7 ms·

Don’t mistake this for victory. Google’s standard playbook when forcing things people don’t like is to spread the action out over a longer timeframe, exhausting

by twhb 4y ago

Don’t mistake this for victory. Google’s standard playbook when forcing things people don’t like is to spread the action out over a longer timeframe, exhausting the media and keeping the final blow mostly out of the news, and exhausting our individual outrage and will to keep fighting. It works every time, and it’ll work again if we become complacent again. Until and unless Google meaningfully commits to never neuter ad blockers, it’s still critical and urgent that we switch to Firefox.

hparadiz 4y ago
Imagine working at Google on this nonsense and thinking you're actually doing something good for the world.
- refulgentis 4y ago
  - hailwren 4y ago
    One of these companies profits by the proliferation of ads and the other does not.
    - deadmutex 4y ago
      > One of these companies profits by the proliferation of ads and the other does not. Umm... IIUC, Apple already makes billions from Ads. I'll just leave this here: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-08-14/apple-aapl-set-to-expand-advertising-bringing-ads-to-maps-tv-and-books-apps-l6tdqqmg https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-08-14/apple-...
      - hypertele-Xii 4y ago
        Apple's revenue is mostly iPhone. Google's revenue is 80% advertising. Stark difference.
    - endisneigh 4y ago
      Which one doesn't have any ads?
      - hailwren 4y ago
        I was factually incorrect Apple generates about 1% of their annual revenue from ads [1]. Google generates 81% of their annual revenue from ads [2]. 1 - https://www.statista.com/statistics/1330127/apple-ad-revenue-worldwide/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1330127/apple-ad-revenue... 2 - https://www.oberlo.com/statistics/google-ad-revenue https://www.oberlo.com/statistics/google-ad-revenue
        DannyBee 4y ago
        "I was factually incorrect Apple generates about 1% of their annual revenue from ads" Why play silly games to make 4 billion dollars seem small? I could play this game in the other direction and say "Apple generates more money from ads now than 99% of the companies ever make over their entire existence" In truth, 4 billion dollars is a lot of money. More to the point of this discussion, when you ask them, they want it to be a very significant part of their business. They talk about it on earnings calls all the time! It's not like they are hiding it! Which sort of totally blows up the idea that they don't care.
        hailwren 4y ago
        TIL percentages are “silly games” and not a common way to measure how much a portion of something contributes to the whole.
        DannyBee 4y ago
        We're talking about whether they profit, and whether it matters to them and the business. You said they do not. "One of these companies profits by the proliferation of ads and the other does not." That was wrong. They make a lot of money from it and they have said it is an important part of their future. Rather than just say you were wrong, you instead try to paint it as not mattering by using percentages, when again, it is a lot of money and apple themselves say it matters a lot Just accept that what you said was mistaken, and do better next time. What you are doing now just makes you look bad and unable to learn and grow.
    - AYoung010 4y ago
      There’s a big “yet” attached to Apple not profiting from the proliferation of ads - from what I’ve read, since they pushed the “ask app not to track” change, Apple has been pushing hard for more widespread adoption of their own advertising platform. Make no mistake, Apple does not care about your privacy — only about moving the ad money out of Google’s pocket into their own.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - curt15 4y ago
      Does that make Safari's MV3 implementation better than Chrome's? I can't use ublock origin on either.
    - EnKopVand 4y ago
      I sort of see it the other way around. To me Google is an advertisement company first, and if you use Google products then you know your privacy data is how you pay for those products. With Apple and Microsoft you're paying for the product, but you're now also getting your privacy data sucked into their growing advertisement business. I personally think the use of privacy data is a waste of resources, and that companies like duckduckgo have the longer end of the stick. Because it makes more sense to me, that I get advertisements for a robot vacuum cleaner when I'm searching for one, and not the 3 months after I buy one, but then there is a trillion dollar advertisement industry to prove me wrong. So who knows. But what pisses me off is that companies sell you a product, and then also include advertisement and privacy data harvesting in it, like that Samsung TV article that was on here recently. Or how Windows "home or whatever the non-enterprise edition is called" now sometimes installs pre-installers for things like candy crush or Minecraft without asking you to do so... Like what the hell? I don't want you to read this as a defence for google, but at least they are sort of honest about the evil they do. I'm not sure any of these sleazy moves will have the desired outcomes for these companies. I don't want to use linux, I did once, but I like my technology to work right out of the box with no effort to make it so or to maintain it, which is why I'm in the Apple ecosystem these days, but the ways things are heading, I think the only future will be linux, and trying to find appliances that aren't add-infested.
  - HWR_14 4y ago
    I give Apple (and MSFT in the Gates/Ballmer days) money, and in return they don't try to spy on me. Google, current MSFT and Meta all want to give me free stuff and then make up the difference with ads. It's not complex as to why I am more likely to believe Apple when they say something is privacy enhancing and distrust Google.
  - hparadiz 4y ago
    Not sure why you decided to bring up Apple. People decide to buy into the Apple ecosystem. I didn't decide to buy into the Chrome ecosystem. I just have to use it because of the marketshare. And I'm on Gentoo running a personal build of Chromium. Manifest v3 is pure evil. Don't get it twisted. There's no ambiguity here. It's just a cash grab. Anyone working on it on the Chrome team should feel shame.
    - staticassertion 4y ago
      I think it's pretty absurd that this is the level of discourse on this subject. "pure evil" and "just a cash grab" aren't substantive criticisms, nothing in your post is actually informational. The reality is that ad blockers will continue to work to a significant extent that they do today. Engage with that, put some information with merit into your posts.
      - zarzavat 4y ago
        It makes the adblockers fight with one hand behind their back, tilting the balance in the cat and mouse game towards the attackers. Google is an empire built on advertising: scams and malware, so their evil has always been present. But right now we have an easy way to protect ourselves. Manifest v3 is exposing that evil to technologically-minded people. I will have to switch my parents over to Firefox or Brave to keep them safe online.
        staticassertion 4y ago
        Again, the entire post is just axiomatic moral judgments with no information.
        zarzavat 4y ago
        I’m curious what parts of the internet you visit that you do not see all the ads for scams, shock ads, and other malicious things. There’s a reason that “one weird trick, doctors hate it!” is a meme. It’s utterly rampant. If I open YouTube without an adblocker there’s often some kind of snake oil salesman that pops up. Or a cult. Now, I use private browsing, so I get the “default” experience. Perhaps you don’t use private browsing and so your targeting is really honed in. Perhaps you only see sensible ads for sensible people, a sensible wallet or a sensible car. If that is the case then fine, but if the only way to use the internet is logged in to Google and with everything tracked, then that is unacceptable to me.
  - loxias 4y ago
