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Chromium Opera Chrome Software The Internet

Opera, Brave, Vivaldi To Ignore Chrome's Anti-Ad-Blocker Changes, Despite Shared Codebase (zdnet.com) 112

Posted by msmash from the shape-of-things-to-come dept.
Despite sharing a common Chromium codebase, browser makers like Brave, Opera, and Vivaldi don't have plans on crippling support for ad blocker extensions in their products -- as Google is currently planning on doing within Chrome. From a report: The three browsers makers have confirmed to ZDNet, or in public comments, of not intending to support a change to the extensions system that Google plans to add to Chromium, the open-source browser project on which Chrome, Brave, Opera, and Vivaldi are all based on.
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Opera, Brave, Vivaldi To Ignore Chrome's Anti-Ad-Blocker Changes, Despite Shared Codebase More

Opera, Brave, Vivaldi To Ignore Chrome's Anti-Ad-Blocker Changes, Despite Shared Codebase

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  • This Could Get Interesting (Score:4, Interesting)

    by crunchy_one ( 1047426 ) on Monday June 10, 2019 @11:58AM (#58739798)
    The question now is, what will Microsoft do? This may push them to make their position clear: follow the ad-blocker friendly fork or stick with Google.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Mashiki ( 184564 )

      Since MS offers you rewards for using their site without adblocking and selling your searches? I'd expect them to try following the path that Brave is currently trying.

      • Microsoft offers you rewards for doing bing searches with an ad blocker. They know people are just mashing their keyboards for that, it's just to inflate their use numbers for their next press release so they can pretend to be competitive with google.

    • The question now is, what will Microsoft do? This may push them to make their position clear: follow the ad-blocker friendly fork or stick with Google.

      I hope they choose the former (stay ad-blocker friendly), because I am really enjoying their Chromium-based Edge browser.

  • A better headline (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sinij ( 911942 ) on Monday June 10, 2019 @12:01PM (#58739828)
    Google attempts to cripple ad-blockers in Chrome, other browsers resist the change.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by lgw ( 121541 )

      Google attempts to cripple ad-blockers in Chrome, other browsers resist the change.

      I have to wonder whether this will be a bridge too far for Google. Normal people are getting used to ad blockers (no doubt this is the reason for the change). Take that away once folks get used to it, and people will be pissed. Being the default browser on Android only gets them so much, as the death of IE shows.

      • Re:A better headline (Score:4, Insightful)

        by sinij ( 911942 ) on Monday June 10, 2019 @12:41PM (#58740070)

        Take YouTube for example. It went from 5sec max one video ad to multiple ads in a row. Some ads are now as long as 15 seconds. This is just plain old greed, especially considering that it cost Google ZERO to create any of the content.
         
        Advertising industry created the need for ad blockers by being greedy and now they trying to leverage their technical near-monopolies to try to force it down our throats.

        • On browsers not running ad blockers, it's not uncommon these days to see unskippable YouTube ads that are FAR longer than 15 seconds. In the last week alone, I know I've seen unskippable ads that were 30 seconds long (which I recall, because I used the time to update my uMatrix configuration, refreshed the tab, saw that the 30 second ad was playing again, and then kept trying until I eventually got things right), and I think I've seen some 1.5 and 2.5 minute ads that didn't offer the option to skip them aft

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Luthair ( 847766 )

          Take YouTube for example. It went from 5sec max one video ad to multiple ads in a row. Some ads are now as long as 15 seconds. This is just plain old greed, especially considering that it cost Google ZERO to create any of the content.

          There are 400-hours of video uploaded to Google every minute, 1-billion hours streamed a day. Its not free to process videos, stream them, moderate, etc.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Take YouTube for example. It went from 5sec max one video ad to multiple ads in a row. Some ads are now as long as 15 seconds.

          That's funny. I use Palemoon and uBlock Origin, and I haven't seen an ad on YouTube in at least 2 years.

          This is just plain old greed, especially considering that it cost Google ZERO to create any of the content.

          GOOG is not a technology company. GOOG is an advertising company. They currently make ~ $120 Billion a year from advertising. And they are going to do everything they can to keep making more money. The entire reason for YouTube's existence is to make money from content that costs nothing to produce.

          If you use Chrome, you are part of the problem.

