, and Google will no longer be the dominant Chromium branch if they keep making mistakes like this.
    - duiker101 7y ago
      I am afraid that won't be enough https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=%2Fm%2F01z7gs,%2Fm%2F04j7cyf https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=%2Fm%2F01z...
  - XzetaU8 7y ago
    Can't comment for opera, brave however won't follow manifest v3 https://twitter.com/brave/status/1088914000379731970 https://twitter.com/brave/status/1088914000379731970
firefoxd 7y ago
On mobile i use brave, and when things break I switch to chrome. I tried Firefox multiple times, but I can't help but miss the swipe the address bar to go from tab to tab. I always revert back to chrome. So it's more of a convenience for me. But if I had to choose between adblock or swipe to switch tab, then they made the decision for me. There is no way I can ever browse the web without an adblocker
- rozab 7y ago
  ...But mobile chrome doesn't support extensions anyway? I use Blokada for adblocking on Android btw, and this change wouldn't affect that. Works fine.
  - square_usual 7y ago
    Brave blocks ads natively, even on mobile. It's a pretty nifty browser for when you want chromium. Firefox mobile is slower in comparison, but their extension support is killer tbh.
- pjc50 7y ago
  > swipe the address bar to go from tab to tab I never knew you could do that! How did you discover this feature?
  - vkizl 7y ago
    In my case, by accident...
jillesvangurp 7y ago
I find it interesting that Google thinks they are going to get away with this. I'm afraid they might be right. I've been on Firefox since they launched their quantum version a few years ago after a few years of using Chrome. I like Firefox but I notice a lot of people around me seem to default to Chrome. Things work well enough on Firefox that I don't consider compatibility a problem. But I do get a lot of raised eyebrows from people who consider this an extreme thing to do. Just like back in the day where I was doing most of my browsing with alpha builds of Mozilla Phoenix instead of just using IE like world + dog. But what matters is that the market has changed. 15 years ago when MS made their anti competitive moves with IE and in the process helped Mozilla survive their Netscape implosion through reinventing themselves through their Phoenix -> Firebird -> Firefox reinvention (I used all of those). However since then, the market has consolidated around just 3 browser engines: Chromium, Webkit/Safari, and Firefox. Of those Chromium essentially powers all of the Chrome alternatives that aren't Firefox or Safari (Edge, Brave, Opera, etc.). Another change is that the web has imploded to just a handful of websites gobbling up most of the traffic. Yes there are a lot of websites but mostly the way to them leads via Google, Facebook, Apple, or MS owned properties. Finally the ad market has changed. GDPR and related efforts in other markets (including the US) are pushing the market towards more responsible behavior with respect to getting users to opt in and to ad experiences that are increasing harder to block because they don't necessarily come via separate websites and domains.
- buboard 7y ago
  There's also the giant shift to mobile. Google and apple would like you to use phones and tablets to the expense of desktops because they can control those platforms better. So they are building their platforms with those in mind, unintentionally-or-not crippling desktops
- 9dl 7y ago
  You know, IE6 and especially 7 was very good, but...
bambax 7y ago
> Simeon Vincent, a Google Developer Advocate for Chrome Extensions One has to love and admire the use of Newspeak by big companies... How is this Mr Vincent an "advocate"? He's in charge of destroying extensions! On his Twitter bio [1] he also says he likes "helping people" and "the open web". The cognitive dissonance must be hard to bear. [1] https://twitter.com/dotproto https://twitter.com/dotproto
- dessant 7y ago
  And once asked a clear question, the developer advocate deflects and stops answering: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/745#issuecomment-547620810 https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/745#iss...
  - Someone1234 7y ago
    Did you link to the right thing? That isn't a deflection, they're asking permission to sideline the issue on uBlock's issue tracker into a discussion about Chrome/Chromium's extension policies, which incidentally they didn't get a clear answer to. > I also don't want to hijack this without the project's permission. @gorhill & contributors, do you mind having this discussion here or would you prefer if we moved it elsewhere? I haven't really been following this issue, but I did read the linked reply, so I may be missing some bigger context.
    - omnifischer 7y ago
      Would be nice if any hn-reader mediates between the two sides.
      - dsr_ 7y ago
        Mediation is for two sides having a reasonable difference of opinion. In Google's corporate opinion, Google's ads must not be blocked. In everyone else's opinion, all ads must be blockable at a user's option. That's not a difference that can be mediated.
    - 7y ago
laichzeit0 7y ago
Is the current fold at Google too young to remember what happened when Microsoft tried this type of crap with IE6? History truly repeats itself..
- gpderetta 7y ago
  are we in the farce stage already?
kmlx 7y ago
hasn't Apple done the same with Safari? https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.zdnet.com/google-amp/article/apple-neutered-ad-blockers-in-safari-but-unlike-chrome-users-didnt-say-a-thing/ https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.zdnet.com/google-amp/arti... curiously i haven't noticed any changes on my day to day browsing habits.
- kmlx 7y ago
  another point: isn't this what every firefox/others fan wished for? a way to balance things out in the browser market?
  - marcosdumay 7y ago
    That another player turn evil? I don't think so. Firefox fans want it to become a great browser. No shits given to Chrome either way.
- pas 7y ago
  yes, and that is also bad.
  - judge2020 7y ago
    I guess the argument is "is it worth it to save some people the privacy issue of extensions phoning home the pages you visit by requiring the ad-blocking to be a rule list and not rely on synchronous webRequest blocking". Safari's webRequest change also blocked even monitoring webRequest URLs, so the current adblocking solution is to only provide a list of blocked patterns, and it seems to work for me.
    - pas 7y ago
      The easy solution is to measure the performance of this declarative API and inform the user if it causes slowdowns. But don't limit it to 30k entries.
- mrtksn 7y ago
paride5745 7y ago
Moved back to Firefox this weekend. It feels so much snappier than Chrome. So far I only miss SuperSorter (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/supersorter/hjebfgojnlefhdgmomncgjglmdckngij?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/supersorter/hjebfg...).
claudeganon 7y ago
>Cognitive dissonance must be hard to bear Words are just another means to an end for these people. Americans were very good at believing that Orwell’s work about language and politics was specific to the circumstances of the Soviet Union, when in fact it’s broadly applicable to every form of authoritarianism, including corporations and their functionaries. I’ve never had the misfortune of living in a Stalinist state, but I certainly have worked for companies and managers that seemed to aspire to.
- big_chungus 7y ago
  Really? That's funny, I always thought businesses hated the idea of communism.
  - kibwen 7y ago
    Not sure if this is tongue-in-cheek, but the key consideration here is that of authoritarianism (which is capable of being used in conjunction with plenty of other -isms, including socialism and capitalism). Corporations tend to be largely authoritarian as well (i.e., you are expected to respect your boss because they are your boss (and if they deign to respect you, this is regarded as magnanimity); possession of authority in authoritarian contexts is circularly self-justfiying).
    - big_chungus 7y ago
      The comment to which I replied specifically named Stalinism, of which communism is a core tenet. I have difficulty thinking of a Stalinist company.
  - _jal 7y ago
    Internally, businesses run whatever system they want, but it is almost always an authoritarian hierarchy. (Do what you're told or leave. Various amounts of arguing or grumbling before you do may or may not be tolerated.) The language used in bad times is telling. You'll hear managers talking about how it sucks, but is needed to save the company ("individuals must suffer for the greater good"). Externally, businesses reflect the political preferences of those who control them, but they tend to prefer weak states they can influence or control. Democracies are harder to control this way because the stakeholders are diffuse. Centralization, strongmen and corruption make things easier.
radEd 7y ago
This was the nail in the coffin for me, as of last night. Writing this on Firefox :)
JulianMorrison 7y ago
They are being very stupid. Switching primary browser isn't trivial, but it's easier than wading through an ad-laden web. Goodbye Chrome, hello Firefox.
- NieDzejkob 7y ago
  You're not their target. It's the less technical people they have in mind here.
  - JulianMorrison 7y ago
    Those people managed to switch from IE. Chrome used to be the underdog.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    Fortunately, a lot of less technical people have technical people in their immediate families and circles of friends.
    - breakingcups 7y ago
      The big question is, how many of those less technical people switched to Chrome because of technical friends or family and how many switched because of Google abusing its monopoly by displaying deceptive ads for their browser on all web real estate they own?
      - JulianMorrison 7y ago
        Ads don't make people switch browser, it's enough of a fuss that only pain will do that.
  - jve 7y ago
    Except we are the ones that usually decide what to put on end users computers. And we are the ones that makes suggestions. And end users then make same suggestions to other people. Word of mouth I believe is a VERY important marketing tool. Basically if Chrome looses people that brought them market share in the first place... I think market can shift. Not that it happens fast enough. But having some market share for Firefox is important.
fergie 7y ago
Might encourage more users back over to Firefox, which would make this good news on balance.
johnpowell 7y ago
Back in the IE 6 days I was in charge of fixing my families computers, and my family's friends computers. I was dealing with a few things a week, some requiring a full re-install. This was back in the early 2000's. Eventually I snapped and started charging hourly unless people switched to Gmail and Firefox. I started getting a lot less calls since Gmail was pretty good about filtering out malicious attachments and IE was, IE. I probably got around 40 households to switch to Firefox. The people that refused to switch financed a lot of my undergrad, I charged 100 a hour. I don't like fixing computers and the goal was to make things as painful as possible for them so they would stop using IE. Using a ad-blocker in Firefox was the #1 thing I suggested for safe computing. And don't open unexpected email attachments. This killed 95% of peoples computer woes. So good job Google, you did it, from here on out whenever I see Chrome on families computers I will strong-arm them into switching to Firefox. I did it in 2005 and was wildly successful. I can do it again. And I think my Christmas gifts this year will be domain names and three year subscriptions to Fastmail for my immediate family.
