Google Promises To Play Nice With Ad Blockers (Again) (zdnet.com) 138
An anonymous reader shares a report: After being ripped to shreds by angry users, Google engineers have promised this week that the upcoming changes to Chrome's extensions system won't cripple ad blockers, as everyone is fearing. Instead, the company claims that the new extension API changes will actually improve user privacy and bring speed improvements. Furthermore, Google also promised to raise a maximum limit in one of the upcoming APIs that should address and lay to rest the primary criticism brought against the new extensions API by developers of ad blockers during the last six months.
The non-pressure (Score:5, Funny)
I cant wait for google to cancel ads. Its like the one product they have not shut down.
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I for one will never buy anything that its forcefully advertised to me! if I want ads I will watch TV or get informed from them!
Static ads (Score:5, Informative)
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NoScript. It isn't an ad blocker, but it does end up blocking almost all the obnoxious ads.
Re:The non-pressure (Score:5, Informative)
If only. Instead, they decided to lie through their teeth on this one.
Contrary to their claims that they won't cripple ad blockers after all (how generous of them!), what they've actually done is bump up the number of rules ad blockers are allowed to set via the new API by a factor of 5 (from 30K to 150K). That sounds great until you realize that uBlock Origin, today, without including any region-specific lists, already has nearly 200K rules in the lists it can pull from, and users are welcome to import their own lists from other sources on top of that. These lists aren't getting smaller, so the lists will have no choice but to start omitting rules, making them less and less useful.
And that's before we consider the fact that these rules are more limited in what they can do than what the previous API allowed, meaning that, even if 150K rules is enough for you to cover your needs, you'd still be less capable of blocking content than you were before.
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So it will become necessary (and sufficient?) to couple the adblock lists with a good hosts file. So probably no Windows 10.
Right (Score:5, Funny)
Because if Google is known for anything is for how much they care about their user's privacy.
Firefox is no better, unfortunately (Score:1)
Please don't think that Firefox is somehow better at protecting your privacy.
Read Firefox's privacy policy [mozilla.org] for yourself.
Firefox can collect and send a lot of user data to various places and organizations.
Be sure to search the text of Firefox's privacy policy for the name "Google". See how Firefox's privacy policy refers you to Google privacy policies!
It doesn't matter if this tracking and info collection might be disabled. It doesn't matter that they disclose it. This sort of data collection can't b
Re: Firefox is no better, unfortunately (Score:1)
It's definitely not worse. And i'll take a browser thats not developed by an advertising company any day.
Re: Firefox is no better, unfortunately (Score:1, Insightful)
I think that the Firefox situation is worse because a lot of its users don't realize how much user data Firefox collects and sends out.
At least with Chrome you know up front that Google is involved. With Firefox you have no clue, especially if you're a less technical user, until you read Firefox's privacy policy and find out that your user data could very well be ending up with Google despite you not using Chrome and despite you not using GMail or Google Search or their other services directly.
The illusion
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I switched over to Vivaldi this week at work. Running Nano Adblocker (fork of uBO) and Nano Defender as well as others. Vivaldi have sworn to not implement the offending API, even if Google do. I trust Vivaldi far more than Google. Jon, who is the CEO of Vivaldi is one of the founders of Opera and left when that firm went dodgy. He's a great guy and cares about end users far more than Google or Firefox. Firefox is too "SJW" and political for my liking. Vivaldi just shuts up and hacks, which is what an IT co
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I think that the Firefox situation is worse because a lot of its users don't realize how much user data Firefox collects and sends out.
"This guy divides his time between Mastodon, the Minecraft Wiki and 4chan. What can we sell him?"
"An environment suit and a pair of #5 Dorrance hooks."
Re:Firefox is no better, unfortunately (Score:5, Insightful)
Please don't trick yourself into thinking that Firefox is any better.
Firefox allows me to block ads, no problem.
(...which is the topic of this discussion, not privacy)
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But Firefox will be making Hyperlink Auditing [bleepingcomputer.com] mandatory.
(but that's privacy...)
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user_pref("browser.send_pings", false);
user_pref("browser.ping-centre.production.endpoint", "");
user_pref("browser.ping-centre.staging.endpoint", "");
user_pref("browser.send_pings.require_same_host", true);
user_pref("browser.send_pings.max_per_link", 0);
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So does Chrome, today.
Firefox is moving towards having a Premium version that you pay for. How long do you really think it'll be before Premium is the only way to (at least easily) run an adblocker?
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Yep. Don't expect them to allow blocking of google analytics anytime soon.
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Who needs them to allow me that?
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Take your meds.
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We won't do evil trusssssssssssssttttttttt usss.
Right. (Score:5, Funny)
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Kinda hard to lie when the source is open and anyone can go check it for themselves.
The more important issue is that the new API still doesn't offer all the features necessary for some of the more advanced stuff in uBlock Origin.
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There is a HUGE difference between "stealing" (the taking of a thing contrary to the expressed intention of the owner thereof, depriving the owner of the use of that thing) and mere "copying" (the taking of a thing contrary to the expressed intention of the owner, with the owner still having use of the thing).
It depends on what the "thing" is. If the "thing" is the work, then copying is not stealing. But if the "thing" is exclusivity, then copying is stealing.
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Last I heard, the proprietary additions to Chrome compared to Chromium were Adobe Flash Player, video DRM, and crash reporting. None of these three sounds related in any way to web ad blocking. Or what evidence is there that other proprietary additions exist?
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Kinda hard to lie when the source is open and anyone can go check it for themselves.
