Google Chrome is killing all uBlock Origin bypasses, Edge, Opera to follow

Posted by d3Xt3r 9 hours ago

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Comments

Comment by HerbManic 8 hours ago

Just remember that Google is essentially an advertising company and that they were always going to squeeze this opening closed as soon as they could get away with it.

I do fear for a future were even Firefox ends up caving in. Ladybird browser might be our only hope until something legal comes along to block functionality.

Comment by nishanmiranda 8 hours ago

Firefox haven't caved in so far. Why do u think it might in future?

Comment by mrweasel 8 hours ago

Because Mozilla, at least from the outside appears to have been horribly mismanaged for the past 20-25 years and only survived because the ad money kept rolling in.

I'm not knocking Mozilla for taking money from Google, it was a smart move. Most users would use Google anyway, so Mozilla pocketing billions by making users preferred search engine the default didn't really hurt anyone. Some of that money should however have gone into a trust or some type of investment so that funding for browser development would be safe if the ad money ever dried up.

Maybe someone at Mozilla knows something I don't, but there doesn't seem to be much planning for the future.

Comment by 1vuio0pswjnm7 1 minute ago

If Mozilla operates from revenue derived from selling www traffic to an advertising company running a "search engine", then it is 100% possible and realistic that Mozilla's browser could be optimised for advertising

Mozilla literally advocates for an "online advertising ecosystem"

At present Firefox is optimised for sending search traffic to Google

There is a meme that Google financially supports Firefox development as some soft of strategy whereby having an "alternative" to Chrome gives Google some sort of "protection"

This does not make much sense. There is zero evidence to support it

Firefox's value to Google could be as a source for browser development. As part of the agreement between Google and Mozilla, perhaps Google gets more than just search traffic from Firefox, perhaps it also gets collaboration with Mozilla on software development. There is a history of such collaboration. Google CEO at the time did not want competition from Mozilla on a browser. Chrome was originally written by ex-Mozilla developers using componenets of Firefox^1

1.

https://web.archive.org/web/20121018180015/https://www.compu...

https://web.archive.org/web/20200805000248/https://blogs.wsj...

Comment by close04 8 hours ago

> the ad money kept rolling in

Why "ad money"? That's a very uncharitable interpretation and for anyone not aware of the situation it's misleading. They're not paid for ads or by ads, they're paid by Google to continue being a viable alternative to Chrome. Is every Google employee getting "ad money" every month, or a salary?

The payment is more accurately described as a protection tax.

Comment by yakcyll 7 hours ago

In this particular context there really isn't any difference. Technically Mozilla isn't in the business of delivering ads, but their revenue is mostly supported by ad money from Google, and Google, being an ad giant, can simply cut that stream off. The common sentiment seems to be that this would spell a life and death situation for the company and for the browser as a whole, which essentially makes Firefox a hostage to the whims of an ideologically hostile corporate entity.

Comment by account42 4 hours ago

> Technically Mozilla isn't in the business of delivering ads

They weren't back then but are now: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/advertising/mozilla-anonym-raisi...

Comment by close04 7 hours ago

> Google, being an ad giant

Isn't Google also a cloud giant?

Comment by doublerabbit 7 hours ago

I wouldn't say so. They're not offering their cloud at the same scale other competitors. Not sure when the last was I saw advertising for unlike AWS, Azure.

Felt more like their cloud services were more of a side product for when "the cloud" was the trendy buzzword and a way to justify their infrastructure costs. That and keeping a leg in the egg & spoon race.

Comment by esseph 2 hours ago

GCP is growing faster than either AWS or Azure, roughly 60% a year. AWS seems to have stagnated in growth. Azure is a clown car.

Comment by ivanmontillam 1 hour ago

Still wouldn't touch GCP with a 10-foot pole.

Too much dependency in Google[0].

--

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48396596

Comment by sshine 7 hours ago

While the nuance is important, money from Google is ad money:

  - Directing people to Google Search means Firefox users get exposed to ads
  - The money given to Firefox was made selling ads
  - Google is an ad company
So yes, Google gives Firefox money for political reasons. Made from ads, so they can sell ads, including to Firefox users.

Comment by close04 7 hours ago

I'm with you on the first one and that's the closest reason why you could call Firefox payment "ad money". But the rest are not too strong. Google makes a lot of non-ad money too, even if it's a smaller portion than ads. You don't call airlines "banks" just because they make all of their money from currency-like "miles", and even fly at a loss [0].

What I want to say is that calling it "ad money" makes Firefox look bad when it shouldn't.

[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/09/airlines-b...

Comment by rntksi 6 hours ago

You're mis-representing things here.

As in my reply further below, Q1 2026 you can see Google makes 70% of revenue from Ads, the non-ad money you refer to is only 1/3. But if you look at net income, 85% of the net income from Google comes from Services (including Ads).

The Airlines story is taken out of context and different from Google, Delta for example in the Q1 2026 filing you can see they have a revenue of $15.8bn, of which ticket sales is $10.7bn ! Loyalty program income is just $1bn. However the net income supports the story The Atlantic ran, which just means that out of the $1bn, they are getting more net income from their mileage programs, than income from out of $10.7bn ticket sales, because the operating expense of flying airplane is quite high from fuel, etc.

So on one side, Google has 70% revenue from Ads, and even more % if you count net income. On the other side, Airlines - like Delta - have 70% of their revenue from passenger, but relatively speaking less net income from ticket sales if you consider net income.

You are not comparing the same thing. If you just compare revenue, Airlines cannot be called Banks because they still make 70% of their revenue from passenger ticket sales, just as how Google is an Ad company because their main revenue is 70% ads!

If you compare net income, the airlines story can have an angle, but the Google story doesn't, because their net income from Ads is way higher!

Comment by close04 1 hour ago

When someone says that all money a company pays is "money from their main segment", that's intentionally misrepresenting. In this case what's important is what the money is for, not from. Calling it "Firefox had ad-money coming in" can only be bad faith, the usual social media rage bait.

Now everyone comes out of the woodwork with "well akshully" because there's an interpretation where they can plausibly claim "technically I'm right" despite knowing they are sending the wrong message.

Basketball player LeBron James made more money from endorsements than sports, gas stations make more money from selling coffee and food than gas, and fast-food giant McDonald's makes more money from rent than from fast-food. If you called a gas station "a grocery store" you'd be technically right but also practically and pointlessly wrong.

Comment by account42 4 hours ago

> Is every Google employee getting "ad money" every month

Yes. You can think of it like "blood money".

Comment by CjHuber 7 hours ago

Technically yes

Comment by close04 7 hours ago

Well thought out commentary... Let's dig deeper and at least we make it more interesting conversation, not a blurb.

Wouldn't it be technically no because Google's revenue isn't 100% from ads? They're making almost $120bn from cloud, subscriptions and devices for example. It could be cloud money. And if Google gets ad money so whatever it pays becomes ad money, then it's ad money all the way down.

Comment by rntksi 7 hours ago

Where did you get the $120bn figure?

FYI last fiscal results from Q1 of Alphabet, Google Cloud made $20bn revenue Q1 2026, up from Q4 2025 of $17bn. It's a bit misleading to include "subscriptions, platforms, and devices" in cloud.

Q1 2026 Google's revenue totalled $109bn, of which $77bn is Ads, so 70% of its revenue is Ads. It's common knowledge that Google is an Ads company.

Comment by close04 1 hour ago

> FYI last fiscal results from Q1

I googled the money they made from cloud, subscriptions, platforms, and devices, then approximated almost $120bn in a year. The precise number mattered less than the fact that it's a ton of it already, enough to cover a lot of payoffs.

> It's a bit misleading to include

I didn't "include in" anything, it was an enumeration of things that aren't ads. "Google makes $Q from X and Y", not from "X included in Y".

You found something that's technically correct (a clear enumeration and addition) to be misleading. I think you now accidentally understand what was my initial objection. A lot of other people in the thread don't because that's how social media works, they go with the prevailing opinion for the sweet sweet likes, or go against it and get squeezed out.

