Google making Chromium block adblockers?
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@LordOfTheNet Your money, and your choice.
We monks get a free lunch, and many other things free too, but there are associated responsibilities, and we give up a lot of freedom of choice.
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I haven't seen any discussion of what to me, is the obvious answer: replace Blink/Chromium with the WebKit engine. It would require the WebExtension API to be implemented for WebKit or within Vivaldi, but patches are already being maintained against Chromium (vivaldi.com/source), and the WebKitGTK maintainers are interested in implementing this API in WebKit also.
The WebExtension API is being standardised by W3C - https://browserext.github.io/browserext/
I would also point out WebKit is actually faster than Chromium:
I'm not suggesting that it would not be a significant amount of work, but I've loaded the UI code in WebKit and it seems to be a solvable problem to port over the interface code and add/implement extra functionality in WebKit to support Vivaldi's UI.
If ever there was a time to support open standards, open source and an open web, it is now.
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Firstly, I apologize for making a duplicate thread yesterday, I had not found this one.
I find it strange that an open source project is owned/controlled by a company whose main aim (like most companies) is to make money. The problem, as I see it, is when one group/company has the majority or a monopoly, they begin (intended or unintended) to mold the product in a way that is most beneficial to them. This reduces the users choice, and especially in Google's case, their privacy.
I admit I don't understand the technical challenges of this, but I do not want Vivaldi to be shaped/molded (even if only in regards to extensions) by anyone else, other than the Vivaldi team themselves.
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From Vivaldi side regarding this discussion, we’re continuing to watch the situation closely - a lot can still change. It’s our intention to continue to support content blockers. Our mission will always be to ensure users have the choice.
☝️ Vote for new features | 🕵️♀️ Code of Conduct | 🐛 Report bugs | 📨 Contact support
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@gaelle Phew!
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@raed thanks for your kind words, this statement comes from Vivaldi team actually so these words represent the company.
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I could be okay with Google's Manifest v3 changes if Vivaldi also implemented tracking prevention mechanisms (such as https://webkit.org/blog/8613/intelligent-tracking-prevention-2-1/ ) and other privacy protections into the browser.
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@Dr-Flay what is better (more effective) about those banned blockers than the ones allowed in the store?
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@Pesala Subscriptions cost $.
I do subscribe to a couple of sites with which I interact often and provide valuable resources to me and I wish to support, As I've said in other threads, I would have no problem paying for Vivaldi if that was what was needed.
Having said that, as an old geezer on a fixed income I have other priorities for my limited $.Subscriptions can be a quite a burden on those of us with limited $ and are not always an option.
I am sure I am not the only V user in this position.
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@greybeard I'm really thinking of subscribing to youtube red because ad blockers don't work for it on the TV or tablet lol - they used to but then google hired more engineers I guess. But I mean how crass (and greedy) is google? ads between videos is one thing but just stopping your video every 10 minutes to play an ad is insansity.. there are no parallels to TV because TV content was made for that ("we'll be back after a short break")... with youtube things just stop mid sentence. And it's unnecessary, most videos people watch are under 10 or 20 minutes anyhow.
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@Gwen-Dragon Remember this? https://www.networkworld.com/article/3021113/forbes-malware-ad-blocker-advertisements.html
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@raed I admit I haven't had time to fully read this thread yet but I'm still confused as to whether chromium based browsers will probably also be screwed when google implements this in chrome - or not...
I mean it would make much more sense for google to screw over chromium users as well, but then again, there probably aren't that many users not using chrome or firefox or IE (IE is really popular in China) out there
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@raed Would be something to look forward to, but I don't believe it. People use Chrome out of laziness, staying with the browser they know. For most it is of utmost importance to have the sign in to Google to have access to their data – adblocking is important, but it's a fact that the majority of users doesn't even bother to install an adblocker. Small players will likely not profit, but I could see a move to Firefox or Opera. On Firefox ublock will still work, while Opera has built in adblocking, with the possibility to load custom lists. I don't see how Vivaldi is gonna profit in the short term, they would have to act now. This would probably mean implementing native adblocking too (like Opera), or creating an independent store for extensions and keeping the webrequest api. All things I don't see happening in the coming years.
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@luetage but Firefox is really an acquired taste (and I can't seem to acquire it, it just looks wonky to me - the rendering and UI)
do you mean that Opera wouldn't be affected even if chromium was modified to not allow ad blocking?
I mean sure it is not the end of ad blocking, we can always block it at the DNS level but that solution isn't as nice for a lack of a better description. It would be a pain to temporarily unblock a site, for example. And I'm not totally sure but I think sometimes it leaves big empty boxes in the web page whereas a browser based ad blockers wouldn't.
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@dalinar Opera is insofar affected, as it uses block list compiled by third parties, which might change in future, as they won't be useable on Chrome anymore. The same will still work on Firefox, so there is a good chance they will be kept maintained.
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@Gwen-Dragon Adblocking in Opera is on the browser level. I don't know how they implement it, but the approach is different to extensions. I would guess Opera is rather unaffected by these changes.
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@raed said in Google making Chromium block adblockers?:
Once Google goes ahead and implements the vast majority of its proposals, hoards of Chrome users will start looking around for alternatives.
The browser that is ready and waiting for this implementation will surely see its user base increased several times over in a very short period of time.
The problem with this is that much of that hoard will return to Chrome when the Google web services they use start having problems in whichever browser they migrate to ( see https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-28/google-s-chrome-becomes-web-gatekeeper-and-rivals-complain and https://www.zdnet.com/article/former-mozilla-exec-google-has-sabotaged-firefox-for-years/ and many more examples including multiple incidents where Vivaldi has to spoof the user agent string for Google's and other's services to work properly ).
We not only need to convince hoards of people to move away from Google Chrome, but also to stay away and demand Google and others respect everyone's browser choices. It's not impossible, but I do find it unlikely (especially if Chrome's built-in, limited ad-blocking is enough to satisfy a lot of people).
Also, whatever browser(s) people move to will need to have a separate extension store since the existing Chrome extensions will either change to work around the new API (and probably not be as strong as they are now) or just disappear from the Chrome extension store entirely.
I am not giving up and will continue to recommend Vivaldi and FireFox to my friends and family, but I am not so certain this will resolve itself through user actions (at least not quickly).
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For me it's ongoing uMatrix or bust.
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@dalinar said in Google making Chromium block adblockers?:
@Dr-Flay what is better (more effective) about those banned blockers than the ones allowed in the store?
Let us hope they are allowed to keep working properly and so nit get hobbled by the big G.
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Thank you, heartily, to whichever Mod tossed out so-called "LordOfTheNet". What a tiresome lecturer it was!
