Google pulls the plug on uBlock Origin, leaving over 30 million Chrome users susceptible to intrusive ads
Google pulls the plug on uBlock Origin, leaving over 30 million Chrome users susceptible to intrusive ads
Google ramps up its campaign against ad blockers on Chrome.
So ... can we like finally dismiss Google Chrome as the obviously awful idea it is and which should never have made it this far and remind all of the web devs married to it that they're doing bad things and are the reason why we can't have nice things?
Hmmm ... a web browser owned by a monopolistic advertising company ... how could that possibly go wrong??!!
I think some people overestimate how many will migrate to Firefox in the near future over this.
- High switching cost compared to finding another extension (e.g. uBO Lite), even if the resulting experience is worse.
- Just as many Firefox users like Firefox, lots of Chrome users enjoy what they have too. They don't want to lose that.
- The kind of tech-aware person who'd switch over this is much more likely to have seen the news months ago and taken action already.
As fun as it is to imagine an Adpocalypse shocking the masses and pushing them to try out alternatives to big tech, it's also way too optimistic, I feel.
In case anyone here needs this
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/switching-chrome-firefox
"intrusive ads" are the least of the problems, an adblocker is a critical part of any computer's security suite.
The internet advertisement companies wont police their ads from maleware, and untill they accept criminal and financial responsibillity when their ads cause harm to the users being served compromised ads from their networks, I won't even consider disabling my adblocker
Advertising company makes it harder to block ads on their browser, news at 11.
Or did anyone forget that they made an explicit effort to block another ad blocking extension a while back, including blocking it from the Chrome store, blocking you from installing it manually and even blocking at least some versions of it from being manually installed in developer mode?
Ad nauseam, because it also simulated ad clicks and thus ruined their metrics.
EDIT: Fucking phone autocorrect. "as clocks" -> "ad clicks".
I wonder if this leaves Chrome users susceptible to ads that load malware, which has been a problem for the last decade, and a driver of adblocking extension development. You can get spyware and worms from Forbes, for instance.
Adblocking is not just a matter of a cleaner internet experience, but also of good internet hygiene
We should all probably start donating to Firefox. Isn't Google their main source of income?
There might come a time when they prefer to gut Firefox, forcing Mozilla to either reject uBlock Origin or die (or they could simply pull the plug on funding knowing they'll earn more when people go back to Chrome-based browsers)
LibreWolf.
There's an easy fix for this. 🔥🦊
It literally took me less than ten minutes to set up firefox. I carried all my bookmarks and passwords from edge and set up a mozilla account and everything is synced across linux, windows and android.
The only thing I'm worried of, is if some websites require chrome to work, as was the case with some government sites that only worked with internet explorer in the old days.
(Does anyone know if the default user agent is chrome? I used to log in a local streaming site from edge and it wouldn't work, as it required chrome, but I used an extension to take care of the user agent. On firefox it works no problem.)
This was the plan all along
I wonder if we trained an AI on the entire corpus of articles about how Google is gonna kill adblocking, if we could keep these articles going after most people switch uneventfully over to Lite.
I've used Librewolf since the first time Google announced these kinda plans I'm thinking it must be at least 3 years now.
Theres tons of options Librewolf is overkill to be honest Firefox would be fine.
Those who don't like FF can use brave, it's brave shield works well
That is a choice thumbnail.
The headline is a bit overdramatic. Google hasn't pulled uBlock Origin off its extension webstore. Rather, it's switching from Manifest v2 to Manifest v3, which won't support features the current version of uBlock Origin needs to work. We've known this was in the process of happening for months. It's a good reminder of what's coming eventually (namely, the fact v2 extensions will be entirely disabled by Chrome soon), but this is nothing new.
Brave will continue to support manifest V2.
Awesome. Normies are getting sucker punched left and right. Keep it up, Google!
Unpopular opinion: the less people use ad block, the better the experience of those using ad blockers.
Remember the days before ad block detection and nag?
Sensationalist and inaccurate title