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RememberTheApollo_ ,

Thanks for reaffirming why I refuse to use Chrome.

art ,
@art@lemmy.world avatar

They started putting ads in Windows, a few users switched, but most still continue Windows.

Google will roll this out and a few users will switch, but most will just keep using Chrome.

We’ve already established that most users don’t seem to care.

StormWalker ,

I am one that switched. I have Linux Mint which I use 99.9% of the time, and a windows 10 laptop that I use 0.1% for that one windows program.

I think more people are wanting to get out of the grip that google, apple, and Microsoft have over them. Many are overwhelmed because they are in so deep. It took me months to get out, which I did about 6 years ago. I never looked back though. I know people that want out, but are not strong enough to commit to switching all their services and apps.

trafficnab ,

Seeing that half of my extensions (it was seriously like 10 of them) were going to be disabled is what pushed me to finally switch to Firefox because if I have to find alternatives to them it might as well be on another browser

pete_the_cat ,

The reason for this is because switching from Windows to Linux is a lot bigger change, requiring a fair amount of technical know-how, and even knowing that Linux exists in the first place. Swapping browsers is easy in the technical sense, it’s breaking the habit that’s the hard part, but if they piss people off enough all it takes is uninstalling it in order to break the habit, not a drastic paradigm shift. I’m a long time Chrome user, like over a decade and with the recent “unverified download” nonsense unless you enable their invasive tracking has put me over the edge. I had both the Chrome and Firefox icons pinned to the taskbar and just out of habit kept clicking it, I finally removed it last week

golden_zealot , (edited )
@golden_zealot@lemmy.ml avatar

I’m not so sure about that. Windows despite its ads is still generally usable or at least readable, but adblockers affect almost every website, and in a much more extreme way, without which renders some websites virtually unusable. As someone else said, installing another browser is also far easier than taking backups, installing an entirely new OS, implementing your backups, and learning an entire new OS which may not readily support the software you have licensed from windows for most users.

Users care a lot about convenience. I expect that they weigh installing and learning linux etc as less convenient than the ads in windows which is why they would not switch, but I expect when it comes to this case, they would weigh installing a different browser with adblock as much more convenient than using the internet with ads on every single website.

time_fo_that ,

Firefox ftw.

I’ve actually been using Waterfox lately though because for some reason there’s a video codec issue on Firefox that makes YouTube videos not play correctly.

TheColonel ,

I watch YouTube just fine on Firefox.

Some plugins to Adblock but that’s it.

time_fo_that ,

I’m not sure why it happens. It happens on every PC I have Firefox installed on (three of them). I should probably try and reduce my extension count to see if it works lol.

CoffeeJunkie ,

…Oh, no! Anyway. Just giving people one more reason to finally make the switch to Firefox or something different.

Google Chrome warns about disabling uBlock Origin. I warn Google Chrome that they’re being a little bitch & they’re going to lose users.

Tja ,

Oh no, they are about to lose the $0 that uBlock origin users bring!

They know they will lose users and they don’t care. They will make much more per user selling ads than before. Google is an ad company. They’re not a browser company, or a mobile OS company, or an office suite company. It’s all about ads.

Olgratin_Magmatoe ,

Not necessarily. They still get money from selling user data. So they likely still care about losing users who use adblocking to at least some degree.

CasualPenguin ,

Good point, but also it’s not that they will lose all of the user data they sell if people switch off Chrome, just the parts that chrome collects.

If they were blocking ublock users from accessing any google products then it would be purely a ‘we only care about ad revenue’

It would be very interesting to see the internal data they use to make these decisions, but also knowing tech these decisions were probably made by a series of mid level managers sufficiently sucking the air out of the room until a critical mass was hit to make this happen

Olgratin_Magmatoe ,

They absolutely also get data through means other than their browser. But they data they get off of the browser directly is probably a shit load.

but also knowing tech these decisions were probably made by a series of mid level managers sufficiently sucking the air out of the room until a critical mass was hit to make this happen

1000%

I’m sure a bunch of bean counters were involved as well.

person420 ,

Google doesn’t sell user data, they sell user eyeballs. There’s no incentive for Google to sell user data since they’re an ad company and the only people who would buy the data are competitors.

