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Google Chrome’s plan to limit ad blocking extensions kicks off next week

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.
RokAlamSeth ,

Brave Chads keep on winning

nutsack ,

it’s all inevitable. client signatures, the end of privacy, jerking off on my way home from the office. there is no God

meep_launcher ,

We killed god and replaced it with Google.

RokAlamSeth ,

Brave Chad’s keep on winning and shitting on Firefart buttboys

COASTER1921 ,

So maybe my experience is unique but websites don’t always test with Firefox now and some simply don’t work with it. I use it anyway out of principle but occasionally I need to open Chrome.

On mobile it’s even worse. Firefox is stuttery on my Pixel 8 Pro and doesn’t handle more than ~20 open tabs well. The nightly version fixes the stutter but crashes all the time (it’s a nightly build after all so this is expected).

iliketurtles ,

Do you have a lot of add-ons for Firefox mobile? I’m on a pixel 7 and it is smooth with 3ish add-ons, but is slow if I have too many.

COASTER1921 , (edited )

Just ublock origin with default configuration. My complaints aren’t for page loading so much as scrolling. Stutter when scrolling is really annoying to me. Interestingly as mentioned the nightly version fixes this, even when ublock is also installed on it.

My occasional page related complaints are for stuff animating correctly. This is very rare and a minor inconvenience usually, but sometimes stops you from being able to do what you came to accomplish (usually on jank websites, rental car companies for example).

Pretending Firefox mobile is already great is counterproductive to fixing it’s issues. They don’t have extensive development resources particularly for the mobile version so it makes sense it’s worse. But to a non-techie switching to it isn’t a good experience yet. It definitely can be in the future but without at least acknowledging it’s current flaws why would anyone switch who has previously tried switching?

Psythik ,

This is just straight-up slander. I’ve been using Firefox since 1.0PR (so for 20 years now). It was a very rare occasion when a website wouldn’t function properly, and almost never would a website completely break. I haven’t had a single issue with a website in Firefox for over 5 years now. I would appreciate it if you could post some examples of some websites that “simply won’t work with it”, because I simply don’t believe you.

Mobile is fine too. I have a bad habit of not closing tabs. It’s gotten so bad that the tab count number is just the infinity symbol on my phone. Still don’t have any slowdown issues on a Fold 3. Didn’t have any on my OnePlus 6T, either, nor my LG G2, nor my Galaxy S3. Quit making shit up just to have an excuse to stick with a shitty browser.

RogueAozame ,

Not op but moda healths find care page. It has a rapid refresh loop or just doesn’t load at all in Firefox. Chromium it works.

MentorKitten ,

I often have to use edge or chrome to do most if anything related to my classes or for pearson. Almost never wants to work on Firefox

Psythik ,

Ah yes, anything institutional or governmental tends to behind on the times when it comes to browser compatibility. Good point.

I remember back when I tried to get assistance from my local government; the application form didn’t work unless you had IE6 (a browser that hasn’t been supported since Windows XP), in 2012.

frostmore , (edited )

netscape was the standard back then when expolorer was crap…fast forward today,firefox(netscape’s successor) is still the standard when other browsers are still crap.

edit: spelling firefox and netscape…god damn butter fingers…

sip ,

Firefox

JackbyDev ,

NetScape!

egeres ,
@egeres@lemmy.world avatar

It’s weird that I’ve been on firefox for the vast majority of my life and I always had this perception that “everyone” was using it. Here in lemmy you hear about it all the time, my friends use it, I see it on my newsfeeds etc

But when you check the market share it around 2.8% while chrome is 65.1% gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share

Juigi ,

I guess average user cares mostly about how fast and smooth the browsing is. Chrome definitely has the edge on that over firefox.

sunbeam60 ,

I’m forced to use Chrome quite a bit (workplace silliness) and exclusively use Firefox at home. I seriously cannot see this edge that you claim Chrome has. Do you mean in loading speed? Scrolling speed?