- 9dl 7y ago
  I did it like this Install FF Set it as default Change path on desktop shortcut for "Internet" to FF And ofc do not forget to say that is new IE version
  - Cub3 7y ago
    Change the icon of the FF shortcut to look like the IE icon ;)
  - moomin 7y ago
    If you’re on Windows, you need to set up edge-deflector too, which is a fairly advanced piece of idiocy.
    - exergy 7y ago
      There is a way to get rid of Edge by renaming its install folder or something like that. I did it, and I love it.
Ensorceled 7y ago
Like so many others on this thread, this is my push to go entirely back onto Firefox. I'll keep Chrome for the diminishing number of sites that don't like Firefox.
- square_usual 7y ago
  You can use Brave as your Chromium-based browser. It blocks ads natively, and I've not yet run into a site that required Chrome that didn't work on Brave.
  - BurnGpuBurn 7y ago
    How sure are we that Brave will not break also with these new changes? And also, how sure are we that Chromium isn't secretly tracking users already? I don't have time to read the source, and don't trust that many people that say it's all a-okay.
  - 9dl 7y ago
    Whut? Sites require chrome?
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      Sadly, there are a number of websites that assume that Chrome is the only web browser and do not work properly in other browsers.
    - bshacklett 7y ago
      The web version of T-Mobile Digits is one I can think of off the top of my head.
    - Ensorceled 7y ago
      For the entire history of the internet, there have been sites that only work properly with the dominate browser, starting with Netscape and then, famously, IE6. I'm always confused when people imply this isn't the case or start demanding evidence. I'm bemused when they are surprised.
LeonM 7y ago
Wow, the amount of negativity here is awful. I looks like most commenters have not even read the article... First of all, the HN title is not the title of the article. HN mods, please change it to reflect the actual title of the article. Second, to me this does not seem as some attempt by Google to actively block Adblocker extensions. They are proposing a change to the API (Manifest) to no longer allow manipulation of content, which I think is a good thing from a security standpoint. They also propose reducing the number of content stripping rules to 30k. Now, I'm not familiar with add-on development, but this sounds like a constraint that was implemented for performance reasons. This constraint will break add-blockers in their current form, but there is no reason for me to believe that this will make content filtering impossible. It is also clearly stated that the V3 manifest is in early testing phase. Nothing here is set in stone.
- daRealDodo 7y ago
  Thank you for giving an insight from the other side.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  Mods, can we have this title changed to match the article? It’s not accurate, as Manifest v3 does not “kill” adblockers. (Whether it cripples them or not is still subjective and does not belong in the title.)
- yipbub 7y ago
  The amount of negativity here is appropriate.
- icegreentea2 7y ago
  They announced this back in May/June - the whole 30k rules things. Current rules list easily exceed that number. They said back in May/June that they would consider looking increasing the number of rules - they clearly haven't chosen to increase the number in the intervening time. Maybe they are waiting for more actual testing, but they're not setting themselves up for an easy time. It's also honestly a little rich to worry about the performance impact of ad blocking given the performance impact of ads themselves.
- 7y ago
nottorp 7y ago
A couple years ago my mac started to not go to sleep... I checked and it was Chrome saying “webrtc has active peer connections”. No, you can’t disable webrtc in chrome. So I’ve been a bit ahead of the crowd and gave up on Chrome long ago. This ad block scandal made me give up on Safari too though. Firefox seems to be the only reasonable option left.
- JohnFen 7y ago
  > No, you can’t disable webrtc in chrome. Is this true? That's a complete showstopper for me.
  - nottorp 7y ago
    Was when I checked. Don't know now, haven't used Chrome in a while. In any case, how do they dare disable my power management for something I didn't start myself?
enobrev 7y ago
I had already switched my mobile browser to Firefox explicitly so I could use ublock. And now it's time to move to Firefox in the desktop. I appreciate Google helping with the decision.
- degenerate 7y ago
  And then you'll be able to sync your bookmarks and settings etc.
- perf1 7y ago
  Unfortunately the Touchpad experience is non native and horrible on a Windows Laptop.
wy35 7y ago
I didn't use an adblocker until every single site began competing on how much of my screen can be a billboard telling me that I won't last two minutes playing their game. If the new changes make it past testing and there's no strict anti-ad abuse policy put in place, I'm jumping ship.
BurnGpuBurn 7y ago
The biggest advertising company in history tries to kill blocking advertisements in their browser? How am I not surprised. I bet this move is also to kill the workings of extensions like DecentralEyes and others that try to protect users from being tracked. The whole changing of the API into a "sure we'll block that URL for ya, sometimes maybe" model reeks of increasing user tracking. They'll work out the kinks to let AdBlockers function again. But they'll have their tracking back.
- treden 7y ago
  This of course. Why is anyone in the least surprised that Google doesn't want the ads that fund Chrome (and everything else they do) to be blocked by the users of Chrome. Shall Google fund our nice things (like Firefox, Chrome, gmail, google maps, etc etc) with hopes and dreams in place of cold hard cash? The audacity. Clearly an unpopular opinion here, but anyway: I'm happy to let a few ads slip through (which I will happily ignore anyhow) in exchange for the possibility of a future where I dont have to drive a car to get places.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    It's not either/or, just like you can have a factory making cheap widgets without letting that factory pollute the local river with industrial waste. Ads are funding the Internet only because it's the easiest legal business model to pull off, so everyone gravitated to it. But it's not like there wouldn't be money for self-driving cars without adtech, and in reality, them being tied with advertising companies only ensures that the future will be shitty.
    - danShumway 7y ago
      To add to this, ads are currently the best way to collect micropayments from users online without requiring you (the website maintainer) to have a database or profile on each customer, or to handle complicated return processes, or to deal with merchant accounts. You just make an adwords account, serve content to people, and that's it. I'm convinced that in a world where collecting anonymous micropayments was as easy as serving ads, the web would look at lot different. People look at this as a choice between paying $5 a month for every website they visit, or getting it "free" with ads. But in a world with good micropayments, most websites wouldn't cost $5. Outside of the biggest players, most sites aren't currently making $5 a month per user via ads.
nsomaru 7y ago
First we started telling everyone about Firefox Then we told them about Chrome Now we tell them about Firefox again Google has officially reached 90s MS levels
- EasyTiger_ 7y ago
  Only far worse
- eitland 7y ago
  I've been adding #chromeIsTheNewIE to related posts for a while. As someone who worked at the end of IEs dominance that feels spot on: - lots of developers not caring at all - businesses being businesses caring that we don't spend time on it - ordinary people not caring even when the alternative is in another league We got some work ahead. Hopefully Mozilla won't mess up too much during the next few months/years and then we might pull it off again. And feel free to reuse the hashtag above : )
ulfw 7y ago
And this is prime example number one why something as important as your Browser shouldn‘t be the free thing you get from an ad company.
iamgopal 7y ago
They don't realise how easy is to swtich, and ads already started to anoy almost all. Searching for Subscription model or other model is the key here. Apple with their lower price iPhone 11 sensed it, and acted to increase their service revenue while Google yet to have streamlined payment gateway let alone reliable subscription service product wide.
cletus 7y ago
Did anyone actually read the submission? The title is clickbait that doesn't reflect the content. The change here moves modifying content of the webRequest to the browser from the extension. This is fundamentally more secure. Allowing third-party extensions to inspect and _modify_ arbitrary HTTP requests is nothing short of dangerous. The new declarative API (from the article) limits such extensions to 30,000 rules. I honestly don't know what impact this will have on ad blockers. At worst it seems like ad blockers will become less effective as simple logic tells you that some rules matter more than others and the least used rules will simply be dropped. So rather than be alarmist and use this to feed into the tired narrative that "Google is killing ad blockers because it's an advertising company" (paraphrased) we should be pushing for changes that make this workable, such as: 1. Having a higher limit than 30,000; and 2. Working on ways to condense N rules into <N rules. There must be ways we can be more expressive so that we don't require as many rules, no? I honestly don't like the fact that I have to give a third party developer so much privileged access to run an ad blocker and I'm surprised anyone else is. Extensions can be compromised.
- malvosenior 7y ago
  > So rather than be alarmist and use this to feed into the tired narrative that "Google is killing ad blockers because it's an advertising company" That’s not alarmist, it’s the obvious truth. As a user I should have complete control over what runs on my machine. I don’t need Google “protecting” me (by breaking ad blockers). Google is the single most destructive force in the tech industry today. Very much like Microsoft in the 90s. We should resist their attempts to embrace, extend, extinguish and we should be insulted that they couch these changes in marketing speak that pretends to be pro-user when it’s the exact opposite.
  - cletus 7y ago
    > As a user I should have complete control over what runs on my machine. You do. By running Firefox. This level of control might be useful to you but it's not to most users. As much as power users chafe against things like the App Store, for example, this is clearly a win for most users. Limiting what a malicious extension could do is very much the same because I can guarantee you there are scams to get users to install malicious extensions. How Firefox should respond here is to make ad-blocking a first party solution. In that Firefox itself is responsible for the blocking and all extension writers are responsible for are the rules. At that point you will have a solid story that FF is putting the user first.
sub7 7y ago
Sooner we move off ad renvenue based products the better. Surely there's a way to get people to pay a tiny bit to get great quality products that don't fuck them in the arse. We need some benevolent dictatorship in tech to sponsor this ecosystem.