Comment by 2 hours ago

Comment by 53 minutes ago

Comment by palmotea 8 hours ago

> Firefox haven't caved in so far. Why do u think it might in future?

Because pretty much all their revenue comes from Google.

Comment by Brybry 8 hours ago

I think Google will try to annoy Firefox users into using Chrome instead via things like needless captchas.

Comment by blooalien 7 hours ago

Things like https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2026/06/mozilla-firefox-android-... do not bode well either... :(

Comment by anonymousiam 8 hours ago

All the more reason to keep using Firefox.

Donate if you can!

https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/donate/

Comment by pseudalopex 8 hours ago

Donations to Mozilla Foundation do not support Firefox development. But payments for services to Mozilla Corporation do.[1]

[1] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/products/

Comment by account42 4 hours ago

Those also don't go to just Firefox development but also to cushy executive salaries.

Comment by ninalanyon 8 hours ago

Last I heard was that there is no way to be sure that donations to the Mozilla Foundation go to Firefox.

Comment by rvz 8 hours ago

They will do both. Firefox has zero leverage to do anything and is on life support with Google's money.

Comment by close04 7 hours ago

Making Firefox even less desirable by "googlifying" it pushes Firefox users away and kills its image of a viable competitor. That's exactly what Google is paying for.

Why would Google destroy the cover they have for keeping control over Chrome and 70% of internet users, just to squeeze a bit more ad revenue from what, 2% of users?

Comment by account42 4 hours ago

Copying Chrome at the expense of loosing even more of their user share has been Firefox's MO for the last decade. It doesn't have to make sense to be reality.

Comment by tapoxi 7 hours ago

Firefox has around 2% share, it hasn't been a viable competitor for a long time.

Comment by miroljub 7 hours ago

Mozilla Foundation is more interested in spending money on anything else than making Firefox genuinely better.

If money gets short, the first thing they would cut would be a browser.

Comment by 8 hours ago

Comment by HPsquared 8 hours ago

It's giving Sony. Similar situation where you have a media business and also make some of the distribution channels including engineering of devices used to consume the content.

Comment by wolvesechoes 1 hour ago

> Ladybird browser might be our only hope

God help us.

Maybe after few another "we are switching from language X to language Y" blogposts.

Comment by account42 4 hours ago

The thing is that they shouldn't be able to get away with it.

Comment by Forgeties79 8 hours ago

Good news is there are many viable Firefox forks currently and I’m sure some of them could take the wheel. It is open source, after all.

It would be a shame to lose the Mozilla foundation/Firefox but it wouldn’t be the end of the browser.

Comment by antibird 8 hours ago

[dead]

Comment by yannicklesuisse 2 hours ago

PM of Orion here.

Orion (https://orionbrowser.com) is a WebKit-based browser for Mac, Linux, iPadOS and iOS that supports both Chrome and Firefox extensions natively ⟩ including uBlock Origin.

We have no plans to drop extension support. Content blocking is a feature, not a loophole, and we think users should have full control over what runs in their browser.

Comment by mead5432 1 hour ago

What about the glaring memory issues that is a pinned thread in your forum? It’s had one comment by a staff member over 5 or so months?

I loved Orion and have been using as a daily driver almost since day 1 including paying for it but now it’s completely unusable. I’ve since moved to Firefox.

The fact that a pinned thread was silent for months concerns me about the future of Orion. It honestly hurts to see.

Comment by red_alpacalypse 1 hour ago

While you can install the Firefox uBlock Origin extension in Orion on iOS, it doesn't block any ads.

This has been reported for some time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43203237

Could you please clarify?

Comment by hamburgererror 1 hour ago

I will consider Orion only when it is open source.

Comment by lelanthran 6 hours ago

Good! Give everyone the push they need to break the web homogeny of Chrome everywhere.

I'm tired of all the (mostly technical) people whining that they need Chrome, and only Chrome can browse the internet. Then you ask them for a site that doesn't work and conveniently "it was some time back and I don't remember the details".

I've been using FF since before it was called Firefox. In the last 10 years I've not come across any site that doesn't work with Firefox - online shopping, social media, banking, custom line-of-business internal apps, ERP apps... you name it.

And, TBH, if I did, I'd just visit that one site with Chrome, and still use FF daily.

Comment by disgruntledphd2 6 hours ago

> In the last 10 years I've not come across any site that doesn't work with Firefox

I have. The dominos pizza website (at least in Ireland) basically never works with Firefox. I normally end up using Safari for that particular site.

Additionally, lots of stuff doesn't work when Advanced Tracking Protection is on, enough that if I have any issues my first step is disabling that.

Comment by legacynl 5 hours ago

Did you ever click 'report broken website' button? It's there specifically for those cases.

Comment by disgruntledphd2 2 hours ago

where is this button?

Comment by esseph 2 hours ago

Fox years with no changes, seemingly.

Comment by packetlost 1 hour ago

I switched to FireFox like 8 years ago, but to be completely honest there are maybe 2-3 very important sites that straight up do not work for me at all with FireFox. Like, completely unusable, not just weird graphical issues.

Comment by yumraj 54 minutes ago

Such as?

Comment by packetlost 29 minutes ago

accuweather.com was the biggest one, though it looks like they fixed it sometime in the last month.

Comment by zacmps 5 hours ago

I now daily drive firefox, there are unfortunately plently of broken sites. Nebula's video player is broken in widescreen for example.

Comment by gonzalohm 4 hours ago

Interesting. I also use Firefox and Nebula works fine for me. Do you have any extensions that may be causing that?

Comment by esseph 2 hours ago

I keep firefox as a backup browser after more than 25y of on again off again use.

It simply does not work well on a lot of sites including government or bank websites. Wish it did.

Comment by gonzalohm 9 minutes ago

But I'm wondering if you are doing something wrong. I just tried nebula in Firefox 151.0.3 and it works flawlessly. Full screen works, all buttons in the player work. I also tried it on Firefox for Android and it works.

Do you have any other websites that don't work?

Comment by vintagedave 6 hours ago

For me it's speed.

I used FireFox for the same reasons, for years. Every time I started Chrome, it was a breath of fresh air. Everything was just slightly faster to react, to switch tabs, to scroll, to interact.

I kept reading posts about how the FireFox team was increasing performance, yet it never seemed to really impact it. Maybe because I often have several windows with a dozen tabs each (yes, one of those people.)

These days I have given up, and I haven't tried it for about two years now, maybe more. Is it any better? Does anyone know, for real, not a marketing blog post?

It still lives on the Dock, next to Safari and Chrome. I can't bear to remove the icon.

And Mozilla seems way off in the weeds with its product and corporate strategy. At this point, I'd pay for a non-Chromium, highly performant, privacy-first browser.

Comment by lelanthran 5 hours ago

> Every time I started Chrome, it was a breath of fresh air. Everything was just slightly faster to react, to switch tabs, to scroll, to interact.

Well, with unblockable ads coming to Chrome, that will no longer be true.

There is no world in which browsing on Chrome with ads is faster than browsing on Firefox without ads.

> Is it any better? Does anyone know, for real, not a marketing blog post?

Well, since moving from ads to no-ads results in roughly a 30% performance increase, you can expect Firefox with uBlock origin to beat out anything in Chrome.

> And Mozilla seems way off in the weeds with its product and corporate strategy.

Agreed.

Comment by zdware 3 hours ago

Sadly same here. firefox ran FoundryVTT poorly in the browser, like 12 fps, on Linux. Chromium had 0 issues with it, 60 no problem.

Comment by moebrowne 6 hours ago

> Every time I started Chrome, it was a breath of fresh air. Everything was just slightly faster to react

Are you opening "several windows with a dozen tabs each" in Chrome? If not, then it's hardly a fair comparison.

Comment by subscribed 2 hours ago

> whining

- Chrome is safer due to the proper sandboxing of tabs.

- Try watching anything on YouTube on Firefox - for me even 360p stream (on 12c, mostly idle Linux PC) stutters to the point of being unwatchable. None of the is/browser settings work. Yeah, I realise YouTube is owned by Google

That's just my first two (just look it up, don't take my word for it), to show your "whining" claim is just an uneducated hostility not bound in facts.

