37 ms·

A list of recent hostile moves by Google's Chrome team

1074 points by luu 3y ago

archo 3y ago
https://archive.is/yy2Yf https://archive.is/yy2Yf
dbish 3y ago
The problem is there are almost 0 alternatives beyond Firefox so if you don’t like their UX you’re stuck. All the “new” browsers are just chromium skins (edge, arc, etc.) Are there any real competitors building a new browser?
- colordrops 3y ago
  Aa long as chromium is open source and various entities are able to build and remove/modify anti-user features, i don't see a problem with alternatives being a "skin". If Google makes moves to make it difficult to modify chromium then browser maintainers will quickly migrate to other engines.
  - viscousviolin 3y ago
    Yes, it's not a problem. For now. There are so many software projects that depend on chromium for their basic functionality, and so many users that indirectly rely on chromium. It's hard to switch to an alternative if the need arises. So when Google inevitably turns chromium into a problem, you don't have enough time to switch, no matter how badly you want to. It's time to preventatively switch to a project that's more reliable. Give Firefox's Gecko engine a chance, it has all the features you need. It would take a lot of effort, but we'd be protecting ourselves from a pretty realistic scenario where Google just pushes through whatever they want.
    - hutzlibu 3y ago
      "Give Firefox's Gecko engine a chance, it has all the features you need." No, sadly it does not. And then I would be just dependant on mozillas leadership and sadly I do not trust them either. Ladybird and Kling I would trust, but it is not advanced enough yet. But they are making progress!
      - viscousviolin 3y ago
        What makes you not trust firefox? I don't remember hearing about them acting in bad faith, but I'd love to hear if they did. What features do you need that only Chromium can give you?
        hutzlibu 3y ago
        Ads and tracking(called studies) enabled by default from the browser - and marketing itself as privacy orientated. "What features do you need that only Chromium can give you?" WebGPU and sone features with webworkers.
        misnome 3y ago
        This. The first thing I have to do on firefox is turn off a load of advertising. That, crypto, and the Mr.Robot extension fiasco burned a _lot_ of goodwill.
        viscousviolin 3y ago
        Are you talking about firefox not blocking website adds by default? I hadn't heard about the Mr.Robot fiasco, that's seriously troubling..
        viscousviolin 3y ago
        Oh interesting! Seems like a pretty specific requirement to have. Do you mind if I ask what you use those for? As for the tracking - I'm pretty sure Firefox blocks a lot of those by default, last time I checked it was plastered all across their homepage. It's not 100% effective, but if them making an effort to do the right thing pushes you away, you might be asking too much unfortunately. Building an entire browser takes a lot of energy and time, and Firefox seems like the kind of browser that's worth it in the long term.
        hutzlibu 3y ago
        "Do you mind if I ask what you use those for?" Game engine. "As for the tracking - I'm pretty sure Firefox blocks a lot of those by default, last time I checked it was plastered all across their homepage" And the thing is, that firefox itself is tracking you and sends that data home. Maybe look up what "studies" mean. But so far at least you can opt out of it, unlike with chrome.
    - rvnx 3y ago
      Most Chromium-forks are not interested at all (or do not have the resources, considering the tons of costs it has) into doing any core changes to fight against Google, only Vivaldi… all the others are either doing nothing or just PR bullshit. If a feature is rolled out to 95% of users, then websites have to adapt. If you have a browser and are part of these remaining 5% you will be the one blamed by the users and by the websites. So there is no incentive to remove any hostile feature.
      - viscousviolin 3y ago
        I get that, which is exactly why you don't want any one browser having just under 70% marketshare like Chrome. If there are multiple options for people to switch between, then they can switch to another one if their current browser does something they don't agree with. If there isn't another option, you're stuck. We open ourselves up to horrific effects of browser monopolies like all the security issues that Microsoft didn't give a damn about back when internet explorer had a monopoly. It takes effort to switch to a different browser stack, like moving away from Chromium for example, but in the long term you do not want everyone stuck with only one option, because that will be even more costly.
  - soco 3y ago
    Other engines? There must be a reason everybody is building on Chromium nowadays...
  - asaddhamani 3y ago
    What other engines?
    - kmlx 3y ago
      webkit
  - blibble 3y ago
    WEI will make chromium effectively unusable yes you'll have the source, but it won't remotely attest unless you're Google/MS so it is effectively closed source
    - colordrops 3y ago
      Brave uses chromium and they cut WEI out of their build already.
      - blibble 3y ago
        so shortly after WEI goes live in Chrome, Brave users won't be able to: - use youtube - watch "premium" video content (disney/netflix/...) - use online banking - visit sites with adwords and will be presented with endless captchas on e.g. cloudflare sites
        colordrops 3y ago
        Yes and? How does that contradict my original point?
        blibble 3y ago
        it doesn't but you're missing the entire point if brave doesn't implement WEI then brave ceases to be a functional web browser it will have voluntarily removed itself from the market
        colordrops 3y ago
        I didn't miss that point. I'm well aware of that point - WEI is a nightmare. This thread is about something else though.
  - xethos 3y ago
    Once upon a time Lineage OS had Privacy Guard settings. You could feed an app fake data for things like location and contacts, leaving you with the best of both worlds: apps that "require" location will open, but you remain anonymous. Over time, AOSP became harder and harder to build this feature back in to. AOSP (and Chromium) is Open Source in name only. One may view, download, and build the source, but maintaining modifications long-term isn't feasible without massive amounts of dev time and/or cash.
    - colordrops 3y ago
      There was no intention by Google to go after forks with the changes they made that made Privacy Guard difficult to maintain, and in fact I believe it was because they added their own version of it. What could you do with Privacy Guard that you can't now with Permission Hub? I'm using Lineage right now and I have full control over all perms for all apps including network access.
- worrycue 3y ago
  Frankly Firefox is barely a hedge against Chrome. When it comes to things like JPEG-XL they are in lock step with Chrome. Safari ended up being JPEG-XL’s unlikely champion. I kind of wished Apple would release Safari for other platforms again.
  - bawolff 3y ago
    HN is weirdly obsessed with jpeg-xl. The logic for removing it totally made sense.
    - febusravenga 3y ago
      true, I'm web fronted developer and I don't care ... more, I have no ida that there's some drama going on let alone normal users
    - dvtkrlbs 3y ago
      I personally don't agree. They did a test with limited users and than complained the audience was limited.
    - rhn_mk1 3y ago
      There's nothing weird about the obsession. It's the most technically impresive format so far.
      - kmlx 3y ago
        avif? webp?
        rhn_mk1 3y ago
        https://avif.io/blog/comparisons/avif-vs-webp/ https://avif.io/blog/comparisons/avif-vs-webp/ > AVIF has an image resolution limit of 65536 x 65536 pixels. but from https://tonisagrista.com/blog/2023/jpegxl-vs-avif/ https://tonisagrista.com/blog/2023/jpegxl-vs-avif/ > Max image size is limited to 4K (3840x2160) in AVIF, which is a deal breaker to me. You can tile images, but seams are visible at the edges, > WebP also has a hard limit to an image's frame size, with its maximum dimension being 16,383 x 16,383 > WebP supports a max bit depth of 8-bit > AVIF flexes a max bit depth of 10 Jpeg XL has progressive rendering support https://opensource.googleblog.com/2021/09/using-saliency-in-progressive-jpeg-xl-images.html https://opensource.googleblog.com/2021/09/using-saliency-in-... AVIF spec doesn't (although it might gain it: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1221717 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=122171...) JPEG-XL manages to be more efficient than other current formats: https://cloudinary.com/blog/jpeg-xl-how-it-started-how-its-going https://cloudinary.com/blog/jpeg-xl-how-it-started-how-its-g... All of that while being a good all-around image format (rather than a specialized one like webp and avif): same format for web, photos, raw photos, etc. To me, this makes it the most noteworthy image format now.
- ksey3 3y ago
  I have been using Brave for about a year. Dont miss Firefox or Chrome.
  - dbish 3y ago
    Brave is built on chromium. Cool concept, but not a new browser
    - k__ 3y ago
      They often say they don't use problematic features.
      - ohgodplsno 3y ago
        They're still beholden to Google. Their own repo is a set of patches that disable some features. For now, it's mostly feature flags being turned on/off. What happens when Google starts being more hostile and makes disabling features harder ? Can Brave have the manpower to disable that, forever? What if there's a new rendering engine that's 10 times faster but it's so intertwined with a restrictive API that you can't have one without the other? Brave, for all their talk, are at Google's mercy. And no, don't give me "but Chromium isn't just Google anymore": it is 90% Google.
        k__ 3y ago
        I'd expect them to have the skills to fork Blink.
        bjord 3y ago
        not sure about the resources to support its development long-term, though
      - goku12 3y ago
        That's like people who don't like what Chromium does, but still uses it along with uBlock. It feels to me like the web needs another engine, not chromium reskins, to stay healthy.
- nathias 3y ago
  if you don't like their UX you make your own, ff is the only browser that actually lets you customize
- chungy 3y ago
  There is Ladybird.
  - dbish 3y ago
    Nice. This is legitimately a new browser. Hadn’t heard of them. Will check it out.
  - deafpolygon 3y ago
    > Are there any real competitors
    - paddim8 3y ago
      It might be in the future
      - userbinator 3y ago
        Only if things like WEI don't make it impossible to use for most sites.
- tgv 3y ago
  What would you think the problem with Firefox' UX that keeps so many people from switching is? I think it's not UX, but pure marketing.
  - kramerger 3y ago
