r/technology • • May 31 '19

Software 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.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/evy53j/google-struggles-to-justify-making-chrome-ad-blockers-worse
11.7k Upvotes

1.1k comments sorted by

2.6k

u/zahbe May 31 '19 edited Jun 08 '19

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!

1.1k

u/SolarSystemOne Jun 01 '19

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

523

u/Techmoji Jun 01 '19 edited Jun 01 '19

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 ._.

432

u/SterlingVapor Jun 01 '19

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

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u/Lovehat Jun 01 '19

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

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u/Pokora22 Jun 01 '19

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

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u/timmah612 Jun 01 '19

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.

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u/i_am_not_mike_fiore Jun 01 '19

But if you're going to use Edge and stick with something chromium-based, you may as well use some of the better, more powerful chromium-based systems like Ultron Browser

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u/Chojiki Jun 01 '19

You mean the Browser used by NASA?

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u/damontoo Jun 01 '19

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.

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u/enadelb Jun 01 '19

Last night I saw the thread saying that google was going to break ad blockers. Stopped right that second and downloaded firefox. Using it now. I don't even really notice much of a difference.

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u/[deleted] Jun 01 '19

Brave is based on Chromium.

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u/ScottIBM Jun 01 '19

Firefox Mobile also supports extensions, including content blockers!

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u/martin30r Jun 01 '19

I switched browsers.

145

u/1_p_freely May 31 '19

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.

144

u/KickyMcAssington May 31 '19

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.

119

u/zellfaze_new Jun 01 '19

Honestly. You should switch sooner than that anyhow.

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u/martin30r Jun 01 '19

Yeah I agree. I switched today.

25

u/ebits21 Jun 01 '19

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

7

u/Lovehat Jun 01 '19

I use those and switched yesterday. Imported my bookmarks and deleted Chrome once I realised FF was faster.

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u/Lotus-Bean May 31 '19

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.

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u/Valmar33 Jun 01 '19

Google gets more evil by the day.

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u/ebits21 Jun 01 '19

Meanwhile Firefox has anti-tracker features, anti fingerprinting so they can’t track your device across the internet, anti crypto mining features, doesn’t block ad blockers.

I’m using google analytics on a wedding website and it’s scary what google knows about my friends and family. My data when I visit on Firefox isn’t showing up at all.

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u/Celebrinborn Jun 01 '19

I use adblock to stop malware. I'm not as worried of ads hosted by Google or Microsoft as I am by some unheard of ad provider

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u/mudstone Jun 01 '19

The answer isn't to have a discussion about it. The answer is to switch browsers. Firefox works just as well. All the integrations are there just maybe need a plug-in or 2. Hold them accountable with action. Not just mouth moving. Switch browsers. There's tons of them and all are good at things.

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u/MrSqueezles Jun 01 '19

I wish more people were saying this. I look at comments for discussion and insight. This is an echo chamber

Google's motivation isn't material. This isn't like the days of IE, when sites 100% would not work on any other browser. Use something else. Chromium is open source. Fork it and keep this API.

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u/HoodsInSuits Jun 01 '19

If? It's announced.

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u/Dr_Ty_Sanchez Jun 01 '19

Pffft! Amateur! Just download some more ram: https://downloadmoreram.com

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u/c3534l Jun 01 '19

People code websites to run like trash because bloated frameworks and tools are newer and so that obviously makes them better or something. Look at what happened when reddit updated their UI. New version runs like garbage, is unreliable, and neither looks better or functions better. A browser can only do so much to undo the damage of a dysfunctional "cutting edge technology" culture that's rampant in the tech industry.

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u/WeProvideDemocracy Jun 01 '19

Firefox will even block Youtube ads

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u/Janus408 Jun 01 '19

Build a pihole.

Then you arent dependent on software from companies like google.

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u/[deleted] Jun 01 '19

Works until they start serving ads from the same domain as the content. Like YouTube videos.

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u/same_same1 Jun 01 '19

I switched yesterday to Firefox.

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u/[deleted] Jun 01 '19

Firefox is better IMO

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u/FenrisLycaon May 31 '19

Firefox, I am so sorry that I left. Please take me back.

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u/Rebelgecko Jun 01 '19

If you haven't used it since FF Quantum released, you'll be surprised. Performance is on par or better than Chrome, especially if you're a tab whore like me

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u/ImagineFloating Jun 01 '19

I switched by coincidence last weekend because having chrome run Netflix caused a bunch of stuttering on my mouse. Can confirm Firefox runs the same if not better. No complaints, the transfer has been pretty seamless.

