Google gets its way, bakes a user-tracking ad platform directly into Chrome
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/09/googles-widely-opposed-ad-platform-the-privacy-sandbox-launches-in-chrome/Open linkView original on startrek.website1406
Comments338https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/09/googles-widely-opposed-ad-platform-the-privacy-sandbox-launches-in-chrome/Open linkView original on startrek.website
Yay for Firefox
Sounds like they really want people to use Firefox!
They fund Mozilla a ton on purpose. They want a small subset of people to use Firefox. It keeps them from the monopoly investigations
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-05-05/why-google-keeps-paying-mozilla-s-firefox-even-as-chrome-dominates
I knew about that. They also pay to be the default search engine on Firefox.
But my joke was that these changes make it seem like they don't want people to use Chrome anymore and switch to Firefox instead. If users knew about this stuff and understood it, Firefox would bounce back.
I have already begun to move from Google services.
Look for other large corporations to continue this trend: offer a product to the masses for free, wait until you have little to no competitors and dominate in market share, then put it behind a pay wall or strongarm changes that most of the population doesn't understand. Oracle did it with Java, knowing most companies were too invested to look for alternatives, and now Google is doing it with their Chrome baked-in privacy changes and ad crackdown.
I expect to see more of this trend from "free" services as the people continue to wake up and take their personal data seriously. We know the government(s) won't do a thing to change the status quo, and I have no idea what else to do other than cry into my ramen and binge watch the death of a planet in 4K!
Unfortunately, the rich keep scarcity high to ensure they not only make the most money, but they can use less money to buy favors from those with less. Man greed sucks...
It’s even more insidious when you look at the shit Amazon does, im almost certain they hyper-aggressively track the popularity of products not made by them, ones that are made by small companies (and even individuals in some cases) for the sole purpose of seeing what’s popular with the masses and then they make their own shitty version of said product followed by undercutting the original products cost significantly. And when people go to search they of course put their shit product at the top of the search page so that’s the one the unaware will always buy. It’s kind of a genius business model if we are being honest, if you’re an absolute shit stain that completely lacks morals that is. I just can’t believe they’ve been allowed to do this for so long under the radar because I feel like I never hear people talk about that particular scummy tactic they use.
I do think they know these companies are invasive, but they don't fully understand the ramifications of it, nor do they care to.
While I agree at some level, most users aren’t like you or me. They are my mom, my boss, my mailman. They only care about convenience, and understanding even the difference between browsers is one thing, let alone why they should use a different one. Unfortunately I don’t think that’s likely to change. If it was, Facebook wouldn’t exist, if those people cared about their online privacy they wouldn’t use the platform, but here we are
Yeah, people knew enough to ditch IE for Firefox, but I think Google's marketing convinced everybody that Chrome was the best. Most people tell me they use Chrome because it's the fastest.
Yeah early on when chrome was released I was a big proponent of it. But that was in Google’s earlier days before they adopted Microsoft’s EEE policy
Really? I always hated it. It was such a resource hog compared to Firefox, and that only got worse as Firefox improved.
My main Linux distro at the time, Fedora, wouldn't even ship Chromium because of how difficult and inefficient it was to package. It leaves a bunch of Google crap on Mac too.
Was it better on Windows or something? Because it's always been crap on Linux and Mac.
I made the switch a few weeks ago. While the transition was a little inconvenient, I got everything set up in maybe an hour or two. Performance was wacky for a few hours after that, but it's settled now for my purposes.
You definitely have to finagle the browser with add-ons and other about:config things to make it work for you, but after that yeah I can say I prefer Firefox over Chrome!
Now I just need to deGoogle everything else...
I actually never stopped using Firefox. I tried Chrome/Chromium on and off since it came out in 2008, but I never understood the appeal. Chrome looks more minimal, but it always ran like crap on Linux and Mac for me. Was it better on Windows or something? The constant memes about Chrome's RAM and CPU usage would lead me to believe it isn't.
Check out Vivaldi
Riiiight, because Google wasn't doing sneaky tracking shit leading up to this. This time, they'll surely switch, all dozens of them, and a couple might even use Firefox. woohoo
Reality: https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share
Someone reply to me saying they just switched to make this a perfect internet circlejerk.
Unironically, yeah, this is the nail in the coffin for me.
But think about it. You’re talking on Lemmy - currently a niche messaging board with a tech focused audience. I don’t think you’d count as the average Chrome user. Most people won’t hear about this or if they do, won’t care.
'Average user' just means all traits proportionally blended together, right? Lemmy users are not a huge part of the internet, but our contribution to the 'average' is just a big as any other person; and our opinions and knowledge and behaviour does matter. Some might argue that the opinions of tech-focused people matter more because they are more likely to influence other people about tech decisions.
So yeah, we're a niche group - but the discussion and sharing of ideas is important.
