>Nobody could have possibly seen it coming that Google would abuse its market position to their own benefit...
Doesn't Safari have the same restriction, also ostensibly for "security/privacy" reasons? The only difference is that Apple doesn't have a web advertising presence, so you can't make the accusation that they're "abuse its market position to their own benefit".
People scratch their heads about how "just a default setting" can be worth an annual $20 billion payment from Google. It makes more sense if it's actually for a raft of wildly illegal under-the-table measures this.
Imagine what it would cost Google's bottom line if Apple was truly user-focused and enabled ad-blocking on desktop, mobile and embedded safari views by default. Someone do the napkin math please!
Defaults is exactly how Microsoft has been getting away with everything they did for forever. Anti-trust investigations? Irrelevant if you can just make it configurable but the default is Microsoft.
Most people don't change default settings unless prompted and guided. And adding a setting shuts up most of "us" coz we'll just change it.
The only reason they're remove the ability to configure something would've been if too many of us change the settings for too many of our friends and relatives for it to register negatively on their end and they'd try to get away with not allowing it to be configured / hiding it as much as possible until they actually get anti-trust investigated // convicted (Re: requiring Windows to ask if you want to install other browsers than Internet Explorer).
Heh, sometimes you feel pressed between “but it’s just a default” and “who uses settings anyway”. Because the first group is blind and deaf to network effects of a default and the second to the fact that workflows and preferences differ.
It's a revenue share deal where Google pays Apple 36% of the search revenue they get from Safari users [1].
In other words, Google pays Apple ~$20B per year to be default search engine because they make ~$53B in revenue from those searches. This is profitable for both Apple and Google -- no "wildly illegal under-the-table measures" required.
How much would Google even lose if Apple didn't make Google the default search engine? People would almost certainly just use Google anyway. If Apple switched to Bing most people would use it once, get pissed off, and then switch it back to Google.
It's not that weird that people are a bit suspicious that it's really worth Google $20B/year.
I couldn’t possibly disagree more. I’ve always worked with end users and I can say with confidence that the majority of people wouldn’t change it or more accurately wouldn’t feel like putting in the effort/dealing with the hassle of changing it, minor as it may be. Also a non-trivial segment of the population most likely wouldn’t be aware of that it is even an option.
The power of the default is just that, they it is the default.
Also Apple themself has only one incentive which is to get the best deal for themselves. Is Microsoft willing to offer more money than Google? The evidence points to no.
Back when I tried both more extensively a few years ago, Google was a lot better giving me results relevant in Europe and Asia. Bing and duck duck go used to be very US only focused. Which made me go back to Google.
the fuzziness is too high (forget searching for specific error messages, prepend !g for that) and it doesn't have a 'verbatim' mode (on google search: tools -> verbatim) ..
This conspiracy theory doesn't make sense because safari's content blockers (ie. the nerfed version of adblock) block most ads just fine, especially from google ads. The only ads that get through are first party ads (eg. youtube), but as of a few years ago adblockers could block those as well, so it's a moot point.
Safari content blockers are awful compared to UBlock and I’m a Safari user. Not only does YouTube either get through or cause weird issues, YouTube now blocks you until you completely disable the extension. Content blockers often block cookie banners too which can often result in broken functionality - a nightmare when you’re trying to buy tickets to something and have to “reload without blockers” for the website to work.
If I go to buy something, I switch off ad blocking on that page, at the very least, on the checkout page. Ads can even be actually relevant there.
If the page is too ad-ridden to tolerate, I may consider to just close that page, and go search for other options.
I use Firefox + uBlock Origin, because going to the wide commercial internet without some form of ad blocking is like going out without an umbrella when it's raining heavily.
Usually checkout pages don't have pesky ads galore, or any. But such a page usually has a ton of anti-bot scripts, such as captchas and other privacy-invading checks.
Ad blockers usually block such stuff, for a good reason. But I don't mind it on a checkout page specifically though, because on a checkout page I wilfully disclose a ton of my private details, such as name, address, etc.
Good checkout pages work well with an ad blocker on.