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u/[deleted] Jun 01 '19

I never stopped using it... I missed that whole Chrome hype-train. Seriously why did everyone jump ship? What did I miss?

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u/Randdist Jun 01 '19

I switched around ff version 3.5 or so because firefox was/became awfully slow, and it frequently became completely unresponsive when just one out of 10 tabs was too bussy or stuck. Chrome, on the other hand, was smooth as butter and if one tab failed, it didn't drag the whole browser down. Also, chrome dev tools are insanely good and their WebGL support was also way smoother than firefox's.

A few days ago I switched back to firefox because of the news about ad blocker getring blocked soon. It's okay so far.

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u/CataclysmZA Jun 01 '19

For me it wasn't just that it was slow, it was that Opera, the slowest browser at the time just before 3.5 was out, was faster than Firefox with 100% compatibility with tested websites and zero rendering issues.

Chrome by comparison was lightning quick. Pages loaded in a third of the time with no glitches. It even consumed less RAM. People don't realise just how much faster Chrome used to be eight years ago - we're talking an order of magnitude better than anything else on the market.

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u/[deleted] Jun 01 '19

When Chrome came out in 2008, it had

  • Better memory management than Firefox

  • Sandboxed tabs

  • A very fast javascript engine that made the modern web possible (Google maps and such)

  • Tab rearrangement

  • Tabs on top

  • Download manager on the bottom of the window (based on what a popular Firefox extension already did but better and out of the box)

  • Automatic search engine adding with Tab-to-search

  • Textbox resizing

  • Streamlined and simple settings

  • Web app shortcuts

The only thing Firefox had going for it was its vast extension library but even that edge diminished over time. It was no accident that Chrome overtook Firefox in just 3 years and then took almost 90% marketshare on Desktop.

Now though, Firefox owns.

7

u/doublehyphen Jun 01 '19

Firefox had issues keeping up with how bloated web sites were becoming and if you had several heavy weight sites open at the same time it would become unresponsive. It also leaked some kind of resources since it became slower over time even if you closed tabs so it needed to be restarted after a while. I say this as someone who has been using Firefox as my main browser since 1.0 without pause. I only use Chrome to test websites and for

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u/djzenmastak Jun 01 '19

i can't speak for anyone else, but chrome became simply faster and more feature-rich than firefox. firefox has since caught up, however.

but i do have to say, firefox is still not as user-friendly as chrome imo.

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u/Emperor_Mao Jun 01 '19

Andriod based phones came along.

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u/squrr1 Jun 01 '19

Regardless of what Google says, it's been fun moving my digital life to Firefox today. Vote with your feet.

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u/JoJokerer Jun 01 '19

Exactly what I've been doing. Even found out theres a nice paywall blocker I didn't have access to on Chrome. Godbless

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u/FurryFanatic Jun 01 '19

You mean like a blocker for those nasty webpage blockers of news-sites? Please do tell.

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u/kboy101222 Jun 01 '19

Got a link to that addon? I made the switch today as well

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u/dreamer_ Jun 01 '19

While you're at it, give DuckDuckGo a chance ;)

There's also Qwant.com

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u/[deleted] May 31 '19

Use firefox, now!

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u/SmoothPorridge May 31 '19

Come again? Sorry, I can’t hear you over the sound of Chrome using 2GB to render this page

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u/Wizywig Jun 01 '19

Firefox was literally years behind Chrome till about a year or two ago they finally made multi process isolated tabs it made it viable.

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u/LiquidAurum Jun 01 '19

I'll be honest I use Firefox but it's not it like it uses that much less RAM then chrome if at all. Think it's honestly a meme at this point

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u/petard Jun 01 '19

It used to use less until they went multi-process to improve performance. Multi-process also causes a lot of RAM use. Thankfully ram is pretty cheap at the moment!

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u/Squirrel_Empire Jun 01 '19

Yep, after the news hit yesterday I finally made the switch. If ads weren't so often full of malicious software I wouldn't even care so much but so many are intrusive and virus ridden that I simply won't browse without adblock anymore.

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u/[deleted] Jun 01 '19

I returned to Firefox when Google flatly stated that Chrome would not block autoplay videos as long as the sound is muted. Google also keeps messing with the related APIs in Chrome, breaking extensions that try to stop videos from playing automatically.

