3mo ago

Google looks to be fully shutting down unsupported extensions and ad blockers in Chrome – which might push some folks to switch to Firefox

www.techradar.com Google looks to be fully shutting down unsupported extensions and ad blockers in Chrome – which might push some folks to switch to Firefox

Manifesting a future where Firefox is more successful?

Google @lemmy.world

www.techradar.com /computing/chrome/google-looks-to-be-fully-shutting-down-unsupported-extensions-and-ad-blockers-in-chrome-which-might-push-some-folks-to-switch-to-firefox

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Technology @lemmy.world

Google looks to be fully shutting down unsupported extensions and ad blockers in Chrome – which might push some folks to switch to Firefox

www.techradar.com /computing/chrome/google-looks-to-be-fully-shutting-down-unsupported-extensions-and-ad-blockers-in-chrome-which-might-push-some-folks-to-switch-to-firefox

198 26

Technology @lemmy.world

Google looks to be fully shutting down unsupported extensions and ad blockers in Chrome, such as uBlock Origin – which might push some folks to switch to Firefox

www.techradar.com /computing/chrome/google-looks-to-be-fully-shutting-down-unsupported-extensions-and-ad-blockers-in-chrome-which-might-push-some-folks-to-switch-to-firefox

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26 comments

Misleading title. This is nothing new, just Manifest V2 being removed. Ad blockers like uBlock Origin Lite still work.

I'm worried about the direction of Mozilla, though. We need another :'(
- LibreWolf for desktop, Mull for Android.
  
  Keep in mind both LibreWolf and Mull are very slow because LibreWolf disabled WebGL, enabling higher privacy features, and Mull disabled JIT, a massive performance hit.
  This is for people who don't know then blaming Firefox being slow, LibreWolf and Mull are slower version of Firefox, just that.
  
  Aren't those Firefox with some patches?
- I won't be surprised at all. They bought an advertising network company and most of their user-tracking always was opt-out and “hidden” in about:config and this won't change now.
  They also released this pamphlet against an ad-free internet, so instead of being less intrusive with their spam and user tracking, this will become more and more annoying and complex to circumvent.
- Ladybird is slowly being worked on but I doubt we'll see people daily driving it for a few years yet.
  I wouldn't worry too much about Mozilla when it comes to Firefox at least. As long as they keep up with the backend then forks can clean the crud off.
  
  Ladybird needs to support openness & stop using MS GitHub & Discord as their only means of communication/collaboration.
- I installed ZenBrowser and it's pretty good. It's pretty, it works
  
  It's just reskinned Firefox though.

While at the same time Firefox implodes
- It really isn't all things considered

The average person doesn’t care. The average person doesn’t even know what a browser is. They think a browser is The Internet.
- They think Google is the internet. They will most likely type Google into the search bar to get to Google.
- I wouldn't call that average...
  However, people are likely to blame the extension
  
  It’s been a decade since I have done professional computer repair, but the lack of knowledge that people had always shocked me. I don’t mean surprised me, I mean outright shocked me with their ignorance. They just don’t care, and don’t want to care. Computers and the internet aren’t that important to A LOT of people, and no, they’re not all old.

The sad reality is, there was no significant change when they intentionally crippled the API to fight against ad blockers and there won’t be a significant change now.
- Its a booked frog strategy. Chrome used to be great and was quite open. The internet has ramped up advertising in general, tracking in general. So, ad blockers became more commonly used. So it started to hurt them much more. Its a self perpetuating problem of cat and mouse. Chrome being the platform while owned by the largest advertising company was never going to end well.
  However, there's not much between browsers these days in terms of technical ability. So, hopefully the trickle of movers becomes a wave. Open standards and competition are better for everyone.

You would hope so but some chromium forks still try maintain their own ad blockers. And I've seen people just jump between what ones still work, or those few who just give up on ad-blocking all together.
- There are also projects like qutebrowser which allow external programs to be plugins. In case of qutebrowser it uses the Chromium open source platform as rendering engine, etc. but completely relies on external Python scripts for plugins (including ad blocking).
  If Firefox goes down the Chrome route with their forced advertisement I can totally see something like this happening.

26 comments