Siegfried ,

I second you, I don’t see any advantage on using Chrome over Firefox.

shrugs ,

same for me. no noticeable difference

RageAgainstTheRich ,

I was at my parents house last week because i had to help them with their laptop. I told my mom about firefox and she was very confused because she doesn’t seem to understand that google chrome is a browser and that every browser can access google search or their banking site.

It took a bit of effort to explain that firefox works the exact same but is safer and faster.

She is now using firefox on her phone because i showed her ublock origin works with it to block ads.

A lot of people don’t seem to understand that google chrome isn’t the internet and what exactly a browser is.

egeres ,
@egeres@lemmy.world avatar

I feel like “most people” only learn “one technology per category”. They know of, one operative system, one browser, one app to mindless scroll, one program to edit text. As a developer it shocks me a little because I’m always eager to try new programming languages, technologies and ways to interact with things. I guess most people only know about edge/safari because they come pre-installed

iopq ,

How is that shocking?

I use Linux, Firefox, Lemmy, nano. Why would I change?

Malfeasant ,

A lot of people don’t seem to understand that google chrome isn’t the internet and what exactly a browser is.

It’s been that way for a lot longer than chrome has been the big one, it used to be the same with internet explorer…

egeres ,
@egeres@lemmy.world avatar

I would even go as far as saying that the left meniscus of the gaussian thinks google chrome is “google” and the “thing that finds webs”

Kiernian ,

This is also why there’s such a a prevalence of flashing warning banners, fake pseudobluescreens, and other scary shit disguised in chrome notifications.

The notifications in chrome are as close to on by default as you can get and with the right code snippets you can make it look like the FBI locked down your workstation and you need to call them.

Firefox should start hardening against this behavior now because popularity gets targeted even more specifically.

Make it an end user safety feature.

Force every notification to have

“This is a notification from a website that you elected to receive by allowing notifications. You can disable these notifications here”

with a link to the setting on the frame of of every one, no fullscreen allowed, no flashing, double-check and prohibit the words FBI, CIA, NSA, TSA, IRS, Social Security, Microsoft, etc.

Psythik ,

Might have to do with the fact that Firefox was the dominant browser for quite awhile until Chrome arrived on the scene.

ahal ,

Iirc it peaked at around 30% market share. I think IE was around 60% at the time. So never dominant, but definitely very very widespread.

nek0d3r ,

I remember a point around 2015ish where a lot of web apps went from recommending Firefox and Chrome for the best experience to just Chrome. Now I often see “don’t use Firefox” as a support tactic.

mesamunefire ,

Yeah I’ve been using it for at least a decade now. It’s great.

billwashere ,

How does this affect browsers like Brave?

JackbyDev ,

Brave’s ad blocker is not an extension so it’s unaffected.

sebinspace ,

Same with Opera / Opera GX

BaardFigur ,

deleted_by_author

    •
    sebinspace ,

    I’m not recommending it. I’m saying that’s how its Adblock works.

    dan ,
    @dan@upvote.au avatar

    I miss the old Opera, back when it had its own engine. It was a really good browser. I used it from 2002 until 2012.

    TWeaK ,

    I remember it also let you spoof your user agent, and had a built in email client. It was just generally feature rich.

    dan ,
    @dan@upvote.au avatar

    Later versions had a built-in BitTorrent client too. It let you not only spoof the user agent, but it let you disable images, disable JS, block content, and a bunch of other settings per site.

    It showed a loading progress bar indicating how much of the page content had loaded.

    It had an option to only show images that were already cached - useful on very slow connections and better than just turning off all images.

    It had mouse gestures for going back/forward, opening new tabs, etc. Oh yeah, it was the first browser to ever implement tabbed browsing.

    They had an experiment where you could run decentralized services directly within the browser, called Opera Unite: howtogeek.com/…/turn-your-computer-into-a-file-mu…. They were trying to bring the web back to its original form, where everyone hosted their own content.

    All of this was built-in, and yet it was somehow lighter (in terms of RAM usage) than other browsers?

