alt Hacker NewsGoogle Has Removed MV2 Extensions from the Chrome Web Store, Including UBO
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I know Firefox's share of browser share has dwindled to almost nothing. I know sooner or later, well within my lifetime, it will be gone.
But I will keep using it until they pry it from my hands. And if they do, I'll use forks until those break down too. I can't stand Google, or what Chrome has become. No single company should have such unilateral control over the internet and its information.
I remember in 2010 when Chrome made the web so much better for everyone. All the early adopters were singing its praise and encouraging friends and family to use it.
Now, I encourage people to use anything but Chrome. Firefox is really great these days.
Few years ago when google announced their MV2 plan I moved to Firefox. I don't think in all this time I ever missed Chrome for anything in particular outside of maybe 1 or 2 websites that didn't have proper support.
Switch to Firefox if you haven't already really.
The solution is to use Firefox. uBlock Origin always worked best in Firefox anyway:
https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...
I'm fairly happy with uBlock Origin Lite. Sure the original was better but this one does the job as well. uBlock Origin Lite is a MV3 extension, by the same author.
Funny how many people shit on Firefox in this thread. To some of us it was ALWAYS OBVIOUS this was going to happen. Google is an advertisement company, after all. “Chrome is better still except for the shit we’re getting rammed down our throats”
Firefox <3 open web <3 corporate demons </3
One Google doom over, another to go: https://keepandroidopen.org/
I’m irrationally angry with Mozilla for the way they’ve handled Firefox over the past few years. Clearly we need an independent, safe browser and there are no major alternatives for the common folk. Just let me pay a monthly fee to keep Firefox lean and fast instead of jamming AI tools and 3rd party integrations.
There's never been a better time to switch to Firefox. Hopefully soon we'll have another player in this space with Ladybird but for now, Firefox is almost necessary to use the internet unimpeded.
There are also some good Firefox forks out there, and I have been daily driving Zen for nearly a year. However, Librewolf and Floorp are both good options if you don't like Firefox's defaults or their push for more AI features (which you can turn off, to be fair).
There is a very easy solution to this problem, it's called FireFox. Now if only Mozilla would stop messing with it and instead would turn it into a class example of speed and memory efficiency I'd be even happier. But it's pretty good and I'm running it routinely with way too many tabs open (in the 100's, on a 32G laptop). I do have to be careful about unloading stuff. So, kick the Chrome habit.
Ironically, this is a fantastic time to use Firefox with UBO. I made the switch back when Chrome first threatened to block UBO and it was clear they were just kicking the can. What I've come to find is most of the things with ads won't take the time to 'block' UBO on Firefox. Perhaps it is not a big enough segment to justify anti adblocking coding. Youtube seems to have given up trying to fight it. Most things just work. It has been a long time since I've needed to fire up Chrome for anything.
Google for me died when they banned my many years old gmail account out of blue. Because i used vpn to access it.
It was such a big hit to my online life to lose my email like that.
Their appeal system is fully automated, impossible to get a human to look at your case.
This is warning to any reader of this comment, do not depend on your google account to be forever.
I'm hoping that Mozilla Firefox can adopt a similar foundation/donation strategy as Signal has proven to work quite well.
We really need independence from Google in the browser landscape if we want the open web to survive.
The reality is that Chrome users still have sufficient ad blocking so as to not be impacted by this. What will be interesting is if it stops being sufficient, at which point I think people will migrate. But until then, why would they? Most people don't really care if their extension is MV2 or MV3, they just want their youtube video to play faster.
I'm pretty sure it is just a matter of time before the first (open source?) extensions marketplace for Chromium fork extensions will hit the net.
A party like Helium or Brave might even already be working on it. Because while Google might not like it at all, a huge chunk of people love extensions like uBO and ease of use a little bit too much.
15 years ago: "why is google putting so much effort into building a web browser? it must be because they want to see the web grow and by extension more people will use their services"
Thank you google for hosting the downloader that exists for making it easy to use for automated testing('cause all the other people still use it). Its the only use case that exists for me(actually my ai) to use it.
Haven't used chrome in years, Firefox has served me well
I think the new features in MV3 are great, and UBO lite is great. The initial versions of UBOl worked, but definitely lost some power user features. Those are basically all back, it now has full scriptlet support, custom dynamic filters work, element zapper is back and you can now have custom dnr rules. That's a very powerful feature that doesn't exist in UBO.
The big loss for me with the mv2 deprecation was uMatrix, so I made my own replacement. It's a prototype, but you can try it if you like: https://github.com/taviso/matrix3
I think the real question is how have Edge and Mozilla shipped WebExtension support on Android, but Google hasn't. If other competent vendors can ship it then there can't be a technical reason, it must be a policy decision. I'm more open to hearing conspiracy theories about that than MV3 :)
I've been using the Brave browser for years. I just turned off all the crypto stuff. How does Firefox today compare with Brave today?
