For a while now the transition away from Manifest V2 (MV2) to MV3 has been on-going and it looks like it is entering its final phase of deprecation, at least, in the case of Google Chrome. A recent discussion thread in the w3c WebExtensions Community Group GitHub repo has highlighted how the latest and upcoming versions of the most popular browser are expected to be its final releases with support for MV2 extensions.
What this essentially means is that the tricks and bypasses that were used to keep MV2 extensions like uBlock Origin and others alive will not work any more on Chrome, or at least not for very long. For example the Windows Registry mod that could extend MV2 availability will cease to function after Chromium version 151.
Oh look all the “chrome but in a different outfit” browsers are doing the same terrible shit? What a shocker, no one could have predicted that the many many things all on the same base where actuality just fake competition.
Firefox has webserial support now. I no longer need anything chromium. Let them rot.
Really? Holy shit I can switch to zen fully at work and at home and uninstall chromium. Webserial was literally the only thing I needed
I heard about the web usb thing, it’s also going to be a game changer for me (I haven’t tried yet, hopefully it works)
Where oh where is my PWA…?
“Coming soon…”
They are all chrome with google scratched out and their name written in sharpie in its place.
Of course they are all doing it, cause they are all the same thing.
They don’t even try to pretend to fight it.
because theres no fighting google.
Microsoft tried, and google won, which is why Edge became a chrome reskin instead of what it was before.
Everything dies.
Yeah, but the worse they are the longer they live apparently.
Luckily, that’s something you can change!
To avoid a visit by the FBI, I will say no its not.
The winning move is not to do business with them, don’t compete just exist and pretend they don’t exist. Microslop played the game and lost, but it is a stupid silly game.
kinda hard to do when google holds the internet by the balls. and can twist at any moment to get what they want.
Microsoft and Mozilla employees have both accused them of doing this in the past, to sabotage non-chrome browsers on google services, to make chrome look better and drive users to chrome.
News to me, Does google hold this site by the balls? They have a lot of power yes, but they are not some unsinkable boat.
God it still pisses me off what they did to my boy Opera. All of us left when they diverted after v12. We all saw this coming.
Then Vivaldi came which I have tried in quite a while but it sucked. Firefox it is.
I like Vivaldi except for two things: it uses the same engine as Chrome so facilitates Google’s stranglehold on web standards, and it is closed-source. For functionality and design it’s one of the best, but those are important downsides.
What about vivaldi sucked for you?
Chrome is death to a browser, there is little reason to exist if google gets to make the big calls.
Yeah opera used to be the one. I’m STILL pissed that they deleted all of my notes
It’s a damn shame, I’ve always liked Vivaldi otherwise. I’ve been dual running Vivaldi and Firefox for years now, Vivaldi for casual browsing and Firefox for more serious stuff + YouTube.
Oh well, it’s time to do a full switch, I guess.
Kinda funny, I’ve been doing the exact same thing with Win/Linux for approximately the same length of time. Needed Win because of dome software that just doesn’t work linux, and sadly, I still do.
Google and Microsoft can go fuck each other with a frozen cactus for all I care.
The folks at Vivaldi have been doing some work on their internal ad blocker, I think with the intention to bring most of the functionality of uBo internally so that it doesn’t have to be an extension. Not sure how far along they are, but maybe they’re intentionally keeping it quiet.
Vivaldi have earned and deserve a lot of trust here I believe. All my chromium eggs sit in their basket.
Same here. I’m an Opera refugee so to say (and I had high hopes for Opera actually). I’ve been using Vivaldi since its first public alpha/preview/whatever they were calling it.
Yup, Vivaldi user for 8 years and it hasn’t let me down yet, but this post is troubling news.
Aye, I’m just not sure how it’s going to play out. One can hope, though. It’s definitely one of the best options Chrome-wise either way.
I’m wondering what the decision making was when they were starting (which is now 10 years ago already, time flies, yo).
