Of those two pieces of software, only one is essential.

Yes.

I concur.

Discussion (113 points, 7 hours ago, 28 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41140185

Hopefully devs will switch to firefox now because even though many debs might be ethically short sighted, they do not like ads or to spend money.

as shady as mozilla has been for a while now, im sticking to ff. hopefully they make ff a priority again, but doubt that will happen with all the big tech money flowing in.

Just switch to Brave. Comes with great YouTube ad blocking too.

Don't like chrome, google, and their anti-user practices? Try Red chrome instead!

Red chrome's advertising is too annoying? That's okay, you can try purple chrome! Or, for the Serious Business Person, we have Microsoft Blue chrome.

Please stop recommending people replace chrome with chrome in a different color.

hear, hear! I've been using Brave for 2 years now and I can't complain. I don't remember the last time I saw any ads. I have ublock installed too just to add to the formula (no ads whatsoever).

Brave asks me to allow their own ads every 10 minutes even if I say I dont want it.

Google Chrome can warn that all it wants.... Microsoft Edge is now the most used member of the Chrome family, and Microsoft Edge is moving towards implementing their own equivalent of uBlock built into the browser (thus, not Javascript, runs much faster).

Statcounter says 64% Chrome 13% Edge, on Desktop. Edge shrinks to 5% if you count mobile.

Then why are you confident that edge is more popular, what is the basis for this assertion?

I think they mean installed base. Every Windows 10/11 has it installed and is automatically updated every month. So Edge is the most installed Chromium browser. If Chrome’s browsing experience dips below a threshold, people can just use what’s already there in their machines.

That would make sense, but they said most used, and I find that very hard to believe. For starters, all the Windows users I know — even the most tech-unsavvy ones — avoid Edge and stick with Chrome (or Firefox).

On Android, Google Play Store says "50M+ downloads" for Edge, while Firefox (which is not a hugely popular browser on mobile) has "100M+ downloads". So it stands to reason that the vast majority of the 3 billion or so Android users stick with the default, Chrome.

"Installed" much as the Candiru fish is alleged to install itself .. zero effort or consent by the host and painful if not impossible to remove.

"Popular" isn't the right descriptor either, I have fielded many calls from relatives and aquaintainces that want "plain Windows" without the popup ads and Edge-y additions.

> Microsoft Edge is now the most used member of the Chrome family

Doubt it.

> and Microsoft Edge is moving towards implementing their own equivalent of uBlock built into the browser (thus, not Javascript, runs much faster).

Isn't Microsoft pushing ads onto the OS itself? If they are willing to show ads on the start menu, why would they block ads on Edge?

Possibly to fill the now empty space with their own ads? I wouldn't put it past them

Or simply to cripple Google.

For the moment, the best possible solution seems to me simply disabling auto-updates. On long-term, if supermium can port over the critical fixes from chromium, ubo v2 may still survive with chrome-ish packaging.

For larger context, the ecosystem is fragmenting, and I have ~10 browser extensions that are critical to me. I don't think I will prioritize chrome's software cadence over my own preferences, thank you.

There's still uBO Lite. I tried it. It's not as good as uBO (it doesn't offer ad zapper, no Javascript, etc), but most of that stuff is probably stuff your typical user won't need, and of the community that does use uBO's more advanced features, most of them are probably on Firefox or Brave or whatever.

The lite version can't block ads lmao. It just tries its best.

For those who like uBlock Origin, it runs in Kagi Orion while playing nicely with MacOS:

https://kagi.com/orion/

I haven't used Chrome in months, maybe years.

Sounds like time to Uninstall it.

Personally I switched to Safari and Brave due to their superior approaches to privacy. I am curious what did you switch to and why?

Firefox, though I'm currently looking at alternatives.

I've been experimenting with LibreWolf on one of my machines. I haven't pushed it too hard or gone through an update cycle (I'm aware of) yet and it's been a great experience thus far.

You can use Waterfox.

Safari private?

can't we just put manifest v2 support patched over in every oss chromium fork by default.

Wouldn't that effort be better spent on improving Firefox?

This fucking sucks. I recently just told someone to stop using ABP and to use uBO. "Normal people" don't want, nor care enough, to switch to Firefox.

Don't worry. The same thing will happen to it on firefox eventually. They always copy everything chrome does.

The issues at hand is Manifest V3. Firefox has already modified their implementation so that extensions like uBO will work.

I do not believe them or you. Firefox will copy chrome it is the only thing they know how to do.

Ok, don't believe him and don't browse the web.

Given their track record, I do believe you.

They won't because they'll vanish if they do.