    It seems Google (or maybe just some of the employees?) derive pleasure from taking things that were working just fine and then breaking them so my life is harder. It's almost a yearly occurrence at this point -- some thing that, once upon a time in the past I spent effort on configuring so that I could have a happy experience with my computer, will now be announced deprecated forcing me to comply with some new edict from on high with absolutely no benefit for me. Please stop doing this. Stop "fixing" things. I'm an engineer too, I know building new things is fun, but there is also honor in maintaining well functioning things and not making other people's lives unnecessarily hard. I bet that, now that I finally have mutt working again with Google's newest incarnation of authentication, there's a team within Google excited about breaking it in 2 years.
    - smoldesu 4y ago
      The problem is (as always) a lack of regulation in the tech industry. We've taught Big Tech that the only way to 'innovate' is to perform profane moneymaking rituals at the expense of the end user, and the shareholders are always asking for more. The average Google engineer's job is no different from anyone else working in a sufficiently large company. Their job isn't 'press the big evil switch on MV3', but rather 'MV3's staging branch is failing tests, go fix it'. The evil comes from perverse bureaucratic incentive, so it leaves me kinda ruffled to see people blaming the engineers on HN of all places. I can imagine some pinstriped upper-management prick at FAANG reading this thread in their penthouse and laughing their ass off.
      - loxias 4y ago
        > We've taught Big Tech that the only way to 'innovate' is to perform profane moneymaking rituals at the expense of the end user, and the shareholders are always asking for more. > The evil comes from perverse bureaucratic incentive.. I think you're entirely right. I have nothing else to add, other than that I've always thought this, it's not a new change of opinion. I guess I don't see any conflict between my comment and yours? Yes, I know that "Their job isn't 'press the big evil switch on MV3', but rather 'MV3's staging branch is failing tests, go fix it" -- I've worked in software my whole career too. :) > so it leaves me kinda ruffled to see people blaming the engineers on HN of all places. I also know that it isn't some nebulous cloud above which is where designs come from, but other employees. I also know, from experience, that if you're a valuable enough engineer within an org or a project, and you significantly oppose a proposed feature or change coming from the suits, it's not gonna happen. What are they gonna do, code it themselves? > I can imagine some pinstriped upper-management prick at FAANG reading this thread in their penthouse and laughing their ass off. Agree.
  - lawgimenez 4y ago
    I'm still bitter that Google permanently removed my @gmail.com with your dark pattern migration to business email. With no option to move back? You guys lost half of my Google Drive, Photos history. But it's cool. That's life. And then you moved me to legacy workspace to appease me. And then months before you tried again to migrate my legacy workspace email to paid, which another Google employee said it's free forever. I'm willing to pay anything on your valuable service but those dark patterns is what really pisses me.
  - btown 4y ago
    > people call it privacy If you think of privacy solely as reducing the risk of an extension going rogue and leaking data - then sure, MV3 is a win. But if you include the issue of sites sharing data, then reducing the ability of extensions to use advanced heuristics to block advertising and tracking may cause more harm than good. There are plenty of users who understand that extensions are extremely powerful, thoroughly vet the organizations that have the capacity to update those extensions, and are also required to visit numerous less-trusted websites (and in a modern age of advertising technology, that's practically all of them) whose data sharing practices they cannot vet. MV3 will be a net negative for the privacy of those users. Now, it may be reductive to say that those users, and that privacy threat model, matter more than others. But it is equally reductive to pretend that MV3 is a universal good.
    - tyingq 4y ago
      Where MV3 happily still allows you to inject arbitrary javascript into pages, it's not about privacy.
      - btown 4y ago
        “It’s not arbitrary JS, it needs to be reviewed by the Chrome Web Store team, unless it’s a userscript or we miss it in our review process!” https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/chromium-extensions/c/ZUZqOgwqkBg https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/chromium-extensio... It’s the equivalent of an airport security policy - as I mentioned before, to reduce risk. Which, both in that analogy and here, can indeed be part of a defense-in-depth. But such a policy is not without tradeoffs, and it cannot be evaluated in a vacuum.
        xani_ 4y ago
        I bet far more people got scammed by malicious ads than people deciding to install malicious extension.
        hombre_fatal 4y ago
  - howinteresting 4y ago
    Yeah, well, Apple is very bad for doing this too. One reason I don't trust iOS or Apple in general.
  - invisible 4y ago
    It's as though nobody realizes extensions can be created or purchased by sketchy actors and that this is a huge security risk when the extensions request "all access to all sites." OK, so when setting up an account's username and password and are provided 2FA codes or recovery codes -- those can all be compromised. How can you know an extension is compromised? It's almost impossible to tell with certainty. Things like "The Great Suspender" incident get ignored and folks assume no other extensions have the same problems.
    - RedShift1 4y ago
      And what in MV3 solved all of that? It still allows enough to do a lot of damage. Regardless of that, at some point you have to trust software. You can't expect everyone to read every line of code and compile all the software by themselves.
      - invisible 4y ago
        Yes, I trust plenty of software and I'm not suggesting that extensions are bad in theory. Extensions being able to silently inject code and ownership to change at any time is a pretty bad security model. We can agree that there are _bad_ security models, right? It's the sum of the parts in changes from manifest V2: - no arbitrary code injection via executeScript, must be a file now - no more remote code - no more arbitrarily getting selected text or highlighted text on a tab - declarativeNetRequest instead of intercepting requests - explicit listeners on the page to help detect bad actors (vs just arbitrary JS running on the page)
        linkgoron 4y ago
        Even ignoring ad blocking - with those rules stuff like Tampermonkey which is totally legit can no longer work with execute script. You also lost a lot of functionality by losing DOM, having to rely on the broken lifetime of a Service Worker instead of persistent background page . It took Google three to four years to acknowledge that the community is completely correct with its criticisms, and that MV3 is garbage designed by people who have no knowledge on how people write extensions and which abilities they actually use. They're finally adding features that should have been there years ago. The new scripting API which brings back arbitrary scripts, in a new form, the offscreen documents API, and hopefully they'll eventually implement limited event pages which are somewhat solving the background page lifetime and DOM issues (which are already implemented by Mozilla and Safari I believe). Obviously, everything was decided hastily in the last second so all of the features are supposed to be completed by "around" October 2022, just two months before the original MV2 cutoff. I've also read some of the extension working group transcripts, it's pretty sad how Google/Chrome has no accountability and almost zero transparency.
  - trap_goes_hot 4y ago
    Calling for objectivity is probably not the first thing people want to do when discussing a company building a giant world-wide spying machine. In addition to logic, humans employ sentiment, emotions, and feelings and there isn't anything wrong with doing that.
  - MBCook 4y ago
