Just got this blocking modal. In mine, the title says “Turn on an ad privacy feature”. That is misleading to say the least. This is a privacy-invading feature, leaking summaries of my browsing history to anyone who wants to have a look. What’s worse, the modal completely blocks the UI, so you can’t even search for it to understand more.
Why am I even using this browser anymore?
EDIT: Note this section about privacy goals, from the draft proposal by two Googlers: “Users should be able to understand the API, recognize what is being communicated about them, and have clear controls. This is largely a UX responsibility but it does require that the API be designed in a way such that the UX is feasible.” [1]
I guess it’s just a little oopsie that made the people responsible for the UX present it to the user through misleading copy.
Yeah, stop putting up with all these anti-features! Firefox, Brave etc are not perfect but at least they're not THAT. No matter how many hoops you jump through, still using Chrome means it is being endorsed. Wish more people would reconsider it like you and jump ship!
I have been using Firefox since version 2.x and I never understood what downsides people find with it. I've used chrome and the only difference i saw was annoying pushes from google to log in so that i could be tracked all the time. Otherwise, it shows web pages, what more do you want?
Using Chrome at work and Firefox at home, the only features I missed were low-effort 'translate this page' and extensionless reverse image search.
Wise Google have decided to remove the second point by replacing it with terrible Lens.
The differences aren't really important any more. Both have converged on similar UIs, both have important privacy extensions, both have password managers and payment storage. My only caveat for suggesting Firefox is that it's a possible frying pan -> fire situation, since they push their own revenue-building tat and get paid by Google.
I've used Firefox as my main browser for 15+ years, and the only times I've needed Chrome have been for performance-related reasons in some browser games or some heavier sites. Though recently it feels like firefox's performance has gotten better and I rarely find myself having to launch chrome anymore.
I quite dislike all the crap they try to tack on like Sync or Pocket, sometimes cluttering the UI after an update. But still everything can be disabled, so not too much of an annoyance.
> I have been using Firefox since version 2.x and I never understood what downsides people find with it.
For some weird reason somes sites just dont open on Firefox on my work computer when I connect to the company VPN on it. Safari and Chrome can open all sites just fine.
I really want to use Firefox especially for the container feature but just cannot figure out why somes sites dont work when I on the vpn.
When you say don't open, what do you mean? Sometimes companies configure their SSL cert in only safari and chrome, so you might be able to just add it to Firefox's store.
It could be that the proxy is set up as a non-system proxy too, so you could try checking Chrome's configured proxy and setting it in settings.
Firefox's branding has always felt a little unusual to me. not as bad as some other popular free apps (SumatraPDF, VLC) but perhaps that subconsciously puts people off? Chrome has always looked and sounded quite clean and cool in comparison. I say this as someone who only ever uses FF or Safari
Im sorry but if you are using Chrome as a “pro” nowadays, its your own fault. There are countless alternatives available, starting from Firefox, to Brave, to some exotic browsers, and if you must use Chrome, then there is a de-Googled one called Chromium.
Its clear that Google is milking every single one of its users using their browser, since they have access to your computers.
Probably this is the “vector” they use to gather the most info about users, apart from Android maybe.
There's Chromium and there's Ungoogled Chromium[1]. If you're looking for (some) independence from Google, you want the latter. Or just avoid it altogether and use other browsers.
I wouldn't recommend Blink-based browsers (Brave, Vivaldi, Opera, etc.) You're still indirectly giving Google power over the web by using their engine.
IMO the browser is far too important to use third-party builds containing patches that don't receive serious audit.
For example, the Chromium packages provided by the vast majority of Linux distros disable security features like CFI (check your favorite distro's x86_64 Chromium package build log and look for the "is_cfi" argument). I think Arch is the only exception.
If you are going to use a Blink-based browser, I would recommend just using the official Google release, or maybe Edge or Brave if you trust the organizations behind them. Otherwise, just switch to Firefox. It has its own problems, like being overall less hardened than Chromium, but it's far less user-hostile. And regarding security, for browsing untrusted sites, I think you should always virtualize the browser since they're all routinely exploited anyway.
