Reminder to switch browsers if you haven’t already!
- Google Chrome is starting to phase out older, more capable ad blocking extensions in favor of the more limited Manifest V3 system.
- The Manifest V3 system has been criticized by groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation for restricting the capabilities of web extensions.
- Google has made concessions to Manifest V3, but limitations on content filtering remain a source of skepticism and concern.
The silver lining here is that you’d hope that more people will simply adopt Firefox. It’s user share has been too low for too long given how great it is
Their user share was pretty okay for a while, but bombed when Chrome first released because it was much more performant. Unfortunately, that stigma never quite fell off and they lost a huge opportunity to overtake the market.
How was it more performant? As I remember it, Chrome was loading websites not noticeably faster than Firefox, as website loading speed depended and still depends mainly on your internet connection and hardware anyway.
As I remember it, Chrome exploded because it was pushed onto users at every possible opportunity while Firefox depended (and still depends) on users actively looking for it.
Used Google or Google products? Get ads for Chrome. Wanted to download Google Earth? You had to activly uncheck a box such that Chrome wasn’t going to be installed as well. Meanwhile no ads and not the same amount of exposure for Firefox.
That way they achieved a critical mass and snowballing did the rest. There were so many users using it that it was considered a good choice just because it was used by many people.
Regarding the performance aspect, if there even was a noticeable difference, it was worse than Firefox. Where else did the “Chrome eating RAM” memes come from?
I just remember Firefox around that time and for like over a decade just felt bloated and super slow in comparison. No idea if it’s better these days or what.
I’d say give it a try and see for yourself.
I can just recommend using Firefox for a multitude of reasons. However, I am biased as I have been using firefox for almost two decades and did not have many reasons to complain.
I think you are misremembering. Chrome won at the start because it was fast as fuck and Firefox was not. Firefox caught back up in the 2016 time frame iirc and they’ve been back and forth ever since.
Ironically chrome was named so as a goal was to reduce the chrome of the UI and focus on the web content, something recent versions of chrome and Firefox have abandoned in favor of massive swaths of whitespace and giant chrome buttons (on Firefox you can enable “unsupported” compact mode to reclaim some of the space if you’re on a laptop)
agreed. chrome was bare ones and super fast when it was released. over the last two years it’s a fucking monster memory hog
I’ve been a loyal Firefox user for almost as long as Firefox has existed. So I’m probably a bit biased. However, when I used other browsers, and if it wes just to try them out, I didn’t notice any benefits in terms of loading websites and executing their scripts. This includes Chrome. In benchmarks there are obviously differences visible, but to me as a user they didn’t matter. I wasn’t so short on time that I needed those microseconds. So I really don’t get how performance could be an argument in this.
I was a Firefox user at the time, using adblockers, and the swap was a huge improvement to my browsing experience. I can’t even remember all the ways, since this was a decade ago. But at the time, Firefox was in a lul.
Things likely swapped pretty fast, but I wasn’t aware of it at the time because I was already using Chrome.
No ads swayed me, no Google specific sites, it wasn’t side loaded with anything.
The Chrome eating ram memes came much later, after the enshitification process reached the third step. You seem to be compressing the entirety of both browsers into a single moment, and that’s not really how time works.
I understand that you made such an experience, but I can’t share it though. I’ve been a Firefox user for almost as long as Firefox exists, which is almost two decades. (I think I joined somewhere between 2005-2007). I’ve tried other browsers, sometimes I had to. However, I didn’t notice any benefits compared to Firefox. Especially not in performance. Even though benchmarks have always shown clear differences, they weren’t significant enough for me to consider switching, as the difference really didn’t impact my browsing experience.
Regarding the memes: That was just a random annectode which I found suitable here. I don’t claim it has been that way since the beginning. (Can’t relate to that anyway.) But given that it has been around for a while, I don’t see how performance can be an argument in favour of Chrome in this.
I’m right there with you. I hear people talking about how slow and bloated Firefox was, which I do not remember at all. I remember Chrome using some tricks to seem faster like preloading websites and preferential treatment for Chrone with Google websites and stuff, but in terms of raw performance I felt like they were roughly equal. I think the main reason for Chrome’s popularity is how firmly entrenched Google is/was with Google Search, Gmail, YouTube etc. and constantly having the “get Chrome!” ads pushed to users.