Comment by lelanthran 1 hour ago

> - Try watching anything on YouTube on Firefox - for me even 360p stream (on 12c, mostly idle Linux PC) stutters to the point of being unwatchable.

I'm literally watching Lowko videos right now, on a computer made in maybe 2010, running Linux Mint and FF.

Comment by subscribed 1 hour ago

Just look it up :))))

Comment by darksim905 45 minutes ago

this sounds like a weird driver issue. in 30 years of watching content on YouTube, I've never seen it stutter unless I was using some weird low power PC.

Comment by tikotus 3 hours ago

Meta's ad manager breaks maybe once a year on Safari, so I have to boot up Chrome. Also recently there's been an odd bug on more than one sites (at least Zoho mail and, again, Meta) where the top 20 or so pixels are hidden behind the tab bar. Again works in Chrome. But mostly Safari has been fine.

Comment by arowthway 3 hours ago

'Then you ask them for a site that doesn't work' - For me it was Youtube. Debian 13, Gnome, apt update && apt install firefox, try playing a video. It's always noticebly slower, and last time it didn't even play at all. It might be skill issue or Google malicious behavior or both, but I'm ashamed to say installing Chrome was easier than troubleshooting. I'm slowly growing balls to sacrifice my comfort and migrate nontheless. But I'm tired of people pretending it's just as good and easy to use. Also, if anyone's wondering, gaming on linux still sucks, just a bit less.

Comment by lelanthran 3 hours ago

> 'Then you ask them for a site that doesn't work' - For me it was Youtube. Debian 13, Gnome, apt update && apt install firefox, try playing a video. It's always noticebly slower, and last time it didn't even play at all. It might be skill issue or Google malicious behavior or both, but I'm ashamed to say installing Chrome was easier than troubleshooting. I'm slowly growing balls to sacrifice my comfort and migrate nontheless. But I'm tired of people pretending it's just as good and easy to use.

These are very different experiences we have. I've been using FF on Linux and on Windows since before the first day I found Youtube, and have not yet had a period where it doesn't work.

It's not pretending when tens of thousands are browsing that self-same site just fine over the period you had problems.

I've used Debian, Mint, Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, Slackware and more. In none of them did I need to do anything specific to make FF work on youtube.

Comment by vitally3643 3 hours ago

Google makes google-owned properties perform worse on Firefox on purpose and you fell for it.

Comment by esseph 2 hours ago

> Also, if anyone's wondering, gaming on linux still sucks, just a bit less.

What am I doing wrong? All the games I want to play just seem to work without issue, including new AAA titles, with exceptions for things that use kernel level anticheat that I wouldn't play anyway specifically because of that.

Arc Raiders, Helldivers 2, Factorio, etc just fine. I'm even involved in some alpha / beta testing for a couple of new games.

Just running fedora + proton (wine). I just use the regular steam client like anyone else.

Comment by qweqwe14 4 hours ago

No.

You do realize that people have stuff to do and want their browser to be both 1) fast and 2) compatible with all websites?

Firefox is slower than Chromium, and always will have some compatibility issues, because all websites are made with Chromium in mind.

You can pretend all you want that "well ackshually standards exist and all website makers should use things from the standard", but it's not realistic, everyone will just stick with what works on Chromium.

Also projects like Ungoogled Chromium exist, but for some reason Firefox fanboys conveniently ignore them and pretend that all Chromium-based browsers are evil and Firefox is our last bastion of hope (it isn't and also it sucks)

Comment by preg_match 2 hours ago

Chromium is technically faster but in practice it doesn’t matter if you don’t have an adblocker. Adblocking significantly lowers render and JS load and lessens memory pressure. It varies site to site, but keep in mind that ads have to be fetched and then displayed. That’s not free.

Firefox with uBlock origin is basically as fast as a web browser can get.

Comment by qweqwe14 41 minutes ago

uBO Lite exists and blocks ads just as well as uBO. Why do people pretend it doesn't exist?

Comment by preg_match 9 minutes ago

Because it doesn’t work just as well, because the blocking is less dynamic and filter lists are more out of date. For simple ad blocking scenarios it’s fine, but it will actually miss some ads on some websites.

Comment by qweqwe14 5 minutes ago

I've yet to see any ads on uBO Lite so I'll assume it's false, unless you give an example

Comment by esseph 2 hours ago

> It varies site to site, but keep in mind that ads have to be fetched and then displayed. That’s not free.

Move your ad blocking to a different layer. Like say, network level.

Comment by preg_match 7 minutes ago

This can be done but it’s not sophisticated enough for many ads. Websites are smart and will smuggle ads through known-good domains that you can’t block. You really need to be able to navigate the dom and use JS heuristics to identify ads and popups.

Comment by qweqwe14 46 minutes ago

You could, but at the very least you'd need to MITM all HTTPS, and that means installing your own CA on all devices

Comment by lelanthran 3 hours ago

> Firefox is slower than Chromium,

IME, ads introduce a 30% or more performance penalty, the only way Chrome is "faster" is if you view ads on FF.

So, sure, if you don't want to block ads, Chrome just might be slightly faster. But the browser that never fetches ads in the first place is always going to be faster.

Comment by qweqwe14 43 minutes ago

For some bizarre reason you think that you can't block ads on Chromium. uBO Lite exists and blocks ads just as well as uBO.

Comment by account42 4 hours ago

People are also too lazy to go vote and then cry when someone gets elected that they didn't want to. Sometimes participating in society means not always taking the easiest path.

Comment by qweqwe14 30 minutes ago

It won't matter if dozens of nerds use Firefox, Chromium is just better in every way and that's the reason for it's popularity. No amount of "voting" will change that.

Manifest V3 doesn't prevent anyone from blocking ads, as proven by uBO Lite. And yet misinformation about MV3 takes place in every Chromium vs Firefox debate.

Comment by gonzalohm 4 hours ago

That sounds like the apple fanboys "but it just works, why wouldn't I like a monopoly"

Comment by rwmj 9 hours ago

Surprised they still have this page on their site:

> https://about.google/company-info/philosophy/

> 1. Focus on the user and all else will follow.

> 6. You can make money without doing evil.

Comment by geysersam 8 hours ago

Hah

> 6. You can make money without doing evil

implies that they're doing it for fun then I guess?

Comment by yread 7 hours ago

you make some money without doing evil and some more in other ways

Comment by kibibu 7 hours ago

Technically, you can make money without doing evil.

Comment by mrandish 7 hours ago

I heard they actually changed to this wording from the original, which for a long time was "Don't be evil."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_evil

Comment by ChoGGi 2 hours ago

You heard? It was a fairly big controversy when they did get around to removing it.

Comment by NoMoreNicksLeft 8 hours ago

Or obligation.

Comment by speedgoose 6 hours ago

> You can make money without doing evil.

Neat! I rate this sentence at 7/10 on my scale of shit American companies say. The top score is currently held by Palantir with their X bio "Software that dominates."

Comment by out_of_protocol 8 hours ago

> 6. You can make money without doing evil.

You can but well, it's more profitable the other way around....

Comment by subscribed 2 hours ago

See if you can raise it as an issue. There's clearly a grave errors on the page.

Comment by throwawayqqq11 9 hours ago

Google only moves fast and breaks things that matter.

Their sunsetting of manifest v2 appears fast to me and updating some corporate philosophy has apparently no business impact.

Comment by userbinator 9 hours ago

Archive it before they memoryhole it.

Comment by pndy 8 hours ago

Yeah I'd expect someone here will note it and page will get a "deserved" update

Comment by eloisant 7 hours ago

"You can make money without doing evil [but that's not what we do]"

Comment by dbbk 4 hours ago

What is evil about this?

Comment by chinathrow 9 hours ago

Look, we're having a good time on Firefox since November 9, 2004. Come join us!

Comment by mbmbn 7 hours ago

Then again, our laptop battery only lasts 1/3 as much on MacOS.