    The same people screamed when Apple did it. “This ruins ad blockers”, “this is so they don’t have to make REAL ad blockers work”, “they want a 30% cut of VPN money instead”, “this will cause cancer”. OK, not the last one. But people literally posted here on HN that Apple was killing people by not letting Flux on the iPhone. Considering how much information “normal“ ad blockers can see, I’m not against this. I like Apple’s approach (and understand this to be similar). But obviously I’m in the minority.
  - bogomipz 4y ago
    It's very bizarre that your response is nothing more than a complete deflection - "what about Apple?!", but then you go on to accuse others of being reductionist and lacking honesty.
  - GeekyBear 4y ago
    Funny how Mozilla manages to vet the code of some of the more popular extensions for their "recommended" extensions program with far fewer financial resources. >curated extensions that meet the highest standards of security, functionality, and user experience. Firefox staff thoroughly evaluate each extension before it receives Recommended status. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/recommended-extensions-program https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/recommended-extensions-...
    - LtWorf 4y ago
      Opera browser was vetting every extension manually.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - stjohnswarts 4y ago
    That's because while Apple has monetary incentive to keep up the walled garden it really does have provide value to apple customers. I know google is selling everything and the farm about me when I use thier services. If apple wants my business they'll keep on doing what they're doing, I don't see ads on their platform and haven't seen any credible reports they're selling everything they know about me to the government and anyone who will pay $$ for that. I hastled myself for years keeping a rooted phone with trimmed down Android OS in various forms, but it was a lot of work. With apple I just buy a phone and use it and don't have to worry them selling me out every step I make or allow apps to rifle through my files and photos.
- hailwren 4y ago
  > Imagine working at Google and thinking you're actually doing something good for the world.
  - ocdtrekkie 4y ago
    The term is called "cognitive dissonance".
- bambax 4y ago
  The wording of the blog is pure doublespeak: > as we shift our focus to Manifest V3. This change will give Chrome users increased safety and peace of mind while browsing and installing extensions by providing more transparency and control over permissions, adding stricter protocols for accessing resources outside the extension’s context, and ensuring that extensions work well on all devices It sounds like government gobbledygook, with even more lies (there are no extensions on Chrome on mobile, so what "all devices" means is anyone's guess). I often wonder what goes on in the mind of people writing this. Are they happy? Why did they choose to work in tech instead of some administration, if BS is their thing? Is it just for the money?
MarkusWandel 4y ago
I went to a lot of trouble preparing for a post GAFYD/Workspace future (I have a legacy free one from way back that's in active use for four family email accounts). Then they changed course and let me keep it after all. Death by slow boil, or they'll let me stay on it for another 10+ years?
- mappu 4y ago
  I left GAFYD just days prior to them relenting and let people stay on it. I regretted the decision for a while afterwards, but i've since realized i don't want this shutdown threat hanging over my head. Thanks for the 10+ years of hosting but i don't have to be treated like this, I'm better off without them.
- vosper 4y ago
  > GAFYD "Google Apps for Your Domain" for anyone who (like me) could not figure out what that acronym means.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Could as well have been Google Always F*cls Your Dumbass I presume.
    - 2Gkashmiri 4y ago
      its the internet, you can casually swear here
      - bombcar 4y ago
        FACLS! FSCK! Just noticed the typo heh.
ikinsey 4y ago
Can you provide an example of where this pattern of behavior happened in the past?
- wolpoli 4y ago
  Example: In Chrome 69, Google made it so that each time you sign in and use a Google service like Gmail, Maps or YouTube, your Google account will be automatically logged in to the Chrome browser. There were outrage but Google had provided a flag to turn it off. It was in chrome://flags/#account-consistency. Edit: Google removed the flag shortly after.
  - loxias 4y ago
    Thanks! I didn't know I could turn that off. I "solved" it by wrapping chrome with my own home grown tooling to maintain multiple parallel profile directories, so I could run "work chrome" and "chrome for gmail" and "chrome for web browsing". Of course, now I use firefox for all 3 so I don't have the problem anymore... :)
    - wolpoli 4y ago
      The flag is long gone, as Google removed it a few release after. I apologize if I didn't make it clear.
      - tech234a 4y ago
        It's a setting now. On each browser profile, go to chrome://settings/syncSetup and turn off "Allow Chrome Sign-in".
    - ikiris 4y ago
      Its a paranoid reading of the normal launch process. Behind the scenes every major change like that is a flag that's deployed first off then slowly flipped to default true as a rollout so that it's as low risk as possible of unintended damage / failure.
  - 4y ago
wolpoli 4y ago
Google also likes to provide a feature flag to re-enable the old feature for a few versions. Parts of the community happily re-enable the feature, hence the media doesn't pick up on any outrage. By the time the feature flag is removed, it's a stale story.
- bakugo 4y ago
  This has happened so many times in recent years, I've grown tired of warning people about it. It's such a simple trick but almost everyone falls for it.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - tommica 4y ago
    Out of curiosity, what kind of things has this happened over the recent year?
    - rasz 4y ago
      https://browsertouse.com/blog/2891/enable-ftp-setting-in-chrome-flags/ https://browsertouse.com/blog/2891/enable-ftp-setting-in-chr...
monopoliessuck 4y ago
I mean, it's not just Google that does this nor is this an Alphabet invention. This is merely Assimilation 101. The "Chinese patience" towards heterogeneous minority groups and their customs is a commonly referenced one, but this "boiling the frog" is really the only way to guarantee things change while mitigating serious rebellion. Another good example is how the Rashidun Caliphate granted conquered Zoroastrian Persians Dhimmi or "people of the Book" status. I'm sure it seemed kind at the time since Zoroastrianism is obviously not "of The [Abrahamic] Book". This merely postponed persecution of the unconverted until such a time as they were disperse, weak and with less sovereign resolve. They got a worse and worse deal as the centuries wore on. I'm not justifying Google here, but this is really every hegemon's SOP: corporate, tech or cultural. I'm just as mad with Microsoft forces me to use a Windows account after juggling the slow creep Mojang deprecation, when Mozilla gives you fewer and fewer ways to install apps outside of their extension store until it's a Nightly-only feature, or when [your favorite app] is acquired by [your least favorite company] and starts down a path you'd *never expect*. It's all garbage.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- 3OCSzk 4y ago
  Sorry for getting out of topic somewhat, But how many users would benefit if Mozilla gives many more ways to install extensions from unfederated source? That sounds like browser malware disaster from 2010s to me
  - monopoliessuck 4y ago
    It was a slow boiling. Today, there's no way to install an unsigned extension in Firefox at all, you now have to use Developer Edition binaries. For a company that says the end user should be the decider and hold the keys, Mozilla sure likes limiting our options. There was a way to place them in a directory for awhile, then a cli flag, then an about:config flag, then a few other inconvenient options that ultimately ended up being snuffed out. Even Chrome has a flag you can flip and install an unpacked extension from file. Sending this stuff up to Mozilla for them to grace or relegating developers and corporate users to some unbranded or esoteric dev binary is offensive to the end user IMO. I mean, it's not even federation, just centralization. Sure you can host it on your webpage, but it needs to be signed by the mother ship either way. Firefox removed "about:config" from Firefox on android as well. Maybe we'll get a cli flag escape hatch for a year when they do the same on desktop. Not trusting the end user in the name of security is not a Google-only play despite all the Moz Marketing.