I remember it as, Firefox was fast enough, but Chrome was shipping a weirdly quick JS engine and trying to convince people to put more stuff into JS because on Chrome that would be feasible. Nowdays if you go out without your turbo-JIT hand-optimized JS engine everyone laughs at you and it’s Chrome’s fault.
They messed up 10 years ago when for some reason it took ages for Firefox to load compared to Chrome, and sadly it never really recovered the user base even though the performance is vastly improved.
To be fair, even in 2006 the Mozilla corporation was never going to outspend Firefox
Especially not given how much Mozilla wastes on executive compensation ;)
I think you’re ignoring the functional aspect of the integration of Chrome into the Android platform. A lot of people’s entire online life is stored within the walls of the Chrome ecosystem. And moving all of that to a completely different browser that is not fully integrated with Android is daunting to say the least.
What’s the new chrome integration?
Didn’t say new, I’m assuming they refer to the WebView that many apps use which is chromium based. However if you have a calyx- or graphene- compatible phone the WebView will be non-g chromium.
For work, I use Chrome, but only because Firefox’s profile management is (more or less) nonexistent. Once they have that, which I understand isn’t too far out, I’m ditching Chrome entirely.
Have you thought about installing a Firefox fork? On my Work PC I use Firefox for work and Floorp for personal browsing.
Long live Firefox.
hear ye
Pretty great outcome for firefox really.
I don’t think firefox numbers will get a huge & immediate bump, but I think that over time it will support a reputation for firefox as being cool different and just plain better.
I can’t imagine raw-dogging the internet without an ad blocker in 2024. I’m aware that most people aren’t bothered by ads, but surely… surely some people might be interested in blocking them if they become aware that it’s possible and easy.
Oh no! Wait, I don’t use that shit because of shit like this.
I’d be glad to switch back to Firefox, but websites straight up don’t work on it anymore. That was the only reason I went to Chrome.
I’ve yet to find a single website that doesn’t work in Firefox.
There are some sites out there that won’t work. ESC Configurator won’t work in Firefox because it needs web serial to program an ESC connected over a serial port. That’s the only site I use that I have to run in chrome. I’m sure there are more out there, but they are not very common.
That’s a reason to insist on Firefox even harder. Fuck those websites!
I encourage those in this situation to do their small, small part in fighting for the future of the open web by only switching to Chrome when necessary.
Which is almost never in my daily life!
What websites? I use Firefox as my daily driver on desktop and mobile, and I rarely run into problems. Like so infrequently that I don’t even remember the last time.
Some websites display warnings even though everything works fine, like web.skype.com. But that’s the closest thing to doesn’t work I’ve ever seen on Firefox.
Same. My Dark Reader doesn’t always show websites properly but Firefox hasn’t let me down in ages.
They are around… Try this one: (https://www.starbirdchicken.com/starbird-chicken-menu)
I was curious of what their menu looked like as I have one by my work. Haven’t checked it on desktop, but on Android, the menu items never get loaded. ($10-12 for an á la carte chicken sandwich from a fast casual place is a ripoff anyway)
No problems loading that page on Firefox for Android or desktop for me. Are you using Firefox or a fork of Firefox? Do you have any extensions or about:config changes that may be affecting the page rendering?
Which sites? Been using Firefox since forever and all is well.
What does google expect users to do once they realize they get better extensions with firefox?
Imagine ad blockers not working on youtube only on chromium browsers, or tracking cookies/pixels/scripts not being blockable only on chromium browsers.
80% of people I know does not use an ad block, even the ones more tech savvy. I have no clue how brainwashed they are for eating ad garbage all day.
To be fair, let’s be glad that 80% of people don’t use an ad block. If it were the opposite and 80% did use ad block, web services would be much more aggressive in combating ad blockers and many more of them would end up pay-walled (although it seems we’re heading there anyway).