They removed wording in their FAQ saying that they wouldn't sell data. It's a subtle distinction, and may or may not make a difference depending on your perspective.
It's just the paradox of when you present yourself as "the good guys" - people will hold you extra accountable for things that others easily get away with as nobody expects them to do better.
Unfortunately, Mozilla tends to shoot themselves in their foot this way somewhat often.
Being the good guys is the only reason anyone still uses Firefox. If Mozilla doesn't want to be the good guys, we'll use one of their many forks that remove the bad guy code.
Suggest using a service like NextDNS or Pi-hole for DYI ad blocking at the DNS/network level. I started with pi-hole but the hassle of updates and most importantly not having it available outside of my home network pushed me to a service like NextDNS which works on any network (5G, work, etc)
If you think manifest v3's adblocking is bad, DNS-based adblockers (eg. NextDNS or Pi-hole) is even worse. It can't do any filtering based on urls or elements, so any first party ads will be able to get through.
First party ads aren't evil usually tho. If someone builds their own ad infrastructure they might as well build it properly because they know it's going to be their fault if someone uploads something fishy.
In my experience only the big ad networks let you post anything. Small specialized ad platforms usually have actual moderation.
Edit:// by the way it wasn't that hard to get ads trough ublocks filters by self hosting them either. But that's rarely really evil and I never saw that abused.
to get any actual work done with DNS based blocking (ie. visiting Google ads, or their other dashboards) you quickly have to start whitelisting a ton of sites, which applies everywhere.
Apparently, it doesn’t have the described issues. I also use AdGuard on iOS/Safari and see only occasionally desperate ads. I expect ad networks to target this with mv3-hard methods now that it will become widespread, but up until now it just worked.
Apple and google did everything for you to not know about it. It’s not the first thread where people either don’t know about it or will read but won’t try.
The only time I use Safari is when the MBP is unplugged because it improves the battery life. I have the AdBlock extension but I'm looking for something better.
>Not only does YouTube either get through or cause weird issues, YouTube now blocks you until you completely disable the extension
Works fine on my machine. You might need to update your filter lists or try another content blocker app.
>Content blockers often block cookie banners too which can often result in broken functionality - a nightmare when you’re trying to buy tickets to something and have to “reload without blockers” for the website to work.
So don't enable the filter lists that try to block cookie banners?
YouTube has been playing a cat and mouse game, disabling some accounts until disabled, randomly re-enabling them. I personally think it's so when people talk about issues like this - people say "Well, it's been ok on my end". But it's definitely some kind of A/B testing.
For me the element blockers are the most important of all. It's not just about blocking ads. It's about making websites more usable. Ads are only one of those detrimental points. Many websites bombard you with big photos of their articles. I block all that with custom blocklists so the end result is a lot more like here at hacker news.
The main difference between this and current element blockers is that Web Defuser allows you to block annoying behaviors (by modifying requests/responses in flight) in addition to elements.
At the moment it's a bit lacking in the UI department, I'd appreciate early adopter feedback (you can contact me at gmail with my username).
The webRequestBlocking api, which allows the extension to inspect all request/responses in real time and act on them. With manifest v3 the extension can only supply a list of expressions to block, and the expressions that can be used is very limited.
I understand that nerfing adblocking is definitely a big draw for Google, but Apple went the ManifestV3 route many years before, specifically to increase extension performance and privacy.
Back then there was a big uproar too, but mostly because Safari extension developers charged for a new version because they had to rewrite the entire thing.
> specifically to increase extension performance and privacy
This reasoning is so bogus that it’s hard to believe anybody could believe it in good faith. Ad blockers are essential for performance and user privacy and security.
If Apple truly bought into this reasoning then they’d integrate an ad blocker like Brave does. Follow the money.
It is not bogus. It does increase privacy because the extension no longer sees what pages you load or your web content. And it is indeed more performant.
And Apple does care because later on they started to allow blockers to spread blocking rules over multiple sub-extensions. Initially they were limited on... 15 000 rules? Can't quite remember.