Olgratin_Magmatoe , (edited )

Maybe you’re right, I don’t have any certainty in this. But I don’t buy google’s word on this for a second.

www.cnn.com/2023/07/11/tech/…/index.html

tampabay.com/…/google-selling-users-personal-data…

mercurynews.com/…/google-selling-users-personal-d…

Corpos like to lie, and their promises to not sell data is worthless. Even if they’re not outright selling data directly, or “anonymizing it” before selling it, at a bare minimum they’re still abusing the hoard of data they have to make a buck. They want that data and get large amounts of it through people’s broswers, even with adblockers installed.

person420 ,

Your first link talks about Google consuming data for its AI

Your next two links (which are talking about the same thing) talks about how other companies are abusing Google’s adbid system to try and collect correlated data against their own.

Love it or hate it, Google has been pretty transparent that they use your data for advertising, but nothing there talks about Google selling your data to third parties.

snugglesthefalse ,

They also gain people spreading word of mouth advice to never use chrome

Tja ,

If you also spread the word about uBlock, same rule applies.

GoogleSellsAds ,
@GoogleSellsAds@sh.itjust.works avatar

If you use anything Google, you are the product. This has been pretty obvious since the early 2000’s, yet people dive right into all the crap they release.

Tja ,

Counterpoint: so what? I’m not going to start paying for a search engine, or maps, or the dozen other Google services. Yeah, if I search for a lawn mower I will see lawn mower ads everywhere… and that’s actually better than seeing dishwasher ads or dating site ads.

I use Google since the beginning, and the o ly thing that would make me stop is if the quality of the product goes down (like the recent AI summaries that apparently they show in the US).

StormWalker ,

Actually if everyone paid for software instead it would be very cheap. Maybe like $1. Think about it, it only takes a tiny fraction of the people that use free open source alternatives to make a donation to keep those products going. I use all the alternatives to google. The only google product I use is YouTube. And I find alternatives VERY affordable and voluntary donations mostly. Take for example Microsoft Word and Excel, I switched to LibreOffice 6 years ago. It’s 100% as good. We are here on Lemmy instead of Reddit. And Firefox is every bit as good as chrome. I get it that once your are in the google system it’s hard to get out, and is a lot of learning and work to move over, but daym it feels good once the only google you use is YouTube. Supporting a load of little projects instead of the mighty google feels good also. The alternatives have come a long way. I made I list of alternatives and as a project switched over one by one. I have never looked back and don’t miss all the google demands for phone numbers etc. I am now in control instead of google.

Tja ,

I use Firefox (and chromium and even chrome at work) and lemmy, but nothing comes close to Google search, maps and YouTube content. I tried ddg and openstreet maps, not even close. Partially because of crowd sourced, privacy invading features like location tracking for traffic info. I even pay for YouTube premium, easily the cheapest entertainment around. The ads in the free version is crap because how disruptive they are, and I prefer to pay the creators than use an ad blocker (although new pipe is on my phone and yt-dlg on my computer for videos I really like and want to preserve).

For email Google has features that other clients just don’t, even tho I ran my own server, DNS domain with dkim, etc, I still prefer Gmail for 90% of my emails. Only friends and family get my non-gmail account. Spam filter, calendar integration, mobile Client, threads, consistency, customization…

Same for office. While I do have Libre office installed (and Next Cloud on my server) I mostly use Google Docs. I never know who I will need to share a document with, or open on mobile or somewhere else, Google docs just works.

I also loved Google Reader and used Google domains, but I don’t want to talk about that :D

StormWalker ,

Wow you use a lot of tech! Good share, thanks. I’m with you with Google maps, however check out “Organic Maps” I was very impressed with it (here in the UK) it finds shops and businesses, but no reviews obviously. I still use Google maps most of the time (on a separate phone that lives in the car), but Organic is really impressive, way ahead of the other map apps, definitely one to watch. Paying for YouTube is a great idea. I may do that also actually. I run a server with Mail-in-a-box for email. Yes it is just email basically, but I personally do not need or use more than that. And I love having unlimited aliases that all point to my main email. Also NextCloud is amazing yes. I love NextCloud. The other services you use I just don’t have a need for. But yes google = convenience. I bet there are good alternatives to document sharing. And I use Hover.com for domains.

pete_the_cat ,

Agreed, people always forget that Google is a company or to make money, they don’t provide all of these services out of the kindness of their hearts.

Blackmist ,

Sadly I’m far more attached to ad blocking than I am to a browser.

stellargmite ,

I guess you want the internet to be a place for finding useful information, and/or the entertainment you choose to access, over it being a long uninteruptable stream of infomercials for crap products you have no interest in? Then groogle is not for you. In fact groogle is not for humanity.

