I stopped using Chrome a while back, but still use Gmail because I’m lazy. Every time I crank open Gmail in another browser, Google whines at me to use Chrome. That grizzling pop-up is now the main reason I don’t use Chrome, and it will eventually drive me to migrate away from Gmail. DON’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!
Gmail was so handy because it did a good job at filtering the spam and offered customization. But it’s doing a worse job at the spam and not a good enough one at customization. Where should I go?
Proton mail? Some similar platform?
I’m terrible at maintaining my email but I check it often enough.
I’m trying both Outlook and Proton. I’ll probably go with Proton, but aaaaargh, the thought of all the tedious work involved… I’ve got better things to do!
Until google announces that adblocks will be blanket removed from chromium as well. The truth is the only company big enough to maintain a fork this different, is Microsoft, the question is will they feel like they should, or will they side with Google, since this is by their interests as well…
A browser is not like a social network though. There’s barely any difference in practical terms between Chrome and Firefox. Once you’ve switched there’s no reason to go back.
As long as there is suddenly a new pinned tab with irrelevant info or an unskippable pop up about the new color schemes or data grabbing websites pinned to the top sites or the company firing half their developers even when their CEO gets another pay raise or…
Desktop runs great, but Firefox on Android seems to be noticeably buggy here and there sadly. I still use it, but I can imagine that might drive people out of the ecosystem.
Many people get used to the synchronization of their passwords / bookmarks cross-channel. More advanced users have a separate password management for this I’d figure, but that’s not the default for 90% I’d guess.
I’ve never had a single issue with Firefox for Android and I’ve run it on all my phones for like 6-7years at least, probably more but I don’t remember.
It doesn't play super nice with foldable phones. The UI doesn't adapt correctly without restarting the app and you end up with a very dense interface of overlapping buttons if you try going from open to closed. The address bar becomes completely blocked by all the extra buttons from the tablet layout, so the app is unusable.
You may think so but there’s always a bunch of posts about why people can’t switch out of chromium in every other Firefox related posts. There are few significant differences and some don’t wanna make any compromise for something better.
I heard from someone who uses a shit ton of tabs in Chrome which Firefox doesn’t do as well apparently. But I’ve been a FF guy for as long as it’s been around and i hate open trans so
Agreed, I think they’re hedging on the amount of people who leave will be less than the increased revenue of those who stay. Considering the ones leaving were never going to allow as revenue anyway what do they really lose?
This is why I don’t understand why anyone tech savvy isn’t using Firefox. There’s literally no cost. From a user standpoint they’re basically the same thing. The one that isn’t made by an evil monopoly is just the obvious choice.
And thus, entropy is presented. Even if only 10% go to Firefox, thats still 10% that aren’t going back to Chrome. And if this repeats with similar results, as you imply, that 90% going back to Chrome is gonna be a lot smaller a few iterations from now.
Until they use their multiple monopolies to further cripple the experience for competitors, entrenching their dominance, and allowing them to force their proprietary standards on the internet, killing any remaining pretence of Internet freedom.
There were people back in the day who thought that the internet was that fancy E on the desktop (internet explorer) and would have their brains melt when trying to explain alternatives. I think that people now have this problem with a fancy G.
Nah, there’s a big difference between what and how much you’re allowed to block in V2 vs V3 - the current status V2 adblock is way outside the range of V3’s version.
I’d say V3 blockers can probably block at best 30% of what V2 can block. Which means it has to be selective. It essentially nuders the extension, making it worthless - an adblocker that only blocks some ads is not an adblocker at all. It’s more of an ad restrictor, and in heavily monetized sites it might not even be that.
They won’t make people disable uBlock. They’ll just make it stop working, and people will just think the ads have gotten better or uBlock has gotten worse.
I guess the idea is that if a person is giving you zero ad revenue, then them switching to a diff browser instead of removing ad blocker doesn’t change your equation.
But if any of them do just turn off the ad blocker it’s a win…
However I’m not sure if they lose other revenue because they don’t use chrome (like data tracking info)
Ublock is so good at being 'set and forgettable I’ve gone beyond just suggesting it to friends and family who aren’t very tech literate, and just installed it for them. I’m sure I can’t be the only one. But these people would likely go straight back to consuming ads rather than try to figure out why their ad blocker stopped working. That’s sad but it’s true.
It won’t do anything to their market share. At work my colleagues keep asking me “Why don’t you use chrome?” or saying things like “Isn’t Firefox slow?”. They simply don’t know or don’t care to know. Also Firefox IS slow or just doesn’t work, not because it’s a bad browser but I’ve been seeing a trend of websites being designed to make it appear slow, like YouTube takes 5 extra secs on Firefox to load videos Clipcham and Adobe outright not supporting Firefox on their websites. The internet is a clown show.
This is now a balancing act to see how much they can cripple the internet for their own benefit without affecting market share enough that it hurts long-term profitability.
This will do nothing to stop Google Chrome’s market share tbh.
Installing an ad blocker is like the easiest thing in the world to do. Literally takes less time than watching the ad yet even most young people don’t use it. It’s the reason why Edge has such a high market share despite not being all that great. It’s the default for many people so inertia will carry it forward. Google Chrome could literally record your screen at all times and sell it to the highest bidder and it would still dominate the market.
Back before web browsers had ad-blocking extensions, we had programs like Web Washer. It was a local, ad-blocking proxy program that you ran along side your browser. To use it, you just changed your browser’s network settings to point to Web Washer. And the ads would be filtered before they even reached your browser. It would be no problem to implement this again.
It’s a proxy though, so it could inspect the actual content, detect ads and do something about it. Peertube, Grayjay etc bypass ads just fine so I guess it could be done with the webapp?
Random article I found said about 26% of people in the US use adblocking services. Working on the assumption that’s reasonably accurate, that’s a pretty big chunk of ad revenue.
What platforms does chrome come as default on? I know it’s on google products like pixel, but mac and pcs still have safari and edge, right? What kind of people know enough to get a non-default browser and not enough to get adblock?
Not sure they understand the flow on effects. Those of us being affected and work in the corporate IT space who have a lot of say in what browsers are used will simply replace chrome with Firefox on our thousands of machines nationwide without a second thought. They are digging their own grave.
You can script that i believe. We had multiple fuckup in our company due to poorly missmanaged browser migration.
Im in a top500 and they swapped browser to like 30% of the population without informing local IT as a test. Many people lost bookmarks I always run a firefox in parallel (against company policy but they are too bad to find out)
The last straw for me was about a decade ago when an update completely broke Chrome on my machine. It would open and immediately crash, even after reinstalling. Everything else worked fine, virus scans came back clean and everything, it was only Chrome. I spent the next 2 months playing browser roulette before settling on ol’ reliable Firefox once again.
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