- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@derp.foo
- privacy@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@derp.foo
- privacy@lemmy.ml
Google did it again.
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Laughs in Firefox
After dragging my feet for years I finally moved back to Firefox a few weeks ago. Sure, there’s a few features I miss from Chrome/Edge (vertical tabs, PWA support, tab groups, etc.) but I was able to ‘fix’ many issues with extensions and a custom userchrome.css, and trust is ultimately more important to me.
I’m thankful there are still free, open, privacy respecting options out there.
There are Tab Groups add-ons for Firefox. I’m sure there might be vertical tab add-ons, too.
As someone who never went to Chrome, I’m just sitting here trying not to be all “I told you so!” from when Chrome started to really take off a decade ago.
You can also edit the userChrome.css file to get rid of the top tabs.
Step 1. Uninstall Chrome why are you still running it? Stop giving Google power over the internet. Just stop. Uninstall it. Use Firefox, Brave if you must. Just ditch Chrome.
Step 2. See above. Just flipping stop. No, don’t install another browser and keep chrome. Just DITCH CHROME. TOTALLY. If you need a backup use Edge or Brave or Firefox. STOP GIVING GOOGLE POWER OVER THE INTERNET.
Unfortunately, it’s not like it would realistically change the monopoly Google has over the internet. The greatest financial backer of Mozilla is Alphabet and if Firefox starts to gain too much traction, they will simply axe Mozilla and unless they manage to get another backer fast, Alphabet will have THE monopoly over the Internet.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m doing my part and using Firefox (when it doesn’t constantly crash), but Alphabet’s holding way too many strings currently for any change to happen.
My understanding is that Google pays Firefox to use Google as the default search engine, which they also pay Apple for the same, so it’s a win-win situation and unlikely Google would ever do such (especially since Chrome is already the dominant browser for user base)
We can dream for the day where Alphabet finally loses it’s monopoly. It will be a day to be remembered.
The FTC is actually suing them right now for that very practice. Google might be forced to stop doing that which would ironically hurt Mozilla/competition.
To stop supporting Firefox would be begging for antitrust investigation (if not in the US then in the EU). Plus Mozilla would probably find another sponsor so all they’d be doing is draw attention to themselves. If it were a large piece of the marketshare at stake I could see it but Firefox is currently at 3-5% (depending on who you ask) so it’s not even worth the aggravation.
That’s why I included the clause “if Firefox starts to gain too much traction”. I agree that currently Firefox is no threat to Google, but if it starts to become, they will strike hard against it.
And unfortunately, antitrust investigations do little against the Titans of Big Tech, just look at what it (didn’t) do to Microsoft.
On the contrary, if Firefox market share were to grow then Mozilla would only be in a better position to negotiate with Google. And the fact they support a rival with a larger share would only strengthen the argument that Google is not monopolistic.
Don’t lose sight of the fact that Google’s main concern is Search market share, not browser market share. As long as Mozilla agrees to keep Google Search as default Firefox could have 90% market share and Google would still be ok with it.
It’s true that browser market share also counts indirectly, because it allows them to influence the technology. If Google rolls out support for something, or withholds support for something, it affects everybody and can make or kill any particular piece of tech.
Browser engine dominance will come under scrutiny (and it will be a deep and fascinating rabbit hole), but later. Right now it’s about Search.
One can hope.
I wouldn’t use Edge, if you’re on Lemmy, use Firefox. Cmon, if you’re technically literate you can figure it out. Everybody else, use Brave. It’s the least worse normie browser.
Just install another more privacy friendly browser
Firefox is the only answer here
I personally use librewolf. Firefox is making it look like they are private, but you need to tweak a lot of settings to get there
Eh, depends on your threat model. When Telemetry is none of your concern, you’re good to go.
They forgot to add “Switch to Firefox” at the end of the title
I read this article from top to bottom and didn’t find a clear explanation of why you should disable this feature.
Because it doesn’t protect your privacy (Google still tracks everything), but it gives Google an even stronger monopoly to make taking other actions to protect your privacy less viable.
The end game is still their web DRM pretending to be “security” to make it impossible for you to choose how a page is displayed to you.
Google doesn’t track everything. The browser determines your interests locally; the only information shared with Google (and advertisers) is which broad topics you’ve recently shown an interest in.
It’s an underhanded way of implementing a browser supported foolproof adblock detector. Even its stated goal of “give advertisers a unified, browser backed, ‘private’ way of tracking you for advertising” isn’t especially appealing or useful when you get something better than that from adblock anyway. Turning it off will be reflected in telemetry sites gather about feature availability and hopefully low adoption numbers discourage them from taking advantage of this “feature”.
Hmm, not having read up on the tech, what’s stopping someone from making a Firefox plugin that just spoofs fake data back? It’s all done client side if I’m understanding, so everything necessary to do so must be available. Only wrinkle I could see is if they have signing and ship the cert with Chrome and regularly rotate it. It’s still not impossible in that case, just more annoying.
My understanding is vague but the sandbox environment is cryptographically integrity checked in some fashion that makes the spoofing you’re suggesting difficult or impossible.
Well, I did a little digging, and while parts of the stuff proposed by Google might be tricky, the actual topics portion of the API looks pretty easy to spoof. It seems like there’s really only two things that need to be done. The first is to spoof the feature detection logic to return true for calls to
document.featurePolicy.allowsFeature('browsing-topics'). The second would be to return randomly selected topics from all available topics from calls todocument.browsingTopics()(care might need to be taken to return a consistent set of random topics to a given page, otherwise clever sites might poll the API many times to detect randomness). That really seems to be all there is to the topics API part of this. As for spoofing the rest of the web DRM parts, that’s going to be a lot trickier, but with control of the browser I can’t see how it could be made insurmountable.
Because spying on you is bad. They mention the privacy implications in the article.
Everyone here has probably seen Scott McCloud’s Contra Chrome web-comic. In the off chance you haven’t, it details exactly why you shouldn’t use Chrome.
Never seen it before. I’ll give it a better read when I’m not so busy in a bit (taking a shit right now ;)
Instead, text the boss: this is gonna be a looong shit.
I haven’t seen it yet. Thanks for sharing.
I hadn’t seen it but am aware enough that it didn’t reach me a whole lot. But still.
Damn.
Gawd Google really is just a despicable company
Oh man! Time to give Google a damn good show of a
morbidly obese balding 40 something world of warcraft guy beating it heavily to lesbian futanari furry content staring into the camera as he gets busy!Google wanted this to happen, so why not give those suckers the VIP First Class treatment?
Anybody else think of things that’ll make those Google folk writhe in visual and audial agony and cut the privacy invasion act?
Let me guess … every new update reverts Chrome back to default settings
Chrome feels like it’s updated every week
It’s a browser. They have been getting weekly updates for like a decade now.
Updates generally don’t require settings resets. It can happen if there’s major changes but that’s the exception, not the norm. If Chrome updates revert settings to default with any degree of regularity (I actually don’t know if they do, I haven’t really touched Chrome in ten? years) that’s either gross incompetence or sheer malice.
Fair enough. I stopped using it ages ago, and was abhorred to find out chrome logs you in on the browser when you log in to Google at any point. Any browser that silently insists on knowing your identity as you browse the Web deserves zero trust.
Thank firefox for containers.
Chrome updates itself about once every five - six days on my system
Firefox updates once about every two weeks and often just once a month.
Everytime I run a manual update, Chrome is always on the list.
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