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Google is essentially saying that Chrome will still have the capability to block unwanted content, but this will be restricted to only paid, enterprise

Google is essentially saying that Chrome will still have the capability to block unwanted content, but this will be restricted to only paid, enterprise users of Chrome. Never heard of a paid version of Chrome before! Can anyone elaborate on this? I gotta say I'm kind of glad Google is doing this. It will force me to finally abandon Chrome, something I should have done awhile ago.

jchw 7y ago
Googler here, but I do not work on Chrome and I’m speaking on a personal capacity. I believe this is a misnomer. The enterprise deployment stuff I’m aware of in Chrome/Chromium is accessible by any user, as far as I know, and in the past I’ve used it to force private browsing on always for my own personal usage. That said, I switched to Firefox when Quantum came out and haven’t looked back. Mozilla has done some annoying stuff over time, but imo the browser itself is really solid, and with some tweaks is very good.
- junar 7y ago
  Is it this? https://cloud.google.com/chrome-enterprise/browser/download https://cloud.google.com/chrome-enterprise/browser/download
  - jchw 7y ago
    Looks like some useful stuff for deploying to Enterprise, but actually as far as I know the enterprise functionality exists in normal installations. Like for example, this stuff: http://dev.chromium.org/administrators/policy-list-3 http://dev.chromium.org/administrators/policy-list-3 To be honest, I am not the most knowledgeable here; I just know I used the enterprise policy system on my personal laptop without issue.
    - Jaruzel 7y ago
      See my sibling comment.
  - Jaruzel 7y ago
    Key point (for Windows) on that page is: ADM/ADMX templates with 300+ user and device policies ADM/ADMXs are a list of settable policies (rules) that Chrome will read from the Windows Registry on startup[1]. I'm going to make a huge assumption that the Chrome.exe for Enterprise users is no different to the Chrome.exe that everyone else uses, and it switches into 'Enterprise' mode if it sees certain key policy entries in the Registry[2]. These polices are typically set on a Windows Domain Controller and are pushed to Domain member machines (and users) on the network on a regular basis. However end-users can simulate the policies by setting these Registry entries manually (There are about 4 places in the Registry where they live). Depending on where Chrome looks, the user may need local admin privileges to do this. So, what we really need is a 'Chrome Enterprise Enabler' tool, that does this automatically for non-technical users. They would run this tool, the required Registry keys would be enabled, and WebRequest API based Ad-blocking would continue to work. Unfortunately, none of this helps Linux users as I don't see a Linux Enterprise Chrome package. --- [1] I've got 25+ years of Windows domain administration under my belt, this stuff used to be my bread-and-butter. [2] Even if not, extracting just the Chrome MSI installer from the Enterprise bundle is trivial.
    - rando444 7y ago
      These are just features and settings, there's no requirement to use them. The main point isn't listed on the page. The Enterprise installer installs Chrome to the operating system. Regular chrome installs in your user profile.
      - Jaruzel 7y ago
        > These are just features and settings, there's no requirement to use them. I think you missed my point. Google say that the Enterprise version will continue to support WebRequest API. If the Enterprise version is the same codebase as the normal version, then it's a good educated guess that the Policy keys are whats controlling that.
    - discreditable 7y ago