I know, I know. The community keeps pretending this isn’t an issue for the last, hum, 15 years? But it is, and for people that are looking for a tool and not for a statement, it quickly drives them away from Firefox back to Chrome browsers.

Comment by elAhmo 6 hours ago

Anything to back those claims up? I use Firefox and didn't really notice this (although I am rarely on battery), and other than Google Meet making my machine throttle (and I blame that on Google not on Mozilla), I don't use Chrome for anything else for my browsing.

Comment by HelloMcFly 3 hours ago

I've used Firefox across devices, across the years. This just isn't my experience, at all, remotely. And I have had to use Chrome (now it is Edge) for many work functions, so I do have the A/B comparisons. I'm not doubting your experience, fine, but I also know I'm not "pretending" anything in my own experience.

Comment by ChoGGi 2 hours ago

Firefox on Android 16, it sucks the battery up in background mode (even with permission to use background turned off).

If I manually close it no issue.

Comment by HelloMcFly 2 hours ago

I believe you.

I also do not, and have never, experienced this. I've been using Pixel phones since the 3a in 2019/2020.

Comment by tpm 1 hour ago

doesn't happen in my case (OnePlus 15/Android 16, Firefox background usage allowed in some "smart" mode whatever that means, doesn't suck the battery in background although it's on most of the time).

Comment by 7 hours ago

Comment by eviks 7 hours ago

Right after they reach at least ~80% of customization Vivaldi offers!

Comment by qmmmur 7 hours ago

This isn't the gotcha you think it is. Every time I try Vivaldi I am right back at Firefox and I am surely not alone. I have never understood the obsession with tree style tabs or vertical tabs. I don't need to customise my browser at all and I like supporting engine diversity.

Comment by hgoel 1 hour ago

The motivation for vertical tabs is pretty straightforward, screens are mostly wider than they are tall, browsers are often used in fullscreen mode, yet much of the web does not use much of the screen's width. So it's a better use of screen space to put tabs on the side than on top.

Comment by eviks 7 hours ago

> I don't need to customise my browser

Ok, but not every use case is so primitive? I do need my custom shortcuts and what not, so it is exactly the correct "gotcha" I think it is even if that's beyond your understanding.

Comment by Markoff 6 hours ago

went from Firefox to Vivaldi, never looked back for many years

on Android phone tried many, most recently was using Kiwi Browser, then for some time Firefox until they fucked up UI, so moved to Cromite, though my phone broke (never buy Google Pixel again, first broken phone after 15 years with smartphones and various brands including very low budget), so now I am on my old phone which for some reason doesn't support Cromite, so I am back at Firefox temporarily

Comment by nchmy 3 hours ago

Why not Vivaldi on android as well, and benefit from sync etc? That's what I've been doing for about 8 months now. Generally quite happy.

Comment by Markoff 3 hours ago

no extensions, cant live without uBlock Origin and few others

Comment by perks_12 8 hours ago

Was that the year they fired the Rust team to focus on paying their executives?

Comment by 28304283409234 8 hours ago

Let's not exchange crap behaviour. I think google would win hands down. Firefox at least has adblocking.

Comment by Freak_NL 8 hours ago

The classic 'those guys did something bad, so I am going to go with the guys who are absolute assholes doing several orders of magnitude more bad things now instead' response.

That usually means that whoever utters it was just looking for a sycophantic excuse to go with the bigger threat because it is more convenient to them (for now).

Comment by pjc50 8 hours ago

It's remarkable how often this happens, isn't it? One incident of someone not living up to standards is suddenly an opportunity to abandon standards and go with known bad actors. It's like people giving up on the MSM and immediately latching onto propaganda Youtubers instead.

Comment by account42 4 hours ago

Not at all. Firefox is a trap to keep motivated people from banding together to create a real user-respecting alternative.

Comment by charcircuit 8 hours ago

No it doesn't. Unlike Brave, Firefox needs an extension to block ads just like Chrome.

Comment by tpm 8 hours ago

or even since 2002 when it started as Phoenix

https://website-archive.mozilla.org/www.mozilla.org/firefox_...

Comment by totetsu 8 hours ago

uBo is the only reason I find browsing the web at all tolerable anymore. As a test I turned it off to view this article and almost crashed my browser with a dozen auto play video ads This would mean I would find the energy to get over anything that is holding me on chrome, like saved passwords etc.

Comment by matheusmoreira 8 hours ago

Agree. The web is literally unusable without uBlock Origin. It should be a standard browser feature at this point, like popup blockers.

Comment by raffael_de 7 hours ago

I personally consider uBlock Origin as an Internet infrastructure component. I have no ... _no_ idea whatsoever how some people use the Internet without it.

Comment by anonymousiam 8 hours ago

In addition to uBlock Origin, I also have a few piholes (two locations), and I use NoScript as well. It's nice to have multiple layers of defense.

Comment by riffraff 8 hours ago

it _is_ a browser feature for e.g. brave, vivaldi and (experimental, afair) firefox.

Popup blockers were also a differentiator, once.

Comment by eloisant 7 hours ago

The difference is that the biggest popup offender was not the same company behind the browser everyone uses...

Just imagine if Netscape and MS made all their money from popups at the time.

Comment by nolist_policy 7 hours ago

uBlock Origin Lite with MV3 works perfectly fine on Chrome. I don't notice a difference to the classic uBlock Origin, it even has a element zapper nowadays.

Comment by NoMoreNicksLeft 8 hours ago

It's quite possible that we're just not meant to view the web. Those companies that even maintain websites might intend for us to really view things on their phone app. The garbage you see on the website is then not just some parasitic draining of your spiritual health, but a disincentive designed to convince you to stop using the web altogether.

Comment by gblargg 6 hours ago

Like Home Depot not showing the item location in store from the website, only the app.

Comment by sseagull 3 hours ago

I only use the Home Depot website, and it shows the location for me. Maybe it’s regional or something

Comment by EasyMark 1 hour ago

Yeah not sure what they're talking about, that's how I do it too

Comment by gblargg 1 minute ago

I just tested and apparently their site is extremely flaky. I tried for several minutes to get info but nothing except one time (changing store location, refreshing). Then it started working fine for a while, updating when I changed location. I cleared cookies out each time and that didn't cause/fix it. So it's not intentional to push you to the app, just a shit site (not just because of this issue, but its extreme slowness on mobile).

Comment by ChoGGi 2 hours ago

"We won't be able to provide / maintain this functionality indefinitely due to the complexity and tech debt, as well as the security risks it entails (we've actually found a number of bugs that are specific to MV2 lately)."

Poor little Google doesn't have the resources to support mv2.

Comment by dotcoma 9 hours ago

Why are people on HN still using Chrome? (or Edge, or Opera…)

Comment by michaelt 8 hours ago

I don't, 99.9% of the time.

But when your browser has a 2% market share worldwide, some developers won't bother to test on it. And if your setup is even more obscure (I use Firefox on Linux with an adblocker and third-party cookies blocked and DRM disabled and autoplaying video disabled and so on) making you rare even among that 2%, sometimes sites won't have tested with your specific configuration.

It's useful to have a second browser around, as a fallback when a site is broken. Uploading images when creating a listing on ebay is broken, but I don't have to figure out which element of my setup is breaking it, I can just switch to the other browser.

Comment by dvh 7 hours ago

There are 2 reasons why I'm using chromium (with ublock origin lite) over Firefox:

1. Chromium is significantly faster (maybe 5 to 10x faster on certain tasks mostly around canvas but anything that requires fast ui really). Every time I use Firefox it feels like it has some kind of serious problem. If chrome was this slow I would stop working and start investigating what part of my computer is broken. This experience hasn't changed over span of 10 years, 3 OSes and several computers.

2. Neverending caching issues on Firefox. It just caches too aggressively which makes development really annoying to a point where anytime I encounter issue on Firefox my first thought is "Is this Firefox caching issue?". On chrome when I change button color and I don't see it, I know I made a mistake. If I change button color on Firefox, my first thought is, is this Firefox caching issue? When I develop web I have very quick update loop and I really can't be questioning browser. I cannot work like this. Firefox is unusable for me.

