Comment by bearjaws

I wouldn't be surprised if the people that did care about that internally at Google either used something like Firefox or had their private build that can run uBlock or similar ;)

Enterprise editions of Chrome continue to have manifest v2 support, so this doesn't necessarily affect Google employees.

> Are they not up in arms internally because of how awful the web is without ad blocker?

Chrome still has many ad blockers. While I use chrome/chromium fairly little, ublock origin lite has worked well for me when I do. I'm aware older manifest V2 extensions are theoretically superior at blocking a wide variety of undesired content but if your main concern is not seeing ads, that is absolutely doable.

If you've never used an ad blocker, I guess it may just be the normal web rather than anything terrible. Because ad blocking isn't illegal, it may not be quite as bad as a Disney employee pirating all their movies, but I suspect it's still not that common (at least most people I knew while there didn't use one, and of course I was happy to install one again the day after leaving).

Is it that bad with ublock lite ?

> Are they not up in arms internally because of how awful the web is without ad blocker?

You realize these people pay check depend on that, right?

Thanks for the link to the original.

Well the crappy copy does come with some extra text. (No judgement from me on whether the extra text improves the comic here; just that someone might think it does, and there's no arguing about taste.)

It's also interesting to see that XKCD itself explicitly supports eg hotlinking, and the license makes putting it into your own crappy creations rather easy. (Though I think the example linked to fails the 'attribution' requirement.)

Oh, people just don't understand the value of default settings. It's a constant theme even on this forum.

It's a revenue share deal where Google pays Apple 36% of the search revenue they get from Safari users [1].

In other words, Google pays Apple ~$20B per year to be default search engine because they make ~$53B in revenue from those searches. This is profitable for both Apple and Google -- no "wildly illegal under-the-table measures" required.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/14/apple-gets-36percent-of-goog...

This conspiracy theory doesn't make sense because safari's content blockers (ie. the nerfed version of adblock) block most ads just fine, especially from google ads. The only ads that get through are first party ads (eg. youtube), but as of a few years ago adblockers could block those as well, so it's a moot point.

You can still install uBlock Origin in Brave, assuming you don't mind the crypto stuff and how they pay it out (or, rather don't) to site owners. Even Firefox feels a little weird now with the advent of Mozilla Advertising.

Very much a lesser of all evils situation.

Do you have thoughts about Kagi/Orion browser? I've been using it for a bit now and I've been pleased with the ad blocking capabilities and the ability to have ublock origin on my iPhone and iPad. The browser definitely has scales but it's usable for me at this point.

How long will Mozilla be around for, though?

It's easy to block ads on an entire system DNS level, instead of using browser plugins.

...so long as you're not in a market where they automatically opt you in to sending all your DNS requests to a for-profit company without asking, and if you are, you remember to set up a canary domain or go and update your settings for every new install and new profile.

Well, this country (the US) decided in November to go the exact opposite direction of having a government capable of, let alone willing to, pursuing litigation like this, so I hope we enjoy this digital feudalism only expanding, never receding, in the coming years.

> It's time for a Google breakup from the DOJ / FTC.

That one is already being pursued.

it's a good base level, but misses dynamic updates, custom rules and interactive element picker/blocker.

Not working as well on YouTube. The ad is blocked, but you still need to skip it. You didn't need to do this with UBO.

>Alright? Split iOS off from Apple, then split Apple Music off too?

Windows is split off from Lenovo/Dell. How's that working out for the Windows OS, or the Edge browser?

> but don't the Apple OSs have adblocking at a system level (implying Safari)?

No, content blockers are specific to Safari. Third party apps can show ads just fine.

What ads are not blocked by other ad blockers though? I'm upset too that ublock origin is no longer usable. I tried ublock origin lite and it seems to be blocking most ads so it's still blocking google's ads and that's not banned. It seems kind of hard to argue that it's just about banning ads given plenty of ad blockers still block Google's ads.

I haven't tried others like Ad Blocker etc...

>Apple is totally an advertising company. Have you missed the part about [...]

Have you missed the part of my comment of my comment where I specifically mentioned "web advertising presence"? That's relevant, because ublock would only work on web ads. It can't block ads in the app store, or any other app (eg. spotify).

It's not whataboutism. If the claim is that google's actions with manifest v3 is "abusing its market position to their own benefit", but Apple did the same thing when it didn't stand to benefit from it, then it severely undermines that claim.

