Keep uBlock Origin in Chrome for another year by enabling Enterprise policy

https://www.ghacks.net/2024/08/15/google-is-killing-ublock-origin-in-chrome-but-this-trick-lets-you-keep-it-for-another-year/

by speckx • 2 years ago

51 55 2 years ago

ghacks.net

scblock• 2 years ago

If this matters to you it's far more productive to stop using Chrome.

autoexecbat• 2 years ago

Moving to firefox seems more practical at this point

hypeatei• 2 years ago

I'm glad Google is doing this - even if it only takes away 0.01% of users, it's still good.

tedivm3• 2 years ago

Keep uBlock Origin forever by switching to Firefox.

oguz-ismail• 2 years ago

Too slow. Not a serious alternative

ghusto• 2 years ago

Not according to benchmarks and my personal experience it's not.

tedivm3• 2 years ago

That may have been true five years ago but it's not true today.

thinkingtoilet• 2 years ago

How on earth is it "too slow"? What are you doing in the web? It loads web pages. What's the difference, fractions of a second? Enjoy no ad-blocking.

akomtu• 2 years ago

Too slow will be Chrome infested with ads.

baq• 2 years ago

To a browser without ublock? Tail wagging the dog if you ask me.

rpearl• 2 years ago

[citation needed]

marssaxman• 2 years ago

A browser which lacks serious adblocking cannot be a serious option for me, no matter how fast it claims to be.

Aperocky3• 2 years ago

Firefox user that haven't used Chrome for 6 years, what am I missing?

kkfx• 2 years ago

Visually Chrome now look more like Firefox, really, thin tabs with declining borders have been substituted by thicker one with vertical border. Practically if feel faster on the same iron, and it's more rigid in user UI change, for instance you can't have Tab Center reborn and hide the tab-bar because you are on a large screen and you like to been able to read comfy all tabs...

For the rest... They are essentially equivalent even if under the hood there are many differences.

darby_nine• 2 years ago

Mostly sites complaining they don't recognize your browser and disabling features (this is mostly a blessing).

ravenstine3• 2 years ago

Nothing, other than you can't debug JavaScript as easily as with Chrome or Node.

tedmiston• 2 years ago

Mostly that FF has ~36k extensions (January 2024) [1] and Chrome has ~112k (June 2024) [2].

[No doubt, total count of extensions isn't the most important number and there's a long tail in both counts of very small user bases, but this paints the ~3x picture in a broad stroke.]

Of course, since FF migrated to WebExtensions in 2017, theoretically most Chrome extensions can be ported to FF with minimal changes [3] — practically speaking though, not all of the big ones actually have, or the FF equivalents to some of the most useful Chrome extensions are far less polished.

And also, if you're developing front end web apps for normal end users, most are still on Chrome... over the years, I've experienced an unfortunate number of sites that should work across Chrome/FF/Safari actually break because of things like the developers not even testing in browsers besides Chrome given its dominance. I'm not encouraging that by any means, but the reality is that it still happens.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Add-on_(Mozilla)

[2] https://github.com/DebugBear/chrome-extension-list

[3] https://extensionworkshop.com/documentation/develop/porting-...

nope1000• 2 years ago

Also works on Android!

stevenkkim3• 2 years ago

As a longtime Chrome user, I just switched to Firefox because of this. Everything seems fine so far. I just wish Mozilla would invest some time to polish the UI a little – it feels a bit dated and rough.

tedivm3• 2 years ago

It's funny you mention that, as they have the largest upgrade to the UI in the current nightly build. There was a reddit comment with some pictures.

https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1epkgh5/latest_nig...

wussboy• 2 years ago

I think that's the last thing they should be spending time on. In my list of browser priorities, security, speed, memory all are much higher.

Aperocky3• 2 years ago

Minimal UI is best, especially since buttons don't have man pages.

Mathnerd3144• 2 years ago

AFAICT there is no way to set this on a Chromebook though - and since Chrome is embedded into the OS using Firefox is really painful in comparison. I guess I will have to use uBO Lite.

edit: There is apparently a way to set it by enabling Developer Mode, but Developer Mode is itself really annoying - it shows a popup screen every boot.

layer8• 2 years ago

Or maybe don’t use a Chromebook.

Mathnerd3144• 2 years ago

It was gifted to me...

jimcsharp• 2 years ago

I've been running ad blockers for 15 years now at least, but I seem to recall really annoying pop-ups being a part of Internet advertising too, and they happen more than once per boot.