I honestly don’t get why people think chromium browsers are good, for example Firefox in my use case is far faster than chrome… by a long shot. Also if you want to argue…
https://treeherder.mozilla.org/perfherder/graphs?highlightAlerts=1&highlightChangelogData=1&highlightCommonAlerts=0&series=mozilla-central,3735773,1,13&series=mozilla-central,3412459,1,13&timerange=86400
something about the way it [chrome] handles memory isolation means i get fewer blue screens at work with all my bloated browser tools loaded at the same time. I have to have ~15 tabs open. It is not my laptop, so I cant go around experimenting with plugins much.
then again who gives a flying fart if chrome tracks me while i use the same internal browser tools day in and day out?
I cannot drag my tabs out properly. Its been the dealbreaker for many years for me, they dont fix it, but i just deal with it now because google is too evik.
That was also my experience with Firefox. I tried it one time because I kept hearing it was better than chrome, and then the absolute first thing I noticed is that they can't get tab dragging right.
I don't care how much more "private" it is than chrome. If you can't even get the first impression on absolute basic UI elements right, I simply have no faith in your browser
Maybe I'll use Firefox when it matures a bit
Its been around for like 20 years though
Sometimes there is a proverbial straw to break a camel’s back.
I mean, for some percentage of users this will be it. Will it be a significant share of Chrome users? Probably not, but it just means those of us who got people to switch to Firefox in the 00’s and Chrome in the early 10’s need to be as vigorous with getting people off Chrome now.
I used chrome since it was launched and this summer I switched to Firefox on all devices.
I just switched my internet off!
What's your thoughts on Orion? It's weirdly niche, but has been killer for me.
Orion is not open source so that’s a no. There is no way to know that what they tell us is true. If they free their code it might become my go to browser as well.
There is a way to tell - just check the binary. Actually, you need to check binaries of open source apps as well.
Check the binary for current outgoing traffic? Sure but instant traffic is not the only way to be tracked, and it is particularly difficult to get an overview for a browser.
A open source project is automatically safer to use. Sure, any binary can be injected with crap but in a closed source app there is really no way to know anything for sure.
The binary is your source. And it's THE ONLY source of truth.
Sure the binary is what I run, but I am not following what your point is. If you are paranoid about binaries from an open source project, just compile it yourself. It’s easy. That’s just not an argument against open source.
downvoted for stating facts. I can only give you one updoot brother, you're the hero we need.
Please, everyone, stop using Chrome. This is an easy vote with your wallet that doesn't even require your wallet.
Complacency means the internet gets worse, ads get worse, nickel and diming gets worse. It's the easiest chance to take a stand you'll ever have.
I use it at work because of it has the best dev tools. Although edge is pretty much the same so I could use that, but not much of an ethical upgrade.
I know that. I acknowledged that in the next sentence when I talked about edge.
But it still wouldn't stop me from using chrome because I need to test with it. It's what most of our end users use. I'm not about to install Vivaldi or something when we don't even support it, and none of our users use it.
I am ...
Serious question: let's say I continue using Chrome and Privacy Sandbox becomes the norm. How does my internet experience get worse?
One key change in the short term is the Topics API. This is the replacement for 3rd-party cookies in Privacy Sandbox. Basically, it allows sites to query your browser directly about what topics you enjoy, and Chrome will respond with topics based on analysis of your browsing history to allow for targeted ads. If it seems strange that a new "privacy" feature is still serving up data about you for targeted ads -- it is. And in fact, a lot of the proposed changes potentially just give Google more sway to act as a middleman, which ultimately gives them more data.
Will your experience change immediately? Likely not, but as with many things in this space, it's about the dangers of the path and its longer term implications, specifically here about corporate controls and softening the definition of "privacy".
Here's a decent overview with more far more details.
I know what the Topics API does. I'm asking for a concrete example of exactly how it's going to make my internet experience worse. (That Register article doesn't provide one.)
Losing privacy makes your internet experience worse. That seems pretty clear to me, but if you don't care about corporations being better suited to target ads to you, then I don't think anyone would be able to convince you that these changes are bad.
I'd love to debate this with you properly but I've got COVID right now and don't have the energy to put together a decent response, sorry. Basically I just don't see how the specific features in the new Chrome build let advertisers do anything they can't already do. I don't see how they contribute to ads getting worse, or where "nickel and diming" comes into it.
Firefox is the way to go.
What's Opera based on? My friends mostly use Mac, so they all use Opera and Chrome, but I have gotten them to stop using Chrome.
Nearly every browser is Chromium-based. Additionally, Opera is Chinese-owned.
So? It isn't google. Also google and Mozilla have Asian employees so I guess you'll have to be not racist.
I do agree that the Chinese government is problematic though.
I'd like to point out that they said nothing about it being a bad thing and that all they did was say it was Chinese-owned, hence making your comment a pointless attack of nonsense.