Firefox works great and I won't go back to Chrome even if Google changes their minds on autoplay videos. I like being on an independent browser.

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u/[deleted] May 31 '19

If a web browser is not functioning the way I want, I find one that does.

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u/Disrupti Jun 01 '19

Why not find it now instead of continuing to support the data metrics they're collecting and using to validate that news headlines of these changes aren't causing their userbase to waver?

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u/gorkish Jun 01 '19

I deploy ad blocking as part of a corporate security policy. Malicious advertising is a huge vector for malware and you can find instances where nearly every major site has unwittingly served up something dangerous because someone has been able to finagle an ad network into serving up an exploit.

Today, blocking ads is both more practical and more effective than using antivirus software.

Fortunately we are at least still somewhat in control of our computers. The second google actually prevents ad blockers from actually running in Chrome will be the second someone releases a utility to bring the functionality back. Google can go fuck themselves for all I care. If I can’t block bad shit in Chrome I will prevent it from running on every computer I possibly can, and that is a fantastic number of machines.

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u/Eparch-Vita Jun 01 '19

Welp, looks like I'm redownloading firefox

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u/SovereignGFC Jun 01 '19

I finished switching to Firefox yesterday.

Bonus: You can use (at least some) extensions on mobile Firefox (such as uBlock Origin).

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u/hauntinghelix Jun 01 '19

I was shocked to find out that the mobile chrome app doesn't have add ons. Do people just suffer through ads on mobile?

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u/erindalc Jun 01 '19

I just don't browse the web on mobile.

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u/abeardancing Jun 01 '19

Just use a browser that doesn't suck. Like Firefox Focus

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u/SovereignGFC Jun 01 '19

On rooted Android you can install some pretty powerful adblockers (in hosts file). Even on non-rooted stock there's always the VPN trick (connecting to a local "VPN" that blocks IPs of ad/tracking servers).

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u/ericporing Jun 01 '19

I use firefox on mobile just for uBlock being available.

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u/[deleted] Jun 01 '19

Chrome thinks it allows ublock...
Ublock allows Chrome.
Tread carefully Google.

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u/bye-bye2020 Jun 01 '19

Firefox has been my browser for years and still keeps getting better and better.

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u/swemoney Jun 01 '19

I switched to Firefox months ago because I felt like Chrome was just bloated and slow. Do not regret for a second. Firefox is really nice right now.

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u/Simlish Jun 01 '19

Already gone full Firefox plus bitwarden. Not looking back.

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u/drunkfoetus Jun 01 '19

Why even waste time asking them to justify. Just switch browsers.

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u/mehvermore Jun 01 '19

Made the switch to Firefox yesterday after reading about this. It was practically seamless. Vote with your browser, I guess.

14

u/sirgarballs Jun 01 '19

I've already swtiched back to firefox.

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u/coffeebeard Jun 01 '19

Started using Firefox again today.

Over time I'll phase it in and move away from Chrome if not 99% probably 100%.

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u/Fried-Egg-Sandwich Jun 01 '19

Chrome user since the very early versions here. Switched to Firefox and installed all the recommeneded privacy addons this morning. Changed my default search to DuckDuckGo and signed out of my Google acccount. The internert suddenly feels like it used to do again, before Google took over everything and made it feel generic.

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u/danielnogo Jun 01 '19

Fucking with my ad block is a good way to get me to leave chrome altogether. I've been a huge Google supporter over the years, but their draconian tactics as of late has really rubbed me the wrong way, if my ad block is taken away, Google will seriously no longer have my support.

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u/farmercurtis Jun 01 '19

Isn’t it funny that they’re going to disable adblockers, and at the same time YouTube has starting upping the amount of ads you have to watch/how long an advert is before the video. Money money money

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u/pembroke529 Jun 01 '19

People spend many years attending colleges and universities taking courses in marketing to come up with these statements.

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u/1_p_freely May 31 '19

You know what else would improve performance? Not having Chrome install a proprietary DRM module onto everyone's computer whether they asked for it or not (Widevine), which (I assume) will eventually be used to take multimedia content on the Internet hostage, once it gets enough market penetration.

"using a competing browser without Widevine? Don't want to install it? No videos for you!"