    They were truly innovating. We just don’t see a lot of software doing that any more. So many companies these days are trying to figure out how to extract more of your personal data and show you more ads.

    TWeaK ,

    Don’t recommend Brave either lol.

    mechoman444 ,

    I can’t remember a time when I didn’t use Firefox. Actually back in highschool I used IE around 2002ish but only because I didn’t know any better back then.

    hydrospanner ,

    I went from IE to Firefox back in that same timeframe, then by the time Chrome came out, my Firefox just had too much clutter and Chrome was way faster.

    Within the past year, Chrome managed to enshittify itself enough that I’ve gone back to Firefox on PC (still using chrome on mobile) and it’s the same sort of “lighter, faster” feel that I got years ago when I left it for Chrome.

    There’s also the whole ad blocker bullshit too, of course. YouTube ads were the last straw for me.

    thermal_shock ,

    if you use Firefox on mobile, you can add plugins like ublock origin.

    wesley ,

    I can’t use the Internet on Mobile without an adblocker. The user experience is totally unbearable

    thermal_shock ,

    fully agree

    dan ,
    @dan@upvote.au avatar

    Honestly, IE was the best browser around the time IE6 was released (2000/2001). Way better than Netscape. Opera was the other good browser back then. The initial release of Firefox wasn’t quite there yet.

    rottingleaf ,

    Better for MS non-standard things? Or better how? Performance-wise - yes.

    IMHO a web browser has to support HTML 4.* , JS, Netscape plugins (Java, Flash, whatever else) and that’s it.

    That’s what I came to when I started using the Web, but I’m confident it’s not just bias - that was the best combination. I’m not sure on CSS - I hated it, but people have good arguments in favor of it. But hypertext with limited appearance tuning and scripts for the web itself, plus plugins for various content, including applications, - that’s definitely a better idea than the modern approach.

    dan ,
    @dan@upvote.au avatar

    Better for MS non-standard things? Or better how?

    All browsers had non-standard things back then, to the point where many sites had two versions: An IE version and a Netscape version.

    Believe it or not, back then Internet Explorer was the most standards-compliant browser. It was the first browser to implement the DOM and CSS based on relevant W3C specs (Netscape was backing JSSS instead).

    Many features we take for granted these days came from IE. Drag and drop, the JS events system, iframes, rich text editing, clipboard access, AJAX (dynamically loading content on the page without a full page reload), visual effects like transparency and gradients, all originally came from Internet Explorer.

    The CSS box-model in IE6 (including margin, padding and border in the width of elements) was wrong because the CSS spec hadn’t been finalized by the time of its release so Microsoft used a draft, and it changed from publication of the draft to publication of the final version. Many years later, people realised that IE6’s model was actually the better model, which is why every browser supports it now via box-sizing: border-box.

    rottingleaf ,

    Sigh. OK, since I didn’t use Netscape (started around 2002), didn’t know about some of these.

    AsimovsRobot ,

    At some point 15-20 years ago Firefox was becoming a resource hog and I switched to chrome. I switched back a number of years ago and regret not switching back earlier.

    cujo255 ,

    Are you me? Firefox was always an option, but it definitely became slow maybe around 2010? I switched to chrome but came back to Firefox a few years ago also when chroms was first getting enshitified

    ICastFist ,
    @ICastFist@programming.dev avatar

    Back when Chrome was the shiny new thing, Firefox was taking a downturn, I think it was around version 50 or something, as they wanted to update something that would break compatibility with a considerable number of existing themes and plugins, including my then favorite, NoScript.

    For some reason, the UI of Chrome was never my cup of tea, all those round edges and auto-hiding buttons (maybe these were later additions?) annoyed me to no end.

    AsimovsRobot ,

    Yeah, all my bad experiences with Firefox from back in the day were completely gone when I switched back to it a couple of years ago.

    burretploof ,
    @burretploof@lemmy.world avatar

    For a time in the early 2000s I used IE via AvantBrowser. It had some cool features at the time! 😅

    AnUnusualRelic ,
    @AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world avatar

    I admit I didn’t always use Firefox. I used netscape navigator.