Sure, it doesn't rule out google was secretly intending on doing it, only internal memos or whatever can prove that definitively. But at the same time, to immediately conclude that google was "abusing its market position", you would have to be maximally uncharitable to google. That's a sad way to see the world. Take for instance, the flak that google got for banning third party cookies. If this is done by anyone else (eg. Firefox), this would be seen as a good thing. However, cynics have opposed this on the basis that such change would disadvantage third party ad networks more than google, thus google was "abusing its market position to their own benefit" and therefore the change was bad.

So it's impossible for a company to make a mistake and rectify it? If they settle on the same approach as their major competitor, it's bait and switch?

It's not "obviously" a pretext. I don't think that the change in ad revenue to Google is going to be significant between v2 and v3 ad blockers. It might be to ad networks and sites that employ significant ad blocker counter measures though.

And it's not "altruistic" - it's because eval() and webRequestBlocking are bad for security and performance, so they're bad for a lot of users. Users who will switch to Safari or another browser without that extension API, because the browser is faster or didn't exfiltrate their banking credentials.

Microsoft intend to deprecate V2 and move fully to V3 basically as soon as they can, pretty much in lockstep with Google:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/extensions-...

> but if these trends were to continue

Disco Stu has something to say about that

Safari is even worse at ad blocking, basically ManifestV3 with fewer rules, so this is moving in the wrong direction.

It depends on whether Google bends the knee, as Amazon and Facebook have done.

The trump admin got this ball rolling way back in 2017.

>article dated Mar 10, 2025

Trump's DoJ just submitted basically the same remedy proposal last Friday, it's on

>Did Google have to open Chromium? No.

Google did not make Chromium from scratch, and so were obligated to use a license compatible with the previous source they used. That source can be traced back to KDE's Konqueror browser and its KHTML engine.

The NodeJS dependency is purely for running some tests. You shouldn't need it to actually build Firefox.

So actually even Firefox depends on V8...

Not even "back in the day". Youtube and Gsuite constantly break on firefox.

If people don’t like this, they can stop using gmail. Neither Chrome, nor Gmail is a monopoly.

The more things Google does to make gmail less useful, the better.

It’s no secret that Google is an ad company. Anyone still using gmail deserves what they get.

You don't own the roads in Detroit; the government owns most of them.

Gmail is not a government service. Google is free to make that work with only one browser, if they want.

You can't assert that Google must make Gmail work with any browser whatsoever, because that means supporting someone using Windows 95 with Internet Explorer 5.5.

Read/write permissions are necessary to effectively block ads. There's a lot of sites that will throw up a screen saying "please turn off your adblocker" and refuse to let you view the page if they detect ads aren't being loaded. Read/write permissions allows uBlock Origin to inject scripts into the page to fool the anti-adblock scripts into thinking that ads are being served.

It's not ideal, but if that's what it takes to block ads as well as uBlock Origin does, then that's a price I'm willing to pay.

It's my computer. I will run code that I choose and disallow code that I choose. If I choose to run code that blocks your code, that's my prerogative. Whether that's a full blown right is another topic.

You're just pissed because I've chosen to block your code in software you created. Next, you'll tell me I have to watch your programming on a TV I bought with your code on it.

The idea that we have to do anything that evilCorp wants us to do is just insane that people have come to the point of accepting that.

It really isn't. They can spend some of their billions of revenue to review changes when popular extensions are updated, just like Mozilla does. Every uBO update is vetted by Mozilla and is only then pushed out to users. But doing this is not in Google's interest at all.

If I’m going to be the devil’s advocate, it’s probably better for performance.

When I maintained a hook-based plugin system, I learned that many programmers do not know data structures or algorithms and would slow down the whole software by writing plugins that looked up rules using extremely slow ways extremely often. And if users wanted to complain about the software being slow, they would always blame me first.

But when I replaced it with rule lists, now I was in control and could implement fast data structures.

Trusted is known to not be the same as trustworthy.

Repeat the lie often enough and loud enough, it becomes accepted as truth. A billboard is pretty loud in this context.

Like Chomsky said: (corporate) propaganda is incredibly widespread but about an ankle deep.

Only users who are tech-savy know they are lying.

My mom, who has Ublock Origin installed on her Chrome by me, will never know these details.

Perfect time to read again The Gervais Principle!

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

Do they really? Or are you assuming?

More like the willfully blind engineers, disingenuously claim to believe that absurd bullshit. There's not a lot genuine left in that company.

I need this for Android pretty badly. I currently just don't set a default, and often use urlcheck in the middle to edit the URL if necessary, then pick my browser. I would love an app that automated this after the first use. I've submitted feedback to multiple apps that are halfway there, but none have seemed interested in getting the rest of the way there. UrlCheck is currently the closest, it has single buttons to remove tracking parameters and paths like landing pages, and I think it remembers the browser based on domain, but it doesn't have a list of changeable per-domain settings, won't open it automatically, and doesn't show a launcher-style grid (it uses a scrolling list that has to be opened manually). Google doesn't make things easier either, since apps can no longer be inserted as a chooser, and setting a chooser app as default breaks things.

