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Google's Chrome Browser Starts Disabling uBlock Origin
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y agoPerfect timing, I've fully switched to Firefox over the last month or so.
- rosstex 2y agoI used Firefox for 5 years until I met my husband, who pointed out how much time I waste dealing with Firefox rendering bugs and freezing and how much it aggravates him. After the 15th time I switched to Chrome and it's helped my relationship grow. But I use uBlock Origin religiously so it's time to go hunting again...
- not_a_bot_4sho 2y ago> I switched to Chrome and it's helped my relationship grow Something is very wrong here
- fhdsgbbcaA 2y agoI’ll have you know IE6 is known to have caused numerous divorces.
- blasphemers 2y agohttps://youtu.be/2RmUMmUj3u8?si=PmRdQqMs3KURXytI https://youtu.be/2RmUMmUj3u8?si=PmRdQqMs3KURXytI
- sunaookami 2y agoEvery browser has critical bugs. It's more important how fast they can be patched. And CVE scores are often exaggerated.
- lenkite 2y agoImmediately moved to Firefox after "ad topics" were introduced.
- deletechr0me 2y agoSwiching from chrome to firefox at work, this was the final straw. Internet/youtube etc is almost unusable without uBlock origin. Glad I already use FF privately.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y agoI just switched at work as well.
- hoppyhoppy2 2y agoDupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41852580 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41852580
- redrix 2y agoGoogle needs to be broken up. It's extremely concerning that a company that derives most of its revenue from internet ads, can use its control over the world’s most dominant browser to limit apps that are a risk to its bottom line as it pleases.
- privacymatters4 2y agoBetween Wordpress's bullshit and capitalist bullshit like Google doing things like this, I'm honestly just in utter shock at what the internet actually _is_ now adays. What a dystopia.
- fhdsgbbcaA 2y agoDon’t give up, fight’s not nearly over.
- michaelnny 2y agoAn honest question, what’s the news on Wordpress episode? Didn’t follow the topic
- jart 2y agoFolks, Google just saved Mozilla. For nearly two decades, Google dumped limitless resources into Chrome and gave it all away to gain maximal adoption. That would be considered anti-competitive behavior in any other context. By acting more competitively, Google is giving the competition an opportunity to finally compete. Firefox was so close to hitting that red line in terms of market share. Now Firefox is going to not only survive, but thrive, and so will other newer browsers like Brave and Ladybird too.
- shiroiushi 2y agoHow exactly do you think Mozilla is going to get funding to continue Firefox development with Google now unable to pay them billions to keep Google Search the #1 default? This Google breakup is only going to destroy Mozilla entirely. Brave will survive as long as it can piggyback on Chrome development, and by getting bribed/paid by advertisers to have their ads shown instead of blocked. Ladybird can survive because it's all-volunteer, but it's not even close to being a viable browser for regular use, and with the limited development resources it has, it's questionable it will ever be really usable for general users. The real winners of this "antitrust" action will be Microsoft (who can then dedicate more resources to Edge and make that the new IE6.0) and Apple. There will only be two browsers you can use in the future: Edge (Windows-only) and Safari (Mac/iOS-only). Other browsers will wither and die since you won't be able to use them for your internet banking and various other tasks. You'll just get a message like we did back in 2002, saying "this browser not supported, please install Microsoft Edge or Apple Safari to continue".
- toastercat 2y agoI'm torn. I'm not a huge fan of malware and I don't have a lot of respect for the modern ad networks. However this culture of expecting websites to host the data then freeloading off it by blocking the tracking and ads is also a bit ugly. There is an unwritten social contract here. Websites are willing to host and organise a vast number of content because that'll attract an audience for ads. If there are too may freeloaders resisting the ads then services won't host the content, and on the path to that the freeloaders are really just leeching off a system in an entitled way (unless their goal is to destroy the services they use in which case good on them for consistency and for picking a worthy target). If people aren't going to be polite and accept that contract then fine, enforcement was always by an honour system. But strategically if a service's social contract doesn't work for someone then they shouldn't use that service - they'd just be feeding the beast. They should go make their own service work or investigate the long list of alternative platforms.
- aaomidi 2y agoYou should have control over what content gets displayed on your screen. This is an ad network using another unrelated product (chrome) to enforce its market dominance.
- jart 2y agoYes but what tipped the scales was when policymakers all over the place started requiring adblockers. For example if you manage a company with 100,000 employees, you can push a button in Google Admin that installs uBlock Origin on all their browsers. Those people didn't have a choice. Enough organizations probably did this that I imagine it started threatening the whole economy.
- trinsic2 2y agoNo. Im sorry, find another way to make money. Nobody has a god given right to deliver me ads.