Comment by lelanthran 4 hours ago

> It just caches too aggressively which makes development really annoying to a point where anytime I encounter issue on Firefox my first thought is "Is this Firefox caching issue?".

This is a non-issue, if the devtools is opened, checkbox for "disable cache" is is checked by default.

> When I develop web I have very quick update loop and I really can't be questioning browser. I cannot work like this. Firefox is unusable for me.

How can you be developing front-ends and not have the devtools open while doing your quick edit-test cycle?

Comment by elashri 6 hours ago

Ctrl + shift + R would solve your second problem at all times.

And I don't think your first point is quantified correctly and I am sure there is no data to back it up. But I understand the appeal of trying to quantify your personal experience.

Comment by pebble 6 hours ago

I can back up their first point a tiny bit with regards to canvas. The primary product of our company is heavily canvas-based so I’ve always noticed that canvas on Firefox on macs is slower than on Chrome but it used to be in the 2-3x range and nowadays is more in the 1.5x range. They’ve made great improvements and I’ve never noted anything close to 5-10x slowdowns.

On Windows Firefox and Chrome canvas has performed equally well at least for the past ten years. Got no data for linux tho.

Comment by moebrowne 6 hours ago

Yup, or open dev tools and enable "disable cache". This applies only while dev tools is open

Comment by emayljames 7 hours ago

[dead]

Comment by ano-ther 8 hours ago

Some pages do not work in Firefox, so I keep a copy of Chrome around.

It’s a bit like with Internet Explorer which back in its day was also needed for some stubborn sites.

Comment by RachelF 8 hours ago

Me too. Many government or banking sites only work properly on Chrome. Anything with Docusign is Chrome-only.

Comment by fsflover 8 hours ago

Name and shame?

Comment by raffael_de 7 hours ago

Netflix.

Comment by sakisv 6 hours ago

This is not true. I'm a Firefox user and it works perfectly fine in Firefox.

Comment by raffael_de 6 hours ago

Windows or Linux?

Comment by CyberDildonics 1 hour ago

You brought it up, you specify where it doesn't work.

Comment by raffael_de 1 hour ago

Netflix doesn't serve maximum res for Linux and Firefox due to DRM related reasons. Chrome on Linux usually resolves or at least amends the issue.

Comment by hgoel 1 hour ago

I switched over to Edge from Firefox because it was simply much better at managing its memory on my laptop. With Firefox I had to be far more cautious about having too many things running at once. WSL2 would often be killed to free up memory.

Recently I found they added the ability to auto-sort and group tabs via Copilot, probably the only thing I've found the non-GitHub copilot to be genuinely useful for.

Comment by batperson 6 hours ago

Edge user here. For one, chromium is faster than firefox, any given page will load about 20% faster, another reason is edge workspaces feature, I've grown to like it, which seems to be some sort of chromium feature that everyone bakes in weird ways if at all, and I'm still running ublock origin on edge without any funky bypasses.

Then there's a fact that a bunch of sites/webapps straight up refuse to work on firefox and they ask you to install chrome or something. And lastly chromium the most popular browser flavor and as a web dev it helps to see pages through "the same eyes" as my users/customers.

That's about it, the only reason I use firefox every day is their superior picture-in-picture player, chromium one is waaay inferior.

Comment by nchmy 3 hours ago

Give Vivaldi a try. I used edge on windows and android ever since it started used chromium, and switched to Vivaldi on Linux and android 8 months ago. Generally quite happy with it - not really missing any features from edge.

Comment by lelanthran 4 hours ago

> Edge user here. For one, chromium is faster than firefox, any given page will load about 20% faster,

I'm skeptical; You're probably measuring Chromium + ads against FF + ads.

The only fair test is testing agains FF + uBlockOrigin. And there, FF wins hands down.

Comment by 20k 8 hours ago

For me the two reasons I can't live without are

1. Firefox's ctrl-f search doesn't highlight all instances of a found item on the right hand side. It sounds petty, but its a gigantic timesaver for looking through research documents

2. Firefox's tab crash recovery isn't as solid. I use chrome with fully persistent tabs, and its a gigantic pain if I can't re-open them

If I could find a way to fix these I'd swap in a heartbeat

Comment by Ennea 8 hours ago

Firefox has added highlighting of search terms in the page's scroll bar quite a few versions ago, if you want to give it another spin for that.

Comment by 20k 7 hours ago

Weird, it still only highlights a single occurrence for me if I ctrl-f something, is there a setting for this or something?

Comment by jeroenhd 7 hours ago

You need to click "highlight all" to highlight all occurrences. It's the checkbox to the right of the search box. If you enable it for the first time, you may need to hit enter in the search bar again for it to show up (it remembers the setting and works instantly the next search)

Comment by 20k 7 hours ago

Apparently I'm just a moron and have never seen it has settings in 10+ years. Thanks!

Comment by 7 hours ago

Comment by Chiron1991 7 hours ago

[dead]

Comment by misswaterfairy 8 hours ago

Do these Firefox extensions help?

I haven't used this, as I didn't know it was a feature I needed until you mentioned it.

- https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/find-in-page-...

Tab Session Manager allows you to dump tabs to groups for restoration later, with auto-save at regular intervals. Works quite well!

- https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-session-m...

Comment by Itoldmyselfso 4 hours ago

There's also Simple tab groups which allows creation of file backups at regular intervals https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/simple-tab-gr...

Comment by 20k 7 hours ago

Thanks for this, I'll go have a look

Comment by plqbfbv 8 hours ago

> 2. Firefox's tab crash recovery isn't as solid. I use chrome with fully persistent tabs, and its a gigantic pain if I can't re-open them

I normally have 5-50 tabs open (so perhaps on the lower end), but I can't recall the last time I crashed a tab in the last 3 years. I also use persistent/pinned tabs and never noticed issues.

Comment by 20k 7 hours ago

Its not the tabs themselves crashing, its when firefox (or my pc as a whole - I'm a developer and its a frequent occurance) crashes, firefox isn't as good as chrome at remembering what tabs were previously open

Comment by hansvm 9 hours ago

Is that a rhetorical question suggesting those people are wrong, or are you asking for, e.g., the technical reasons some software only works with Chrome in the mix?

Comment by tgv 9 hours ago

I'm betting there are a lot of people here using Chrome as their "daily driver".

Comment by dotcoma 9 hours ago

To people who like Chrome, or some of its features (I love their bookmarks), I say: try Helium. Or Iridium. Or even Brave.

Comment by worthless-trash 8 hours ago

Which one isnt going to get unmaintained first.

Comment by dotcoma 8 hours ago

Brave, then, I imagine.

Comment by Scoundreller 9 hours ago

Locked down computers that still let you install extension.

Comment by dijit 8 hours ago

Since it underpins so much of the modern browser ecosystem it becomes a primary target for webapps to work.

As such, if you want to be sure a website will work you use chrome.

Since chrome has such a market share, developers feel justified testing primarily for chrome.

Self-fulfilling cycle.

Comment by pjmlp 5 hours ago

Because they don't bother to learn the history, worse, they are also worshipping Electron crap, which is basically Chrome.

Comment by nubinetwork 7 hours ago

Find me a browser that doesn't have ai shoved into it... and no I don't mean 10 year old versions of iceweasel.

Comment by ceving 8 hours ago

Don't know, but I have uninstalled it a few minutes ago.

Comment by girvo 8 hours ago

Work forces me to on the work laptop. But Ublock Origin Lite is good enough for that use-case. I use firefox everywhere else.

Comment by maxloh 8 hours ago

Actually, I opted in for tracking. Knowing my interests, Google suggests good articles on their Android app feed.

Also, there are a few parts of Firefox that still look ancient, like the bookmarks and history managers, as well as the PDF viewer, where the buttons are too small to click easily. Unfortunately, those are unusable for a Gen Zer.

Comment by djfergus 8 hours ago

On lower end cpus (N100) chromium/brave benchmarks 10-20% faster than Firefox.

Comment by lxgr 8 hours ago

Even if you factor in all the ad bloat that uBlock lite can’t block?