From today’s perspective, a Firefox fork sounds way more logical. Back then maybe things with Blink/Chromium weren’t looking so grim, maybe they were relying on the experience of that part of the team that moved over from Opera…
10 years ago Google was trusted and liked. The cracks were starting to show, but we’re talking about the Google that was still open sourcing a lot of their products and loudly opposing government censorship of the internet.
I mean, on a technical level chromium isn’t a terrible browser engine. Building your own engine from scratch is Extremely Hard™ and it’s entirely possible to build a decent browser on top of it, so I can understand why most alternative projects have done just that.
It’s just… google’s control over chromium is concerning.
And an ecosystem of one engine is not healthy. Even if google was not google, this is a massive risk to take for the Easy™ way.
It’s not an ecosystem of one, though one is very dominant.
You can compare it to Linux. It’s not the only Unix-like kernel, but it’s similarly dominant. If you want to create a new distribution, it doesn’t make any sense to spend a decade trying to write your own kernel rather than just using the Linux kernel (insert GNU Hurd jokes here).
Is that an unhealthy ecosystem then? I don’t think it is.
What makes the chromium situation unhealthy is Google’s ownership and control, not that it’s the preferred engine for other browsers. I mean, even a company as large as Microsoft gave up trying to create their own engine.
Your example is a poor choice, Linux overall is one example of an OS for users. There are more OS choices then Linux, that is good. Nothing like web browsers where people where actively trying to make everything chromium based. The ecosystem is unhealthy when there is one choice for an entire type of software (so for OS you have Linux, Windows, and Mac as big players) and outside of Firefox and its forks all web browsers are Chromium based. Oh and although there are other fringe options they don’t matter much, much like in the OS world Temple OS is not a real choice.
My point was that it would be very very bad if Firefox was not there (or turned into chromium) as an ecosystem of one is a massive risk regardless of who controls it.
The browser wars have been kind of strange from the perspective of someone who’s been using Firefox for well over a decade. It’s a bit like hearing about the Civil War while living in Oregon.
i used opera for around 13 years. i knew about the flaws but i was simply used to it, and as long as adblock worked i couldn’t be bothered to switch to anything else
then my laptop broke and only that happening gave me the incentive to install something else, i was starting from (close to) scratch anyway
it’ll take a lot of effort for people to abandon what they know, even if they’ll be moving towards something better
i use Zen now :) it’s nice
Another zen user, good to hear!
Zen is a reskinned Firefox. Firefox depends on Google’s funding to stay afloat.
Everything else, other than Safari on Mac is either chrome-based or firefox-based.
There are levels of survival we are prepared to accept.
The more you tighten your grip, Google, the more ad revenue will slip through your fingers.
Not after they demonstrate the power of their evil browser. In a way, you have determined the choice of the ads that you will be shown first.
Honestly I don’t think so, the average person won’t bother with changing browser. So they might lose more users but they dont care about those users because they are were using adblock anyways
Cue the Brave shills “recommending” to switch to Brave in 5…4…3…
Wait what’s wrong with Brave?
Brave is by a company who’s in the business of serving ads.
Much like google was back in the day, they’re trying to obtain market share with a product that they can easily manipulate after the fact and rely on people not jumping ship as things get progressively worse and worse bit by bit
Think of the “approved ads” era followed by the “enhanced security features” which made it so your block list couldn’t be updated at a moments notice and now it’s being stripped entirely.
Better to avoid it entirely and just use Firefox or a derivative thereof
I would argue that if you’re choosing between chrome and brave, brave is still better.
Sure. Probably. But why are we choosing between Chrome and Brave?
People entirely blind to the idea that they can just choose something else instead of 2 piles of shit, one of which has a cherry on top and was sprayed with perfume recently.
Its like some sort of awful american tradition at this point.
Is a two party system not capable of approptiately responding to the needs of the people within it?
On iOS you can go on pornhub on brave and it blocks all the ads and cookie popups.
That’s one reason that uh… “someone” might use brave.