    UpperBroccoli ,

    I am still using Mosaic because it supports Gopher.

    chiliedogg ,

    When Chrome launched Firefox was in pretty rough shape, and Google wasn’t what they are today.

    Lots of us switched to Chrome then because it simply ran better.

    sip ,

    there was a point between 3x and quantum (47 or 48 I think) that the performance was pretty poor and I briefly switched to chrome. when quantum got released, I switched back instantly

    iopq ,

    When Firefox was just starting to get good I still used Opera with their presto engine

    rukaslan ,

    I am using firefox over six month i guess. Added firefoxcss and some important extensions. Its just invincible. In my experience, its better than edge and vivaldi. I stopped using chrome many years ago. I switched to edge, then vivaldi, then again edge. Now, firefox forever. But, I have a question. I understand that, it will stop extension. But those chromium based browsers, which have built in adblocker, will they also get affected? Edge, brave, vivaldi etc, all of them are chromium based. It would be sad to see them suffer. They all fight against the mighty emperor like chrome. Hope they are going to find alternative way. However, firefox should make it customization more easier for normal user. They can offer extension like sidebery, ublock origin, gesturefy, dark mode, auto discard tabs at the beginning of their installation. Also, some different looks as theme from Firefoxcss. Normal users don’t dig much. Many people still don’t know that ads can be block by extension. A easier setup would boost users.

    glitchdx ,

    I used firefox back in the day because it was better than IE, switched to chrome because of the convenience and features. I recently switched to brave because chrome became such a pain. If brave shits the bed because of this, I’m going back to firefox.

    stormeuh ,

    Friendly FYI: Brave is based on Chromium, so under the hood it uses the same browser engine as Chrome. I can’t recommend switching to Firefox enough, not only because it’s a good and fully featured browser, but also because its existence is vital to keeping Google’s power in check.

    zewm ,
    @zewm@lemmy.world avatar

    Don’t forget that brave is also just a crypto scam hiding as a browser.

    KonalaKoala ,
    @KonalaKoala@lemmy.world avatar

    I think LibreWolf is going to end up being the go-to browser at this rate.

    n3m37h ,

    Laughs in Firefox

    graymess ,

    How long until the majority of the Internet is inaccessible to non-Chromium browsers because the pages “don’t support them”?

    balder1991 ,

    Then I guess people will use the web less and less.

    RememberTheApollo_ ,

    I don’t think that’s going to be the case. People will find workarounds. The whole point of these alternative browsers is to use the web in whatever way the developers think their user base wants to use it. If the web is inaccessible to non-chromium browsers then people will spoof their browser to the site to look like a chromium browser.

    bc93 ,

    deleted_by_author

    •
    RememberTheApollo_ ,

    If we get to the point where the corporatocracy can force us into a limited set of compliant browsers then the web as we know it has ended. I don’t think they’ll go that far unless they decide to go whole hog. That level of control will likely look to wipe out any useful plugins like ad-blockers or other privacy features. I didn’t want to go down the slippery slope argument, but that’s pretty much what will happen if they go that direction.

    iopq ,

    But most of those only give you a few bits of data. Like if there’s only one technique that succeeded, you might have the same fingerprint as everyone with your exact phone with the rest randomized

    n3m37h ,

    If it don’t work on Firefox I won’t use it. There are better FOSS options anyways

    BlueMagma ,

    Sure as long as it’s not my bank or my employer or the gov official website for accessing my taxes…

    bc93 ,

    deleted_by_author

    •
    Kiernian ,

    “WebUSB is a JavaScript application programming interface specification for securely providing access to USB devices from web applications”

    Holy Hannah, NO!!!

    Might as well allow a website to direct write to your hard drive unprompted again.

    Does noone see how BAD this stuff is?

    Stop creating attack vectors with glowing neon signs on them.