    People have all kinds of weird excuses for not using Firefox. Sometimes it feels like "Sure, Chrome sold my kids data to human traffickers. But I can't switch to Firefox because I really _need_ MIDI-2 over websocket support" Sure, FF is not perfect but a lot of issues is due to sites being optimised for webkit and that will not change as long as Chrome has 80% marketshare. You need to sacrifice a little for freedom.
    - oblio 3y ago
      > that will not change as long as Chrome has 80% marketshare. You need to sacrifice a little for freedom. And herein lies the rub. 20% of people, at best, will sacrifice convenience for freedom. Firefox and Chrome overtook IE because they were move convenient to use (Firefox had tabs and extensions, Chrome had a more reliable multi-process architecture and more CSS/JS/... features faster).
      - ChoHag 3y ago
        IE didn't die until YouTube publicly dropped support for it.
    - sneak 3y ago
      Chrome is a lot more robust and secure against exploitation than Firefox is. This is a very unpopular fact, and every time I point it out the rabid Mozilla people get upset, despite it being the truth. I use Ungoogled Chromium.
      - robin_reala 3y ago
        There’s no such thing. You use a Chromium that doesn’t report data back to Google, but the entire project is a Google project that pushes Google’s aims on the web.
- have_faith 3y ago
  This a problem for me. I've been a long time Firefox user, but the UI/UX has stagnated (like all browsers) for so long. I'm enjoying using Arc at the moment because it's rethinking a lot of things that bug me about the traditional browser UI paradigm but I also know that it's a trendy startup that could either: explode, decide to change features radically at the drop of a hat (pivot), or simple do something distasteful to please investors. Extensions technically fill in the gap on the Firefox side, like Containers, but the UX is just an afterthought.
  - chickenfeed 3y ago
    Out the box the squashed tabs vs the silly tab scroll thing on Firefox is horrible. But it reminds me I have too many tabs open anyway. I mainly use FF, but the UI really is behind the times. Notice MS marketing stuff like chatGPT in their browser. They are tooling it up. I want my browser to help me. The tab/workflow/history/sandboxing, I feel could all be a bit more ingrained in the desktop OS/UI. Google is the plugin on Chrome. If you unwittingly walk blindfold into using it on say Android etc. You'll have all that Google stuff activated, and it's a real boon. Difficult to give up. Heck hard enough to sign out. You unknowingly can sign in. Yeah there are different options, and yeah there are extensions. But why would I install an extension that basically says it can spy on every tab in my browser? And why would I even trust Google in my browser?
  - cesarb 3y ago
    > but the UI/UX has stagnated (like all browsers) for so long. What some people call "stagnation", others call "stability".
    - have_faith 3y ago
      Stability is great but if the UX doesn't fit how I'd like to interact with the internet it doesn't really matter what you call it. The general shape of the browser, how you interact with it and how you get it to do things for you has been stagnant in my mind. This is why I'm trying out other options.
  - dbish 3y ago
- kmlx 3y ago
  i’ve been a happy safari user (desktop and mobile) for years now.
  - kvrck 3y ago
    What adblock do you use with Safari? Last time I've tried, I couldn't find one and returned back to Firefox.
    - kmlx 3y ago
      https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wipr/id1030595027 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wipr/id1030595027
    - bob1029 3y ago
      I just checked mine and its using this: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/adblock-pro-safari-ad-blocker/id1018301773 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/adblock-pro-safari-ad-blocker/... I have zero issues with this setup.
    - AndroidKitKat 3y ago
      I've been using AdGuard and haven't seen a single ad since I installed it. AdGuard seems to offer a much of the same functionality from uBlock that I enjoyed, like being able to selectively block elements on the page, and choosing what filter lists I want. The only 'downside' is that I believe you have to pay for it, but I believe there is a free version that I use on my mother's MacBook. AdGuard also offers a pi-hole-esque ad-blackhole that I deploy on my home network and it's got much better UX than pi-hole.
    - mercacona 3y ago
      Does NextDNS count as adblock?
- asddubs 3y ago
  "Real" competitors as in having any amount of market share, no. But there are a few projects, like ladybird, palemoon (which is a fork of ancient FF which does have original implementations of things that came since) and Servo is being revived.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
amelius 3y ago
Webmasters should really fight back and show annoying popups when the user agent equals Chrome. These popups could nudge the user towards e g. Firefox. Perhaps EFF.org could provide a reference implementation of such popups.
- DeathArrow 3y ago
  "We detected you are using an insecure browser. Please upgrade to a secure browser such as Mozilla Firefox." would do it. :)
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- toxik 3y ago
  /More/ popovers and popups? What about just making the site slower?
  - maxbond 3y ago
    If you're going to do something in protest, people have to know that you're protesting and that you want them to take an action in support of it. And if you degrade their service, they won't blame Chrome, they'll blame you.
    - toxik 3y ago
      I think you can tell people other ways that you degraded their experience intentionally. I guess I’m actually fine with popups too. The goal is to make Chrome known as the slow browser so people stop using it.
    - amelius 3y ago
      Well, you could do both :) "You are using a slow browser, please upgrade to Firefox for a fast experience" Okay, perhaps that is a bit underhanded, but you get the idea.
irthomasthomas 3y ago
Firefox is unusable on Linux. Way too slow. But Brave browser is very snappy. It's the fastest chrome fork, and has great features, like vertical tabs, which have become essential to me.
- XorNot 3y ago
  Firefox is my daily driver as is Linux. It is perfectly performant.
  - twistedcheeslet 3y ago
    From my experience hardware acceleration has been quite lacking on Ubuntu (especially noticeable when watching YouTube).
    - danogentili 3y ago
      It just needs a little bit of configuration in the about:config tab, it works just fine with VAAPI!
    - puzzlingcaptcha 3y ago
      VA-API has been enabled by default for linux builds in Firefox 115 (at least for Intel GPUs). Keep in mind you also need to have the intel-media-driver installed (for Broadwell+)
      - jeroenhd 3y ago
        If you use an Nvidia GPU (i.e. a gaming machine or ML desktop) you'll have to force a whole bunch of settings to use it through a compatibility layer that isn't particularly stable, or accept the CPU hit of about 1 core per video file at 1080p. It's not unusable but very annoying when the fallback behaviour accidentally triggers on a laptop and your CPU ends up constantly boosting, draining the battery. Firefox on my Intel iGPU + Nvidia dGPU likes to pretend the iGPU doesn't exist. Very annoying but I've given up on trying to get it to work on desktop. Chrome seems to do a lot better for somme reason.
yankput 3y ago
How is jpeg xl “hostile”, it’s just a new format. Does Chrome really need to support every new image format?
- uoaei 3y ago
  Can you expand on what you mean? As it stands your questions seem in incredibly bad faith, especially considering the market share Chrome has in the browser space.
  - yankput 3y ago
    The article says Chrome sabotaged JPEG XL. I am saying that JPEG XL is a new format, which it is; any additional format that is supported means more code, more potential for bugs, more security issues (format parsing is one of the biggest sources of security issues). Chrome had experimental support for it and then they dropped it. They still support PNG, normal JPEG. I agree with the arguments against the current DRM and Manifest 3 content blocking was kind of misdirected (however… look at how Safari does it, it’s essentially the same) Also I don’t think the same argument applies for Chrome as for OSes for example. You are not really locked in. Just use a different browser. It’s just web.
- detuur 3y ago
  It was/is a very well thought-out format that had a lot of industry signalling they were willing or even enthusiastic about supporting it, which happens virtually never for new image formats. All the major browsers were working on support, many image processing pipelines were being updated. Everyone agreed that it was not just a major improvement, but actually the best option out of all the contenders out there. Even the Chrome team. The only ones who didn't agree were the AVIF team at Google, who had developed a competing standard. Well, whoever was on that team had some pull, because not long after Chrome landed JXL support in stable and everything was about to pick up some serious pace, they suddenly landed a commit that reverted everything to do with JXL support in Chrome, and that was that. An immense, cross-industry effort undone by internal Google politics. That's what's hostile about this situation. JXL is still limping along, but Google's unilateral reversal hurt everyone's confidence in the project but also the entire process. Apparently it doesn't matter what everyone in the world thinks is the most appropriate format. What matters is Lord Google's favour.
Tepix 3y ago
Missing in the list: - https://www.pcmag.com/news/google-will-let-you-opt-out-of-chrome-forced-login https://www.pcmag.com/news/google-will-let-you-opt-out-of-ch... Google Will Let You Opt Out of Chrome 'Forced Login' (2018) Remember? They tried to force everyone to login completely. Quote from article: The tweak was made to address a privacy uproar over the latest iteration of Google's browser, Chrome 69. Earlier versions of the browser let you log into a Google service, say Gmail, without logging into Chrome. But the tech giant decided to change that in Chrome 69, which arrived earlier this month. Signing into a Google service via the browser will now automatically log you into Chrome as well.
simula67 3y ago
> to explain why they should stop using #Chromium / #GoogleChrome and use #Firefox or #Epiphany as their main #web #browser Or use Brave.
- PartiallyTyped 3y ago
  > The Brave Browser is built on the open-source Chromium Web core and our own client code is released under the Mozilla Public License 2.0 . If you are on mac, you can use Orion, it’s written by the kagi team.
- Xelbair 3y ago
  Are you even aware that Brave uses Chromium basically? it uses Blink engine.
  - jadamson 3y ago
    Near enough everyone here knows that. Are you even aware that Chromium is open source and Brendan Eich has said Brave won't be supporting WEI? https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1684561924191842304 https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1684561924191842304 Baby, bathwater, etc.
    - fsflover 3y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36983812 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36983812