Mathnerd3144• 2 years ago

It's true that in normal use you don't reboot a Chromebook that often, and developer mode offers other advantages as well. And apparently it is possible to "neuter" the screen https://web.archive.org/web/20170711043202/https://johnlewis.... Probably the only real solution long-term...

nolist_policy• 2 years ago

There is also uBlock Origin Lite.

I haven't tried this, but you should also be able to apply enterprise policies with Chrome Enterprise Core[1]. As if you are centrally managing a bunch of Clients, but it's only your one Chromebook of course.

[1] https://chromeenterprise.google/intl/de_de/products/cloud-ma...

Mathnerd3144• 2 years ago

You need a Google Workspace account - personal doesn't work. Which is admittedly only $6/month on the starter plan, but signing up just to get uBO working seems a bit much.

QuantumGood3• 2 years ago

A .reg file with this works to extend ManifestV2:

  [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Chrome]

  "ExtensionManifestV2Availability"=dword:00000002

Mistletoe• 2 years ago

Switched to Brave recently over this.

geraldwhen• 2 years ago

Brave doesn’t have the political agenda of Mozilla. I have no idea why this comment is downvoted

ziddoap• 2 years ago

The Brave ads cryptocurrency stuff was/is a turn-off for many. That'd be my guess regarding the downvotes, anyways. As well as the Brave redirection to affiliate links left a sour taste.

slowmovintarget2• 2 years ago

Brave is based on Chromium, so it's not a reasonable choice if you're trying to avoid this change.

sebazzz• 2 years ago

Easy for the Brave CEO to say they keep ManifestV2 support while these enterprise flags in the Chromium codebase are still present. Once these flags are removed, and the code is removed, and then the internal APIs to support the ManifestV2 code is removed it becomes a whole other thing.

You can try to keep the code, but every upstream code change becomes more painful to integrate. It is going to cost more and more, requiring more and more expertise with the Chromium codebase, like it is some kind of technical debt. Not even counting the potential security issues you can introduce by keeping the code alive, with Brave being a target that is large enough to matter for hackers but perhaps too small for security researchers.

stevenkkim3• 2 years ago

If I recall, I think the same thing is going to happen to the Microsoft Edge browser, which is built on chromium, which is a real shame because this could've been a point of differentiation for them. Windows has always asked me to switch from Chrome to Edge without giving me a compelling reason. This would have been a compelling reason.

Fauntleroy• 2 years ago

I've been a Firefox user for years—it's more than a suitable replacement for Chrome. You can also use adblocking extensions on both mobile and desktop.

staplers• 2 years ago

Firefox is the perfect privacy middle ground between Tor and Chrome for general browsing.

Never understood why so many seemingly hate it. Obviously work demands Chrome but I haven't installed Google products on my personal pc for a decade.

Aperocky3• 2 years ago

Funny but where I work Firefox is default (one of FAAN)

ravenstine3• 2 years ago

It became cool to hate it because Chrome was originally snappier, plus it was made by The Google, which many used to worship.

From what I can tell, there is very little reason to hate Firefox more than Chrome today.

zihotki• 2 years ago

Here are some reasons: 1. Firefox is supported by Google because otherwise there will be a monopoly and Google doesn't want to be called a monopoly.

2. You can't donate to Firefox development. You can donate to Mozilla Foundation who owns Firefox. But there are no guarantees that your money will go to Firefox development. Mozilla spends money left and right, including luxury life of management, and only a fraction goes into Firefox development. Mozilla could allow direct donations like they did with Thunderbird but they woldn't.

3. Mozilla Foundation acquired an ads company in 2024 and afterwards released "privacy preserving ads measurement" feature which is turned ON by default. There was a great discussion here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40966312

4. Firefox is also switching to manifest v3 and thus crippling ad blockers.

For these reasons I'd prefer to avoid Firefox, it's no better. I can only hope that https://ladybird.org/ or some other will get enough funding and talent to make a real alternative. Sending prayers and donations to ladybird for now.

redml• 2 years ago

It's real bold of google to double down on these bad faith changes while also trying to get me invested in their AI offerings at the same time.

ssahoo• 2 years ago

If any new fork of chromium support manifest 2 forever, while maintaining the other upstream updates, that will be my go to browser. May be Opera can resurrect.

dns_snek• 2 years ago

I salute you for your bravery, I can't even make myself comfortable with the idea of switching from Firefox to Librewolf, never mind "any new fork" of a browser. The security implications are just too severe - malicious code, lingering vulnerabilities, project abandonment, etc.

Keep uBlock Origin in Chrome for another year by enabling Enterprise policy

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