Orion also blocks ads on iOS and isn’t backed by Thiel, run by Eich or an ad business startup masquerading as an ad blocking browser.
Ok i will look
For a lot of people, it’s an easy transition.
DDG, Vivaldi, etc. harder transitions.
Firefox for my parents would result in calls every 3 days for sites that aren’t working right.
I’m just saying perfect is the enemy of good.
Firefox for my parents would result in calls every 3 days for sites that aren’t working right.
Sorry, what? If they are so tech-illiterate that they have to call you and ask why the website is not working, then what kind of web sites are they visiting?
Been using FF since 2022 and the only sites that wont work are the ones that utilizes HID. Are your parents trying to flash custom firmware for their phones though browser every third day?
Good for you. I’ve been in tech for over 16 years and FF absolutely does not work well on ~25% of websites.
Been in tech longer then that (if for some reason we are doing that now) and I will officially call bullshit on that claim.
Wait, really? The access cripplers are crazily powerful add-ons for the paranoid, like NoScript, not the browser itself. Like what example websites, specifically?
Wanna link those websites so we can see?
I get it that tech people stumble upon these sites much more often than non-techies. My point was that if your parents are having website issues every other day (which implies they are not tech-savvy), then why would they even visit sites that are not FF-compatible. How many sites out of all the web do you think are not compatible with FF? Give an example of a normie site that wont work well with FF.
On the other hand, if your parents are tech-savvy then why would they ask you why a website wont load properly? Do you get it that your statement counters itself?
What sites are those?
Websites that are actively malicious against firefox, that miraculously work when you have a useragent plugin that makes firefox report that its chrome proving that the site works fine, if the asshole code is removed?
I think this is when @AlecSadler@lemmy.dbzer0.com will discreetly not answer or otherwise avoid mentioning the exact websites… (Because there are none)
Yup mostly because I don’t care anymore. You’re all stating the, “it works on my machine” mantra and I don’t care. See my other comments for some examples.
It’s true, unfortunately. Not every 3 days, but once a month I encount these sites.
Change the icon on the desktop to the chrome pinwheel and they’ll never know the difference.
Because Firefox is a different engine and might not work well with certain websites.
I’ve only ever encountered one website where Firefox didnt work.
and that was because the website was coded maliciously to reject firefox… a plugin to make it think firefox was chrome and suddenly it ran fine.
Couldn’t use just set the user agent?
Firefox doesn’t support WebHID, so I can forget about configuring my custom keyboard with anything other than a Chromium based browser.
Keyboard setup would be a system level setting, no?
Well I did, the Amazon Prime Video has many weird behaviors on Firefox compared to the Chromium engine, even YouTube used to have before.
Any web developer knows it isn’t as simple as “code once, work everywhere”. If companies don’t test on Firefox (which is a reality nowadays given its small market share) bugs happen in very weird and unusual ways.
Only issue I’ve ever had with Amazon Video was the fact they artificially limit resolution to 320p for people on linux, regardless of browser.
I consider that a website problem, not a me problem. I choose what I do on the internet, the internet doesn’t dictate the software I use.
My real issue is as a dev of a web application, using Firefox makes things occasionally render differently. It’s only once in a blue moon but enough to make me just accept using Vivaldi to be closer to the defacto user experience. And then I can’t be bothered to switch between FF (I use Zen) and Vivaldi and split my bookmarks, extensions, logins etc. it just doesn’t make sense.
Brave has a certain distasteful reputation earned by repeated unethical fuckery. If you are fine with what brave does, you have no reason to avoid chrome in the first place.
Nothing.
Government becomes more fascist, tech companies become more fascist.
People don’t like surveillance advertising, and most reject it when given the choice. Unpopular policies are squashed when the people are represented, and the Republican policies and interests of forced and extreme deregulation are being represented here, not the people’s.
That, and I believe advertising is inherently fascistic in the way that it distorts realty, and intrusively attempts to modify thinking with punitive, insulting, and psychologically coercive methods - it is corporate propaganda, and when it is combined with surveillance and purchased by the State, it becomes fascism.