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - BrendanEich 3y ago
        That's a link, all right, but it doesn't refute your correspondent here. Chromium forked Blink from WebKit, which was forked by Apple from KHTML. We have a fork (or spork: https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1687485972164837377 https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1687485972164837377). We could cope if Google were to repudiate Chromium (and violate the FOSS licenses on the sources).
nathan_phoenix 3y ago
Expected a huge list and there's only 3 items there, and one of them, JPEG XL, is kinda moot because it didn't seem viable until recently after Safari started supporting it... Feel that the list could have had much more substance with the addition of webUSB, webSerial and such features which Chrome just strong armed. In the current form the list and toot don't really drive the point home...
- dvtkrlbs 3y ago
  I mean it was always viable. Chrome did an opt-in experiment that no one heard of and than used it as a justification for ceasing its development. As a format it is just a win-win situation. Most of the companies that deals with images spoke for JXL. I think Google tried to push its own format in favour of JXL. So I really don't think it is moot.
  - progbits 3y ago
    JPEGXL was (co)authored by Googlers so it's also their "own" format.
    - toastal 3y ago
      Google is big enough to have its own bureaucracy & infighting for this to easily & plausibly happen.
      - dvtkrlbs 3y ago
        I think AVIF format had a play in this whole ordeal.
        toastal 3y ago
        It’s a shame too because it takes a lot more resources to encode & can often give results that are too smooth. JPEG XL offers a lot of features from years of other formats like FLIF that never quite made it over the hump. You know you’re making deafened decisions when Facebook+Adobe were on the same side as GIMP+Krita in pleading to get the format back.
est 3y ago
I lost trust with Chromium back when v70 they removed chrome://net-internals/#sockets It allows you to live debug what traffic has been made outside devtool. e.g. account sync, tracking, etc.
mrtksn 3y ago
Remember the "Safari is the new IE" narrative? Just because Safari doesn't support some API doesn't make it IE, IE wasn't an inferior browser at the beginning either. What made IE the IE everyone hates was its departure from standards(?) and enforcing its own vision of the web thanks to its enormous market share. On IE's case, MS probably stagnated it to prevent competition against its desktop Apps business and on Google's case it's going to be in the name of data collection and ad business. Chrome is the new IE. But yeah, that's what you get when you don't know history.
- tommiegannert 3y ago
  IE was absolutely hated for not evolving. I'm curious what "its own vision" was, other than "do as little as possible, while Mozilla and Opera keeps pushing forward." Now, this is from the perspective of the web developer. I don't think IE was ever hated the same way from the end-user perspective. Chrome is still innovating, but now end-users hate it, because it's trying to be too much. The "new IE" hat still belongs to Safari.
  - Semaphor 3y ago
    Later, IE was also hated for being tied to the OS (which was related but different to the "not evolving"). Another thing Safari has. So yeah, I also fully agree. Safari is still the new IE.
    - mrtksn 3y ago
      The reason IE was hated for being tied in the OS was because the OS was crashing due to the IE bugs. That's not the case with macOS or iOS at all, just because the OS provides a JS engine out of the box doesn't make it Windows Me grade.
      - Semaphor 3y ago
        I disagree. It made it, so people with an older OS could not get a current IE. So you had ancient IE version linger for years and years. And with Safari, I can’t test any specific issues because we only have one mac, and it’s old and can’t run a current Safari. The situation is slightly better than with IE, as multiple macOS versions apparently (or so I was told) can run a newer Safari, but still not all.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
csmpltn 3y ago
A "no-hire" list?
ShamelessC 3y ago
As someone who hates Google’s behavior here, this “list” (3 whole items!) is deeply underwhelming to the point that I would say it’s some of the laziest social media activism (essentially the easiest form of activism) I’ve ever seen.
- theyeenzbeanz 3y ago
  Google running sites poorly or broken in non chrome browsers should be on the list too. Half the time the back button only changes the url on youtube, and doesn’t go back to the previous page.
DrNosferatu 3y ago
Switch to SerenityOS and use Ladybird ;) (or build it for your favorite OS)
sph 3y ago
What is the excuse of all people reading this thread in agreement and still using Chrome? As I mentioned elsewhere, this is preaching to the choir. A choir of Chrome users. Google wouldn't be so dominant if tech people like us would stop making lazy excuses to continue its hegemony. In Dante's Divina Commedia, there is a circle of hell for those too lazy to take a stance [1]. If it were written today, it would include a lot of tech workers running Chrome with uBlock enabled. It's 2023, Safari and Firefox have been very good for a while. -- 1: in fact, in the Divina Commedia the lazy ones that can't take a stance are kept just outside of Hell, as they are so detestable not even Satan itself would want them around.
- tibanne 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - frameset 3y ago
    Because you're a frog boiling in a pot. The URL we're discussing has a list of coming changes to weaken uBlock and other privacy or content blocking features.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 3y ago
  Many of my work tools require a browser extension that's only compatible with Chrome. The publishers don't plan to support Firefox or any other browser. I can do without these tools (not an easy task) but not my coworkers.
  - tomjen3 3y ago
    You can install adons from the Chrome store in Brave.
    - tvink 3y ago
      I assume most tech-savy people will want to stay far away from a browser that uses cryptonomics to confuse people into feeling better about blocking ads.
jokoon 3y ago
At one point I thought jpeg XL was just jpeg 2000.
krishnaislove 3y ago
Unless a big enough competitor comes along, they'll not change.
- goku12 3y ago
  The solution for the current web browser situation isn't another competitor. There will probably never be another big competitor. The reason is that merit isn't the primary reason how Chrome won the majority market share. There was a twitter thread that I have been trying to dig up ever since the WEI debates began. It was from a Firefox developer who explained how Chrome managed to get its users. Many Google websites used to intentionally provide bad UX for months on Firefox compared to on Chrome. When Mozilla calls this out, Google devs would pretend that it's an honest mistake and would enable full performance on Firefox. However, many users would have ditched Firefox and migrated to Chrome by that time, never to return to Firefox again. These oopsies happened so many times. How is any new competitor going to overcome the lack of cooperation from such huge services on the net? The problem really is that the users let themselves be manipulated. The solution here lies with the users, not the competitors.
  - gorhill 3y ago
    > a twitter thread that I have been trying to dig up https://twitter.com/johnath/status/1116871245021220875 https://twitter.com/johnath/status/1116871245021220875
    - goku12 3y ago
      Thanks a lot for this link! And for making web tolerable with uBlock!
tjpnz 3y ago
I would add their moves to put things behind codes of conduct. Not the first time I've seen them deployed purely to stifle criticism but I've never seen it done as overtly as this.
Timber-6539 3y ago
Browser wars tend to get preachy at times and border on religious fanaticism. Chromium is free to fork. That's the only thing that matters. I'm not going to give up sweet convenience so that I can make a claim that am sticking it to the man. That's ridiculous.
- rkangel 3y ago
  These days browsers are good at following standards, but it's very important what's actually in the standards. There is potential for Google to use Chrome's market share to move the standards in a user hostile way. Chromium being open source is good, but it's not everything.
- capableweb 3y ago
  Both Firefox and Chrome owe their existence to people who were religiously fanatical about building better browsers than the status quo. Without those people, you wouldn't have your convenience in the first place. Whats to say history cannot repeat in this case?
- goku12 3y ago
  > Chromium is free to fork. That's the only thing that matters. Yet, we see browser after browser dropping their own engines and migrating to blink. The fact is, something being free to fork no longer means that it is practical to do so. These ostensibly open code bases are massive monoliths backed by morbidly bloated standards. It isn't practical for even big companies to fork and maintain. Aggravating this is the fact that these are developed primarily by just one company who rarely listens to its users and often silences them with CoC. Such code appear open, but not in spirit. > Browser wars tend to get preachy at times and border on religious fanaticism. > I'm not going to give up sweet convenience so that I can make a claim that am sticking it to the man. That's ridiculous. People are calling for the use of any alternative due to an imminent threat to the open nature of the web. And yet, there are attempts like these to bill them as preachy and fanatic. It's not wrong to care about freedom! Convenience - if any (I don't feel inconvenienced on Firefox) - is no longer an excuse to neglect the seriously wrong turn the web has taken.
- blibble 3y ago
omgmajk 3y ago
* The "Manifest v3" sabotage of content blocking extensions: https://archive.is/i2vGD https://archive.is/i2vGD * The attempted sabotage of #JPEGXL: https://archive.is/2ihEV https://archive.is/2ihEV * #WebEnvironmentIntegrity a.k.a. #DRM for whole websites would hurt the web, #opensource browsers and OSes: https://archive.is/S912x https://archive.is/S912x
- tomrod 3y ago
  > * #WebEnvironmentIntegrity a.k.a. #DRM for whole websites would hurt the web, #opensource browsers and OSes What really blew my mind was how out of touch the dev guiding the WEI proposal is, in relation to how dangerous this implementation would be.
  - bagacrap 3y ago
    It's one dev, out of hundreds/thousands! At least one web platform lead from the Chrome team is on record saying that the proposal could never move past the experimentation phase. Do you think it's impossible for one bad^H^H^H clueless apple to slip through the interview process? Isn't it a good thing that a company as large as Google still allows individuals to experiment with their ideas?
    - jauntywundrkind 3y ago
      Isn't Yoav overall Chrome Lead?
      - bagacrap 3y ago