Comment by hgoel 1 hour ago

Brave has built-in blocking, it's literally one of their main selling points.

Comment by nmeagent 7 hours ago

I keep chromium installed mostly to run virtual tabletop software (specifically Foundry VTT), because webgl performance in firefox is not great (though it has improved somewhat in the last couple of years). There are also a few sites (mostly restaurants for some reason) that just refuse to work properly in firefox, so I sometimes fall back to chromium. I wish I could drop it like a bad habit, because frankly Google's shenanigans piss me off on a semi-regular basis.

Comment by partiallypro 9 hours ago

That's pretty irrelevant isn't it? Shouldn't all users demand privacy, especially from ads?

Comment by dotcoma 9 hours ago

All users should demand privacy, but they don’t.

Take a look at Firefox’s market share, or Brave’s etc.

Comment by JumpCrisscross 9 hours ago

Won’t Brave follow Google’s lead on this?

Gecko, WebKit and—hopefully—Ladybird are the true alternatives. I used to think this was too extreme. But the ad vendor dragging ad blockers out of the engine flipped my view.

Comment by riffraff 8 hours ago

Brave has its own ad blocker engine built-in rather than as an extension, and it can reuse uBlock's lists

https://github.com/brave/adblock-rust

I use brave on my phone and I can't really tell the difference from desktop browser+UO, so I guess it works well enough.

Comment by dotcoma 8 hours ago

Brave, like Vivaldi, I think, have developed their own ad blocker.

No idea if they will fight to keep UBlock Origin accessible or not.

I think and certainly hope that Helium will fight the good fight.

Comment by pseudalopex 8 hours ago

> Won’t Brave follow Google’s lead on this?

They said they could offer limited MV2 support even after it’s fully removed from the upstream Chromium codebase.[1]

[1] https://brave.com/blog/brave-shields-manifest-v3/

Comment by 8 hours ago

Comment by fp64 6 hours ago

uBlock Origin Lite works perfectly, so I have no complaints?

Comment by anal_reactor 7 hours ago

On mobile, Opera is the only usable browser. It supports text reflow on zoom, and also I can choose the download folder for each file. Allows me to keep porn and non-porn downloads separate.

Comment by evolighting 9 hours ago

I'm a Firefox user for about 20yrs (since Firefox 3);

but too often I have to use Chrome, as so many sites only work properly on it; Firefox is really buggy or laggy on those websites;

For a time, all those AI chat web pages were just very slow on Firefox even with very little context, whereas Chrome only gets laggy when there is a lot of context.

Comment by miriam_catira 8 hours ago

Same here, but when a site completely fails in Firefox I either A) use my phone because mobile Firefox occasionally works or B) use Ungoogled Chromium.

https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium

Really hoping the uBlock will continue to work on that project...

Comment by MasterYoda 8 hours ago

Are you really sure it’s not because of an add-on? If I remember correctly, Mozilla has said that about 95% of all pages that don’t work aren’t due to Firefox, but to an add-on. I use Firefox exclusively and don’t usually notice that pages don’t work. When that happens, as I said, it’s almost always an add-on that’s to blame. And I dont notice its buggy or laggy. So could be good check your addons next time.

Comment by evolighting 6 hours ago

Here are some cases where Firefox really sucks: some of them are specific CSS styles, some are downgraded features, and some of them I just don't know why. As I mentioned here, the ChatGPT web and Gemini web used to be very laggy for no reason—or maybe it was just a bug for me?

I don't think any of this is caused by add-ons, though.

But it's getting better, and most of those problems are just gone;

Still, I keep Chrome around just in case.

Comment by t0bia_s 8 hours ago

How many extensions do you use on laggy FF?

Comment by shellwizard 8 hours ago

Not using many extensions on my case, but Google meet remains unusable for a long time, sound is horrible during meetings. Chrome on the other hand works fine

Comment by iririririr 8 hours ago

only site that was slow on firefox was google meet, but then it turned out someone documented how google had code to explicitly do that. ouch.

Comment by Gualdrapo 9 hours ago

Ex-bosses used it so had to test shit on them.

Comment by dotcoma 9 hours ago

Ok but if you use it only for testing, and not for your ‘real’ browsing, then probably the fact that they track what you are doing is not that important, even if it’s still a nuisance. Or not?

Comment by Markoff 6 hours ago

only reason I can think of is synchronization among devices since you can't find same decent browser you could use on Android phone and desktop, Firefox ain't decent browser on neither of those, on desktop Vivaldi with customization and stability is superior, on Android Firefox actually ain't THAT bad since good browsers with extensions support are not that common, I would recommend Cromite, though there is also Helium and Ultimatum

Comment by TiredOfLife 8 hours ago

Firefox will also disable V2 sooner or later. BUT. Chrome then will still have uBlock Origin lite. Firefox won't, because mozilla banned that extension from store.

Comment by Krssst 8 hours ago

> Firefox will also disable V2 sooner or later.

Source?

> Firefox won't, because mozilla banned that extension from store.

It's unbanned; the author chose to not put it back. https://www.ghacks.net/2024/10/01/mozillas-massive-lapse-in-...

Comment by maxloh 8 hours ago

Yeah, pissing off the ecosystem is a great way to drive users to your competitors. Requiring users to manually install and update a popular extension is a subpar experience.

It seems they spent so much of their budget on the CEO's salary that they couldn't afford an extension review team.

Quoting open-paren comment (2024):

> As far as I can tell, there are maybe two reviewers that are based in Europe (Romania?). The turn around time is long when I am in the US, and it has been rife with this same kind of "simple mistake" that takes 2 weeks to resolve.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41710183

Comment by account42 4 hours ago

Even if their review is flawed with false positive rejections, you'd think they have checks to require approvals from up the chain for poster child extensions that without which FF would be nothing.

Comment by doikor 8 hours ago

There is currently no plan to deprecate V2 manifest in Firefox.

And Firefox version of V3 supports browser.webRequest blocking (the part that adblockers need to work properly)

Comment by kelnos 8 hours ago

> Firefox will also disable V2 sooner or later.

Got a source for that, or is that just unfounded speculation?

Comment by gblargg 6 hours ago

Well given a long enough timeline, everything will be disabled at some point.

Comment by michaelmrose 8 hours ago

Why wouldn't someone anyone cobble together a v3 version between the uncertain future date in which v2 was deprecated and when it became unavailable. There appears to be no possible future in which google has better adblocking.

Comment by m-schuetz 8 hours ago

I switched from Firefox to Chrome a couple of years back because Firefox always dragged its feet when it came to implementing important developer features. Like, DataView was excruciatingly slow in Firefox; WebGPU support didnt go anywhere; and they initially refused to implement import maps. I consider the latter to be an essential tool as it allows me to work without the need for build systems. Also, chrome dev tools worked far better.

Since Chrome blocked ublock, I switched to Edge. Not sure where I will go next, but I dont think it will be Firefox since they are always years late.

Comment by sunaookami 8 hours ago

I hope Firefox never drops MV2. I have a lot of other extensions that use it other than uBlock. Can't believe Google really went through with it. We are truly in the end times of "personal" computing, very sad to see :/

Comment by Sayrus 5 hours ago

MV3 itself isn't what breaks uBlock Origin, it is the bundled removal of capabilities that Chrome decided to do. Firefox MV3 supports full WebRequest "scopes" while Chrome only supports declarativeNetRequest.

Comment by grishka 9 hours ago

I wonder what will Vivaldi do. They say that their built-in content blocker is "good enough" that you supposedly don't need uBO (I very much disagree) but they also keep MV2 extensions working to this day.

Comment by pseudalopex 8 hours ago

Vivaldi said We will keep Manifest v2 for as long as it’s still available in Chromium.[1] They kept it before now because it was little effort.

[1] https://vivaldi.com/blog/manifest-v3-update-vivaldi-is-futur...

Comment by maxloh 8 hours ago

They can only support MV2 extensions as long as Google continues to maintain them.

Their tech stack is heavily JavaScript-focused, as their entire UI is written in JavaScript.