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  We have seen that floated many times but I am afraid it is a non-starter. It has the same exact issues as Clickbait but calls for a large infastructural change. Just having a convenient pay mechanism would be an in practice security vulnerability from scareware. Plus like subscriptions the owner practice often will be "do both at once"!
- Kaiyou 7y ago
  You'd need a convenient, anonymous payment system. Tough luck.
mcv 7y ago
I'm in the process of switching as much as possible to Firefox. I now use Firefox Mobile on my smartphone, and my new laptop doesn't even get Chrome. And in many ways, it's been a breath of fresh air. Firefox gives my much more control over my privacy, and even recommends some extensions to improve it further. A couple of websites are sadly broken on my Firefox setup, but I can live without them. I want to get back to the content-driven web rather than this ad-driven web we have now. I want to read what people want to share, not what people think will get them ad clicks.
- ffritz 7y ago
  > I want to read what people want to share, not what people think will get them ad clicks. Interesting thought.
- fastball 7y ago
  Why not something like Brave which has the performance of Chromium (still better than Firefox imo) because it's a fork but probably won't make similar business decisions to Google?
  - chatmasta 7y ago
    By the same logic you could use Microsoft Edge, which is now chromium based and effectively a chrome shell.
    - fastball 7y ago
      Very true, but I think I trust Brave more than I trust Microsoft to try to keep the internet neutral as such.
  - bn7t 7y ago
    Regarding brave see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21323576 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21323576
    - fastball 7y ago
notkaiho 7y ago
All the more reason to use a DNS level ad-blocker and clear all cookies on browser exit, I guess...
chronolitus 7y ago
Welp, I've been putting this off for a few years, but this is as good as moment as any to do it. Took me 10 minutes to import all bookmarks, set up extensions, and customize one or two details but it is done. So long Chrome, it was good while it lasted!
eyegor 7y ago
Now that they're pushing forward with the artificial limits, I'm looking forward to moving back to the days when large software was deployed on floppy/discs. I can see it now: "ublock origin part 1", "ublock origin part 2", ...
wffurr 7y ago
What a needlessly hostile title that editorializes and doesn't match the linked article. @dang can you change it to match the site? I think this submission violates the site guidelines on titles. The original title is "Google Begins Testing Extension Manifest V3 in Chrome Canary" and doesn't include the ad blocker flame bait. "Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize"
- khrbrt 7y ago
  The bit about adblockers provides context on why this article is worth my attention. I'm not an extension developer, so "Extension Manifest V3 in Chrome Canary" means nothing to me. But this: >The most controversial aspect of the extension manifest v3 is the upcoming changes to the webRequest API. In v3, Google has changed the API so that extensions can only monitor browser connections, but not modify any of the content before it's displayed. >Instead Google wants developers to use the declarativeNetRequest API, which has the browser, not the extension, strip content or resources from a visited web sites. This API, though, has a limit of 30,000 rules that can be created. >Unfortunately, this change will break popular ad blockers such as uBlock Origin, which rely on the original functionality of the webRequest API and need more rules than are available in the declarativeNetRequest API. Is very worrying. So thanks to the submitter.
  - wffurr 7y ago
    It's also completely misleading and perhaps willfully so. The limit's been raised. The removed API is used by half of all detected malicious extensions to spy on users. Ad blockers will continue to work fine with the new API, just like they do on Safari now.
    - fwn 7y ago
      > The limit's been raised. I thought the worrying thing isn't whether it's a 30k or 300k limit but that Google itself chooses the amount of filters users can apply. It feels to me that this is just asking for the abuse of power. I don't think the specific number itself is anyones primary concern.
znpy 7y ago
Google Chrome is the new Internet Explorer
- anoncake 7y ago
  That's an unfair comparison. IE wasn't a good browser but at least it wasn't designed to make people suffer from ads.
wffurr 7y ago
Half of all detected malicious extensions used the web request API to spy on users. The rule limit has already been raised to 150,000. Plenty of ad blockers will still work in Chrome. This thread is chock full of motivated reasoning and deliberate misinformation.
- chopin 7y ago
  Afaik they can do this still. This can't be the motivation.
- rndgermandude 7y ago
  > Half of all detected malicious extensions used the web request API to spy on users. And they can continue doing so because spying is passive and the passive (just eavesdropping, no modifications) webRequest API still will be there. >The rule limit has already been raised to 150,000. And it could be 10 billion rules. The point isn't so much the actual number, but that you cannot programmatically judge and block request anymore. >Plenty of ad blockers will still work in Chrome. Of course, those ad-blocker crippling changes aren't in the Stable yet, and even in Canary they are only "preview" and the old APIs still work. >This thread is chock full of motivated reasoning and deliberate misinformation. Yes, that's more or less what you did here.
- jddj 7y ago
  Can you spell out what you are implying here? Is it that the people posting in this thread are.. authors or stakeholders of malicious extensions? Do they all work for Mozilla? Are they a part of some rival industry which stands to benefit from the fall of adtech? Have they shorted GOOG? Surely it would be strange to class arguments from users who want to continue to block ads in their browsers the same, effective way that they have been for years as motivated reasoning. What sinister motivation am I missing?
  - wffurr 7y ago
    For whatever reason they all seem determined to put Google in the worst possible light and ignore any arguments to the contrary. I can't speak to the motivation other than "hate Google".
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
mehdix 7y ago
I am so glad that it's a while I have started migrating off Google, Gmail and Android and I am Chrome-free for almost two years now (Syncthing and DecSync helped a lot). However, I think Google will exploit their browser-market-dominance to bend web tech to make escaping from ads impossible, same as what they did with DRM.
hendersoon 7y ago
Everybody saying declarativeNetRequest is sufficient and Apple's Safari content blocking works perfectly fine is entirely missing the point. Both of those statements are true enough, _for right now_. Losing the ability to modify content in this manner means adblockers can't compete in the arms race against advertisers. Anti-adblock scripts running locally with randomly-generated names will render this sort of declarative content blocking ineffective.
pen2l 7y ago
This is not as terrifying to me as the other news brought to my attention by a post in today's Reddit's r/YSK, that if you use Adblock, your gmail can be closed. In the new TOS of Youtube [1], it states that if your account is not deemed commercially viable, your Google account (i.e. your Gmail, your Google Photos, your Google Drive, etc.) can be closed down: YouTube may terminate your access, or your Google account’s access to all or part of the Service if YouTube believes, in its sole discretion, that provision of the Service to you is no longer commercially viable. Makes sense they would make this decision, as Youtube is a big money-loser for Google and they want to do something about this. Still, this is more of a wake-up call to me than anything else that I need to get off Google. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/t/terms?preview=20191210#main& https://www.youtube.com/t/terms?preview=20191210#main&
- calciphus 7y ago
  > YouTube may terminate your access, or your Google account’s access to all or part of the Service if YouTube believes, in its sole discretion, that provision of the Service to you is no longer commercially viable.
- kyrra 7y ago
  I think it depends on how "the Service" is defined. As "Service" is capitalized, it is likely defined in the TOS, and may only apply to Youtube (not Google as a whole). So I believe you (and the redditor) are reading that passage incorrectly. (IANAL, and I have no clue if what I said is right).
  - pen2l 7y ago
    I've been struggling with this myself. But extrapolating from news that some Youtubers who got banned also found their Google accounts (i.e. Gmail, Drive, etc.) closed, (someone up above just commented on this), I feel I must err on the side of caution. I mean, what do you then make of this haphazard interpretation of 'Service'? p.s., not to be snarky, but you ought to add a disclaimer that you're a Googler in your comment!
    - 7y ago
clickme_zsh 7y ago
I use Firefox as my main browser and have Vivaldi, Brave, Edge, Installed for testing purposes. I just need to migrate my email away from Gmail hmmmmmm. Any good suggestion?
tablethnuser 7y ago
I'm the one who switched my whole family to Chrome back in the day to get them off IE. I have no problem doing it again this holiday season. Firefox for everyone. No idea what Google is thinking. In one short decade they've become the new villains of the internet.
butuzov 7y ago
I can't use firefox since they decided I need to enter 6 char code to verify my password. Oh... this code never arrives to my google mailbox.
enriquto 7y ago
ublock origin is non-negotiable so long, chrome!
bit_4l 7y ago
I found Brave more trustworthy than Chrome and better usability than Firefox. Just made a switch to it.
newscracker 7y ago
I don’t care about Chrome (having ditched it long ago). On the other hand, I do care about whatever Chrome implements having an adverse impact on Firefox. Mozilla has said before that Manifest V3 is up for consideration in Firefox and that “there are no immediate plans to remove” the existing APIs (mainly webRequest). [1] If Mozilla makes the power of uBlock Origin untenable on Firefox [2], that’d be a sad day for me, and I’d probably switch to Brave (assuming it’s still able to support uBlock Origin, even though it has a built-in as blocker). If anyone from Mozilla or the Firefox team is reading this, please lead the way on these changes in a way that improves security (one of the goals of Manifest V3) while allowing extensions to remain powerful. Letting Google dictate the terms or just following Chrome will likely make Firefox worse in the eyes of power users and those who influence others to use it. [1]: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2019/09/03/mozillas-manifest-v3-faq/ https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2019/09/03/mozillas-manifest... [2]: like it did with the XUL obsolescence (for good reasons) and the removal of great extensions like Tab Mix Plus and Session Manager (without providing a way forward for them to work; session saving extensions on Firefox are still not as good as the mozdev Session Manager was).
- snagglegaggle 7y ago
  Mozilla is full of either cowards or sellouts. When the page visibility API was added to Firefox for Android and used to automatically pause nonvisible YouTube pages they ignored user arguments for blocking it.
badrabbit 7y ago
How impossible is it to fork Chromium and maintain a privacy friendly branch?
- freetonik 7y ago
  There's one popular effort: https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium
noobiemcfoob 7y ago
The only feature keeping me on Chrome is web bluetooth.

