Opera, Brave, Vivaldi to ignore Chrome's anti-ad-blocker changes

https://www.zdnet.com/article/opera-brave-vivaldi-to-ignore-chromes-anti-ad-blocker-changes-despite-shared-codebase/

by snaky • 7 years ago

571 248 7 years ago

I wonder if that is sustainable as features are built on top of the new system and their codebase diverges further and further from chrome as a result.

haecceity• 7 years ago

Google said that the adblocking would still be available for entreprise customers so it should be as simple as flipping a switch. Maintenance should be easy if that's true.

ryacko3• 7 years ago

I think they'd simply be maintaining separate sets of backported code, since Enterprise Google Chrome won't be open source.

techntoke5• 7 years ago

Google never said they were removing ad-blocking. Not sure where you are getting your information.

ralphstodomingo2• 7 years ago

I won't worry about that. I'm guessing this effectively creates a fork of Chromium that does not have the anti-ad blocker changes in question, which Opera/Brave/Edge will use instead of the main one.

On that note, are people switching over to Firefox already?

mattlondon2• 7 years ago

I've been using Firefox for 6+months now as my primary browser. Once used to the slightly different UI I've not noticed any difference in day to day browsing.

Only complaint - and this is my fault for enabling it and not a Firefox issue - is that if I used a container for Google, reCAPTCHAs are a huge huge huge pain in the arse now and take many attempts to pass. This is (I guess) because the Google cookie cannot track your general web usage (since your google cookie is in a container that only works on google domains, rather than general web properties) so it is harder to distinguish you from a bot. Also the dev tools are not as nice, but that is a niggle.

jeena• 7 years ago

This might be sustainable for a couple of months but Google will keep on developing chromium with the assumption that those APIs aren't available and maintaining and back porting patches will not be sustainable in the long run. And we've seen Opera and Edge shying away from too much work with their own webengines, why would it be different this time?

dmortin• 7 years ago

Maintaining a fork takes effort and this effort grows when the codebases diverge from each other. If the affected code is at a busy location in the source code then other changes can also affect it which makes maintaining the fork harder in the long run.

unicornporn4• 7 years ago

On that note, are people switching over to Firefox already?

Not sure why power users ever left Firefox as their default browser when surveillance tech came along. I sure didn't. Firefox was always the more competent and customizable browser. Happy to see users returning. Among other things, the current "Welcome Chromium/Chrome users!" megathread in the Firefox subreddit[1] seems to indicate there's something going on. :)

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/bvh4pq/welcome_chr...

vasili1114• 7 years ago

I switched to Brave.

crankylinuxuser• 7 years ago

I'm not switching to Firefox.

I never left. Firefox, even for its warts, wasn't run by a adtech company. I knew this would happen sooner or later. And now, the thumbscrews tighten.

Now yes, Moz://a has done some dumb stuff.. But so does many others. Still its the best we have.

imgabe• 7 years ago

I think Google will find people switch browsers more easily than they think.

There was a time when Chrome was not ubiquitous. Even non-technical users can be convinced to click on a different icon to access the Internet if it results in a better experience. That's how we ended up with Chrome after all.

joaomacp• 7 years ago

Even non-technical users can be convinced to click on a different icon to access the Internet

Google put a lot of effort in convincing those users, by plastering Chrome icons in their products and saying it was the supposed way to access the internet "safely".

It's not as easy for others to do the same.

robbrown451• 7 years ago

I don't see that as a problem. Sure it takes effort, but especially since Google has the feature in their enterprise version, it shouldn't be too hard to just turn it on.

Regardless, I'm sure a company like Brave or Microsoft can handle the engineering necessary to keep this working. You don't have to fork the whole thing.

jraph3• 7 years ago

I feel like things would be easier if Firefox could be embeded in another browser just like chromium can.

Let Google cripple their browser for themselves, and Mozilla provide the good and strong de facto browser engine.

yoz-y• 7 years ago

What is currently stopping its adoption? Iirc there were several browsers based on Gecko engine. Is it drm?

sametmax• 7 years ago

Firefox is probably still a legacy mix of XUL, cpp and migrating to rust. I'm pretty sure chrome is easier to adapt.

enz• 7 years ago

Unfortunately, Embedded Gecko is not supported anymore... https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Gecko/Embed...

However, the new Servo engine will be embeddable.