        What did Yoav say? The blink-dev thread is full of crucial nuggets like: > In order to start even an origin trial in Chrome, this proposal would need approval from API owners like myself, and the current state of the proposal is not something I'd personally approve due to many of the concerns being raised. ... but only if you look for them.
      - tomrod 3y ago
charcircuit 3y ago
This is just a list of antichrome rhetoric which isn't based off truths, but rather are propagated by people who hate Google. >The "Manifest v3" sabotage of content blocking extensions: Manifest v3 does not change anything that would sabotage content blocking extentions. >The attempted sabotage of #JPEGXL Chrome did not sabotage JPEGXL. The chromium team didn't think the format was worth supporting due to lack of broad interest and support costs. They recommend using a WASM based decoder if you would like to use JPEGXL. >#WebEnvironmentIntegrity a.k.a. #DRM for whole websites would hurt the web, #opensource browsers and OSes The current web is what you get when there is no environment integrity. The web is already hurting from bad actors. Adding signals attesting to environment integrity could help the web fight against the harms caused by bad actors. It isn't DRM either.
luth0r 3y ago
As someone working in the ad fraud detection space, Google has been hostile for quite a while. Making things extra difficult just to get more ad spend quota on their platforms. First User-Agent reduction (I agree with some points). Later making a perfect Headless automated browser that shows no difference against a real browser (making bot detection nearly impossible without captcha's). Last weeks by removing any kind of WebView signal in the browser so it makes impossible to detect between in-app traffic/fraud/Chrome Mobile. Could write a lot more about other stuff and the implications but the whole picture is not looking great.
foobarbecue 3y ago
AMP should be on this list
kotaKat 3y ago
Can I sound a little whiny and say "the new Downloads experience"? I'm a little peeved that the UX suddenly changed with no warning and I want my Downloads bar back, something I won't be allowed to have, because the Chromium team Said No.
booleandilemma 3y ago
Are there any browsers better than firefox at the moment?
- toastal 3y ago
  There are plenty of Gecko & WebKit forks out there if you don’t like what base Fx gives you.
Thaxll 3y ago
The attempted sabotage of #JPEGXL. Well no one else is supporting or using that format, how come it is a sabotage?
- jonsneyers 3y ago
  If you read the Chromium bugtracker comments (https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1178058 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=117805...) and see the messages of support from e.g. Facebook, Adobe, Intel, VESA, Krita, etc then I think it is quite clear that "no one else is supporting that format" is not quite a correct assessment of the situation.
j1elo 3y ago
Firefox had been underperforming during part of its life, but deep internal improvements meant those days are over. There is a huge difference in memory and CPU usage between older Firefox and the one we have today. Sadly, lots of people still think that Firefox never changed. I did a quick memory usage test, just for having my personal anecdote and some numbers to show. The result was that Firefox uses an average of 10 MiB for each open (and active) tab. Not bad at all! First, what I'm testing: * Firefox 115, on Linux Mint 20.3 (which essentially is Ubuntu 20.04). * 13 extensions installed. Some are uBlock Origin, Amazon Unsponsor, Bookmark Search Plus, DeArrow, Multi-Account Containers, Keepa, One-Click Wayback, Tree Style Tab (guys try this one out for a great vertical tab tree!). * 90 tabs open. Tree Style Tab makes me open lots of tabs, because it is then so convenient to open/close subtrees for different topics... but I digress. * Tabs include: 4 videogame stores, which are heavy on graphics and dynamic content. 10 shopping tabs in various shops, including Amazon. 10 YouTube videos (buffering preloaded). 14 Google Drive / Google Docs tabs (heavy on JS usage). Various documentation pages, and too many HN threads to admit. * Firefox configured to remember all tabs when closed, and restore them when opening. Upon firstly starting, Firefox doesn't actually load the tabs. They are in suspended, inactive state, until opened for the first time. RAM usage results: * Cleanly started, only HN frontpage loaded: 372 MiB. * HN frontpage and this entry opened in tabs: 386 MiB. * Third HN tab opened: 394 MiB. * Went through ALL 90 tabs to force them loading: 954 MiB. Conclusion: Firefox uses around 10 MiB per loaded tab. Screenshots of Btop++: * In the middle of loading all 90 tabs. CPU is busy! https://pasteboard.co/Bxf2TI9P8YT2.png https://pasteboard.co/Bxf2TI9P8YT2.png * After all tabs have been successfully loaded. Resource usage is back to being stationary. https://pasteboard.co/m3tVzYNMtDmD.png https://pasteboard.co/m3tVzYNMtDmD.png (The reason for this post is all those comments here and in other entries, claiming that Firefox was a resource hog for them a while ago, and that's why they nowadays are committed Chrome users. In light of recent events, we really need to collectively reduce Chrome usage numbers!)
- LinuxBender 3y ago
  An additional test that may be worth trying out is BrowserBench [1] Varies heavily by computer specs. My daily driver is an ancient PC running Linux still fast enough for me but my newer mini-PC's leave this old thing in the dust regardless of what browser I use. [1] - https://browserbench.org/Speedometer2.1/ https://browserbench.org/Speedometer2.1/
mrblampo 3y ago
Sounds like the thing about "ad blocker sabotage" is about replacing the Web Request API with something called declarativeNetRequest. I've been sifting through documentation but have had trouble seeing why this is any kind of a downgrade for ad blockers. Can someone explain?
- jefftk 3y ago
  It removes the ability to run custom logic to decide whether a net request should be allowed to go through, switching Chrome to a system like Safari's where you can only declaratively specify what you would like blocked. While Google claims it is a change they are making for security and performance, a lot of people are worried that it is actually intended to make ad blocking harder.
p1mrx 3y ago
I would add these to the list: - Removing "http:// http://" from URLs. This was partially fixed several years later on Desktop, as now you can right-click the URL bar and check "Always show full URLs" - Replacing the linear tab view on Android with a 2D grid (so the first tab is hardest to reach with your thumb), and gradually removing all the workarounds as people discovered them. - Lack of extensions (e.g. ad blocking) on Android - When using a bluetooth mouse on a Chromebook, the scroll wheel has been really janky for years, and it can only be temporarily fixed using "gesture_prop" in the crosh console. Not sure if this is intentional or just laziness.
kytazo 3y ago
As of passing by: 666 points by luu 6 hours ago
cma 3y ago
What's funny is the earliest seed of Chrome is ad blocking: the Google IE toolbar with popup blocker.
account42 3y ago
> stop using #Chromium / #GoogleChrome and use #Firefox or #Epiphany > * The attempted sabotage of #JPEGXL: https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/chrome https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/chrome Remind me, does Firefox support JPEG XL?
- toastal 3y ago
  It’s behind a flag for Nightly. Some Fx forks like LibreWolf allow enabling it even not on Nightly.
bagacrap 3y ago
My entourage definitely is not impressed by any of these three obscure details of web development. I think they might have a hard time even grasping what the web platform is.
titzer 3y ago
I don't understand the JPEG XL frackus, but that's partly because I think the Web platform should not continue being an enormous ball of mud, with everything built into the browser with no layering. Make a Wasm module (use SIMD and threads if you want) that can decode the format and render to an immutable canvas and then let the browser engine manage the pixels after that. Wasm is close enough to native speed now that it no longer makes sense to bake this into the native browser binary anymore.
- micheljansen 3y ago
  That sounds like a lot more work than just allowing <img src=“my image.jxl”>. Are you proposing that every website comes with their own set of WASM libraries to allow its content to be rendered (each with their own bugs)? Why stop there? Just have the browser manage the canvas and deliver your own HTML rendering engine via WASM?
  - titzer 3y ago
    No, it's a fail if every website renders itself to the canvas. I think there's a middle ground where, for example, unknown mime/image types can be handed by "application level"--actually middleware or library-level--codecs supplied as Wasm extensions. The browser doesn't have to ship with them, and it doesn't have to trust them the way it does plugins, but they can hook into key places in ways that maximizes the benefit of having a rendering/layout engine, yet is extensible, fast, and secure.
aunterste 3y ago
I'm just waiting to see which (non google of course) website will be the first that is "you must have WebIntegrityAPI enabled to use this website" ..
notjoshjames 3y ago
Across the dozens of Chrome threads over the last week, I haven't seen discussion about the impact of businesses' usage of Google Workspace. I'm sure this is relevant to the discussion on moving away en masse from Chrome; I use Firefox primarily but need to use Chrome for various organizations. There's quite a few really useful features for Workspace org admins, from blocklists and telemetry to provisioning browser extensions and adding bookmarks, and most of these features require end users to use Chrome. In fact, you can configure security policy such that end users can only use Chrome to login to their company account, and there are multiple reasons from a corporation's perspective to enforce these types of policies. Microsoft 365 is the most dominant player, and I assume Google Workspace is second in enterprise user account management. Are there any prominent, stable open-source business cloud stacks that meaningfully compete here?
bfrog 3y ago
Chrome is the new IE, its become such a dominant thing people forget there's other web engines out there. As soon as there's a monopoly on how the web is viewed, especially by a company who's best interest isn't in an open web, all bets are off on how they operate.
johnea 3y ago
To use the Mastodon web application, please enable JavaScript.
ptman 3y ago
We need a way to directly fund firefox development: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/ability-to-donate-money-to-the-firefox-development-team-directly/idi-p/198 https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/ability-to-donate-money...
nenaoki 3y ago
For me, it's the tying of the new-tab page to your search engine choice. That's perhaps the most valuable real-estate in the browser; I just want it to be about:blank and not do any funny phoning-home stuff.

