Technology

This is the thing about Chrome and the whole Chromium based ecosystem. Why on earth would anyone use a browser from an Ad company.

By the way. They are planning on putting it in Android apps too. So there one gets little choice. A non-starter like Apple where you cannot even load your own apps and app stores or Android from an Ad company where you can with effort at least choose your own software and even image your own OS.

@Gormadt They say Firefox is slow. Because in the past it used to, especially with the old engine and when Chrome was new, that's true. But nowadays it does not matter anymore and the speed differences are negligible. If that is the only reason to not use Firefox, then people should reevaluate their decision.

Then there is the argument that people do not like Mozilla. But they like Google more? Even if you use a Chromium based browser by a different company, you give more power to Google this way, as the engine becomes a bigger part of the web. Am I crazy for thinking that?

I use Firefox since version 1 as my default. Occasionally I switched to a different browser, but always came back to good ol' Firefox.

How do they rise up, rise up, rise up, how do they rise up, rise up high?

Seriously… I’ve never once strayed from Firefox since its release.
I’m forced to use chrome for work and it is crap.

I guess that using safari on iOS devices is one exception, and it isn’t too bad.

I reinstalled my pc and didn't install chrome. Firefox is pretty decent.

I remember going from IE to Firefox when they came out with tabs way back. We probably shouldn't have switched to chrome en masse in hindsight.

People aren't misunderstanding the issue. Third party cookie support is being dropped by all browsers. Chrome is also dropping them, but replacing them with topics. Sure, topics is less invasive than third party cookies, but it is still more invasive than the obvious user friendly approach of not having an invasive tracker built into your browser. No other major browser vendor is considering supporting topics. So they're doing an objectively user unfriendly thing here. This is the shit that happens when the world's largest internet advertising company also controls the browser.

It's because ANY COMMERCIAL TRACKING AT ALL is unacceptable!

Chrome is trying to have it's cake and eat it too by removing 3rd party cookies and baking in another tracking methodology anyways.

The User Has Spoken and we DEMAND that there be NO TRACKING! The browser devs are complying with that demand in various ways to various degrees.

Firefox complies with this demand openly and honestly. Third party cookies are not a thing much anymore and the browser actively tries to punish companies who try to do it anyways; while also allowing us to turn to other plugin developers to further punish companies who try to aggressively invade our privacy.

Google Chrome, on the other hand, complies very maliciously because it's made by one of those companies who are trying to track us anyways. It removes third party cookies on the one hand and on the other hand tries to introduce other tracking technologies and WebDRM while also trying to severely curtail browser plugins that we choose to install to assert our rights to privacy our way.

You can't tell me that's not an evil dick move on the part of Google and the Chrome team. Chrome needs to clean up it's act and the development team of Chromium needs to forcefully eject it's Google developers and find new ones to retake the internet.

Google developers cannot be trusted not to put the interests of Google first; it's literally what they're paid to do.

In addition, there seems to be a sentiment that there should be no targeted ads altogether. To be honest I'm not sure how this looks in practice. I think it's pretty obvious that no targeted ads mean fewer sales and therefore less revenue. Google has margins that could be dug into, fine. However this revenue is also shared by the open web that's funded by ads. It's also shared by small businesses that advertise. Generally those two groups have less margin to spare. How does the open web look like in this kind of status quo? How about local economies where the actual businesses who advertise operate? Ads on the web aren't some small thing that is kind of up in the air, separate from "the real economy" anymore. 🤔

Besides all of that, targeted ads help people find stuff. Web ads used to be terribly useless in the 2000s. Over time they actually got pretty useful for me. Over the years I've found many products that I had no clue about as well as promos via well targeted ads. I don't enjoy ads, but some of the things I use and love came from them. I definitely don't want to go back to the useless ad shit show landscape of the earlier internet.

Who gives a fuck? It's not our problem if it's not feasible, they can find ways of making money without living in our asses. Or they can make a bit less money - they can buy less latte and guacamole etc

Eventually the chromium base will be too hard to patch if Google has their way. Surfing on ungoogled chrome is keeping the user agent the same as chrome. This shows devs and companies that chrome dominates and therefore they should only code sites to support it. Only true way to protest these changes is to switch to a different browser. Firefox and its forks are the only privacy focused options.

@yoz Most people aren't idiots, they are uninformed. But they become an idiot ones you inform them... So most people are potential idiots. :D

Brave essentially has done this all along.

Brave is based on chromium which probably wont have too much dystopian tracking stuff unlike proprietary chrome (and they remove it anyways). People should still switch to firefox though

They will add this to the long list of things they patch out. But at some point, maintaining these patches is going to be more work than they can handle.