- ulrikrasmussen 2y agoThat's great, the ad economy can die in a fire and leave the space for alternatives that aren't focused on turning your brain to mush and promoting overconsumption. Some content creators will be hurt but the good ones will be fine.
- ChrisArchitect 2y ago[dupe] More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41809698 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41809698 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41757178 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41757178
- pentagrama 2y ago> uBlock’s own uBlock Origin Lite, which uses Manifest V3 and has received positive reviews on the Chrome Web Store. Still, the ad blocker’s developer Raymond Hill has said the Lite version can’t match the full capabilities of the original uBlock Origin. To me the developer should update the current v2 version with the new approved v3 version. Yes, is worse but at the end of the day is better for those 40M of users [1]. I'm speculating but I think he don't want to show defeat, maybe some ego is involved there. [1] https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublock-origin/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublock-origin/cjpal...
- avazhi 2y agoWhy should the developer do that? So Google won’t lose users? So uBlock Origin won’t lose users? In the end there are alternatives, like using Firefox. Saying the developer ‘should’ do something when you admit that something is worse than what he has going now is super weird. Personally I think if Google wants to kill their browser engine for everybody who hates ads, we ‘should’ welcome it, because it will hopefully cause Chromium’s browser dominance to fade at least somewhat, and Google’s monopolising position in terms of browser market share is what enabled Google to make this Manifest 3 decision in the first place.
- zamadatix 2y agoThere's plenty to speculate or inquire about without jumping straight to assumptions about a stranger's personal motives. What about all of the users that haven't been flipped yet, all of the ones using Chrome based browsers still supporting v2 but using the Chrome Web Store for the extension at the moment, all of the users and corporations using ExtensionManifestV2Availability who won't be flipped for a year? Heck, maybe it's even a good thing users have Chrome tell them the old extension is expressly disabled so they can find out the limitations in the new one and chose for themselves rather than have their extension's functionality cut silently made for them.
- extraduder_ire 2y agoI can't find the tweet, but gorhill himself has said that as well as ublock lite not being a drop-in replacement, there are other MV3 content blockers that could work better depending on what your usecase is. He doesn't want to just silently degrade user experience.
- mediumsmart 2y agoOn macOS I recommend kagi AND Orion for the ultimate zero telemetry search experience. No need to block when you are not the product https://kagi.com https://kagi.com full disclosure: I am wearing my free kagi t-shirt right now
- jonathantf2 2y agoI tried Orion a few months ago but it didn't at all play nicely with 1Password, any idea if that's changed?
- joeross 2y agoFor a while it’s my experience that 1Password doesn’t play nicely with… anything. I’ve had issues on Orion, Firefox, Chrome, Brave, Edge and Safari across MacOS and Windows machines.
- neodymiumphish 2y agoI think I’m using the Firefox extension for 1P and it’s been fine the past few weeks. I’ve had sporadic issues with 1P on various browsers for the past few months.
- valunord 2y agoI don't trust 1PW anymore. After they killed their product with their forced cloud storage with 8, they died. Not trustworthy behavior from anyone in that space.
- privacymatters4 2y agoAdtech is cyber warfare. Used to manipulate, control, and feed our minds with things that not even we understand what they're up to. There is no argument for uBlock being disabled/removed. Fight for an internet where we're not exploited.
- fhdsgbbcaA 2y agoThere’s no argument to use chrome either. Hopefully they will lose users.
- caseyy 2y ago“it’s the Google ball on the taskbar and when you click it, the internet comes up” — is the argument to use Chrome that many people will go with. I’m not making fun of tech illiterate people either. We are all more vulnerable in some parts of our lives than others. Maybe a giant internet tech company won’t abuse you like it abuses people who don’t know much about computers, but big chemical industry may abuse you and kill you early through environmental pollution. We must recognise that there are many people vulnerable to different kinds of abuse through destructive business practices in pursuit of growth (“rot capitalism”). And if we don’t have a culture of protecting the most vulnerable, someone won’t protect you in areas of your vulnerability.
- shiroiushi 2y ago>“it’s the Google ball on the taskbar and when you click it, the internet comes up” — is the argument to use Chrome that many people will go with. >I’m not making fun of tech illiterate people either. The problem here is that when Joe Sixpack buys a Windows PC and starts it up, there is no "Google ball" on the taskbar: there's an icon for Edge, Microsoft's own browser that's included in Windows. Chrome is nowhere to be found. Joe only sees Chrome when he goes to a Google site like YouTube and gets prompted to install it, and goes through the steps of doing so. Joe could just as easily install Firefox, but he doesn't, perhaps because no huge website like YouTube is encouraging him to.
