Comment by justsid
1 year ago
What boggles my mind is the fact that surely people working for Google also use Chrome. Are they not up in arms internally because of how awful the web is without ad blocker?
I have the same experience as you, every time I set up a new machine or watch friends/relatives browse the web, it just blows my mind how bad the unfiltered internet is.
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 ;)
In 2011, when I worked at Google (on ads, not on Chrome), I did use Firefox as my main browser. But back then, there was much less need for an ad blocker. I still remember asking my manager whether it was OK to click an ad (from a VPS provider) while browsing from the corporate desktop.
Did you get a response from your manager?
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Enterprise editions of Chrome continue to have manifest v2 support, so this doesn't necessarily affect Google employees.
Guess I know what I'm deploying in my enterprise of one seat.
If anyone finds a good guide, this would be a great place to share it.
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> 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.
The core issue is that those ad blockers are easy to defeat. The only reason ad companies haven't invested energy in defeating them (yet) is because they're not popular enough.
Once they are the only option in Chrome, it's just a matter of time until Chrome becomes largely useless at blocking ads.
ublock origin lite is mv3 compatible and not nearly as good at blocking ads as the original, for instance.
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?
Employees can disagree with their employers.
The list of things that can be done is way bigger than the liat of things that are in fact done in real life. A Google employee could voluntarily put his hands over an open flame, but it's just very improbable.
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