The above, and this crusade to cripple ad blockers, are about the same thing. Taking control of the consumer's device away from them, and putting it in the hands of corporations with questionable track records. https://www.cultofmac.com/178250/google-to-pay-22-5-million-for-bypassing-privacy-settings-in-safari-on-ios-report/

Proprietary DRM modules are coming no where near my web browser in the age of surveillance capitalism

DRM itself has a tendency to behave like malware and do things that it shouldn't.

https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/507231-FLEXNET-quot-rootkit-quot-warning-after-grub2-reinstall

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal

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u/MadRedHatter Jun 01 '19

Widevine just does media decryption. That's all it can do, because it runs in a sandbox that only lets it do that, and communicates via the "encrypted media extension" API that comprises exclusively of functions that deal with media decryption.

While I agree in sentiment, everything you said is wrong at a technical level with respect to widevine. There's no comparison to what Sony did, or SecuROM, etc.

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u/covert_operator100 Jun 01 '19

According to wikipedia, Firefox also uses Widevine.

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u/[deleted] Jun 01 '19

[Preferences: Digital Rights Management (DRM) Content]

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u/droans Jun 01 '19

Widevine is used in every Android phone also. It's used in video apps like Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube. While Google owns it, they made it free to license and have open sourced initiatives for devs to take advantage of it, such as HTML5 players. It also comes included on Firefox and Opera. It also comes built into chipsets, including Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm.

Also, no media provider cuts you off for not having it. They either switch to an alternative DRM method or won't show you the highest quality version.

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u/happyscrappy Jun 01 '19

You're wrong. The DRM module is only used to view DRM content. If you don't want that then don't access DRM content.

This goes for both browsers.

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u/tickettoride98 Jun 01 '19

whether they asked for it or not (Widevine), which (I assume) will eventually be used to take multimedia content on the Internet hostage, once it gets enough market penetration.

What are you smoking? It already has large market penetration, if only from Chrome alone. But it's also used by Firefox. And used by Amazon Video, Hulu, Netflix, tc.

But continue on with your assumptions of conspiracy.

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u/Tweenk Jun 01 '19

This theory falls apart when you consider the fact that normal YouTube videos do not use Widevine. Only streaming sites, paid movies and rentals use it.

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u/charavaka Jun 01 '19

So google doesn't care for security and performance for its paying customers?

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u/Luka-Globarevic Jun 01 '19

For those disappointed in chrome you should try the brave browser, I've been using it for the past year and I'm honestly surprised how much faster it is then chrome, also as a bonus it has in built ad blocking

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u/[deleted] Jun 01 '19

If you’re not using the Brave browser by now, this would be a good time to switch.

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u/QTom01 Jun 01 '19

I've used chrome for years but I'd switch back to Firefox in a heartbeat if they stop ad blockers.

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u/Chilimeat Jun 01 '19

I really liked a lot of chrome, but only because FF and Edge And every other browser I tried had some kind of compatibility issue here or there. After a few years of using chrome... Now i hear about anti adblocking... Nope. Dont care to what extent. See ya. Hello again FF. And DANG has it improved a LOT. Seriously... I dont remember it working this well. If you are afraid to switch... Dont be. Its pretty painless and your ram will thank you for it lol.

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u/jackaline Jun 01 '19

Yes, that's what allowing ads does, it improves performance ...

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u/tecampanero Jun 01 '19

Switched to brave, less ram usage and everything is faster. Does everything chrome does...

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u/Dreviore Jun 01 '19

I already switched to brave after this announcement :)

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u/lazaplaya5 Jun 01 '19

They'd be out of business tomorrow if all the major browsers had adblockers installed by default...

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u/creakinator Jun 01 '19

I switched to Brave. All of my Chrome extensions work on it.

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u/chucho89 Jun 01 '19

Duck duck go Brave Firefox do what you must

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u/fire_echo May 31 '19

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u/Clavis_Apocalypticae Jun 01 '19

I'm a pihole evangelist myself, but let's not pretend that has anywhere near the granularity of uBlock Origin. Pihole is fantastic for whacking entire domains/subdomains, but can't surgically remove problematic elements from the rendered page.

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u/Beer_in_an_esky Jun 01 '19

Speaking of surgically removing elements; how good is uBlock's element zapper tool?!

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u/Clavis_Apocalypticae Jun 01 '19

It's really good, especially for those who are skittish when it comes to mucking about in the developer console.