521 points by rahuldottech 7y ago

I wonder how much of this is actually about Adblockers... vs Googlers just wanting to make some performance numbers go up in aggregate to make their own internal company stats better. Cos sure as hell no user is waiting for this.

rootlocus 7y ago
> Cos sure as hell no user is waiting for this. Why do you assume Google implements features that users want? They implement features that their clients want: the ones paying for ads.
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  As someone who's used digital advertising in the past I wouldn't really care about forcing my content upon all customers. It's a self selected opt-out for someone who won't ever click anyway. The real problem is news websites don't show restraint and shovel (so, many) ads to customers, making impressions go up and clicks go down. IMO ads won't go away and adblockers won't kill them completely as too many market forces (privacy, performance, revenue) is making the industry adapt. Disclaimer: Personal opinion, Googler, not in ads or Chrome.
  - chungus_khan 7y ago
    This is absolutely the real thing hurting online advertising right now. Nobody wants their eyes molested by that many ads, and it makes the user's eyes glaze over. Fewer, better quality, better placed, and less obnoxious ads have consistently worked out better for my clients in terms of clicks.
Freak_NL 7y ago
It makes sense to me that a company that is heavily invested in an ad-driven internet economy would limit the use of ad-blockers in their very popular browser. They surely weighed the risks of losing some users to better browsers, and probably found that they were by now acceptable.
dewey 7y ago
As the browser is made by an ad company I'd probably go with "actually about adblockers" and not performance metrics.
ignoramous 7y ago
> Cos sure as hell no user is waiting for this. Most of the web browsing happens on mobile devices where Chrome has a staggering 5B+ installs (though possibly not all active) vs Firefox's 100M+. Chrome on mobile never did support extensions let alone content blockers. The manifest v3 offensive is meek compared to their hegemony already on display in the Android world which has 2B+ active users that almost exclusively use Chrome. I see an anti-trust case in here somewhere or for Mozilla to simply buckle up and sign deals with OEMs that makes them the default browser and webview on Android.
cromwellian 7y ago
Apple/Safari adopted pretty much the same architecture on Ad Blockers. Maybe just maybe the conspiracy theories are all wrong, and there was actually a legitimate, technical reason for choosing a restricted API.
- pilif 7y ago
  Safari has a much larger limit for blocking list entries though.
  - my123 7y ago
    + the limit there is per-extension, not global
    - rmsaksida 7y ago
      And the limit is easily circumvented by having multiple extensions. I've seen Safari extensions that split themselves up to one extension per block list.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    It’s not all that much larger; the limit is a combination of a hard cap of 50,000 rules and what Jetsam will let you get away with.
    - hombre_fatal 7y ago
      You can bundle many rule lists inside one extension. It's how 1Blocker works, and I did it myself for my own adblocking extension. I'm not sure if this is possible in Chrome's proposal though. Maybe this change will finally get people to prune Easylist which had 30% outdated cosmetic-filter cruft when I last sampled it along with hobby horse websites <0.00001% people would ever visit. Right now it's basically like an append-only legacy CSS file.
- sha666sum 7y ago
  If there was, they could've communicated it clearly already a year ago. There is no reason to give Google the benefit of the doubt, since it's clear they're not trying to get it. If this rolls out, I'm going to very loudly tell my friends to use Fox, and not stop.
onion2k 7y ago
Google's internal motivation doesn't really matter.
contravariant 7y ago
Given that they added an arbitrary limit to the number of rules that is high but not quite high enough for modern adblockers I'm gonna assume this was intentional.
kjaer 7y ago
I don't know if this actually helps Google show more ads. With a 30k rule limit, I'm imagining most adblockers will prioritize the most common ad domains, and I'm pretty sure Google would be at the top of that list. This may really be a win for the long tail of smaller ad networks rather than the bigger players.

pragnesh 7y ago

time to move to firefox

moomin 7y ago
Way ahead of you...
- petepete 7y ago
  I moved earlier this year, it's been a good experience overall. The dev tools, which were what was holding me back, are _excellent_ and improving all the time. Only thing I'd really love to see are container-specific windows, so 'Work' tabs would open by default in my 'Work' window.
  - PorkBoneSoup 7y ago
    Perhaps something along the lines of this? https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/multi-account... Full disclosure: I love this extension.

mda 7y ago

Does it really kill adblockers though?

steventhedev 7y ago
Yes[0] [0]: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338 https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338
reagent_finder 7y ago
In current form, yes. The article pretty clearly states: >Instead Google wants developers to use the declarativeNetRequest API, which has the browser, not the extension, strip content or resources from a visited web sites. This API, though, has a limit of 30,000 rules that can be created. >Unfortunately, this change will break popular ad blockers such as uBlock Origin, which rely on the original functionality of the webRequest API and need more rules than are available in the declarativeNetRequest API. Looking at an old picture of ublock origin block lists: https://www.bleepstatic.com/images/news/u/1100723/uBlockOrigin-content-blocker.png https://www.bleepstatic.com/images/news/u/1100723/uBlockOrig... we can see 150,000 rules. The whole point of a rules list (easylist/easyprivacy) is that they're easy to maintain, since it should be a surprise to no one that adding new ad domains is trivially trivial. EasyList alone is 30,000 rules and it alone is woefully insufficient for a modern-day browser. The declarativeNetRequest only allows for ONE type of filter to work. The static kind, i.e. the old, deprecated, bad, insufficient kind. Recommended reading: uBlock Origin developer's comments on this change (unanswered by google ofc) https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=896897&desc=2#c23 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=896897...
- onion2k 7y ago
  The way ad-blockers work at the moment is that the authors of ad-blockers work hard to not break the websites they block adverts on. This is good for users. This change means ad-blockers will need a different, simpler approach that probably will break far more websites. For example, you could write a very simple ad-blocking script that just denied requests to load JS from any third-party domain. That would break a lot of websites, but you wouldn't see many adverts. I'd rather have lots of broken websites than websites with adverts. I suspect a lot of web users feel the same way.

moomin 7y ago

This is the point in the dominance cycle where the dominant player decides they no longer need to be the fastest or the most secure and that their dominance will allow them to coast along doing their thing. There’s nothing particularly inevitable about what happens next, but let’s hope they get an IE6-sized kick in the teeth.

sqrt17 7y ago
> they get an IE6-sized kick in the teeth. as in: people will continue to suffer for about a decade while good alternatives readily spring up but suffer slow adoption?
- moomin 7y ago
  Yeah, let’s hope that it’s IE6-sized, but not IE6-speed. Although I’m not ruling out a lost decade of web tech happening again.
- Nuzzerino 7y ago
  Why does an alternative have to be widely adopted to be seen as good? Tech has an obsession with "popular or bust" and that's the ultimate cause of the lack of choices IMO.
- wbl 7y ago
  Firefox is already here.
  - claudeganon 7y ago
    Since Firefox is already dependent on Google for a great deal of their funding, I’d say the next phase in Google’s strategy will be scaling that back.
    - pnako 7y ago
      They still need to keep Firefox alive, because it allows them to control market concentration and avoid the antitrust issues that MS had to fight.

