I knew about that. They also pay to be the default search engine on Firefox.
But my joke was that these changes make it seem like they don't want people to use Chrome anymore and switch to Firefox instead. If users knew about this stuff and understood it, Firefox would bounce back.
I have already begun to move from Google services.
Look for other large corporations to continue this trend: offer a product to the masses for free, wait until you have little to no competitors and dominate in market share, then put it behind a pay wall or strongarm changes that most of the population doesn't understand. Oracle did it with Java, knowing most companies were too invested to look for alternatives, and now Google is doing it with their Chrome baked-in privacy changes and ad crackdown.
I expect to see more of this trend from "free" services as the people continue to wake up and take their personal data seriously. We know the government(s) won't do a thing to change the status quo, and I have no idea what else to do other than cry into my ramen and binge watch the death of a planet in 4K!
Unfortunately, the rich keep scarcity high to ensure they not only make the most money, but they can use less money to buy favors from those with less. Man greed sucks...
It’s even more insidious when you look at the shit Amazon does, im almost certain they hyper-aggressively track the popularity of products not made by them, ones that are made by small companies (and even individuals in some cases) for the sole purpose of seeing what’s popular with the masses and then they make their own shitty version of said product followed by undercutting the original products cost significantly. And when people go to search they of course put their shit product at the top of the search page so that’s the one the unaware will always buy. It’s kind of a genius business model if we are being honest, if you’re an absolute shit stain that completely lacks morals that is. I just can’t believe they’ve been allowed to do this for so long under the radar because I feel like I never hear people talk about that particular scummy tactic they use.
If users knew about this stuff and understood it, Firefox would bounce back.
I wish that were true. But how long have companies like Google and Meta been tracking people? Ask anyone on the street if they think Google and Meta know everything about them and they'll say "yes but I don't care" or "yes but it's unavoidable". There's just no way people don't know by now what incredibly invasive corporations they are. They just don't care.
I do think they know these companies are invasive, but they don't fully understand the ramifications of it, nor do they care to.
While I agree at some level, most users aren’t like you or me. They are my mom, my boss, my mailman. They only care about convenience, and understanding even the difference between browsers is one thing, let alone why they should use a different one. Unfortunately I don’t think that’s likely to change. If it was, Facebook wouldn’t exist, if those people cared about their online privacy they wouldn’t use the platform, but here we are
Yeah, people knew enough to ditch IE for Firefox, but I think Google's marketing convinced everybody that Chrome was the best. Most people tell me they use Chrome because it's the fastest.
Yeah early on when chrome was released I was a big proponent of it. But that was in Google’s earlier days before they adopted Microsoft’s EEE policy
Really? I always hated it. It was such a resource hog compared to Firefox, and that only got worse as Firefox improved.
My main Linux distro at the time, Fedora, wouldn't even ship Chromium because of how difficult and inefficient it was to package. It leaves a bunch of Google crap on Mac too.
Was it better on Windows or something? Because it's always been crap on Linux and Mac.
In 2008? Sure, chrome was lightning quick, especially with V8 on the JS side, granted this was on Mac. It was only a matter of time before it became google’s ad platform though
Maybe the Linux version was ahead of Mac and Windows in 2008. It was already crap then. lol
I’m a JavaScript dev by trade. V8 was light years ahead when it came out, the specs on runtime compilation were off the charts. I’m not defending google by any means, but the work that went into V8 is how nodejs was created, and Firefox has adapted many of those learnings into its own JS engine. Google was and always has been a corporation for profit, but their engineers really pushed JS into a new stage with their engine, whether or not the browser around it was great
I made the switch a few weeks ago. While the transition was a little inconvenient, I got everything set up in maybe an hour or two. Performance was wacky for a few hours after that, but it's settled now for my purposes.
You definitely have to finagle the browser with add-ons and other about:config things to make it work for you, but after that yeah I can say I prefer Firefox over Chrome!
Now I just need to deGoogle everything else...
I actually never stopped using Firefox. I tried Chrome/Chromium on and off since it came out in 2008, but I never understood the appeal. Chrome looks more minimal, but it always ran like crap on Linux and Mac for me. Was it better on Windows or something? The constant memes about Chrome's RAM and CPU usage would lead me to believe it isn't.
Please, everyone, stop using Chrome. This is an easy vote with your wallet that doesn't even require your wallet.
Complacency means the internet gets worse, ads get worse, nickel and diming gets worse. It's the easiest chance to take a stand you'll ever have.
I'm fairly confident no one here is using Chrome.
I use it at work because of it has the best dev tools. Although edge is pretty much the same so I could use that, but not much of an ethical upgrade.
I use it at work because of it has the best dev tools.
Every Chromium fork has those same tools.
I know that. I acknowledged that in the next sentence when I talked about edge.
But it still wouldn't stop me from using chrome because I need to test with it. It's what most of our end users use. I'm not about to install Vivaldi or something when we don't even support it, and none of our users use it.
Okay so I'm just not sure what your point is then.
I am ...
Serious question: let's say I continue using Chrome and Privacy Sandbox becomes the norm. How does my internet experience get worse?
One key change in the short term is the Topics API. This is the replacement for 3rd-party cookies in Privacy Sandbox. Basically, it allows sites to query your browser directly about what topics you enjoy, and Chrome will respond with topics based on analysis of your browsing history to allow for targeted ads. If it seems strange that a new "privacy" feature is still serving up data about you for targeted ads -- it is. And in fact, a lot of the proposed changes potentially just give Google more sway to act as a middleman, which ultimately gives them more data.
Will your experience change immediately? Likely not, but as with many things in this space, it's about the dangers of the path and its longer term implications, specifically here about corporate controls and softening the definition of "privacy".
I know what the Topics API does. I'm asking for a concrete example of exactly how it's going to make my internet experience worse. (That Register article doesn't provide one.)
Losing privacy makes your internet experience worse. That seems pretty clear to me, but if you don't care about corporations being better suited to target ads to you, then I don't think anyone would be able to convince you that these changes are bad.
I'd love to debate this with you properly but I've got COVID right now and don't have the energy to put together a decent response, sorry. Basically I just don't see how the specific features in the new Chrome build let advertisers do anything they can't already do. I don't see how they contribute to ads getting worse, or where "nickel and diming" comes into it.
But donating your money can not make firefox independent.It will only make firefox more revenue.
Google wants to keep mozilla afloat to stay out of anti-competitive allegations.
If mozilla gets market share, google will defund them. That mozilla have a money will help.
Also mozilla's other projects are also good ;)
Also big CEO wallets.
Nothing in comparison to others but there is some special pay going.
But it's definitely the lesser of the evils.
Some of Mozilla's other projects are good, iirc there was a journalist a few years ago who chronicled how Mozilla had donated a lot of money to other charities unrelated to it's goal rather than reinvesting in the business so that it can try to ween off of Google reliance.
And the money won't go to Firefox, but Mozilla's other projects.
Firefox has been my go-to, but I've left Chrome installed just to have on hand incase some website fuckiness could be solved with a browser change.
Naw. It's not worthy of staying around even for that. Time to completely scrub my devices of google.
Feeling the same, it’s surprising how many companies are just leaning towards screwing users for a few more pennies on the dollar. Eventually, Google with be the next AOL.
Just need their Time-Warner to put the last nail in the coffin
We can only pray, the ghouls.
Eventually, Google with be the next AOL.
I am anti-google all day, but that's ridiculous.