gnarbarian 4y ago
I'm here to recommend brave because it's not mentioned nearly enough yet. https://brave.com/ https://brave.com/ fuck you Google!
- shbooms 4y ago
  isn't Brave chromium-based? Have they stated yet if/when they will take MV3 into/remove MV2 from their codebase?
  - chidg 4y ago
    Yes it is, and extensions for Brave are installed through the Chrome Web Store, as are extensions for other chromium based browsers like Edge. There's no escaping the manifest v3 event horizon for extension developers.
  - gnicholas 4y ago
    Other commenters mentioned that they will continue to support MV2 and are even planning to stand up their own extension store that offers MV2 extensions after Google stops allowing them in their store.
- hypertele-Xii 4y ago
  So what's all this then? https://brave.com/brave-ads/ https://brave.com/brave-ads/ > Sponsored Images: Striking, high-definition images that are featured in the Brave new tab image rotation. Advertisers have the opportunity to feature their brand prominently in this coveted space in front of millions of consumers. "Fuck Google, have Brave shove ads in your face instead!"
  - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
    I’ve been using brave for years and never seen an ad on new tabs. New tabs typically have an image of mountains or some scenery, with a summary of the number of ads blocked and bandwidth saved because of those blocks.
1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago
"Until and unless Google meaningfully commits to never neuter ad blockers, it's still critical and urgent that we switch to Firefox." Why would Google ever commit to keep ad blockers working, unconditionally. It makes no sense. I use Firefox in sometimes on mobile. I use Chrome for online banking and shopping. This usage is an extremely small portion of web use for me. (Does that make me an "actual user" under the Google employee's definition.) The majority of the time using the web I do not use a popular browser from a "tech" company. I use simpler software I can edit and compile myself, quickly and easily. I have all the "features" I need. As such, 99% of the time I never see any ads. Google can do whatever it wants with Chrome. I still see no ads. I am not using it. Unless and until one considers that there are other ways to access the web besides those dictated to us by "tech" companies, then one cannot seriously claim to be trying to avoid advertising. Firefox is funded by Google and other "search provider" profits from advertising services. Mozilla is against some forms of online tracking, but they are absolutely pro-advertising. I just watched their "Chief Security Officer" state this on video to the FTC earlier in the month. Are we supposed to believe there is some "standoff" between Mozilla and Google (or any other "tech" company, i.e., "search provider") over advertising. That would be pure fantasy. Mozilla (Corporation)^1 is like any other "tech" company. It has no business plan. It has nothing to sell that could sustain it as an employer of software developers. It only has its position as an intermediary, to assist with online advertising, in Mozilla's case to assist by sending search traffic to Google, and whatever else is required by their royalty agreements with "search providers".^2 1. https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2020/mozilla-fdn-2020-short-form-0926.pdf https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2020/mozilla-fdn-202... 2. Mozilla even sells its own advertising services: Advertising revenues - Mozilla also offers advertising services in three formats. The first is the New Tab advertising service, which places links to sponsored content when a new tab is opened in the Firefox web browser. The second format is through Pockets email product, Pocket Hits. Pocket Hits may include paid advertisements, which are placed in email newsletters that get delivered to global Pocket users. Lastly, Mozilla also sells web advertisement spots on content that Mozilla licenses and syndicates from publisher partners across the web. Along with a "service" to remove advertising: Subscription revenues - Included in a Pocket Premium subscription are features like full text search on saved articles, removal of advertising from Pocket properties, the ability to create unlimited highlights and the ability to create a permanent library of everything a user has saved. For me, playing both side of the coin, charging for advertising services and charging for advertising removal services, does not rank high on the scale of company integrity. But this sort of "playbook" seems quite common for "tech" companies. For example, Google does it with YouTube ("YouTube Red", now "YouTube Premium").
kcb 4y ago
> Until and unless Google meaningfully commits to never neuter ad blockers, it’s still critical and urgent that we switch to Firefox. Google doesn't want ad blockers to exist, the evidence is not that they make the majority of their revenue from ads. It's that the most popular version of Chrome already has 0 ad blocking capability! Ad blocking and extensions are legacy features.
fny 4y ago
Meh. One day everyone will open Chrome, realize adblock doesn't work, wonder what happened, and switch.* Do you really think Google is on some vendetta against adblock? Adblock has lived on the Chrome webstore for a decade, and many, many, many copies have appeared too. Google could have easily nuked any of them but hasn't. MV3 is not about adblock. Maybe one day the web will turn into some WASM-driven advertising shitshow, but we're thankfully a long way from that. *Google knows this, which is why they haven't stopped ad-blocking.
- sneak 4y ago
  > Do you really think Google is on some vendetta against adblock? Yes, quite obviously. Google’s revenue is from advertising. Google is an advertising company.
- HWR_14 4y ago
  Yes, I think it's about Adblock. Chrome has a huge percentage of the browser market (they killed ie/edge as non chromium options!) and will never be as hedgemonic as now. So now is when you strike back at ad blockers if you're an ad company. I don't see any other reason for the features they killed to be killed. Specifically the preload hooks that ad blockers used.
  - tyingq 4y ago
    Also notable that Chrome on Android doesn't support Chrome extensions.
- kavalg 4y ago
  Maybe they didn't make the move until now, because they an tolerate a minimal amount of ad blocking in their user base (e.g. for PR purposes). Or maybe they were not dominant enough until now. Or maybe the user base has reached the critical mass of ignorance and brainwashing.
- xani_ 4y ago
  How do you got to conclusion that the change in features essential for adblocking, in browser by company that main revenue is ads, is not about adblocking? "But they did not nuke it before" is not an argument btw. They didn't had utter market dominance before in case you somehow fucking forgot.
zackees 4y ago
dislikedtom2 4y ago
adblock or not, google already has too much power over internet so that reason alone is enough for me to use something else.
sneak 4y ago
Apple did the exact same thing with the rollout of the clientside police informant that scans the local files on an iOS device.
- ls612 4y ago
  As far as I’m aware that feature has not been implemented since the controversy last year.
  - sneak 4y ago
    Parts of the supporting code have, and Apple still plans to roll that feature out. We are mid-rollout. They probably won’t make any other announcements about it. You’ll know it’s complete when they announce e2e encryption for iCloud Backup. They said some stuff after the backlash, but they never retracted or renounced their plan. Indeed, portions of the code are now in the current released OS.
    - ls612 4y ago
      I think that code is there to support their new feature where it does on device scanning of photos sent to minors via iMessage, which is not reported to Apple.
      - sneak 4y ago
        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33028738 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33028738
tempodox 4y ago
Exactly. It's just the old “let's cook the lobster more slowly”.