EsssM7QVMehFPAs 7y ago

Couldn't some kind of graph compression algorithm preprocess the subscribed rulesets into what fits 30k rules? I have no idea about the domain but 30k rules seems more than sufficient to map from a 150k set of uncompressed wildcard patterns.

fenk85 7y ago
No the company which has solved some incredible technical/algorithmic problems is not capable of offering any technical solutions which might impact its own bottom line
kretor 7y ago
The 30k rules limit is not final. > we are currently planning to change the rule limit from maximum of 30k rules per extension to a global maximum of 150k rules. (https://blog.chromium.org/2019/06/web-request-and-declarative-net-request.html https://blog.chromium.org/2019/06/web-request-and-declarativ...)
- GraemeL 7y ago
  I currently have 135k network rules active in uBlock Origin without having all of their lists active. Your 150k proposal is nowhere near enough.
dao- 7y ago
You seem to be assuming that the people maintaining the rules have been somewhat lazy so far. uBlock origin has the reputation of being pretty performant though, so I'd assume the engine and rules are already well optimized. That aside, I wouldn't want to bend backwards just to comply with how Google wants the world to work. I'd rather use Firefox.
dividuum 7y ago
"Nice ad blocker you still have working there. Would be a shame if this arbitrarily chosen limit of 30k would be reduced to 15k"
saagarjha 7y ago

jruz 7y ago

Classic cat and mouse moves. Adblockers will move to OS level so google cant do anything about it. Pi-hole and Network level blockers should also see a rise.

catalogia 7y ago
DNS-based blocking schemes lack fine grained control. They're simply less capable than uBlock Origin/uMatrix.
mantap 7y ago
Pi-hole can't filter out ads that are embedded into the page though. I think adblockers have to be a browser extension to work conprehensively.
- rozab 7y ago
  I generally don't mind ads that are embedded into the page (at the moment). It would solve a lot of the big problems people have with ads right now. Anyway, this change only prevents extensions from blanket blocking web requests, and will make no difference to adblockers which manipulate DOM content. I think the same thing that happened with popup blockers will happen again. Advertisers will be forced to listen to the consumers and the internet will be better for it. Have you turned off your popup blocker recently? You can surf around even to fairly sketchy sites, and I bet you won't see a pop up. The consumer won. With tracking, we'll win again.
- adrianN 7y ago
  Pi-hole can switch from magicking the DNS to being a proxy that rewrites HTML.
  - koolba 7y ago
    TLS makes that tricky as you need a MITM proxy.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago

9dl 7y ago

Well hello my dear Firefox ms thought that ie will be at the top forever too

Kipters 7y ago

I've given up on Chrome a long time ago (using Firefox now), but I think the best way to block ads for good is to use Pi Hole as DNS. I've set it up a couple months ago at my home, plus a Wireguard tunnel so that all connections from my laptop and phones go through that DNS (with the added benefit of encrypting all my traffic over unsecured networks).

9dl 7y ago
DNS blockers are nuclear option Sometimes they are useful but in most cases you need more flexible solution
- Kipters 7y ago
  Why should it? Most ads are toxic. Even if the site is well-intended and doesn't put too many of them, the few ads are still going to track you and disregard your privacy.
  - 9dl 7y ago
    This is tech limitation If site has ads served from main domain you can't block them You can block ads with some static files on subdomains/domains, and this drastically change content (like how is image sites looks like without images?) So, using DNS filtering for big ads providers is OK For small and smart ads providers will not work And I mean ads and tracking the same thing. While you can block all kind of "analytics", at the same time you can't block web-server logs with your IP (cookies, etc)
    - Kipters 7y ago
      That's why I use it in conjunction with Firefox (set to the strictest anti-tracking level) and uBlock Origin
      - 9dl 7y ago
        And this is right way to use it

vkizl 7y ago

Off-topic: because of this, I was thinking of moving to Vivaldi and it's really sad how unpolished and slow their UI is... it's almost as if it was a beta, still. I wonder if they use it themselves... It seems to me that they want to reinvent the entire Chrome UI but they don't have the necessary manpower to do it properly.

me_me_me 7y ago

Meanwhile me laughing in Firefox. I hope no one here is surprised by this G was more and more anti ad-blocking for years now. This is only natural conclusion after u are a de-facto browser monopoly.

Craighead 7y ago
Is it better to send all dns requests to a private company that harbors and protects racists and pedophiles?
gnom69 7y ago
Google captcha makes some sites almost unusable on firefox if you dare to resist fingerprinting for full traceability. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20147015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20147015
- romanovcode 7y ago
  Can you surpass it by faking user-agent and pretend to be Chrome?
  - GuB-42 7y ago
    It is not about Chrome vs Firefox. It is about how much information they can get about you. The idea behind the "I am not a robot" captcha is that if you act like a human, then you don't need to be shown pictures for further confirmation. The more you allow tracking, the more info they have to figure it out. A big one is being logged in to your Google account. Having access to all your history really helps. And because Chrome heavily encourage you to setup a Google account, Chrome users are more likely to be logged in than Firefox (or other) users. Spoofing your user-agent is likely to be worse. If you have a Chrome user-agent but your browser don't act like Chrome, that's a big red flag. Bots often spoof their user agents.
- pmlnr 7y ago
  I see recaptcha, I walk. There's nothing else I can do. BTW if I turn on 1st party isolation in FF, I keep feeding the fire hydrant monster for hours.

bufferoverflow 7y ago

That's how you make people switch to Firefox, Brave, Opera, etc.

the8472 7y ago
The last two are chromium-based and thus will likely follow chrome's extension system too.
- codehalo 7y ago
  Brave has built in ad blocking.
  - IGotThroughIt 7y ago
    I use brave but some brave allowed ads seep through. I have no issue with ads; I just don't like tracking and insane JavaScript pop ups taking over the browser without the user invoking a deliberate action.
- DiabloD3 7y ago
  Both of them have already said they will not implement these changes in their Chromium branches. Unfortunately for Google, Chrome is open source, and Google will no longer be the dominant Chromium branch if they keep making mistakes like this.
  - duiker101 7y ago
    I am afraid that won't be enough https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=%2Fm%2F01z7gs,%2Fm%2F04j7cyf https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=%2Fm%2F01z...
- XzetaU8 7y ago
  Can't comment for opera, brave however won't follow manifest v3 https://twitter.com/brave/status/1088914000379731970 https://twitter.com/brave/status/1088914000379731970

firefoxd 7y ago

On mobile i use brave, and when things break I switch to chrome. I tried Firefox multiple times, but I can't help but miss the swipe the address bar to go from tab to tab. I always revert back to chrome. So it's more of a convenience for me. But if I had to choose between adblock or swipe to switch tab, then they made the decision for me. There is no way I can ever browse the web without an adblocker

rozab 7y ago
...But mobile chrome doesn't support extensions anyway? I use Blokada for adblocking on Android btw, and this change wouldn't affect that. Works fine.
- square_usual 7y ago
  Brave blocks ads natively, even on mobile. It's a pretty nifty browser for when you want chromium. Firefox mobile is slower in comparison, but their extension support is killer tbh.
pjc50 7y ago
> swipe the address bar to go from tab to tab I never knew you could do that! How did you discover this feature?
- vkizl 7y ago
  In my case, by accident...

jillesvangurp 7y ago

I find it interesting that Google thinks they are going to get away with this. I'm afraid they might be right. I've been on Firefox since they launched their quantum version a few years ago after a few years of using Chrome. I like Firefox but I notice a lot of people around me seem to default to Chrome. Things work well enough on Firefox that I don't consider compatibility a problem. But I do get a lot of raised eyebrows from people who consider this an extreme thing to do. Just like back in the day where I was doing most of my browsing with alpha builds of Mozilla Phoenix instead of just using IE like world + dog. But what matters is that the market has changed. 15 years ago when MS made their anti competitive moves with IE and in the process helped Mozilla survive their Netscape implosion through reinventing themselves through their Phoenix -> Firebird -> Firefox reinvention (I used all of those). However since then, the market has consolidated around just 3 browser engines: Chromium, Webkit/Safari, and Firefox. Of those Chromium essentially powers all of the Chrome alternatives that aren't Firefox or Safari (Edge, Brave, Opera, etc.). Another change is that the web has imploded to just a handful of websites gobbling up most of the traffic. Yes there are a lot of websites but mostly the way to them leads via Google, Facebook, Apple, or MS owned properties. Finally the ad market has changed. GDPR and related efforts in other markets (including the US) are pushing the market towards more responsible behavior with respect to getting users to opt in and to ad experiences that are increasing harder to block because they don't necessarily come via separate websites and domains.