          • That's funny. I use Palemoon and uBlock Origin, and I haven't seen an ad on YouTube in at least 2 years.

            Recently, I wanted to show a video on YouTube a friend's house. I pulled up the content on their computer and was surprised to see an annoying ad play.

            I have used ad blockers for so long that if I ever get a glimpse of the unblocked internet, I cringe.

          • "GOOG is not a technology company. GOOG is a semi-official surveillance agency."

            FTFY

        • The justification for ad blockers is as much malware as it is annoying ads, though I haven't seen either in awhile here - because my blockers work. If that stops, Chrome goes out the window instantly. I can't risk it not blocking something malicious.

        • Most of the content on Youtube cost nothing to create, so thats not a great argument in any respect.

          People host on Youtube because the cost of hosting a popular video on your own platform can be very high - Google offer that for free, and swallow the bandwidth costs it takes to show your cat video to a million people. Creating of the content here is not the costly part, its the distribution.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jimbo ( 1370 )

        But they're not taking it away, merely limiting it. People will see most ads blocked and still be happy. Some ads and maybe more unnoticeable artifacts, like trackers, will suddenly not be blocked - but who will notice.

        • Re:A better headline (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Gavagai80 ( 1275204 ) on Monday June 10, 2019 @02:15PM (#58740706) Homepage

          People will notice that Chrome suddenly takes way longer to load pages because it's loading all the undisplayed ad and tracker resources. Speed has always been a selling point of Chrome.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            It won't take longer. Don't believe the hype, Google aren't getting rid of ad blockers. The contention is that they are limiting the number of rules that ad blockers can set, which they say is a performance issue.

            30k static rules and 5k dynamic rules I think it was. More than enough to block 99% of advertising.

            For example, the default uBlock Origin rules are about 19k entries. They kill all Google ads and 99% of everything else.

            There are some other issues like lack of support for the more advanced features

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by AHuxley ( 892839 )
              Re "limiting the number of rules that ad blockers can set'"
              So on a real computer with a real browser the ads are blocked.
              When the number of rules that block ads are set, ads get past.
              That results in the user seeing ads... something a real ad blocker would not allow.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

                Are you saying that 30k rules isn't enough? Because uBlock Origin only comes with 19k by default and that blocks pretty much all ads.

            • Yes, but only a fool uses the defaults, which by default, do not also block malware domains, which tack on another several hundred thousands rules.

          • Speed has always been a selling point of Chrome.

            Which has always been a mystery to me. My Netscape browser runs just as fast. And somehow, I manage to avoid most of Firefox's issues too, and Opera's, and Internet Explorer's... kinda nice that a 20 year browser can hold up so well without having to go through all the silly makeovers that the others have to deal with.

  • Chrome is done - stick a fork in it (Score:3, Funny)

    by JoeyRox ( 2711699 ) on Monday June 10, 2019 @12:07PM (#58739852)
    And then fork it entirely.

  • Go further (Score:3, Interesting)

    by xack ( 5304745 ) on Monday June 10, 2019 @12:10PM (#58739876)
    Fork Chromium completely and develop it away from the influnece of Google. Having another independent browser engine is healthy for the web.

    • Fork Chromium completely and develop it away from the influnece of Google. Having another independent browser engine is healthy for the web.

      OK, so why haven't you done that already?

      Oh, that's right, you want SOMEBODY ELSE to do it.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by ichthus ( 72442 )
        Oh, that's right, you want SOMEBODY ELSE to do it.

        Yep. I also want somebody else to take Tesla's patents and further develop an EV car concept. And, I want somebody else to kill and butcher a cow so I can have a hamburger. What's your point?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sad_ ( 7868 )

        well yes, obviously this is something Opera, MS, Brave, Vivaldi, etc should be picking up.
        together they maybe have a fighting chance.

    • Re:Go further (Score:4, Funny)

      by slack_justyb ( 862874 ) on Monday June 10, 2019 @02:05PM (#58740638)

      Fork Chromium completely and develop it away from the influnece of Google

      Or maybe try Firefox? ducks...

      But seriously, Firefox is a very good browser.

    • Yeah, but will it run HTML?