Buddahriffic ,

Frankly, at this point I might even be more attached to blocking ads than browsing.

moitoi ,
@moitoi@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

I’m using Firefox or forks.

GoogleSellsAds ,
@GoogleSellsAds@sh.itjust.works avatar

With the direction FF is taking it’s gonna be forks for now.

The only thing that held me back from using LibreWolf over Firefox was that it disabled (automatic) dark mode on websites. I understand this is part of the “resist fingerprinting” configuration. There’s a workaround now ( bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1732114).

In about:config update these 3 preferences:

  • privacy.resistFingerprinting = false
  • privacy.fingerprintingProtection = true
  • privacy.fingerprintingProtection.overrides = +AllTargets,-CSSPrefersColorScheme
Chakravanti ,

Dark Reader

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

I know everyone is doing the “use Firefox” thing, but please remember that Acer alone sold almost a million Chromebooks globally in 2023.

Sure, many of those people probably weren’t going to use it anyway, but plenty were. I installed it on my daughter’s Chromebook that she was forced to use for school.

wesley ,

I’m pretty sure you can install Firefox on those too can’t you?

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

Looks like you can, but if you have an older Chromebook (which most schools definitely have), it takes more work than I think a lot of people would be willing to do.

www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/…/chromebook/

Also, at least in the case of my daughter’s school Chromebook, the Play Store was disabled.

aidan ,

docs.mrchromebox.tech/…/supported-devices.html

wiki.archlinux.org/title/Chrome_OS_devices

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

Sorry… are you suggesting people install Linux on their kids’ school Chromebooks? You know we don’t own them, right?

aidan ,

You know we don’t own them, right?

As long as you reset them before returning them it should be ok ;p

Grandwolf319 , (edited )

How could they even allow this? Isn’t ublock an independent plugin?

Also, how about other chromium browsers?

EDIT: click bait headline, chrome is just deprecating a dependency it uses and ublock isn’t using the new version yet.

Edit 2: I didn’t realize v3 was nurfed intentionally,

Fuck google

Johanno ,

This was all about the news probably 2 years ago. Chrome uses a new api manifest that does not allow for changes in websites like blocking specific type of content. Once manifest v3 is fully implemented and enforced there will be no way for ublock origin to work correctly anymore.

Grandwolf319 ,

Didn’t realized v3 was nurfed on purpose, should never give google the benefit of the doubt.

ghterve ,

The word “just” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in your edit. The replacement for that dependency doesn’t allow an extension to work as an ad blocker as effectively as the thing they are deprecating. This is deliberate.

Grandwolf319 ,

Added a second edit :)

Zink ,

That’s a funny way to say “you should uninstall chrome rather than leaving it unused” but I hear you Google. 🫡

Persen , (edited )

Well, I’m forced if I want to use casting to androidTV or chromecast. Edit: fx-cast exists.

girsaysdoom ,

Yeah, there isn’t a very good alternative other than occasionally getting lucky that it’s compatible with VLC streaming.

Persen ,

I think it usually works with VLC (but usually not performant), but I don’t think there is an alternative for cast on android (without gapps)

madis ,

For other Chromium browsers or those who don’t see this yet, enable chrome://flags#extension-manifest-v2-deprecation-warning.

the_toast_is_gone ,

Sadly, this won’t stop Google from killing off Manifest V2.

GoogleSellsAds ,
@GoogleSellsAds@sh.itjust.works avatar

Google’s core business is selling ads. So anything that aligns with selling ads is the path they’ll take. Their users are the product.

trafficnab ,

Chrome really needs to be broken off from Google, the largest ad company owning the largest browser is clearly a huge conflict of interest

hogmomma ,

Could a grease monkey script do something similar? I’m probably just talking out of my butt, but it seems like GM can sometimes do things easier or better (or just at all) that extensions can’t or won’t do.

Natanael ,

If GM can do it then uBlock can do it. The problem is restriction of APIs

hogmomma ,

Ah, gotcha.

x00z ,
@x00z@lemmy.world avatar

Laughs in Librewolf

pyre ,

what’s a google chrome

remer ,

What’s a computer 🥴

piranhaphish ,

I know this reference

LainTrain ,

Just wait till they do this again with vision pro 2. Oh wait it hasn’t sold well enough. Lol!

Phegan ,

Please just us in using Firefox.

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