Been using FF since they announced this. The only disadvantage I've found is that I think it consumes more memory compared against chromium based browsers.
Hoping my browser gets some love in the near future
All that hassle to sell youtube premium
Weirdly enough, you can install the full version of uBO on Edge, and I think it's a great option for less tech savvy family and friends. It's basically chrome but without the 'make this your default browser' shenanigans.
Allowing Google to capture both phones (android) and browsers (chrome) was a mistake. Needs to be broken up...
I stopped using chromium browsers years ago. After this move, not sure why anyone would.
If I can’t install an ad/malware blocker, I’m not using your browser.
This caused me to go back and try Firefox again, I struggled with performance years ago on Mac when I did this. This time it’s been great, I switched from Arc to Zen and don’t see any reason to go back.
I can imagine business reviews within Google that are seeing precipitous drops in Ad revenue given the uptake of AI Mode, which needs to be balanced out. And this becomes an easy tap that they can open, in the pretext of 'security', so Ad Words campaigns weren't getting rendered previously start showing up. If they'd only look at cracking down on malicious Ads rendered through their systems, it would be applause worthy, but I guess we're asking too much.
The media just have to report the removal of ad blocking as a security/safety issue.
If users are made aware that what Chromium is doing, they can make a better decision, but it has to be called out in every post about Chromium (preferably mentioning a few safer choices), otherwise it will disappear in the noise.
I made a conscious attempt to try to switch to Zen (built on Gecko/Firefox), but ended up switching back to Chromium-based browsers because pages just feel like they load faster with Chromium. :(
When you make your money selling ads, you're not going to want your users to block ads. It's as simple as that. Google should not be allowed to both sell web ads and control a browser platform.
What Google means to say is that MV3 will allow them to more closely control what you’re able to do with your time, since this was done primarily to target ad blocking software.
Not that this matters much anymore as Google is now more an AI than it is a search engine, and an unreliable one at that.
Waterfox is the best browser I have ever used. Native tree style tabs, minimalist UI, built in ad blocking, Firefox extensions.
Switched the family to Firefox. I use Libre but I understand it’s a hard sell. FF is much easier and the regular user can’t tell the difference anyway since they don’t spelunk into the details.
Pick my mother-in-law phone, is full of apps that pushes mensages every second, ad block is a way to prevent web to become IE with that toolbars, remember?
Apparently uBO can't be ported to MV3, as dynamic request interception is no longer allowed, only fixed block lists.
"For security and privacy"
The same day I finally migrated from Arc to Zen. What a coincidence ^^
I know people don't like apple and safari here, but I like safari. It works good enough for me. And when an experience is off, it helps me develop my web developer hat by better understanding webkit and why safari has a different experience or frontend like behavior.
This entire thread is so ridiculous. UBlock Origin Lite still blocks all the ads.
I suspect it's to force even more people to use they AI
Firefox is still great!
People fall for "think of the children!" so let's also try "think of the elderly!". We're a society that ruthlessly opposes individual responsibility and individual outcomes.
For most people, mv3 is "good enough". But that's mostly just random chance. If sites really start taking advantage of the deficiencies in mv3 to push ads, I think Chrome will lose a lot of users. And I think at that point Google will be forced to backtrack and bring back mv2. (Quite contrary to people who think this is just the start of the slippery slope, boiling the frog move to manifest vEvil which will disable adblocking entirely).
Google has been boiling the frog for a long time with this one. I for one will keep using Firefox.
As a longtime Firefox user: shrug
Contrary to some confusion about whether firefox will keep mv2:
Yes they will. Also I predict that MV2 is going to be a major boon for firefox.
It has taken a long time to prove the value of firefox to the masses and I believe mv2 extensions in particular ublock origin will be what keeps people coming back to it
I've not touched chrome in decades. Firefox stands strong. I would donate but in EU that comes with tax issues.
Ad blocking has become a safety issue. My parents are at an age where they fall for things. If a malicious ad pops up and offers to install McAfee, some other form of crapware, or outright scamware, they'll click that ad and install the thing. Then I'll get called over when the computer starts acting screwy. If Google, MS, etc. had ever gotten together and developed a way to filter malicious ads out of their own ad services, maybe we wouldn't be having this conversation. They didn't do that and probably never will.
If my parents get a new machine, the first thing I do is uninstall or, at least, delete the icons for Edge, Chrome, etc.. On goes Firefox, uBlock Origin, and a couple other extensions. They don't care what browser they use. They can't even name it. I just try to make sure they use a browser that isn't horribly unsafe.
We should all do this for people we care about. Don't ask them what browser they prefer. Odds are they don't know or care. Don't try to convince them to install Firefox themselves. They won't. Just do it for them. Think of it like picking up a rusty nail that's on their lawn. Sooner or later they're going to step on that thing if you don't.