For various functionality, there's also NeoLinker, UntrackMe, Intent Intercept, unalix, LinkSheet, and Open Link With. I believe Lynket browser, which uses the custom tab protocol, also has some basic rules-based choosing but it only works with two browsers and the rules are based on the app making the request.

It looks like LinkSheet added many of the settings I'm looking for at some point, so I'll be trying that out.

That's a useful app for people who use different browsers for different tasks -thanks!

I haven't tried anything but Chrome/Chromium (nightly dev). Brave is my dedicated porn browser I won't use it for anything else.

I recently had cause to sign in to the Google Cloud console (not BigQuery specifically) and found it unusable on Firefox. It pegged a core at 100% and consumed memory at a prodigious rate. Basic UI actions were painfully slow.

I killed the tab and tried it in Chromium where the UI was... not snappy, but in range for my expectations of a heavyweight frontend.

I use it all the time on multiple platforms and it is a DOG on anything but Chrome/Chromium. We have 30+ datasets each with many tables/views/functions etc tho so that could be part of the issue.

Same thing will happen in the billing portal or really any experience but I notice it the most in BQ.

> kinda like running Windos applications in Wine

Sometimes works better than on the original Windows? I assume that's not what you meant though :-)

Wrong. Every company exists to be profitable; how ethically they go about it is a different topic. Companies aren't charities.

If you're looking to move away from Chrome, Firefox + uBlock Origin is still your best bet IMO. Mozilla's committed to keeping the robust ad-blocking capabilities alive despite Google's changes.

Brave is decent too if you want something Chromium-based but more privacy-focused (comes with minor controversies).

Safari works well if you're in the Apple ecosystem.

I actually run a dual-browser setup these days - Firefox for most browsing, and only fire up Brave for those annoying sites that Google has mysteriously "optimized" to run poorly elsewhere. Not ideal but gets the job done!

I’m happy with Zen.

Ungoogled Chromium!

Librewolf

Not only not a good defense, but practically indecipherable. What scale of abuse couldn't be excused by this? I'm not sure I even understand what the notion of abuse means to a person who thinks it could be excused by such a logic.

It seems to completely lose track of the face value significance of any individual instance of abuse because it gets lost in the comparative equation to hypothetical worst harms.

It also confusingly treats restraint as though X amount of restraint can then be cashed in for a certain amount of harm, rather than something that's supposed to happen by default under good stewardship.

And it shifts the whole question to whether or not that position is being abused when I think the criticisms are more fundamental about the fact that they shouldn't be in the position to have or not have that leverage in the first place.

So that, long and short, would be my detox from the assumptions at play here.

The point is, that always looking for abuse is maybe not the right model to explain what is really going on.

It's funny that this line of defense is sincerely attempted here, as it's so absurd that it's actually the punchline of an SMBC comic. And honestly, one of my favorite ones that I find genuinely very funny.

>Lawyer: Okay, let's say my client killed his wife. What about the people he didn't kill?! That's six billion people! Don't they matter? Don't they matter?!

>Caption: In an alternate universe, Jeffrey Dahmer has a thank you parade every year.

https://smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=299

Nearly 20 years of attacks, from both the left and the right, across the anglosphere.

Consider also that some people just like it.

Villifying normal people is more nefarious.

But who told you that there is a Fourth Estate? Was it the very “Fourth Estate”?

It does. I just don't install any extension that requires access to my data on all sites.

Right. I think people were alert to these possibilities long before the actual stuff happened with Manifest V3.

And it shouldn't take waiting until specific examples happen to understand the incentives and the possibilities that could ripen at some future date.

And just to throw in my little side hobby horse on this conversation, it's what I find personally frustrating about conversations with people who think that Brave counts as an alternative.

Being attached at the hip to the Chromium project is a ground level commitment to a long-term vulnerability, and it means that similar circumstances could "ripen" at some future date as the family of Chromium browsers become dependent on an increasingly vast foundation of code and web standards. To me, the combination of that capability and the incentive should be enough to be treated as a complete argument which disqualifies Chromium derived browsers from counting as alternatives.

Sure. You are free to modify your browser.

But chrome is free to choose not to distribute that plugin. If you want you can download it elsewhere.

>Right, and that's why ad and spying funded products should be illegal. They don't just distort but destroy markets. It's an extremely unfair business practice.

Call your senator and propose a bill, otherwise we'll keep doing what's legal.