On one hand, I feel kinda bad that my ad-free experience is only supported thanks to those who do undergo the torture of ads, on the other hand, the companies have only themselves to blame. If web ads were decent, only limited to sides and headers or even between paragraphs of web pages and didn’t cover the content you’re trying to view, didn’t try to trick you into thinking it’s part of the content, didn’t lead to malicious websites, didn’t autoplay videos with sound or didn’t put unskippable ads before and inside videos, I would have never felt the need to install an ad block.
What does google expect users to do once they realize they get better extensions with firefox?
If that happens en masse, which is extremely unlikely, Google can just pull its funding for Mozilla and cripple them
The entire sector is fucked because of lack of regulation
They expect most users to not care, and sadly they’re right.
I think, they just stopped caring about users instead. They’ve got enough market share. Might as well internet-explorer it for a while.
I think people just genuinely don’t know that firefox (and I suppose Safari) is the only true alternative browser i.e. Not based on chromium.
I do my best to transition people I know across, but people are retty comfortable on chrome. If ad blockers stop working, I think there will be people who care just enough to switch.
I think people just genuinely don’t know that firefox (and I suppose Safari) is the only true alternative browser i.e. Not based on chromium.
Safari is only “not based on Chromium” in the sense that the heredity goes in the other direction (Chromium is based on it).
Firefox is the only browser that maintains a rendering engine codebase fully separate from Chrome. That’s why using Firefox, and evangelizing it to help keep up its marketshare, is so vitally important for the health of the web.
Huh, I didn’t know that about Safari/Chromium. Absolutely agree that having a Google-controlled browser monopoly would be catastrophic.
Used Firefox on and off since it came around, not a fan. But if chromium blocks ad-blockers, I’m switching instantly. I doubt many people know or care enough to switch.
I’ve been on Firefox almost exclusively for about a decade and I can’t really tell the difference between them honestly in terms of performance of normal web browsing.
I’m having some weird graphical issues with my NAS frontend Web portal display on Firefox atm though, so keep chromium installed for that.
I honestly don’t understand why anyone would refuse to switch from away Chrome. It’s not like the other browsers lack functionality or are slow. The only problem they might encounter is some rare incompatibility which is the result of Firefox (and its forks) small market share and web devs not caring enough.
I’ve never used Chrome as my primary browser and I don’t think I missed anything. I started using Opera years before Chrome was even a thing (back when everyone was using IE) and then when the old Opera died, I didn’t think even for a second about switching to Chrome and went straight to Firefox. Which could at least be highly customized to bring some Opera exclusive features (eg. mouse gestures, tab grouping) back.
Firefox Forever!!
After bingeing that show, I have a constant fear that he’s been standing behind me the whole time, just waiting for me to catch a glimpse of him.
Been here since Kevin helped the project out?
I use Firefox everywhere which means I have ads blocking everywhere, including and especially on Android. All my tabs are synced and are easily transferred between devices.
If we want to be honest, Firefox on Android has way worse performance than Chrome.
(But I still use it instead of Chrome)
I use both on a Pixel 7 Pro.
Can’t confirm that.I use it on a Pixel 5 and even there it is fluid while browsing. Only on Youtube there is the slightest stutter for HD Videos. Heavy sites like Discourse fora or Cryptpad or such work flawlessly.
TIL Cryptpad.fr is just one instance apparently
Yeah wow nice that’s fantastic
Ive been using Firefox on Android for years but it really needs some TLC. It doesn’t support scaling to a tablet/desktop UI at all so it doesn’t work well in DeX or anything larger than a phone. I also recently had to swap to Brave because I noticed Firefox was draining a lot of battery all of a sudden. There’s some kind of leak or running process that isn’t sleeping properly. In a few months I’ll re-install and try again.
It depends I think. I found Chrome to be a tiny bit faster but then ads bogged the page down so most of the time, Firefox is faster for me.
In some very rare cases when I need to disable ads blocking, Chrome is indeed faster but I’d rather abandon websites rather than disable ads blocking.
So if you love ads, Chrome is better. If you hate ads like I do, Firefox is miles ahead.
There are other ways to block ads. Adguard does a great job on Android. It establishes a local VPN, so it can do HTTP[S] content filtering in addition to DNS blocking.
Can’t use my VPN and adguard at the same time iirc, unless android has two active VPN “slots” now. Can’t bring a pihole with me 24/7 either as much as I would like to.