Vinnl3• 7 years ago

They're at least working on making that as easy as possible on Android: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/android-components/

As I understand it, that should also make it relatively straightforward to switch between Servo and Gecko, as a developer. But I'm not an Android dev, so take that with a grain of salt.

izacus• 7 years ago

I haven't seen this talked about here but... last I checked Mozilla was in majority funded by Google royalties. What's their plan of aligning their income with essentially directly attacking their funding source?

sudhirj• 7 years ago

They’re not attacking anything - I don’t think ad blockers block search ads, which are embedded into search results - and Firefox royalties have always been for search.

jraph3• 7 years ago

I guess Google could still be interested in being the default engine in Firefox even with ads and tracking blocked, since it would slow down alternatives from spreading.

I would be more comfortable in Mozilla not being founded by Google though.

amelius2• 7 years ago

Let Google cripple their browser for themselves

Web developers can also help here by making the UX slightly worse for Chrome users, e.g. by showing more ads.

corrigible• 7 years ago

"This site best viewed with..."

pszndr• 7 years ago

We want less dark patterns in software, not more

kodablah• 7 years ago

I feel like things would be easier if Firefox could be embeded in another browser just like chromium can.

Completely agree. I made my own little browser (with ad blocker built in to the network layer) using CEF simply because there was not an easy to use FF equivalent library.

tzury• 7 years ago

This one[1] and the likes will prevent vast majority of ads, regardless of which browser you have chosen to use this morning.

[1] https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/h...

close043• 7 years ago

Except mobile browsers, arguably the most critical place where you need blocking to get any kind of reasonably decent experience (load times, viewable area, battery life, etc.).

Extensions like uBlock target people who don't want to bother with editing hosts files and keeping them updated.

chmod7752• 7 years ago

I use such a host file on my android. There's even apps to manage them.

Needs a rooted device though.

That has the added benefit of removing ads in all apps, because when they can't be loaded, generally not even the empty widget shows.

ignoramous• 7 years ago

I think that's a reason why DNS based ad-blocking is as effective a solution as any, though easily worked around against (I see that Amazon's android app is able to show ads despite DNS blacklist).

hamilyon2• 7 years ago

Mobile chrome did not support ad blocking extensions last time I checked

bambax2• 7 years ago

Firefox on Android supports extensions, including uBlockO, and it works perfectly. It can be set as the default browser and voilà, no more ads ever.

sirn• 7 years ago

On iOS, you can use DNSCloak[1] which has recently been open-sourced[2]. You can either setup a DNS server (DoH or dnscrypt) somewhere that include these filters, or you can use in-app Blacklist functionality to block domain (although it needs domains only-type of block file, instead of host file, but converting them is quiet trivial).

[1] https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dnscloak-secure-dns-client/i...

[2] https://github.com/s-s/dnscloak

arthurfm• 7 years ago

If you use an Android browser that supports the Chrome Custom Tabs protocol [1] such as Lynket [2][3][4] it's possible replace the Chrome tab that appears when you click/tap a link with a completely differently browser such as Brave or Firefox (inc. Focus, Nightly or Preview). [5]

By doing this you inherit the features of the replacement browser like ad-blocking and tracking protection.

[1] https://developer.chrome.com/multidevice/android/customtabs

[2] https://github.com/arunkumar9t2/lynket-browser

[3] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=arun.com.chrom...

[4] https://medium.com/@arunkumar9t2/introducing-chromer-2-0-a-b...

[5] https://i.vgy.me/EWrVFa.jpg

red_admiral• 7 years ago

I tried opera a while back, and while it's fast and looks good, it has a new tab page with "recommended" sites that you can't turn off - I tried, but it's protected by DRM (opera will refuse to start if the file doesn't have a valid digital signature).

So if I'm going to switch browsers because of privacy/advertising concerns, it's not going to be Opera.

V-22• 7 years ago

Current Opera doesn't even allow to customize mouse gestures. The browser that once prided itself in its feature richness...

ModernMech3• 7 years ago

I mean... at least it has mouse gestures. Hard to knock it for being not feature-rich enough when it has a feature no other browser has by default (except Vivaldi, which has Opera lineage).

pps2• 7 years ago

I don't see anything like that in new tab page. I have only searchbar and thumbnails for pages I like to visit. I'm on Mac, do they have different versions of new tab page for other systems?

