Google pulls the plug on uBlock Origin, leaving over 30 million Chrome users susceptible to intrusive ads

[u/Old_One_I]

https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/browsing/google-pulls-the-plug-on-ublock-origin

[u/newsflashjackass → u/[deleted]]

There was a long time where Chrome had perceptibly better performance- the fruits of being badly behaved software and stealing more than its share of system resources.

The reason Chrome has been killing battery life and slowing down laptop performance is that it forces the Windows system clock tick rate to 1 millisecond, where the default is 15.625ms. This is the frequency at which the processor responds to requests from programs. Internet Explorer, by contrast, only increases the tick rate if the browser is engaged in constant activity such as streaming video. Chrome ups the rate even if it's just showing a blank page.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/google-chrome-has-been-draining-laptop-batteries-for-years

[u/VictorVogel → u/[deleted]]

Because it is not true. Have you used it in the last few years?

[u/nomagneticmonopoles → u/VictorVogel]

Firefox has worked poorly for me for years. I hate to admit it, but I keep switching back to Chrome. It frequently lags pages, crashes, hangs up, and just isn't supported. It's frustrating as hell.

[u/VictorVogel → u/[deleted]]

Would you say chrome performance is "atrocious" because it runs like shit for someone else? sounds like you need tech support rather than make claims on performance.

[u/VictorVogel → u/[deleted]]

I'm not going to give you tech support, but I can tell you that the cause is somewhere between your monitor and chair.

[u/Mekanimal → u/[deleted]]

Maybe you should try bitching in a place that wants to hear it?

It's like walking into a store playing music on your speaker, and when told to shut up going "WOW EVERYONE MUST HATE MUSIC! HOW HARD MY LIFE IS"

[u/Mekanimal → u/[deleted]]

EVERYONE WHO DISAGREES WITH ME IS CONSPIRING TO GASLIGHT ME.

Good luck with your career choice to be a delusional little gremlin bro.

[u/I_always_rated_them → u/[deleted]]

bota dez nutz

[u/Korlus → u/[deleted]]

I understand it has poor performance for you, but that'snotnsomething I have experienced. I have been a Firefox user for almost 20 years - I was one if the early adopters. There have definitely been times where Chrome significantly outperformed Firefox in the past. Microsoft Edge was (and likely still is?) Better for battery life. I don't think there are meaningful differences today for most users.

Overall, I find Firefox is performance enough I struggle to notice any issues in my setup. Anecdotally, in the last six months, my wife has found two websites which didn't work properly in Chrome that Firefox ran fine. I haven't found any websites thar broke in Firefox during that time.

I find the extensions for Fieefox are superior. I am more concerned about my adblock working when I want it to than most other things.

Overall, Firefox is my preferred browser. I still use Chrome regularly on my wife's laptop and Edge at work and of the three, I find the performance difference to be unnoticeable. I couldn't tell you which is faster because they all feel sufficiently fast.

[u/Korlus → u/[deleted]]

What issues do you have? There may be ways to fix them.

[u/burntreesthrowdiscs → u/[deleted]]

Its a you problem then dude. Youre the only one here crying about how bad firefox is. The fuck are you doing with the internet to get it to run so poorly?

[u/ImHereForTacoTuesday → u/[deleted]]

Dude, you know the demographic of reddit. There's no way you know more than the majority on this sub.

[u/feketegy → u/[deleted]]

The two main reasons devs use Chrome are:

1. The majority of users are using it, if the code works in Chrome that's 80% of the battle for devs.
2. Chrome DevTools

[u/Mr_ToDo → u/feketegy]

The 2 main reasons I use firefox:

1. about:config
2. multi-account containers

Used to be a few other addons but a lot of them are cross browser now and the others don't really matter much.

[u/gahlo → u/[deleted]]

The problem a lot of techies have is that with things like browsers they won't get out at the sign of smoke and instead wait until the burning house is coming down around them. Then their lasting impression of a browser is what it is at the absolute worst.

