A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.
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Google isn't blocking one of the biggest adblockers. It's killing chrome!
Those who aren't using an adblock won't notice any difference but everyone else will just migrate to a non chromium browser
This will incentivize businesses to only support chrome
I'm fine with not supporting them then.
Google has been telegraphing this for months. Either switch browsers now or enjoy your ads.
They've literally said ad blockers are a threat to their revenue https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000165204419000004/goog10-kq42018.htm
Risks Related to Our Businesses and Industries
[...]
New and existing technologies could affect our ability to customize ads and/or could block ads online, which would harm our business.
Technologies have been developed to make customizable ads more difficult or to block the display of ads altogether and some providers of online services have integrated technologies that could potentially impair the core functionality of third-party digital advertising. Most of our Google revenues are derived from fees paid to us in connection with the display of ads online. As a result, such technologies and tools could adversely affect our operating results.
It's not exactly super helpful to just link to an 86 page SEC filing. Maybe you could provide a quote?
Ctrl F for "block". There were only 5 usages of the word and that led me to the section.
That's nice. A quote still would have been more approachable for most, while those that were more curious could have followed the link to the document.
I have some time now, I'll grab it and edit it in
Yet another reason to use Brave, which has better native ad block than any of the other browsers.
Only vivaldi caught this issue. Brave had this api enabled, most likely on accident.
But the problem is, that chromium is just such big and complex software, when combined with development being driven by Google, it's just impossible for any significant changes or auditing to be done by third parties. Google is capable of exteriting control over Brave, simply by hiding changes like above, or by making massive changes like manifest v3, which are expensive for third parties to maintain.
Brave can maintain 1 big change to chromium, but for how long? What about 2, 3, etc.
My other big problem with brave is that I see them somewhat mimicking Google's beginnings. Google started out with 3 things: an ad network, a browser, and a search engine.
Right now, Brave has those same three things. It feels very ominous to me, and I would rather not repeat the cycle of enshittification that drove me away from chrome and goolgle.
No thanks Brendan Eich the CEO of Brave is a piece of shit.
Meh, Brave is still Chroium. Even if they continue to support manifest v2, even today the are selling „good“ ads to the users. That and the Crypto bullshit they tried a while ago makes them untrustworthy in my eyes.
Firefox is the only real alternative.
Brave is still Chroium
And yet, it does a better job blocking YouTube ads than Firefox, without any add-ons.
Crypto, Ads
Those features are opt-in.
You mean by building the add-on directly into the browser? No thanks. I like my browser dev to work on my browser and my ad-block dev to work on my ad-block. They are both good at what they do on their own, I don't need them to mix.
Those features are opt-in.
They are now. They were opt-out to begin with. This is one of those "fool me twice" situations. That, and the founder of Brave is also an outspoken homophobe. He financially backed Prop 8 in California to overturn same-sex marriage, and left Firefox because it was too woke. I seriously would rather Chrome at that point. They're just regular levels of corporate evil, not "every person who uses my browser is proving my identity politics" level of evil.
They are now.
That's what I don't get with the Anti-Brave crowd. Brave learns their users don't like a feature and then they do better. This would, to me, be indicative of the way things should proceed.
Meanwhile Firefox is moving backwards.
By all means, use a browser that doesn't work as well, but maybe don't run a circle jerk of trolls whenever someone offers a better-working alternative.
Personally, I think I should be able to expect a company to understand their target demographic well enough to know that those "features" wouldn't be well received. But I also personally don't consider ads and crypto garbage to be features. I guess if you do, then it's the perfect browser for you. However, I don't really want to contribute to Google's monopolisation of browser engine development anymore. Nor do I want to use a browser developed by a homophobe. So even if Brave may be slightly "better-working" I would not consider it better at all.
As well, even though I'm a Blahaj member, I'm going to take the time to point out the "Bee Nice" rule of the instance we're currently on. It feels like you're skirting dangerously close to violating that, considering you implied I'm a troll for calling out the prejudicial politics of the founder of a piece of software, which you didn't at all address in your comment. I'm going to attach some resources about it here, if you care to read them at all:
(Some of these are older, about the push for him to step down as Mozilla CEO, some are newer and urging him to leave Brave, or for people to boycott it.)
The garbage is taking itself out
Block Chrome and use anything not Chrome based. In other words use Firefox.
But Firefox is about to loose it's funding because google is a monopoly lol
So Google is a monopoly and removing funding to Firefox will help them not to be a monopoly? That does not sound right. Rather the opposite.
Nothing has been decided or done yet. Most likely they will just be forced to not abuse their position, for example make ads for it on www.google.com, don't bundle Chrome with Android and such things.
I believe there will always be an alternative to Chrome available as the Open Source community will find a way together.
Firefox is open source. It's not going anywhere; even if Mozilla Co. goes broke and closes down the Mozilla Foundation.
Sure. But loosing the money to fund development surely won't help, will it? My point is that there is a real danger here. There are other forces at play which is why you have the chrome dominance already. Long term firefox will fall behind if not maintained. There really needs to be a push to finance firefox or alternatives.
Or imagine if more and more websites "require" some new web protocol to prevent ad blocking, or use of DMCA against browsers or addons altering websites as "web apps". This is another problem that cannot be solved through individual responsibility.