    Goodtoknow ,
    @Goodtoknow@lemmy.ca avatar

    Except it’s a very good thing for 2FA USB keys which prevent people from gaining access unless they have physical access to the key. Also useful for USB gamepads etc

    iopq ,

    I would close my bank account and such to a different bank. It takes literally 5 minutes to open one online.

    And yes, I would not work for a company that doesn’t support Firefox

    I would also keep pestering support of the government website, that one I will have to give to you

    InternetUser2012 ,

    They do some now, but user agent switcher gets me to all of those with no problem.

    nomadjoanne ,

    It is not that simple. These are cat and mouse games. Whack a mole. Whatever you’d like to say.

    InternetUser2012 ,

    If I can’t access a site with firefox, i won’t deal with online. I’ll call them and waste an employee’s time, or send payment in the mail. I’m not using chrome or an app and i don’t care.

    nomadjoanne ,

    For this reason, we must still take a stand against this stuff.

    webghost0101 , (edited )

    Honestly the way the internet is going do you need access to the majority of the internet? I feel like its pretty dead as it is now already.

    Lemmy will still work because we mostly use Firefox, and i bet the same will hold true for many others.

    Basically the moment mainstream internet becomes google only you will see nerds build new websites specifiably to cater to the non google crowd and i trust random internet nerds a hack of a lot more than a monopoly corporation.

    BRING IT ON GOOGLE!, YOU CAN INITIATE THE PUSH TO CREATE A NEW BETTER INTERNET. ^Create demand for freedom trough your suppressive enforments^

    prole ,

    Oh yeah nothing bad could ever happen from effectively removing an entire section of the population from certain parts of the Internet completely.

    I can’t imagine that ever going badly.

    freebee ,

    That’s already the case. Facebook etc have been walled gardens (or prisons if you prefer) for decade and a half now.

    CancerMancer ,

    I remember the “works best on IE” warnings of old, looks like we might be heading back there.

    sunbeam60 ,

    This is getting more common. Whatever dev accepted that when sizing the story should hang their head in shame. “No, you don’t size for a poor solution, you size for a good solution and let the PMs chip at the things they understand, keeping some things sacrosanct”.

    BrownianMotion ,
    @BrownianMotion@lemmy.world avatar

    Laughs in Waterfox

    Emerald ,

    Laughs in earthfox

    pycorax ,

    Laughs in airfox

    Gestrid ,

    Laughs in avatarfox

    patak ,
    @patak@lemmy.world avatar

    Laughs in electrofox

    veloxization ,
    @veloxization@yiffit.net avatar

    Laughs in long ago, the four nations lived together in harmony fox

    ICastFist ,
    @ICastFist@programming.dev avatar

    Laughs in Captain Planetfox

    Wait, wrong 5 elements

    enleeten ,

    With your powers combined, I am Internet Explorer 7!

    Emerald ,

    laughs in icefox

    fne8w2ah ,

    I’ve long ago stopped using Chrome on my computer because it was getting too bloated.

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    As with others, I use Firefox for my main browser, and Brave when I need a Chromium-based browser for something. I don’t see many ads…

    ruse8145 ,

    Consider ungoogled chromium instead. Brave is not great, it just has the advantage of being heavily promoted by the middle part of the (privacy nerds) and (want privacy because their beliefs are rejected by most of human society) venn diagram.

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    I use that on my personal computer, but at work I’ll occasionally hit sites other than what I’m debugging, and Chromium has ineffective ad-block, whereas Brave has reasonable ad-block. I can’t control the network at work like I can at home, so I can’t really rely on something like a pi-hole or whatever.

    As a web browser with an embedded ad-blocker, it works fine. I’m not going to stop using something because someone distasteful is using it, I’ll stop using it if it no longer meets my needs. It blocks ads and renders as Chrome would, so it works well enough for me.