The source may be open, but unless you compiled it yourself, you can't really be sure what's in that binary that you downloaded from Google.
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Or ran it under a debugger and/or disassembled. Which is a thing, don't kid yourself. If there's a sneaky trick to ferret out and make public, there is a (white hat) hacker who is going to do it. There is no better way to get hacking fame than that.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You know, comments like yours is precisely the reason companies stop listening to users:
Company: Announces change.
Users: Complain.
Company: Addresses complaints directly by saying they won't implement the changes.
Users: Complain.
Your comment is precisely the reason why users get treated more and more like some stupid thing to ignore and force in a direction any company wants precisely because you are unpleasable. That directly gives companies no incentive to listen to you in the future.
So how about you save
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How about you take your holier-than-thou-ism and shove it up your ass, and save it there until you actually have a point?
Re: Right. (Score:1)
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Company: Addresses complaints directly by saying they won't implement the changes.
They didn't. They said they are going to continue to implement the changes in a way that breaks things. They didn't use those exact words, of course.
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No.
Company: Announces change
Users: Complain
Company:Addresses complaints directly by saying they won't implement the changes.
Company: (a few months later) OH LOOK! We had our fingers crossed!
Company: But please be distracted by this cheap plastic shiny consolation trinket.
Users: WTF?!?
thegarbz: (with starry eyes) OOOOOOOhhh so SHINEY!!!
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Not going to happen. Google knows it's way too easy to switch browsers for them to be able to afford to negatively differentiate Chrome. When all the other Chromium-based browser makers announced they weren't going to follow Google's lead, that sealed the fate of the plan.
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You know, comments like yours is precisely the reason companies stop listening to users:
Company: Announces change. Users: Complain. Company: Addresses complaints directly by saying they won't implement the changes. Users: Complain.
Your comment is precisely the reason why users get treated more and more like some stupid thing to ignore and force in a direction any company wants precisely because you are unpleasable. That directly gives companies no incentive to listen to you in the future.
So how about you save the complaint for when you actually have something to complain about. Seriously man, the world is a messed up place with plenty of real things to complain about.
You know, these companies stopping listening to their users is the reasons for comments like mine. Google have shown time and time again their interests come first. End of story. It wasn't always that way but google has been a corporate machine for a good while now and they act exactly like a corporate machine does and 9 times out 10 when they announce something good for their users it's a secondary of something that is good for them or just a plain mask. I mean, google has no reason to play nice with ad bl
It really does not matter (Score:5, Interesting)
Since installing Pi Hole on a Raspberry Pi, I have enjoyed an enormous (113,000 plus) block list. Ads do not come through on Roku, phones, tablets, or browsers. Even my Cable Modem / Router points backward to the Pi Hole.
The Pi Hole was easily configured to use DNS over HTTPS and to make requests to Cloudfare. So Comcast can't scrape my traffic to sell ads to me. My DHCP server has been configured to use the Pi Hole as DNS, so I didn't even have to touch any of the machines in our household.
Take that Google!
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That's great, as long as you don't leave your house.
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You can add vpn to your rpi too.
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Thats true. Basically Google is going to defeat that too with their DNS changes though.
Provided your ISP allows inbound connections (Score:3)
You can add vpn to your rpi too.
Provided your home ISP allows incoming connections to the VPN endpoint running on your Raspberry Pi. Home ISPs in many areas do not, be it through refusal to forward inbound ports or through threatening and then performing disconnection. In fact, many countries outside North America and western Europe don't even have a separate IPv4 address for each subscriber, so ISPs there have to put everyone behind carrier-grade NAT.
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Pi-hole instructions: https://docs.pi-hole.net/ [pi-hole.net]
A VPN if you want it too, you can have both at once https://docs.pi-hole.net/guide... [pi-hole.net]
Google showing weakness? (Score:3)
Too late (Score:1)
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"But you can disable that!" Yeah, and about 0.000001% of users will ever know that and bother to do it.
Finding where to disable Firefox from sending that data is not hidden like in Chrome though.
still causes problems (Score:2)
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Of course Chrome cause problems with No Script. Ability to black list Google on per-website basis (e.g. no Google tracking outside of Google.com) is existential threat to Google.
Re: still causes problems (Score:2)
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Here they are: https://rdap.arin.net/registry... [arin.net]
Also, Google IPs reverse DNS into 1e100.net
There is only Firefox and Chrome (Score:1)
You have no other choice [seamonkey-project.org].
Don't waste your vote!
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And all firefox users will do it?
What difference does it make if "all firefox will do it?" You (or other ACs) bring that up as if it is relevant to whether or not you *can* do it. If privacy is not important to others, then what difference does it make if they don't bother disabling that feature?
This is not a reversal (Score:3)
company claims that the new extension API changes will actually improve user privacy and bring speed improvements.
It seems like they have conceded nothing here. It sounds like they are moving ahead with the Lie that taking away/restricting the API does not harm Ad Blockers and other tools: Trying to ``defeat'' the argument by contradiction --- just continuing to try and "save face" by disputing the point.
Yes, sure! (Score:2)
How could we doubt about it?
Heard that before (Score:2)
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Re: Still lying (Score:1)
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Indeed, they haven't backed down at all.
This also means that the only way to run an ad blocker extension with Chrome will be to give Chrome the full list of sites that you want to block. Even if that list is not immediately transferred to Google, they can still analyze it and check what Google ads are blocked, how well Google ads are doing compared to their competitors, etc.
If I want to block some trackers that invade my privacy, Google will make this harder (if the block is currently based on a pattern ra