buboard 7y ago
There's also the giant shift to mobile. Google and apple would like you to use phones and tablets to the expense of desktops because they can control those platforms better. So they are building their platforms with those in mind, unintentionally-or-not crippling desktops
9dl 7y ago
You know, IE6 and especially 7 was very good, but...

bambax 7y ago

> Simeon Vincent, a Google Developer Advocate for Chrome Extensions One has to love and admire the use of Newspeak by big companies... How is this Mr Vincent an "advocate"? He's in charge of destroying extensions! On his Twitter bio [1] he also says he likes "helping people" and "the open web". The cognitive dissonance must be hard to bear. [1] https://twitter.com/dotproto https://twitter.com/dotproto

dessant 7y ago
And once asked a clear question, the developer advocate deflects and stops answering: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/745#issuecomment-547620810 https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/745#iss...
- Someone1234 7y ago
  Did you link to the right thing? That isn't a deflection, they're asking permission to sideline the issue on uBlock's issue tracker into a discussion about Chrome/Chromium's extension policies, which incidentally they didn't get a clear answer to. > I also don't want to hijack this without the project's permission. @gorhill & contributors, do you mind having this discussion here or would you prefer if we moved it elsewhere? I haven't really been following this issue, but I did read the linked reply, so I may be missing some bigger context.
  - omnifischer 7y ago
    Would be nice if any hn-reader mediates between the two sides.
    - dsr_ 7y ago
      Mediation is for two sides having a reasonable difference of opinion. In Google's corporate opinion, Google's ads must not be blocked. In everyone else's opinion, all ads must be blockable at a user's option. That's not a difference that can be mediated.
  - 7y ago

laichzeit0 7y ago

Is the current fold at Google too young to remember what happened when Microsoft tried this type of crap with IE6? History truly repeats itself..

gpderetta 7y ago
are we in the farce stage already?

kmlx 7y ago

hasn't Apple done the same with Safari? https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.zdnet.com/google-amp/article/apple-neutered-ad-blockers-in-safari-but-unlike-chrome-users-didnt-say-a-thing/ https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.zdnet.com/google-amp/arti... curiously i haven't noticed any changes on my day to day browsing habits.

kmlx 7y ago
another point: isn't this what every firefox/others fan wished for? a way to balance things out in the browser market?
- marcosdumay 7y ago
  That another player turn evil? I don't think so. Firefox fans want it to become a great browser. No shits given to Chrome either way.
pas 7y ago
yes, and that is also bad.
- judge2020 7y ago
  I guess the argument is "is it worth it to save some people the privacy issue of extensions phoning home the pages you visit by requiring the ad-blocking to be a rule list and not rely on synchronous webRequest blocking". Safari's webRequest change also blocked even monitoring webRequest URLs, so the current adblocking solution is to only provide a list of blocked patterns, and it seems to work for me.
  - pas 7y ago
    The easy solution is to measure the performance of this declarative API and inform the user if it causes slowdowns. But don't limit it to 30k entries.
mrtksn 7y ago

paride5745 7y ago

Moved back to Firefox this weekend. It feels so much snappier than Chrome. So far I only miss SuperSorter (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/supersorter/hjebfgojnlefhdgmomncgjglmdckngij?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/supersorter/hjebfg...).

claudeganon 7y ago

>Cognitive dissonance must be hard to bear Words are just another means to an end for these people. Americans were very good at believing that Orwell’s work about language and politics was specific to the circumstances of the Soviet Union, when in fact it’s broadly applicable to every form of authoritarianism, including corporations and their functionaries. I’ve never had the misfortune of living in a Stalinist state, but I certainly have worked for companies and managers that seemed to aspire to.

big_chungus 7y ago
Really? That's funny, I always thought businesses hated the idea of communism.
- kibwen 7y ago
  Not sure if this is tongue-in-cheek, but the key consideration here is that of authoritarianism (which is capable of being used in conjunction with plenty of other -isms, including socialism and capitalism). Corporations tend to be largely authoritarian as well (i.e., you are expected to respect your boss because they are your boss (and if they deign to respect you, this is regarded as magnanimity); possession of authority in authoritarian contexts is circularly self-justfiying).
  - big_chungus 7y ago
    The comment to which I replied specifically named Stalinism, of which communism is a core tenet. I have difficulty thinking of a Stalinist company.
- _jal 7y ago
  Internally, businesses run whatever system they want, but it is almost always an authoritarian hierarchy. (Do what you're told or leave. Various amounts of arguing or grumbling before you do may or may not be tolerated.) The language used in bad times is telling. You'll hear managers talking about how it sucks, but is needed to save the company ("individuals must suffer for the greater good"). Externally, businesses reflect the political preferences of those who control them, but they tend to prefer weak states they can influence or control. Democracies are harder to control this way because the stakeholders are diffuse. Centralization, strongmen and corruption make things easier.

radEd 7y ago

This was the nail in the coffin for me, as of last night. Writing this on Firefox :)

JulianMorrison 7y ago

They are being very stupid. Switching primary browser isn't trivial, but it's easier than wading through an ad-laden web. Goodbye Chrome, hello Firefox.

NieDzejkob 7y ago
You're not their target. It's the less technical people they have in mind here.
- JulianMorrison 7y ago
  Those people managed to switch from IE. Chrome used to be the underdog.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Fortunately, a lot of less technical people have technical people in their immediate families and circles of friends.
  - breakingcups 7y ago
    The big question is, how many of those less technical people switched to Chrome because of technical friends or family and how many switched because of Google abusing its monopoly by displaying deceptive ads for their browser on all web real estate they own?
    - JulianMorrison 7y ago
      Ads don't make people switch browser, it's enough of a fuss that only pain will do that.
- jve 7y ago
  Except we are the ones that usually decide what to put on end users computers. And we are the ones that makes suggestions. And end users then make same suggestions to other people. Word of mouth I believe is a VERY important marketing tool. Basically if Chrome looses people that brought them market share in the first place... I think market can shift. Not that it happens fast enough. But having some market share for Firefox is important.

fergie 7y ago

Might encourage more users back over to Firefox, which would make this good news on balance.

johnpowell 7y ago

Back in the IE 6 days I was in charge of fixing my families computers, and my family's friends computers. I was dealing with a few things a week, some requiring a full re-install. This was back in the early 2000's. Eventually I snapped and started charging hourly unless people switched to Gmail and Firefox. I started getting a lot less calls since Gmail was pretty good about filtering out malicious attachments and IE was, IE. I probably got around 40 households to switch to Firefox. The people that refused to switch financed a lot of my undergrad, I charged 100 a hour. I don't like fixing computers and the goal was to make things as painful as possible for them so they would stop using IE. Using a ad-blocker in Firefox was the #1 thing I suggested for safe computing. And don't open unexpected email attachments. This killed 95% of peoples computer woes. So good job Google, you did it, from here on out whenever I see Chrome on families computers I will strong-arm them into switching to Firefox. I did it in 2005 and was wildly successful. I can do it again. And I think my Christmas gifts this year will be domain names and three year subscriptions to Fastmail for my immediate family.

9dl 7y ago
I did it like this Install FF Set it as default Change path on desktop shortcut for "Internet" to FF And ofc do not forget to say that is new IE version
- Cub3 7y ago
  Change the icon of the FF shortcut to look like the IE icon ;)
- moomin 7y ago
  If you’re on Windows, you need to set up edge-deflector too, which is a fairly advanced piece of idiocy.
  - exergy 7y ago
    There is a way to get rid of Edge by renaming its install folder or something like that. I did it, and I love it.

Ensorceled 7y ago

Like so many others on this thread, this is my push to go entirely back onto Firefox. I'll keep Chrome for the diminishing number of sites that don't like Firefox.

square_usual 7y ago
You can use Brave as your Chromium-based browser. It blocks ads natively, and I've not yet run into a site that required Chrome that didn't work on Brave.
- BurnGpuBurn 7y ago
  How sure are we that Brave will not break also with these new changes? And also, how sure are we that Chromium isn't secretly tracking users already? I don't have time to read the source, and don't trust that many people that say it's all a-okay.
- 9dl 7y ago
  Whut? Sites require chrome?
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    Sadly, there are a number of websites that assume that Chrome is the only web browser and do not work properly in other browsers.
  - bshacklett 7y ago
    The web version of T-Mobile Digits is one I can think of off the top of my head.
  - Ensorceled 7y ago
    For the entire history of the internet, there have been sites that only work properly with the dominate browser, starting with Netscape and then, famously, IE6. I'm always confused when people imply this isn't the case or start demanding evidence. I'm bemused when they are surprised.