1074 points by luu 3y ago

https://archive.is/yy2Yf https://archive.is/yy2Yf

The problem is there are almost 0 alternatives beyond Firefox so if you don’t like their UX you’re stuck. All the “new” browsers are just chromium skins (edge, arc, etc.) Are there any real competitors building a new browser?

colordrops 3y ago
Aa long as chromium is open source and various entities are able to build and remove/modify anti-user features, i don't see a problem with alternatives being a "skin". If Google makes moves to make it difficult to modify chromium then browser maintainers will quickly migrate to other engines.
- viscousviolin 3y ago
  Yes, it's not a problem. For now. There are so many software projects that depend on chromium for their basic functionality, and so many users that indirectly rely on chromium. It's hard to switch to an alternative if the need arises. So when Google inevitably turns chromium into a problem, you don't have enough time to switch, no matter how badly you want to. It's time to preventatively switch to a project that's more reliable. Give Firefox's Gecko engine a chance, it has all the features you need. It would take a lot of effort, but we'd be protecting ourselves from a pretty realistic scenario where Google just pushes through whatever they want.
  - hutzlibu 3y ago
    "Give Firefox's Gecko engine a chance, it has all the features you need." No, sadly it does not. And then I would be just dependant on mozillas leadership and sadly I do not trust them either. Ladybird and Kling I would trust, but it is not advanced enough yet. But they are making progress!
    - viscousviolin 3y ago
      What makes you not trust firefox? I don't remember hearing about them acting in bad faith, but I'd love to hear if they did. What features do you need that only Chromium can give you?
      - hutzlibu 3y ago
        Ads and tracking(called studies) enabled by default from the browser - and marketing itself as privacy orientated. "What features do you need that only Chromium can give you?" WebGPU and sone features with webworkers.
        misnome 3y ago
        This. The first thing I have to do on firefox is turn off a load of advertising. That, crypto, and the Mr.Robot extension fiasco burned a _lot_ of goodwill.
        viscousviolin 3y ago
        Are you talking about firefox not blocking website adds by default? I hadn't heard about the Mr.Robot fiasco, that's seriously troubling..
        viscousviolin 3y ago
        Oh interesting! Seems like a pretty specific requirement to have. Do you mind if I ask what you use those for? As for the tracking - I'm pretty sure Firefox blocks a lot of those by default, last time I checked it was plastered all across their homepage. It's not 100% effective, but if them making an effort to do the right thing pushes you away, you might be asking too much unfortunately. Building an entire browser takes a lot of energy and time, and Firefox seems like the kind of browser that's worth it in the long term.
        hutzlibu 3y ago
        "Do you mind if I ask what you use those for?" Game engine. "As for the tracking - I'm pretty sure Firefox blocks a lot of those by default, last time I checked it was plastered all across their homepage" And the thing is, that firefox itself is tracking you and sends that data home. Maybe look up what "studies" mean. But so far at least you can opt out of it, unlike with chrome.
  - rvnx 3y ago
    Most Chromium-forks are not interested at all (or do not have the resources, considering the tons of costs it has) into doing any core changes to fight against Google, only Vivaldi… all the others are either doing nothing or just PR bullshit. If a feature is rolled out to 95% of users, then websites have to adapt. If you have a browser and are part of these remaining 5% you will be the one blamed by the users and by the websites. So there is no incentive to remove any hostile feature.
    - viscousviolin 3y ago
      I get that, which is exactly why you don't want any one browser having just under 70% marketshare like Chrome. If there are multiple options for people to switch between, then they can switch to another one if their current browser does something they don't agree with. If there isn't another option, you're stuck. We open ourselves up to horrific effects of browser monopolies like all the security issues that Microsoft didn't give a damn about back when internet explorer had a monopoly. It takes effort to switch to a different browser stack, like moving away from Chromium for example, but in the long term you do not want everyone stuck with only one option, because that will be even more costly.
- soco 3y ago
  Other engines? There must be a reason everybody is building on Chromium nowadays...
- asaddhamani 3y ago
  What other engines?
  - kmlx 3y ago
    webkit
- blibble 3y ago
  WEI will make chromium effectively unusable yes you'll have the source, but it won't remotely attest unless you're Google/MS so it is effectively closed source
  - colordrops 3y ago
    Brave uses chromium and they cut WEI out of their build already.
    - blibble 3y ago
      so shortly after WEI goes live in Chrome, Brave users won't be able to: - use youtube - watch "premium" video content (disney/netflix/...) - use online banking - visit sites with adwords and will be presented with endless captchas on e.g. cloudflare sites
      - colordrops 3y ago
        Yes and? How does that contradict my original point?
        blibble 3y ago
        it doesn't but you're missing the entire point if brave doesn't implement WEI then brave ceases to be a functional web browser it will have voluntarily removed itself from the market
        colordrops 3y ago
        I didn't miss that point. I'm well aware of that point - WEI is a nightmare. This thread is about something else though.
- xethos 3y ago
  Once upon a time Lineage OS had Privacy Guard settings. You could feed an app fake data for things like location and contacts, leaving you with the best of both worlds: apps that "require" location will open, but you remain anonymous. Over time, AOSP became harder and harder to build this feature back in to. AOSP (and Chromium) is Open Source in name only. One may view, download, and build the source, but maintaining modifications long-term isn't feasible without massive amounts of dev time and/or cash.
  - colordrops 3y ago
    There was no intention by Google to go after forks with the changes they made that made Privacy Guard difficult to maintain, and in fact I believe it was because they added their own version of it. What could you do with Privacy Guard that you can't now with Permission Hub? I'm using Lineage right now and I have full control over all perms for all apps including network access.
worrycue 3y ago
Frankly Firefox is barely a hedge against Chrome. When it comes to things like JPEG-XL they are in lock step with Chrome. Safari ended up being JPEG-XL’s unlikely champion. I kind of wished Apple would release Safari for other platforms again.
- bawolff 3y ago
  HN is weirdly obsessed with jpeg-xl. The logic for removing it totally made sense.
  - febusravenga 3y ago
    true, I'm web fronted developer and I don't care ... more, I have no ida that there's some drama going on let alone normal users
  - dvtkrlbs 3y ago
    I personally don't agree. They did a test with limited users and than complained the audience was limited.
  - rhn_mk1 3y ago
    There's nothing weird about the obsession. It's the most technically impresive format so far.
    - kmlx 3y ago
      avif? webp?
      - rhn_mk1 3y ago
        https://avif.io/blog/comparisons/avif-vs-webp/ https://avif.io/blog/comparisons/avif-vs-webp/ > AVIF has an image resolution limit of 65536 x 65536 pixels. but from https://tonisagrista.com/blog/2023/jpegxl-vs-avif/ https://tonisagrista.com/blog/2023/jpegxl-vs-avif/ > Max image size is limited to 4K (3840x2160) in AVIF, which is a deal breaker to me. You can tile images, but seams are visible at the edges, > WebP also has a hard limit to an image's frame size, with its maximum dimension being 16,383 x 16,383 > WebP supports a max bit depth of 8-bit > AVIF flexes a max bit depth of 10 Jpeg XL has progressive rendering support https://opensource.googleblog.com/2021/09/using-saliency-in-progressive-jpeg-xl-images.html https://opensource.googleblog.com/2021/09/using-saliency-in-... AVIF spec doesn't (although it might gain it: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1221717 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=122171...) JPEG-XL manages to be more efficient than other current formats: https://cloudinary.com/blog/jpeg-xl-how-it-started-how-its-going https://cloudinary.com/blog/jpeg-xl-how-it-started-how-its-g... All of that while being a good all-around image format (rather than a specialized one like webp and avif): same format for web, photos, raw photos, etc. To me, this makes it the most noteworthy image format now.
ksey3 3y ago
I have been using Brave for about a year. Dont miss Firefox or Chrome.
- dbish 3y ago
  Brave is built on chromium. Cool concept, but not a new browser
  - k__ 3y ago
    They often say they don't use problematic features.
    - ohgodplsno 3y ago
      They're still beholden to Google. Their own repo is a set of patches that disable some features. For now, it's mostly feature flags being turned on/off. What happens when Google starts being more hostile and makes disabling features harder ? Can Brave have the manpower to disable that, forever? What if there's a new rendering engine that's 10 times faster but it's so intertwined with a restrictive API that you can't have one without the other? Brave, for all their talk, are at Google's mercy. And no, don't give me "but Chromium isn't just Google anymore": it is 90% Google.
      - k__ 3y ago
        I'd expect them to have the skills to fork Blink.
        bjord 3y ago
        not sure about the resources to support its development long-term, though
    - goku12 3y ago
      That's like people who don't like what Chromium does, but still uses it along with uBlock. It feels to me like the web needs another engine, not chromium reskins, to stay healthy.
nathias 3y ago
if you don't like their UX you make your own, ff is the only browser that actually lets you customize
chungy 3y ago
There is Ladybird.
- dbish 3y ago
  Nice. This is legitimately a new browser. Hadn’t heard of them. Will check it out.
- deafpolygon 3y ago
  > Are there any real competitors
  - paddim8 3y ago
    It might be in the future
    - userbinator 3y ago
      Only if things like WEI don't make it impossible to use for most sites.
tgv 3y ago
What would you think the problem with Firefox' UX that keeps so many people from switching is? I think it's not UX, but pure marketing.
- kramerger 3y ago
  People have all kinds of weird excuses for not using Firefox. Sometimes it feels like "Sure, Chrome sold my kids data to human traffickers. But I can't switch to Firefox because I really _need_ MIDI-2 over websocket support" Sure, FF is not perfect but a lot of issues is due to sites being optimised for webkit and that will not change as long as Chrome has 80% marketshare. You need to sacrifice a little for freedom.
  - oblio 3y ago
    > that will not change as long as Chrome has 80% marketshare. You need to sacrifice a little for freedom. And herein lies the rub. 20% of people, at best, will sacrifice convenience for freedom. Firefox and Chrome overtook IE because they were move convenient to use (Firefox had tabs and extensions, Chrome had a more reliable multi-process architecture and more CSS/JS/... features faster).
    - ChoHag 3y ago
      IE didn't die until YouTube publicly dropped support for it.
  - sneak 3y ago
    Chrome is a lot more robust and secure against exploitation than Firefox is. This is a very unpopular fact, and every time I point it out the rabid Mozilla people get upset, despite it being the truth. I use Ungoogled Chromium.
    - robin_reala 3y ago
      There’s no such thing. You use a Chromium that doesn’t report data back to Google, but the entire project is a Google project that pushes Google’s aims on the web.
have_faith 3y ago
This a problem for me. I've been a long time Firefox user, but the UI/UX has stagnated (like all browsers) for so long. I'm enjoying using Arc at the moment because it's rethinking a lot of things that bug me about the traditional browser UI paradigm but I also know that it's a trendy startup that could either: explode, decide to change features radically at the drop of a hat (pivot), or simple do something distasteful to please investors. Extensions technically fill in the gap on the Firefox side, like Containers, but the UX is just an afterthought.
- chickenfeed 3y ago
  Out the box the squashed tabs vs the silly tab scroll thing on Firefox is horrible. But it reminds me I have too many tabs open anyway. I mainly use FF, but the UI really is behind the times. Notice MS marketing stuff like chatGPT in their browser. They are tooling it up. I want my browser to help me. The tab/workflow/history/sandboxing, I feel could all be a bit more ingrained in the desktop OS/UI. Google is the plugin on Chrome. If you unwittingly walk blindfold into using it on say Android etc. You'll have all that Google stuff activated, and it's a real boon. Difficult to give up. Heck hard enough to sign out. You unknowingly can sign in. Yeah there are different options, and yeah there are extensions. But why would I install an extension that basically says it can spy on every tab in my browser? And why would I even trust Google in my browser?
- cesarb 3y ago
  > but the UI/UX has stagnated (like all browsers) for so long. What some people call "stagnation", others call "stability".
  - have_faith 3y ago
    Stability is great but if the UX doesn't fit how I'd like to interact with the internet it doesn't really matter what you call it. The general shape of the browser, how you interact with it and how you get it to do things for you has been stagnant in my mind. This is why I'm trying out other options.
- dbish 3y ago
kmlx 3y ago
i’ve been a happy safari user (desktop and mobile) for years now.
- kvrck 3y ago
  What adblock do you use with Safari? Last time I've tried, I couldn't find one and returned back to Firefox.
  - kmlx 3y ago
    https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wipr/id1030595027 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wipr/id1030595027
  - bob1029 3y ago
    I just checked mine and its using this: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/adblock-pro-safari-ad-blocker/id1018301773 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/adblock-pro-safari-ad-blocker/... I have zero issues with this setup.
  - AndroidKitKat 3y ago
    I've been using AdGuard and haven't seen a single ad since I installed it. AdGuard seems to offer a much of the same functionality from uBlock that I enjoyed, like being able to selectively block elements on the page, and choosing what filter lists I want. The only 'downside' is that I believe you have to pay for it, but I believe there is a free version that I use on my mother's MacBook. AdGuard also offers a pi-hole-esque ad-blackhole that I deploy on my home network and it's got much better UX than pi-hole.
  - mercacona 3y ago
    Does NextDNS count as adblock?
asddubs 3y ago
"Real" competitors as in having any amount of market share, no. But there are a few projects, like ladybird, palemoon (which is a fork of ancient FF which does have original implementations of things that came since) and Servo is being revived.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

