Clearly, Google is serious about trying to oust ad blockers from its browser, or at least those extensions with fuller (V2) levels of functionality. One of the crucial twists with V3 is that it prevents the use of remotely hosted code – as a security measure – but this also means ad blockers can’t update their filter lists without going through Google’s review process. What does that mean? Way slower updates for said filters, which hampers the ability of the ad-blocking extension to keep up with the necessary changes to stay effective.
(This isn’t just about browsers, either, as the war on advert dodgers extends to YouTube, too, as we’ve seen in recent months).
At any rate, Google is playing with fire here somewhat – or Firefox, perhaps we should say – as this may be the shove some folks need to get them considering another of the best web browsers out there aside from Chrome. Mozilla, the maker of Firefox, has vowed to maintain support for V2 extensions, while introducing support for V3 alongside to give folks a choice (now there’s a radical idea).
I fail to see the issue.
While this will drive some users to Firefox, we all know it won’t be enough. Too many people simple don’t know, or don’t care, it won’t affect their lives in any meaningful way, or so they will believe. Google will be harming the tech illiterate and normies (sorry for the slur) because money, bullshit, and to drive the stake deeper into the monopoly. If you have older family members using chrome, sit them down and explain to them the dangers of the internet without adblock.
If you have older family members, you could try just installing Firefox for them and tell them it’s their internet now. This worked for me parents.
It gets me thinking. Tech literate people are the types to install blockers, and would be the same type of people both motivated and knowledgeable about how to switch browsers. On the line of thinking it seems like it is just going to drive them away from Chrome. Tech illiterate people remain unaffected since they are getting ads anyway.
But then on the other hand, if someone is tech literate then why are they even still using Chrome? Does such a person value whatever advantage Chrome theoretically provides over their ad-blocking?
The Fox has been re-promoted to my daily driver as of this year. Chrome still in play for work stuff & sites don’t have ads.
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Some? Some you say?
Unfortunately, yes.
Google, fuck you and your ads too:
Man fuck google
One of the reasons why I left chomium based browsers even ungoogled chromium (I use chromium alongside firefox but mainly firefox)
I’ve fully switched to Firefox everywhere. The only thing I’m missing is a lightweight browser which is not based on chromium for my potato tablet. jQuarks viewer is a good one but can be dumb sometimes, it opens image instead of the link for eg.
Not sure if they’re still round, but I used to use opera.
Opera ditched their browser engine. They use chromium now.
I don’t understand seemingly intelligent people who still blindly use chrome at this point…
The problem here is not just Chrome (as in Google Chrome) but Chromium, the web engine behind many browsers out there (such as Opera, Vivaldi, Edge, among many many others). For now there are two main web engines available, those being Chromium and Gecko (Firefox, Palemoon and many other Firefox forks). The deprecation of Manifest v2 is a Chromium change that includes (and focuses on) Chrome.
It’s not about intelligence it’s about what keeps you up at night. Most people aren’t bothered by cookies and ads, somehow.
this is something i cannot understand. my brain would fking die from the seizures the modern, ad infested web induces.
It used to be worse. Pop up ads are mostly a thing of the past. The web used to be an advertisement shit hole and there were no ad blockers back then.
Regardless, you’re right. I don’t understand why or how people could be ignorant of the existence of adblock in 2024 unless they’re boomers.
And the creepiness. Advertisers can deduce many habits based on the information you give them. Some techniques can tell when people are pregnant before they do based on their pathing inside the store, for instance.
And yet, all they continue to sell me is a dryer when I just bought one a month ago.
Most people are stupid, myopic imbeciles that arent bothered by anything until it personally affects them.
Then they’ll howl like wolves at the moon about the great injustice of it all, and how could anyone allow this to happen.
For those of us who work in (or love) tech - we (myself included) grossly overestimate how much the general public cares about, or cares to be informed about, this stuff. Heck, even people in tech who know better.
I wish it wasn’t the case but look how long and hard Microsoft moved on Internet Explorer and ActiveX back in the early days of the web.
Google and Chrome is just another bit of history repeating.
As an aside, I’ve been using Zen for about a week and it’s been wonderful. Easy transition from Firefox because it largely is Firefox, so anll my containers, extensions, annd settings carried over. Zen’s workspaces provide exactly the promise I’d hoped “tab groups” brought with Safari (but never worked right). I just wish there was an equivalent to the Hush plug-in on Safari (even after a year of full-timing FF, consent-o-matic is quite poor).
Yeah I work in tech and I’m the only one that cares enough to use Firefox. All my colleagues use chrome or chrome with makeup.
Maybe ad blocking will be what broke the camel’s back, but I doubt more than a few will care enough to switch.
I kinda have to at work. Our classroom computers reset between classes and Chrome is the only browser installed. I might ask IT about that, moving forward, given uBlock getting neutered soon.
You’d be amazed at what seemingly intelligent people will do or say or believe.
I know people who I thought brilliant until they said they were voting for trump. Way to shatter my opinion of you, jagoff.
Waiting for Mozilla to shoot their own foot again
Make sure to shit on them every fucking time anyone says the name “Mozilla”, that’ll help us not have anything except Chrome in a couple years.
It’s fine, there are open source projects underway. If any one of them gains traction, it could happen to Mozilla what happened to Unity with Godot. Here’s to hoping they get their act straight sooner tan later.
Oh, bullshit. There is nothing that has 1/100th of the effort that goes into gecko, because maintaining a web browser is ridiculously difficult. You’re living in a dreamworld if you think any other project is within a lightyear of Firefox.
👍
Didn’t they just announce recently that they were going to work more with advertisers? https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/improving-online-advertising/
How to improve online advertising: Step 1: remove all online advertising
again?
Before chrome became massively popular, Firefox was very popular. ie was still the most used browser back then
They just did, they are gonna work more with advertisers.
When new fearures added to V3, will Mozilla port it to V2 too?
IIRC, they’ve said they’ll implement V3 to maintain compatibility, but they’ll also continue to maintain V2. You, the extension developer, will not be forced to use V3 if you don’t want to.
educated guess: since firefox is implementing v3 support alongside their v2 extensions, there shouldn’t be any issues running v2 and v3 extensions side by side in the foreseeable future
I think they are wondering if one extension can use both v2 and v3 APIs at once? As in whether v3 APIs will be “backported” to allow v2 extensions to use them
I wonder how they’ll solve that riddle.
If only banks and government websites moved their asses and stopped mentioning Internet Explorer for one more time…
When is this happening? I’ve been telling my wife and kid that they need to stop using chrome for a year, but ublock is still working for them and blocking YouTube ads. They are the type that won’t switch until it becomes a problem for them.
I think that’s the point: Google has been shutting down Manifest V2 extensions one step at a time, and it’s been experimenting with anti-ad-block tech on YouTube with one user group at a time.
I remember the internet before Google, and how game changing it was to have all of the internet indexed in one place (even if that wasn’t actually quite true back then). If you had asked me 15, 10, even 5 years ago if I would be cheering its downfall and yearning for a return to a simpler, far less centralized internet, I would have called you crazy. And yet here we are.
It wasn’t hard to foresee. We knew these kind of things could happen. The internet used to be very out spoken about it. That ethos is long gone. What’s equally disappointing is tech nerds selling out for bigger paychecks.
You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.
