Google pulls the plug on uBlock Origin, leaving over 30 million Chrome users susceptible to intrusive ads
Google ramps up its campaign against ad blockers on Chrome.
So ... can we like finally dismiss Google Chrome as the obviously awful idea it is and which should never have made it this far and remind all of the web devs married to it that they're doing bad things and are the reason why we can't have nice things?
Hmmm ... a web browser owned by a monopolistic advertising company ... how could that possibly go wrong??!!
Do you remember the Internet Explorer days? This, unfortunately, is still much better.
Pretty good reason to switch the Firefox, now. Nearly everything will work, unlike the Internet Explorer days.
I think some people overestimate how many will migrate to Firefox in the near future over this.
As fun as it is to imagine an Adpocalypse shocking the masses and pushing them to try out alternatives to big tech, it's also way too optimistic, I feel.
Yeah, same with people here declaring the death of reddit, or Twitter, or any of these massive, mainstream services. People in bubbles (and Lemmy is definitely a bubble) always seem to underestimate how little everyone else cares or even knows about the things that are important to them. The service needs to be extremely bad in a user experience way, not an ethical way, for an extended period of time and there needs to be a big social movement where lots of people migrate to a direct and equivalent competitor within a short space of time. Most people will not do it on their own, they will wait until they see their peers doing it and only then can a migration start to snowball.
"Netflix will die when they ban account sharing!!" - Reddit/Lemmy/Techtubers
Netflix actually went on to have a massive jump in revenue, because most normal people can't be arsed to set up a Plex/Emby/Jellyfin server and buy a shitload of storage.
The uBlock Origin chrome extension has had 34 million users.
Chrome has 3.45 billion users.
Even if every uBlock user switched, it’s less than 1% of chrome users.
Depends on their methodology. Sure, a huge proportion of those are users who haven't heard of uBO, but we're forgetting a lot of caveats:
All of these skew the numbers towards Chrome. Some Chrome users use a different adblocker which lowers the uBO statistic.
There's also other chromium browsers with built-in ad-blocking that still work AFAIK. If all extensions and forked brower's ad-blockers stopped working, I think there would probably be a surge in firefox usage (even if there's not that much change in chromium usage).
Hopefully it will give Firefox a bit of a boost anyway. Firefox needs a boost.
High switching cost compared to finding another extension (e.g. uBO Lite), even if the resulting experience is worse.
You're not wrong about the high switching cost.
Switching from Chrome to Vivaldi (because of Chrome's whole FLoC thing) to Brave (because I didn't like Vivaldi's layout) to Firefox (because of Brave's whole thing) was a pain.
And I don't mean as a whole. Taking the time each time to change from one browser to another was always a pain. Transferring bookmarks and passwords was easy (Chrome and Firefox are at least compatible in that regard), but transferring extension settings was a whole different beast.
Some extensions had cloud sync support. Others had local export support. Some didn't have either kind, and I'd have to manually copy the settings from one browser over to the other. And that's not even getting into finding replacements for the Chrome-exclusive extensions (of which there were only a few, thankfully).
(because of Brave's whole thing)
Ha.
I'm sorry to hear that, been there (Chrome, Opera, Vivaldi, Firefox in my case). Hopefully we can stick around for a while.
My friends will stick to chrome, I switched to Firefox months ago. You're right
Not to mention all the people who don't even have an adblocker and for some reason don't seem to care that their web browsing is infested with ads.
A lot of people don't even know it's an option, or have grown to believe that's just how the web is. When was the last time you saw adblockers in mainstream media or news?
This is why I think it's so important to keep raising awareness. If you have people in your life who you believe would be better off using uBlock, consider bringing it up when you have the opportunity.
I think probably the single most important thing that nobody is saying is that Google have ALL the numbers on this decision and they are not stupid, so it would be silly to assume this will work against their interests. Not only do they know how many people use chrome, their ad network gives them insight into ALL browsers.