I've been doing similar; been using Firefox, but Chrome is installed for its browser-wide automatic captioning. Not something I need often, but I rely on it for the occasional remote meeting here and there. I'm sure free automatic captioning applications exist for my operating system, but I'd have to actually test each one to see if they actually work, and it's just been so convenient keeping Google's around.
(Speaking of which, if anybody happens to have recommendations for free automatic captioning software that works on Ubuntu, I seem to be in the market...)
I suggest to use chromium as the backup "in case a webpage doesn't work on Firefox" browser. All the compatibility but no telemetry.
But why use chromium or any chromium based browser since google disabled ad blocking plug-ins?
I suggest it as the backup browser. Use Firefox and if you need to open something that only works on chrome, I'd rather use chromium, so Google doesn't rape your computer when trying to use the internet.
Eh, did they? I'm sure I still have Ublock Origin on the work browser, which is Chrome.
just fyi, when Mv3 (at least googles version of it) will completely replace Mv2 ... uBO or for that matter any content/ad-blocker might not be able to perform as well on chrome based browsers.
Nah, I use Edge for that. Chrome is only for work for me, but I think I'm going to migrate to another Chromium-based browser for that.
The site you've linked to literally uses Facebook and Google browser trackers. Pretty hypocritical of them if you ask me.
It's always funny/sad to see that "we care about your privacy" doublespeak on an article about digital privacy
So my takeaway from this is to never use Chrome again? Gotcha.
If everyone who said they were going to do this actually did this, Chrome wouldn't do this, if that makes sense.
Or, idk, regulators could like, do their jobs.
Unfortunately, if the government had one single source to secretly control/monitor the world wide web from then they would gladly stand back and do nothing.
Having said that, I truly hope I'm wrong. And they are probably already doing what I described upstream from the browser anyways.
It’s really irritating but some websites only work on Chrome for me. They range from work related to Google Meet instances. I only use it then but yeah.
I don't think I've used Google Chrome itself for over 3 years now (excluding on other people's devices). I don't plan to ever use it again either.
At one point I was switching back and forth, because I'd see a general decline in Firefox for some reason. I don't know if it was just getting overloaded with extensions that were hitting its performance or if my machine itself was having problems or if Firefox's performance was shit for awhile, but I'd switch from Firefox to Chrome, try going back to Firefox, then back to Chrome, but I've been with Firefox for a good few years now without issue. The browser "market" is even crowded now, there's no reason to go back to Chrome, since there's so many other choices out there (though avoiding Chromium might be a little bit trickier).
You guys are way to late to quit chrome, and you probably won't at this point. This is what happens when you don't swap, you enable this anti-consumer monopoly behavior.
I change from Chrome to Firefox recently on all devices and it was a pretty easy transition.
Doing same thing right now... only two things I will miss are chromecast and page translation.
Good news about page translation, Firefox is adding it, and it's all done locally too, no phoning home to their or somebody else's translation servers.
I wonder if there's an extension for Chromecast support? Might be worth looking into
Good news about page translation, Firefox is adding it, and it's all done locally too, no phoning home to their or somebody else's translation servers.
Till then there is this open source extension which provides the same functionality including local offline translation
Sadly, no, there is no chromecast extension (which I am aware of).
Actually there is one, but it's not very good if I'm being honest ( but workable).
I'm kind of surprised that no open source project of renown has ever decided to implement that on Firefox well.
There is? What's it called?
Just search for it from within Firefox, from the mods tab. That's how I found it the first time.
I did, but found nothing.
Don't know what to say, that's how I found it.
I'll try to remember the next time I am in front of my computer to look it up and post here.
For translation you can use this. Since you can use Google translation service as the backend(?), it works as good as Google translate atleast in my experience
Thanks a lot, this extension looks very much as what I need. I wish Apple stopped their WebKit policy on iPhone so I could use it on mobile Firefox too…
For the time being I'm using TWP for translation. Seems to work flawlessly
I'm using 2 extensions from the Firefox store, Simple Translate and Translate This Page. If one goes down, I use the other. Sometimes I use translate.yandex.ru as well.
I think libretranslate has a extension but I could be wrong
only two things I will miss are chromecast and page translation.
You can use your phone to start the chromecasting, and translate.google.com lets you also put in a weblink to translate a whole page at once.
I've only had issues with Nordpass crashing occasionally when auto-filling, but it's otherwise pretty seamless
the main thing holding me back is the password manager in Chrome and having to basically use 2 browsers as passwords are slowly saved to a new system
Do yourself a favour and get Bitwarden or similar. Browser password managers are way too vulnerable.
That's clever meme template usage if I've ever seen one
does this happen on Linux too?
i have to keep chrome around for sites that breaks with ff / ublock, but i only open it when i need it.
I have a chromium install lying around for that. Bizarrely the online conferencing tool my bank uses has issues with Firefox despite advertising Firefox support which is pretty much the only thing I need the Chromium browser for
Back in the old days when a software contains these crap, considered as adware/malware and people get their pitchforks.
Now: its normal.
Modern software: Please insert anal probe.
Average user: OK 😀
It's sickening.
there's a whole class of users born with smartphone, those were not techie or concerned, then you have the other class who don't know really anything about these things which only use smartphones.
even discussing with family about privacy is difficult. "but everyone use it"... gosh.
then you have some of my IT colleagues - there for the good money job - which don't care with the motto: I have nothing to hide.
anyway, stay true to your principles no matter what.
I blame these "tech youtubers" who don't understand anything technical and keep repeating the script which the company provides them. I saw this idiot MKBHD telling his viewers how a phone has a "beast mode".
Wtf is a beast mode? ! Non technical guys eat shit like this and proceeds to buy because the phone has beast mode lol.
These are exactly my thoughts about tech YouTubers. They have no idea what they're talking about and encourage mindless consumption. Glad I'm not the only one who's thought about this.
I work in tech, and I’m still using Chrome. I don’t like it, and I know a lot of other tech people are in the same boat, but I can’t just switch. That’s what I’m working towards, but the amount of tooling we use every day that depends on specifically Chrome is, significant to say the least. This is tooling we built internally to help ourselves, that depends on Chrome-specific APIs that are either different, or do mot yet exist in Firefox.
We’re working to port this stuff over to Firefox, but that takes time, and not everyone can just drop what they are doing to reimplement the tooling they already have in a different browser. On top of userspace tooling, we also have tens of thousands of unit tests based in some part on chrome (through tools like jest and puppet) to validate certain aspects of massive distributed web platforms that cannot easily be unit tested in normal code (though we have high coverage where we can). These also need to be ported, and are VERY specific to Chrome (or Chromium in some cases) in particular. We’re talking entire teams of people, and tens of thousands of man hours.
A lot of users truly can just switch at the drop of a hat. The UI switch is annoying sure, but its doable. For a lot of users in the tech space though, it’s just not feasible to drop Chrome overnight. We’ve started the process to be clear, but it’s going to be a very long transition.
Every single thing about Google sucks nowadays. Great job Sundar, you successfully turned one of the former most exciting companies on the planet into one of the absolute lamest.
It was shit even before Sundar Pichai became the CEO
He did a great job shitting it up further, also.
Switched back to Firefox. Easy transition. Fuck Google.
Except websites that will tell you "Use a modern browser, switch to Chrome to view this page".
This sort of thing is becoming more and more pervasive. I'm genuinely worried that between this and web DRM, there will be no where to hide from corporate America ducking everyone over with their greed.
I've been using Firefox for over 5 years now and I don't think I've ever seen this message?