I personally thought they were implying that China could be a privacy concern, as you don't have a single clue what happens with your data there. There's zero reason to assume anything bad especially with a simple statement like that.
Hooray pointless-nonsense-spew!
It uses Chromium as its base, so is essentially Chrome with fancy things attached to it. It uses Blink, Chrome/Chromium's rendering engine.
We need fewer Chromium-based browsers out there. The greater marketshare they have, the easier it will be for Google to push W3C and everyone else around to conform to their desired business model.
For example, when Google inevitably pushes WEI into Chrome, WebKit and Gecko (Safari-based and Firefox-based browsers) won't be affected at all.
If, however, 90% of all users end up on Blink (whether it's Chrome, Opera, Vivaldi, Edge, Brave, or whatever) then Google can do whatever they want to the web.
Chromium is owned by Google. That should be bad enough
Opera was bought by a Chinese data analytics company, and once that happened, they scrapped their engine and used chromium to save money.
They have questionable CCP ties too.
Maybe use that information to try and influence the public in the same way that cambridge analytica did for the 2016 elections.
Someone having that data is a problem in itself
lol. This thread is about people mad that google is doing it, and you’re saying so what if a nation state does it?
The answer is the same either way - to either sell the data to a party who want to manipulate you into doing or thinking what they want or by directly manipulating you into doing or thinking what they want.
Same with Reddit and lemmy. It doesn’t take a whole lot of investment (on a state level actor basis) to manipulate small and large communities or individuals into thinking something is normal or mainstream. Or convincing them that everyone loves this product or it’s so popular or whatever.
The CCP censors their entire internet for their people and collects all sorts of information to root out dissidents. What good thing do you think is going to come from them having that data?
Opera has unfortunately given up and switched to Chromium as its backend.
At least its not chrome
Give it time. Greed is greed, just a matter of time. Personally I’m back to use the old carrier pigeon. Kinda slow but probably still better than dialup
Edit: Either y’all don’t get this was a joke, or haven’t been alive long enough to watch your hero’s die.
Either way, fuck Google, sorry to rain on the parade
And soon, the carrier pigeon breeders will start tagging them with tracking chips..
Stooooop 😂😂😂
Carrier pigeons are still faster than the internet, tested again this year to prove it
Bandwidth, maybe, but that latency...
Or they just didn't think it was funny...
Absolutely not. I’ve seen what you people think is funny.
oR mAyBe I JuSt got DowNvoTe brIgaDeD
But donating your money can not make firefox independent.It will only make firefox more revenue.
Google wants to keep mozilla afloat to stay out of anti-competitive allegations.
If mozilla gets market share, google will defund them. That mozilla have a money will help.
Also mozilla's other projects are also good ;)
Also big CEO wallets.
Nothing in comparison to others but there is some special pay going.
But it's definitely the lesser of the evils.
Some of Mozilla's other projects are good, iirc there was a journalist a few years ago who chronicled how Mozilla had donated a lot of money to other charities unrelated to it's goal rather than reinvesting in the business so that it can try to ween off of Google reliance.
And the money won't go to Firefox, but Mozilla's other projects.
This is true. I am unsure why this comment is getting downvoted more.
Feeling the same, it’s surprising how many companies are just leaning towards screwing users for a few more pennies on the dollar. Eventually, Google with be the next AOL.
Just need their Time-Warner to put the last nail in the coffin
We can only pray, the ghouls.
I've been doing similar; been using Firefox, but Chrome is installed for its browser-wide automatic captioning. Not something I need often, but I rely on it for the occasional remote meeting here and there. I'm sure free automatic captioning applications exist for my operating system, but I'd have to actually test each one to see if they actually work, and it's just been so convenient keeping Google's around.
(Speaking of which, if anybody happens to have recommendations for free automatic captioning software that works on Ubuntu, I seem to be in the market...)
I suggest to use chromium as the backup "in case a webpage doesn't work on Firefox" browser. All the compatibility but no telemetry.
But why use chromium or any chromium based browser since google disabled ad blocking plug-ins?
I suggest it as the backup browser. Use Firefox and if you need to open something that only works on chrome, I'd rather use chromium, so Google doesn't rape your computer when trying to use the internet.
Eh, did they? I'm sure I still have Ublock Origin on the work browser, which is Chrome.
Nah, I use Edge for that. Chrome is only for work for me, but I think I'm going to migrate to another Chromium-based browser for that.
The site you've linked to literally uses Facebook and Google browser trackers. Pretty hypocritical of them if you ask me.
It's always funny/sad to see that "we care about your privacy" doublespeak on an article about digital privacy
So my takeaway from this is to never use Chrome again? Gotcha.
If everyone who said they were going to do this actually did this, Chrome wouldn't do this, if that makes sense.
Or, idk, regulators could like, do their jobs.
