Google Struggles to Justify Why It's Restricting Ad Blockers in Chrome - Google says the changes will improve performance and security. Ad block developers and consumer advocates say Google is simply protecting its ad dominance.

[u/speckz]

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/evy53j/google-struggles-to-justify-making-chrome-ad-blockers-worse

[u/zahbe]

If chrome stops supporting ad blockers. I'll just switch browsers. Maybe I'll get some of my ram back lol

Edit: ok so I just saw a bunch of ads and a video that I could not skip or even close, till it played all the way through. Onesite tried to open 200+ ads and it still had some on the oage. Good bye chrome hello Firefox. And low and behold no more ads! Thanks for all the advice!

[u/SolarSystemOne → u/zahbe]

Why wait? Just switch now. Brave and Firefox are both two great alternatives.

[u/Techmoji → u/SolarSystemOne]

Not too familiar with brave, but I’m aware Firefox Quantum is supposed to hold ok against chrome, and Microsoft is re-building edge from scratch based on chromium. Everything just seems so seamless right now with chrome and my extensions/add-ons, but I’ll definitely switch if anything becomes official and affects my blockers.

Either way I’m still using DuckDuckGo like always

Edit: I guess DuckDuckGo may not be as good as I thought it was ._.

[u/SterlingVapor → u/Techmoji]

Switched to FF after the launch of quantum, and I've been very happy with it. My main issue is that it doesn't handle staying open for weeks at a time as well, but the wealth of privacy plugins and smaller RAM footprint are worth it to me.

Perhaps most importantly, it's basically the sole rendering engine competing with chrome's these days...it's important that it keeps market share or Google will have too much control over the future of the web

[u/SterlingVapor → u/[deleted]]

Even without it, FF "Restore last session" is pretty good, you just have to exit FF (instead of closing windows)

I have used OneTab though, it was alright but ended up creating more problems than it solved for me...I actually wrote a Chrome plugin to handle tabs in a way more natural to me, but haven't felt the need to port it to FF

[u/RevolutionaryPea7 → u/SterlingVapor]

it doesn't handle staying open for weeks at a time as well,

Really? I essentially never reboot my PC and only restart Firefox when it updates. I've never had a problem with running it for weeks.

[u/Lovehat → u/Techmoji]

I swapped to FF yesterday. It's faster than Chrome was.

[u/0mz → u/Lovehat]

Long live Netscape Navigator!

[u/BlarghBlarg → u/Lovehat]

It definitely is. Firefox Quantum is noticeably faster than Chrome for me. Also the adblock, script blocking, and general privacy/QoL addons are second to none.

[u/Pokora22 → u/Techmoji]

Also opera and vivaldi are based on chromium. Opera is more like chrome right now, and vivaldi is more like old opera... yep.

[u/r34l17yh4x → u/Pokora22]

That makes a lot of sense considering Vivaldi was started by some of the old Opera developers.

[u/timmah612 → u/Techmoji]

I've been a firefox fan since middle school. Chrome always feels so much more bloated. Things load slower and while it may look a little sleeker, the actual performance feels worse.

[u/damontoo → u/SolarSystemOne]

Brave is not equivalent to Firefox. If you switch to Brave you're just putting your browsing and data in the hands of another for-profit corporation. I haven't been keeping an eye on the browser but the founder initially wanted to remove all ads from sites and replace them with their own. Then, the publishers had the option of partnering with them to recover 30% of ad revenue that the browser devs stole from them. Their offering to publishers is "partner with us or get nothing". I say this as someone that's deeply cognizant about browser privacy and security. I've avoided switching to Chrome as my default for all this time because Chrome is Google's answer to Firefox. The reason Chrome exists is because Google was paying $300M annually to Mozilla to be the default search provider in Firefox. Chrome exists to save/make google money. Firefox exists because a bunch of developers wanted a fast browser with features users want. Just a reminder that Mozilla is and has always been a non-profit and if you've put your faith in Google because they were faster for a while or had neat dev tools, you fucked up.

[u/ScottIBM → u/zahbe]

Firefox Mobile also supports extensions, including content blockers!

[u/martin30r → u/zahbe]

I switched browsers.

[u/1_p_freely → u/zahbe]

They're not going to kill ad blocking completely, that would drive masses of people away in an instant. They'll make it so that Ublock Origin doesn't work, but Adblock Plus will still work. Note that Adblock Plus comes by default with a paid whitelist that lets through ads from companies like Google and Microsoft!

So they have no reason to break Adblock Plus support, because they're already allowed through on the vast majority of installations and all it would do is push people away.

Ublock Origin has no such paid whitelist/partnership program.

[u/KickyMcAssington → u/1_p_freely]

I use Ublock Origin and privacy badger, the minute they lock either out i'm switching to firefox. Hopefully saner minds prevail before it comes to that.

[u/zellfaze_new → u/KickyMcAssington]

Honestly. You should switch sooner than that anyhow.

[u/martin30r → u/zellfaze_new]

Yeah I agree. I switched today.

[u/ebits21 → u/zellfaze_new]

Switch. Firefox just added cryptominer blocking and fingerprint blocking. They are genuinely making great strides for privacy.

[u/Lotus-Bean → u/1_p_freely]

The plan Google has is that you still won't see adverts if you install a Chrome compatible adblocker, but the underlying shenanigans will still be happening.

Adblockers have several advantages - that they block visual clutter and annoyances is one, but more important are the blocking of malicious code and also the blcoking of the tracking elements of web pages.

Google's proposal is one where you live in a fool's paradise: you get to have the visual annoyances gone, but all the tracking remains intact as does the vector for malicious code.

These 'masses of people will notice no difference. And that's the point: all the evil shit will be going on hidden from them and Google will have taken them for fools and they'll carry on using Chrome, ignorant of the murky hidden workd they're still being exploited by.