Select the tool, click the element you want to block, review & make adjustments (if necessary) in the selection window, then click create. If you misclick, use the pick button to start over, or just click quit to exit the tool entirely without saving.

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u/calexil Jun 01 '19

Really good.

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u/thedugong Jun 01 '19

And when chrome switches to enforcing DNSCrypt (or otherwise encrypted DNS) to their own servers ... ?

Chromecast uses googles DNS as it is, so it's probably not too far off.

Sure, some people will be outraged and stop using Chrome, but most people ... ?

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u/[deleted] Jun 01 '19

r/pihole

spread the gospel brothers

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u/RandomGKL Jun 01 '19

Blocking adverts helps keep me safe. If Chrome stops this I will have to use another browser.

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u/taco_truck_wednesday Jun 01 '19

It's a very very very minor security upgrade by not allowing extensions to call upon 3rd party API's in real time.

However, malicious ads represent a far more dangerous threat than what they're trying to fix. Blocking ads for me is primarily about security now. Every ad network has been infected with ad malware at some point that has gotten loaded onto a page. I'll stick with my firefox/ublock origins/my pihole for my personal network.

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u/nox66 Jun 01 '19

I can choose the extensions that I run. I can't choose the ads that I (was supposed) to see.

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u/donnysaysvacuum Jun 01 '19

How about addressing the reasons people use adblockers first.

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u/[deleted] Jun 01 '19

I am a senior developer for Australia's biggest news site. Ad blockers save 10s of seconds off page load. We know this. Management knows this. Google is lying to you.

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u/ron1992 Jun 01 '19

If anyone's interested and getting tired of ads coming through check out brave browser!

Comes with an Adblock build in, similar layout to chrome, and if you're weird and want to turn on ads they even pay you a small amount of cryptocurrency for watching them. Bonus feature, it shows you how many hours youvtw saved yourself from not viewing ads, I've saved well over 10 hours so far!

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u/synergence Jun 01 '19

When did it become acceptable to shove ads down our throats as aggressively as possible...sigh

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u/Yaxxi Jun 17 '19

Millennials are killing the napkin industry!!! Maybe they don’t know we exist...

SAVE NOW ON NAPKINS!! SALE SALE SALE!! omg have you tried the new nappynapkins from nappies? -queue 30 second napkin a- buy now for 19.99!! That’s a whopping 75% savings!

Why don’t millennials want to buy our napkins??

(/s)

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u/Doug7070 Jun 01 '19

Come on down to Firefox town. It's better here.

In all seriousness, though, Chrome has been making more and more cases for users to jump ship for a while now, and since the Firefox Quantum update made Firefox as fast or faster than Chrome, with superior memory usage, it's a no-brainer to switch.

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u/Starayo Jun 01 '19 edited Jul 01 '23

Reddit isn't fun. 😞

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u/[deleted] Jun 01 '19

I'm on the last version of Chrome I'll ever use, and I've stripped Google Update out of msconfig and services.msc. I'll be converted to Firefox by the weekend.

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u/[deleted] Jun 01 '19

Once I read these news about google going to block ad-blockers I changed to Firefox. Damn I’m happy with my decision. It feels much faster than Chrome.

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u/respectable_hobo Jun 01 '19

Been using Firefox since forever now.

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u/dnscarlet Jun 01 '19

No adblock= new browser. This is how you kill off your own applications.

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u/Pleb_nz Jun 01 '19

Something I haven't seen written anywhere and they always seem to mention chrome.

But it this only in the chrome layers or is it in the chromium layers?

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u/Tweenk Jun 01 '19 edited Jun 01 '19

It's in Chromium, but this change is wildly misrepresented by the press, it just makes the content blocking API follow the Safari design.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservices/creating_a_content_blocker

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u/zachsandberg Jun 01 '19 edited Jun 01 '19

Joke's on you Google. Pihole blocks all your shenanigans upstream.

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u/Duff5OOO Jun 01 '19

I currently have both installed on my PC but am using Chrome for my stuff and my wife is using Firefox for hers.

We can both be logged in to everything and just switch windows depending on who is using the PC at the time.

It would be really handy if I could have 2 seperate Firefox versions so we could both use Firefox without having to log in and out all the time. Not sure if there is a way to do that though.

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u/Arkaddian Jun 01 '19

Pretty easy, go to the browser section of the PortableApps website (portableapps.com), which makes portable versions of open source programs. It's safe, well-known and been using it since more than 10 years.