Unfortunately, if the government had one single source to secretly control/monitor the world wide web from then they would gladly stand back and do nothing.
Having said that, I truly hope I'm wrong. And they are probably already doing what I described upstream from the browser anyways.
It’s really irritating but some websites only work on Chrome for me. They range from work related to Google Meet instances. I only use it then but yeah.
Have never had an issue with degoogled chromium not working on any sites that don't work with Firefox.
I don't think I've used Google Chrome itself for over 3 years now (excluding on other people's devices). I don't plan to ever use it again either.
At one point I was switching back and forth, because I'd see a general decline in Firefox for some reason. I don't know if it was just getting overloaded with extensions that were hitting its performance or if my machine itself was having problems or if Firefox's performance was shit for awhile, but I'd switch from Firefox to Chrome, try going back to Firefox, then back to Chrome, but I've been with Firefox for a good few years now without issue. The browser "market" is even crowded now, there's no reason to go back to Chrome, since there's so many other choices out there (though avoiding Chromium might be a little bit trickier).
For people who roll their eyes when someone mentions Linux and all of the free and open source projects adjacent to it (including Firefox!), this is exactly why many people value those things. We actually can have freedom in computing and it's worth pushing for. We don't have to roll over simply accept what Google, Microsoft and Apple want.
But there are a few specific hardware configurations and specialized jobs that Linux doesn't work for, therefore nobody should use it!
My workplace is transitioning a bunch of their data and processing to the cloud. When I look at what software makes the cloud work, there is soooo much open source software there. Big business is quite comfortable with FOSS
Why not be happy both OS options exist? Both have a place and a use and in various ways an ease of use
That's the point. We want options for OSs to exist, instead of one company monopolizing the entire market.
Linux with 100% market share can’t monopolize the entire market because it doesn’t have a centralized distro
You see similar to Google with Redhat/Canonical. If everyone was with them then it would be a problem
Woosh...
What use is there for the others?
Any of thousands of people can say this but i don't see it in the comments below so: I've been using a Linux Mint / Windows dual boot system for over 10 years and love it. I think a lot of people see Linux as highly technical, but versions like Mint and Ubuntu are more carefree than Windows nowadays.
Sure but Google also uses tons of open source - android is built on the linux kernel, and even chrome is or is based on open source:
https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src
We have firefox, iceweasel, fennec (android). Anything else not firefox based is chrome based. Don't get tricked by opera and similars.
You can still change browser.
There is an issue with monoculture of rendering engines. Developers assume every browser have the same things implemented and start to build around this assumption. Also Google can dictate how the web looks like.
Exactly, we've seen this previously with Internet explorer.
And Netscape before that, it had reached 90% market share.
You're missing the point. Netscape implemented the html standard, they didn't introduce new, proprietary "features" to gain that market share.
There are two things to consider here:
Chrome offers adherence to standards as one of their features. But it also introduces new features that look like standards, meant to increase profits for the parent company.
VB.Net was exactly that. Difference being Microsoft's interest was locking companies and governments onto Microsoft's enterprise products vs Google's user tracking. Easy, quick internal web app put together in half a day? Would never work right on Netscape. It takes work to make them work to standards.
Using chromium based browsers keeps power over web standards and such in google's hands, i.e enforces their ever growing monopoly. So if you want a competitive/fair environment on the web, it's best to avoid them altogether and stick to firefox or safari.
Aren't Firefox funded by Google in order to present a false sense of competition in the browser market?
Google pays to be the default search in Firefox, it was Bing for a while.
Also it pays to keep mozilla alive.It helps in defending anti-competitive lawsuits.
Sad to say there are only two engines available for the open web.(Not considering Safari as that is only available on apple)
The WebKit engine Safari uses is still open source, Gnome Web and Konqueror use it. It definitely has a small non-apple userbase but it's an option
Funny you mention Safari, because you know, Safari is the only browser allowed on iOS. Every other browser has to use Safari to render web pages if they want to be in App Store - once again the only allowed source of packages.
Safari on iOS is literally worse than IE and Chrome combined.
Unfortunately for Android, Chromium based browsers are, at the moment, significantly more secure than Firefox based ones.
Edit: For the people down voting me, feel free to make a principled stand to avoid Chromium browsers on Android, just understand the risks. Again, specifically for Android. Here's some reading:
https://divestos.org/pages/browsers
Sadly it is still a problem. Fortunately there are some pretty good mobile browsers like Cromite available!
RIP Bromite
Mulch is pretty solid as well.
Unless the developers of other browsers take specific steps, the ad engine will get pulled on the next update of their Chromium engine, that's the problem.
It's in Chromium, the other browsers have just disabled/patched it out: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/refs/heads/main/components/privacy_sandbox/privacy_sandbox_prefs.h
e.g. Vivaldi:
https://vivaldi.com/blog/technology/heads-up-googles-going-off-topics-again/
They have forked it though? That's why almost all the other Chromium-based ones don't have this enabled by default or completely disable it (even if you tried to turn it on).