There has been a handful of times when a page just won't work correctly and I have to switch to edge, but that is super rare and has probably been less than 10 occasions
the feature they just implemented will start to trigger this. there is a hardcore push for corporate to go all in on chromium for tracking/drm reasons similar to how IE had that market in the past. as a firefox user im kinda terrified were out of options.
were not talking about what the experience was, but what it will be
99% of the time you can just tell the website that firefox is actually chrome using the User Agent Switcher plugin and it will work perfectly. Unfortunately that 1% exists because chrome likes to add features that aren't web standards that irresponsible devs then use and break compatibility with other browsers
Time to uninstall chrome. Can I move my passwords, bookmarks and saved data there? How do I do it?
When you install any browser (Firefox recommend) it ask you if you want to transfer browser data. It will guide you through (its pretty much automatic)
just adding that granted FF already has a decent password manager there are also reliable, free and open source and audited independent password manager like as
Bitwarden (remote service as basic or premium plan, optionally self hosted, user friendly service, very likely has some account migration wizard tool to help importing data from browsers) and
The only reason I use chrome is for the passwords feature and realising that it is a separate service to android password manager has made it pointless. I thought changing phones would be easier as it had my bank apps and everything in chrome but it never promoted.
to manage passwords, use bitwarden
is not tied to any browser, it sync between devices and it's free.
there are clients for Android and desktop, most likely ios too.
Now that Firefox is getting in-page translation capability, Chrome does not offer any features I am missing anymore. As long as they don't start performance wars, like the shit that happened with Youtube a while ago, I'll be fine
Wait really? Is it on the stable version or do I need to install beta/nightly?
That's fantastic if the quality is good. I only use chrome now for pages purely in Japanese that I need to deal with and can't properly read in full yet (which, living in Japan, is a fair few, heh). EDIT: Bah, no Japanese support. Oh well; some day.
Thanks, didn't realize it's an add-on. Much better because now I can use it on Librewolf. :D
you can also set browser.translations.enable to true in about:config for full-page translations. it's kinda slow and the languages are limited compared to google translate, but other than that it's fine. also, it works offline if you install the languages https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/website-translation
Offline translation, nice. I'm gonna miss Opera GX stylish theme but I'm ready to ditch Chromium-based browser again, at least on desktop :D
Edit: I'be checked the add-on, unfortunately my mother language and other popular languages are not supported yet.
So as far as i know, firefox is the only mayor browser not based on chromium. Also, firefox is dependent on google's funding because of a search engine exclisivity deal. So my understanding is that, if google decides to kill firefox, they could easily do that. Well, what then? Is there any other browser left wich similar features that would be untouchable by google?
They couldn't kill Firefox without having the US government come down on them for monopoly. Which the government is already looking at https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/24/tech/doj-google-lawsuit/index.html , so it's not likely Google will risk it even further by shitting down funding to Firefox. Pretty sure they'll point at Firefox to claim they're not a monopoly.
So the lawsuit appears to be looking at Google as a search engine monopoly, not web browser, right? And if I'm understanding this right, assuming this lawsuit goes anywhere, it would actually incentivize Google to pull funding from Firefox to no longer support that search engine exclusivity deal.
Google still benefits from having Firefox around, so that they can maintain less of an appearance of a monopoly in the browser space. Whatever way they fund Firefox, it's still to their benefit to do so.
This is pretty much the same situation as when Apple faced bankruptcy a while back and Microsoft essentially bailed them out.
Having an effective monopoly is better than a literal one for legal reasons
We need to extend our laws to effective monopolies too, fuck this shit
Fun fact, Firefox used to be called.... Netscape.. Yeah... Let's see how many miklenials are in here!
Sort of. Netscape released the program's source code and Firefox used that as a base, but it wasn't like they took Netscape and just changed the name to Firefox like your comment implies. They were competing browsers for a while.
Fair enough. My bad.
And remember what happened when Microsoft tried to kill Netscape? That needs to happen again, but against Google.
I've just browsed with Netscape. But did not know this fact.
I've been corrected that it is a branch off of, not a direct evolution of, Netscape.
This should be the top comment, and I'm going to come back to view the replies. I can't personally think of any realistic alternatives. Someone further down posted a link to an article about the US investigating Google for a search engine monopoly, but I'm not sure how large a role that would factor into web browsers.
You have to decide for yourself if those browsers have the features you need, but just for your interest, other non-chromium browsers are Ladybird, NetSurf, Flow, Pale Moon, Basilisk and K-Meleon.
We will have to maintain a Chromium fork with their trackers removed, if it comes to that.
Likely Google won't do anything until or unless the bulk of the public moves off of Chrome over this.
I tried to preach why Google sharing your browsing history with ad partners is bad, but most of my friends don't seem to care. :(
It's frustrating, I get it too. Nobody cares until the leopard bites their face. Then it's too late, and we're all affected by their indifference/laziness/ignorance.
I think people care, but there is a lot of inertia. i.e. it takes a lot of little nudges for people to change their habits.
The whole point of the Privacy Sandbox is that Google is NOT sharing your browsing history with advertising partners. All that's shared is information about whether or not your usage of Chrome suggests an interest in specific topics. The current list of topics is here: https://github.com/patcg-individual-drafts/topics/blob/main/taxonomy_v1.md
Honestly, I was already using FF for my home. Made the switch on Mobile after seeing this on the news yesterday. I'm just one person though.
I've also switched to FF on both desktop and mobile because of this. So there's two of us!
Moi makes trois!
I've been using Firefox Mobile for years. It's never let me down and having mobile adblock is great
Yeah, I made the switch on Mobile when YouTube's ads started getting super annoying. Ad block is a killer app in my book.
I switched my whole family several years back. Nobody has any issues with it.
Not used anything but Firefox for the last 10 years or so. Can't remember how long I've used DDG for. Fuck Google and all who fail in her.
It's lucky I haven't used Chrome in years. Firefox is much appreciated these days.
I should have never left Firefox when chrome came out. Its good to be back. Especially before any of this happened.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Unlike the glitzy front-page Google blog post that the redesign got, the big ad platform launch announcement is tucked away on the privacysandbox.com page.
The blog post says the ad platform is hitting "general availability" today, meaning it has rolled out to most Chrome users.
This has been a long time coming, with the APIs rolling out about a month ago and a million incremental steps in the beta and dev builds, but now the deed is finally done.
Users should see a pop-up when they start up Chrome soon, informing them that an "ad privacy" feature has been rolled out to them and enabled.
That's actually what started this whole process: Apple dealt a giant blow to Google's core revenue stream when it blocked third-party cookies in Safari in 2020.
Google says it will block third-party cookies in the second half of 2024—presumably after it makes sure the "Privacy Sandbox" will allow it to keep its profits up.
The original article contains 588 words, the summary contains 159 words. Saved 73%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Who could have possibly have forseen that a company that makes nearly all of its revenue from data mining and advertising would one day use a popular software tool as a means of data mining and advertising. This is like wheels-within-wherls thinking right here.
Finally un-installed chrome on Windows.
Is this enough to remove traces?
Go to this location:
C:\Users\YOUNAME\AppData\Local\Google
C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\
And delete that "Chrome" folder (for both location, if there is a Chrome folder)
A friend of mind in IT suggested revouninstaller. I have never used it in practice but he says it might be helpful in this case.
I use that everytime I go to uninstall something. You can configure it to scan your system registry and local files for residual files that the software's uninstaller won't remove.
bakes a user-tracking ad platform directly into Chrome
Does disabling this as described in the article truly disable it, meaning if you do, after Chrome blocks 3rd party cookies late next year (assuming they follow through on that), you won't be tracked by either?