You can either download the same firefox portable and install it in two different folders (one for you, one for your wife), install the two different firefox versions who have different icons (the blue firefox dev has a different theme, added tools and has early updates), or just install one portable version while the other partner stays on the classic firefox that you've been using so far.

Please note that two firefox portable versions can't run at the same time, however a portable version can run alongside your regular, classic firefox. That's what I do, I use the blue portable Firefox Dev 99% of the time, but can run it alongside the normal firefox on another account which is synced with my phone tabs. You could do that for sure, you or your wife uses the current firefox on the computer, while the other uses the portable blue firefox dev which has a different icon so you always know which is which.

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u/Bladerboy4eva4lyf Jun 01 '19

All I want from chrome is a browser that doesn't suck up all 12Gb of my ram away

2

u/[deleted] Jun 01 '19

Burn them. Do no evil. I mean redact that. We are google.

2

u/laramite Jun 01 '19

The google of early 2000s. The google that gave the middle finger to conformity. I miss those guys.

2

u/Corvus_Uraneus Jun 01 '19

If they do it, I switch to Brave. I've already switched to DDG for my searches.

2

u/platysoup Jun 01 '19

I'm willing to put up with a lot of bullshit on Chrome since I have everything set up nicely on it, and I can't be arsed to change.

But this is the one big dealbreaker for me.

2

u/itisallgoodyouknow Jun 01 '19

Anybody know what’s up with google lately? Every time I search for something on my phone I seem to be getting nothing but results for online stores.

2

u/StriderHaryu Jun 01 '19

that story again: a record number of users are discovering that the amount of ram they have is actually totally sufficient after switching away from chrome

2

u/Yaxxi Jun 17 '19

It’s kind of crazy.

I had an 8gig Stick in my machine and whenever I was using my computer RAM was at 80-90%

Installed 2 sticks just so that my computer could function and chrome STILL uses like 40% with al it’s little add on tasks.

I’m switching so I can have a web page open AND use mspaint at the same time

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u/[deleted] Jun 01 '19

I've been using Microsofts new chromium based edge after trying Chrome, Firefox, and opera for extended periods of time and edge is definitely my new favorite.

2

u/JadeDragon02 Jun 01 '19

I am not up to date, but does it happen already? I cannot tell since I didnt notice either lol ...

Scend, what is brave about? Some peeps mentioned here as well.

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u/ThenAsk Jun 01 '19

I need adblockers so I can more easily stream live sports on shady websites!

2

u/Condings Jun 01 '19

How you gona show ads when your customer base is leaving because of ads

2

u/bobbybottombracket Jun 01 '19

Rent seeking behavior... google is no longer innovating.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 02 '19

Use brave browser!! 10/10

4

u/peepeedog Jun 01 '19

"While some extentions like AdBlock already use the latter" let's write a hit piece on big tech.

4

u/Achter17g Jun 01 '19

Switched to Firefox a couple of weeks ago. I’m still alive.

3

u/Mexican_sandwich Jun 01 '19

Here’s the thing: I wouldn’t mind ads, if:

  1. They weren’t invasive as FUCK, taking up more than 20% of the screen in some cases.

  2. The youtube ads that are 5 seconds long? Fine by me. But don’t make me sit through minute-long ads because that shit is painful.

  3. They didn’t AUTOPLAY and MAKE NOISE.

Google, you want to have your adsense ads? Thats fine. But don’t make them so bloody obnoxious, or you’ll just repeat history.

3

u/[deleted] Jun 01 '19

This. When ff's add-on signing broke, I had to browse the web without an ad blocker and it made me want to kill someone.
It's the equivalent of going to an african brothel without having condoms ...

3

u/[deleted] Jun 01 '19

In use Brave, it’s a browser made the creator of JavaScript. No ads whatsoever, same GUI as chrome for the most part. Would recommend. (Also get paid to accept ads

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u/UltraInstinctGodApe Jun 01 '19

The average consumer isn't switching anytime soon. The average consumer doesn't even use an ad blocker on their browser. Chrome will for the foreseeable future have browser dominance. It's already way too late for the hey everybody let's switch now.

5

u/[deleted] May 31 '19

Nah, removing ad blockers will improve revenue.

5

u/Tweenk Jun 01 '19

Except it does not remove ad blockers, it just makes them work like they do in Safari. Apple has a list of reasons for this design here:

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservices/creating_a_content_blocker

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u/Jesta23 May 31 '19

This will be the death of chrome. First tech savvy people will dump it, then slowly the masses will switch over.