amelius 3y ago

Webmasters should really fight back and show annoying popups when the user agent equals Chrome. These popups could nudge the user towards e g. Firefox. Perhaps EFF.org could provide a reference implementation of such popups.

DeathArrow 3y ago
"We detected you are using an insecure browser. Please upgrade to a secure browser such as Mozilla Firefox." would do it. :)
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
toxik 3y ago
/More/ popovers and popups? What about just making the site slower?
- maxbond 3y ago
  If you're going to do something in protest, people have to know that you're protesting and that you want them to take an action in support of it. And if you degrade their service, they won't blame Chrome, they'll blame you.
  - toxik 3y ago
    I think you can tell people other ways that you degraded their experience intentionally. I guess I’m actually fine with popups too. The goal is to make Chrome known as the slow browser so people stop using it.
  - amelius 3y ago
    Well, you could do both :) "You are using a slow browser, please upgrade to Firefox for a fast experience" Okay, perhaps that is a bit underhanded, but you get the idea.

irthomasthomas 3y ago

Firefox is unusable on Linux. Way too slow. But Brave browser is very snappy. It's the fastest chrome fork, and has great features, like vertical tabs, which have become essential to me.

XorNot 3y ago
Firefox is my daily driver as is Linux. It is perfectly performant.
- twistedcheeslet 3y ago
  From my experience hardware acceleration has been quite lacking on Ubuntu (especially noticeable when watching YouTube).
  - danogentili 3y ago
    It just needs a little bit of configuration in the about:config tab, it works just fine with VAAPI!
  - puzzlingcaptcha 3y ago
    VA-API has been enabled by default for linux builds in Firefox 115 (at least for Intel GPUs). Keep in mind you also need to have the intel-media-driver installed (for Broadwell+)
    - jeroenhd 3y ago
      If you use an Nvidia GPU (i.e. a gaming machine or ML desktop) you'll have to force a whole bunch of settings to use it through a compatibility layer that isn't particularly stable, or accept the CPU hit of about 1 core per video file at 1080p. It's not unusable but very annoying when the fallback behaviour accidentally triggers on a laptop and your CPU ends up constantly boosting, draining the battery. Firefox on my Intel iGPU + Nvidia dGPU likes to pretend the iGPU doesn't exist. Very annoying but I've given up on trying to get it to work on desktop. Chrome seems to do a lot better for somme reason.

yankput 3y ago

How is jpeg xl “hostile”, it’s just a new format. Does Chrome really need to support every new image format?

uoaei 3y ago
Can you expand on what you mean? As it stands your questions seem in incredibly bad faith, especially considering the market share Chrome has in the browser space.
- yankput 3y ago
  The article says Chrome sabotaged JPEG XL. I am saying that JPEG XL is a new format, which it is; any additional format that is supported means more code, more potential for bugs, more security issues (format parsing is one of the biggest sources of security issues). Chrome had experimental support for it and then they dropped it. They still support PNG, normal JPEG. I agree with the arguments against the current DRM and Manifest 3 content blocking was kind of misdirected (however… look at how Safari does it, it’s essentially the same) Also I don’t think the same argument applies for Chrome as for OSes for example. You are not really locked in. Just use a different browser. It’s just web.
detuur 3y ago
It was/is a very well thought-out format that had a lot of industry signalling they were willing or even enthusiastic about supporting it, which happens virtually never for new image formats. All the major browsers were working on support, many image processing pipelines were being updated. Everyone agreed that it was not just a major improvement, but actually the best option out of all the contenders out there. Even the Chrome team. The only ones who didn't agree were the AVIF team at Google, who had developed a competing standard. Well, whoever was on that team had some pull, because not long after Chrome landed JXL support in stable and everything was about to pick up some serious pace, they suddenly landed a commit that reverted everything to do with JXL support in Chrome, and that was that. An immense, cross-industry effort undone by internal Google politics. That's what's hostile about this situation. JXL is still limping along, but Google's unilateral reversal hurt everyone's confidence in the project but also the entire process. Apparently it doesn't matter what everyone in the world thinks is the most appropriate format. What matters is Lord Google's favour.

Tepix 3y ago

Missing in the list: - https://www.pcmag.com/news/google-will-let-you-opt-out-of-chrome-forced-login https://www.pcmag.com/news/google-will-let-you-opt-out-of-ch... Google Will Let You Opt Out of Chrome 'Forced Login' (2018) Remember? They tried to force everyone to login completely. Quote from article: The tweak was made to address a privacy uproar over the latest iteration of Google's browser, Chrome 69. Earlier versions of the browser let you log into a Google service, say Gmail, without logging into Chrome. But the tech giant decided to change that in Chrome 69, which arrived earlier this month. Signing into a Google service via the browser will now automatically log you into Chrome as well.

simula67 3y ago

> to explain why they should stop using #Chromium / #GoogleChrome and use #Firefox or #Epiphany as their main #web #browser Or use Brave.