  • Just another reason not to use Chrome (Score:3)

    by jwhyche ( 6192 ) on Monday June 10, 2019 @12:16PM (#58739908) Homepage

    Just when I think there could be no more reasons not to use Chrome, Google comes out and gives me one more. If I didn't know better I would swear that Google is doing this on purpose, giving us reasons to ditch chrome.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by lgw ( 121541 )

      If I didn't know better I would swear that Google is doing this on purpose, giving us reasons to ditch chrome.

      I don't think you need to need to look for oddball motives when an advertising company move to eliminate ad blockers. Doesn't get more straightforward than that. Normal people must be adopting ad blocking, to a degree that it's affecting Google's bottom line.

      I don' think this ends the way google hopes it will end.

  • What about chromium? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Maybe it's a silly question, but does anyone know about chromium?

    • chromium is chrome's parent browser, so if google kills all the adblockers then google wont have them available for not only chrome but chromium too, when you install an extension chromium goes to the same source as chrome (google)

  • Could Host Files still be used to block ads on Chrome? If only it was possible to manage Host Files somehow.

    • You forgot to draw a pentagram.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by SpzToid ( 869795 )
      Any mention of hosts files on /. seems like an automatic down-vote. Anyway, I'll point out Android and iOS make it difficult to edit a hosts file on the device. However OpenVPN clients are available for both, so you can always create a proxy server somewhere and edit its hosts file, and use it wherever you are from the Android or iOS device.

      In a SOHO environment you can also use an OpenWRT router or PFsense firewall and edit the hosts file there, filtering all LAN traffic. Google github and hosts files t

  • I don't believe them (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Artem S. Tashkinov ( 764309 ) on Monday June 10, 2019 @12:23PM (#58739954) Homepage

    Looks like a cheap posturing.

    All these three browsers are basically a modified UI for Chromium, so if its codebase changes enough, these browsers will have to spend a considerable amount of resources to support the old code and since it's expensive, they will be forced to drop it sooner or later.

    So, yes, in case Chromium drops it, they will have a few releases with this code intact. But only for so long.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Since google promises to keep full feature available for enterprise customers all the hooks should still be there (just blocked). If so maintaining support may be as simple as switching this enterprise flag on or adding some trivial code patch. Most of those browsers also have some builtin adblocker so they will be unlikely to drop this feature.

      • This!

        Everybody seems to assume that Opera, Vivaldi et. al. have to basically fork Chromium to keep the APIs, but at the moment that shouldn't be the case. Now, Google might remove the APIs altogether somewhere down the line. But at the moment the fix for Chromium-based browsers seems to be small.

      • Since google promises to keep full feature available for enterprise customers all the hooks should still be there (just blocked). If so maintaining support may be as simple as switching this enterprise flag on or adding some trivial code patch. Most of those browsers also have some builtin adblocker so they will be unlikely to drop this feature.

        Nah. They'll follow Google for a different reason: The change is a good one. After Google makes it, the Chrome ad-blocker extensions will update to use the new API and will work just fine. Meanwhile the damage that malicious extensions do will be reduced since they'll no longer have that excessively powerful old API to abuse. At that point everyone will understand that this was much ado about a misunderstanding and get on board.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      The test is in the ad blocker working and that it can keep working. With no browser limits, code limits, changes.
      See an ad? Thats the browser code allowing ads.
  • These browsers are niche players, so they don't have anywhere near the problem with malicious browser extensions that Chrome does. So they can afford to keep the old extension model for the time being. Not to mention Google is already modifying the proposal to be a bit more flexible for legitimate content blockers, and the PROPOSED change was never aimed at breaking ad blockers. But those are things for future students of the Internet shriek mob to contemplate.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      what a load of fucking garbage. they are disabling the fucking API used to catch ads in the initial request. They are not removing it, only disabling it for us. PAID ENTERPRISE USERS will still have access to that api.

      There is absolutely no way this API is a security hole. It facilitates a feature that users wanted, now too many users are flipping it on and this completely destroys googles "free but ad supported" business model.

      I'm not happy about it, but it seems like a straightforward move for an ad r

  • I hope its going to be easy enough to determine when this particular change goes live in the codebase, I dont think there's an actual date stipulated anywhere?

    I actually like some of the features exclusive to chrome I wouldn't wanted ti be forced to part ways with it if I just don't know.

    Hopefully someone spots when it is going to be time to download the latest release (unbroken) version available for keep-safe.

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