ModernMech3• 7 years ago

The new tab page has a list of bookmarks you can customize. It starts off with some "recommeded" sites in there, but you can just remove them once and they never come back. The only thing you can't remove from the new tab page is the Google search bar, which never really bothered me. Either way, it seems like you're implying that Opera will populate the new tab page with sites it chooses, but that's just not the case.

zrobotics• 7 years ago

Plus, the search bar isn't just limited to Google, it respects the default search engine selection.

laqq3• 7 years ago

Opera does allow you to remove the Google search bar (actually, it's not tied to Google).

Go to browser settings -> advanced settings -> Start Page.

This is what I use https://i.imgur.com/GpF0sQt.png

nahtnam2• 7 years ago

I just wrote a blog post on how to replace the new tab page altogether if that is something you are interested in: https://blog.nahtnam.com/p/my-new-favorite-browser

It is highlighted in the "new tab page" section

vasili1114• 7 years ago

Opera is owned by Chinese company.

nahtnam2• 7 years ago

Hey! I hope this isn't breaking the rules (self promotion) but I wrote a blog post on how to change your new tab page: https://blog.nahtnam.com/p/my-new-favorite-browser

It is described under the "new tab page" section. I can't really comment on the privacy/advertising concerns but I do know that Opera providers a VPN for you (who know what they are doing behind the scenes) and have their own adblocker built in.

userbinator• 7 years ago

I tried, but it's protected by DRM (opera will refuse to start if the file doesn't have a valid digital signature).

Not too long ago, that situation would just cause someone to crack it and share how, or at least a patch.

Then again, that was also a time when there was an actual choice between browsers, and not just "Firefox or WebKit/Chrome(/ium) shell."

rndgermandude• 7 years ago

The problem at this point isn't whether chrome will disable it... It can be added back, probably fairly easily as google intents to keep it around for "enterprise" anyway, so it's probably just gonna end up changing/removing one if-statement. If not, then the code already exists and has to be merged back in.

The problem is distribution of the actual extensions, as Vivaldi kinda pointed out, as the other browsers mostly rely on the Chrome Extension store. If Google really decides to pull the plug here they could start rejecting extensions using the old, removed-from-Chrome APIs. And then what? Each browser such as Vivaldi, Brave, Opera has to implement their own app store just to host the old-API ad-blockers. And implementing such a store is a major feat. And the walled garden strikes again.

Vivaldi already indicated they might create a "limited" store, meaning not a real store open to the public, but one where they list hand-picked old-API extensions such as ublock origin. Of course, innovation is still stiffed as you in such a "chrome-store + limited vendor store" scenario cannot just develop new extensions using the old-API because you'd have no chance of getting listed in the chrome store, and essentially no chance in the hand-picked limited vendor ones.

mantap• 7 years ago

You can install extensions manually. You have to be able to because otherwise you wouldn't be able to develop new ones.

zzzcpan• 7 years ago

Walled gardens for extensions is also a big problem. Maybe web browsers will finally be forced to give up that control because of all this. Personally I would like at least user freedom to choose extension stores for themselves.

LoSboccacc• 7 years ago

yeah this commitment inspires little long term confidence since the ecosystem is heavily chrome-centric

I've already moved everything to Firefox to test out waters before moving all my relatives.

el_programmador• 7 years ago

My gut feeling is that Google won't pull this stunt with chrome, this is some kind of scare mongering or a PR tactic, I dunno.

It doesn't make a logical sense because if they are banning the ad-blockers, it means they accept that chrome is largely used by power users who can install these blockers (otherwise, what's the need?). But they should realize that a power user who installs an addon can just as easily move to another browser like firefox/brave. And the PR repercussions will ensure that a lot of newbies will leave too (because they usually follow the power users on youtube) which will essentially kill the advertising income that they wanted in the first place?

user178436• 7 years ago

Maybe think about it in a different way. Right now, there is a kill-switch within googles primary product that could essentially destroy their business model.

This is not about google wanting to harm the current power users. It is probably the idea that someone could come along and destroy their business.

If such an extensions goes mainstream that could seriously harm them.

They may also want to get rid of paying Adblock Plus money for their highway robbery.

Now that I think about it, getting rid of ABP may be the primary reason for this move. They have to basically pay a third party to get access to their own users.

Either way, the battle is not over the power user minority, but over the average user.

The idea is to make the API just powerful enough for the most annoying ads to disappear. Most users would probably be content with this. They will probably make it so they won't lose all of their power users. I think what they really want is increasing the amount of works it takes to have full adblocking functionality to the point where the average user has no access to it.

mtgx• 7 years ago

it means they accept that chrome is largely used by power users who can install these

You're making a very big assumption here. Last I checked people who blocked ads counted in the hundreds of millions and the number was growing rapidly.