If you're talking about forking the entire project and using it as a base that diverges from what Google does, I don't think that's going to happen. Not even Microsoft with their billions had the desire to maintain a totally separate engine anymore and I don't see the other Chromium-based browsers redirecting efforts from useful things like better UIs, privacy enhancements, etc into just keeping feature/performance parity.
They're based on Chromium, Not Google's altered version of it.
Yeah, about that...
Safari isn’t Chromium based! But I’m not a fan of it on Desktop, just iOS.
Firefox for all my other devices.
Been using it exclusively for a few years now, I'm pretty happy with it
It's the only search engine i use.
You guys are way to late to quit chrome, and you probably won't at this point. This is what happens when you don't swap, you enable this anti-consumer monopoly behavior.
All the people saying to just use Firefox have zero fucking clue how screwed we are with google implenting the forced attestation for the removal of ad blockers too. Chrome will be the internet. Its already been initially deployed in chromium.
Please don't confuse Internet with WWW, it's making discussion like this even harder, thanks.
Okay, still use Firefox
I change from Chrome to Firefox recently on all devices and it was a pretty easy transition.
Doing same thing right now... only two things I will miss are chromecast and page translation.
Good news about page translation, Firefox is adding it, and it's all done locally too, no phoning home to their or somebody else's translation servers.
I wonder if there's an extension for Chromecast support? Might be worth looking into
Till then there is this open source extension which provides the same functionality including local offline translation
Sadly, no, there is no chromecast extension (which I am aware of).
Actually there is one, but it's not very good if I'm being honest ( but workable).
I'm kind of surprised that no open source project of renown has ever decided to implement that on Firefox well.
There is? What's it called?
Just search for it from within Firefox, from the mods tab. That's how I found it the first time.
I did, but found nothing.
For translation you can use this. Since you can use Google translation service as the backend(?), it works as good as Google translate atleast in my experience
Thanks a lot, this extension looks very much as what I need. I wish Apple stopped their WebKit policy on iPhone so I could use it on mobile Firefox too…
For the time being I'm using TWP for translation. Seems to work flawlessly
I'm using 2 extensions from the Firefox store, Simple Translate and Translate This Page. If one goes down, I use the other. Sometimes I use translate.yandex.ru as well.
I think libretranslate has a extension but I could be wrong
You can use your phone to start the chromecasting, and translate.google.com lets you also put in a weblink to translate a whole page at once.
I've only had issues with Nordpass crashing occasionally when auto-filling, but it's otherwise pretty seamless
the main thing holding me back is the password manager in Chrome and having to basically use 2 browsers as passwords are slowly saved to a new system
Do yourself a favour and get Bitwarden or similar. Browser password managers are way too vulnerable.
The only issue is I have to keep a chromium browser because there are a few sites that Firefox has issues with. But the vast majority work fine.
Can you not use those sites? The reason they don't work is because there userbase uses chrome.
Unfortunately I'm not in the business of working for them. They are mostly govt sites in my country and we simply have to work with them sometimes. Their web devs are underpaid general workers who know a bit of Joomla but added this and that shit to the point that it works only on Chrome.
Use Edge.
Use Ublock if you haven't (Firefox extension)
Is there just a Ublock? I've only ever seen Ublock origin
Lol nice. People using chrome be like
That's clever meme template usage if I've ever seen one
does this happen on Linux too?
i have to keep chrome around for sites that breaks with ff / ublock, but i only open it when i need it.
I have a chromium install lying around for that. Bizarrely the online conferencing tool my bank uses has issues with Firefox despite advertising Firefox support which is pretty much the only thing I need the Chromium browser for
Use brave
Use brave
Rather, use un-googled chromium. Brave is kind of bloated with all of the extra "features" they have.
Where can I download it from ? Can you please share the link for windows? . Ungoogled chromium for android is not maintained anymore.
Windows links are here. As for android, you're right, it is not maintained anymore; the most similar still-maintained browser I could find is Cromite, but I've never used it before so I can't comment on it.
Chromite is quite good its the successor of bromite and has increased adblock functionality I've used it for a little bit and it is quite nice.
Thanks bro
Back in the old days when a software contains these crap, considered as adware/malware and people get their pitchforks.
Now: its normal.
Switched back to Firefox. Easy transition. Fuck Google.
Every single thing about Google sucks nowadays. Great job Sundar, you successfully turned one of the former most exciting companies on the planet into one of the absolute lamest.
Time to uninstall chrome. Can I move my passwords, bookmarks and saved data there? How do I do it?
When you install any browser (Firefox recommend) it ask you if you want to transfer browser data. It will guide you through (its pretty much automatic)
just adding that granted FF already has a decent password manager there are also reliable, free and open source and audited independent password manager like as
which both can plug in any browser through their respective extension.
