Google gets its way, bakes a user-tracking ad platform directly into Chrome

teft@startrek.website to Technology@lemmy.world – 1390 points –
Google gets its way, bakes a user-tracking ad platform directly into Chrome
arstechnica.com
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Riiiight, because Google wasn't doing sneaky tracking shit leading up to this. This time, they'll surely switch, all dozens of them, and a couple might even use Firefox. woohoo

Reality: https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share

Someone reply to me saying they just switched to make this a perfect internet circlejerk.

Unironically, yeah, this is the nail in the coffin for me.

But think about it. You’re talking on Lemmy - currently a niche messaging board with a tech focused audience. I don’t think you’d count as the average Chrome user. Most people won’t hear about this or if they do, won’t care.

'Average user' just means all traits proportionally blended together, right? Lemmy users are not a huge part of the internet, but our contribution to the 'average' is just a big as any other person; and our opinions and knowledge and behaviour does matter. Some might argue that the opinions of tech-focused people matter more because they are more likely to influence other people about tech decisions.

So yeah, we're a niche group - but the discussion and sharing of ideas is important.

I honestly don’t get why people think chromium browsers are good, for example Firefox in my use case is far faster than chrome… by a long shot. Also if you want to argue…

https://treeherder.mozilla.org/perfherder/graphs?highlightAlerts=1&highlightChangelogData=1&highlightCommonAlerts=0&series=mozilla-central,3735773,1,13&series=mozilla-central,3412459,1,13&timerange=86400

Mostly for increased privacy but also additional features. Firefox and it's forks are usually relatively limited in feature set.

Speed isn't a problem on any of them for me.

something about the way it [chrome] handles memory isolation means i get fewer blue screens at work with all my bloated browser tools loaded at the same time. I have to have ~15 tabs open. It is not my laptop, so I cant go around experimenting with plugins much.

then again who gives a flying fart if chrome tracks me while i use the same internal browser tools day in and day out?

I cannot drag my tabs out properly. Its been the dealbreaker for many years for me, they dont fix it, but i just deal with it now because google is too evik.

That was also my experience with Firefox. I tried it one time because I kept hearing it was better than chrome, and then the absolute first thing I noticed is that they can't get tab dragging right.

I don't care how much more "private" it is than chrome. If you can't even get the first impression on absolute basic UI elements right, I simply have no faith in your browser

Maybe I'll use Firefox when it matures a bit

Its been around for like 20 years though

Sometimes there is a proverbial straw to break a camel’s back.

I mean, for some percentage of users this will be it. Will it be a significant share of Chrome users? Probably not, but it just means those of us who got people to switch to Firefox in the 00’s and Chrome in the early 10’s need to be as vigorous with getting people off Chrome now.

I used chrome since it was launched and this summer I switched to Firefox on all devices.

What's your thoughts on Orion? It's weirdly niche, but has been killer for me.

Orion is not open source so that’s a no. There is no way to know that what they tell us is true. If they free their code it might become my go to browser as well.

There is a way to tell - just check the binary. Actually, you need to check binaries of open source apps as well.

Check the binary for current outgoing traffic? Sure but instant traffic is not the only way to be tracked, and it is particularly difficult to get an overview for a browser.

A open source project is automatically safer to use. Sure, any binary can be injected with crap but in a closed source app there is really no way to know anything for sure.

The binary is your source. And it's THE ONLY source of truth.

Sure the binary is what I run, but I am not following what your point is. If you are paranoid about binaries from an open source project, just compile it yourself. It’s easy. That’s just not an argument against open source.

I'm not arguing against open source. What I'm saying is that binary is NOT an issue. You can analyze it exactly the same way you can do with source code.

downvoted for stating facts. I can only give you one updoot brother, you're the hero we need.