Comment by zamadatix 7 hours ago

How is it half of HN is convinced Firefox can compete with Chrome in its entirety and the other half is convinced nobody can possibly maintain a single additional API version on Chromium?

Comment by maxloh 7 hours ago

It's about the tech stack, IMO. Chromium is a moving target to maintain compatibility with, which is difficult for a team that doesn't have much C++ experience.

As a counter example, Brave is heavily invested in C++ and Rust, and I believe they could handle that work much better.

Comment by zamadatix 5 hours ago

Sure but even Vivaldi has a few C++ folks on the dev team, how many more is it to maintain an existing API to changes in the codebase, especially when any of the hard parts of that work only need be done once among all of the forks.

Even if they don't want to handle it directly, this is the kind of thing a single sponsor can pay Igalia for, who have shown the ability to make entire new Chromium subsystems like MathML. There is no shortage of C++ browser developers in the world to do maintenance work.

Comment by grishka 7 hours ago

Can't Chromium-based browser developers work together to fork the entire thing? Ideally becoming independent of Google altogether.

Comment by pseudalopex 6 hours ago

It would be much spent and not much gained in their eyes.

Comment by derideor 8 hours ago

So, what's next? Will Chrome ship with hard coded DNS, so that DNS based adblockers will stop working as well? Where (and when) does my rights what to display on my devices end?

Comment by somat 8 hours ago

Ship has already sailed, it's called DoH. Please note, that it is to make your DNS safer and has absolutely nothing to do with removing your ability to resolve DNS in whatever way you want to(cough adblock cough).

Comment by SparkyMcUnicorn 56 minutes ago

How does DoH remove any capabilities of what the resolver can respond to queries with? I block ads via a DoH resolver.

Comment by derideor 8 hours ago

I guess I just missed that?! I'm running a mix of Adguard and nextdns blockers on some of my mobile devices, and both are apparently handling the DoH issue for you; by just blanket blocking the resolvers and/or ports, to force a fallback.... I need a Beer.

Comment by account42 4 hours ago

Don't worry. Once their telemetry shows that DoH is working for enough users they'll push to remove the fallback for security reasons.

Comment by hamburgererror 7 hours ago

> my rights

There's no such thing in the Google realm

Comment by bodash 3 hours ago

My browser combo: Firefox Developer Edition + uBo + Privacy Badger + Facebook Containers

One time setup, it’s synced to Mozilla account for later reinstalls

Comment by Balinares 8 hours ago

AdGuard MV3 works fine. Still switch to FF if you can, more diversity in the ecosystem benefits everyone.

Comment by renegat0x0 8 hours ago

wasn't mv3 a dumbed down version? So it "does not work just fine" as some ads slip through?

Comment by maxloh 7 hours ago

MV3 is actually a faster but less capable version.

With MV2, every request must be filtered with slow, JIT, garbage-collected JavaScript code. In MV3, filtering is handled by native browser code using the list provided by extensions. UserScripts could be used to modify the DOM, but that requires power users to manually enable it.

Comment by 8 hours ago

Comment by charcircuit 8 hours ago

What ads are slipping through?

Comment by mindcrash 2 hours ago

Ungoogled Chromium (https://ungoogled-software.github.io/) will 99.9% likely patch MV2 back in if they remove it (as there's already support and they will never remove it) and Ungoogled Chromium based Helium (https://helium.computer/) even ships with uBlock Origin by default.

And then there's still Firefox and all of its forks.

Best of luck to Big Tech as people will move on elsewhere.

Comment by js2 1 hour ago

I use uBO lite with Safari on macOS/iOS and maybe I just don't know what I'm (not?) missing, but it seems fine? I rarely see ads. Is uBO lite for Chrome that much worse than uBO?

Comment by geysersam 8 hours ago

Finally Firefox will get a 30% usage share!

Comment by rwmj 8 hours ago

I'm confident that Mozilla corporate will find some way to self-sabotage before that happens.

Comment by cryo32 8 hours ago

That is my fear. Or get distracted on some ancillary product that takes resources away from FF development.

Just keep making a browser that isn’t shit. That’s your only job!

Comment by shellwizard 7 hours ago

Normies don't care much about ads, trackers and all that nuisance. I find it astonishing when you see them dodging all that crap while browsing the Internet

Comment by fallbackboy 4 hours ago

I would recommend folks check out Helium (https://helium.computer) it’s fast, basically just ungoogled chromium, and has full support for ublock origin.

Comment by pseudalopex 3 hours ago

> full support for ublock origin

This meant they added to Blink all the Gecko features uBlock Origin used?[1] Or they said they could maintain MV2 after Google removed it fully? Or they supported it so far?

They said We'll keep support for MV2 extensions for as long as possible. But other developers said this and meant they would support MV2 until Google removed it.

[1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...

Comment by fallbackboy 3 hours ago

They bundle uBlock Origin into their Chromium fork, I expect that if it became too difficult to support the APIs needed on MV2, they'd integrate the features more directly into the browser.

Comment by danslo 8 hours ago

>from our experience, uBO Lite does not seem to be as good as the original non-Lite version

In what way? I've never noticed a difference.

Comment by pseudalopex 4 hours ago

The uBlock Origin Lite FAQ said In general, uBOL will be less effective at dealing with websites using anti-content blocker or minimizing website breakage because many filters can't be converted into DNR rules (see log of conversion for technical details).[1]

[1] https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/Frequently-as...

Comment by 8 hours ago

Comment by jameson 7 hours ago

Moved to Firefox. Thank you Firefox.

Comment by ggm 9 hours ago

Does Brave track or does Brave fork on this?

Comment by eran- 9 hours ago

It seems as if they will track it (https://brave.com/blog/brave-shields-manifest-v3/), with an exception for a selected few extensions (AdGuard AdBlocker, NoScript, uBlock Origin, and uMatrix).

Comment by ggm 8 hours ago

The few exceptions being the ones we want. So.. a good outcome.

Comment by pseudalopex 8 hours ago

We want forks or better extensions impossible?

Comment by ggm 8 hours ago

If they were willing to make exceptions then I would hope the list isn't closed. I view this as the best of the possible worlds not the best of all imaginable worlds.

Perhaps good was overkill. Less bad?

Comment by pseudalopex 6 hours ago

They would add the most popular fork if uBlock Origin was abandoned is plausible. They would add a no reputation developer's proof of concept is unlikely I think.

Comment by charcircuit 8 hours ago

I've found Brave's built in ad blocking to be good enough on its own.

Comment by 9 hours ago

Comment by kmfrk 5 hours ago

The year is 2030. Content's been blocked by age verification and overreach, but the ads still remain.

Comment by TomMasz 5 hours ago

The university I work at is heavily dependent on Google and its products, so I use Vivaldi for work. Otherwise, it's Firefox. I've been using it since the beginning and see no reason to change. If a site doesn't work with it, than I don't visit that site.

Comment by topsykrates 8 hours ago

I have been using UBlock Origin Lite on Chrome for a while, and while it's not perfect and needs a bit of manual tweaking here and there, it's been mostly good for me

Comment by nullbio 8 hours ago

The only reason I use Chrome is because its dev tools are better, and for whatever reason, webgl wigs out on Ubuntu 26.04 in Firefox. It's mostly the lag issue though...

Comment by userbinator 9 hours ago

IMHO it's quite brave that a Google employee working in that area would let his real name be published, and an illuminating view of how they (don't) think.

Comment by ajkjk 3 hours ago

If I stop having a way to block ads I will stop using the internet. They are so evil.

Comment by fab13n 8 hours ago

Being the maintainer of such a big open-source application as Chrome used to grant dictatorial power: maintaining a fork represented too much work. It only happened in the most awful situations, such as Oracle acquiring OpenOffice.

But that was before LLM-driven development, I think that now the game has changed, and maybe Google hasn't got the leverage it thinks it has.

Comment by tentacleuno 7 hours ago

A browser engine maintained by AI with less human oversight sounds like a recipe for disaster.

