2y ago

A list of recent hostile moves by #Google's #Chrome team (Jeff Fortin T. (@nekohayo@mastodon.social))

Jeff Fortin T. (@nekohayo@mastodon.social)

A list of recent hostile moves by #Google's #Chrome team;

handy for sharing with your entourage, to explain why they should stop using #Chromium / #GoogleChrome and use #Firefox or #Epiphany as their main #web #browser :

The "Manifest v3" sabotage of content blocking extensions: https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/10/23131029/mozilla-ad-blocking-firefox-google-chrome-privacy-manifest-v3-web-request
The attempted sabotage of #JPEGXL: https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/chrome-banishes-jpeg-xl-photo-format-that-could-save-phone-space/
#WebEnvironmentIntegrity a.k.a. #DRM for whole websites would hurt the web, #opensource browsers and OSes:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/googles-web-integrity-api-sounds-like-drm-for-the-web/

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2y ago

List of recent hostile moves by Googles Chrome team

mastodon.social /@nekohayo/110775656176571435

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2y ago

A list of recent hostile moves by Google's Chrome team

mastodon.social /@nekohayo/110775656176571435

27 comments

Reformatting body to be readable:
A list of recent hostile moves by #Google's #Chrome team; handy for sharing with your entourage, to explain why they should stop using #Chromium / #GoogleChrome and use #Firefox or #Epiphany as their main #web #browser :
The "Manifest v3" sabotage of content blocking extensions
The attempted sabotage of #JPEGXL
#WebEnvironmentIntegrity a.k.a. #DRM for whole websites would hurt the web, #opensource browsers and OSes
- Thank you. I edited the main body too.

I switched when I got tired of not having ad blockers on mobile. Best decision ever. The Internet can be unusable without it.
- I never used Chrome. happy user of Firefox since it's conception.
  
  I do most browsing on Firefox, but there are some web developers who seem to totally ignore anything but Chrome. Like I sometimes think a site is broken until I try it in Chrome. Anyone else have this issue and have a solution other than using Chrome?

Never used Chrome, and strongly suggest to other people not to use Chrome. However, I've not had the hate for chromium browsers (so far, the killing of extensions might drive me away) - I've really enjoyed Vivaldi for a lot more features and having the engine that works on websites (yes this sucks). My mom OTOH is a Firefox person, and I just had to help her get onto her insurance website - she had tech support on the phone, and Firefox just would not let her set a password and just kept looping and using up the reset link. Finally I tried in Vivaldi (Chromium) and it worked first try. Of course, I've had the same experience in the opposite direction. So I have to keep using both.
Also, Vivaldi anyway has a much better UI IMHO for what I want than Firefox does, and is faster. As an IT person, I much prefer semantic versioning which Vivaldi also has.
Anyway, at this point Chromium is like IE was - you can't not have access to your health insurance website, and they don't apparently test in Firefox so it doesn't work. You can't drop your provider cause you don't pick it, your work does. The upshot of Chromium is that there are rebuilds and it runs on other platforms than Windows - so... there's that at least.
Honestly, I'd like to see someone fork Chromium and keep web extensions etc, but no one wants to write a browser engine anymore - even Vivaldi, which was the old Opera team that wrote 2 browser engines over the history of the browser through v12 - can't afford to make their own engine. What I don't get is why so many browser makers have chosen chromium vs gecko - almost no one wraps gecko in the last 10 years. (Maybe Firefox is different now? I know it in some ways started getting crappy wrt extensions back in v28? whenever Pale Moon forked.)
- but no one wants to write a browser engine anymore
  Then let me brighten your day a bit: https://awesomekling.github.io/Ladybird-a-new-cross-platform-browser-project/
  
  Time to learn some c++, it's a good cause to help with
- I strongly suggest against using any Chromium forks. I already explained why in another post. I'll put the link to that here: https://kbin.social/m/asklemmy@lemmy.ml/t/282011/Why-do-most-browser-companies-opt-for-a-Chromium-Blink-base#entry-comment-1301554
- We did have people developing a new browser engine. It was called Servo and Mozilla went and killed the project.
  Maybe it just wasn't going anywhere and they didn't think it was right for Firefox, maybe it was experiment for experiment's sake, maybe it was always destined to be a side project. I don't know.
  It's still being developed, but doesn't have nearly as much manpower and funding as it did at Mozilla.
  Honestly, my very uninformed opinion is that there should be more browsers developed using WebKit.
  It's still FOSS (despite Apple's best efforts) and it's widely supported due to Safari's market share (particularly on mobile).
  I'm just not familiar with how easy it is to implement outside of Apple (I know GNOME Web uses a GTK port), or how well current popular extensions can integrate with it.
  Then again, I assume we'd be having the same argument, except complaining that it's Apple, rather than Google, that has too much control over the web.
  