There’s always nextdns.io that can be configured to use ad blocking filters on the dns level. You can set it up on your phone as well
Can I use it in conjunction with my normal VPN? AFAIK android has only one active VPN slot available at a time.
Yes because there is no need to setup another VPN. You only configure the DNS settings (Private DNS). I know that Mullvad on PC has an option to use custom DNS server
While I dont use Firefox itself any more I am using librewolf on my PC, which sadly doesnt exist for phones yet. Also, GOS comes with its own privacy oriented chromium fork called vanadium, so I’m using that in the mean time.
I’ve found the Mull browser (which can be found through the DivestOS repository on F-Droid) works great as a privacy-focused firefox fork, similar to LibreWolf. I hear Fennic F-Droid is also a pretty good but less extreme alternative, but I’d imagine you don’t care much about that if you use LibreWolf.
I also use librewolf and have settled for iceraven on my phone. the list of installable extensions is much longer (even if not everything is working yet, depending on how far mozilla has come along) and it has about:config support, which gives me a pretty close approximation of my desktop browser.
Switched to Firefox at work today. Looks like I still need Chrome to do the VPN handshake, but the more of us there are, the more pressure we have on IT!
If you still need Chrome, consider Ungoogled Chromium!
Is that project going to maintain Manifest V2 support?
I have no idea. I’d guess not, as it’s not a strong fork like other Chromium-based browsers. Its main selling point is that it’s nearly identical to Chrome, but with a lot of the Google garbage stripped out. I don’t use it as a daily driver, but only when I need something Chromium-based like the use case mentioned by @OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml. It’s very likely to work wherever Chrome does.
I don’t have official information, but I doubt it. They tend to stick as closely to the Chromium experience as possible, with the exception of the ungoogled part, of course. Maintaining Manifest V2 support would also just be a massive amount of work, for which they likely don’t have the manpower.
I’m still confounded by workplaces that run the old nineties way of VPN handshake by browser. Clunky, clumsy just straight up bad digital workplace setup.
There is no reason to not do it the modern way where all the handshaking and connecting is done under the hood, hidden from the user. At the most you as a user should only see the tiny little systray icon switch how it looks.
firefox extensions are the best patches i have for enshittification
It’s weird that I’ve been on firefox for the vast majority of my life and I always had this perception that “everyone” was using it. Here in lemmy you hear about it all the time, my friends use it, I see it on my newsfeeds etc
But when you check the market share it around 2.8% while chrome is 65.1% https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share
Might have to do with the fact that Firefox was the dominant browser for quite awhile until Chrome arrived on the scene.
I was at my parents house last week because i had to help them with their laptop. I told my mom about firefox and she was very confused because she doesn’t seem to understand that google chrome is a browser and that every browser can access google search or their banking site.
It took a bit of effort to explain that firefox works the exact same but is safer and faster.
She is now using firefox on her phone because i showed her ublock origin works with it to block ads.
A lot of people don’t seem to understand that google chrome isn’t the internet and what exactly a browser is.
I guess average user cares mostly about how fast and smooth the browsing is. Chrome definitely has the edge on that over firefox.
I remember a point around 2015ish where a lot of web apps went from recommending Firefox and Chrome for the best experience to just Chrome. Now I often see “don’t use Firefox” as a support tactic.
Now we gotta have websites developing for all web browsers instead of Google Chrome like it’s Internet Explorer 2.0.
There are effectively only two web browsers: Chrome and Firefox. Literally everything else, aside from some really niche things that can’t render modern webpages, is a fork of one of those two that uses the same rendering engine.
What about Apple’s WebKit? Does it count?
Nope, it doesn’t count. The only reason Safari/WebKit isn’t considered a fork of Chrome/Blink is that Chrome/Blink is a fork of Safari/WebKit instead.
I’m sure they’ve diverged enough for it to be pretty significant compared to the Chromium browsers
So it wasn’t, like, forked hard enough that now after the years it counts as a different browser? Expect it to render pages ‘n’ stuff pretty much like Chrome?