      Chrome MSI and chrome EXE installers work a little differently. The MSI installer by default installs to the program files directory. I've seen the EXE installer often installed to the local user profile. to convert a regular install to Enterprise you would probably have to uninstall the local version and then install the MSI. ADM templates are something Firefox is sorely lacking at the moment. I remember reading that it is on the road map but that does not help out much. Nevertheless, I installed both chrome and Firefox and my organization. I like Firefox and use it myself, but sadly it's just not as easy to administer as chrome.
- milkytron 7y ago
  One of my favorite things with Firefox is the ability to “edit and resend” requests in the browser devtools. I’m sure there are plugins that do something similar on chrome/chromium. But I use it all the time and my colleagues are always blown away when I show them this.
  - jchw 7y ago
    Ah yeah, on occasion I will boot Firefox at work for this capability. Truth be told I know of nothing similar in Chrome/Chromium, but you can do something similar using the healthy number of “Copy Request As” context options. I like to copy as fetch and manipulate it in the console. It’s not perfect but it’s useful.
  - joshschreuder 7y ago
    Whoa, never knew that was a thing. I found FF's dev tools quite bulky and clunky in the past, but I might have to give it another go.
    - King-Aaron 7y ago
      That's the only reason I keep falling back to Chrome, the dev tools are just so much more refined.
      - jchw 7y ago
        The one thing I always liked about Chrome dev tools was the ability to introspect WebSocket frames. Last I checked this couldn’t be done in Firefox :( Otherwise, I have found Firefox dev tools to be fairly competitive. I liked the CSS Grid stuff they had around the launch of Quantum; it made it easier for me to jump into Grid.
        shoeboxam 7y ago
        I use Firefox personally, but develop with Chrome. I have a hard time getting stack traces from Firefox reliably. Oftentimes one of the following occurs on Firefox: There is no error, but the page won't load. There is an error, but the error message is generic. There is an error message, but no stack trace. When I switch to chrome, I always get the error and stack trace without any further code modifications. I make sure to clean up for Firefox in releases. But it's just impossible to develop without error messages and traces. I'm on Ubuntu using the latest stable releases.
- AaronFriel 7y ago
  I don't believe it's accurate to say it's "accessible by any user", the net effect of the policy will be (over a time span of months or years) to limit ad blocking only to the most technically capable users who understand how to do what you describe. Moreover, extensions that continue to use this behavior are required to adhere to manifest v2, and support for that manifest will likely eventually be deprecated. Chrome blocked the store from serving and updating manifest v1 extensions after a deprecation period. Google rapidly deprecated version 1, from Chrome 18's release adding version 2 in March 2012 to blocking updating in March 2013, to removal of all extensions that had not updated from the Chrome Web Store in September 2013. If Manifest v3 follows a similar trajectory, Chrome is on a path to remove uBlock Origin from its web store in 2 years.
  - jchw 7y ago
    Just to clarify, what I am referring to is the claim that it’s limited to paying enterprise customers. I could be wrong but I believe that the enterprise policy bits are what matter, and as far as I know all of those are available in Chrome/Chromium today, via group policy systems. When I say “accessible” I am specifically referring to that bit, definitely not suggesting ordinary users should do that.
- swah 7y ago
  What platform are you on? I tried Firefox quantum yesterday and could not stand the text rendering. Gmail looks awful. But I don't have a 4k monitor yet...
panarky 7y ago
This is essentially not true. Content can still be blocked with extensions, but it will be more difficult to handle large block lists. See this comment from the author of uBlock Origin and uMatrix. https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338#issuecomment-496009417 https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338#iss...