by twhb 4y ago

hparadiz 4y ago

Imagine working at Google on this nonsense and thinking you're actually doing something good for the world.

refulgentis 4y ago
- hailwren 4y ago
  One of these companies profits by the proliferation of ads and the other does not.
  - deadmutex 4y ago
    > One of these companies profits by the proliferation of ads and the other does not. Umm... IIUC, Apple already makes billions from Ads. I'll just leave this here: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-08-14/apple-aapl-set-to-expand-advertising-bringing-ads-to-maps-tv-and-books-apps-l6tdqqmg https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-08-14/apple-...
    - hypertele-Xii 4y ago
      Apple's revenue is mostly iPhone. Google's revenue is 80% advertising. Stark difference.
  - endisneigh 4y ago
    Which one doesn't have any ads?
    - hailwren 4y ago
      I was factually incorrect Apple generates about 1% of their annual revenue from ads [1]. Google generates 81% of their annual revenue from ads [2]. 1 - https://www.statista.com/statistics/1330127/apple-ad-revenue-worldwide/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1330127/apple-ad-revenue... 2 - https://www.oberlo.com/statistics/google-ad-revenue https://www.oberlo.com/statistics/google-ad-revenue
      - DannyBee 4y ago
        "I was factually incorrect Apple generates about 1% of their annual revenue from ads" Why play silly games to make 4 billion dollars seem small? I could play this game in the other direction and say "Apple generates more money from ads now than 99% of the companies ever make over their entire existence" In truth, 4 billion dollars is a lot of money. More to the point of this discussion, when you ask them, they want it to be a very significant part of their business. They talk about it on earnings calls all the time! It's not like they are hiding it! Which sort of totally blows up the idea that they don't care.
        hailwren 4y ago
        TIL percentages are “silly games” and not a common way to measure how much a portion of something contributes to the whole.
        DannyBee 4y ago
        We're talking about whether they profit, and whether it matters to them and the business. You said they do not. "One of these companies profits by the proliferation of ads and the other does not." That was wrong. They make a lot of money from it and they have said it is an important part of their future. Rather than just say you were wrong, you instead try to paint it as not mattering by using percentages, when again, it is a lot of money and apple themselves say it matters a lot Just accept that what you said was mistaken, and do better next time. What you are doing now just makes you look bad and unable to learn and grow.
  - AYoung010 4y ago
    There’s a big “yet” attached to Apple not profiting from the proliferation of ads - from what I’ve read, since they pushed the “ask app not to track” change, Apple has been pushing hard for more widespread adoption of their own advertising platform. Make no mistake, Apple does not care about your privacy — only about moving the ad money out of Google’s pocket into their own.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - curt15 4y ago
    Does that make Safari's MV3 implementation better than Chrome's? I can't use ublock origin on either.
  - EnKopVand 4y ago
    I sort of see it the other way around. To me Google is an advertisement company first, and if you use Google products then you know your privacy data is how you pay for those products. With Apple and Microsoft you're paying for the product, but you're now also getting your privacy data sucked into their growing advertisement business. I personally think the use of privacy data is a waste of resources, and that companies like duckduckgo have the longer end of the stick. Because it makes more sense to me, that I get advertisements for a robot vacuum cleaner when I'm searching for one, and not the 3 months after I buy one, but then there is a trillion dollar advertisement industry to prove me wrong. So who knows. But what pisses me off is that companies sell you a product, and then also include advertisement and privacy data harvesting in it, like that Samsung TV article that was on here recently. Or how Windows "home or whatever the non-enterprise edition is called" now sometimes installs pre-installers for things like candy crush or Minecraft without asking you to do so... Like what the hell? I don't want you to read this as a defence for google, but at least they are sort of honest about the evil they do. I'm not sure any of these sleazy moves will have the desired outcomes for these companies. I don't want to use linux, I did once, but I like my technology to work right out of the box with no effort to make it so or to maintain it, which is why I'm in the Apple ecosystem these days, but the ways things are heading, I think the only future will be linux, and trying to find appliances that aren't add-infested.
- HWR_14 4y ago
  I give Apple (and MSFT in the Gates/Ballmer days) money, and in return they don't try to spy on me. Google, current MSFT and Meta all want to give me free stuff and then make up the difference with ads. It's not complex as to why I am more likely to believe Apple when they say something is privacy enhancing and distrust Google.
- hparadiz 4y ago
  Not sure why you decided to bring up Apple. People decide to buy into the Apple ecosystem. I didn't decide to buy into the Chrome ecosystem. I just have to use it because of the marketshare. And I'm on Gentoo running a personal build of Chromium. Manifest v3 is pure evil. Don't get it twisted. There's no ambiguity here. It's just a cash grab. Anyone working on it on the Chrome team should feel shame.
  - staticassertion 4y ago
    I think it's pretty absurd that this is the level of discourse on this subject. "pure evil" and "just a cash grab" aren't substantive criticisms, nothing in your post is actually informational. The reality is that ad blockers will continue to work to a significant extent that they do today. Engage with that, put some information with merit into your posts.
    - zarzavat 4y ago
      It makes the adblockers fight with one hand behind their back, tilting the balance in the cat and mouse game towards the attackers. Google is an empire built on advertising: scams and malware, so their evil has always been present. But right now we have an easy way to protect ourselves. Manifest v3 is exposing that evil to technologically-minded people. I will have to switch my parents over to Firefox or Brave to keep them safe online.
      - staticassertion 4y ago
        Again, the entire post is just axiomatic moral judgments with no information.
        zarzavat 4y ago
        I’m curious what parts of the internet you visit that you do not see all the ads for scams, shock ads, and other malicious things. There’s a reason that “one weird trick, doctors hate it!” is a meme. It’s utterly rampant. If I open YouTube without an adblocker there’s often some kind of snake oil salesman that pops up. Or a cult. Now, I use private browsing, so I get the “default” experience. Perhaps you don’t use private browsing and so your targeting is really honed in. Perhaps you only see sensible ads for sensible people, a sensible wallet or a sensible car. If that is the case then fine, but if the only way to use the internet is logged in to Google and with everything tracked, then that is unacceptable to me.
- loxias 4y ago
  It seems Google (or maybe just some of the employees?) derive pleasure from taking things that were working just fine and then breaking them so my life is harder. It's almost a yearly occurrence at this point -- some thing that, once upon a time in the past I spent effort on configuring so that I could have a happy experience with my computer, will now be announced deprecated forcing me to comply with some new edict from on high with absolutely no benefit for me. Please stop doing this. Stop "fixing" things. I'm an engineer too, I know building new things is fun, but there is also honor in maintaining well functioning things and not making other people's lives unnecessarily hard. I bet that, now that I finally have mutt working again with Google's newest incarnation of authentication, there's a team within Google excited about breaking it in 2 years.
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    The problem is (as always) a lack of regulation in the tech industry. We've taught Big Tech that the only way to 'innovate' is to perform profane moneymaking rituals at the expense of the end user, and the shareholders are always asking for more. The average Google engineer's job is no different from anyone else working in a sufficiently large company. Their job isn't 'press the big evil switch on MV3', but rather 'MV3's staging branch is failing tests, go fix it'. The evil comes from perverse bureaucratic incentive, so it leaves me kinda ruffled to see people blaming the engineers on HN of all places. I can imagine some pinstriped upper-management prick at FAANG reading this thread in their penthouse and laughing their ass off.
    - loxias 4y ago