You're downvoted so much that I can't even read your text without copy and pasting it.
But you're right. When I'm using Safari with 1Blocker, I don't even notice that I'm not using Chrome with uBlock Origin. And it accomplishes that with static rules instead of with an API that reads every request.
You can still install uBlock Origin in Brave, assuming you don't mind the crypto stuff and how they pay it out (or, rather don't) to site owners. Even Firefox feels a little weird now with the advent of Mozilla Advertising.
You can, but ultimately Brave is downstream of Chrome and their stated intention of supporting Manifest V2 "for as long as [they're] able" doesn't inspire as much confidence.
Firefox is also the only open alternative to Chromium at the moment, so I prefer to endorse it instead.
Brave has its own Rust based Adblocker BUILD IN. That is at the very core of the Browser, uses the exact same filter lists uBlock Origin and all the other use. There is no point in using uBlock origin in Brave at all. I have been using Brave for years now and the adblocker pretty much like uBlock. Never looked back. I think it even inspired by uBlock but the fact they can even integrate it tighter with Chromium makes more then than an extension written in JS.
uBlock Origin does a bit more than applying community maintained filter lists though. I regularly use its capability to add custom filters for instance. Is that also possible in Brave?
We would not do that on principle, but imagine we're the mustache twirlers you fantasize we are: we'd light our brand on fire doing any such thing, lose all our lead users, stop growing and start shrinking. Think / Type / Post is the Ready / Aim / Fire analogue you seek.
I know that you probably went with Chromium based on the way your relationship with Mozilla ended, but man... I'll never have a Chromium based browser as my daily driver, I simply never trusted the ad company to not do what they ended up doing in the end (killing ad blockers). Brave will always be a no go for me for this reason. And now more than ever, we really need some company with real fire power to take the reins of the Firefox source code and create a real trustable fork.
This is a choice we made. As I wrote in my last reply, I think we would have died trying to get Gecko/Graphene with a Web front end up to competitive scratch vs. Chrome (nm Firefox).
A Firefox fork would have gone over badly with some potentially large number of Mozilla/Firefox fans, and we'd still lack key elements not part of the Mozilla open source (at the time, e.g., Adobe's CDM for HTML5 DRM). On the upside we'd have more UX customizability.
But our choice of Chromium/Blink (via Electron, so we had Web front end upside without Firefox extensions) was not a slam dunk choice. It involved trade-offs, as all engineering does. One downside is we have to audit and network-test for leaks and blunders, which often come from Chromium upstream:
Huh, I was under the impression that you were forking Chromium itself instead of building over Electron. Or are you talking about a past, post-Gecko decision that had to be dropped as well?
No, we started with Gecko (on Graphene, a sandboxing multiprocessor framework from b2g/FirefoxOS). We switched for hard-nosed wins of Chromium (as part of Electron) because out of the box vs. Gecko, most rows in the spreadsheet favored Chromium decisively. This is covered in
Why do you write "probably... based on... relationship ended"? Brave as a startup does not have time for feels not realz, pathos-over-logos nonsense. I recommend you avoid it in your work efforts too.
Thanks for the replies. I did not knew that you started with Gecko. Anyway, Brave is my go to advice when a regular user asks for a mobile browser, it just works out of the box. Not for me, and I still hope to see a Firefox fork becoming the main Chrome competitor in the future.
I get it. I run FF as my primary browser (mostly because I don't want to see the internet devolve into a Blink mono-culture).
But, I always recommend Brave for less-technical folks. It just works! My FF setup includes a number of extensions, some of which need a bit of tuning to be useful. Then you have to deal with issues in websites that just don't properly support FF, etc. My grandmother can install Brave and simply start browsing. Things just work without extra config or tinkering.
What I specifically mean by 'large media elements' is that I currently have the uBlock option active to 'Block media elements larger than [50] KB'. (Where the 50 is a spinner so I can increase or decrease the size if I want.)
I would like to know this, too. It does not seem to be on the list of features unless they are referring to it via "cosmetic filtering". I often block particular elements on websites.
