It’s amazing how little leverage they have when you stop using their products.
More than you think. They are also actively seeking ways to make that leverage effect more people.
They are defining web standards. They control chrome and chromium. So all of the alternative browsers that aren't safari and Firefox are using Google's web engine. Even Firefox and safari are beholden to Google as they fund both these web browsers through their default search deals.
Google after many failed messaging apps has taken on RCS messaging. They provide most of the supporting infrastructure through their Jibe servers. They don't allow anyone but themselves and Samsung to make an RCS app on android. They also had a campaign to pressure apple to use RCS. It's likely apple's RCS will be following Google's Jibe service closely, as they've already said their will work with Google on this. Google successfully got most RCS messages going through their servers, with apple on board with RCS itll see most SMS messages defaulting to RCS and most of those going through Google.
They also have deep hooks into education market with their OneDrive/Google docs products and Chromebooks.
Most privacy focused android alternatives recommend Google hardware.
I use Safari, Firefox, and DuckDuckGo.
Firefox is loving every week of this as they head towards launch. Market share is guaranteed to improve.
You have more faith in people’s giveashit than I do.
Nah, I've seen people who were hard chrome users start to change their tune about it. A few even changed over to Firefox. Now I understand that my sample size is people I know, but even my wife asked me "how can I stop the youtube ads stuff" after noticing that I don't have to deal with that bullshit... and she's not tech literate at all.
The issue is that most people will just end at "well I guess I can't block ads anymore".
That's encouraging.
It's not really about giving a shit, but when you're used to no ads, then seeing ads is an inconvenience. And that's usually even more potent than people giving a shit or not
My 5 years old decided to switch to Firefox after I told him google chrome will not block ads on YouTube anymore.
That's the iq it takes yeah. :)
Not saying anything bad about your son, hopefully you understand what I mean.
Don’t talk to my son ever again! /s Yeah most adults are just very tall 4 year olds.
can you invite 5 year old to fediverse when older
Firefox isn't an "alternative browser."
I didn't think Google would play the evil card, but don't trust the ad blocking abilities of software made by an advertising company, I guess.
What do you mean by not an alternative browser?
Are you trying to say something about the word choice or...?
Chrome is an alternative browser to Firefox too.
yes, i think he is speaking about the word itself. it is terrible that it is gaining negative connotation... like when people say bullshit like "alternative facts" or "alternative medicine" and the word itself slowly starts to look slightly suspicious just because it is used by morons.
Of course it's the alternative. Has always been, even before it was called Firefox: Netscape Navigator is the alternative to Mosaic. Fun fact: Internet Explorer was a fork of Mosaic. All of Chrome, Edge and Safari are descendants of KHTML.
How is this even legal? So now suddenly every chromium extension has to go through a play store style review? How is Google entitled to do this on their competitor's browsers?
They can do it if a competitor has forked Chromium but not bothered to provide their own addon store. For example, Edge supports its own store plus Google, Vivaldi only supports Google
Not hard to believe these rumors of super low morale within the industry are true.
How is it still a problem for anyone? I haven't used Google in years and I am unexpectedly still alive
We have prescribed terminals in our classrooms that are wiped between classes and only have chrome included. It's a fuckin' pain to have to load uBlock in each class in each section every day, because for some reason, our uni's IT department only supports chrome.
Are you able to access anything like USB drives? There are portable versions of Firefox you can carry around with you.
I switched to FireFox slightly before all this Adblock-Drama came up. Simply because i realised Chrome was getting ridiculously slow ._.
What happened to the ad blocker detection thing a month ago. Did Google remove it or does uBlock Origin have a permanent workaround now rather than needing to clear cache and reload?
It's still an ongoing war, but with Manifest V3, Google will have an advantage over adblockers because they will be in full control over the frequency of extension updates, how many ad blocking rulesets they'll allow, and perhaps when no one is looking, prevents those rulesets from targeting their own domains. The latter is the nuclear option that'll instantly piss off the whole tech world if implemented now, but perhaps slow boiled frogs won't notice it once the heat is high enough.
They regularly try to add things to break it, and uBlock's devs update it as fast as possible. They'll probably slow down on these breaking changes as it falls out of the spotlight and people slowly forget about it.
yea lucky enough i switched to firefox a year ago
I'm wondering if Chromebooks can run Firefox? I'm guessing not. I know you can install adblockers on them. Not after mid-2024, I guess.
It really sucks that an affordable notebook computer means getting locked into an advertising system. You can get a Chromebook for under $100 and they have a very, very easy-to-use OS. They're great for poor people and elderly people.
So much for putting an adblocker on Grandma's computer now.
you can have refurbished thinkpad for the same price and you don't have to deal with some chrome-crap.
honestly, the fact that people have to be reminded there are alternatives to chrome is the most mindblowing fact from the article.
You can run the android version or use the Linux VM. Neither are great but are workable. Unless they've changed it recently, you can also dual boot them and run Linux off an external drive.
I'd honestly say skip the Chromebook, get an older used laptop that is known to be fully supported by Linux, install a lightweight distro, and off you go if all Grandma needs is a web browser. Older used laptops are usually far better powered than a cheap Chromebook for the same price anyways. Plus it fights e-waste.
A further option is to do adblocking at the router or through the computer's own networking system or something like a Pihole. These all come with their own pros and cons.
If all you need is a cheap laptop, there's thousands of deals on refurbished or used ones. You don't need this year's model to browse the web and send email.
Throw Ubuntu or something on it and you can go even cheaper hardware wise.
If she'd allow you, you could always put a little pihole ($10-20) on her network (with the bare minimum lists so that it doesn't break things too often). Wouldn't change anything about her computer.
I've installed the Android version of Firefox on my wife's Chromebook via the Google Play store. There's also a way to enable Linux within ChromeOS and install the more full fledged version of FF.
See: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/browsers/chromebook/
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