I agree folks are overestimating how many will switch. but also maybe you're underestimating too - a lot of browser installations are managed by the "family tech guy". the father, mother, brother, sister, aunt or uncle who sets up everyone's new laptops on Christmas and has the suggestions when you look for a new phone. we all know the type. a lot of us are the type.
setting up granny's laptop? I'll install whatever browser lets me automatically block the most "1000th visitor!" banner ads and change the desktop icon to the old AOL icon because that's all she knows the internet as. she doesn't know of care about the browser options so it's up to me. Chrome used to be fast and simple so it was the right choice. Firefox has caught up a fair bit on UX simplicity and speed and now offers better blocking and general security, so it just stole the crown for these installations imo. I trust it more to not let her mess the computer up, so even if I'm not using it as my main personal browser, it gets use here.
For what it's worth, I hope you're right.
- Just as some Firefox users like Firefox, many Chrome users enjoy what they have too. They don't want to lose that.
Do you have some source for that? IIUC, you mean that more Chrome users like Chrome than Firefox users like Firefox, right?
Meh. They had plenty of time to move to Firefox but they ignored all the warnings.
It’s not like they contracted some sort of terminal illness. Anyone can migrate whenever. It’s not hard.
And I mean, there's still time now. Switching browsers isn't that bad. Export+import some bookmarks and adjust some settings, good to go.
I think FF has been a good option for a while. But the second best time is now. I can totally get it if people didn't want to switch until they had more of a concrete problem.
FF still hasn't brought back a tab group API for extensions or native tab groups. Extensions can only do so much given what they have to work with. I still use FF on the side, but it simply isn't a practical as a primary browser for me currently.
But for casual users, many probably have never even touched their browser settings.
For all the firefox fans out there it might be good to note there have consistently been more Safari users than Firefox users since 2014. Hell Safari has been the number two browser by market share since 2015.
Browsers have to get very SHITTY or a new browser has to have a killer app to unseat a dominate one.
https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share#monthly-200901-202408
"The browser built to be yours"
Hahaha sure thing Google
"The browser built to be piping your data into our hands"
There, fixed.
In case anyone here needs this
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/switching-chrome-firefox
I'm in the process of switching to firefox on all my devices.
I've had enough of Google pushing features like this.
Having ublock on mobile is such a breath of fresh air. I wish I had made the transition sooner. I knew this was coming and completed my transition a few weeks back so I could abandon Chrome on my own time table and not on Google's. Other than a little headache trying to find extension replacements for pc, I'm LOVING it.
I switched from Chrome to Firefox in 2019 because that's when Google adopted Manifest V3 and I never looked back. There were already articles then describing how it'd break ad blockers, and Firefox had at the time just recently released their "Quantum" overhaul which drastically improved responsiveness.
I'm a bit surprised it took five years for Google to drop support for Manifest V2, but the threat has long been there.
I use Firefox as my main on my home pc. I keep running into things that don't work on Firefox. Not by saying they don't, just by throwing errors that make it sound like I put the wrong data in a field. Is there some magic extension to fix that?
I remember the Quantum release. They remade how the browser handled tabs, and with the new release you could handle (almost) unlimited number of tabs. I tried this buy opening as many tabs as I could, it worked flawlessly. I can't even remember how it was before that, except that it was RAM intensive.
"intrusive ads" are the least of the problems, an adblocker is a critical part of any computer's security suite.
The internet advertisement companies wont police their ads from maleware, and untill they accept criminal and financial responsibillity when their ads cause harm to the users being served compromised ads from their networks, I won't even consider disabling my adblocker
as long as data caps exist anywhere on the planet all internet advertisement is theft.
I see your point but disagree with your hard take.
Firefox.
This is the way.
This is the way.
This is the way.
I miss the "dont be evil" version of google. Its like, large amounts of money ruin everything
It's not just large amounts of money. It's chasing more and more money each quarter, and when it starts slowing down panic sets in and they start trying to find any and every possible avenue to keep profits up. It's how we've ended up in subscription based hell and it'll only get worse.
There's only 34 million uBlock Origin users on Chrome? So, billions are using Chrome without any ad-blockers? That's crazy and unsafe
Lemmy has a really biased idea of what the average computer user can do. Imagine Janet in accounting, who calls help desk to reset her password every morning, and takes 30 minutes to remember how to check her email. Or the late GenZ just entering the workforce, who was surprised that their desktop wasn’t a touchscreen, and doesn’t know how a file structure works, because literally every device they’ve used growing up has been either a tablet or a Chromebook. That’s the average user.
My boss once asked me to take a look at her computer that was super slow and barely functional, and the thing that surprised me the most was that she had been running Chrome without any adblock since ever, and when I asked her about adblock, she answered: "adwhat?". Mind you that she's still a millennial, and only a few years older than me.