Some old stats I found with a quick search:

https://pagefair.com/blog/2017/adblockreport/

615 million devices now use adblock

11% of the global internet population is blocking ads on the web

Adblock usage grew 30% globally in 2016

Mobile adblock usage grew by 108 million to reach 380 million devices

Desktop adblock usage grew by 34 million to reach 236 million devices

ben_jones• 7 years ago

I think its gotten to the point where power users go around to all their non-power-user friends and install ad blockers for them, at least I do in our office. The reason this is so successful is because it takes 5 seconds to go the the chrome store and add ublock origin. Convincing my non-power-user friends to move to firefox would be significantly harder. Google's goal is to remove the severity (and effectively the ease) of ad blocking for non-power-users.

SquareWheel4• 7 years ago

It doesn't make a logical sense because if they are banning the ad-blockers...

To be clear, you can still block ads under Manifest v3. I don't know where this idea that you suddenly won't be able to block ads came from, but somebody is being dishonest about it.

taneq2• 7 years ago

Chrome isn't "largely used by power users", it's used by 60+% of all web users[1] which means it's largely used by nontechnical users. Power users will block ads somehow, whether by changing fork or changing browser or running a PiHole.

However, over 300 million users run adblockers[2][3] and it's probably a fair assumption that most of those users are relatively nontechnical and only run them because they're very easy to install.

I think this push is just to add a tiny bit of friction into the process so that 'casual' adblockers stop bothering.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Su...

[2] https://whybytes.com/ublock-origin-vs-adblock-plus/477/

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBlock_Origin

xeeeeeeeeeeenu• 7 years ago

Opera does not use chrome web store: https://addons.opera.com/en/extensions/

rhamzeh• 7 years ago

They do have their own store. However, Opera's add-on store is not a great experience. I'm not sure what's going on there, but I know of at least one company where they submitted a new extension to that store it took them around 6 months(!!!) to approve it.

It was easier to self-host the add-on for people who want it, so that they can download it from your website.

fouc• 7 years ago

We need a third party extensions store.

AsyncAwait2• 7 years ago

We need companies to stop promoting the Blink monoculture and helping Google pull stuns like this as a result.

These companies helping Mozilla getting Servo into shape would be a really good idea, which is why they won't do it.

U8dcN7vx• 7 years ago

I know of at least one, F-droid.

derefr• 7 years ago

Given that Firefox has now also moved to using WebExtensions, the Chromium forks could just rely on http://addons.mozilla.org as their “store.”

kbrosnan• 7 years ago

Firefox add-ons have a different namespace and some additional APIs that Blink does not support. See https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web... and https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...

_bxg1• 7 years ago

Why wouldn't the other vendors band together and make a single, non-Google chromium extensions repository? If anyone from Microsoft is reading, this would be an excellent opportunity to give Edge a leg up on Chrome.

tempguy99992• 7 years ago

I suppose an extension is easier but as browsers can be told to go through proxies, an extension isn't necessary for adblocking. A 2nd process on the machine, a change to the browser (set localhost and a port) and you're done. Someone did something similar and called it Dan's Guardian IIRC, but that's all it was.

That's how I run mine, a local (and very ancient) version of squid blocks everything. It won't be as flexible but it works.

Yizahi• 7 years ago

As an example - app stores for android. Each manufacturer makes it's own and for years they are unable to cooperate.

superkuh• 7 years ago

The problem you described actually happened with Firefox and Firefox forks not too long ago. Mozilla kicked out all traditional Firefox add-ons from their repository to "replace" them (note: they didn't actually replace the vast majority) with chrome style webextensions. Firefox forks were forced to implement and run their own add-on hosting system and API, and navigate the complex legal waters of re-hosting the add-ons if they wished to continue having access. One notable example of this is the Pale Moon browser. But it all turned out all right. The PM add-on "store" works great and is reliable.

It's not beyond the capabilities of efforts like Vivaldi or Brave to do the same as the Pale Moon team.

guelo• 7 years ago

Ironically Firefox killed their extension API to be compatible with Chrome's extensions. Now they probably don't want to be compatible with the new Chrome API.

Vinnl3• 7 years ago

And how many add-ons are updated and maintained specifically for Pale Moon - especially compared to the number of add-ons for Firefox for which that is the case?

Because that is the danger for the Chromium forks too - that nobody will bother with their forked store.