LeonM 7y ago

Wow, the amount of negativity here is awful. I looks like most commenters have not even read the article... First of all, the HN title is not the title of the article. HN mods, please change it to reflect the actual title of the article. Second, to me this does not seem as some attempt by Google to actively block Adblocker extensions. They are proposing a change to the API (Manifest) to no longer allow manipulation of content, which I think is a good thing from a security standpoint. They also propose reducing the number of content stripping rules to 30k. Now, I'm not familiar with add-on development, but this sounds like a constraint that was implemented for performance reasons. This constraint will break add-blockers in their current form, but there is no reason for me to believe that this will make content filtering impossible. It is also clearly stated that the V3 manifest is in early testing phase. Nothing here is set in stone.

daRealDodo 7y ago
Thank you for giving an insight from the other side.
saagarjha 7y ago
Mods, can we have this title changed to match the article? It’s not accurate, as Manifest v3 does not “kill” adblockers. (Whether it cripples them or not is still subjective and does not belong in the title.)
yipbub 7y ago
The amount of negativity here is appropriate.
icegreentea2 7y ago
They announced this back in May/June - the whole 30k rules things. Current rules list easily exceed that number. They said back in May/June that they would consider looking increasing the number of rules - they clearly haven't chosen to increase the number in the intervening time. Maybe they are waiting for more actual testing, but they're not setting themselves up for an easy time. It's also honestly a little rich to worry about the performance impact of ad blocking given the performance impact of ads themselves.
7y ago

nottorp 7y ago

A couple years ago my mac started to not go to sleep... I checked and it was Chrome saying “webrtc has active peer connections”. No, you can’t disable webrtc in chrome. So I’ve been a bit ahead of the crowd and gave up on Chrome long ago. This ad block scandal made me give up on Safari too though. Firefox seems to be the only reasonable option left.

JohnFen 7y ago
> No, you can’t disable webrtc in chrome. Is this true? That's a complete showstopper for me.
- nottorp 7y ago
  Was when I checked. Don't know now, haven't used Chrome in a while. In any case, how do they dare disable my power management for something I didn't start myself?

enobrev 7y ago

I had already switched my mobile browser to Firefox explicitly so I could use ublock. And now it's time to move to Firefox in the desktop. I appreciate Google helping with the decision.

degenerate 7y ago
And then you'll be able to sync your bookmarks and settings etc.
perf1 7y ago
Unfortunately the Touchpad experience is non native and horrible on a Windows Laptop.

wy35 7y ago

I didn't use an adblocker until every single site began competing on how much of my screen can be a billboard telling me that I won't last two minutes playing their game. If the new changes make it past testing and there's no strict anti-ad abuse policy put in place, I'm jumping ship.

BurnGpuBurn 7y ago

The biggest advertising company in history tries to kill blocking advertisements in their browser? How am I not surprised. I bet this move is also to kill the workings of extensions like DecentralEyes and others that try to protect users from being tracked. The whole changing of the API into a "sure we'll block that URL for ya, sometimes maybe" model reeks of increasing user tracking. They'll work out the kinks to let AdBlockers function again. But they'll have their tracking back.

treden 7y ago
This of course. Why is anyone in the least surprised that Google doesn't want the ads that fund Chrome (and everything else they do) to be blocked by the users of Chrome. Shall Google fund our nice things (like Firefox, Chrome, gmail, google maps, etc etc) with hopes and dreams in place of cold hard cash? The audacity. Clearly an unpopular opinion here, but anyway: I'm happy to let a few ads slip through (which I will happily ignore anyhow) in exchange for the possibility of a future where I dont have to drive a car to get places.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  It's not either/or, just like you can have a factory making cheap widgets without letting that factory pollute the local river with industrial waste. Ads are funding the Internet only because it's the easiest legal business model to pull off, so everyone gravitated to it. But it's not like there wouldn't be money for self-driving cars without adtech, and in reality, them being tied with advertising companies only ensures that the future will be shitty.
  - danShumway 7y ago
    To add to this, ads are currently the best way to collect micropayments from users online without requiring you (the website maintainer) to have a database or profile on each customer, or to handle complicated return processes, or to deal with merchant accounts. You just make an adwords account, serve content to people, and that's it. I'm convinced that in a world where collecting anonymous micropayments was as easy as serving ads, the web would look at lot different. People look at this as a choice between paying $5 a month for every website they visit, or getting it "free" with ads. But in a world with good micropayments, most websites wouldn't cost $5. Outside of the biggest players, most sites aren't currently making $5 a month per user via ads.

nsomaru 7y ago

First we started telling everyone about Firefox Then we told them about Chrome Now we tell them about Firefox again Google has officially reached 90s MS levels

EasyTiger_ 7y ago
Only far worse
eitland 7y ago
I've been adding #chromeIsTheNewIE to related posts for a while. As someone who worked at the end of IEs dominance that feels spot on: - lots of developers not caring at all - businesses being businesses caring that we don't spend time on it - ordinary people not caring even when the alternative is in another league We got some work ahead. Hopefully Mozilla won't mess up too much during the next few months/years and then we might pull it off again. And feel free to reuse the hashtag above : )

ulfw 7y ago

And this is prime example number one why something as important as your Browser shouldn‘t be the free thing you get from an ad company.

iamgopal 7y ago

They don't realise how easy is to swtich, and ads already started to anoy almost all. Searching for Subscription model or other model is the key here. Apple with their lower price iPhone 11 sensed it, and acted to increase their service revenue while Google yet to have streamlined payment gateway let alone reliable subscription service product wide.

cletus 7y ago

Did anyone actually read the submission? The title is clickbait that doesn't reflect the content. The change here moves modifying content of the webRequest to the browser from the extension. This is fundamentally more secure. Allowing third-party extensions to inspect and _modify_ arbitrary HTTP requests is nothing short of dangerous. The new declarative API (from the article) limits such extensions to 30,000 rules. I honestly don't know what impact this will have on ad blockers. At worst it seems like ad blockers will become less effective as simple logic tells you that some rules matter more than others and the least used rules will simply be dropped. So rather than be alarmist and use this to feed into the tired narrative that "Google is killing ad blockers because it's an advertising company" (paraphrased) we should be pushing for changes that make this workable, such as: 1. Having a higher limit than 30,000; and 2. Working on ways to condense N rules into <N rules. There must be ways we can be more expressive so that we don't require as many rules, no? I honestly don't like the fact that I have to give a third party developer so much privileged access to run an ad blocker and I'm surprised anyone else is. Extensions can be compromised.

malvosenior 7y ago
> So rather than be alarmist and use this to feed into the tired narrative that "Google is killing ad blockers because it's an advertising company" That’s not alarmist, it’s the obvious truth. As a user I should have complete control over what runs on my machine. I don’t need Google “protecting” me (by breaking ad blockers). Google is the single most destructive force in the tech industry today. Very much like Microsoft in the 90s. We should resist their attempts to embrace, extend, extinguish and we should be insulted that they couch these changes in marketing speak that pretends to be pro-user when it’s the exact opposite.
- cletus 7y ago
  > As a user I should have complete control over what runs on my machine. You do. By running Firefox. This level of control might be useful to you but it's not to most users. As much as power users chafe against things like the App Store, for example, this is clearly a win for most users. Limiting what a malicious extension could do is very much the same because I can guarantee you there are scams to get users to install malicious extensions. How Firefox should respond here is to make ad-blocking a first party solution. In that Firefox itself is responsible for the blocking and all extension writers are responsible for are the rules. At that point you will have a solid story that FF is putting the user first.

sub7 7y ago

Sooner we move off ad renvenue based products the better. Surely there's a way to get people to pay a tiny bit to get great quality products that don't fuck them in the arse. We need some benevolent dictatorship in tech to sponsor this ecosystem.