Comment by orwin 7 hours ago

Opera was a strong contender to become my main browser (luckily firefox copied the most useful feature, it's vpn), if ublock is deactivated, I will let it go without a second look.

Comment by austin-cheney 7 hours ago

The solution then is to run the equivalent of a PiHole on your private network and then configure your portable devices to always use that PiHole as their DNS service via self hosted VPN

Comment by nizbit 6 hours ago

Pihole is great for DNS filtering but doesn’t hide elements, no filtering and script blocking.

Comment by pseudalopex 7 hours ago

DNS ad blocking is useful. It does not replace browser ad blocking.

Comment by zerr 7 hours ago

Chrome: uBlock Origin is dead.

Any other browser with uBlock Origin: Chrome is dead.

Comment by Havoc 8 hours ago

Adtech company insists on ramming more unwanted ads down your throat

Comment by z3ratul163071 4 hours ago

thank god for firefox

Comment by kahf56 4 hours ago

Could brave browser continue their add block rampage?

Comment by spwa4 8 hours ago

"removing Effectively-dead code" nice euphemism for directly killing a feature people desperately want ...

Comment by damnitbuilds 9 hours ago

Boycott evil companies.

Comment by AltruisticGapHN 7 hours ago

uBlock Origin Lite works just as well. I don't see any ads anywhere. My experience has not changed one yota.

People just like to rage against Google.

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublock-origin-lite/...

It's even available on iOS, I have it running in Safari

Comment by RockstarSprain 8 hours ago

AdGuard works fine for me, on YouTube as well.

Comment by JamesTRexx 7 hours ago

Just about obligatory mention of Pale Moon here. Have had a relatively clean internet experience for years with the old Firefox uBlock extension in combination with eMatrix. *Includes a disclaimer because I don't use Youtube and other assorted "social" media websites.

Only need Firefox ESR for a handful of websites giving me no option when specifying a Linux/Mozilla user agent instead of the native one for those doesn't work.

Comment by m-schuetz 8 hours ago

I hope not, I switched from chrome to edge so I can continue using ublock origin.

Comment by metalman 6 hours ago

It looks like crunch time is here. Personaly I have never watched add's on the net, by useing alternative browsers for 99% of my time, doing things like downloading a browser to do online banking, and then uninstalling it. Even as a child I didn't like advertisements, and have never owned a TV, for the simple reason that NO advertisement has ever shown me something I wanted, and could have. I have learned to let the net do it's thing, and provide me with work making things that people want, or show a lead to a product if I search (think~tractor part) but the rest is alien and very unpleasant for me to encounter.

Here is the guy who builds the browser I use https://www.stoutner.com/about/

git https://gitweb.stoutner.com/?p=PrivacyBrowserAndroid.git;a=s...

download https://www.stoutner.com/privacy-browser-android/changelog/

Comment by 2 hours ago

Comment by apimade 7 hours ago

So, consider this a layman explanation of why this change is bad from someone who spends their time securing end-users.

This change is good for the majority of users, but is actually bad for large enterprise customers and highly-regulated customers. It puts more control and onus of responsibility on to Google, rather than the end-user. So, we will expect to see better enforcement of controls from Google for the lowest-hanging-fruit that some aspects of MV2 exposed.

What's that, you say? MV2 changes? Well there's 3 things.

1. Remote code execution. The ability for someone to just yeet commands into your browser. A little harder to do directly.. Still very possible, just with extra steps.

2. Removing the ability for extensions to access network requests directly, which is what adblockers often relied on. It also means malicious extensions could snoop on your requests. They still can, just with extra steps.

3. Background persistence, an extension could stay alive, maintain state, run timers, keep connections open, and coordinate across tabs. So this shuts off the "background persistence" piece -- but helps with ensuring better isolation. Still possible, but now requires yeeting your data to an external provider instead of keeping the state contained locally.

Those 3 changes are incredibly powerful, and will impact many, many Enterprise security tools. Tools that now instead will result in products like "Island Browser", and "Enterprise Chrome" being rolled out to supplement the functionality that MV2 gave us.

This change goes against the US and Australian government's hardening advice, and reduces the overall efficacy of security controls we're able to implement within our web browsers natively.

CISA's own guidance on this is pretty straightforward (aptly named Securing Web Browsers and Defending Against Malvertising for Federal Agencies): https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/2023-09/CISA%20CEG%...

Here's the Australian Government's control relating to it:

> Control: ISM-1485; Revision: 1; Updated: Sep-21; Applicable: NC, OS, P, S, TS; Essential 8: ML1, ML2, ML3 > Web browsers do not process web advertisements from the internet.

And if you're wondering about what incentives there are that led to this change, you can read this letter written to the Chairman of the FTC by a US Senator back in 2020. This letter is linked to from the same CISA document I shared earlier.

You should read it in full, and consider what incentives the Senator was referring to -- and how they also apply in this scenario.

https://www.wyden.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/011420%20Wyden%20...

Those Enterprise Chrome products I mentioned earlier? Chrome's change has now put some of this functionality which was previously possible with an extension, behind the Enterprise Chrome Premium SKU: https://chromeenterprise.google/products/chrome-enterprise-p...

Comment by Stevvo 8 hours ago

uBlock Origin Lite gives an identical browsing experience, ad-free. What is all the fuss about?

Comment by pseudalopex 8 hours ago

Your comment was redundant.[1] And contradicted in the uBlock Origin Lite FAQ.[2] And in the article.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48472424

[2] https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/Frequently-as...

Comment by bronlund 9 hours ago

People still using that POS? :)

Comment by jon_adler 8 hours ago

Yet another reason to also perform ad blocking at the network level (e.g. DNS). I’ve found AdGuard Home very easy to maintain. Using Firefox and Orion browsers too.

Comment by Markoff 6 hours ago

Actually the main killer feature of UbO for me is cosmetic filtering with element picker, if I wanted just any ad blocker I could use various browsers with built-in adblockers supporting lists.

So much for blocking at network level.

Comment by curiousgal 7 hours ago

> Cronin further explained why MV2 extensions are no longer allowed in supported Chrome versions as maintaining the associated functionality indefinitely is no longer possible. He cited growing technical difficulties and implementation complexities as well as security concerns.

You know what else is a security concern? Ads. The amount of mental gymnastics is insane. It's honestly insulting.

Comment by Devasta 5 hours ago

Clamping down on adblocking was always the plan and anyone who suggested differently was knowingly lying.

Comment by zuzululu 7 hours ago

Google : "You will own nothing and like manifest v3"

smiling smugly from planet firefox

Comment by Ecko123 8 hours ago

[dead]

Comment by rvz 8 hours ago

Totally not a monopoly on the browser space /s

Comment by TiredOfLife 8 hours ago

uBlock Origin lite exists. And in couple years usage I see no difference from non lite version.

Comment by michaelmrose 8 hours ago

The author of both appears to disagree.

Comment by itskamran 9 hours ago

This feels more like a gradual tightening of extension APIs under Manifest V3 than a sudden “kill switch.” uBlock isn’t going away, but its capabilities are definitely being reshaped...

Comment by Chu4eeno 8 hours ago

It's all an excuse to try to neuter adblockers. The push for killing MV2 was suspiciously accelerated at the same time that youtube started implementing much more invasive anti-adblock techniques that really needed a full content blocker support (at least until people found new clever workarounds).

Especially since they put no effort into removing even extensions they know are malicious (and who work very well within the MV3 restrictions): https://palant.info/2025/01/20/malicious-extensions-circumve...

Comment by qilo 9 hours ago

It is a "kill switch" - uBlock Origin will no longer work in Chrome 151 (July 28, 2026).

Comment by noir_lord 8 hours ago

I'm far more faithful to Ublock Origin than I am any specific browser.

Sadly I don't think that's the general case, I've been on FF for decades but there isn't a universe where I use a browser without UBO at this point.

Comment by NoMoreNicksLeft 8 hours ago

>but there isn't a universe where I use a browser without UBO at this point.

One wouldn't need to be loyal to UBO... a simple with-and-without comparison would be enough for anyone with a functioning brainstem.