I can’t wait for them to try and make ad-blocking illegal. We’re seeing a similar trend with the age verification firm Yoti “reporting” GrapheneOS users to “the authorities”, whatever the hell that Gestapo bullshit scare-tactic means. If FOSS software and ad-blocking are tools of privacy and freedom from thought manipulation, and those concepts are being attacked by a State-backed corporate entity, then the State no longer represents those values. Chrome, like so much other corporate software that has sunk to surveillance advertising with a healthy side of selling data to the government, is now just another fascist tool to punish democratic resistance.
Freedom from advertising is a human right.
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. …
~Edward Bernays From his 1928 publication - Propaganda
Edward is the father of modern advertising through psychological manipulation.
He’s the reason bacon and eggs are breakfast.
I am posting this again in such a short time, but The Century of Self is required viewing in my opinion. That asshole you mentioned, Bernays, is one of the prime perpetrators for the state of advertising.
— Anyway, I do highly recommend (for those that haven’t) investing the time and watching The Century of the Self by Adam Curtis. It is very illuminating as to how we’ve arrived where we are now with regards to propaganda and advertising which are rooted in the same psychological underpinnings.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s
It appears to be on Netflix, as well.
I was the one who you posted it to and it’s well worth a watch. I put it at 1.25 speed and that was about right.
Hey there, Pele!
I was going to mention two other docs to you that my friend and I found quite good (though different topics). They are:
I hope you can find them somewhere. If you torrent or what not, they are doubtlessly found there.
Firefox and its derivatives (and Safari - sorry Apple users) are the only browsers not using Google’s Blink web engine these days - at least until Ladybird is released.
Despite the Mozilla Foundation’s many stupid decisions, Firefox (and Safari) is starting to look like the only thing stopping Google from completely controlling the internet.
Not true — Safari is still based on WebKit. And Safari is still the default browser on over two and a half billion mobile devices currently in use. And say what you might about Apple, but at least they aren’t in the business of selling ads, and thus don’t have any business interest in allowing you to block them effectively, unlike Google.
They don’t sell as many ads, but they do sell ads. It was only a few months ago they announced that ads would be coming to their maps app. There’s ads in news, the App Store, music, and settings on iOS. Maybe more than aren’t coming to mind immediately
Oops. My bad. I swear I read somewhere that Safari was switching to Blink, but that isn’t the case.
When will marketing people figure out our generation views ads as hostile, non-consensual, and unwanted? They are a negative way to introduce us to your product/service. I actively avoid things with obnoxious ads. Native, old spice, liberty mutual, all of those brands the first thing that comes to mind is the negative experience of an invasive advertisement I never fucking asked for.
Ads aren’t always there to get you to buy something specific. In fact, an ad you don’t interact with is a better ad because they don’t have to pay for click-through.
You don’t want to buy brand A because they have ads, so you buy brand B instead, but both widgets are owned by the same holding company. Or they’re made in the same factory. Or they use the same components. Or they have the same shareholders. Any way you slice it, the same rich assholes are getting your money.
The goal of the Ads is to put a bug in your head and get you to buy something.
And that’s just the Ads. The tracking is also (increasingly primarily) about political manipulation and surveillance.
Apparently not, as ads keep selling.
I hate to sound so cynical, but many folks are gullible. They’ll trust a flashy ad because it looks nice to them, and gives them a positive emotional response, and then internalize that judgement as their own decision (so when someone comes to challenge it, they take it personally).
It’s not just old people living in another time, either. I’ve watched teenagers and young adults trust obviously-sponsored influencers like they’re friends. Or wear brands as status symbols.
They’re too busy milking the boomers for now (and even then, the smart ones also despise ads already)
That’s been the better browser since 2008 though.
People will *anything *except use FireFox
IKR?
And people still use these trash dumpster of a browser?
You know, I seem to see this rhetoric a lot, and it seems to be getting upvoted more now, which isn’t a good sign for Lemmy, but are you really surprised by this? Is this really a question? Are you really that under a rock?
