Google Chrome pushes ahead with targeted ads based on your browser history

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to

Technology@lemmy.world – 426 points – 10 months ago

Google Chrome pushes browser history-based ad targeting

theregister.com

Google Chrome pushes ahead with targeted ads based on your browser history::YMMV, based on where you are

Good luck. I switched to Firefox months ago and couldn’t be happier.

Same.

I switched a few weeks ago, I have not been able to test it on a PC, but the Android app definitely feels slower than Chrome, Cromite and Vivaldi.

Enable Ublock origin. It'll be faster when it doesn't need to load ads.

It is enabled, I think the performance hit would come from Dark Reader... but it is a must have extension for me (the reason I dropped Chrome actually, since they ditched the ability to darken websites in recent chrome versions).

Switched? I've been using it since pre-1.0

I have chrome, but that's because my company's product uses it for our clients plugin. Only use it for work stuff.

Brave and Arc for me! F chrome ;)

Idk arc but brave is just a downstream of chromium with a little less Bs. We all know the discussion.

Brave is chrome with a fresh coat of paint

I like seeing the full cycle of Google Chrome starting out as the hero the world needed, to becoming the bloated pile of stalkerware trash like it had originally replaced.

Rest in piss Google chrome.

Was it ever needed? What has chrome provided that wasn't already available from other 3rd party and/or open source browsers?

The whole "faster than firefox" thing was greatly exaggerated, didn't last long, and was at least partially artificial as google has been found to intentionally gimp their sites on non-chrome browsers.

Chrome's UI was light years ahead of the competition. I'd be tempted to say they had an impact on the design of all desktop applications.

Yeah when they came out they did absolutely everything right. And they do no evil years they just kept nailing it time after time.

For folks that knew browsers other than Internet Explorer existed, no.

But for the vast majority of internet users, yes I think it was needed.

You either die a hero, or live long enough to become the villain.

Is there a lemmy sub for no shit sherlock? This post needs a link to that

have they not already been doing this ever since they created Chrome?

Yeah it honestly surprises me they haven't been doing this already. I mean at least on a smaller scale this has been Google's business model for a while now.

Yet another reason to ditch Chrome and go to Firefox.

I had to read the whole article to get to this info: Depending on what Chrome version you're using, and whether you've been selected to start using Topics API, you can switch this functionality off and on by visiting chrome://settings/adPrivacy and/or chrome://settings/privacySandbox – cut'n'paste these URLs into your address bar to jump straight to the controls.

Or don’t use chrome at all.

Easier said than done sometimes. Google is already doing what Microsoft used to do. They’re locking G suite features to Chrome, and if your company uses G suite, you made find yourselves in Chrome just so a damn thing works.

My company uses G Suite extensively, and I exclusively use Firefox. I haven't found a single thing that doesn't work in Firefox thus far.

Some lawyer somewhere will wind up with a fat payday if some important feature of Gmail/Sheets/Docs gets locked to Chrome exclusively, as soon as anyone notices.

FF is my daily driver (tho I do have to use other browsers for testing and such). G Suite works great for me in FF as well.

Unrelated to G Suite, Google search on mobile should work perfectly fine on Firefox, but Google has decided anyone not using chrome will get a "mobile" version of the site. There's an addon that fixes that by just changing the user-agent string.

2 more...

Latest thing I encountered, virtual backgrounds in Google Meet.

They work great for me in chromium based browsers like Arc or Brave

And those are basically Chrome.

WebKit, Gecko, and other rendering engines don’t always get full compatibility, even if they’re super standards compliant.

They use the chrome rendering engine but they are not chrome. You get the best of both worlds. Compatibility with your corporate g suite whatever with a security/privacy-first mindset (at least with Brave)

2 more...

Especially with some webapps too. My nas's only allows you to upload folders through chrome, completely unsupported on Firefox. They do however another service on a different site that does support folder upload on Firefox for some reason though. I don't get the disconnect.

You could ask them when they are going to support uploading through a modern browser like Firefox.

There are a lot of webapps only supported by chromium based browsers. A lot of development focuses on popular modern browsers. Firefox market share is under 5%. I use it because google has become more awful every year. I wish everything was supported on Firefox. It uses a different engine which provides challenges for some js and js libraries.

The amount of dev hours involved has to be justified by the user base that desires the feature. This is the case even for just adding new features. It’s annoying, because I can only test using chrome, and chrome dev tools is way worse than Firefox.

If we keep having to justify any development for other browsers, well end up with Chrome having all the market share!

I agree. I don’t choose what goes on the board though. And Firefox is less than 5% of the browser market share (likely less than 1% of our customer market share). The money folks are the ones who ultimately decide what gets put in the pipeline. Why would a company care about reducing chromes market share? If we had a bunch or a large customer asking for it, then we’d likely do something to fix the Firefox issues.

Being a modern browser doesn’t really matter. What matters to companies is their user base and the needs there in. Increasing profits and (if they’re a good company) user satisfaction. Majority will always outweigh the few in these cases.

Its going to get more and more difficult to be flexible as this company locks in their entire development pipeline into a single browser.

It will probably be more expensive to move away from Chrome if you DONT develop for other browsers now. All it will take is the company that owns Chrome deciding to exercise their Terms of Service and Privacy Policies to the best of their abilities. If you sprinkle in support for other browsers now, it wont take as much work when the huge overhaul is needed later.

The money guys are blinded by the dollar signs though.

I encounter a site that will only work in Chrome based browsers (or at least won't work in Firefox) about once a month. I've yet to encounter one that will only work in Chrome proper.

2 more...

You can switch it now but obviously it's just a matter of time til you won't be allowed to.

This is why chrome is for work only. Firefox for everything else.

Nah, Firefox with UserAgent Switcher for work.

For me it's Chrome for work, because we're not allowed to install anything on our machines :(

Is there a portable firefox?

If they're not allowed to install their own software, they probably aren't allowed to use USB drives

You're absolutely right! USB storage devices are blocked and we don't have the right to execute arbitrary executables anyway. It is a pretty secure environment.

Apologies, I am the one who makes those decisions. So I give firefox to those who will take it and no matter what I make sure Google isn't their default search engine.

I manage a team of about 30 people in IT. Your job is not valued enough, and I know the importance of what you do. Thank you for your work!

And also .... When you give users the choice to turn something on or off but don't tell them that the thing is on and also make it inconvenient for them to turn it off ....

... Most users won't turn it off.

It cant be compliant with gdrp

2 more...

Install Firefox Install Firefox Install Firefox!

Maybe avoid software from an ad company?

🔥 🦊