    I disable the crypto nonsense and pretty much only use it for debugging work stuff. Sometimes that means I need a JSON formatter or something, and those sites are riddled with ads w/o an ad-blocker.

    ruse8145 ,

    oh, hrm. Im not sure what specific build you’re using, but the one I’m using has mechanisms for installing normal adblockers like ublockorigin. note: afaik, this doesn’t solve the problem indicated in this thread – I’m operating on the basis that the blocking functionality will be nerfed. However for me, I use it purely for (stuff that doesnt work in firefox) and my jellyfin server (since firefox is kinda particular about hevc videos…you can kinda get them to work in windows, but in many cases I dont fully understand jellyfin still tries to transcode to 264).

    worth stating that “because someone distasteful is using it” is a reasonable misunderstanding due to me assuming some knowledge. Brave was created because firefox kicked a homophobe out and he wanted to make a browser. Said person is also clearly a cryptonut, which makes him a yet more negative person in my book. Now, unrelated to that base, you have a lot of people out there who are promoting it by my personal experience in more privacy centric groups is that these promoters are often quite…unsavory. Is that enough to stop using software? not necessarily. Is it enough when there are far better options out there? to me, absolutely.

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    At home, it’s whatever ships with my Linux distribution. I use it mostly for web dev testing (I dev on Firefox, test on chromium) for personal projects, and for my kids to play certain games (Firefox works most of the time for that).

    Brave was created because firefox kicked a homophobe out and he wanted to make a browser.

    Sort of, but I don’t think that’s really telling the whole story.

    Brendan Eich was the CEO of Mozilla for many years and was the initial creator of JavaScript. He was ousted because he made a private donation to block gay marriage legalization in California. There is no evidence that he was or is a homophobe, just that he didn’t believe that gay marriage was something that state should legally recognize. By all counts, he was pleasant to work with regardless of sexual orientation, the issue was that someone found out about his donation. He didn’t harm anyone and wasn’t unfair, he just made a private donation.

    I think he was a great CEO, and Mozilla needs a technical CEO imo (in fact, everything started going downhill around when he left). I disagree with him politically, but if I avoided every product where I disagreed with the executive team politically, I’d have to avoid pretty much every product (and quit my job).

    So I need a better reason to avoid Brave. I’m not sure what the plan is for their cryptocurrency, and I honestly see it as more of a gimmick than anything. It’s easy to disable, so whatever, it existing doesn’t impact me.

    I also don’t actively recommend it to anyone, I always recommend Firefox or a Firefox derivative. The only time I recommend it is if someone needs a Chromium-based browser and wants ad-blocking, and Brave works well for that. If they just need Chromium and don’t need ad blocking, I recommend Chromium.

    If you have a better alternative, I’m interested. I literally just need a Chromium-based browser that works on macOS (what I use for work) with proper ad blocking. I don’t need to sync anything, it’ll only ever exist on that one device. I also need something for Linux, and open source is more important than ad blocking there.

    I’m also interested in Brave Search since it uses its own index. I currently use DDG, but search results are kinda crappy so I’m looking for alternatives.

    kyle ,

    To my shame, I’m still deeply ingrained in the Google ecosystem. I settled on it like 8-10 years ago and I’m not sure how to dig myself out of this pit. More than Chrome, I heavily use Docs, Sheets, Drive, Wallet, YouTube, Gmail, I even have a Pixel (I hate how bloated Samsung is).

    I’ve used Firefox a little for work because of the nice containers feature. Is Google Drive bad too? It’s so easy to share things, I torrent a lot of books and I’ve shared with a bunch of friends, idk if there’s an alternative that others could easily use.

    AnActOfCreation OP ,
    @AnActOfCreation@programming.dev avatar

    Don’t fret, I think a lot of us are on a long-term journey to de-Google. I’ve actually found that changing browsers is one of the easiest things to do, especially with the ability to import your bookmarks and such. With Firefox Sync, you pretty much have the same functionality as you would with your Google account signed into Chrome.

    TipRing ,

    Gmail is probably the hardest one to kick. I’m fine with paying for an email service if it’s functional and doesn’t siphon my personal data, but finding a quality trustworthy provider and then migrating 20 years of data to it seems so overwhelming.