If it’s rhetorical, then what’s the point? Is this just a petulant way to try and dumpster something without going through the effort of actually picking out a real problem with it, of which there are countless?
Is this starting an interesting discussion? Is this voicing an interesting opinion? What is the point of this exact kind of comment?
Maybe I’m just too autistic and I’m going off the rails here, but these are starting to itch like a form of “internet forum hives”.
Maybe it is because people shame others into using “the most popular” browser, by asking stuff like “who uses X?” or “I use Y, lke a normal person” and so on and so forth. However, spend any time in the privacy-oriented community, and you will find that there is a significant disdain for Chrome, and Edge is never truly accepted as a viable option, and well; Opera, by Chinese scare is also shunned; but more often than not, Privacy-oriented browsers, (to my disappointment, a Chromium-based browser,) Brave is often recommended for most who don’t want to tinker, and that’s understandable.
But, when you look at things like the LinkedIn spyware, the aggressive anti-ad and also anti-privacy practices of these “popular” browsers, you really start to question, is it worth it? So tell me, IS IT worth it? My bare minimum is Containers, Chromium has to use an extension that kinda works, but for everyone else, why keep using something that constantly tries to invade your privacy? – The “Everything spies on you” or “I have nothing to hide” mentalities that try to normalize this are, in my eyes, outright defeatists.
The question once again, becomes; Why are we allowing this? If we don’t get a say; then the trusty old “Vote with your Money” comes into play; cause you always have a choice to switch browsers. We will always have that choice, and yet, I keep seeing the perpetuation of Chrome, and less Brave, and to my personal disdain, even less Firefox-based options, which are objectively better, and have built-in containers (kinda wish you didn’t need the extension to unlock it on the toolbar)
Nothing against you, you provided me with a peak at a concerning common perspective; “Why are you hating?” “If you dislike it so much why don’t you suggest something better?” and the far too common, “I dismiss everything you say, because you dislike/hate X” and truth be told, between that, and the in-person shaming and questioning, we ignore everything that is factually wrong, until something like the LinkedIn spyware or an AI Forcefully-yet-Repeatedly being downloaded without your consent, only then do they THINK, but not necessarily commit to switching to something else, the companies know this, and they just keep doing their… questionable practices.
So, I’m sorry, but yes. Chrome, is a trash browser, one that will continue to invade your privacy. De-googled Chromium would be better than Chrome. Brave is still far better, but it’s still Chromium based, that matters because if something affects a Chromium-based browser, there’s an exceedingly high chance it’ll work on all Chromium-based browsers (again, look at the LinkedIn spyware). I would personally suggest a Firefox-based alternative, simply because a lot of these exploits, which again, are a (Non-Google) Search away (just look at the efforts to remove malware from the chrome store), would simply not affect the browser. Easy suggestions are LibreWolf, WaterFox and the Mullvad Browser.
Tech isn’t meant to be complicated, it’s meant to facilitate things, but convenience should never have to come at the cost of bundled consent nor privacy.
Man up and take your spyware like an obedient peasant
Good thing I don’t use any of those shitty browsers.
Remember back in the day when you’d see these little badges on websites saying Best viewed with Internet Explorer? And some sites just wouldn’t work right on other browsers?
Soon you went be using any of those shitty sites, either
Ublock was already somewhat neutered on Chrome, and people didn’t seem to notice. They keep using it.
I’m just so cynical these days. It’s not like the Windows XP era, where people eventually get fed up with enshittification, and move.
Google won. Facebook won.
They have absolute control, basically.
Firefox exists.
At ~3.5% market share, depending on the statistics source. And declining, month-on-month:
https://radar.cloudflare.com/reports/browser-market-share-2025-q4
In all sadness, folks on Lemi and other more technically inclined forums infight even more than leftists infight, and all they do is sabotage themselves.
