My friends at Google: it is time to return to not being evil
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@aach1 Nothing. What Google is doing is not in response to Vivaldi.
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@ayespy So, out of technical interest, how does new google sites (and the rest of gsuite) know that I'm not using Chrome? I had understood from other discussions that Vivaldi reports itself as being Chrome. Is there some other way that Google finds out it's not?
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@aach1 Maybe, the sites and g-browser share a particular information to say "hey, I'm chrome!" other than the spoofed user agent.
But I hope not. As if the popup is not seen and the site works on other chromiums.... -
@aach1 It's called browser sniffing. Each browser must have a unique "User Agent" identifier which is detectable by websites you visit. The Vivaldi UA is:
"Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/62.0.3202.63 Safari/537.36 Vivaldi/1.94.993.1"The Chrome UA is:
"Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/62.0.3202.62 Safari/537.36"You can see they are not the same. That is how Google knows you are not using Chrome.
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This is why I use a User Agent Switcher for use in GDrive and other Google sites.
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@ayespy ok thanks. I remembered what I was referring to - it was in Jon's original post: "We still have to hide our identity when visiting services such as Google Docs.". I'd thought that this was why I wasn't getting the annoying popup etc., so I assumed something must have been dropped when 1.12 came around. So he was referring to something other than the user agent?
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@catweazle thanks for that - wasn't aware of any of this, will give it a go.
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@aach1 No, the UA is what he was talking about. If we had employed "UA cloaking" for Google services, it may have stopped working.
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@ayespy right. That's why I'm asking about 1.12. On my laptop I'm running 1.12 and getting the annoying popups. On my Surface, I'm still on 1.9 and I am not getting the popups. Two possibilities: google nefariously changed something, but in a way that didn't affect 1.9 but does affect 1.12. Or something in 1.12 itself broke the cloaking for google sites. Anyway - now I know from @Catweazle that I can "do it myself", so I'll give that a go.
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@catweazle I tried a couple of the User Agent switcher extensions, including google's own one. Both failed because the version of Chrome (or Firefox) they gave me was considered "out of date" by google. I'll dig around but if there's a chrome user agent string for the current version somewhere, I'm interested.
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@aach1, I use the Chrome one and add following string:
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/59.0.3071.104 Safari/537.36
It work on many pages Vivaldi cant log in, open mail box and so forth.
Cheers, mib
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@mib2berlin thanks very much, that works!
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@aach1 said in My friends at Google: it is time to return to not being evil:
@catweazle I tried a couple of the User Agent switcher extensions, including google's own one. Both failed because the version of Chrome (or Firefox) they gave me was considered "out of date" by google. I'll dig around but if there's a chrome user agent string for the current version somewhere, I'm interested.
I know that not all are worth. I have also tested those on the list as User Agent Switcher, with very disparate results and not very satisfactory.
But I have found one that did not appear in this search list in the Chrome Store, but as Random User Agent that works good, although perhaps it is necessary to change sometimes the User Agent, that selects of random form, until it gives with the correct combination (it changes Browser and OS, configurable) and stay with this for the indicated site. Then there are no problems (Open Source)https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/random-user-agent/einpaelgookohagofgnnkcfjbkkgepnp
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I am only reading this for the first time now. Thank you very much for writing this. Vivaldi is the first Blink-based browser I have ever used. I have never used such browsers in the past because of their tacit association with goolag, such is my loathing for this crony company that "Just Does Evil". I gave Vivaldi a shot because of its Linux-friendliness. Upon reading this article, I have newfound and substantial respect for Vivaldi and the people that comprise it, assuming their thoughts are similar to yours. Please keep fighting and providing voice for those that are aware of this "company's" authoritarianism.
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I too, am reading this for the first time and want to thank Vivaldi for giving us an alternative to Google. Google started out as a "do no evil" company but eventually went over to the dark side (Apple's home turf). I specifically went looking for a browser that was google compatible and linux friendly without all of the spyware. Vivaldi fits the bill nicely. I am also looking at switching my emails, calendar etc to Vivaldi.net.
Thank you Vivaldi.
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Dear Jon, congratulations on your masterful creation, the Vivaldi browser. It's a dream come true, feature-wise, more elegant browser, nothing comes close.
However, it is based on Chromium, on which Google's Chrome also relies.
Perhaps it's about time to move on and change Vivaldi's chromium foundation to the one Firefox Quantum uses, built using the Rush language.
Firefox Quantum is screeming fast, faster than any other browser, and all that speed is thanks to Rush (from what I've read, but I am not a developer).
I don't know if it's even possible to use that other browser engine instead of chromium, but perhaps it is.
Please explore this tantalizing possibility and the sky will be the limit for Vivaldi. -
@jon: competition is coming...
How Amazon’s Ad Business Could Threaten Google and Facebook
Amazon.com has valuable data its tech competitors can’t access: Its own sales
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-amazons-ad-business-could-threaten-google-and-facebook-1517157327 -
@spytrdr I'm not sure that having two or three massive corporations gobbling up your data and privacy is better than only one. In fact I think it's worse! Now you have the situation where you as a user have to fit into the "Google world" or "Amazon world" or "Apple world" or "Microsoft world"... and there are distinct borders where you can't view content from one on the devices or services of the other.
That is already the case with streaming services and devices like Alexa and Google Home, and having a couple more megacorp competitors only makes it worse for us users.
At the moment it's getting worse than it was with a Google monopoly!
The only way things can improve for us is if there are open standards so services and products from different "ecosystems" will seamlessly talk to us and each other. That's only going to happen if
- there's so many competitors that it's the only way forward (unlikely since that's exactly what Google, Amazon etc. are trying to prevent)
- the corporations all spontaneously develop a benevolent conscience (yeah right)
- governments intervene (also unlikely for now, unfortunately)
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@mossman: I agree, of course. In the end it will be a matter of which ecosystem (cloud, etc) you trust most. For me the worst offender is actually Facebook (that's why I don't use any of its services), not Google. Google is unavoidable, Gmail, Google Drive, and YouTube in particular are essential at least for me.
What I like about Amazon is that it doesn't have a "social" component ("find your friends!", "share with mommy!"), although that Alexa speaker is very creepy and no way I will ever let it inside my home.
We all know who is behind the curtain listening, recording, and tracking all our movements, and even our thoughts.
Not ideal of course.
Anyway, the stock market hasn't look this "solid" since 1929, and when the inevitable market crash comes, it will be fund watching many of these juggernauts collapse., there will be a lot of rearranging of chairs when the dust finally settles.
It happened to MySpace, it can and will happen to Facebook too. -
@spytrdr: let me recommend this awesome privacy browser addon from the Electronic Frontier Foundation
https://www.eff.org/privacybadger