I had to use my parents desktop a when I flew home for a bit.
Surfing the internet is fucking stressful if you don't have adblocks. So overstimulating!!
I'm also on windows and for some reason I had to use Edge.
The Edge home screen is the VERY REASON google killed it back in the 90s. Clean clear search screen. Allows you to think what you are doing with out getting bombarded with ads and posts and ads and markets. Reminded me how terrible the search experience was back in Alta Vista and Yahoo days
There are also loads of people using Edge.
A lot of them don't know the difference between ab, abp ublock and ublock origin
There are billions of people on earth who don't have access to a computer.
It deserves mentioning that Firefox on Android supports extensions, so if you uninstall/disable the official YouTube app then add uBlock Origin and Sponsorblock you get a more tolerable experience.
Or just use Revanced or Grayjay, both of which are ad free and support sponsor block. Revanced is still a bit more feature complete imo, but also more buggy on my device, and more of a hassle to update. The browser YouTube experience is so bad, ads or ad free.
Can also use Vinegar (for YouTube) and Baking Soda (for basically every other site with videos) with Safari on iOS. It’s not a perfect solution, but it at least revamps Safari’s built-in video player so watching in the browser is actually tolerable.
You can also patch YouTube in a similar way as revanced on iOS, I use YTLitePlus. And for Adblock I use the Wipr extension and hush for blocking and auto rejecting cookie popups. No jailbreak needed.
At this point I am seriously wondering why people would like to use Chrome over Firefox for instance.
“What's a browser?” —the general populace
I just install uBlock Origin on every device I come across. Graffiti software.
Because I use chrome for standard use and Firefox for sailing the high seas. And I much prefer just having 2 separate browsers for containerization. I'm just going to have to use librewolf or something when I do get the the mv3 update.
I am using Firefox as of last week I made the switch to the browser a different password manager and so far it is fine but there have been a couple of hiccups but it's not necessarily a Firefox issue but an implementation with Android issue.
For example auto forwarding to an app from a webpage in Firefox has worked half the time for me and the other half not so much.
This is a small example, having Google Chrome and like wise the Google app be native to Android so they move back and forth between one another and are interchangeable while using my phone is much more smooth on my Android device.
Other than that, I am not positive as to why. On Desktop, zero issues. Works like a charm.
Its cool well just message the maintainers of Android to improve it, I'm sure it's a mistake. Lemme go check who who's behind it... /s
Use chrome to download Firefox.
Back in the day when I still used windows, I did not even use IE to download Firefox. I used the FTP functionality inside the explorer to download Firefox from the Mozilla FTP.
Personal preference I guess. I've tried Firefox many times over the years and always ended up going back to other browsers. I find Firefox doesn't render some pages quite right, the user agent stylesheet is odd, and the UI is less streamlined. Performance also used to be a problem although I hear it's caught up now.
I used to be a Chrome user but now I prefer chromium based alternatives like brave and edge (which incidentally, uBO will keep working on). Chrome is still required for work, but uBO change won't be an issue I think, there are plenty of other ad blockers that will work with MV3
I use multiple profiles in chrome for my different logged in usages, for some reason Firefox makes it hard to switch profiles.
Look up the Firefox Containers extension.
The profile manager is definitely annoying, but it shouldn't be that hard to visit about:profiles to switch / open other profiles. Afaik they do work on a better one though.
it has something like '-no-remote -p name' param on cmd that you can do it seamless like chromium, or u can use the fork of the drop official pwa firefox support, it could be better, i know n i get it, but if u just use chromium base for it, than i got u covered
Advertising company makes it harder to block ads on their browser, news at 11.
Or did anyone forget that they made an explicit effort to block another ad blocking extension a while back, including blocking it from the Chrome store, blocking you from installing it manually and even blocking at least some versions of it from being manually installed in developer mode?
Ad nauseam, because it also simulated ad clicks and thus ruined their metrics.
EDIT: Fucking phone autocorrect. "as clocks" -> "ad clicks".
Stallman was right.
It's pronounced GNU Stallman.