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    Why do you need to migrate 20 years of data? Do you actually look at anything more than a month or two old?

    That said, Protonmail has “Easy Switch” to copy emails and whatnot.

    The harder part for me is Drive, since there just isn’t a competitor that’s anywhere near as good in terms of overall experience. I’m going to try out OnlyOffice, but I know there are a few features I just won’t have anymore.

    TipRing ,

    I do occasionally need something from 10 or even 15 years ago, needing the exact date I sold a property or started a new project or even just jogging my memory of an old contact I am reaching again. While none of this is strictly necessary, I could make do without it if I had to, it does create inertia.

    I really need to check out Proton, Google is just getting worse and worse and the sooner I can get away from their ecosystem the better.

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    Give it a shot! Worst case scenario, you just go back.

    AnActOfCreation OP ,
    @AnActOfCreation@programming.dev avatar

    I think migrating is the hardest part. My email history has a lot of important records and notes that I don’t want to lose.

    By the way, I recommend checking out this video, which makes a great point that email is inherently insecure, regardless of the provider you choose.

    www.youtube.com/watch?v=iH626CXyNtE

    RichieRich ,
    @RichieRich@lemmy.world avatar

    Why do you need to access 20 years of data in Gmail? For archiving mails there is a cost-free tool called MailStore Home. It’s portable and fits on a USB thumb drive. Save two or more copies for data safety.

    www.mailstore.com/en/products/mailstore-home/

    So you can archive your mails without a hassle. Then you can choose any provider you want.

    ghost_towels ,

    Oh my gosh thank you!! I need this exact thing but hadn’t gotten around to figuring out a solution. Much appreciated!!

    ruse8145 ,

    Several practical solutions here but the simplest is probably to start with thunderbird on your home computer. That way storage limit shouldn’t be a worry and you can see if you find it searchable/usable enough. If so, you can do a Google takeout as a long term canonical archive, do a thunderbird backup to easily switch computers when the time comes, and then sign up for a privacy friendly service.

    I bought into proton for a bit but am very very against how they bundled their services and switched my mail to posteo, which i have had no issues with in the last 1.5 years or so. Tutanota was fine but firmly a third place opt for me. I also prefer posteo because I’m anti-magic: posteo has tons of options which can get you to same or better security than proton, but it doesn’t “just work” like protons security does. Both are great.

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    Here’s what I did:

    1. switch to Firefox - works with all the Google crap, so it’s an easy switch
    2. get a slim wallet - I don’t need Google Wallet at all anymore, I just keep the two cards I use for everything easily accessible
    3. install GrapheneOS on my Pixel phone - can install sandboxed Google crap if you want (I do it in a separate profile)
    4. YouTube - install ad-block and use Grayjay on my phone to make it easier to watch non-YouTube channels
    5. forward all gmail to a new account (I picked Tuta, but Protonmail is probably better for most) - easy to configure forwards in gmail, and then I just give out my new email to family and friends; plan is to keep gmail for spam once I’m no longer getting important emails sent to my new email

    I’m still stuck with Google Drive though. As you said, it’s just so convenient. I’m trying out OnlyOffice with a self-hosted NextCloud instance, but there’s a lot of sacrifices. I have some complex spreadsheets, and switching to literally anything else loses features (I like the GOOGLEFINANCE() feature).

    But yeah, I wish Google didn’t suck, they have some really convenient products, I just don’t trust them anymore.

    InternetPerson ,

    Restore Privacy – Alternatives to Google Products – The Big List (2024)

    Emmie , (edited )

    I did it by selling soul to apple completely, I mean I am not going to peddle another company but at least it isn’t google. However I can afford to throw some cash on their overpriced stuff. They suck but at least they aren’t google. I don’t use any google services right now. Not even maps. Without any cons because obviously I just use apple stuff for everything wallet etc

    I could use framework laptop linux + graphene os but I need to live and thrive among ppl and also get that sweet social credit for not being a total nerd that yells about evil corps and how I have superior privacy in the basement left and right. However I would if it was socially acceptable.

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