I'm not sure, but I think CFI also requires building Chromium as a single binary with LTO, and this has extremely high memory requirements that their build infrastructure might not be able to handle. Also, I think some distros use GCC instead of LLVM/Clang, so CFI isn't even an option.
Just want to pour one out to my fellow corporate drones on locked down work laptops, who can usually choose between a pre-installed and managed installation of Chrome (a rock) and/or Edge (a hard place).
The popup is absolutely disgusting. I would love to think this would backfire and push more people towards Firefox but their target is obviously not HN readers, they know what they are doing.
> I would love to think this would backfire and push more people towards Firefox but their target is obviously not HN readers, they know what they are doing.
I am gonna make a generalization but HN readers is not the demographic pushing for Firefox usage and when they do it's usually for the wrong reason: "performance".
At some point you would have to set a weekly (daily?) reminder to turn off all new sell-out "features" that get added. Also, at some point those "features" stop being an option you can opt-out.
If computing was a night club, "Silicon Valley" would be the creepy guy who goes up to women with "Do you want to dance? [Yes] [Ask again later]". Or more often: "We are now dating. I'll pick you up at 7PM tomorrow for dinner. To opt out, send me a letter in the post."
If you're interested in utilizing your history information for something in your intentional interests, consider saving an archive of pages you browse to make a search engine you can query back through later.
You can save the full content for indexing with full text search, and you can even export archives as tarballs by zipping up the directory. Many people find this a useful way to "mine" their own browser history to create a curated search engine aligned with your interests. Or simply to save the pages they browse for review offline--either to save bandwidth, or just because they're actually "offline"--at a remote site, or on an airplane.
Everything is saved in a fully interactive way. Personally tho, I find search the most useful feature. Also, we're open source so if you want to get involved, please do so!
Didn’t something happen to that guy, or the site went down? Or was that something else. The one i linked is self hosted, but a Saas version definitely is interesting.
In the long run I want a browser that has a solid community or base behind it, with a mostly-good record (no point chasing perfection here) of privacy and security. The Mozilla Foundation has done a good but not stellar job (remember 1.1.1.1?). I also don't want to change browsers because someday Vivaldi - hypothetically - gets acquired by Evil Corp, or has some vulnerability that remains unpatched. I just want to get my work done.
They are a lot better. You’re talking about Google, a company that literally owns its existence and trillions of dollars of revenue to targeted advertising across the entire world, vs Mozilla, a company that’s chosen to add a few non-targetted ads that are easily disabled.[1]
Not to put too fine a point on it, but Mozilla also owns its existence to Google's firehouse of money, a portion of which is streamed to Mozilla (some $500M in FY 2021) to ensure they keep Google as the default search engine.
There's plenty to criticize of Mozilla, but yes, they're a lot better, or a lot less bad if you want.
Are you really suggesting there isn't a huge difference between an ad and sharing your browsing history with advertisers?
I see this happen all the time, specially in politics or politics-adjacent topics. Just because no option is perfect, they become equal in people's mind. Two things can be both imperfect, and one be way worse than the other.
Google Chrome is on a whole different league when it comes to abusing your privacy. Mozilla Firefox ain't perfect, but it's way better.
This argument lacks for the average consumer. Heavily. Do you compile every update of Firefox yourself (and this assumes that you have read every line of code that changed during updates)? Especially when on Windows or macOS, you just download the version that is distributed by mozilla.org on their website. There is no guarantee that they're using the actual sources to build. They could just as well add in a little patch that does some nasty things.
But they won't, because they have a reputation to loose. So does Vivaldi.
> Please, do not use Vivaldi or any other closed source, secret codebase browser.
This is misleading, Vivaldi source code may not be released under an OSI License [1] but it is publicly accessible for audit at [2].
Whilst you wont be able to create OSS derivatives from it, it's definitely not "secret" and fear mongering need not apply to a publicly auditable code-base.