      > We've taught Big Tech that the only way to 'innovate' is to perform profane moneymaking rituals at the expense of the end user, and the shareholders are always asking for more. > The evil comes from perverse bureaucratic incentive.. I think you're entirely right. I have nothing else to add, other than that I've always thought this, it's not a new change of opinion. I guess I don't see any conflict between my comment and yours? Yes, I know that "Their job isn't 'press the big evil switch on MV3', but rather 'MV3's staging branch is failing tests, go fix it" -- I've worked in software my whole career too. :) > so it leaves me kinda ruffled to see people blaming the engineers on HN of all places. I also know that it isn't some nebulous cloud above which is where designs come from, but other employees. I also know, from experience, that if you're a valuable enough engineer within an org or a project, and you significantly oppose a proposed feature or change coming from the suits, it's not gonna happen. What are they gonna do, code it themselves? > I can imagine some pinstriped upper-management prick at FAANG reading this thread in their penthouse and laughing their ass off. Agree.
- lawgimenez 4y ago
  I'm still bitter that Google permanently removed my @gmail.com with your dark pattern migration to business email. With no option to move back? You guys lost half of my Google Drive, Photos history. But it's cool. That's life. And then you moved me to legacy workspace to appease me. And then months before you tried again to migrate my legacy workspace email to paid, which another Google employee said it's free forever. I'm willing to pay anything on your valuable service but those dark patterns is what really pisses me.
- btown 4y ago
  > people call it privacy If you think of privacy solely as reducing the risk of an extension going rogue and leaking data - then sure, MV3 is a win. But if you include the issue of sites sharing data, then reducing the ability of extensions to use advanced heuristics to block advertising and tracking may cause more harm than good. There are plenty of users who understand that extensions are extremely powerful, thoroughly vet the organizations that have the capacity to update those extensions, and are also required to visit numerous less-trusted websites (and in a modern age of advertising technology, that's practically all of them) whose data sharing practices they cannot vet. MV3 will be a net negative for the privacy of those users. Now, it may be reductive to say that those users, and that privacy threat model, matter more than others. But it is equally reductive to pretend that MV3 is a universal good.
  - tyingq 4y ago
    Where MV3 happily still allows you to inject arbitrary javascript into pages, it's not about privacy.
    - btown 4y ago
      “It’s not arbitrary JS, it needs to be reviewed by the Chrome Web Store team, unless it’s a userscript or we miss it in our review process!” https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/chromium-extensions/c/ZUZqOgwqkBg https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/chromium-extensio... It’s the equivalent of an airport security policy - as I mentioned before, to reduce risk. Which, both in that analogy and here, can indeed be part of a defense-in-depth. But such a policy is not without tradeoffs, and it cannot be evaluated in a vacuum.
      - xani_ 4y ago
        I bet far more people got scammed by malicious ads than people deciding to install malicious extension.
        hombre_fatal 4y ago
- howinteresting 4y ago
  Yeah, well, Apple is very bad for doing this too. One reason I don't trust iOS or Apple in general.
- invisible 4y ago
  It's as though nobody realizes extensions can be created or purchased by sketchy actors and that this is a huge security risk when the extensions request "all access to all sites." OK, so when setting up an account's username and password and are provided 2FA codes or recovery codes -- those can all be compromised. How can you know an extension is compromised? It's almost impossible to tell with certainty. Things like "The Great Suspender" incident get ignored and folks assume no other extensions have the same problems.
  - RedShift1 4y ago
    And what in MV3 solved all of that? It still allows enough to do a lot of damage. Regardless of that, at some point you have to trust software. You can't expect everyone to read every line of code and compile all the software by themselves.
    - invisible 4y ago
      Yes, I trust plenty of software and I'm not suggesting that extensions are bad in theory. Extensions being able to silently inject code and ownership to change at any time is a pretty bad security model. We can agree that there are _bad_ security models, right? It's the sum of the parts in changes from manifest V2: - no arbitrary code injection via executeScript, must be a file now - no more remote code - no more arbitrarily getting selected text or highlighted text on a tab - declarativeNetRequest instead of intercepting requests - explicit listeners on the page to help detect bad actors (vs just arbitrary JS running on the page)
      - linkgoron 4y ago
        Even ignoring ad blocking - with those rules stuff like Tampermonkey which is totally legit can no longer work with execute script. You also lost a lot of functionality by losing DOM, having to rely on the broken lifetime of a Service Worker instead of persistent background page . It took Google three to four years to acknowledge that the community is completely correct with its criticisms, and that MV3 is garbage designed by people who have no knowledge on how people write extensions and which abilities they actually use. They're finally adding features that should have been there years ago. The new scripting API which brings back arbitrary scripts, in a new form, the offscreen documents API, and hopefully they'll eventually implement limited event pages which are somewhat solving the background page lifetime and DOM issues (which are already implemented by Mozilla and Safari I believe). Obviously, everything was decided hastily in the last second so all of the features are supposed to be completed by "around" October 2022, just two months before the original MV2 cutoff. I've also read some of the extension working group transcripts, it's pretty sad how Google/Chrome has no accountability and almost zero transparency.
- trap_goes_hot 4y ago
  Calling for objectivity is probably not the first thing people want to do when discussing a company building a giant world-wide spying machine. In addition to logic, humans employ sentiment, emotions, and feelings and there isn't anything wrong with doing that.
- MBCook 4y ago
  The same people screamed when Apple did it. “This ruins ad blockers”, “this is so they don’t have to make REAL ad blockers work”, “they want a 30% cut of VPN money instead”, “this will cause cancer”. OK, not the last one. But people literally posted here on HN that Apple was killing people by not letting Flux on the iPhone. Considering how much information “normal“ ad blockers can see, I’m not against this. I like Apple’s approach (and understand this to be similar). But obviously I’m in the minority.
- bogomipz 4y ago
  It's very bizarre that your response is nothing more than a complete deflection - "what about Apple?!", but then you go on to accuse others of being reductionist and lacking honesty.
- GeekyBear 4y ago
  Funny how Mozilla manages to vet the code of some of the more popular extensions for their "recommended" extensions program with far fewer financial resources. >curated extensions that meet the highest standards of security, functionality, and user experience. Firefox staff thoroughly evaluate each extension before it receives Recommended status. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/recommended-extensions-program https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/recommended-extensions-...
  - LtWorf 4y ago
    Opera browser was vetting every extension manually.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- stjohnswarts 4y ago
  That's because while Apple has monetary incentive to keep up the walled garden it really does have provide value to apple customers. I know google is selling everything and the farm about me when I use thier services. If apple wants my business they'll keep on doing what they're doing, I don't see ads on their platform and haven't seen any credible reports they're selling everything they know about me to the government and anyone who will pay $$ for that. I hastled myself for years keeping a rooted phone with trimmed down Android OS in various forms, but it was a lot of work. With apple I just buy a phone and use it and don't have to worry them selling me out every step I make or allow apps to rifle through my files and photos.
hailwren 4y ago
> Imagine working at Google and thinking you're actually doing something good for the world.
- ocdtrekkie 4y ago
  The term is called "cognitive dissonance".
bambax 4y ago
The wording of the blog is pure doublespeak: > as we shift our focus to Manifest V3. This change will give Chrome users increased safety and peace of mind while browsing and installing extensions by providing more transparency and control over permissions, adding stricter protocols for accessing resources outside the extension’s context, and ensuring that extensions work well on all devices It sounds like government gobbledygook, with even more lies (there are no extensions on Chrome on mobile, so what "all devices" means is anyone's guess). I often wonder what goes on in the mind of people writing this. Are they happy? Why did they choose to work in tech instead of some administration, if BS is their thing? Is it just for the money?