Wjy bother asking? Just use different browser. Google is big fucking red flag and now it's waving right in front of everybody's face.
Unless it explicitly says so, I'd assume the worst option, i.e. that you'll be tracked one way or another.
nuked that shit from my machine.
only going to use it inside a VM now for testing purposes
Chrome is for the surveillance state
I already use Firefox for everything that's not literally for my D&D stuff. Because some relevant fan sites don't display properly on Firefox for some stupid reason. That's it. So even if they manage to get past my blockers, they literally are telling me nothing I will ever care about because I already have/know where to get any relevant thing those ads might be shilling, and the rest is all irrelevant noise.
Same, though those D&D websites work in Brave with the usual blockers turned on (uBlock + Brave's blockers), so maybe its an engine thing?
In regards to the argument that google pays firefox and could easily kill it off I doubt it. Even if they were so bold as to cut funding completely (which they are not) you will find that Mozilla will have at some point have to cut loose their CEO or cut their huge pays down and make some changes there followed by some clever moves to find another source of income. If worse comes to worse the community will come to its aid and it will go back into the hands of the community which is likely a very good thing but Google has another approach to all of this and are incrementally trying to lock firefox or any non compliant browser or competitor out of the internet.
Google has been doing it for years now. They hijacked web standards also along the way.
I think people are either forgetting the roots of chrome or how it came about as being PUP and foistware bundled along with popular freeware software or anyone they could pay to bundle their software with but earlier than that it was a toolbar that piggybacked onto IE (for its marketshare) and than I believe even Firefox too.
People also seem to have this belief that when Chrome came out it was absolutely revolutionary and brilliant but the truth is that it was garbage but people fell for it like a shark to a bucket of chum. To me Chrome was pretty much your Bonzi Buddy of browsers. And google a complete scourge on the internet.
As for webkit that old chestnut. The only reason why that is popular at all is because Apple makes sure that you cannot use any other browser or makes it as difficult as possible not to mention the largest part of their user base comes from their iphone without that they're pretty much scraping the bottom of the barrel. IMO
Yes, Google is just as bad if not worse in many cases as they leverage their android phone market, run ads on TV specifically designed to push chrome and also built an entire laptop (all be it a terrible one) and called it a chromebook to make sure they keep their dominance but lets not also forget they bought youtube also to stack the odds in their favor. Same ol' Google really.
The browser wars are dead! We just settle for the lesser evil these days.
Saying that this is better for your privacy is like saying I only get punched in the face every second day rather than every day now.
Taking all of the above away and if there is one reason fewer people should be using chrome or chromium based browsers and using something else such as Firefox or a fork is to maintain a balance and take away some of the power and influence they (Google) do have over the web so they will not be able to force things such as WEI and take away many of the freedoms from the net in which we grew up on as too did the internet.
The Freedom of exchange of information was never meant to be conditional or the internet held to ransom by one company but this is where we are at so its time for a change of hands or a the balance of power to be restored.
Bringing balance will also force sloppy and lazy web developers to stop build dirt poor websites and deliberately blocking out other browsers. Web standards need to be restored and be completely independent from one entity or another, be it google, Mozilla, Apple or any one else in between.
I haven’t used another browser outside of Safari for almost a decade and I’d never dream of using anything made by Google.
I cant get Google drive links to stream in Firefox, thus I still keep Google Chrome around. Am I doing something wrong or is there a work around?
Usually an issue like that is due to me having something blocked in uBlockOrigin or some other extension.
I think they worked for me without issue or me doing anything special (a month or so ago though) so there's likely something you can do to get it to work.
I can check later today if they still work with whatever firefox setup I have
I appreciate that, yeah let me know if there's anything that stands out to ya
Yeah I can confirm it works with no issues for me.
Only extension is ublock origin (no settings changed) and Firefox is on version 117.0
It's probably either an extension that's breaking it for you or Google is doing some A B testing that's only breaking it for some people
this probably still won't make people switch to Firefox.
As a seamonkey user - aka mozilla, the flagship product that Mozilla deemed was too hard to maintain - I'm just surprised Firefox is still going. We joked at the time that Mozilla would find a browser too hard, then a rendering suite, then a library, then an algorithm, and finally a line of code.
(tribalists - I'm not picking on Firefox, so calm your knickers. I'm still just picking on Mozilla)
You can just disable it when it pops up. I hope it continues to warn new users when first setting it up.
Yes, it seems to be trendy to use this as a reason to switch to Firefox, but surely you can just totally disable this new feature in Chrome? The article even tells you how to do this. I guess people are switching as a protest?
I should have specified,I meant open source version/app,or official. I prefer open source,but at one time fdroid had several versions,but I'm not against the stock app. I've been ootl for a while on what's up with ff.
No, Mullvad browser is built from and in conjunction with Tor browser, which is built from Firefox. It works really well if you leave it stock, which is the whole purpose. Blending in with all users.
Thank you!
I am pretty new to the privacy concerns. All the browsers and forks and stuff seems pretty confusing.
Is Mullvad better than Firefox? I have not found out how to tell.
Is Mullvad better than Firefox?
That's hard to qualify. The question needs to be more specific. Is Mullvad better than Firefox* at what*? Firefox is a great general browser with decent security and privacy in mind. It allows you theme and modify to your desire. However, any time you add theming or extensions it makes your browser more unique and identifiable. The more you add, the more unique. Stock Firefox is a little promiscuous for my liking and I usually install UBlock Origin and add a little css, like Betterfox. You can create a new Firefox profile which you can swap between depending on the purpose of the window. Or, you can just add a user.js file to your existing Firefox profile. This is called "hardening", and there's many different hardening css available. Some make most things unusable, so a balance is recommended. If you're on Linux you could just use Librewolf which is a sandboxed Flatpak app that is built from Firefox, and, has a great balance of security and privacy tweaks out-of-the-box.
Then we have Mullvad browser. Is it better? Maybe it isn't as fast. Maybe it doesn't open some web pages that stock Firefox would. However, Mullvad is brilliant at making you blend in. Mullvad have created the browser with a great balance of privacy and security tweaks that harden it somewhat. What it does, just like Tor browser, is make your online "fingerprint" look like thousands of other people's browsers. As long as you don't identify yourself somehow there's a better chance at anonymity. Identifying yourself could include logging in a known account, adding themes or extensions or using social media. Read more about it here.
I recommend you use both. A lightly hardened Firefox that you use for general purpose, and a Mullvad for browsing, searching and shopping (not purchasing). Mullvad browser is best used with a VPN that lumps your IP in with many other VPN users, like MullvadVPN or IVPN.
I hope this helps.
At least it's opt-in?
Dark patterened AF
Do you trust Them to keep it opt-in?
Given the fact it's pushed through despite widespread disapproval of this development, I wouldn't.
Haha nah probably not
For now.
Probably to see how it fairs before Chrome turns off third party cookies.
Anyone know a good Google Chrome replacement on Android that is chromium based? Wanna a basic browser that I'll use when Firefox does not work correctly
Yay for Firefox
Sounds like they really want people to use Firefox!
They fund Mozilla a ton on purpose. They want a small subset of people to use Firefox. It keeps them from the monopoly investigations
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-05-05/why-google-keeps-paying-mozilla-s-firefox-even-as-chrome-dominates
I knew about that. They also pay to be the default search engine on Firefox.
But my joke was that these changes make it seem like they don't want people to use Chrome anymore and switch to Firefox instead. If users knew about this stuff and understood it, Firefox would bounce back.