Being both an independent option from the browser they help the user not making him vendor locked to his browser through his saved data.
Plot twist: Bitwarden on desktop is Chromium browser based.
Still can be used in FF as plugin.
Good to know! I've never installed bitwarden desktop and always used the Firefox extension. I just recently found out that Bitwarden has a desktop app. I was thinking of trying it out, until I read your comment. I think I'll just stick with the extension. Thank you for your TED talk.
There's nothing special about it. It's just the extension in a larger format. I've tried to use it a few times, but there's no gain over the extension. And, typically the extension is better because I already have my browser open, so I don't need to open a new app.
Pretty much every web-app wrapped into a desktop environment uses Electron, which is based in Chromium.
Avoid webapps ported to desktop, noted.
Unless you can run them over Firefox, using this for example
KeepassXC is not available for Android.
The Android implementation is called KeePassDX.
There's also KeePass2Android. I opted for this because it brings a very useful feature called QuickUnlock. Your opened database gets locked in standby but you can reopen it with just the last 3 characters without needing to retype the whole passphrase.
@[email protected]
KeepassDX can quick unlock with the device pin or with biometrics but the major hassle vs bitwarden is the management of syncing the database, which can be opened as file from the mobile and the desktop app also at the same time, instead bitwarden access your pwd database only remotely and only querying it, but the file is opened only on the server.
But browsers plugin work in the same way, they connect to the local app like it was a server, so it might be possible in the future that there will be an app which can access the db remotely, with this being opened only from the app on the desktop.
Good to know.
Good to know.
The only reason I use chrome is for the passwords feature and realising that it is a separate service to android password manager has made it pointless. I thought changing phones would be easier as it had my bank apps and everything in chrome but it never promoted.
to manage passwords, use bitwarden
is not tied to any browser, it sync between devices and it's free.
there are clients for Android and desktop, most likely ios too.
getfirefox.com
Wait really? Is it on the stable version or do I need to install beta/nightly?
That's fantastic if the quality is good. I only use chrome now for pages purely in Japanese that I need to deal with and can't properly read in full yet (which, living in Japan, is a fair few, heh). EDIT: Bah, no Japanese support. Oh well; some day.
Thanks, didn't realize it's an add-on. Much better because now I can use it on Librewolf. :D
you can also set
browser.translations.enableto true in about:config for full-page translations. it's kinda slow and the languages are limited compared to google translate, but other than that it's fine. also, it works offline if you install the languages https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/website-translationOffline translation, nice. I'm gonna miss Opera GX stylish theme but I'm ready to ditch Chromium-based browser again, at least on desktop :D
Edit: I'be checked the add-on, unfortunately my mother language and other popular languages are not supported yet.
So as far as i know, firefox is the only mayor browser not based on chromium. Also, firefox is dependent on google's funding because of a search engine exclisivity deal. So my understanding is that, if google decides to kill firefox, they could easily do that. Well, what then? Is there any other browser left wich similar features that would be untouchable by google?
They couldn't kill Firefox without having the US government come down on them for monopoly. Which the government is already looking at https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/24/tech/doj-google-lawsuit/index.html , so it's not likely Google will risk it even further by shitting down funding to Firefox. Pretty sure they'll point at Firefox to claim they're not a monopoly.
So the lawsuit appears to be looking at Google as a search engine monopoly, not web browser, right? And if I'm understanding this right, assuming this lawsuit goes anywhere, it would actually incentivize Google to pull funding from Firefox to no longer support that search engine exclusivity deal.
Google still benefits from having Firefox around, so that they can maintain less of an appearance of a monopoly in the browser space. Whatever way they fund Firefox, it's still to their benefit to do so.
This is pretty much the same situation as when Apple faced bankruptcy a while back and Microsoft essentially bailed them out.
Having an effective monopoly is better than a literal one for legal reasons
We need to extend our laws to effective monopolies too, fuck this shit
Fun fact, Firefox used to be called.... Netscape.. Yeah... Let's see how many miklenials are in here!
Sort of. Netscape released the program's source code and Firefox used that as a base, but it wasn't like they took Netscape and just changed the name to Firefox like your comment implies. They were competing browsers for a while.
Fair enough. My bad.
And remember what happened when Microsoft tried to kill Netscape? That needs to happen again, but against Google.
I've just browsed with Netscape. But did not know this fact.
I've been corrected that it is a branch off of, not a direct evolution of, Netscape.
This should be the top comment, and I'm going to come back to view the replies. I can't personally think of any realistic alternatives. Someone further down posted a link to an article about the US investigating Google for a search engine monopoly, but I'm not sure how large a role that would factor into web browsers.
You have to decide for yourself if those browsers have the features you need, but just for your interest, other non-chromium browsers are Ladybird, NetSurf, Flow, Pale Moon, Basilisk and K-Meleon.