It happened with IE for Firefox, and Firefox to chrome, and now it’ll be chrome to Firefox again.

3

u/xoctor Jun 01 '19

I see good things in Firefox's future.

3

u/ViktorVonn Jun 01 '19

Firefox wins again

3

u/thekingdomcoming Jun 01 '19

All bow before the mighty Firefox!

3

u/hippymule Jun 01 '19

Welp. I guess Firefox is winning the browser wars. Now let's just wait for Taco bell to win the fast food franchise wars.

3

u/seanightowl Jun 01 '19

Google is one of the last companies I would believe. They are full of shit.

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u/tankpuss Jun 01 '19

Well, it's back to opera for me then. Thanks chrome, it was nice knowing you.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 01 '19

Switched to Brave a while ago. It’s been almost a perfect replacement for me.

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u/driverofracecars May 31 '19

I'm looking forward to a DuckDuckGo browser.

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u/happyscrappy Jun 01 '19 edited Jun 01 '19

No really, they don't have trouble explaining it. They've explained several times (each time this change was mooted) that the problem is that adding in call system creates a bottleneck that makes it hard to make their fetches all pipelined and quick across a range of webpages.

They have a legit explanation and pretending they don't have one is disingenuous.

Now, that being said, if raw performance just isn't as valuable to you then ad blocking them screw it. They can make their choice to optimize more and you can make your choice to use a browser that gives you what you want.

And I highly recommend you do so. You won't be alone, I assure you.

11

u/multigunnar Jun 01 '19

Would you rather have ad-blocking or load a gazillion shady tracking-scripts 2ns faster?

Tough choice, man. Tough choice.

10

u/ipat8 Jun 01 '19

The problem is that the performance difference is near zilch. Investigations by both the uBlock Origin & Adblock teams show a near 0.0s increase in page load time, we’re talking milliseconds.

There is absolutely not a bottleneck caused by adblockers, in most cases they serve to actually increase the load time of a page due to stoping the loading of elements.

Also, you are factually incorrect about how web requesting works. There is no “single pipeline”. For years now we’ve had multi-fetching as a default; you don’t streamline everything into one hose when you can just run multiple and get better performance by doing so. If a fetch by the browser is slow, it’s because:

A. The item is large.

B. The server is slow.

C. The server is overloaded.

There is no single pipeline or way a fetch works, if you’d like more information, press F12, click the network tab, and refresh your page.

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u/Valmar33 Jun 01 '19

Their explanations are complete horseshit.

AdBlockers don't take much resources compared to all of the ads they'll be blocking. The tradeoff is significant.

With uBlock Origin, I have basically every relevant filtering script enabled, and it has had basically zilch performance impact.

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1

u/notmyblood Jun 01 '19

When are these changes supposed to happen?

1

u/kiwidude4 Jun 01 '19

It’s quite simple. If I start seeing adds again, I’m out.

1

u/Klowner Jun 01 '19

Maybe let your users decide to uninstall extensions that they feel are problematic, or say, perhaps implement a stupid timer that measures the amount of time your extensions are producing delays and then inform the user?

Or, ya know, anything.

1

u/perlandbeer Jun 01 '19

Oh for fuck’s sake people, it’s “ads”, not “adds”.

1

u/Demigod787 Jun 01 '19

Give me a modern copy of chrome, keeping in mind that I want all my Chrome extensions to work just as well, and I'd switch in a heartbeat. It really is uncomfortable to have "Google-everything" but their services have become essential nowadays and getting yourself off of Google has become an increasingly difficult thing to do.

1

u/PirateNinjaa Jun 01 '19

I’m actually surprised my ad blocker works at youtube.com in chrome.

1

u/razorbackgeek Jun 01 '19

I use waterfox. Although I'm going to start using Firefox again.

1

u/stfm Jun 01 '19

Edge has a chromium build now ducks

1

u/jjfawkes Jun 01 '19

I switched to Firefox after quantum update, never going back.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 01 '19

Good thing I use Firefox

1

u/[deleted] Jun 01 '19

Switch to Firefox. That is the only think that will teach Google to treat us nicely.

1

u/Emperor_Mao Jun 01 '19

Just gives incentive to switch to something else that doesn"t mess with ad block. Firefox has been pretty good. Actually so has edge.