I have already begun to move from Google services.
Look for other large corporations to continue this trend: offer a product to the masses for free, wait until you have little to no competitors and dominate in market share, then put it behind a pay wall or strongarm changes that most of the population doesn't understand. Oracle did it with Java, knowing most companies were too invested to look for alternatives, and now Google is doing it with their Chrome baked-in privacy changes and ad crackdown.
I expect to see more of this trend from "free" services as the people continue to wake up and take their personal data seriously. We know the government(s) won't do a thing to change the status quo, and I have no idea what else to do other than cry into my ramen and binge watch the death of a planet in 4K!
Unfortunately, the rich keep scarcity high to ensure they not only make the most money, but they can use less money to buy favors from those with less. Man greed sucks...
It’s even more insidious when you look at the shit Amazon does, im almost certain they hyper-aggressively track the popularity of products not made by them, ones that are made by small companies (and even individuals in some cases) for the sole purpose of seeing what’s popular with the masses and then they make their own shitty version of said product followed by undercutting the original products cost significantly. And when people go to search they of course put their shit product at the top of the search page so that’s the one the unaware will always buy. It’s kind of a genius business model if we are being honest, if you’re an absolute shit stain that completely lacks morals that is. I just can’t believe they’ve been allowed to do this for so long under the radar because I feel like I never hear people talk about that particular scummy tactic they use.
I wish that were true. But how long have companies like Google and Meta been tracking people? Ask anyone on the street if they think Google and Meta know everything about them and they'll say "yes but I don't care" or "yes but it's unavoidable". There's just no way people don't know by now what incredibly invasive corporations they are. They just don't care.
I do think they know these companies are invasive, but they don't fully understand the ramifications of it, nor do they care to.
While I agree at some level, most users aren’t like you or me. They are my mom, my boss, my mailman. They only care about convenience, and understanding even the difference between browsers is one thing, let alone why they should use a different one. Unfortunately I don’t think that’s likely to change. If it was, Facebook wouldn’t exist, if those people cared about their online privacy they wouldn’t use the platform, but here we are
Yeah, people knew enough to ditch IE for Firefox, but I think Google's marketing convinced everybody that Chrome was the best. Most people tell me they use Chrome because it's the fastest.
Yeah early on when chrome was released I was a big proponent of it. But that was in Google’s earlier days before they adopted Microsoft’s EEE policy
Really? I always hated it. It was such a resource hog compared to Firefox, and that only got worse as Firefox improved.
My main Linux distro at the time, Fedora, wouldn't even ship Chromium because of how difficult and inefficient it was to package. It leaves a bunch of Google crap on Mac too.
Was it better on Windows or something? Because it's always been crap on Linux and Mac.
In 2008? Sure, chrome was lightning quick, especially with V8 on the JS side, granted this was on Mac. It was only a matter of time before it became google’s ad platform though
Maybe the Linux version was ahead of Mac and Windows in 2008. It was already crap then. lol
I’m a JavaScript dev by trade. V8 was light years ahead when it came out, the specs on runtime compilation were off the charts. I’m not defending google by any means, but the work that went into V8 is how nodejs was created, and Firefox has adapted many of those learnings into its own JS engine. Google was and always has been a corporation for profit, but their engineers really pushed JS into a new stage with their engine, whether or not the browser around it was great
I made the switch a few weeks ago. While the transition was a little inconvenient, I got everything set up in maybe an hour or two. Performance was wacky for a few hours after that, but it's settled now for my purposes.
You definitely have to finagle the browser with add-ons and other about:config things to make it work for you, but after that yeah I can say I prefer Firefox over Chrome!
Now I just need to deGoogle everything else...
I actually never stopped using Firefox. I tried Chrome/Chromium on and off since it came out in 2008, but I never understood the appeal. Chrome looks more minimal, but it always ran like crap on Linux and Mac for me. Was it better on Windows or something? The constant memes about Chrome's RAM and CPU usage would lead me to believe it isn't.
Check out Vivaldi
Please, everyone, stop using Chrome. This is an easy vote with your wallet that doesn't even require your wallet.
Complacency means the internet gets worse, ads get worse, nickel and diming gets worse. It's the easiest chance to take a stand you'll ever have.
I'm fairly confident no one here is using Chrome.
I use it at work because of it has the best dev tools. Although edge is pretty much the same so I could use that, but not much of an ethical upgrade.
Every Chromium fork has those same tools.
I know that. I acknowledged that in the next sentence when I talked about edge.
But it still wouldn't stop me from using chrome because I need to test with it. It's what most of our end users use. I'm not about to install Vivaldi or something when we don't even support it, and none of our users use it.
Okay so I'm just not sure what your point is then.
I am ...
Serious question: let's say I continue using Chrome and Privacy Sandbox becomes the norm. How does my internet experience get worse?
One key change in the short term is the Topics API. This is the replacement for 3rd-party cookies in Privacy Sandbox. Basically, it allows sites to query your browser directly about what topics you enjoy, and Chrome will respond with topics based on analysis of your browsing history to allow for targeted ads. If it seems strange that a new "privacy" feature is still serving up data about you for targeted ads -- it is. And in fact, a lot of the proposed changes potentially just give Google more sway to act as a middleman, which ultimately gives them more data.
Will your experience change immediately? Likely not, but as with many things in this space, it's about the dangers of the path and its longer term implications, specifically here about corporate controls and softening the definition of "privacy".
Here's a decent overview with more far more details.
I know what the Topics API does. I'm asking for a concrete example of exactly how it's going to make my internet experience worse. (That Register article doesn't provide one.)
Losing privacy makes your internet experience worse. That seems pretty clear to me, but if you don't care about corporations being better suited to target ads to you, then I don't think anyone would be able to convince you that these changes are bad.
I'd love to debate this with you properly but I've got COVID right now and don't have the energy to put together a decent response, sorry. Basically I just don't see how the specific features in the new Chrome build let advertisers do anything they can't already do. I don't see how they contribute to ads getting worse, or where "nickel and diming" comes into it.
Firefox is the way to go.
Firefox gets like 90% of its revenue from Google.
Keep Firefox independent and donate: https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/?form=donate
But donating your money can not make firefox independent.It will only make firefox more revenue.
Google wants to keep mozilla afloat to stay out of anti-competitive allegations.
If mozilla gets market share, google will defund them. That mozilla have a money will help.
Also mozilla's other projects are also good ;)
Also big CEO wallets.
Nothing in comparison to others but there is some special pay going.
But it's definitely the lesser of the evils.
Some of Mozilla's other projects are good, iirc there was a journalist a few years ago who chronicled how Mozilla had donated a lot of money to other charities unrelated to it's goal rather than reinvesting in the business so that it can try to ween off of Google reliance.
And the money won't go to Firefox, but Mozilla's other projects.
Firefox has been my go-to, but I've left Chrome installed just to have on hand incase some website fuckiness could be solved with a browser change.
Naw. It's not worthy of staying around even for that. Time to completely scrub my devices of google.
Feeling the same, it’s surprising how many companies are just leaning towards screwing users for a few more pennies on the dollar. Eventually, Google with be the next AOL.
Just need their Time-Warner to put the last nail in the coffin
We can only pray, the ghouls.
I am anti-google all day, but that's ridiculous.
I've been doing similar; been using Firefox, but Chrome is installed for its browser-wide automatic captioning. Not something I need often, but I rely on it for the occasional remote meeting here and there. I'm sure free automatic captioning applications exist for my operating system, but I'd have to actually test each one to see if they actually work, and it's just been so convenient keeping Google's around.