MiroF• 7 years ago

opera already had its own app store

pier252• 7 years ago

Opera blocks ads wihout the need of an extension. It's just a setting.

xaduha• 7 years ago

Well internally it shows as an extension, you can check yourself. Didn't use to, but does now.

neilv• 7 years ago

Business-wise, I would love to own an app store, and exercise control, and (eventually) cut myself in as the middleperson on for-pay software sold through it, as well as paid placements and ads.

millisecond• 7 years ago

All of the other browsers shouldn’t worry about store nonsense, just ship u-block by default and enabled. Fight fire with fire.

kibwen2• 7 years ago

The reason that no browser does this is because that's the easiest way to go from "some sites are broken in this browser because no webdevs care to test with it" to "many sites are broken in this browser because webdevs deliberately go out of their way to break it". It's the nuclear option that a browser like Firefox would only go for (in the climate of the current web) if things got truly desperate for them. It's why, for example, Firefox didn't start blocking third-party cookies until Safari did it first: it gave them political cover to do so (and Safari can do whatever it wants because it's the only game in town on iOS).

Swizec• 7 years ago

Isn’t one of Brave’s main selling points that it itself is an ad blocker and doesn’t require a third party extension? Something about removing ads from pages before they even make http requests.

cpeterso• 7 years ago

I hadn't considered the ramifications to extension distribution. If Google's Chrome extension store chooses to not host extensions that use the webRequest API, other Chromium-based browsers will need to maintain their own extension stores or users will start installing unvetted extensions from shady third-party websites.

owaislone• 7 years ago

Since Firefox support WebExtensions now (or will soon get it) which are very close to Chrome extensions, it wouldn't be unthinkable for all non-Chrome browsers to use Firefox store instead of the Chrome one. I think Mozilla could even be convinced to open it up as an "open web extensions" store or collaborate with others to build a new one. They certainly have the infrastructure and experience to run one.

techntoke5• 7 years ago

Uh, Firefox already supports WebExtensions and it is like common knowledge. Mozilla barely has the experience to run a sync service, and even that is a disaster.

nedp2• 7 years ago

Mozilla supports WebExtensions since 57+ afaik. Not sure about this if there are some differences in implementation and API's between Firefox's WebExt and Chrome's.

stcredzero2• 7 years ago

Each browser such as Vivaldi, Brave, Opera has to implement their own app store just to host the old-API ad-blockers. And implementing such a store is a major feat. And the walled garden strikes again.

How about "app store as a service?"

gremlinsinc• 7 years ago

They should team up for the good of all, and create a communally owned fork of Chromium that they all contribute to, and a marketplace. That way the ensure their ecosystem can thrive outside of Google's kingdom.

Element_• 7 years ago

Brave has it's own ad blocking builtin.

directional• 7 years ago

This is an excellent opportunity for Microsoft to distinguish their Chromium-based Edge from Chrome. Leave the webRequest API intact, ensure that these adblocking extensions are available from their own store, and invite other Chromium-based browsers to use their store instead of Google's.

nine_k• 7 years ago

This would be a very funny inversion!

2004: M$ is so greedy, Google is so pro-user.

2019: Google is so greedy, MS is so pro-user.

l30n4da52• 7 years ago

i used opera for a while, and, while i liked it, it had a glaring bug in Windows 10 that jist didnt go away in the year or so i was using it.

that being said ...opera already has their own extensions store.

indronilbanerji• 7 years ago

I really don't understand why security concerned people use Google's product in spite of knowing that Google steals everything and compromises user's privacy.

icxa• 7 years ago

I think you are confusing security with privacy.

As far as security goes, I trust Google way more than any other site to handle my credentials properly, follow security best practices, use the highest level of encryption where applicable, keep servers up to date and patched faster than anyone else, etc. Outside of Google+, I can't remember the last time there was a major security incident at Google, when they happened, the impact was minimal (contrast this to say the Apple Cloud leak which led to the infamous "fappening", the Marriot leak, the Equifax hack, Target, etc). Breaches and 0-days happen, but as far as I know, Google is going to be the best it gets when it comes to security.

Now when it comes to my privacy, no. I don't trust Google as far as I could throw them.

mistersquid• 7 years ago

contrast this to say the Apple Cloud leak which led to the infamous "fappening"

This breach was not due to missteps or problems with security on Apple’s part (though Apple has had issues with security lapses, notably passwordless root login on macOS which was never reported to have been exploited [0]).

In the instance of “The Fappening”, the breach that lead to the exposure of iCloud data was “revealed to have been gained via spear phishing attacks”. [1]

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/29/macos-hig...