- tyingq 7y ago
  "Content can still be blocked with extensions" Well, without live heuristics. Chrome ad blocking is basically now limited to a dumb, limited list of URI patterns. Better than nothing, but much less capable than before.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    And without privacy invasion implications. Apple introduced content blocking 4 versions ago implemented nearly the same way. No one would accuse Apple of trying to help Google make more money.
    - andrewprock 7y ago
      Google pays Apple for access to their browser.
      - scarface74 7y ago
        Google pays Apple for access to the search bar.
    - tedivm 7y ago
      Every application has privacy implications, and it isn't difficult to manage this one. Having a giant warning around installing extensions with this level of access would be a good way to protect people while also allowing them to make their own decisions.
      - 7y ago
zerocrates 7y ago
> Never heard of a paid version of Chrome before! Is there such a thing? The "paid" part comes from the article's gloss, not from Google. I could see it instead being "this is a switch you can turn on in Group Policy."
voldacar 7y ago
Check out Ungoogled Chromium, it's pretty great.
- marktangotango 7y ago
  Can you elaborate on what this is and why you think it’s so great?
  - voldacar 7y ago
    Ungoogled Chromium is Chromium with all google domains and google-specific code removed. It keeps the nice things about Chrome/Chromium like the dev tools and is compatible with Chrome extentions, though you do have to download and install them manually. Unlike Chrome, it is also 100% open source.
    - A2017U1 7y ago
      How timely are updates? Would be my main concern here.
    - bscphil 7y ago
      I was under the impression that Chromium had some Google integrations but was pretty harmless from a privacy standpoint unless you sign in to Google. Is that wrong? Do I need to use Ungoogled Chromium instead?
  - lioeters 7y ago
    It's a fork of Chromium, the core layer of Chrome, with Google integrations removed (and other privacy-conscious feature removals/additions). https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium
    - yesforwhat 7y ago
      How is this different than Brave?
tacosx 7y ago
People were predicting this as the Chrome endgame years ago. It's playing out exactly as everyone cynically expected. It's time to eliminate Google from your life as much as possible if you haven't already. Too many wake up calls. They are not a tech company, they are data monopolists. Stop giving them your data.
- estranhosidade 7y ago
  Funny how sometimes what everybody was waiting to happen just.... happens
  - marktangotango 7y ago
    Particularly satisfying for those of us who never left Firefox for this very reason!
  - Aeolun 7y ago
    > You were the Chosen One! You were supposed to destroy the Evil, not join them.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
- mehrdadn 7y ago
  > People were predicting this as the Chrome endgame years ago. It's playing out exactly as everyone cynically expected. Would you happen to have any links to previous discussions anticipating this exact endgame?
  - Tepix 7y ago
    Here‘s a german article from 2008 https://heise.de/-202799 https://heise.de/-202799
    - mehrdadn 7y ago
jaimex2 7y ago
They mean Chrome extensions installed via gsuite - Google's enterprise management system. Ie - you can have managed Chromebooks and force install extensions. A lot of school's use it for web filtering.
jimmaswell 7y ago
Perhaps the elusive Google Ultron.
yesforwhat 7y ago
Brave user here, 1/10 the CPU and memory usage and built on the same tech. Welcome!
- arbol 7y ago
  Are brave in control of the web request API within their build? I know it's a fork of Chromium, just not sure how much is available for them to change. I have been using brave for months and intend to continue if uBo keeps working. Braves internal ad blocking doesn't stop everything.