I can't listen or look at this man anymore after seeing him scrape shit off his feet and eat it in front of a bunch of people. 🤢
Too bad he spent all his energy getting Linux users to say GNU/Linux instead of talking about the real issues
Just because that's all you ever listened to doesn't mean that's all he ever said.
who
It's a very searchable name
Simple solution. Don't use Chrome.
Ive been testing out ungoogled chrome with uBlock, and it still seems to be working. But I think I'm going to add Waterfox along side of my Firefox to look at that one also.
But I'm also not sure you can install uBlock anymore from the Chrome repository either.
Not sure about the repo route, never went that deep with Chrome. Firefox has always been my mainstay (and Netscape before it.)
I wonder if this leaves Chrome users susceptible to ads that load malware, which has been a problem for the last decade, and a driver of adblocking extension development. You can get spyware and worms from Forbes, for instance.
Adblocking is not just a matter of a cleaner internet experience, but also of good internet hygiene
Oh yeah, I have a feeling we're about to see 2000s level bullshit on computers/phones again.
Google says Manifest v3 is being done "for security reasons" but what they don't say is that it's not for your security.
It's a Judge Dredd situation.
Google is vertically integrating the roles of content provider (ads) and content server so that web pages load exactly the way the page's developer expects them to. This necessarily excludes things that selectively filter content, like blockers.
They're essentially taking an open framefork for the web and replacing it with interactive pdfs, that show exactly what the web developer wants, and collects exactly the information the developer wants to know about you.
If you think you should have more control, use Firefox. Anyone using Chrome is complict at this point.
Ublock origin isn't the only ad blocker out there. If you like Ublock origin, use Ublock origin lite. It's fully V3 compliant.
Not so effective against the likes of YouTube allegedly.
We should all probably start donating to Firefox. Isn't Google their main source of income?
There might come a time when they prefer to gut Firefox, forcing Mozilla to either reject uBlock Origin or die (or they could simply pull the plug on funding knowing they'll earn more when people go back to Chrome-based browsers)
If they can pay 5-8 milion the CEO while laying off employees, they do not need donations.
Mozilla still does pretty good without any donations, and your donations will most definitely not be spent on Firefox.
This is what drives me mad about Mozilla. Let me donate to Firefox! I don’t want to donate to another hairbrained idea to “diversify your revenue streams” - I want to donate to Firefox.
As I’ve said many times before, Firefox would be better off as an opencollective-driven, smaller (50-ish) team, with code on Codeberg, than driven by a 600 strong org who needs to compete with SF salaries and fancy offices. They have become Google by another name and it ain’t healthy.
You're absolutely right, ~80% of Mozilla's revenue is from Google's paying to be the default search engine in Firefox - and the US is going after Google for it's anticompetitive behaviors as we speak. Ad blocking aside, Mozilla is going to need help pretty soon anyways if Google gets their monopoly broken up.
Possibly when the US government decides to break Google up next week.
Screw the mozilla foundation. My only hope at this point is that Ladybird or one of the other projects produces something viable one of these days.
I pulled the plug on allowing chrome user agents on my domain.
Granted its tiny but I'm making people switch.
This is the juncture.
P.s. yes I know the cavaets all my services work fine tyvm.
With Google providing 80% of Mozilla's finding, I think we can all see whats going to happen next.
I feel like this isn’t talked about enough. Sure
just use Firefox
But for how long is it gonna work that way until they too deprecate v2
Don't worry. Where there's a will, there's a way.
Personally I feel like I'm too addicted to Youtube (and Reddit, which is what brought me back here), so if I can't block ads, perhaps I'll be able to quit. To be honest though, even just disabling watch history and reducing subscriptions makes a massive difference to how addictive it is.
They're the only alternative for now.
The Google payments were never guaranteed for Mozilla. If they didn't have a backup plan in place to reduce spending, that's on them. Let Mozilla return to its garage opensource roots.
LibreWolf.
How long until YouTube blocks Firefox?
They can try. It won't work.
Anti-trust lawyers are rubbing their hands in anticipation.
There's an easy fix for this. 🔥🦊
It literally took me less than ten minutes to set up firefox. I carried all my bookmarks and passwords from edge and set up a mozilla account and everything is synced across linux, windows and android.
The only thing I'm worried of, is if some websites require chrome to work, as was the case with some government sites that only worked with internet explorer in the old days.
(Does anyone know if the default user agent is chrome? I used to log in a local streaming site from edge and it wouldn't work, as it required chrome, but I used an extension to take care of the user agent. On firefox it works no problem.)