PartiallyTyped 3y ago
> The Brave Browser is built on the open-source Chromium Web core and our own client code is released under the Mozilla Public License 2.0 . If you are on mac, you can use Orion, it’s written by the kagi team.
Xelbair 3y ago
Are you even aware that Brave uses Chromium basically? it uses Blink engine.
- jadamson 3y ago
  Near enough everyone here knows that. Are you even aware that Chromium is open source and Brendan Eich has said Brave won't be supporting WEI? https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1684561924191842304 https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1684561924191842304 Baby, bathwater, etc.
  - fsflover 3y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36983812 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36983812
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - BrendanEich 3y ago
      That's a link, all right, but it doesn't refute your correspondent here. Chromium forked Blink from WebKit, which was forked by Apple from KHTML. We have a fork (or spork: https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1687485972164837377 https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1687485972164837377). We could cope if Google were to repudiate Chromium (and violate the FOSS licenses on the sources).

nathan_phoenix 3y ago

Expected a huge list and there's only 3 items there, and one of them, JPEG XL, is kinda moot because it didn't seem viable until recently after Safari started supporting it... Feel that the list could have had much more substance with the addition of webUSB, webSerial and such features which Chrome just strong armed. In the current form the list and toot don't really drive the point home...

dvtkrlbs 3y ago
I mean it was always viable. Chrome did an opt-in experiment that no one heard of and than used it as a justification for ceasing its development. As a format it is just a win-win situation. Most of the companies that deals with images spoke for JXL. I think Google tried to push its own format in favour of JXL. So I really don't think it is moot.
- progbits 3y ago
  JPEGXL was (co)authored by Googlers so it's also their "own" format.
  - toastal 3y ago
    Google is big enough to have its own bureaucracy & infighting for this to easily & plausibly happen.
    - dvtkrlbs 3y ago
      I think AVIF format had a play in this whole ordeal.
      - toastal 3y ago
        It’s a shame too because it takes a lot more resources to encode & can often give results that are too smooth. JPEG XL offers a lot of features from years of other formats like FLIF that never quite made it over the hump. You know you’re making deafened decisions when Facebook+Adobe were on the same side as GIMP+Krita in pleading to get the format back.

est 3y ago

I lost trust with Chromium back when v70 they removed chrome://net-internals/#sockets It allows you to live debug what traffic has been made outside devtool. e.g. account sync, tracking, etc.

mrtksn 3y ago

Remember the "Safari is the new IE" narrative? Just because Safari doesn't support some API doesn't make it IE, IE wasn't an inferior browser at the beginning either. What made IE the IE everyone hates was its departure from standards(?) and enforcing its own vision of the web thanks to its enormous market share. On IE's case, MS probably stagnated it to prevent competition against its desktop Apps business and on Google's case it's going to be in the name of data collection and ad business. Chrome is the new IE. But yeah, that's what you get when you don't know history.

tommiegannert 3y ago
IE was absolutely hated for not evolving. I'm curious what "its own vision" was, other than "do as little as possible, while Mozilla and Opera keeps pushing forward." Now, this is from the perspective of the web developer. I don't think IE was ever hated the same way from the end-user perspective. Chrome is still innovating, but now end-users hate it, because it's trying to be too much. The "new IE" hat still belongs to Safari.
- Semaphor 3y ago
  Later, IE was also hated for being tied to the OS (which was related but different to the "not evolving"). Another thing Safari has. So yeah, I also fully agree. Safari is still the new IE.
  - mrtksn 3y ago
    The reason IE was hated for being tied in the OS was because the OS was crashing due to the IE bugs. That's not the case with macOS or iOS at all, just because the OS provides a JS engine out of the box doesn't make it Windows Me grade.
    - Semaphor 3y ago
      I disagree. It made it, so people with an older OS could not get a current IE. So you had ancient IE version linger for years and years. And with Safari, I can’t test any specific issues because we only have one mac, and it’s old and can’t run a current Safari. The situation is slightly better than with IE, as multiple macOS versions apparently (or so I was told) can run a newer Safari, but still not all.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

csmpltn 3y ago

A "no-hire" list?

ShamelessC 3y ago

As someone who hates Google’s behavior here, this “list” (3 whole items!) is deeply underwhelming to the point that I would say it’s some of the laziest social media activism (essentially the easiest form of activism) I’ve ever seen.

theyeenzbeanz 3y ago
Google running sites poorly or broken in non chrome browsers should be on the list too. Half the time the back button only changes the url on youtube, and doesn’t go back to the previous page.

DrNosferatu 3y ago

Switch to SerenityOS and use Ladybird ;) (or build it for your favorite OS)

sph 3y ago

What is the excuse of all people reading this thread in agreement and still using Chrome? As I mentioned elsewhere, this is preaching to the choir. A choir of Chrome users. Google wouldn't be so dominant if tech people like us would stop making lazy excuses to continue its hegemony. In Dante's Divina Commedia, there is a circle of hell for those too lazy to take a stance [1]. If it were written today, it would include a lot of tech workers running Chrome with uBlock enabled. It's 2023, Safari and Firefox have been very good for a while. -- 1: in fact, in the Divina Commedia the lazy ones that can't take a stance are kept just outside of Hell, as they are so detestable not even Satan itself would want them around.

tibanne 3y ago
[flagged]
- frameset 3y ago
  Because you're a frog boiling in a pot. The URL we're discussing has a list of coming changes to weaken uBlock and other privacy or content blocking features.
rcMgD2BwE72F 3y ago
Many of my work tools require a browser extension that's only compatible with Chrome. The publishers don't plan to support Firefox or any other browser. I can do without these tools (not an easy task) but not my coworkers.
- tomjen3 3y ago
  You can install adons from the Chrome store in Brave.
  - tvink 3y ago
    I assume most tech-savy people will want to stay far away from a browser that uses cryptonomics to confuse people into feeling better about blocking ads.

jokoon 3y ago

At one point I thought jpeg XL was just jpeg 2000.

krishnaislove 3y ago

Unless a big enough competitor comes along, they'll not change.

goku12 3y ago
The solution for the current web browser situation isn't another competitor. There will probably never be another big competitor. The reason is that merit isn't the primary reason how Chrome won the majority market share. There was a twitter thread that I have been trying to dig up ever since the WEI debates began. It was from a Firefox developer who explained how Chrome managed to get its users. Many Google websites used to intentionally provide bad UX for months on Firefox compared to on Chrome. When Mozilla calls this out, Google devs would pretend that it's an honest mistake and would enable full performance on Firefox. However, many users would have ditched Firefox and migrated to Chrome by that time, never to return to Firefox again. These oopsies happened so many times. How is any new competitor going to overcome the lack of cooperation from such huge services on the net? The problem really is that the users let themselves be manipulated. The solution here lies with the users, not the competitors.
- gorhill 3y ago
  > a twitter thread that I have been trying to dig up https://twitter.com/johnath/status/1116871245021220875 https://twitter.com/johnath/status/1116871245021220875
  - goku12 3y ago
    Thanks a lot for this link! And for making web tolerable with uBlock!

tjpnz 3y ago

I would add their moves to put things behind codes of conduct. Not the first time I've seen them deployed purely to stifle criticism but I've never seen it done as overtly as this.

Timber-6539 3y ago

Browser wars tend to get preachy at times and border on religious fanaticism. Chromium is free to fork. That's the only thing that matters. I'm not going to give up sweet convenience so that I can make a claim that am sticking it to the man. That's ridiculous.

rkangel 3y ago
These days browsers are good at following standards, but it's very important what's actually in the standards. There is potential for Google to use Chrome's market share to move the standards in a user hostile way. Chromium being open source is good, but it's not everything.
capableweb 3y ago
Both Firefox and Chrome owe their existence to people who were religiously fanatical about building better browsers than the status quo. Without those people, you wouldn't have your convenience in the first place. Whats to say history cannot repeat in this case?
goku12 3y ago
> Chromium is free to fork. That's the only thing that matters. Yet, we see browser after browser dropping their own engines and migrating to blink. The fact is, something being free to fork no longer means that it is practical to do so. These ostensibly open code bases are massive monoliths backed by morbidly bloated standards. It isn't practical for even big companies to fork and maintain. Aggravating this is the fact that these are developed primarily by just one company who rarely listens to its users and often silences them with CoC. Such code appear open, but not in spirit. > Browser wars tend to get preachy at times and border on religious fanaticism. > I'm not going to give up sweet convenience so that I can make a claim that am sticking it to the man. That's ridiculous. People are calling for the use of any alternative due to an imminent threat to the open nature of the web. And yet, there are attempts like these to bill them as preachy and fanatic. It's not wrong to care about freedom! Convenience - if any (I don't feel inconvenienced on Firefox) - is no longer an excuse to neglect the seriously wrong turn the web has taken.
blibble 3y ago

omgmajk 3y ago

* The "Manifest v3" sabotage of content blocking extensions: https://archive.is/i2vGD https://archive.is/i2vGD * The attempted sabotage of #JPEGXL: https://archive.is/2ihEV https://archive.is/2ihEV * #WebEnvironmentIntegrity a.k.a. #DRM for whole websites would hurt the web, #opensource browsers and OSes: https://archive.is/S912x https://archive.is/S912x

tomrod 3y ago
> * #WebEnvironmentIntegrity a.k.a. #DRM for whole websites would hurt the web, #opensource browsers and OSes What really blew my mind was how out of touch the dev guiding the WEI proposal is, in relation to how dangerous this implementation would be.
- bagacrap 3y ago
  It's one dev, out of hundreds/thousands! At least one web platform lead from the Chrome team is on record saying that the proposal could never move past the experimentation phase. Do you think it's impossible for one bad^H^H^H clueless apple to slip through the interview process? Isn't it a good thing that a company as large as Google still allows individuals to experiment with their ideas?
  - jauntywundrkind 3y ago
    Isn't Yoav overall Chrome Lead?
    - bagacrap 3y ago
      What did Yoav say? The blink-dev thread is full of crucial nuggets like: > In order to start even an origin trial in Chrome, this proposal would need approval from API owners like myself, and the current state of the proposal is not something I'd personally approve due to many of the concerns being raised. ... but only if you look for them.
    - tomrod 3y ago

charcircuit 3y ago

This is just a list of antichrome rhetoric which isn't based off truths, but rather are propagated by people who hate Google. >The "Manifest v3" sabotage of content blocking extensions: Manifest v3 does not change anything that would sabotage content blocking extentions. >The attempted sabotage of #JPEGXL Chrome did not sabotage JPEGXL. The chromium team didn't think the format was worth supporting due to lack of broad interest and support costs. They recommend using a WASM based decoder if you would like to use JPEGXL. >#WebEnvironmentIntegrity a.k.a. #DRM for whole websites would hurt the web, #opensource browsers and OSes The current web is what you get when there is no environment integrity. The web is already hurting from bad actors. Adding signals attesting to environment integrity could help the web fight against the harms caused by bad actors. It isn't DRM either.