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICloud_leaks_of_celebrity_ph...

cfarm2• 7 years ago

When Chrome did this they quickly highlighted how much control they have over what people view. Privacy focused open browsers will gain marketshare because of it.

techntoke5• 7 years ago

What did Chrome do exactly? Cause they never said they were disabling ad-blocker extensions. That was the grapevine effect from the Firefox crowd.

cfarm2• 7 years ago

I was referring to this, but it looks like there was an update to the article saying that it might not block everything https://www.tomsguide.com/us/chrome-block-ad-blockers,news-3...

paulcarroty• 7 years ago

The main question is how long they will do it. Now it's easy, but google can move the locker deeply inside. If anti-ad-blocker changes will needs 1-2mb patches every release, they will just give up fast.

la_barba• 7 years ago

If you don't control the browser you downloaded, do you control the OS you chose to install? Can Microsoft ban Google Chrome from even running on their platform? Where does the 'user gets to decide' line end and the 'vendor knows best' line begin?

agumonkey3• 7 years ago

I, for the first time ever, uninstalled chrome/chromium from my computers. It pains me because I liked it overall, and firefox isn't happy with my 2009 laptops.

Maybe chrome devs mistake will be the air gap that creates a new leader from another group.

clumsysmurf• 7 years ago

FF and Safari were the only browser that worked well on my 2009 MBP ... until FF went multi process, and then started using too much ram. Today I think its total ram usage is worse than Chrome.

agumonkey3• 7 years ago

Memory usage used to be a lot better than chrome, but I'm under linux, maybe on macos it's different, also I stopped caring about it so maybe it got worse.

Vinnl3• 7 years ago

You could try setting it up to use fewer than 8 different processes?

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/performance-settings

Chirael• 7 years ago

I got a new computer recently (old one died), and because of this change I will not install Chrome on the new computer. I’m planning to use Edge for anything Google-specific like Google Docs or Sheets, and Firefox for everything else.

Unfortunately, my wife has a Chromebook and it’s hard to convince her that her very cheap, almost-disposable laptop should be replaced with something more expensive just to avoid Chrome. (And no, she did not want me to install Linux on it - sigh.)

agumonkey3• 7 years ago

Buy a second hand machine. I just grabbed a 3rd gen thinkpad x1 carbon for a neighbor and the thing is a ferrari compared to any laptop I have. 390$. Probably less than 300$ for a less thin model (x250~)

aembleton3• 7 years ago

Can't she install Firefox from the Play store?

EugeneOZ4• 7 years ago

Tried Opera on Mac OS - half of toggles on the Settings page is not rendered - "Pref not found for element SETTINGS-TOGGLE-BUTTON in SETTINGS-APPEARANCE-PAG". It was so epic trash - removed instantly. They obviously don't test it on Mac OS.

Tried Vivaldi - render sites with errors (some images missing). 0 plugins installed. Not acceptable, removed.

Brave - I really hate person who run this project and how he is trying to sell his product by "if you hate google as much as me, use Brave", while using Chromium.

So, for now I don't see any Chromium-based alternative.

pedrocx4862• 7 years ago

Edge Chromium maybe? I've been using it and have no complaints...

EugeneOZ4• 7 years ago

Yeah, testing it right now :) Thanks for the reminder - it's easy to forget MS has a browser for Mac :)

EugeneOZ4• 7 years ago

Works absolutely great!

dvdgsng• 7 years ago

Tried Vivaldi - render sites with errors (some images missing). 0 plugins installed. Not acceptable, removed.

Not sure what version of Vivaldi you used when that happened, but using Vivaldi every day on multiple workstations with different OS's without any issues I can only urge you to give it another try.

EugeneOZ4• 7 years ago

There is only one version I found on their Download page, 2.5.

nerd7473• 7 years ago

Good news :D

negamax• 7 years ago

Damn Google! This is so short sighted. People/everyone just installed Chrome on whatever systems they could find and that's how Chrome become so prevalent. Not because it was a superior product, not because of technology but because everyone was anti IE. Google is painting Chrome into similar corner. In a way, this is a good indicator of decline of Google. Revenue not through innovation but by coercion

TylerE3• 7 years ago

I think that's rather revisionist. At a point in time Chrome was way better than not just IE, but way better than Firefox. The performance was leaps and bounds ahead.

whatpreventsit• 7 years ago

I’ve been using both Firefox and Chrome since they came out and they have always felt near each others performance. It would be interesting to see some data on the subject.