There is an Aggressive setting for Brave Shields, which you can set either per-site in the Shields menu from the URL bar, or globally in brave://settings/shields - that should take care of SERP ads and other first-party placements.
Brave has a native adblocker that lets basically nothing through, though it can be configured as desired. Crypto stuff is opt-in, though there is a little monochrome button for it on the browser that one can disable with a right click.
As I see it, Brave is the only Chromium-based browser with a competitive Mv2-deprecation-resistant adblocker. If adblocking is important to you - and it is, to many people - then Brave literally is the only one worth considering. Not to mention it is open source, unlike most of the others.
(I work on Brave's adblocker, and FWIW the folks who work for Brave are very open about their affiliation when commenting about it online)
It is not a subtle insinuation, Brave is the defacto only browser apart from Chrome right now. All the rest are niche and irrelevant if you measure adblock, compatibility and widely subpar privacy protection.
There is some bitching about the ads crypto token, but that is entirely optional, so complaints are mostly fear and dogma. And to be honest, is a fascinating new approach to ads that suvberts the current state of affairs in the advertising market.
Do you have thoughts about Kagi/Orion browser? I've been using it for a bit now and I've been pleased with the ad blocking capabilities and the ability to have ublock origin on my iPhone and iPad. The browser definitely has scales but it's usable for me at this point.
Your comment was downvoted into oblivion, but it's a very valid point. There is a significant number of GNU/Linux users who value the freedoms granted by FLOSS licensing, so I believe Orion not being a FLOSS project is a valid argument against it - specifically in context of GNU/Linux (as a part of Free Software movement).
At least it certainly leaves me (personally) having second thoughts, even though I'm no purist and use proprietary software (but try prefer free software if I can).
If the Google, Pocket and other ad money dries up, Mozilla the company may go away but the Firefox browser itself will continue on because it's open source. As an exclusively Firefox user for over 20 years, I suspect if Mozilla the company dies, it will won't negatively impact Firefox much, at least in any meaningful way. In fact, the browser may be somewhat better off managed like the Blender or MAME projects.
In the last five years or so Firefox has increasingly introduced controversial changes that make it (IMHO) less good, primarily around interface design. And, from what I understand, Mozilla employs full-time UX designers who've been driving much of that. Of course, with Firefox it's still possible to modify, fix and restore all these recent interface "improvements" with user CSS but it's a constant annoyance to need to keep fixing it. Fortunately, there's an active community effort around restoring the Firefox interface and usability, exemplified by the brilliant Lepton project https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix/releases.
My perception just watching the evolution of Firefox from the outside, is that it used to be a browser that celebrated the ethos of "Have it Your Way." However, Mozilla the company gets money to pay its executives and employees (millions in the case of more than one recent CEO) by actively driving users and eyeballs for Google, Pocket and other advertisers. So the company is highly incentivized to try myriad changes and redesigns to increase appeal to "the masses" of browser users. Thus, the UX keeps getting 'simplified' and 'de-cluttered' with advanced functionality 'de-prioritized' and add-on support demoted to second-class afterthought - instead of the shining key feature advanced users value most. Basically, in recent years the Firefox UX and end-user features have been pushed by the substantial payroll needs of the Mozilla company to become more like Chrome and Safari instead of embracing its unique position as a tool for power users who value advanced features, customization and extension. And it was all for naught because Firefox has continued to lose market share while ignoring (and even actively alienating) its niche community of fanatically devoted power users.
Do you think the open source community is capable of maintaining Firefox without Mozilla? I find that doubtful. Even if they did, without Mozilla, Cloudflare and friends would start trying to kill Firefox like they do to other independent browsers.
...so long as you're not in a market where they automatically opt you in to sending all your DNS requests to a for-profit company without asking, and if you are, you remember to set up a canary domain or go and update your settings for every new install and new profile.
It's time for a Google breakup from the DOJ / FTC.
They've gone well beyond what Microsoft did in the 2000s.
Google owns so many panes of glass and funnels them all through its search and advertising funnel. They've distorted how the web (and mobile) work to accomplish this massive market distortion.