I recommend the User-Agent Switcher and Manager Firefox addon for those struggling with some sites.
You can also report a broken site to Mozilla directly via the browser menu.
There was another (third-party?) page where you could report websites but I forgot its url.
I used this extension on edge to view one particular site (although I never managed to make it auto load on that page, but meh). As I said firefox seems to work without it for some reason.
I'm using the Chrome Mask extension on the few sites that complain
From my experience, most of those websites that want a specific browser require edge these days. Some streaming sites will only give FHD on edge, and HD streams on other browsers if at all (looking at you Vudu).
half of the websites are google-owned
I imagine most of us here already don't use Google Chrome, but I'll be spending some time proselytizing on the behalf of Mozilla for Firefox with the folks I run across.
Firefox
Librewolf
Stop using Chrome, it is adware at this point. Use Firefox or if that's too different, use Brave or Edge or a different chromium offshoot that isn't going to support manifest v3.
Weird that you tell people not to use Chrome because it’s adware but suggest Brave which is a crypto miner.
Man I just tried to throw out a Chromium fork that didn't use Manifest v3, I didn't realize Brave went off the deep end. Personally I use Firefox and Edge when I need to use Chromium and for work just because I find it's dev tools nicer.
False. Try again.
This was the plan all along
I wonder if the DoJ actually does split up Google if separating Chrome would make any difference with behavior like this?
Chrome on its own does not bring revenue. It would then require donations
I wonder if we could force a world where browsers are purely donation supported.
Chrome is used to get a tighter grip on the www and form it to Google's vision (one that is very anti consumer). If Chrome dies, it would be a net benefit for all.
Firefox downloads a spike by 30 million. Will be the next headline.
Although searches for Firefox only ticked up slightly.
One would hope but nothing much will change in reality.
Followed by shocked pikachu face.
I've used Librewolf since the first time Google announced these kinda plans I'm thinking it must be at least 3 years now.
Theres tons of options Librewolf is overkill to be honest Firefox would be fine.
I wonder if we trained an AI on the entire corpus of articles about how Google is gonna kill adblocking, if we could keep these articles going after most people switch uneventfully over to Lite.
Look like I need to convince my dad to switch now
Would he notice if you just installed Firefox and changed the icon to Chrome?
Reminds me of the time I did roughly the same thing trying to get people to move away from internet explorer.
This headline is premature. They haven't pulled the plug yet. I still have Chrome installed, fully updated, and all the extensions are still there.
and also ublock origin lite is still in the app store and works fine.
uBlock Origin Lite is a Manifest v3 compatible extension and was intended to be the successor of uBlock Origin on Chromium based browsers.
However, it is not at feature parity(and will likely never be due to restrictions in Manifest v3). One restriction is no element picking on websites and then adding them to custom filters.
I glanced at it and from a quick look I didn't see any way of adding custom blocklists.
so long dental plan!
Lisa needs braces!
Those who don't like FF can use brave, it's brave shield works well
Is ublock origin still operable for YouTube? Could this be related?
That is a choice thumbnail.
As long as chromium keeps it I'm fine. I use edge, why should I bother with downloading another browser when the one it comes with is identical?
The reason you're utilizing edge is valid, but why not use Firefox?
The headline is a bit overdramatic. Google hasn't pulled uBlock Origin off its extension webstore. Rather, it's switching from Manifest v2 to Manifest v3, which won't support features the current version of uBlock Origin needs to work. We've known this was in the process of happening for months. It's a good reminder of what's coming eventually (namely, the fact v2 extensions will be entirely disabled by Chrome soon), but this is nothing new.
Do you know if this is at the chrome or chromium level?
Chromium. However other chromium browser's have said they'll either patch it to keep manifest V2 compatibility, or they won't but you can still use their inbuilt ad-blocking.
Brave will continue to support manifest V2.
Awesome. Normies are getting sucker punched left and right. Keep it up, Google!
Unpopular opinion: the less people use ad block, the better the experience of those using ad blockers.
Remember the days before ad block detection and nag?
Sensationalist and inaccurate title
I'm using brave so who cares..
Wasn't it revealed a while ago that Brave was just a big crypto scam?
Also, it's chromium so... You're getting V3 eventually.