seba_dos1• 7 years ago

As someone who kept bouncing between Firefox and Chromium for quite a long time before finally settling with Firefox, I think that's the case only for light workloads with not a lot of tabs open. I was switching from Firefox to Chromium because Firefox was getting slow, but after a while of my normal usage, Chromium wasn't just getting slow - it was getting unusable, so then I switched back to Firefox (and the same cycle repeated after a while). But yeah, right after refreshing the browser profile, fresh Chromium felt a little bit faster than fresh Firefox. I don't think that's the case anymore.

jorgesborges• 7 years ago

I remember Chrome being way better than anything else at the time. I switched from Firefox to Chrome during that period because it was just so fast and lightweight in comparison. I think it was also the first time mainstream users had access to features like tabbed browsing, which was truly novel at the time.

jasode• 7 years ago

Not because it was a superior product, not because of technology but because everyone was anti IE.
>>I think that's rather revisionist.

I agree with the sibling comments that remembered the past differently: Back in 2008, Chrome was actually the superior product -- for both users and developers.

- Chrome had a better partitioned process for each tab. IE and Firefox 3.x didn't so they often crashed on buggy web pages or bad Javascript. In Firefox, that would also take down all the other tabs one had open which obviously frustrated users.

- Chrome with V8 had the fastest Javascript engine at the time. This translated to faster UI on Gmail, Google Maps, Google Docs, etc.

- Chrome had a built in PDF viewer which was convenient. In IE, clicking on a pdf link triggered a disruptive "Save file as" prompt or if one had Adobe installed, it would launch Adobe Reader which was a jarring UI experience. (Also add that Chrome included ability to print to PDF. To duplicate that functionality in IE required buying the full Adobe Acrobat Professional for $300 or installing a similar PDF printer driver such as Bullzip.)

- Chrome had very good dev tools included. With Firefox, you had to install the Firebug plugin which was slower and buggier

It's fascinating how Google's recent controversy has caused widespread amnesia of Chrome browser's real technical advantages in 2008.

wnevets• 7 years ago

Chrome still has the fastest start up times from what I've seen.

ionised2• 7 years ago

I think this is the revisionism to be honest.

Chrome became as widespread as it did because it was bundled like crapware with installers for various pieces of software and they plastered scare-mongering banners all over their service telling people they had to use Chrome to get the correct experience, or deliberately gimping their own services on other browsers.

Chrome may have been the better browser at release, but simply being better did not get it to where it is.

giancarlostoro• 7 years ago

There was always Firefox. When Chrome first came out I tried it. It didnt have plugins therefore no AdBlocker so I went back to Firefox cause pop ups are super annoying. Then when it did have addons it had a crappy adblocker that wasnt effective at all. I never went back to Chrome except for as a secondary browser. Firefox has been my main driving browser since the mid 2000s.

fourier_mode2• 7 years ago

People/everyone just installed Chrome on whatever systems they could find and that's how Chrome become so prevalent. Not because it was a superior product

This statement logically does not make sense.

People installed Chrome => Chrome was a superior product. Although, now it isn't anymore.

stcredzero2• 7 years ago

Revenue not through innovation but by coercion

Power corrupts. When did Google find they had the power to force people to do things? It started with some beneficial, "thou shall not." Power corrupts, however. Was it around 2011?

qwerty456127• 7 years ago

Because anti-IE? I doubt it was the driving motive for much people. People usually switch to something because it's better or at least because it's cool and popular.

I switched to Opera because it was so much better than anything in 2000. Then I tried Firefox because a friend switched to it and I sticked with it occasionally as it was becoming better and better and cool extensions emerged. Then I switched to Chrome because Firefox became so slow it was driving me crazy (yes, I always use obsolete hardware) and Chrome was ok (it lacked functionality I loved in Firefox extensions but I could tolerate this).

Now I actually am increasingly anti-Chrome because I don't want Google's monopolism and dictate so I feel like I want to switch back to Firefox and guide friends to do so but Firefox is still notably more slow than Chrome although not as slow as it used to be. I hope Mozilla guys are going to keep on improving its performance.

EdwardDiego• 7 years ago

Why not try Opera again? As the joke goes, both Opera users are happy.

You can even run Chrome extensions if you install this extension: https://addons.opera.com/en/extensions/details/install-chrom...

microcolonel2• 7 years ago

Brave is good† and probably if Google tries to close down the Chromium open source project, a lot of resources will just instead go to whoever maintains the biggest open source fork.