You mean KHMTL, born in KDE’s Konqueror. That spawned WebKit (Safari), that spawned Blink (Chrome, Edge, Opera, etc). The whole thing then finally came full-circle when Konqueror dropped KHTML due to lack of development, now you have the choice between WebKit and Blink (via Qt WebEngine).
Then there’s Gecko (Firefox) and Servo which had a near-death experience after Mozilla integrated half of it into Gecko but by now development is alive and kicking again. Oh and then there’s lynx, using libwww, tracing its lineage back straight to Tim Berners Lee.
No, they don’t mean KHTML. KHTML is an ancestor of WebKit and Blink, but WebKit forked from it over 2 decades ago. They meant WebKit.
They also didn’t mean lynx and yet I mentioned it. How come? Might the distinct possibility exist that I used the opportunity to draw a wider picture, and “you mean X” has to be understood as internet brain-rot rhetorics, not literally?
Just a suggestion.
Not to toot the kagi Horn, but they are talking about releasing thier webkit based Orion Browser on Linux. Ive been following that one closely since it has firefox extension support.
I mean, if folks really want something like that, I’d say they shouldn’t have let KDE’s KHTML (which is what WebKit was forked from) die. But as I’ve said elsewhere in this thread, KHTML→WebKit→Blink are related and thus fail to combat Google’s web hegemony the way that Gecko (Firefox) does.
I’ve become very skeptical of anything Kagi, wishing they’d just focused on making one thing good instead of getting distracted by mediocre AI and a browser they can’t realistically support while their search is still subpar. Illusions of grandeur.
Iirc the browser is older than their search engine. If anything that is their og product
Subpar Seach?
Yeah, wtf is he/she talking about there :)
won’t stop pihole
It’s still DNS level only, right? That wouldn’t stop YouTube ads, or remove annoyances.
Love my PiHole but you’re hella correct
You sweet summer child.
How long do you think Chrome will let DoH be opt-in?
It’s not up to Chrome.
The day they do their own DoH in-browser it is definitely up to them. It’s already opt-in if you want to see how well your pi-hole won’t work with it enabled.
Next step is to do DoH by default, and finally making it compulsory.
Chrome already does have DoH enabled by default from what I can tell.
https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/10468685
By default, Secure DNS in Chrome is turned on in automatic mode. If Chrome has issues looking up a site in this mode, it’ll look up the site in the unencrypted mode.
You sweet summer child
How are they going to get past my firewall rules?
By using the same hostnames that you need for wanted content.
Personally, I’d like to see them force in-browser DoH down my throat with my computer powered off. They’ll never see it coming.
Nerd fight! Nerd fight! Nerd fight! Show 'em your bionicles collection!
By refusing to load
You can block ads from being served to you.
But the flip side is that the website developer can make a website that won’t function if it can’t load the ads being served.
And most users are gonna want a functional website.
Somebody’s going to need to write a web site with a very, very compelling function to make me give enough of a shit to not just click away if it is deliberately coded to not work with Firefox/adblockers. Like, gives me a million dollars per page load functionality.
Man for real.
And they never will.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Other groups don’t agree with Google’s description, like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which called Manifest V3 “deceitful and threatening” back when it was first announced in 2019, saying the new system “will restrict the capabilities of web extensions—especially those that are designed to monitor, modify, and compute alongside the conversation your browser has with the websites you visit.”
Google, which makes about 77 percent of its revenue from advertising, has not published a serious explanation as to why Manifest V3 limits content filtering, and it’s not clear how that aligns with the goals of “improving the security, privacy, performance and trustworthiness.”
Like Kewisch said, the primary goal of malicious extensions is to spy on users and slurp up data, which has nothing to do with content filtering.
Google now says it’s possible for extensions to skip the reviews process for “safe” rule set changes, but even this is limited to “static” rulesets, not more powerful “dynamic” ones.
In a comment to The Verge last year, the senior staff technologist at the EFF, Alexei Miagkov, summed up Google’s public negotiations with the extension community well, saying, "These are helpful changes, but they are tweaks to a limited-by-design system.
For a short period, users will be able to turn them back on if they visit the extension page, but Google says that “over time, this toggle will go away as well.”
The original article contains 692 words, the summary contains 230 words. Saved 67%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
I think LibreWolf is going to end up being the go-to browser at this rate.