Why use chromium based browsers at all? Google largely has control of the project and they seem determined to keep adding anti-privacy/anti-user features.
I feel moving away from Google Chrome still sends a message but yes long term I think we will need to move away from Chromium given Google is running it into the ground. My hope is that Chromium will get forked and supported by other companies and individuals with ethics around a free and open web that doesn't involve Google Adware.
Yeah, I like Vivaldi too. It's been a string of largely pleasant surprises since I started using it a few months back, along the lines of "I had no idea I needed this until now". The only downside has been the occasional crash, perhaps because I've gone overboard with workspaces relative to the specs of my old PC.
Same boat (workspaces are great), only in addition to crashes it slows down with many tabs even when they're all hibernated (so the number of tabs/workspaces should not matter), and it's in general not the fastest , but the latest version claims some big improvements in opening new tabs/windows
Just use brave. I only use chrome to watch videos when I need Nvidia Video Super Resolution for low res videos because brave has a performance bug supporting this feature
Its 2023, how have we come so far with this nonsense. I would have thought Firefox would be king of the browsers by now. But nope, people love their data being sucked up and used by the big G.
It doesn't really matter what Mozilla did. They never had the budget to compete with Google on browser advertising anyway.
If you look at the market share progression of the old opera and mozilla vs. internet explorer, and you compare it to the stellar rise of Chrome when it came out, it's really obvious that Chrome's success is due mostly to advertising.
Blows my mind that people think that there’s some magical way that Firefox could have competed. Chrome had ads on google.com, like the home page. No one except Google gets those ads. 90-second prime time tv spots. And they also scattered nudges throughout their entire website. Google ran a relentless ad campaign to get people to switch, and no browser on Earth was able to compete with that.
I agree Firefox never had a chance, but there is losing a battle and there is diving head first onto the floor. Mozilla played the few cards it had not that well.
Firefox is just less usable. It's slower and a lot of config options are missing. Stuff that is common in enterprises and has buttons in Chrome (e.g. "add the intranet search to your browser!") is hard in Firefox (you have to write and serve a specific XML file somewhere).
Also it has a big incredible redesign every 2 weeks, as far as I can tell from HN, while Chrome's UI is mostly boring and stable.
Yeah. For me, the main feature that has me use chrome instead is that it can remember my credit card details. I don't understand how it can be that firefox doesn't do this, it's so annoying.
There is an end in sight: Firefox's. Mozilla has billion dollars and is cutting back on Firefox software development to focus on paying executives and pushing agendas.
You're either out of touch, or pushing an agenda yourself.
Firefox is a great browser, a sensible choice without any flaws that exists RIGHT NOW, that does not add a weekly "feature" that encroaches the user's interests.
It is fair to criticize Mozilla's operations. It's not fair to spew FUD on the best browser alternative that currently exists - your comment implies that Firefox isn't any better than Chrome. That is simply not true from a user-hostileness perspective, which is the context.
Financials are another matter, and if they are really so problematic then what you should do is either propose a better alternative, or even work on it yourself, given that it is open source what we're talking about.
My comment didn't "imply" anything. I stated that Firefox may be coming to an end. Then I stated the facts that back up my belief: (1) Mozilla has over a billion dollars; and (2) they are reducing the amount of money allocated to Firefox development.
I simply have no idea how you can possibly draw any other conclusion. It's not "FUD" either. If you can refute the article I posted, I will stop posting it and never speak of the matter again. Until then, I will criticize Mozilla for not spending money developing Firefox. Because I care about Firefox and want to see it kill Chrome, not languish in 5th place dying a slow death with zero leverage to actually stop things like WEI from being inflicted upon us.
> Because I care about Firefox and want to see it kill Chrome
You're actively working against what you say you care about if you post a negative reply to a comment suggesting Firefox as alternative to Chrome. In a thread about Chrome's latest user-hostile feature of the week.
