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Google Chrome’s plan to limit ad blocking extensions kicks off next week (arstechnica.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Reminder to switch browsers if you haven't already!

  • Google Chrome is starting to phase out older, more capable ad blocking extensions in favor of the more limited Manifest V3 system.
  • The Manifest V3 system has been criticized by groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation for restricting the capabilities of web extensions.
  • Google has made concessions to Manifest V3, but limitations on content filtering remain a source of skepticism and concern.
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[–] 49 points 2 years ago (5 children)

The silver lining here is that you'd hope that more people will simply adopt Firefox. It's user share has been too low for too long given how great it is

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  • [–] 28 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    They messed up 10 years ago when for some reason it took ages for Firefox to load compared to Chrome, and sadly it never really recovered the user base even though the performance is vastly improved.

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  • [–] 14 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Their user share was pretty okay for a while, but bombed when Chrome first released because it was much more performant. Unfortunately, that stigma never quite fell off and they lost a huge opportunity to overtake the market.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago* (4 children)

    How was it more performant? As I remember it, Chrome was loading websites not noticeably faster than Firefox, as website loading speed depended and still depends mainly on your internet connection and hardware anyway.

    As I remember it, Chrome exploded because it was pushed onto users at every possible opportunity while Firefox depended (and still depends) on users actively looking for it.

    Used Google or Google products? Get ads for Chrome. Wanted to download Google Earth? You had to activly uncheck a box such that Chrome wasn't going to be installed as well. Meanwhile no ads and not the same amount of exposure for Firefox.

    That way they achieved a critical mass and snowballing did the rest. There were so many users using it that it was considered a good choice just because it was used by many people.

    Regarding the performance aspect, if there even was a noticeable difference, it was worse than Firefox. Where else did the "Chrome eating RAM" memes come from?

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  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I think you are misremembering. Chrome won at the start because it was fast as fuck and Firefox was not. Firefox caught back up in the 2016 time frame iirc and they've been back and forth ever since.

    Ironically chrome was named so as a goal was to reduce the chrome of the UI and focus on the web content, something recent versions of chrome and Firefox have abandoned in favor of massive swaths of whitespace and giant chrome buttons (on Firefox you can enable "unsupported" compact mode to reclaim some of the space if you're on a laptop)

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    I've been a loyal Firefox user for almost as long as Firefox has existed. So I'm probably a bit biased. However, when I used other browsers, and if it wes just to try them out, I didn't notice any benefits in terms of loading websites and executing their scripts. This includes Chrome. In benchmarks there are obviously differences visible, but to me as a user they didn't matter. I wasn't so short on time that I needed those microseconds. So I really don't get how performance could be an argument in this.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I was a Firefox user at the time, using adblockers, and the swap was a huge improvement to my browsing experience. I can’t even remember all the ways, since this was a decade ago. But at the time, Firefox was in a lul.

    Things likely swapped pretty fast, but I wasn’t aware of it at the time because I was already using Chrome.

    No ads swayed me, no Google specific sites, it wasn’t side loaded with anything.

    The Chrome eating ram memes came much later, after the enshitification process reached the third step. You seem to be compressing the entirety of both browsers into a single moment, and that’s not really how time works.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    I understand that you made such an experience, but I can't share it though. I've been a Firefox user for almost as long as Firefox exists, which is almost two decades. (I think I joined somewhere between 2005-2007). I've tried other browsers, sometimes I had to. However, I didn't notice any benefits compared to Firefox. Especially not in performance. Even though benchmarks have always shown clear differences, they weren't significant enough for me to consider switching, as the difference really didn't impact my browsing experience.

    Regarding the memes: That was just a random annectode which I found suitable here. I don't claim it has been that way since the beginning. (Can't relate to that anyway.) But given that it has been around for a while, I don't see how performance can be an argument in favour of Chrome in this.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I just remember Firefox around that time and for like over a decade just felt bloated and super slow in comparison. No idea if it’s better these days or what.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    Its much better, and indistinguishable from a usage standpoint against chrome (I use Google garbage at work and they deliberately hamstring it in Firefox, so I use both browsers side by side)

    Biggest Firefox win is containers and privacy. Chrome probably has better absolute security (based purely on the concept that non-private security is Google's whole schtick, not based on data) and in the last year it's gotten better memory management (via sleeping tabs) that Firefox just hasn't caught up with...but there's an addon for that ;)

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  • [+] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    I remember it as, Firefox was fast enough, but Chrome was shipping a weirdly quick JS engine and trying to convince people to put more stuff into JS because on Chrome that would be feasible. Nowdays if you go out without your turbo-JIT hand-optimized JS engine everyone laughs at you and it's Chrome's fault.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I think you're ignoring the functional aspect of the integration of Chrome into the Android platform. A lot of people's entire online life is stored within the walls of the Chrome ecosystem. And moving all of that to a completely different browser that is not fully integrated with Android is daunting to say the least.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    For work, I use Chrome, but only because Firefox's profile management is (more or less) nonexistent. Once they have that, which I understand isn't too far out, I'm ditching Chrome entirely.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (2 children)

    Have you thought about installing a Firefox fork? On my Work PC I use Firefox for work and Floorp for personal browsing.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    Unfortunately, I think that while ad blockers won't work as well, they will still work good enough that most won't bother making the switch.

    https://blog.getadblock.com/how-adblock-is-getting-ready-for-manifest-v3-6cf21a7884f6

    https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/

    https://adguard.com/en/blog/adguard-mv3.html

    https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/1067als/comment/j3h00xj/

    The main issue I see is the slow update of filters (which require an extension update). This might make YouTube win the cat and mouse game. Where YouTube updates(ed?) their blocking detection multiple time a day.

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