(Speaking of which, if anybody happens to have recommendations for free automatic captioning software that works on Ubuntu, I seem to be in the market...)
I suggest to use chromium as the backup "in case a webpage doesn't work on Firefox" browser. All the compatibility but no telemetry.
But why use chromium or any chromium based browser since google disabled ad blocking plug-ins?
I suggest it as the backup browser. Use Firefox and if you need to open something that only works on chrome, I'd rather use chromium, so Google doesn't rape your computer when trying to use the internet.
Eh, did they? I'm sure I still have Ublock Origin on the work browser, which is Chrome.
just fyi, when Mv3 (at least googles version of it) will completely replace Mv2 ... uBO or for that matter any content/ad-blocker might not be able to perform as well on chrome based browsers.
Nah, I use Edge for that. Chrome is only for work for me, but I think I'm going to migrate to another Chromium-based browser for that.
The site you've linked to literally uses Facebook and Google browser trackers. Pretty hypocritical of them if you ask me.
It's always funny/sad to see that "we care about your privacy" doublespeak on an article about digital privacy
So my takeaway from this is to never use Chrome again? Gotcha.
If everyone who said they were going to do this actually did this, Chrome wouldn't do this, if that makes sense.
Or, idk, regulators could like, do their jobs.
Unfortunately, if the government had one single source to secretly control/monitor the world wide web from then they would gladly stand back and do nothing.
Having said that, I truly hope I'm wrong. And they are probably already doing what I described upstream from the browser anyways.
It’s really irritating but some websites only work on Chrome for me. They range from work related to Google Meet instances. I only use it then but yeah.
I don't think I've used Google Chrome itself for over 3 years now (excluding on other people's devices). I don't plan to ever use it again either.
At one point I was switching back and forth, because I'd see a general decline in Firefox for some reason. I don't know if it was just getting overloaded with extensions that were hitting its performance or if my machine itself was having problems or if Firefox's performance was shit for awhile, but I'd switch from Firefox to Chrome, try going back to Firefox, then back to Chrome, but I've been with Firefox for a good few years now without issue. The browser "market" is even crowded now, there's no reason to go back to Chrome, since there's so many other choices out there (though avoiding Chromium might be a little bit trickier).
We have firefox, iceweasel, fennec (android). Anything else not firefox based is chrome based. Don't get tricked by opera and similars.
You can still change browser.
Safari isn’t Chromium based! But I’m not a fan of it on Desktop, just iOS.
Firefox for all my other devices.
You guys are way to late to quit chrome, and you probably won't at this point. This is what happens when you don't swap, you enable this anti-consumer monopoly behavior.
I change from Chrome to Firefox recently on all devices and it was a pretty easy transition.
Doing same thing right now... only two things I will miss are chromecast and page translation.
Good news about page translation, Firefox is adding it, and it's all done locally too, no phoning home to their or somebody else's translation servers.
I wonder if there's an extension for Chromecast support? Might be worth looking into
Till then there is this open source extension which provides the same functionality including local offline translation
Sadly, no, there is no chromecast extension (which I am aware of).
Actually there is one, but it's not very good if I'm being honest ( but workable).
I'm kind of surprised that no open source project of renown has ever decided to implement that on Firefox well.
There is? What's it called?
Just search for it from within Firefox, from the mods tab. That's how I found it the first time.
I did, but found nothing.
Don't know what to say, that's how I found it.
I'll try to remember the next time I am in front of my computer to look it up and post here.
For translation you can use this. Since you can use Google translation service as the backend(?), it works as good as Google translate atleast in my experience
Thanks a lot, this extension looks very much as what I need. I wish Apple stopped their WebKit policy on iPhone so I could use it on mobile Firefox too…
For the time being I'm using TWP for translation. Seems to work flawlessly
I'm using 2 extensions from the Firefox store, Simple Translate and Translate This Page. If one goes down, I use the other. Sometimes I use translate.yandex.ru as well.
I think libretranslate has a extension but I could be wrong
You can use your phone to start the chromecasting, and translate.google.com lets you also put in a weblink to translate a whole page at once.
I've only had issues with Nordpass crashing occasionally when auto-filling, but it's otherwise pretty seamless
the main thing holding me back is the password manager in Chrome and having to basically use 2 browsers as passwords are slowly saved to a new system
Do yourself a favour and get Bitwarden or similar. Browser password managers are way too vulnerable.
Lol nice. People using chrome be like
That's clever meme template usage if I've ever seen one
does this happen on Linux too?
i have to keep chrome around for sites that breaks with ff / ublock, but i only open it when i need it.
I have a chromium install lying around for that. Bizarrely the online conferencing tool my bank uses has issues with Firefox despite advertising Firefox support which is pretty much the only thing I need the Chromium browser for
Back in the old days when a software contains these crap, considered as adware/malware and people get their pitchforks.
Now: its normal.
Modern software: Please insert anal probe.
Average user: OK 😀
It's sickening.
there's a whole class of users born with smartphone, those were not techie or concerned, then you have the other class who don't know really anything about these things which only use smartphones.
even discussing with family about privacy is difficult. "but everyone use it"... gosh. then you have some of my IT colleagues - there for the good money job - which don't care with the motto: I have nothing to hide.
anyway, stay true to your principles no matter what.
I blame these "tech youtubers" who don't understand anything technical and keep repeating the script which the company provides them. I saw this idiot MKBHD telling his viewers how a phone has a "beast mode". Wtf is a beast mode? ! Non technical guys eat shit like this and proceeds to buy because the phone has beast mode lol.
These are exactly my thoughts about tech YouTubers. They have no idea what they're talking about and encourage mindless consumption. Glad I'm not the only one who's thought about this.
I work in tech, and I’m still using Chrome. I don’t like it, and I know a lot of other tech people are in the same boat, but I can’t just switch. That’s what I’m working towards, but the amount of tooling we use every day that depends on specifically Chrome is, significant to say the least. This is tooling we built internally to help ourselves, that depends on Chrome-specific APIs that are either different, or do mot yet exist in Firefox.
We’re working to port this stuff over to Firefox, but that takes time, and not everyone can just drop what they are doing to reimplement the tooling they already have in a different browser. On top of userspace tooling, we also have tens of thousands of unit tests based in some part on chrome (through tools like jest and puppet) to validate certain aspects of massive distributed web platforms that cannot easily be unit tested in normal code (though we have high coverage where we can). These also need to be ported, and are VERY specific to Chrome (or Chromium in some cases) in particular. We’re talking entire teams of people, and tens of thousands of man hours.
A lot of users truly can just switch at the drop of a hat. The UI switch is annoying sure, but its doable. For a lot of users in the tech space though, it’s just not feasible to drop Chrome overnight. We’ve started the process to be clear, but it’s going to be a very long transition.
Every single thing about Google sucks nowadays. Great job Sundar, you successfully turned one of the former most exciting companies on the planet into one of the absolute lamest.
It was shit even before Sundar Pichai became the CEO
He did a great job shitting it up further, also.
Switched back to Firefox. Easy transition. Fuck Google.
Except websites that will tell you "Use a modern browser, switch to Chrome to view this page".
This sort of thing is becoming more and more pervasive. I'm genuinely worried that between this and web DRM, there will be no where to hide from corporate America ducking everyone over with their greed.
I've been using Firefox for over 5 years now and I don't think I've ever seen this message?