  We did have people developing a new browser engine. It was called Servo and Mozilla went and killed the project.
  Maybe it just wasn’t going anywhere and they didn’t think it was right for Firefox, maybe it was experiment for experiment’s sake, maybe it was always destined to be a side project. I don’t know.
  Servo was an experimental browser engine for Mozilla that they were using as a testing ground for their investment into the Rust programming language; the project did bear fruit as components were slowly integrated into Firefox starting at version 57 with Project Quantum. They did eventually complete that transition and everyone using an up-to-date version of Firefox is using various Servo components (I'm personally a big fan). Unfortunately, when COVID devastated the economy Mozilla axed some of their side projects, which included Servo itself. Maybe we'll see further investment in the future, but they did already do what they wanted to with it for the most part.
- Also as a long running Firefox user, I don't get these incompatibilities at all. And if you start using Firefox and increase the usage numbers the incompatible sites would need to reconsider their stance.
  
  The problem is just we have to use the sites. There's no real choice ( we have some of this for work too). I'm not losing my job or impacting my medical care for a browser war. If I can fool the site with an extension or something, then if I know that I'll do it. But this idea that you can just avoid browsers when you need a website is not really true. I will say - I very rarely see these problems compared to back in the day. But I have contacted tech support and they just say use the working browser. I can't report a bug, they don't even understand why I'm being a PITA.

They're really taking the dropping of the old slogan of "Don't be Evil" to heart, aren't they.
The new slogan, "Do the Right Thing", isn't really specific on who the right thing should be done to. I guess they meant themselves...
- It's always the shareholders.

I've been waiting for a sign to switch and I think this is it. A few questions though.
Does Firefox for Android have tab groups like Chrome for Android?
Is Firefox Pocket like Chrome's reading list? My first impression of Pocket was that it was a half-baked feature only really meant to serve ads.
https://ishoudinireadyyet.com/
- I can't answer any of these. I don't have the knowledge. I am not using Firefox on mobile, only on desktop. (opera mobile user)
  However what I can say is, you need to make compromises on some of your convenience to free yourself from a user hostile company's software, or forks of it which strongholds you to their whims. Silicon Valley is trying to profit against your best interests.
  
  Well I was planning to switch anyway for the reasons you just explained, so further moral rhetoric is wasted on me. I'm only asking those who do have knowledge in order to help ease the transition.
- I haven't used Chrome's reading list feature, since I don't use chrome, but they are competing "read it later" product, so should function vaguely similarly.
  Unfortunately I think your impression of Pocket is basically correct, it hasn't received any meaningful updates since Mozilla bought it, and is very underwhelming product, it's still baffling for example that Pocket (at least as a browser plugin) uses a different (and generally worse) reading view from the Firefox "reading mode."
  That being said I haven't found any "read it later" products I've actually liked using... (I switched to Wallabag after I quit using Pocket, but have used readability, instapaper, and the reading list feature of "The Old Reader"), so I just quit using the product category entirely, my replacement is "send to device" feature of Firefox so I can find articles on one device and send them to another to either view on a bigger screen, or a mobile screen. (I have a desktop, laptop, tablet and a phone... so this is very useful)
- I think it does support tab groups. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/manage-tabs-firefox-android
  Pocket is kind of like Reading list. It also kinda sucks for the reasons you mention. Speaking personally, I use Wallabag for that instead.
- no
  Idk as I don't use it
  What is this?
  
  Houdini is a web API that Firefox has not implemented yet, hence the existence of such a website. I think I shouldn't have asked about it here, but I'm still curious about it.

27 comments