Search, Ads, and Android should be broken up into separate units. Chrome shouldn't be placed with any of those units.
While we're cutting, YouTube should be its own entity and stand on its own legs too.
Apple, Amazon, and Meta need the same scrutiny. Grocery stores and primary care doctors should not be movie studios and core internet infrastructure. Especially when those units are wholly subsidized by other unrelated business units, and their under pricing the market is used to strangle out the incumbents and buy them up on the cheap.
Well, this country (the US) decided in November to go the exact opposite direction of having a government capable of, let alone willing to, pursuing litigation like this, so I hope we enjoy this digital feudalism only expanding, never receding, in the coming years.
>Well, this country (the US) decided in November to go the exact opposite direction of having a government capable of, let alone willing to, pursuing litigation like this
Okay, I'll retract my remarks when the new formation of the FTC actually goes after a tech giant. And frankly, I have doubt any DOJ filings of this type won't get repealed by force from above in short order. This is a case that was mostly handled by the prior DOJ, which is gone now, replaced by new management.
New management is aligned with breaking up big tech.
Founders Fund (Thiel), A16Z (Andressen [0], Horowitz), and YC (Gary Tan) have all been lobbying for some form of big tech breakup because it sucks up capital+oxygen needed for startups they funded to exit at respectable valuations.
Also, Andressen's Netscape was screwed over by Microsoft, so he has a grudge against large players.
Breaking up big tech would oxygenate the entire tech sector.
Startups would be able to grow larger. There would be less threat from big tech coming in to eat your market, and M&A wouldn't be the preferred exit strategy.
Tech talent would be able to get paid more without big tech setting wages and orchestrating coordinated layoffs. More successful startups = more money for venture and labor capital. Right now that money just goes to institutional shareholders which are not the innovation drivers of the economy.
Startups will actually get to compete for markets rather than having them won and subsidized by unrelated business units at the big tech titans. The solutions delivered will fit the market needs much better.
Even big tech itself might fetch a higher valuation and be greater than the sum of its parts. So much of big tech is inefficient, untethered from market realities (eg. Alexa), and a waste of talent and human capital on dead end projects. Having Jeff Bezos "pay whatever it takes" to acquire the rights to "007" is a sign of how bloated these market distorting companies have become.
It's working fine on Youtube in Optimal mode. If you have still issue, you will have to go through self-diagnosing steps[1] to rule out all the myriad other ways you suffer such issues -- most commonly another extension is interfering negatively.
uBO being so good at blocking YouTube ads to the point where you didn't need to signup for Premium may have been the tipping point for Google that ended manifest V2.
i suspect that youtube mobile is responsible for more traffic than web. And that it's harder (but not impossible) to have adblocking on mobile (such as revanced).
Honest question here: Could someone explain to me how Apple and Safari relate to what Google is doing?
I currently use Adguard as a content blocker for Safari on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. Does this mean that Safari will also start restricting access to these ad blockers?
This is coming from an Apple antagonist, but don't the Apple OSs have adblocking at a system level (implying Safari)? This does vindicate Apple (but doesn't help in the other legitimate scenarios that this API is needed, which I have been told do exist).
Apple gets Google revenue for being their default search, and that is worth much less if the search ads pay less if Safari users were able to browse other sites untracked.
That's a BIG difference though, and makes the claim about security more believable, especially since it isn't a sole restriction. There are also a number of ad blockers available for Safari, although personally I'll stick with Firefox either way.
Google is an ad company restriction use of the primary ad-blocker on its browser, it's blatant.
What ads are not blocked by other ad blockers though? I'm upset too that ublock origin is no longer usable. I tried ublock origin lite and it seems to be blocking most ads so it's still blocking google's ads and that's not banned. It seems kind of hard to argue that it's just about banning ads given plenty of ad blockers still block Google's ads.
Apple is totally an advertising company. Have you missed the part about their stalling phone, tablet and laptop revenues, that they hope to compensate with "services" revenue, i.e. App Store 30% racketeering and App Store search ads?
>Apple is totally an advertising company. Have you missed the part about [...]