There has been a handful of times when a page just won't work correctly and I have to switch to edge, but that is super rare and has probably been less than 10 occasions
the feature they just implemented will start to trigger this. there is a hardcore push for corporate to go all in on chromium for tracking/drm reasons similar to how IE had that market in the past. as a firefox user im kinda terrified were out of options.
were not talking about what the experience was, but what it will be
99% of the time you can just tell the website that firefox is actually chrome using the User Agent Switcher plugin and it will work perfectly. Unfortunately that 1% exists because chrome likes to add features that aren't web standards that irresponsible devs then use and break compatibility with other browsers
Time to uninstall chrome. Can I move my passwords, bookmarks and saved data there? How do I do it?
When you install any browser (Firefox recommend) it ask you if you want to transfer browser data. It will guide you through (its pretty much automatic)
just adding that granted FF already has a decent password manager there are also reliable, free and open source and audited independent password manager like as
which both can plug in any browser through their respective extension.
Being both an independent option from the browser they help the user not making him vendor locked to his browser through his saved data.
The only reason I use chrome is for the passwords feature and realising that it is a separate service to android password manager has made it pointless. I thought changing phones would be easier as it had my bank apps and everything in chrome but it never promoted.
to manage passwords, use bitwarden
is not tied to any browser, it sync between devices and it's free.
there are clients for Android and desktop, most likely ios too.
getfirefox.com
Now that Firefox is getting in-page translation capability, Chrome does not offer any features I am missing anymore. As long as they don't start performance wars, like the shit that happened with Youtube a while ago, I'll be fine
Wait really? Is it on the stable version or do I need to install beta/nightly?
You can read up on it here https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/features/translate/
That's fantastic if the quality is good. I only use chrome now for pages purely in Japanese that I need to deal with and can't properly read in full yet (which, living in Japan, is a fair few, heh). EDIT: Bah, no Japanese support. Oh well; some day.
Thanks, didn't realize it's an add-on. Much better because now I can use it on Librewolf. :D
you can also set
browser.translations.enableto true in about:config for full-page translations. it's kinda slow and the languages are limited compared to google translate, but other than that it's fine. also, it works offline if you install the languages https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/website-translationOffline translation, nice. I'm gonna miss Opera GX stylish theme but I'm ready to ditch Chromium-based browser again, at least on desktop :D
Edit: I'be checked the add-on, unfortunately my mother language and other popular languages are not supported yet.
So as far as i know, firefox is the only mayor browser not based on chromium. Also, firefox is dependent on google's funding because of a search engine exclisivity deal. So my understanding is that, if google decides to kill firefox, they could easily do that. Well, what then? Is there any other browser left wich similar features that would be untouchable by google?
They couldn't kill Firefox without having the US government come down on them for monopoly. Which the government is already looking at https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/24/tech/doj-google-lawsuit/index.html , so it's not likely Google will risk it even further by shitting down funding to Firefox. Pretty sure they'll point at Firefox to claim they're not a monopoly.
So the lawsuit appears to be looking at Google as a search engine monopoly, not web browser, right? And if I'm understanding this right, assuming this lawsuit goes anywhere, it would actually incentivize Google to pull funding from Firefox to no longer support that search engine exclusivity deal.
Google still benefits from having Firefox around, so that they can maintain less of an appearance of a monopoly in the browser space. Whatever way they fund Firefox, it's still to their benefit to do so.
This is pretty much the same situation as when Apple faced bankruptcy a while back and Microsoft essentially bailed them out.
Having an effective monopoly is better than a literal one for legal reasons
We need to extend our laws to effective monopolies too, fuck this shit
Fun fact, Firefox used to be called.... Netscape.. Yeah... Let's see how many miklenials are in here!
Sort of. Netscape released the program's source code and Firefox used that as a base, but it wasn't like they took Netscape and just changed the name to Firefox like your comment implies. They were competing browsers for a while.
Fair enough. My bad.
And remember what happened when Microsoft tried to kill Netscape? That needs to happen again, but against Google.
I've just browsed with Netscape. But did not know this fact.
I've been corrected that it is a branch off of, not a direct evolution of, Netscape.
This should be the top comment, and I'm going to come back to view the replies. I can't personally think of any realistic alternatives. Someone further down posted a link to an article about the US investigating Google for a search engine monopoly, but I'm not sure how large a role that would factor into web browsers.
You have to decide for yourself if those browsers have the features you need, but just for your interest, other non-chromium browsers are Ladybird, NetSurf, Flow, Pale Moon, Basilisk and K-Meleon.
We will have to maintain a Chromium fork with their trackers removed, if it comes to that.
Likely Google won't do anything until or unless the bulk of the public moves off of Chrome over this.
Like Vivaldi or Brave?
awkward glances around
Yes...
I tried to preach why Google sharing your browsing history with ad partners is bad, but most of my friends don't seem to care. :(
It's frustrating, I get it too. Nobody cares until the leopard bites their face. Then it's too late, and we're all affected by their indifference/laziness/ignorance.
Thank you.
I think people care, but there is a lot of inertia. i.e. it takes a lot of little nudges for people to change their habits.
The whole point of the Privacy Sandbox is that Google is NOT sharing your browsing history with advertising partners. All that's shared is information about whether or not your usage of Chrome suggests an interest in specific topics. The current list of topics is here: https://github.com/patcg-individual-drafts/topics/blob/main/taxonomy_v1.md
Ah, I see. Thanks for the heads up!
Honestly, I was already using FF for my home. Made the switch on Mobile after seeing this on the news yesterday. I'm just one person though.
I've also switched to FF on both desktop and mobile because of this. So there's two of us!
Moi makes trois!
I've been using Firefox Mobile for years. It's never let me down and having mobile adblock is great
Yeah, I made the switch on Mobile when YouTube's ads started getting super annoying. Ad block is a killer app in my book.
I switched my whole family several years back. Nobody has any issues with it.
Not used anything but Firefox for the last 10 years or so. Can't remember how long I've used DDG for. Fuck Google and all who fail in her.
It's lucky I haven't used Chrome in years. Firefox is much appreciated these days.
I should have never left Firefox when chrome came out. Its good to be back. Especially before any of this happened.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Unlike the glitzy front-page Google blog post that the redesign got, the big ad platform launch announcement is tucked away on the privacysandbox.com page.
The blog post says the ad platform is hitting "general availability" today, meaning it has rolled out to most Chrome users.
This has been a long time coming, with the APIs rolling out about a month ago and a million incremental steps in the beta and dev builds, but now the deed is finally done.
Users should see a pop-up when they start up Chrome soon, informing them that an "ad privacy" feature has been rolled out to them and enabled.
That's actually what started this whole process: Apple dealt a giant blow to Google's core revenue stream when it blocked third-party cookies in Safari in 2020.
Google says it will block third-party cookies in the second half of 2024—presumably after it makes sure the "Privacy Sandbox" will allow it to keep its profits up.
The original article contains 588 words, the summary contains 159 words. Saved 73%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
good bot, keep it up!
Librewolf
Do no evil
Who could have possibly have forseen that a company that makes nearly all of its revenue from data mining and advertising would one day use a popular software tool as a means of data mining and advertising. This is like wheels-within-wherls thinking right here.
Finally un-installed chrome on Windows.
Is this enough to remove traces?
C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\
https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/29816481/how-do-i-fully-uninstall-chrome?hl=en
Worrying about traces is usually not necessary.
A friend of mind in IT suggested revouninstaller. I have never used it in practice but he says it might be helpful in this case.
I use that everytime I go to uninstall something. You can configure it to scan your system registry and local files for residual files that the software's uninstaller won't remove.