Honestly, I'll give credit to Apple for pushing forward JXL on webkit and pushing back against Chromium team's dominance and Mozilla team's apathetic stance in the browser space. While I appreciate Mozilla's stance on Manifest V3 and several other issues, I can't help but hope for more development from the Servo project.
We will have to maintain a Chromium fork with their trackers removed, if it comes to that.
Likely Google won't do anything until or unless the bulk of the public moves off of Chrome over this.
Like Vivaldi or Brave?
awkward glances around
Yes...
Edge switched to chromium in 2020...
I tried to preach why Google sharing your browsing history with ad partners is bad, but most of my friends don't seem to care. :(
Honestly, I was already using FF for my home. Made the switch on Mobile after seeing this on the news yesterday. I'm just one person though.
Not used anything but Firefox for the last 10 years or so. Can't remember how long I've used DDG for. Fuck Google and all who fail in her.
It's lucky I haven't used Chrome in years. Firefox is much appreciated these days.
I should have never left Firefox when chrome came out. Its good to be back. Especially before any of this happened.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Unlike the glitzy front-page Google blog post that the redesign got, the big ad platform launch announcement is tucked away on the privacysandbox.com page.
The blog post says the ad platform is hitting "general availability" today, meaning it has rolled out to most Chrome users.
This has been a long time coming, with the APIs rolling out about a month ago and a million incremental steps in the beta and dev builds, but now the deed is finally done.
Users should see a pop-up when they start up Chrome soon, informing them that an "ad privacy" feature has been rolled out to them and enabled.
That's actually what started this whole process: Apple dealt a giant blow to Google's core revenue stream when it blocked third-party cookies in Safari in 2020.
Google says it will block third-party cookies in the second half of 2024—presumably after it makes sure the "Privacy Sandbox" will allow it to keep its profits up.
The original article contains 588 words, the summary contains 159 words. Saved 73%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
good bot, keep it up!
Librewolf
Does disabling this as described in the article truly disable it, meaning if you do, after Chrome blocks 3rd party cookies late next year (assuming they follow through on that), you won't be tracked by either?
That was completely expected. You give any company monopoly over anything and they will abuse it. This was Chrome dominating browser market. Microsoft did it with IE back in the day. Now Google is doing it again.
Who could have possibly have forseen that a company that makes nearly all of its revenue from data mining and advertising would one day use a popular software tool as a means of data mining and advertising. This is like wheels-within-wherls thinking right here.
Do no evil
Finally un-installed chrome on Windows.
Is this enough to remove traces?
C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\
https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/29816481/how-do-i-fully-uninstall-chrome?hl=en
Worrying about traces is usually not necessary.
A friend of mind in IT suggested revouninstaller. I have never used it in practice but he says it might be helpful in this case.
I use that everytime I go to uninstall something. You can configure it to scan your system registry and local files for residual files that the software's uninstaller won't remove.
nuked that shit from my machine.
only going to use it inside a VM now for testing purposes
Chrome is for the surveillance state
In regards to the argument that google pays firefox and could easily kill it off I doubt it. Even if they were so bold as to cut funding completely (which they are not) you will find that Mozilla will have at some point have to cut loose their CEO or cut their huge pays down and make some changes there followed by some clever moves to find another source of income. If worse comes to worse the community will come to its aid and it will go back into the hands of the community which is likely a very good thing but Google has another approach to all of this and are incrementally trying to lock firefox or any non compliant browser or competitor out of the internet. Google has been doing it for years now. They hijacked web standards also along the way.
I think people are either forgetting the roots of chrome or how it came about as being PUP and foistware bundled along with popular freeware software or anyone they could pay to bundle their software with but earlier than that it was a toolbar that piggybacked onto IE (for its marketshare) and than I believe even Firefox too. People also seem to have this belief that when Chrome came out it was absolutely revolutionary and brilliant but the truth is that it was garbage but people fell for it like a shark to a bucket of chum. To me Chrome was pretty much your Bonzi Buddy of browsers. And google a complete scourge on the internet.
As for webkit that old chestnut. The only reason why that is popular at all is because Apple makes sure that you cannot use any other browser or makes it as difficult as possible not to mention the largest part of their user base comes from their iphone without that they're pretty much scraping the bottom of the barrel. IMO Yes, Google is just as bad if not worse in many cases as they leverage their android phone market, run ads on TV specifically designed to push chrome and also built an entire laptop (all be it a terrible one) and called it a chromebook to make sure they keep their dominance but lets not also forget they bought youtube also to stack the odds in their favor. Same ol' Google really.
The browser wars are dead! We just settle for the lesser evil these days.
Saying that this is better for your privacy is like saying I only get punched in the face every second day rather than every day now.