Have you missed the part of my comment of my comment where I specifically mentioned "web advertising presence"? That's relevant, because ublock would only work on web ads. It can't block ads in the app store, or any other app (eg. spotify).
Thus they also clearly have an incentive to sabotage uBO. It may be a much smaller piece of their revenue than at Google, but it is a huge proportion of their revenue growth. Don't believe Apple's marketing about their caring for privacy, belied by their actions.
>Here are the relevant built-in uBlock Origin filter rules:
Can you link to a specific rule that shows Apple has web ads? The search results you linked either removeparam filters (which I guess is "tracking", but probably the most benign kind), malware sites that contain "apple.com", or analytics domains that seemingly belong to apple. Moreover there's no evidence that Safari's content blocker restrictions make a difference here. The domains are trivially blocked so it's unclear how apple is materially gaining from their nerfed adblock.
Ads that apple serves (outside of marketing pages on apple.com) are ads that displayed on ad supported ads. uBO won't help you there. Luckily, every Apple device comes with an AdBlock for those ads - airplane mode.
It's not whataboutism. If the claim is that google's actions with manifest v3 is "abusing its market position to their own benefit", but Apple did the same thing when it didn't stand to benefit from it, then it severely undermines that claim.
Sure, it doesn't rule out google was secretly intending on doing it, only internal memos or whatever can prove that definitively. But at the same time, to immediately conclude that google was "abusing its market position", you would have to be maximally uncharitable to google. That's a sad way to see the world. Take for instance, the flak that google got for banning third party cookies. If this is done by anyone else (eg. Firefox), this would be seen as a good thing. However, cynics have opposed this on the basis that such change would disadvantage third party ad networks more than google, thus google was "abusing its market position to their own benefit" and therefore the change was bad.
You talk about Google as if it's a person. You should take a step back and think to yourself why the changes were made to Manifest V3 that broke backwards compatibility, weakening ability to ad-blocking. Rule set based modification is one of the first features I'd think of when developing a systems of extensibility in browser, and they removed it.
The reasoning is obvious, and "plausible deniability" is not enough to give Google charity. The more difficult you make it to block ads, the more impressions, and the more money made. Yet you believe people should be "charitable" to the same company that can't hire the manpower to defend their own users against bad faith DCMA takedown notices. Because they ran the analysis, and it wasn't worth the cost.
Best case scenario, Chromium loses market share, implements the parts removed from V2, Google likely kicks the can down the road to Manifest V4.
There's no reason to believe companies deserve charitability. Companies are systems designed to extract maximum value, and when the world around that system changes, the system adjusts itself. It's not the systems fault for trying to get more value, it's our fault for letting them.
Ad blockers still run in Chrome - just not ublock origin. Google's ads are still blocked by those blockers. If they really were motivated to stop ad blocking wouldn't they have blocked all ad blockers?
Note: I'm upset too that ublock origin stopped working. I switched to ublock origin lite and it's mostly working, though there are some ads sneaking through. I'm not sure if that just means
(1) it needs an update
(2) I should look for another blocker (IIUC ublock origin lite is not maintained much?)
(3) It's impossible in V3 to block these few things that are currently not blocked.
Manifest v3 is not going to lose any meaningful marketshare. There continues to exist working adblock and most users won't notice any difference in functionality. I sure don't.
Manifest V3 has 100% market share for all "full featured" browsers. My understanding is that just yesterday, YouTube made a change that allows them to apply DRM to videos, with even the client side buffer maintaining encryption until playback. How long until we start seeing similar applied to websites/articles?
Eventually, there will be an overstep that make enough capable people mad, and those people will get together and make/mod something better.
I don't think those two can be compared at all. Safari didn't have proper plugin support at all, doesn't matter ad-blocking or not. Rich plugin ecosystem was one of the Chrome's selling point.
Doesn't Safari have the same restriction, also ostensibly for "security/privacy" reasons? The only difference is that Apple doesn't have a web advertising presence, so you can't make the accusation that they're "abuse its market position to their own benefit".