MarkusWandel 4y ago

I went to a lot of trouble preparing for a post GAFYD/Workspace future (I have a legacy free one from way back that's in active use for four family email accounts). Then they changed course and let me keep it after all. Death by slow boil, or they'll let me stay on it for another 10+ years?

mappu 4y ago
I left GAFYD just days prior to them relenting and let people stay on it. I regretted the decision for a while afterwards, but i've since realized i don't want this shutdown threat hanging over my head. Thanks for the 10+ years of hosting but i don't have to be treated like this, I'm better off without them.
vosper 4y ago
> GAFYD "Google Apps for Your Domain" for anyone who (like me) could not figure out what that acronym means.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Could as well have been Google Always F*cls Your Dumbass I presume.
  - 2Gkashmiri 4y ago
    its the internet, you can casually swear here
    - bombcar 4y ago
      FACLS! FSCK! Just noticed the typo heh.

ikinsey 4y ago

Can you provide an example of where this pattern of behavior happened in the past?

wolpoli 4y ago
Example: In Chrome 69, Google made it so that each time you sign in and use a Google service like Gmail, Maps or YouTube, your Google account will be automatically logged in to the Chrome browser. There were outrage but Google had provided a flag to turn it off. It was in chrome://flags/#account-consistency. Edit: Google removed the flag shortly after.
- loxias 4y ago
  Thanks! I didn't know I could turn that off. I "solved" it by wrapping chrome with my own home grown tooling to maintain multiple parallel profile directories, so I could run "work chrome" and "chrome for gmail" and "chrome for web browsing". Of course, now I use firefox for all 3 so I don't have the problem anymore... :)
  - wolpoli 4y ago
    The flag is long gone, as Google removed it a few release after. I apologize if I didn't make it clear.
    - tech234a 4y ago
      It's a setting now. On each browser profile, go to chrome://settings/syncSetup and turn off "Allow Chrome Sign-in".
  - ikiris 4y ago
    Its a paranoid reading of the normal launch process. Behind the scenes every major change like that is a flag that's deployed first off then slowly flipped to default true as a rollout so that it's as low risk as possible of unintended damage / failure.
- 4y ago

wolpoli 4y ago

Google also likes to provide a feature flag to re-enable the old feature for a few versions. Parts of the community happily re-enable the feature, hence the media doesn't pick up on any outrage. By the time the feature flag is removed, it's a stale story.

bakugo 4y ago
This has happened so many times in recent years, I've grown tired of warning people about it. It's such a simple trick but almost everyone falls for it.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- tommica 4y ago
  Out of curiosity, what kind of things has this happened over the recent year?
  - rasz 4y ago
    https://browsertouse.com/blog/2891/enable-ftp-setting-in-chrome-flags/ https://browsertouse.com/blog/2891/enable-ftp-setting-in-chr...

monopoliessuck 4y ago

I mean, it's not just Google that does this nor is this an Alphabet invention. This is merely Assimilation 101. The "Chinese patience" towards heterogeneous minority groups and their customs is a commonly referenced one, but this "boiling the frog" is really the only way to guarantee things change while mitigating serious rebellion. Another good example is how the Rashidun Caliphate granted conquered Zoroastrian Persians Dhimmi or "people of the Book" status. I'm sure it seemed kind at the time since Zoroastrianism is obviously not "of The [Abrahamic] Book". This merely postponed persecution of the unconverted until such a time as they were disperse, weak and with less sovereign resolve. They got a worse and worse deal as the centuries wore on. I'm not justifying Google here, but this is really every hegemon's SOP: corporate, tech or cultural. I'm just as mad with Microsoft forces me to use a Windows account after juggling the slow creep Mojang deprecation, when Mozilla gives you fewer and fewer ways to install apps outside of their extension store until it's a Nightly-only feature, or when [your favorite app] is acquired by [your least favorite company] and starts down a path you'd *never expect*. It's all garbage.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
3OCSzk 4y ago
Sorry for getting out of topic somewhat, But how many users would benefit if Mozilla gives many more ways to install extensions from unfederated source? That sounds like browser malware disaster from 2010s to me
- monopoliessuck 4y ago
  It was a slow boiling. Today, there's no way to install an unsigned extension in Firefox at all, you now have to use Developer Edition binaries. For a company that says the end user should be the decider and hold the keys, Mozilla sure likes limiting our options. There was a way to place them in a directory for awhile, then a cli flag, then an about:config flag, then a few other inconvenient options that ultimately ended up being snuffed out. Even Chrome has a flag you can flip and install an unpacked extension from file. Sending this stuff up to Mozilla for them to grace or relegating developers and corporate users to some unbranded or esoteric dev binary is offensive to the end user IMO. I mean, it's not even federation, just centralization. Sure you can host it on your webpage, but it needs to be signed by the mother ship either way. Firefox removed "about:config" from Firefox on android as well. Maybe we'll get a cli flag escape hatch for a year when they do the same on desktop. Not trusting the end user in the name of security is not a Google-only play despite all the Moz Marketing.