Taking all of the above away and if there is one reason fewer people should be using chrome or chromium based browsers and using something else such as Firefox or a fork is to maintain a balance and take away some of the power and influence they (Google) do have over the web so they will not be able to force things such as WEI and take away many of the freedoms from the net in which we grew up on as too did the internet. The Freedom of exchange of information was never meant to be conditional or the internet held to ransom by one company but this is where we are at so its time for a change of hands or a the balance of power to be restored. Bringing balance will also force sloppy and lazy web developers to stop build dirt poor websites and deliberately blocking out other browsers. Web standards need to be restored and be completely independent from one entity or another, be it google, Mozilla, Apple or any one else in between.
I already use Firefox for everything that's not literally for my D&D stuff. Because some relevant fan sites don't display properly on Firefox for some stupid reason. That's it. So even if they manage to get past my blockers, they literally are telling me nothing I will ever care about because I already have/know where to get any relevant thing those ads might be shilling, and the rest is all irrelevant noise.
If you don’t mind triggering Tab Overview, it enables Tabs searching as well. You just need to remap shift+command+\ to command+a, or pinch with two fingers if you use trackpad.
I cant get Google drive links to stream in Firefox, thus I still keep Google Chrome around. Am I doing something wrong or is there a work around?
Usually an issue like that is due to me having something blocked in uBlockOrigin or some other extension.
I think they worked for me without issue or me doing anything special (a month or so ago though) so there's likely something you can do to get it to work.
I can check later today if they still work with whatever firefox setup I have
I appreciate that, yeah let me know if there's anything that stands out to ya
Yeah I can confirm it works with no issues for me.
Only extension is ublock origin (no settings changed) and Firefox is on version 117.0
It's probably either an extension that's breaking it for you or Google is doing some A B testing that's only breaking it for some people
You can just disable it when it pops up. I hope it continues to warn new users when first setting it up.
Yes, it seems to be trendy to use this as a reason to switch to Firefox, but surely you can just totally disable this new feature in Chrome? The article even tells you how to do this. I guess people are switching as a protest?
It's a new feature in the testing phase. Once it's proven to work correctly (for Google), the option to disable it will be taken away.
Interesting. Do you have a source for that, please?
It's how Google rolls out new features all the time.
First they ask you. Then it will become a opt-out flag. Then maintaining the switch option will be too much work and it will disappear.
Honestly what should concern you is that this is the way Chrome is going, not that you are allowed to enjoy it your own way for a little while more.
As a seamonkey user - aka mozilla, the flagship product that Mozilla deemed was too hard to maintain - I'm just surprised Firefox is still going. We joked at the time that Mozilla would find a browser too hard, then a rendering suite, then a library, then an algorithm, and finally a line of code.
(tribalists - I'm not picking on Firefox, so calm your knickers. I'm still just picking on Mozilla)
Chromium contains it. Up to the browser bundling it how they configure/patch it.
The official Firefox on Android is all there is.
iOS only has WebKit (for now).
I use Mull these days.
Firefox for Android.
No, it’s not in Vivaldi
Is Mullvad chromium based?
Anyone know a good Google Chrome replacement on Android that is chromium based? Wanna a basic browser that I'll use when Firefox does not work correctly
I hate how rage baity article headlines have become. This isn't even true. The new "ad platform" integrated into Chrome is better for your privacy than what existed before. It's a revision of the previous system. If you think Google didn't track anything in Chrome before, you're wrong.
I can assure you nobody thought Google was not spying the fuck outta you with Chrome.
this is discussed in the article
Doesn't change much about the headline being totally wrong
to be clear, I meant that the reasons you're wrong are discussed in the article. I did not mean that the content of the article is more correct than that of the headline - the headline and article are both are correct. I suggest you read the article
As long as the tracking is purely local, this seems like a good solution to me.
I use brave which is a chromium browser with all the tracking stuff turned off and a few ad blockers baked in. It also has some vpn and crypto wallet stuff built in but it’s not in your face so you can just ignore it.
This ad platform shouldn’t affect brave right? Should just be another thing the brave team are able to automatically switch off when the browser updates?
This should tell you all you need to know about the Brave browser. tl;dr it's a piece of shit scummy software helmed by a piece of shit scummy CEO. Just use Firefox.
I have been hearing about FFs imminent demise for about 20 years now...
And?
What does that matter?
This is not a popularity contest.
No, it isn't.
I have been hearing this shit for 20 years.
Google pays mozilla to keep it alive so they can side step anti-trust laws.
I hate to break it to you but google already dominate the web.
FF is not going anywhere.
As ironic as this sounds, Google can't let Firefox die because then it would become a monopoly
Firefox is too small for them to care, the only browser with a larger share is Safari (Webkit).
Firefox is the only web browser you should be using. Firefox.
Brave, Edge, Opera, only contribute to the Google monopoly, even though you are not using directly Chrome.