Anyway, you brought attention to the issue that you care about going on at Mozilla. Let's hope that there is a way to improving that, simultaneously to promoting Firefox as a perfectly-good alternative to Chrome - today.
I'm doing what I think is right: spreading the word about the way they operate. I don't want people to be disappointed like I was. Disillusioned by false hope.
Maybe it will generate enough pressure to set them straight. Probably not.
I have a similar issue with hardware accelerated videos in general that drops all my USB connections randomly when stopping or skipping in a video. I think it's a power state change issue with my GPU because it never happens if I have a video game running.
I have disabled it an now it's fine! What is also interesting that this is happening with two different laptops. The Sound Device btw is a USB DAC that is connected through the USB-C hub. Maybe this is what is causing the issues.
This issue is relatively new, what I am experiencing is "reaching" the USB DAC Sound Device is getting slower and slower. Maybe this is a driver issue in Windows.
I can see the point here. Ad companies will track your browsing history. Google doesn't want to rely on cookies and fingerprints and probably wants to nuke tracking capabilities as well, but doing so in their browser while they still sell ads would be regulatory suicide.
Providing an open API for advertisers that doesn't require endless digital stalking is the only way Google will ever be able to enforce stricter anti tracking features. Their announcement that they were working on ending third party cookie tracking was met with threats of lawsuits and antitrust.
A locally classified list of topics that can be spoofed by the user agent is an excellent privacy measure. Nobody wants ads, but I'd rather have Chrome enable site isolation than the current status quo.
Honestly, I don't see the problem here. Your browsing history isn't submitted to Google according to the spec. There are aboit 8 bits of entropy for fingerprinting, but who cares when WebGPU and the canvas APIs provide ten times that already.
The privacy invasion argument seems to be "but it's based on my browsing history" which is exactly how all major advertisers have been doing it for the last ten years.
If this gets cancelled, Google isn't going to implement any anti tracking features in Chrome. They legally can't because of advertisers as scummy as them. They can choose between dropping their main source of income (lol), leaving Microsoft in charge of Chromium and killing Chrome (lol), do nothing against the current atate of the web amd tracking, or work with advertisers in a way that doesn't get them sued to hell over antitrust.
1. The argument that "it's been happening for the last ten years" is not a valid justification for the continuation of a practice that infringes on user privacy. Progress in digital privacy rights should aim at enhancing user control over their data, not maintaining status quo.
2. The suggestion that Google has only a limited choice between maintaining its main source of income or facing antitrust lawsuits is an oversimplification. Google, as one of the most influential tech companies, has the power and resources to innovate and find alternative models that respect user privacy while also providing value to their advertisers.
3. The idea that an API to track browsing history is a "privacy measure" because it can be "spoofed" by the user is flawed because it assumes all users have the technical knowledge and time to do so. This should not be a user's responsibility; privacy should be a default setting, not an option for the tech-savvy.
4. Lastly, just because the browsing history isn't directly submitted to Google does not mean it cannot be misused. Even if Google uses this data responsibly, the potential for abuse still exists with third parties
1. That's what they're doing. That's what this is.
2. That's what they're doing. That's what this is.
3. It's not a feature, it's an advantage for browsers like Firefox and Brave that happen to be made possible. Google sure won't advertise with it.
4. What data? Ad companies know through tracking that you've visit cars.com three times during lunch every work day except on your day off on Friday, who cares if they now get an API that says "I like cars".
1. The issue is not just about improving privacy; it's about the method involved. Using browsing history, personal data by nature, still raises significant privacy concerns, regardless of Google's intentions.
2. Trading privacy for utility. A truly innovative solution would respect privacy from the ground up, not pretending to retrofit privacy into an advertising model.
3. The nuance here is about "default" privacy. Even if the feature provides some privacy, it shouldn't require user intervention or tech prowess. Privacy should be a given, not a bonus.
4. The concern isn't just about "liking cars" but the ability to infer personal and sensitive information from gathered data. This may lead to the misuse of data by third parties, reinforcing the need for stringent privacy safeguards.
