And mark the end (actually a while ago) of my use of Google Chrome. What a xrap browser it has become.
You might not know, but you can say “crap” on the internet.
You might not know, but you can say “crap” on the internet.
Nice!
- xrap!
- crat!
- crraaaab!
Well, I’ll keep practicing.
It already has.
This is misleading.
UBlock has been deprecated on Chrome, for a long time. UBlock Lite is its replacement and will continue to function (albeit with more limited efficacy).
What they are talking about is a complicated series of command line flags to re-enable Manifest V2+installing UBlock from source… But who in their right mind would still be using vanilla Google Chrome and jumping through all those hoops?
It will be an issue for forks like Helium or Ungoogled Chromium. They’ll just have to patch in a native blocker, I suppose.
TL;DR: Headline is wrong.
Chrome users will notice nothing. The end happened a long time ago.
Chrome is the modern day IE. We use it for work, but not much else.
Firefox users:
I mean literally though. “Good thing I use Firefox” was literally my first thought.
Ublock Lite will still work
Same. I have Firefox with ublock Origin on it right next to Chrome. If I need to visit some third party site I use Firefox. Occasionally I forget I’m in chrome and visit a third party site that’s chock full of ads. When that happens I immediately close the page in Chrome and jump to Firefox for a more reasonable experience.
This will hopefully move more people to use Firefox again.
Their absolute and stubborn refusal to implement PWA made me give up on Firefox recently.
I tried using Chrome for PWA only and using Firefox for my main browser for a while (to help their market share), but it made it very difficult because external links would open in Chrome.
I’ve found like 80% of sites I use are self hosted so I found it easier to just stop using websites with ads than dealing with Firefox 😞
Maybe 0,00001% of the user base will. People don’t care, us nerds need to come to term with this
The other thing people on Lemmy / Hackernews/ Reddit don’t seem to get is that people are not using laptop or desktop computers anymore. More and more people only have a phone and maybe a tablet. People with phones and tablets do not know what a browser is. It’s baked into the system. Everyone on Android is using Chrome and they very likely don’t even know it.
I use Ecosia on my phone because it has a built-in ad blocker that actually works.
I use Revanced instead of YouTube/Music so I don’t get ads and can listen to what I want (I had to change my phone’s DNS, because on data it wouldn’t let me watch or listen to anything that was marked “explicit”).
I haven’t updated my Discord app in the last couple years because I heard that one of those updates supposedly introduced ads and I said “hell no.”
This is also why Nintendo/Ubisoft/Other Shitty Company Here is still doing well despite all the gamers saying they’d boycott them.
So use Firefox! On Android its ad blockers work well too
The fact there’s extentions on FF & it’s forks for mobile makes me sooo blown away anyone ever choses anything else!
“But my cousin told me the fox fire is used by hackers or something, and the Google one said it was faster.”
I shit you not, I used to work for a company (with no IT dept btw) that refused to use Firefox because they said it was “a trojan virus.”
What I think happened is one of their dipshit employees downloaded something they shouldn’t have and got a virus and the bosses blamed the browser.
Our IT exclusively allows us to use Edge. So yay.
Agree - I just don’t understand why you’d use anything else on a PC.
The IT equivalent of throwing a sabot onto the gears…
There are mobile clients of Firefox and related forks, FYI, not just on PC. Firefox and Fennec are probably the most popular on Android.
100% It’s just somehow way more blatant for me with mobile as it’s BEEN like this… which propbably helped make Google more confident in doing the same thing with PCs 🤯
The forks of Firefox are just as good or better, and largely lack the AI bullshit.
Firefox is my go-to browser, but don’t trust Mozilla and be ready to switch to an alternative just in case Firefox gets enshittified too much.
well except in the worst OS ever, iOS, where you can only use the worst web standards compliant webengine for vague security reasons, you know, to keep you safe from yourself
Check out Orion browser—it has support for uBlock and other extensions
You don’t like the OS; ok. Nobody likes the forced usage of the engine. But WebKit being the “worst web standards compliant” is simply not true. It’s maybe the highest on interop and certainly competitive in other ways. I wish there were more WebKit and Gecko; way too much Blink right now. Come on Ladybird and Servo.
non tech savy ppl just go with the default.
In pretty much all of life, the most consistent thing I’ve learned is that if it’s default anything, that off rip should make you reassess it
Orion for iOS has chrome AND Firefox addons. It’s mozzarella foxfire fork.
And safari on all platforms (all 2) supports ad blocking. Not my first choice on Mac (or even my 3rd really) but it’s basically my only choice on iOS
They’ll continue to work just fine in Firefox.
I think that the concern is whether a number of websites might stop working with Firefox if Chrome users consistently represent ad revenue and Firefox users generally don’t.
I use Firefox, but it has relatively-limited marketshare in 2026. A lot of people just browse on mobile devices and on Android devices, and there Chrome’s probably the default browser.
https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/
Chrome at 70.25%.
Safari at 15.72%.
Edge at 5.14%.
Firefox at 2.19%.
Amazon won’t work on my phone’s Firefox. Really annoying
Just use an agent switcher. That will take care of non browser API checks at least.
If that happens, Google becomes a monopoly, if it isn’t already. They don’t want this (or at least they haven’t, but they might think it won’t matter now). If they continue wanting Firefox to be relevant to help their argument that they aren’t a monopoly, they’ll do what they can to ensure Firefox continues to work.