Nasrudith 7y ago
We have seen that floated many times but I am afraid it is a non-starter. It has the same exact issues as Clickbait but calls for a large infastructural change. Just having a convenient pay mechanism would be an in practice security vulnerability from scareware. Plus like subscriptions the owner practice often will be "do both at once"!
Kaiyou 7y ago
You'd need a convenient, anonymous payment system. Tough luck.

mcv 7y ago

I'm in the process of switching as much as possible to Firefox. I now use Firefox Mobile on my smartphone, and my new laptop doesn't even get Chrome. And in many ways, it's been a breath of fresh air. Firefox gives my much more control over my privacy, and even recommends some extensions to improve it further. A couple of websites are sadly broken on my Firefox setup, but I can live without them. I want to get back to the content-driven web rather than this ad-driven web we have now. I want to read what people want to share, not what people think will get them ad clicks.

ffritz 7y ago
> I want to read what people want to share, not what people think will get them ad clicks. Interesting thought.
fastball 7y ago
Why not something like Brave which has the performance of Chromium (still better than Firefox imo) because it's a fork but probably won't make similar business decisions to Google?
- chatmasta 7y ago
  By the same logic you could use Microsoft Edge, which is now chromium based and effectively a chrome shell.
  - fastball 7y ago
    Very true, but I think I trust Brave more than I trust Microsoft to try to keep the internet neutral as such.
- bn7t 7y ago
  Regarding brave see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21323576 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21323576
  - fastball 7y ago

notkaiho 7y ago

All the more reason to use a DNS level ad-blocker and clear all cookies on browser exit, I guess...

chronolitus 7y ago

Welp, I've been putting this off for a few years, but this is as good as moment as any to do it. Took me 10 minutes to import all bookmarks, set up extensions, and customize one or two details but it is done. So long Chrome, it was good while it lasted!

eyegor 7y ago

Now that they're pushing forward with the artificial limits, I'm looking forward to moving back to the days when large software was deployed on floppy/discs. I can see it now: "ublock origin part 1", "ublock origin part 2", ...

wffurr 7y ago

What a needlessly hostile title that editorializes and doesn't match the linked article. @dang can you change it to match the site? I think this submission violates the site guidelines on titles. The original title is "Google Begins Testing Extension Manifest V3 in Chrome Canary" and doesn't include the ad blocker flame bait. "Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize"

khrbrt 7y ago
The bit about adblockers provides context on why this article is worth my attention. I'm not an extension developer, so "Extension Manifest V3 in Chrome Canary" means nothing to me. But this: >The most controversial aspect of the extension manifest v3 is the upcoming changes to the webRequest API. In v3, Google has changed the API so that extensions can only monitor browser connections, but not modify any of the content before it's displayed. >Instead Google wants developers to use the declarativeNetRequest API, which has the browser, not the extension, strip content or resources from a visited web sites. This API, though, has a limit of 30,000 rules that can be created. >Unfortunately, this change will break popular ad blockers such as uBlock Origin, which rely on the original functionality of the webRequest API and need more rules than are available in the declarativeNetRequest API. Is very worrying. So thanks to the submitter.
- wffurr 7y ago
  It's also completely misleading and perhaps willfully so. The limit's been raised. The removed API is used by half of all detected malicious extensions to spy on users. Ad blockers will continue to work fine with the new API, just like they do on Safari now.
  - fwn 7y ago
    > The limit's been raised. I thought the worrying thing isn't whether it's a 30k or 300k limit but that Google itself chooses the amount of filters users can apply. It feels to me that this is just asking for the abuse of power. I don't think the specific number itself is anyones primary concern.

znpy 7y ago

Google Chrome is the new Internet Explorer

anoncake 7y ago
That's an unfair comparison. IE wasn't a good browser but at least it wasn't designed to make people suffer from ads.

wffurr 7y ago

Half of all detected malicious extensions used the web request API to spy on users. The rule limit has already been raised to 150,000. Plenty of ad blockers will still work in Chrome. This thread is chock full of motivated reasoning and deliberate misinformation.

chopin 7y ago
Afaik they can do this still. This can't be the motivation.
rndgermandude 7y ago
> Half of all detected malicious extensions used the web request API to spy on users. And they can continue doing so because spying is passive and the passive (just eavesdropping, no modifications) webRequest API still will be there. >The rule limit has already been raised to 150,000. And it could be 10 billion rules. The point isn't so much the actual number, but that you cannot programmatically judge and block request anymore. >Plenty of ad blockers will still work in Chrome. Of course, those ad-blocker crippling changes aren't in the Stable yet, and even in Canary they are only "preview" and the old APIs still work. >This thread is chock full of motivated reasoning and deliberate misinformation. Yes, that's more or less what you did here.
jddj 7y ago
Can you spell out what you are implying here? Is it that the people posting in this thread are.. authors or stakeholders of malicious extensions? Do they all work for Mozilla? Are they a part of some rival industry which stands to benefit from the fall of adtech? Have they shorted GOOG? Surely it would be strange to class arguments from users who want to continue to block ads in their browsers the same, effective way that they have been for years as motivated reasoning. What sinister motivation am I missing?
- wffurr 7y ago
  For whatever reason they all seem determined to put Google in the worst possible light and ignore any arguments to the contrary. I can't speak to the motivation other than "hate Google".

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

mehdix 7y ago

I am so glad that it's a while I have started migrating off Google, Gmail and Android and I am Chrome-free for almost two years now (Syncthing and DecSync helped a lot). However, I think Google will exploit their browser-market-dominance to bend web tech to make escaping from ads impossible, same as what they did with DRM.

hendersoon 7y ago

Everybody saying declarativeNetRequest is sufficient and Apple's Safari content blocking works perfectly fine is entirely missing the point. Both of those statements are true enough, _for right now_. Losing the ability to modify content in this manner means adblockers can't compete in the arms race against advertisers. Anti-adblock scripts running locally with randomly-generated names will render this sort of declarative content blocking ineffective.

pen2l 7y ago

This is not as terrifying to me as the other news brought to my attention by a post in today's Reddit's r/YSK, that if you use Adblock, your gmail can be closed. In the new TOS of Youtube [1], it states that if your account is not deemed commercially viable, your Google account (i.e. your Gmail, your Google Photos, your Google Drive, etc.) can be closed down: YouTube may terminate your access, or your Google account’s access to all or part of the Service if YouTube believes, in its sole discretion, that provision of the Service to you is no longer commercially viable. Makes sense they would make this decision, as Youtube is a big money-loser for Google and they want to do something about this. Still, this is more of a wake-up call to me than anything else that I need to get off Google. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/t/terms?preview=20191210#main& https://www.youtube.com/t/terms?preview=20191210#main&

calciphus 7y ago
> YouTube may terminate your access, or your Google account’s access to all or part of the Service if YouTube believes, in its sole discretion, that provision of the Service to you is no longer commercially viable.
kyrra 7y ago
I think it depends on how "the Service" is defined. As "Service" is capitalized, it is likely defined in the TOS, and may only apply to Youtube (not Google as a whole). So I believe you (and the redditor) are reading that passage incorrectly. (IANAL, and I have no clue if what I said is right).
- pen2l 7y ago
  I've been struggling with this myself. But extrapolating from news that some Youtubers who got banned also found their Google accounts (i.e. Gmail, Drive, etc.) closed, (someone up above just commented on this), I feel I must err on the side of caution. I mean, what do you then make of this haphazard interpretation of 'Service'? p.s., not to be snarky, but you ought to add a disclaimer that you're a Googler in your comment!
  - 7y ago

clickme_zsh 7y ago

I use Firefox as my main browser and have Vivaldi, Brave, Edge, Installed for testing purposes. I just need to migrate my email away from Gmail hmmmmmm. Any good suggestion?

tablethnuser 7y ago

I'm the one who switched my whole family to Chrome back in the day to get them off IE. I have no problem doing it again this holiday season. Firefox for everyone. No idea what Google is thinking. In one short decade they've become the new villains of the internet.

butuzov 7y ago

I can't use firefox since they decided I need to enter 6 char code to verify my password. Oh... this code never arrives to my google mailbox.

enriquto 7y ago

ublock origin is non-negotiable so long, chrome!

bit_4l 7y ago

I found Brave more trustworthy than Chrome and better usability than Firefox. Just made a switch to it.

newscracker 7y ago

I don’t care about Chrome (having ditched it long ago). On the other hand, I do care about whatever Chrome implements having an adverse impact on Firefox. Mozilla has said before that Manifest V3 is up for consideration in Firefox and that “there are no immediate plans to remove” the existing APIs (mainly webRequest). [1] If Mozilla makes the power of uBlock Origin untenable on Firefox [2], that’d be a sad day for me, and I’d probably switch to Brave (assuming it’s still able to support uBlock Origin, even though it has a built-in as blocker). If anyone from Mozilla or the Firefox team is reading this, please lead the way on these changes in a way that improves security (one of the goals of Manifest V3) while allowing extensions to remain powerful. Letting Google dictate the terms or just following Chrome will likely make Firefox worse in the eyes of power users and those who influence others to use it. [1]: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2019/09/03/mozillas-manifest-v3-faq/ https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2019/09/03/mozillas-manifest... [2]: like it did with the XUL obsolescence (for good reasons) and the removal of great extensions like Tab Mix Plus and Session Manager (without providing a way forward for them to work; session saving extensions on Firefox are still not as good as the mozdev Session Manager was).

snagglegaggle 7y ago
Mozilla is full of either cowards or sellouts. When the page visibility API was added to Firefox for Android and used to automatically pause nonvisible YouTube pages they ignored user arguments for blocking it.

badrabbit 7y ago

How impossible is it to fork Chromium and maintain a privacy friendly branch?

freetonik 7y ago
There's one popular effort: https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium

noobiemcfoob 7y ago

The only feature keeping me on Chrome is web bluetooth.