You know, they could ask people to select some of their interests to serve ads against. Would totally remove the privacy issue and the ads might finally be targeted towards something good.
No offense, but you are questioning google just now? Like... 2012 was the year to question Google about shady practices. Like bundling Chrome with other software and installing it without user agreements. But it's just an example among many.
Many of them think they’re supporting the free and open internet. I can promise you that many ad engineers take privacy very seriously, and from their perspective, google is leading the charge on less invasive Display ad tech.
I seriously doubt the people in this thread will agree with any of that, but I thought I’d answer the question. Of course, the money helps too - Google just recently laid off thousands of workers in an attempt to scare the rest into compliance
> from their perspective, google is leading the charge on less invasive Display ad tech
That would require levels of cognitive dissonance rarely seen outside fraudulent politicians. But that's phrasing it sarcastically, something best avoided in conversations. Bluntly put: indeed, I don't believe you. You cannot work for Google/Alphabet, where 80% of revenue ($183 billion in 2020!) comes from ads, and believe you're doing privacy a favor.
Google makes money from ads so therefor they can’t be leading the charge on less invasive ad tech…? They want less invasive ad tech, trust me. Regulatory capture only goes so far, and they know that well. Google is doing WAY more for “the next generation of display ads” than any other company. And I promise I’m not lying :)
All of this is kinda silly, in the end: display ads are negligible when compared to their INSANE search ads revenue, and something tells me they’re not long for this world
I don't think they're comparing the merits of either, but rather how can humans can convince themselves they're doing the right thing when it's obvious to us that they aren't. "no one thinks himself a villain, and few make decisions they think are wrong".
It's pretty clear that this privacy invasive behavior from Chrome and Edge browsers by mega corps fueled by ad seeking revenue are only going to worse over time.
For macOS my choice of using the faster and more energy efficient Safari is fairly easy. Windows also has a lot of good options, I prefer Vivaldi as a Chrome alternative since it sports a Blink engine, has a focus on privacy and is actively developed that sees frequent features and improvements in each release [1].
Have installed firefox with uBlock Origin on all of my family members android phone + laptops. Always bug my friends to switch over to firefox. I am doing my part. Just make sure that you export all the bookmarks/history/passwords over to FF to make it easier for them to switch.
The comments I am reading here seem to imply that this is more privacy invasive than tracking cookies. Steve Gibson did an analysis on Topics and his conclusion was that this is an approach to provide targeted ads (which websites need to make money) without being invasive.
Although if you believe that being online you should be 100% anonymous and share 0% of personal data then of course Topics is not good (but then no other ad targeting solution will be either).
There's a pop up that will be clicked through and soon forgotten and then there will still be ads. The ads might be slightly less targetted as they may now be showing for general browsing categories rather than individual websites visited but its not a big change.
The sad thing is people who should know better will still find excuses to keep using Chrome. And people with ulterior motives will help amplify their excuses.
Stop using Chrome and other Google products - They are hostile towards the open web.
Use Firefox instead of Chrome, DDG or Kagi for search, Apple Maps instead of Google Maps, and a privacy respecting e-mail provider.
They will only stop this bullshit once they go bankrupt - the Google we all loved died a long time, only through branding do they still appear nice.
Yeah, these kinds of "features" are horribly invasive and anti-consumer, but so, so, so many people just could not give less of a shit as long as they can hit up Facebook or YouTube or whatever work requires them to visit.
It's not like the early 00s when Firefox rose to dominance because IE sucked so badly in comparison.
Chrome is not only the best and "most-compliant" web browser (isn't it awesome to be compliant with standards you created?), but it is also what most of the web tests against by default and, consequently, works the best with. Not that this even matters, really; most web traffic is shifting to the apps, which have free-reign to track everything you do.
Theoretically, app privacy scorecards should dampen this, but it's all too easy to tap "OK" to the "can I use your contacts, your mic, your camera and every sensor and contact I can get away with?"