† except fine-grained cookie blocking is a bit broken compared to stock Chromium (only works properly if you always allow first-party cookies, which I also want it to ask first about), script blocking is about the same.

furyofantares• 7 years ago

People were anti-IE because IE was vastly inferior to other offerings. Firefox had been making steady but slow progress as tech-savvy folks would install it for their friends/family.

Chrome came out and it was even better than Firefox on speed (javascript especially, with v8), reliability (process isolation, websites would freeze all of your tabs if not your whole computer at the time), and usability (unified search/url bar). And it had Google marketing behind it, meaning non-tech folks knew and loved the company making it and don’t rely on their tech-savvy friends to hear about it.

ggregoire• 7 years ago

Not because it was a superior product

Pardon? For years it was the best option out there. Its dev tools are still the best imo.

partiallypro• 7 years ago

I don't see how Chrome's new anti-ad blocking isn't seen as anti-competitive, considering Google basically runs the ad business on non-Google sites, etc. Sure, Facebook and Amazon also serve up ads...but Google is by far the company that is hurt the most by ad blocking. Then at the same time Chrome is essentially blocking "intrusive" ads by default...and by intrusive they basically mean non-Google ads that have the same CPC and CPM model Google has.

bongobongo2• 7 years ago

It is absolutely anti-competitive garbage, and you should be prepared to see more and more of it (and increasingly anti-consumer iterations if it) until people wake up and start demanding that their political leaders do something about it.

“Companies will regulate themselves” is a cute libertarian bedtime story.

techntoke5• 7 years ago

Google never said they were blocking ad-blockers. It was the hyperbole Firefox crowd who used some post by Raymond Hill from the creator of uBlock Origin as a reason to start another "Switch to Firefox" campaign.

However, Hill admitted that adblockers aren't going away and it is just a proposed change in the WebRequest API to make things more akin to Safari to help adblockers operate in a standard in speedy way.

Mozilla on the other hand did expose a bunch of users to ads and malicious sites recently though when they didn't renew a certificate and didn't push out a fix for over 24 hours in which all addons were disabled in their browser and the configurations were lost as well.

davidp• 7 years ago

You're right that this is potentially anticompetitive, but

    “Companies will regulate themselves” is a cute libertarian bedtime story.

I've never heard libertarians say that. Rather, they say that consumers have the potential to regulate companies if they choose to do so, by voting with their feet. We should do so more often than we do; when there's a free market (monopolies are not free markets) it feels pretty good to tell a company to go screw themselves.

Personally I switched back to Firefox when Chrome tried to force login to my Google account, and I haven't missed a thing (other than some dev tools, e.g. websocket inspection). Firefox Quantum is really good, and their bookmark sync has replaced my previous usage of the now-defunct Xmarks.

fourier_mode2• 7 years ago

My worry is that because Chrome has become a standard of web-browsing so even after such decisions taken by Google, people would not switch to other(better) options.

jackcosgrove• 7 years ago

So not only is Google introducing this change into the Chromium codebase, but it sounds like they aren't putting it behind a Chrome-only compiler flag. And if you're satisfied with Chrome as-is then too bad because the GoogleUpdater will automatically update Chrome and is harder to kill than a cockroach, and Chrome will give you an annoying popup 80-some days after that version's build date telling you to upgrade Chrome even if you have managed to block GoogleUpdater.

nathanasmith• 7 years ago

I looked around but I can't figure out if this affects extensions like Tampermonkey. If not, writing an adblock script for that seems like an alternative.

ycombonator• 7 years ago

What about Microsoft Edge Chromium ?

lsiebert• 7 years ago

I switched to Chrome years ago. Recently I switched back to Firefox.

It's changed dramatically. Speed, security, and stuff that you can't do in Chrome, like extensions like Facebook Container.

To me this isn't about Chrome Vs Firefox though. It's about the benefits of a healthy marketplace for software, and the dangers of near monopolies to consumer choice.

josh26003• 7 years ago

The world is changing. People are starting to care about things they didn’t before. I think the pendulum is swinging towards privacy and I like it.

TheSeeker11• 7 years ago

AdGuard will not be affected by these changes - https://adguard.com/en/blog/chrome-api-comment.html

slenk• 7 years ago

Apples and oranges. AdGuard is a third party app that runs at the system level. Not the same thing.

Opera, Brave, Vivaldi to ignore Chrome's anti-ad-blocker changes

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