luth0r 3y ago

As someone working in the ad fraud detection space, Google has been hostile for quite a while. Making things extra difficult just to get more ad spend quota on their platforms. First User-Agent reduction (I agree with some points). Later making a perfect Headless automated browser that shows no difference against a real browser (making bot detection nearly impossible without captcha's). Last weeks by removing any kind of WebView signal in the browser so it makes impossible to detect between in-app traffic/fraud/Chrome Mobile. Could write a lot more about other stuff and the implications but the whole picture is not looking great.

foobarbecue 3y ago

AMP should be on this list

kotaKat 3y ago

Can I sound a little whiny and say "the new Downloads experience"? I'm a little peeved that the UX suddenly changed with no warning and I want my Downloads bar back, something I won't be allowed to have, because the Chromium team Said No.

booleandilemma 3y ago

Are there any browsers better than firefox at the moment?

toastal 3y ago
There are plenty of Gecko & WebKit forks out there if you don’t like what base Fx gives you.

Thaxll 3y ago

The attempted sabotage of #JPEGXL. Well no one else is supporting or using that format, how come it is a sabotage?

jonsneyers 3y ago
If you read the Chromium bugtracker comments (https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1178058 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=117805...) and see the messages of support from e.g. Facebook, Adobe, Intel, VESA, Krita, etc then I think it is quite clear that "no one else is supporting that format" is not quite a correct assessment of the situation.

j1elo 3y ago

Firefox had been underperforming during part of its life, but deep internal improvements meant those days are over. There is a huge difference in memory and CPU usage between older Firefox and the one we have today. Sadly, lots of people still think that Firefox never changed. I did a quick memory usage test, just for having my personal anecdote and some numbers to show. The result was that Firefox uses an average of 10 MiB for each open (and active) tab. Not bad at all! First, what I'm testing: * Firefox 115, on Linux Mint 20.3 (which essentially is Ubuntu 20.04). * 13 extensions installed. Some are uBlock Origin, Amazon Unsponsor, Bookmark Search Plus, DeArrow, Multi-Account Containers, Keepa, One-Click Wayback, Tree Style Tab (guys try this one out for a great vertical tab tree!). * 90 tabs open. Tree Style Tab makes me open lots of tabs, because it is then so convenient to open/close subtrees for different topics... but I digress. * Tabs include: 4 videogame stores, which are heavy on graphics and dynamic content. 10 shopping tabs in various shops, including Amazon. 10 YouTube videos (buffering preloaded). 14 Google Drive / Google Docs tabs (heavy on JS usage). Various documentation pages, and too many HN threads to admit. * Firefox configured to remember all tabs when closed, and restore them when opening. Upon firstly starting, Firefox doesn't actually load the tabs. They are in suspended, inactive state, until opened for the first time. RAM usage results: * Cleanly started, only HN frontpage loaded: 372 MiB. * HN frontpage and this entry opened in tabs: 386 MiB. * Third HN tab opened: 394 MiB. * Went through ALL 90 tabs to force them loading: 954 MiB. Conclusion: Firefox uses around 10 MiB per loaded tab. Screenshots of Btop++: * In the middle of loading all 90 tabs. CPU is busy! https://pasteboard.co/Bxf2TI9P8YT2.png https://pasteboard.co/Bxf2TI9P8YT2.png * After all tabs have been successfully loaded. Resource usage is back to being stationary. https://pasteboard.co/m3tVzYNMtDmD.png https://pasteboard.co/m3tVzYNMtDmD.png (The reason for this post is all those comments here and in other entries, claiming that Firefox was a resource hog for them a while ago, and that's why they nowadays are committed Chrome users. In light of recent events, we really need to collectively reduce Chrome usage numbers!)

LinuxBender 3y ago
An additional test that may be worth trying out is BrowserBench [1] Varies heavily by computer specs. My daily driver is an ancient PC running Linux still fast enough for me but my newer mini-PC's leave this old thing in the dust regardless of what browser I use. [1] - https://browserbench.org/Speedometer2.1/ https://browserbench.org/Speedometer2.1/

mrblampo 3y ago

Sounds like the thing about "ad blocker sabotage" is about replacing the Web Request API with something called declarativeNetRequest. I've been sifting through documentation but have had trouble seeing why this is any kind of a downgrade for ad blockers. Can someone explain?

jefftk 3y ago
It removes the ability to run custom logic to decide whether a net request should be allowed to go through, switching Chrome to a system like Safari's where you can only declaratively specify what you would like blocked. While Google claims it is a change they are making for security and performance, a lot of people are worried that it is actually intended to make ad blocking harder.

p1mrx 3y ago

I would add these to the list: - Removing "http:// http://" from URLs. This was partially fixed several years later on Desktop, as now you can right-click the URL bar and check "Always show full URLs" - Replacing the linear tab view on Android with a 2D grid (so the first tab is hardest to reach with your thumb), and gradually removing all the workarounds as people discovered them. - Lack of extensions (e.g. ad blocking) on Android - When using a bluetooth mouse on a Chromebook, the scroll wheel has been really janky for years, and it can only be temporarily fixed using "gesture_prop" in the crosh console. Not sure if this is intentional or just laziness.

kytazo 3y ago

As of passing by: 666 points by luu 6 hours ago

cma 3y ago

What's funny is the earliest seed of Chrome is ad blocking: the Google IE toolbar with popup blocker.

account42 3y ago

> stop using #Chromium / #GoogleChrome and use #Firefox or #Epiphany > * The attempted sabotage of #JPEGXL: https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/chrome https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/chrome Remind me, does Firefox support JPEG XL?

toastal 3y ago
It’s behind a flag for Nightly. Some Fx forks like LibreWolf allow enabling it even not on Nightly.

bagacrap 3y ago

My entourage definitely is not impressed by any of these three obscure details of web development. I think they might have a hard time even grasping what the web platform is.

titzer 3y ago

I don't understand the JPEG XL frackus, but that's partly because I think the Web platform should not continue being an enormous ball of mud, with everything built into the browser with no layering. Make a Wasm module (use SIMD and threads if you want) that can decode the format and render to an immutable canvas and then let the browser engine manage the pixels after that. Wasm is close enough to native speed now that it no longer makes sense to bake this into the native browser binary anymore.

micheljansen 3y ago
That sounds like a lot more work than just allowing <img src=“my image.jxl”>. Are you proposing that every website comes with their own set of WASM libraries to allow its content to be rendered (each with their own bugs)? Why stop there? Just have the browser manage the canvas and deliver your own HTML rendering engine via WASM?
- titzer 3y ago
  No, it's a fail if every website renders itself to the canvas. I think there's a middle ground where, for example, unknown mime/image types can be handed by "application level"--actually middleware or library-level--codecs supplied as Wasm extensions. The browser doesn't have to ship with them, and it doesn't have to trust them the way it does plugins, but they can hook into key places in ways that maximizes the benefit of having a rendering/layout engine, yet is extensible, fast, and secure.

aunterste 3y ago

I'm just waiting to see which (non google of course) website will be the first that is "you must have WebIntegrityAPI enabled to use this website" ..

notjoshjames 3y ago

Across the dozens of Chrome threads over the last week, I haven't seen discussion about the impact of businesses' usage of Google Workspace. I'm sure this is relevant to the discussion on moving away en masse from Chrome; I use Firefox primarily but need to use Chrome for various organizations. There's quite a few really useful features for Workspace org admins, from blocklists and telemetry to provisioning browser extensions and adding bookmarks, and most of these features require end users to use Chrome. In fact, you can configure security policy such that end users can only use Chrome to login to their company account, and there are multiple reasons from a corporation's perspective to enforce these types of policies. Microsoft 365 is the most dominant player, and I assume Google Workspace is second in enterprise user account management. Are there any prominent, stable open-source business cloud stacks that meaningfully compete here?

bfrog 3y ago

Chrome is the new IE, its become such a dominant thing people forget there's other web engines out there. As soon as there's a monopoly on how the web is viewed, especially by a company who's best interest isn't in an open web, all bets are off on how they operate.

johnea 3y ago

To use the Mastodon web application, please enable JavaScript.

ptman 3y ago

We need a way to directly fund firefox development: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/ability-to-donate-money-to-the-firefox-development-team-directly/idi-p/198 https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/ability-to-donate-money...

nenaoki 3y ago

For me, it's the tying of the new-tab page to your search engine choice. That's perhaps the most valuable real-estate in the browser; I just want it to be about:blank and not do any funny phoning-home stuff.