I was not expecting to become a curmudgeon at 35, but between this, WEI, Cloudflare becoming the Internet's global firewall, and the Great Enshittification of Reddit, Twitter, and others, all of this bums me out. Anyone got a positive counterpoint?
Is this is a privacy win for anyone using a non-Chrome/ium browser? Given the majority of the population use Chrome, will most websites stop relying on cookies and instead use the Topics API?
Though I suppose cookies will always be a fallback option if the website detects that the browser doesn't support the Topics API...
You can feed websites fake topics to mislead them, or even allow the user to pick their interests if they do want ads. That's a lot easier than sending your browser through random websites to shake off trackers and analysers.
Cookies are hard because other browsers do isolation based on top-level domains. Fingerprinting is the only way to track non-Chrome browsers.
Google wants to do cookie isolation as well, but ad companies threatened to sue them over it, so they can't for now, not until there's a viable alternative.
I think it is a privacy win. Every now and then, probably once every few months, I come across a website on Firefox where I have to disable enhanced tracking protection. If Chrome stops allowing 3rd party cookies then sites will have to be built better and should see fewer problems with the enhanced tracking protection.
How about a Do-Not-Track alternative where I can specify what kind of ads I'd be OK to show up alongside my browsing? It could be a header with a hash of an entry in a public list of lists of interest. Cars, travel, fashion, whatever; any order or preference you might come up with. I could flip a switch or install a plugin in the browser to help learn from my browsing history locally, and populate that list accordingly.
Adsense needs to respect that header, is all. I'd ditch ad-block if that happened.
Provided ads are alongside my content and don't replace it's space and time.
I'd use that.
EDIT: apparently, the basic idea is there; but also cookies will now only come from the website being viewed, not tracking you across the whole Web.
Does Firefox support web apps via PWA APIs yet? That was one of the biggest issues I had with it on desktop - it removes the need for Electron and Mozilla just dropped the plans.
Electron is for lazy developers that cannot master Web widgets available for 30 years on mainstream OSes.
Or step out of their comfort zone into pure native applications, or background services making use of default browser for UI.
If people like myself have been able to master multiple native since decades, and also use such approaches during the dotcom boom, it is hardly an excuse for younger devs lacking such skills, other than laziness.
And yes, even MS, VSCode isn't as bad, as it relies on several external processes, renders into WebGL, and has the excuse they use it to sell services into Azure and Github, back at X-Windows/one UNIX development server.
I don't understand your first sentence - the if "Electron is for lazy developers", then you absolutely want Firefox to implement PWA support so webapps don't need it anymore?
I'm going to get roasted, but it looks like they're abstracting your history into topics and not wantonly sharing it. Dropping 3rd party cookies is a cool thing. They could maybe take that a step further and just ask you what you'd like to see ads for.
That said, even though I "know better" I actively choose to use Safari as a daily driver to avoid things like this. I'm a lot less worried about Apple's intentions, especially since Safari is backed up by all the profits they rake in from iPhone sales.
Writing good luck wishe from Safari to all you all chrome users out there! :-P
The Google Chrome history deletion feature has always been dog slow.
I did read an explanation that it does some complex operations, but you have to wonder if it is deliberately made complex to make people avoid deleting their history, as it takes so long.
This is absolutely fantastic!
It releases me from my region beta paradox and finally gives me enough activation energy to break my laziness of using chrome mobile (only left-over).
Would like to head for Firefox, if they would only add some usability features I'm so used to (like tab groups). So Brave it will be, i guess...
Still the sad thing is, that both Brave (technically) and Firefox (financially) are heavily dependent on Google.
Why am I even using this browser anymore?
EDIT: Note this section about privacy goals, from the draft proposal by two Googlers: “Users should be able to understand the API, recognize what is being communicated about them, and have clear controls. This is largely a UX responsibility but it does require that the API be designed in a way such that the UX is feasible.” [1]
I guess it’s just a little oopsie that made the people responsible for the UX present it to the user through misleading copy.
1: https://github.com/patcg-individual-drafts/topics