It has always been a user-tracking platform but it is getting worse
Does disabling this as described in the article truly disable it, meaning if you do, after Chrome blocks 3rd party cookies late next year (assuming they follow through on that), you won't be tracked by either?
Wjy bother asking? Just use different browser. Google is big fucking red flag and now it's waving right in front of everybody's face.
Unless it explicitly says so, I'd assume the worst option, i.e. that you'll be tracked one way or another.
nuked that shit from my machine.
only going to use it inside a VM now for testing purposes
Chrome is for the surveillance state
I already use Firefox for everything that's not literally for my D&D stuff. Because some relevant fan sites don't display properly on Firefox for some stupid reason. That's it. So even if they manage to get past my blockers, they literally are telling me nothing I will ever care about because I already have/know where to get any relevant thing those ads might be shilling, and the rest is all irrelevant noise.
Same, though those D&D websites work in Brave with the usual blockers turned on (uBlock + Brave's blockers), so maybe its an engine thing?
In regards to the argument that google pays firefox and could easily kill it off I doubt it. Even if they were so bold as to cut funding completely (which they are not) you will find that Mozilla will have at some point have to cut loose their CEO or cut their huge pays down and make some changes there followed by some clever moves to find another source of income. If worse comes to worse the community will come to its aid and it will go back into the hands of the community which is likely a very good thing but Google has another approach to all of this and are incrementally trying to lock firefox or any non compliant browser or competitor out of the internet. Google has been doing it for years now. They hijacked web standards also along the way.
I think people are either forgetting the roots of chrome or how it came about as being PUP and foistware bundled along with popular freeware software or anyone they could pay to bundle their software with but earlier than that it was a toolbar that piggybacked onto IE (for its marketshare) and than I believe even Firefox too. People also seem to have this belief that when Chrome came out it was absolutely revolutionary and brilliant but the truth is that it was garbage but people fell for it like a shark to a bucket of chum. To me Chrome was pretty much your Bonzi Buddy of browsers. And google a complete scourge on the internet.
As for webkit that old chestnut. The only reason why that is popular at all is because Apple makes sure that you cannot use any other browser or makes it as difficult as possible not to mention the largest part of their user base comes from their iphone without that they're pretty much scraping the bottom of the barrel. IMO Yes, Google is just as bad if not worse in many cases as they leverage their android phone market, run ads on TV specifically designed to push chrome and also built an entire laptop (all be it a terrible one) and called it a chromebook to make sure they keep their dominance but lets not also forget they bought youtube also to stack the odds in their favor. Same ol' Google really.
The browser wars are dead! We just settle for the lesser evil these days.
Saying that this is better for your privacy is like saying I only get punched in the face every second day rather than every day now.
Taking all of the above away and if there is one reason fewer people should be using chrome or chromium based browsers and using something else such as Firefox or a fork is to maintain a balance and take away some of the power and influence they (Google) do have over the web so they will not be able to force things such as WEI and take away many of the freedoms from the net in which we grew up on as too did the internet. The Freedom of exchange of information was never meant to be conditional or the internet held to ransom by one company but this is where we are at so its time for a change of hands or a the balance of power to be restored. Bringing balance will also force sloppy and lazy web developers to stop build dirt poor websites and deliberately blocking out other browsers. Web standards need to be restored and be completely independent from one entity or another, be it google, Mozilla, Apple or any one else in between.
I haven’t used another browser outside of Safari for almost a decade and I’d never dream of using anything made by Google.
I cant get Google drive links to stream in Firefox, thus I still keep Google Chrome around. Am I doing something wrong or is there a work around?
Usually an issue like that is due to me having something blocked in uBlockOrigin or some other extension.
I think they worked for me without issue or me doing anything special (a month or so ago though) so there's likely something you can do to get it to work.
I can check later today if they still work with whatever firefox setup I have
I appreciate that, yeah let me know if there's anything that stands out to ya
Yeah I can confirm it works with no issues for me.
Only extension is ublock origin (no settings changed) and Firefox is on version 117.0
It's probably either an extension that's breaking it for you or Google is doing some A B testing that's only breaking it for some people
As a seamonkey user - aka mozilla, the flagship product that Mozilla deemed was too hard to maintain - I'm just surprised Firefox is still going. We joked at the time that Mozilla would find a browser too hard, then a rendering suite, then a library, then an algorithm, and finally a line of code.
(tribalists - I'm not picking on Firefox, so calm your knickers. I'm still just picking on Mozilla)
You can just disable it when it pops up. I hope it continues to warn new users when first setting it up.
Yes, it seems to be trendy to use this as a reason to switch to Firefox, but surely you can just totally disable this new feature in Chrome? The article even tells you how to do this. I guess people are switching as a protest?
Is this just for chrome,or is it on all chromium browsers? Im running bromite,but considering going back to Firefox.
Chromium contains it. Up to the browser bundling it how they configure/patch it.
Well damn. Any recommendations for a ff mobile app?
I use Mull these days.
The official Firefox on Android is all there is.
iOS only has WebKit (for now).
I should have specified,I meant open source version/app,or official. I prefer open source,but at one time fdroid had several versions,but I'm not against the stock app. I've been ootl for a while on what's up with ff.
Firefox for Android.
No, it’s not in Vivaldi
Is Mullvad chromium based?
No, Mullvad browser is built from and in conjunction with Tor browser, which is built from Firefox. It works really well if you leave it stock, which is the whole purpose. Blending in with all users.
Thank you!
I am pretty new to the privacy concerns. All the browsers and forks and stuff seems pretty confusing.
Is Mullvad better than Firefox? I have not found out how to tell.
That's hard to qualify. The question needs to be more specific. Is Mullvad better than Firefox* at what*? Firefox is a great general browser with decent security and privacy in mind. It allows you theme and modify to your desire. However, any time you add theming or extensions it makes your browser more unique and identifiable. The more you add, the more unique. Stock Firefox is a little promiscuous for my liking and I usually install UBlock Origin and add a little css, like Betterfox. You can create a new Firefox profile which you can swap between depending on the purpose of the window. Or, you can just add a
user.jsfile to your existing Firefox profile. This is called "hardening", and there's many different hardening css available. Some make most things unusable, so a balance is recommended. If you're on Linux you could just use Librewolf which is a sandboxed Flatpak app that is built from Firefox, and, has a great balance of security and privacy tweaks out-of-the-box. Then we have Mullvad browser. Is it better? Maybe it isn't as fast. Maybe it doesn't open some web pages that stock Firefox would. However, Mullvad is brilliant at making you blend in. Mullvad have created the browser with a great balance of privacy and security tweaks that harden it somewhat. What it does, just like Tor browser, is make your online "fingerprint" look like thousands of other people's browsers. As long as you don't identify yourself somehow there's a better chance at anonymity. Identifying yourself could include logging in a known account, adding themes or extensions or using social media. Read more about it here. I recommend you use both. A lightly hardened Firefox that you use for general purpose, and a Mullvad for browsing, searching and shopping (not purchasing). Mullvad browser is best used with a VPN that lumps your IP in with many other VPN users, like MullvadVPN or IVPN.I hope this helps.
At least it's opt-in?
Dark patterened AF
Do you trust Them to keep it opt-in?
Given the fact it's pushed through despite widespread disapproval of this development, I wouldn't.
Haha nah probably not
For now.
Probably to see how it fairs before Chrome turns off third party cookies.
Anyone know a good Google Chrome replacement on Android that is chromium based? Wanna a basic browser that I'll use when Firefox does not work correctly