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Google's trying to DRM the internet, and we have to make sure they fail
(par1.iv.ggtyler.dev)
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this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2023
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What about a small TL;DR?
A quick, non-technical explanation:
See my other comments in this Post for more details.
WTF?!!! Monopoly is always a bad thing, we must remember it!
Absolutely. But there’s the catch - if Google passes this (and they will, because they don’t like ad blockers since it hurts their revenue), others will implement it.
Other Chromium browsers will be forced to adopt Mv3 too. If they don’t adopt it, the users that continue to use those browsers will find that certain web sites or services won’t work, and they’ll uninstall them and leave the service. “Why can’t Opera/Brave load my stupid bank? This is so stupid. I just want to check my balance. Whoa! It works in Chrome! That’s awesome! Why are these idiots at Brave even developers if they can’t fix the simplest shit? They should learn from Google, I’m switching to Chrome.”
And thus, Google Chrome isn’t necessarily “a monopoly”, because other Chromium browsers will adopt it if they want to stay in business. Opera belongs to China, Brave feeds their advertisements and has Basic Attention Token (BAT) cryptocurrency, Microsoft Edge is everything Google is but with a heaping pile of Microsoft privacy invasions. They’ll adopt it, they don’t have a choice.
Other Chromium browsers like Ungoogled Chromium, which is made by voluntary developers in their free time, will not adopt it. But because they’re unpaid, how long can they fight Mv3? Eventually, Ungoogled Chromium will disappear.
Firefox and its forks (Librewolf, Waterfox, etc.) are safe for now. In 10 years when Web sites don’t work, if they don’t adopt Mv3, they too will disappear. Firefox is a corporation that has salaries and a bottom line - they’ll have no choice but to comply or they will perish.
The only way this can somehow get turned around is if Google is upended and a new competitor emerges that the majority of users flocks to. The largest competitor is Firefox, which is not Chromium. Web developers and corporations design their services for the majority of users, so maximum compatibility is for Chromium. I don’t see that happening ever. Hopefully Brave and Microsoft have enough power and decide they don’t want to use Mv3. That’s our only chance.
I don't know anything else, but I have been using firefox for a while, and I can't think of any times where a website didn't work. Seems like a almost perfect drop in replacement for chromium currently, just needs people to do it.
There are some extensions that are only available for Chrome, but beside that this compatibility issue mostly happens with government sites and stuff like that. Since in their case it's you who want something from them and not the other way around, they're free to only check compatibility with something and say that anything else might not work.
Most of the time I stumbled upon such sites requiring IE, but that era seems to be over by now, fortunately.
I'm sure there's a few sites that don't work on Firefox, but I've definitely never ran into one, so its gotta be a very very small issue.
Regarding extensions, that is an issue I've had, but it turns out that some extensions can be ported to Firefox relatively easily. I don't have a clue how to write browser extension's, but all I had to do was make a mozilla developer account and you can convert automatically them there. There are certainly some (or most, not sure) that would require someone to manually port to Firefox though.
All in all, its almost a perfect drop in replacement.
Exactly!