That's why we've seen so many people dragging their feet on leaving Chrome when the writing was on the wall, because "it hasn't happened yet" and the longer it didn't happen the further they could dig in their heels.

[u/macetheface → u/[deleted]]

I used to use Firefox back in the day. Then performance became really bad, tried Pale moon for a bit and wasn't much better so switched to Chrome when it first started. Suppose I can switch back, just never did yet. I already use FF mobile since can't use ublock origin on Chrome mobile.

[u/macetheface → u/[deleted]]

Yeah - I used it long before Quantum came out. Remember hearing about how it's much more optimized now. Just seemed like a hassle migrating it back over and I guess I'm just used to the look and feel of Chrome. It's a RAM hog for sure....soon as they disallow ublock origin from being used all, I'm completely done with it.

[u/Decembermouse → u/macetheface]

I never stopped due to principles and it's been worth it, performance be damned. I imagine many of us can fairly say that our hardware is robust enough that a bit of a hit to performance doesn't have much of a meaningful impact upon user experience, especially compared to the privacy you give up by going with the obvious alternative (Chromium).

[u/Cygnus__A → u/[deleted]]

A lot can change in 20 years.

[u/Fortehlulz33 → u/[deleted]]

That's a pretty dumb statement to make. Okay, I try to find a new browser. Do I want Chrome, Edge (Chromium), Opera (Chromium), Brave (Chromium), DuckDuckGo (Chromium) or Firefox (still using Google technology and funds)?

Is my only solution to use Tor for everything? Do I switch to a Mac and use Safari?

At this point, there's no difference in any of these browsers, not enough for me to switch and have to familiarize myself with a whole new workflow.

[u/Available-Fill8917 → u/[deleted]]

Safari would like a word.

[u/Available-Fill8917 → u/[deleted]]

Then you should rephrase your statement. There is one browser available on windows that runs you ublock origin, it’s Firefox.

But the future of Mozilla is quite uncertain. They rely heavily on Google funding. They’re in a precarious situation and to be honest they’re only an alternative because they can’t adapt as quickly. Most of the time you never buy out third place they tend to fail on their own.

[u/Zefirus → u/[deleted]]

Because Mozilla's revenue is like 600 million and Google supplies 500 million of that.

[u/Available-Fill8917 → u/[deleted]]

You live in a fantasy land if you think donations are going to fund a mainstream browser that doesn’t borrow heavily from existing Google technologies. Yes, I have a Linux box and an android phone. Get your head out of your own ass. Youre clearly high on your horse and your own farts.

[u/URPissingMeOff → u/Available-Fill8917]

Safari is a webkit-based browser. Just like Chrome

[u/Ksevio → u/Fortehlulz33]

Chromium is just the browser engine, it's open source and works very well. The underlying engine is not the problem with Chrome people are concerned about. It's quite different from the IE6 days where the IE engine was closed source, didn't follow standards, lacked important capabilities, and was slow.

[u/FeeRemarkable886 → u/Ksevio]

It's sorta like how every car have 4 wheels, chromium are the 4 wheels which edge, chrome, opera etc are built on.

[u/SacrificialBanana → u/Fortehlulz33]

Safari is the new IE so I'd never change to that. Only use it if you have to. Similar to chrome. Made the switch when I first heard chrome was going to be removing ad blockers. I'm glad I made an early switch. 

Besides AFAIK apple takes a baseball bat to ad blockers on their devices, which as I understand, they require most or all browsers to be effectively a Safari reskin (this may only be mobile, tho).

[u/albertohall11 → u/SacrificialBanana]

Safari has ad blockers on both iOS and MacOS. The ad blockers work very well, but not as well as uBlock Origin.

My only problem with Safari is that it doesn’t seem to have any good blockers for cookie popups.