Or Google thinks all the other illegal crap they routinely get away with is a leading sign that they will also get away with becoming a monopoly…
That’s going to change though with ad blocker not working on chrome, more people will install Firefox for android.
Yeah, that’s true. But…if a website derives its revenue from ads, a non-ad-viewing user — and users who switch browsers so as to use an ad blocker would presumably be blocking ads — loses that website money rather than generating it. Like, for such a website, the issue would be how many Firefox users that do view ads would be lost if their website didn’t work on Firefox.
Those of you who remember the early 2000s, when Internet Explorer had very high marketshare, probably remember a number of websites that didn’t work with other browsers.
Because people weren’t testing to work on the various browsers, which is pretty much what happens now with many sites and Firefox. People don’t adhere to the webstandard so Firefox doesn’t always work, but if we see a huge surge in Firefox then websites might put effort into them working in hope to catch some revenue of oerson doesnt have a blocker
Broad rule of thumb for me:
If your website needs ad revenue to either exist, or that’s fundamentally its entire business model?
That website does not need to exist.
Now sure, are their caveats to this? Yes. But broadly, its usually true. The website should exist as a small loss leading part of your whole shebang, or should have some kind of membership or donation model or something else, to fund itself.
Its also not that hard to make a website follow broswer agnostic standards. If the website can’t figure out how to do that, if they think its fine to be a browser-vendor exclusive website, I don’t need to use it.
Google is already killing the ad revenue model of the web by presenting the content it scrapes with AI for search — effectively stealing their content for profit — instead of ranking links so users navigate to their sites. Many have ahead seen a 70-90% drop in traffic, resulting in a 70-90% drop in ad revenue.
Capitalism is a blast, huh? Crime is very legal and very cool!
Useragent Detection - Your Current Useragent: Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 10; K) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/149.0.0.0 Mobile Safari/537.36
Browser userAgentData HighEntropyValues: { “platform”: “Android”, “platformVersion”: “10.0.0”, “mobile”: true, “model”: “K” }
Browser Name: Chrome
Browser Version: for Android
OS: Android 10.0
Hardware Vendor: Unknown
Hardware Model: Unknown
Screen Width:
Screen Height:
Is it a desktop device: No
Is it a mobile device: Yes
Is it a tablet: No
Is it a crawler/robot: No
Is it a console: NoThat’s what is returned by their browser detection tool for Vanadium on graphene.
Cromite is even more privacy oriented, returning
Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 10; K) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/148.0.0.0 Mobile Safari/537.36
{ “platform”: “Android” }
Browser Name: Chrome
Browser Version: for Android
OS: Android 10.0
Hardware Vendor: Unknown
Hardware Model: UnknownTheir stats combine ALL versions of chrome (chromium) which would also include things like cromite, degoogled chrome, cromium itself, possibly vivaldi, apps that use webview (doordash, voyager for lemmy, bank apps, etc) might even be included as they are chrome/chromium on android, would all tally for chrome with no differentiation even though some versions are light years apart.
Cromite/vanadium and chrome are the same browssrs the way chocolate and vanilla are the same ice cream.
Oh, and to muddle things some more, on Android, viewing using desktop site gives this:
Browser Name: Chrome
Browser Version: 148.0
OS: Linux 0
Is it a desktop device: Yes
And If sites start trying to block Firefox, we work around it. User-Agent is still malleable.
Spent the last couple weeks moving my stuff off Chrome. Not convenient but well worth the effort. If you’re not on Chrome they’re doing us a favor. Sites will be less likely to target ad blockers if the majority of users don’t have them installed.
But the majority of users don’t have them installed. Plus Google is pushing Manifest v3 with intent. They aren’t content with most. They want everyone to stop using them.
What will all the chrome users do?
Continue to suck on the poisoned fruit.
Bullshit, there are other, better browsers who do not intentionally break basic security features like ad blocking. Switch to Firefox and Ublock Origin or any of the many forks it has.
If you are using Chrome, Brave, or similar, you should stop using it and switch to something that isn’t shit. Ads are a major attack vector for malware and scams. If you are not blocking them already , you need to start immediately!
I wish people would start suggesting adnauseam. It’s basically ublock, but also silently clicks every link in the page tj poison the data. I have been using it for ages.
I’ve been using it for years too. Can recommend.
This one rules!
Edit: Here’s the F-Droid repo for IronFox, it and it’s predecessor Mull have always been Librewolf mobile to me
Firefox. Zen Browser. Waterfox. Anything other fork! They’re all different flavors of perfectly fine alternatives.
Vivaldi even if you have a website that forces Chrome down your gullet.
Just keep telling your non-nerd friends that more and worse ads aren’t something they need to tolerate.
I will form a home-policy that allows me to only buy alternate products that were not advertised to me. Goodbye “Tide” hello “EconoSuds”. If I see your ad, you are off the list.
Why wouldn’t you just switch to a non-Chromium browser instead?
Chrome is shit pushed by a monopoly, exactly like Internet Explorer used to be.
Anyone who ever adopted Chrome was a fool, anyone who still uses it is an even bigger fool.
Chrome is not working for the freedom of the Internet, only open source web browsers can claim that.
If you are not using an open source web browser, you are undermining the freedom and value of the internet.