Projects like Firefox are mountains above Chrome when it comes to privacy and not ceding web control over to Google. Yet any thread about anything Firefox is doing is just filled with FUD from people complaining about small individual changes or Firefox not being perfect enough, so on and so forth.
It’s self-sabotage. If you didn’t think Firefox is good enough, congratulations. Now you’ve got Chrome, and pretty soon you won’t have Firefox.
😒
At this point when someone complains about anything but Linux, I just bully them.
That seems like you’re complaining about people complaining, we should totally bully you. /j
We should! How do you propose we proceed?
Cool story bro.
People keep mentioning Firefox but fail to realize that Google, as the sole sponsor of Mozilla Corporation (not to be confused with Mozilla Foundation), can just kindly ask for Firefox to follow suit and gimp itself, just like it did before with a move to webextensions. Gotta admit it, Google has won the web, what they say (eventually) goes.
Google doesn’t even need to get their hands dirty like that. IMO all they need to do is continue making it difficult for companies to support Firefox when designing their websites. That, in addition to making sure companies know that Google is tirelessly working to make sure Chrome won’t work with ad blockers is going to eventually kill Firefox completely.
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If there are no remaining mainstream browsers that support ad blockers that pendulum is going to take a long time to swing back.
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if their go at web drm eventually ever comes to fruition, you can expect the fringe to be expelled from all but a few niche communities.
similar to what they are doing to private/custom android with the qr codes and play integrity and whatever else.
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i like our chances of thriving in an alternative internet like in here, or building our own stuff that could be used for good. it’s is an immensely important resource some people take for granted and we should fight for it. however:
1 - the great majority of people accept it and the fringes are discarded as not profitable. the definitive wall where people draw the line goes further the more it’s normalized and the breaking point isn’t near. it’s already coming to your android phone.
2 - remember elected representatives don’t represent the people. they will go back at the slightest hint of disrupting business especially for banking and shopping. exemptions for the powerful aren’t out of the question on anything, plenty of that already.
3 - we are living through a global oil crisis that is starving people worldwide, many wars, genocide, nuclear tension and the rise of fascism. the splinternet is often talked about as being in the horizon. we are lucky to be in relative isolation so far.
things often seem inevitable because they are in bad shape. we are still scrambling over the ongoing fascism and we’ve been compounding the climate crisis without a care in the world.
i’m not saying it’s impossible or that we should quit. just that we need a realistic view of what we are up against, and who calls the shots right now.
Firefox is partially in this position because the community really does not support Firefox. Every decision Firefox makes or Mozilla makes in an attempt to try and claw back their financial freedom away from Google, the community dumpsters them on. Then, on posts like this, the community turns around and dumpsters Firefox for being so financially dependent on Google.
FireFox was and is an awesome project, but unfortunately, without the financial backing of a large for-profit business, they cannot keep up with Chrome. Even then, FireFox, with an engineering team a quarter the size of Chrome’s, still manages to keep up, which is a god damn miracle.
Developing a browser that is fast, actually works with new web standards, stays up to date, and is adding features is incredibly difficult. It is a stupidly expensive endeavor, similar to the level of effort necessary for operating systems.
And unfortunately, there is no Linux equivalent for web browsers, at least not right now. There are some up-and-coming projects, but it’s going to be decades before they reach the level of maturity necessary to start competing against Chrome. At which point there may be so much standards capture that some of these browsers may find it impossible to actually catch up.
then we’ll move again, like we did with chrome. this game of cat and mouse is easy to keep up and really only serves to harm these companys in the long run.
Except they aren’t moving anymore.
I think Google finally trapped most of the web’s population, for good.
That’s theirchoice is all I’ll say, I know plenty went to fire for for these reasons, it stands to reason they’ll do it again.
Move to what and where? Browsers are basically OS’s at this point, even MS stopped developing its own. Ladybird is going to be a joke and don’t think any other company or community is coming to write a new one.
Like how they killed JPEG-XL.
All over some employee’s ego associated with his AVIF contributions, from what I’ve seen.
Laughs in Firefox based browsers