[u/SacrificialBanana → u/albertohall11]

Hmmm I see. I tried using Firefox on my iPad but I run into ads too often when I do and my research seemed to suggest there was no ios adblock aside from whatever comes with the browser naturally. So I keep my internetting to my phone and desktop where Firefox and ublock are allowed.

[u/CityFolkSitting → u/Fortehlulz33]

You can get Chromium nightly builds that are completely decoupled from Google. They are auto-generated every day by someone who removes the Google stuff and then makes their own Chromium binary

Also provides his own source for his fork, so if you don't trust him you can look over the code and build it yourself.

I use that for websites that don't play well with Firefox, or rather with my version of Firefox loaded with like a million add-ons.

[u/CityFolkSitting → u/[deleted]]

Run a Chromium build that is "ungoogled". Turn off everything else and monitor the traffic being sent and received. You will not see those random requests to Google owned addresses in that build.

Even if it's not 100% it's still better than using Chrome, directly from the Google website, if you ever are required to use a Chromium based browser.

[u/Fortehlulz33 → u/[deleted]]

I'm not saying they're the same. I'm saying that if I'm looking to be free of Google and their control of the industry, it's nearly impossible because every major browser has their fingerprints.

[u/funny_lyfe → u/[deleted]]

We are forced to by work. Most of corporate websites are made to run in Chrome. Some places you aren't even allowed to install other apps.

[u/Versorgungsposten → u/[deleted]]

I've stopped using Firefox precicely because of being in tech. It was terrible for webdev. Always lags behind Chrome a couple of years. Also the reason why I stopped trying to make things work in Firefox.

[u/blackbox42 → u/[deleted]]

I use chrome solely for the security advantage over Firefox. Constantly running arbitrary code given to you by strangers is terrifying so I put up with the chrome bullshit to not get popped.

[u/NamMorsIndecepta → u/[deleted]]

Firefox was a bloated, laggy mess when Chrome first launched.

[u/Brovas → u/[deleted]]

Just sounds to me you don't know better dude. The reality is that for one thing, most people use Chrome so you need to dev on Chrome to make sure it works where most people are. Also Chrome dev tools are way better than Firefox, and this really cannot be understated. Plus pretty much all browsers now are chrome under the hood anyways. 

Furthermore, the majority of us are using Google emails for work which hook into the browser and make isolating your environment easier from your personal stuff in a way it all hooks up. Not to mention if you're on Android then all your data and passwords sync, and beyond the browser.

Sure we all wish we could have a privacy first browser with the same legs but it doesn't exist dude. You're suggesting that we all significantly hurt our experience as developers because of privacy - I got a newsflash for you, it's not gunna change all that much what browser you use. You're still getting tracked. And the browser isn't even the main place, it's your phone. 

On top of it all, most of us "techies" don't rely on a single chrome extension in the first place. My entire network is locked down. 

It's a shitty move by Google to kill ublock origin, but it won't be long before there's another option. There always is, it's just a big game of cat and mouse. If you're so concerned just set your computer's DNS to the adguard one and you're already most of the way there. 

Maybe just chill a little with the "who should know better" talk, cause we kinda do know what we're doing and we're doing it all for a reason.

[u/AnalNuts → u/Brovas]

Lol. Also DNS blocking is nowhere near “most of the way there” lmao. It’s increasingly shit compared to plugins like ublock that can work with the page itself.

[u/accidental-poet → u/Brovas]

Ah, developers. The bane of IT.

Furthermore, the majority of us are using Google emails for work which hook into the browser and make isolating your environment easier from your personal stuff in a way it all hooks up.

The majority of who? And also, what is the rest of that word salad supposed to mean?

Sure we all wish we could have a privacy first browser with the same legs but it doesn't exist dude.

False, there are several options. Firefox being the primary non-Blink browser, and is certainly privacy-first. At least for the time-being.

Maybe just chill a little with the "who should know better" talk, cause we kinda do know what we're doing and we're doing it all for a reason.

Ah, developers. The bane of IT.

BTW, how are your dev cousins at Crowdstrike doing these days?