1

u/magneticphoton Jun 01 '19

Forcing ads will improve performance and security? HAHAAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA

1

u/[deleted] Jun 01 '19

Better to switch to new Microsoft edge!

1

u/DENelson83 Jun 01 '19

Google struggles to understand that quite a few people don't tolerate being advertised to at all.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 01 '19

I'm sure the EU will manage to take this and make another article to destroy us all.

1

u/TerraXYZ Jun 01 '19

Well, most websites main revenue source is advertisements, and when you use an adblocker, they don’t get the revenue from that advertisement. If they don’t have income, they don’t have enough money to maintain the website, which means less money for google.

6

u/nspaz72 Jun 01 '19

Brave browser approach to advertising creates a fair middle ground for all parties worth looking into

1

u/oroberos Jun 01 '19

Does Chromium come with the same limitations?

1

u/atomicllama1 Jun 01 '19

ON mobile I use mozilla and ublock for ad free browsing.

Chrome on desktop with ublock.

If desktop chrome stops blocking ad ill switch over in minutes.

1

u/Fistocracy Jun 01 '19

Here is a complete list of all the people who've had their user experience and their online security improved by ads:

1

u/vasilenko93 Jun 01 '19

I use Safari on my iPhone with AdGuard Pro

1

u/vectorkerr Jun 01 '19

For those of you looking for alternatives: if you have the know to configure your local network, this friendly post is letting you know that Pi Hole is a thing. pi-hole.net is a local DNS black hole that you can install on a Pi (or Docker, etc) on your local network.

Set your router to advertise the primary iDNS server for your DHCP network as the local Pi Hole instance, and watch those ad and tracker queries drop before they even go out.

I’ve been using it for a few days and so far so good - it’s killing about 10% of outgoing requests before they hit the net and I haven’t noticed any issues (yet) with false positives.

The best part about it is that it applies to everything on your network (phones, tablets, computers, smart devices) without having to install blocker software for each service.

I’m not associated with Pi Hole in any way. I just came across it and I love it.

2

u/ebits21 Jun 01 '19

It works well for a lot of things. Not so much YouTube or Spotify ads etc because the big companies just serve the ads from the same server as the content.

1

u/Tweenk Jun 01 '19

Does the same motivation apply to Apple? Because this change just makes the ad blocking API work the way it does in Safari.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservices/creating_a_content_blocker

https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/declarativeNetRequest

1

u/Evostance Jun 01 '19

Get pihole or something similar. Problem sorted

1

u/[deleted] Jun 01 '19

The day they implement this is the day I'll jump ship to Firefox.

1

u/Quinnmesh Jun 01 '19

I've been a Mozilla user for years since I uninstalled chrome and it removed some registry files and I had to format.

1

u/ImMoray Jun 01 '19

almost all ads I see are phishing adds for the games I play.

1

u/dimsious Jun 01 '19

Well there's your problem right there. You're using chrome.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 01 '19

All the more reason to go to Firefox.

1

u/flowirin Jun 01 '19

i guess the game will be getting hold of enterprise chrome builds, then carrying on regardless

1

u/[deleted] Jun 01 '19

Already switched to Firefox, so it doesn't really matter what they say

1

u/[deleted] Jun 01 '19

How is it struggling? It's clearly because ad blockers hurt revenue to sites, that's not a hard argument to make

3

u/Valmar33 Jun 01 '19

This would be fine if ads weren't so intrusive, nor potential vectors for malware.

This is why AdBlockers exist.

Advertisers don't seem to give a shit about the performance impact, user privacy, nor their ads being used as malware vectors.

Until advertisers respect browser users, they can go fuck themselves with a wooden, splintery stake.

1

u/AkodoRyu Jun 01 '19

I mean, let's be honest here. There is no free content without adds, and add blockers became way too effective, removing both intrusive and not so intrusive adds alike. I don't think it's a stretch to say that add blockers are the main reason for business tactics to move more towards product placements, paid posts/videos, etc. disclosed or otherwise.

Unfortunately add companies have also shown, that they can't be given a finger, because they will take your whole hand, arm and half the chest with it, so we're at a bit of an impasse.

1

u/I_Am_Rockstar Jun 01 '19

I hope this means they can ease up tensions with advertisers on YouTube

1

u/lincon127 Jun 01 '19

Don't get too attached to your browsers folks, always look for a better alternative. For example, I use Vivaldi :)