jchw 7y ago

Googler here, but I do not work on Chrome and I’m speaking on a personal capacity. I believe this is a misnomer. The enterprise deployment stuff I’m aware of in Chrome/Chromium is accessible by any user, as far as I know, and in the past I’ve used it to force private browsing on always for my own personal usage. That said, I switched to Firefox when Quantum came out and haven’t looked back. Mozilla has done some annoying stuff over time, but imo the browser itself is really solid, and with some tweaks is very good.

junar 7y ago
Is it this? https://cloud.google.com/chrome-enterprise/browser/download https://cloud.google.com/chrome-enterprise/browser/download
- jchw 7y ago
  Looks like some useful stuff for deploying to Enterprise, but actually as far as I know the enterprise functionality exists in normal installations. Like for example, this stuff: http://dev.chromium.org/administrators/policy-list-3 http://dev.chromium.org/administrators/policy-list-3 To be honest, I am not the most knowledgeable here; I just know I used the enterprise policy system on my personal laptop without issue.
  - Jaruzel 7y ago
    See my sibling comment.
- Jaruzel 7y ago
  Key point (for Windows) on that page is: ADM/ADMX templates with 300+ user and device policies ADM/ADMXs are a list of settable policies (rules) that Chrome will read from the Windows Registry on startup[1]. I'm going to make a huge assumption that the Chrome.exe for Enterprise users is no different to the Chrome.exe that everyone else uses, and it switches into 'Enterprise' mode if it sees certain key policy entries in the Registry[2]. These polices are typically set on a Windows Domain Controller and are pushed to Domain member machines (and users) on the network on a regular basis. However end-users can simulate the policies by setting these Registry entries manually (There are about 4 places in the Registry where they live). Depending on where Chrome looks, the user may need local admin privileges to do this. So, what we really need is a 'Chrome Enterprise Enabler' tool, that does this automatically for non-technical users. They would run this tool, the required Registry keys would be enabled, and WebRequest API based Ad-blocking would continue to work. Unfortunately, none of this helps Linux users as I don't see a Linux Enterprise Chrome package. --- [1] I've got 25+ years of Windows domain administration under my belt, this stuff used to be my bread-and-butter. [2] Even if not, extracting just the Chrome MSI installer from the Enterprise bundle is trivial.
  - rando444 7y ago
    These are just features and settings, there's no requirement to use them. The main point isn't listed on the page. The Enterprise installer installs Chrome to the operating system. Regular chrome installs in your user profile.
    - Jaruzel 7y ago
      > These are just features and settings, there's no requirement to use them. I think you missed my point. Google say that the Enterprise version will continue to support WebRequest API. If the Enterprise version is the same codebase as the normal version, then it's a good educated guess that the Policy keys are whats controlling that.
  - discreditable 7y ago
    Chrome MSI and chrome EXE installers work a little differently. The MSI installer by default installs to the program files directory. I've seen the EXE installer often installed to the local user profile. to convert a regular install to Enterprise you would probably have to uninstall the local version and then install the MSI. ADM templates are something Firefox is sorely lacking at the moment. I remember reading that it is on the road map but that does not help out much. Nevertheless, I installed both chrome and Firefox and my organization. I like Firefox and use it myself, but sadly it's just not as easy to administer as chrome.
milkytron 7y ago
One of my favorite things with Firefox is the ability to “edit and resend” requests in the browser devtools. I’m sure there are plugins that do something similar on chrome/chromium. But I use it all the time and my colleagues are always blown away when I show them this.
- jchw 7y ago
  Ah yeah, on occasion I will boot Firefox at work for this capability. Truth be told I know of nothing similar in Chrome/Chromium, but you can do something similar using the healthy number of “Copy Request As” context options. I like to copy as fetch and manipulate it in the console. It’s not perfect but it’s useful.
- joshschreuder 7y ago
  Whoa, never knew that was a thing. I found FF's dev tools quite bulky and clunky in the past, but I might have to give it another go.
  - King-Aaron 7y ago
    That's the only reason I keep falling back to Chrome, the dev tools are just so much more refined.
    - jchw 7y ago
      The one thing I always liked about Chrome dev tools was the ability to introspect WebSocket frames. Last I checked this couldn’t be done in Firefox :( Otherwise, I have found Firefox dev tools to be fairly competitive. I liked the CSS Grid stuff they had around the launch of Quantum; it made it easier for me to jump into Grid.
      - shoeboxam 7y ago
        I use Firefox personally, but develop with Chrome. I have a hard time getting stack traces from Firefox reliably. Oftentimes one of the following occurs on Firefox: There is no error, but the page won't load. There is an error, but the error message is generic. There is an error message, but no stack trace. When I switch to chrome, I always get the error and stack trace without any further code modifications. I make sure to clean up for Firefox in releases. But it's just impossible to develop without error messages and traces. I'm on Ubuntu using the latest stable releases.
AaronFriel 7y ago
I don't believe it's accurate to say it's "accessible by any user", the net effect of the policy will be (over a time span of months or years) to limit ad blocking only to the most technically capable users who understand how to do what you describe. Moreover, extensions that continue to use this behavior are required to adhere to manifest v2, and support for that manifest will likely eventually be deprecated. Chrome blocked the store from serving and updating manifest v1 extensions after a deprecation period. Google rapidly deprecated version 1, from Chrome 18's release adding version 2 in March 2012 to blocking updating in March 2013, to removal of all extensions that had not updated from the Chrome Web Store in September 2013. If Manifest v3 follows a similar trajectory, Chrome is on a path to remove uBlock Origin from its web store in 2 years.
- jchw 7y ago
  Just to clarify, what I am referring to is the claim that it’s limited to paying enterprise customers. I could be wrong but I believe that the enterprise policy bits are what matter, and as far as I know all of those are available in Chrome/Chromium today, via group policy systems. When I say “accessible” I am specifically referring to that bit, definitely not suggesting ordinary users should do that.
swah 7y ago
What platform are you on? I tried Firefox quantum yesterday and could not stand the text rendering. Gmail looks awful. But I don't have a 4k monitor yet...

