Google gets its way, bakes a user-tracking ad platform directly into Chrome
Google gets its way, bakes a user-tracking ad platform directly into Chrome
Chrome now directly tracks users, generates a "topic" list it shares with advertisers.
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but this is Google, and they control Chrome, and this probably still won't make people switch to Firefox
Yeah. People just simply will not do things that are in their best interest. This is literally the biggest issue that was had with IE. Inertia.
All of my web interaction at this point happens through my Android phone, Google has me by the balls anyway.
There is Firefox for Android. You're still on Android, but you can have some control left.
Unfortunately Firefox doesn't have a replacement for the "Android System WebView" component, so any app that embeds a browser component (and oh boy is that a lot of them) will still be using Chrome.
There's a relevant ticket here: https://github.com/mozilla/geckoview/issues/167
It should be possible to have a shim that allows Mozilla's "GeckoView" component to implement the API, but - per that ticket, at least - most Android ROMs won't allow alternatives to the Google one.
The Firefox browser is genuinely great, but it's so far from possible to replace Chrome with it everywhere a browser is used.
A lot of those apps allow you to open links in an external browser instead, but yes, that is a problem
Maybe I'm dumb but I have had no issues using Firefox on android.
Other poster was saying apps that are built around web content use Chrome's webviewer component, and that tons of apps these days are react native, or whatever that Apache foundation tool is for deploying web apps as native apps.
You can't uninstall Chrome most likely, but maybe your stock/rom will allow you to "disable" it.
Good idea. Let me disable it and see what breaks! ( i have firefox and inbrowser installed on lineageos )
Also Firefox Focus, which forgets your browsing history when you close it or hit the trashcan button.
Privacy and digital rights are not a binary "use strange hard to use tools or give everything to google." There are things you can do to improve your ability to own your own data. Giving up immediately is letting perfect be the enemy of good. Running Firefox on your google phone will still win you back something
Google has me by the balls anyway.
GrapheneOS? Are you on a Pixel?
Lineageos+microg is a useable de-googled android. I'm using it now without any google services.