gnarbarian 4y ago

I'm here to recommend brave because it's not mentioned nearly enough yet. https://brave.com/ https://brave.com/ fuck you Google!

shbooms 4y ago
isn't Brave chromium-based? Have they stated yet if/when they will take MV3 into/remove MV2 from their codebase?
- chidg 4y ago
  Yes it is, and extensions for Brave are installed through the Chrome Web Store, as are extensions for other chromium based browsers like Edge. There's no escaping the manifest v3 event horizon for extension developers.
- gnicholas 4y ago
  Other commenters mentioned that they will continue to support MV2 and are even planning to stand up their own extension store that offers MV2 extensions after Google stops allowing them in their store.
hypertele-Xii 4y ago
So what's all this then? https://brave.com/brave-ads/ https://brave.com/brave-ads/ > Sponsored Images: Striking, high-definition images that are featured in the Brave new tab image rotation. Advertisers have the opportunity to feature their brand prominently in this coveted space in front of millions of consumers. "Fuck Google, have Brave shove ads in your face instead!"
- TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
  I’ve been using brave for years and never seen an ad on new tabs. New tabs typically have an image of mountains or some scenery, with a summary of the number of ads blocked and bandwidth saved because of those blocks.

1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago

"Until and unless Google meaningfully commits to never neuter ad blockers, it's still critical and urgent that we switch to Firefox." Why would Google ever commit to keep ad blockers working, unconditionally. It makes no sense. I use Firefox in sometimes on mobile. I use Chrome for online banking and shopping. This usage is an extremely small portion of web use for me. (Does that make me an "actual user" under the Google employee's definition.) The majority of the time using the web I do not use a popular browser from a "tech" company. I use simpler software I can edit and compile myself, quickly and easily. I have all the "features" I need. As such, 99% of the time I never see any ads. Google can do whatever it wants with Chrome. I still see no ads. I am not using it. Unless and until one considers that there are other ways to access the web besides those dictated to us by "tech" companies, then one cannot seriously claim to be trying to avoid advertising. Firefox is funded by Google and other "search provider" profits from advertising services. Mozilla is against some forms of online tracking, but they are absolutely pro-advertising. I just watched their "Chief Security Officer" state this on video to the FTC earlier in the month. Are we supposed to believe there is some "standoff" between Mozilla and Google (or any other "tech" company, i.e., "search provider") over advertising. That would be pure fantasy. Mozilla (Corporation)^1 is like any other "tech" company. It has no business plan. It has nothing to sell that could sustain it as an employer of software developers. It only has its position as an intermediary, to assist with online advertising, in Mozilla's case to assist by sending search traffic to Google, and whatever else is required by their royalty agreements with "search providers".^2 1. https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2020/mozilla-fdn-2020-short-form-0926.pdf https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2020/mozilla-fdn-202... 2. Mozilla even sells its own advertising services: Advertising revenues - Mozilla also offers advertising services in three formats. The first is the New Tab advertising service, which places links to sponsored content when a new tab is opened in the Firefox web browser. The second format is through Pockets email product, Pocket Hits. Pocket Hits may include paid advertisements, which are placed in email newsletters that get delivered to global Pocket users. Lastly, Mozilla also sells web advertisement spots on content that Mozilla licenses and syndicates from publisher partners across the web. Along with a "service" to remove advertising: Subscription revenues - Included in a Pocket Premium subscription are features like full text search on saved articles, removal of advertising from Pocket properties, the ability to create unlimited highlights and the ability to create a permanent library of everything a user has saved. For me, playing both side of the coin, charging for advertising services and charging for advertising removal services, does not rank high on the scale of company integrity. But this sort of "playbook" seems quite common for "tech" companies. For example, Google does it with YouTube ("YouTube Red", now "YouTube Premium").

kcb 4y ago

> Until and unless Google meaningfully commits to never neuter ad blockers, it’s still critical and urgent that we switch to Firefox. Google doesn't want ad blockers to exist, the evidence is not that they make the majority of their revenue from ads. It's that the most popular version of Chrome already has 0 ad blocking capability! Ad blocking and extensions are legacy features.

fny 4y ago

Meh. One day everyone will open Chrome, realize adblock doesn't work, wonder what happened, and switch.* Do you really think Google is on some vendetta against adblock? Adblock has lived on the Chrome webstore for a decade, and many, many, many copies have appeared too. Google could have easily nuked any of them but hasn't. MV3 is not about adblock. Maybe one day the web will turn into some WASM-driven advertising shitshow, but we're thankfully a long way from that. *Google knows this, which is why they haven't stopped ad-blocking.

sneak 4y ago
> Do you really think Google is on some vendetta against adblock? Yes, quite obviously. Google’s revenue is from advertising. Google is an advertising company.
HWR_14 4y ago
Yes, I think it's about Adblock. Chrome has a huge percentage of the browser market (they killed ie/edge as non chromium options!) and will never be as hedgemonic as now. So now is when you strike back at ad blockers if you're an ad company. I don't see any other reason for the features they killed to be killed. Specifically the preload hooks that ad blockers used.
- tyingq 4y ago
  Also notable that Chrome on Android doesn't support Chrome extensions.
kavalg 4y ago
Maybe they didn't make the move until now, because they an tolerate a minimal amount of ad blocking in their user base (e.g. for PR purposes). Or maybe they were not dominant enough until now. Or maybe the user base has reached the critical mass of ignorance and brainwashing.
xani_ 4y ago
How do you got to conclusion that the change in features essential for adblocking, in browser by company that main revenue is ads, is not about adblocking? "But they did not nuke it before" is not an argument btw. They didn't had utter market dominance before in case you somehow fucking forgot.

zackees 4y ago

dislikedtom2 4y ago

adblock or not, google already has too much power over internet so that reason alone is enough for me to use something else.

sneak 4y ago

Apple did the exact same thing with the rollout of the clientside police informant that scans the local files on an iOS device.

ls612 4y ago
As far as I’m aware that feature has not been implemented since the controversy last year.
- sneak 4y ago
  Parts of the supporting code have, and Apple still plans to roll that feature out. We are mid-rollout. They probably won’t make any other announcements about it. You’ll know it’s complete when they announce e2e encryption for iCloud Backup. They said some stuff after the backlash, but they never retracted or renounced their plan. Indeed, portions of the code are now in the current released OS.
  - ls612 4y ago
    I think that code is there to support their new feature where it does on device scanning of photos sent to minors via iMessage, which is not reported to Apple.
    - sneak 4y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33028738 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33028738

tempodox 4y ago

Exactly. It's just the old “let's cook the lobster more slowly”.