- akomtu 2y agoImo, Google's plan is to make Chrome a sealed OS like Windows, where MS has all the control and users have no control. But Google isn't alone. The pressure to show the 25% YoY growth means you need to do worse things than your competitors or die. If you don't poison the river, your neighbor will and you'll starve to death next year. It's the Saw movie, but for corporations. The pressure to grow the stock price never stops, and next year Google will have to invent something else, something even more morally depraved.
- auguzanellato 2y ago> Imo, Google's plan is to make Chrome a sealed OS like Windows, where MS has all the control and users have no control. ChromeOS is already (albeit a different) thing
- trinsic2 2y agoAnd when all those idiots die because the spent time destroying the very society they lived in, all the people that choose not to poison the well will be free to make the world a better place. It's not going to last forever. Their time is limited.
- jpl56 2y agoChrome? I switched to Firefox a few years ago, when Chrome would only play Youtube with 480p resolution. Too bad, the Youtube/tv interface was slick.
- makeitdouble 2y agoThen Google went on killing the Youtube experience on firefox https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1cjbsmj/youtube_on_firefox_seems_to_be_getting_much_worse/ https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1cjbsmj/youtube_on...
- jpl56 2y agoYes I noticed. Thanks for the link, there's a great post from eitland (first answer : reporting a bug to get unassigned from A/B testing experiments), I will try today.
- rpigab 2y ago- Switch to Firefox with uBlock Origin. - Change your default search engines. - Uncheck the Firefox ads and remove commercial stuff. - We all convince Mozilla to refrain from enshittifying Firefox or abandoning it, somehow, because ads are the main reason people hate browsing the internet, so if Firefox becomes a safe haven, Google will stop giving it money to stay alive.
- ulrikrasmussen 2y agoGoogle was ordered by the court to stop giving it money: https://fortune.com/2024/08/05/mozilla-firefox-biggest-potential-loser-google-antitrust-search-ruling/ https://fortune.com/2024/08/05/mozilla-firefox-biggest-poten... I think they were just waiting for the inevitable. Instead of cutting off the competition and risking an antitrust lawsuit due to their browser monopoly, they simply waited for an antitrust case on their search engine monopoly to force their hand. The courts have failed to realize the obvious consequences of this.
- self_awareness 2y ago> We all convince Mozilla to refrain from enshittifying Firefox or abandoning it, somehow, because ads are the main reason people hate browsing the internet, so if Firefox becomes a safe haven, Google will stop giving it money to stay alive. Aren't "we" trying to do it for a long time already?
- zb3 2y agoLinux distributions should patch chromium downstream, enabling the "webRequestBlocking" API in manifest v3. The alternative is to load "policy" extensions, so I guess a system-wide ubo linux package could do it..
- lakomen 2y agoI need to move my Google Chrome saved passwords to Firefox, but I don't trust Firefox, so I need to host my own credentials storage. Firefox isn't all flowers and sunshine either, but at least it's not Chrome, where I can't run an ad blocker anymore. Absolutely unacceptable Alphabet
- cootsnuck 2y agoYou can self host bitwarden.
- graybeardhacker 2y agoIt's disingenuous to say that Google is targeting uBlock Origin. The Manifest V2 extension architecture is fundamentally different from V3. V2 uses always running scripts while V3 requires event driven temporary workers. Additionally V3 eliminates the obviously risky V2 features like remote code execution and direct modification of network requests. Not surprisingly, uBlock Origin relies heavily on features in V2 to perform it's functionality. It could probably be rewritten to use V3 but it's not a simple "Hey ChatGPT, make all this code into V3 compliant code." It will require a pretty fundamental rewrite. Google made common sense improvements to the way extension work for safety and performance. Were they sad that uBlock Origin stopped working? Probably not. But I highly doubt it factored into the need for the V3 changes.
- andrewmcwatters 2y agoIt’s perfectly valid to say they don’t care that this is happening. Software businesses carve out exceptions annd extensions all the time and have done so since the dawn of desktop computing. Focusing on the tech is a red herring.
- jackb4040 2y agoFound the google employee, lol. If only there was some middleground between "no remote code execution" and "breaking the entire paradigm of adblockers". The statement that they could be "rewritten" to anywhere near the same effectiveness is straight up disinformation. There are years and years of coverage of this issue that contradict you. The debate has nothing to do with the level of effort for rewrites. This is a hostile decision by a company with a directly adversarial relationship to adblockers.
- jmholla 2y ago> It could probably be rewritten to use V3 but it's not a simple "Hey ChatGPT, make all this code into V3 compliant code." There are explicit limitations of V3 that make it not able to be as effective even if rewritten to be compliant. uBlock Origin Lite exists; it can't do everything uBlock Origin can.
- self_awareness 2y ago
- pmkary 2y agoHoping for a day without evil corp Google and its Chrome.
- iamthejuan 2y agoIs this not a good thing since people will hate Chrome and they will move to other browsers like Firefox?