panarky 7y ago

This is essentially not true. Content can still be blocked with extensions, but it will be more difficult to handle large block lists. See this comment from the author of uBlock Origin and uMatrix. https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338#issuecomment-496009417 https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338#iss...

tyingq 7y ago
"Content can still be blocked with extensions" Well, without live heuristics. Chrome ad blocking is basically now limited to a dumb, limited list of URI patterns. Better than nothing, but much less capable than before.
- scarface74 7y ago
  And without privacy invasion implications. Apple introduced content blocking 4 versions ago implemented nearly the same way. No one would accuse Apple of trying to help Google make more money.
  - andrewprock 7y ago
    Google pays Apple for access to their browser.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      Google pays Apple for access to the search bar.
  - tedivm 7y ago
    Every application has privacy implications, and it isn't difficult to manage this one. Having a giant warning around installing extensions with this level of access would be a good way to protect people while also allowing them to make their own decisions.
    - 7y ago

zerocrates 7y ago

> Never heard of a paid version of Chrome before! Is there such a thing? The "paid" part comes from the article's gloss, not from Google. I could see it instead being "this is a switch you can turn on in Group Policy."

voldacar 7y ago

Check out Ungoogled Chromium, it's pretty great.

marktangotango 7y ago
Can you elaborate on what this is and why you think it’s so great?
- voldacar 7y ago
  Ungoogled Chromium is Chromium with all google domains and google-specific code removed. It keeps the nice things about Chrome/Chromium like the dev tools and is compatible with Chrome extentions, though you do have to download and install them manually. Unlike Chrome, it is also 100% open source.
  - A2017U1 7y ago
    How timely are updates? Would be my main concern here.
  - bscphil 7y ago
    I was under the impression that Chromium had some Google integrations but was pretty harmless from a privacy standpoint unless you sign in to Google. Is that wrong? Do I need to use Ungoogled Chromium instead?
- lioeters 7y ago
  It's a fork of Chromium, the core layer of Chrome, with Google integrations removed (and other privacy-conscious feature removals/additions). https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium
  - yesforwhat 7y ago
    How is this different than Brave?

tacosx 7y ago

People were predicting this as the Chrome endgame years ago. It's playing out exactly as everyone cynically expected. It's time to eliminate Google from your life as much as possible if you haven't already. Too many wake up calls. They are not a tech company, they are data monopolists. Stop giving them your data.

estranhosidade 7y ago
Funny how sometimes what everybody was waiting to happen just.... happens
- marktangotango 7y ago
  Particularly satisfying for those of us who never left Firefox for this very reason!
- Aeolun 7y ago
  > You were the Chosen One! You were supposed to destroy the Evil, not join them.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
mehrdadn 7y ago
> People were predicting this as the Chrome endgame years ago. It's playing out exactly as everyone cynically expected. Would you happen to have any links to previous discussions anticipating this exact endgame?
- Tepix 7y ago
  Here‘s a german article from 2008 https://heise.de/-202799 https://heise.de/-202799
  - mehrdadn 7y ago

jaimex2 7y ago

They mean Chrome extensions installed via gsuite - Google's enterprise management system. Ie - you can have managed Chromebooks and force install extensions. A lot of school's use it for web filtering.

jimmaswell 7y ago

Perhaps the elusive Google Ultron.

yesforwhat 7y ago

Brave user here, 1/10 the CPU and memory usage and built on the same tech. Welcome!

arbol 7y ago
Are brave in control of the web request API within their build? I know it's a fork of Chromium, just not sure how much is available for them to change. I have been using brave for months and intend to continue if uBo keeps working. Braves internal ad blocking doesn't stop everything.