So … can we like finally dismiss Google Chrome as the obviously awful idea it is and which should never have made it this far and remind all of the web devs married to it that they’re doing bad things and are the reason why we can’t have nice things?
Hmmm … a web browser owned by a monopolistic advertising company … how could that possibly go wrong!!!
I think some people overestimate how many will migrate to Firefox in the near future over this.
- High switching cost compared to finding another extension (e.g. uBO Lite), even if the resulting experience is worse.
- Just as many Firefox users like Firefox, lots of Chrome users enjoy what they have too. They don’t want to lose that.
- The kind of tech-aware person who’d switch over this is much more likely to have seen the news months ago and taken action already.
As fun as it is to imagine an Adpocalypse shocking the masses and pushing them to try out alternatives to big tech, it’s also way too optimistic, I feel.
The uBlock Origin chrome extension has had 34 million users.
Chrome has 3.45 billion users.
Even if every uBlock user switched, it’s less than 1% of chrome users.
Yeah, I thought about mentioning that. But the comparison goes both ways. Less than 1% of Chrome users switching to Firefox could still mean an increase in Firefox users of over 10%, if I remember my numbers correctly. That’d be a sweet boost for most products.
Ya, it’d still be huge for Firefox, but what I’m really getting at is that even with this change, Chrome is going nowhere. They’re the big fish, they can afford to make these kinds of changes, because the people who care are a very small minority.
Depends on their methodology. Sure, a huge proportion of those are users who haven’t heard of uBO, but we’re forgetting a lot of caveats:
- Electron exists and lots of apps are built on top of it and identify as “Chrome”. Judging by the numbers most have been weeded out, but some edge cases do visit more sites so they end up in the count.
- A lot of workplaces mandate the browser, which is often Chrome. This also gets counted.
- A not insignificant amount of Firefox users change their useragent to Chrome.
All of these skew the numbers towards Chrome. Some Chrome users use a different adblocker which lowers the uBO statistic.
I’ve been on Firefox since manifest v3 was announced. Firefox has its own shortcomings but no dealbreakers.
I don’t like the lack of customisability. I’ve been using Vivaldi for a long time now and nothing comes close to how customisable and feature-packed it is. Everything can be set up and tweaked exactly how I want. My version of Vivaldi would look, feel, and act entirely different to someone else’s, because it does what I want, not the other way around.
Unfortunately, it’s Chromium-based. But the developers have been working on its native ad blocker in case extensions are impacted. They’re quite a brilliant bunch, so I’m hoping it all goes smooth. I really don’t want to have to go back to Firefox if I can help it. I can’t stand UX for the masses and these guys get it.
There’s also other chromium browsers with built-in ad-blocking that still work AFAIK. If all extensions and forked brower’s ad-blockers stopped working, I think there would probably be a surge in firefox usage (even if there’s not that much change in chromium usage).
Yeah I use Vivaldi as my daily driver and love it. There’s built in ad blocking but it’s not as good as the extension. If the extension stops working there I’ll switch to Firefox in a heartbeat though
As a supporter of Firefox and FOSS, the closed-source, Chromium-based Vivaldi is my guilty pleasure. It has the best UI experience I’ve found on a browser, and the company behind it doesn’t seem to be very evil.
Is there any other browser that does a right-side vertical tab bar with compact tabs?
There’s an extension for Firefox to do it, but it’s a bit clunkier than Vivaldi’s - definitely something I’d only switch to if I really had to… but every other browser I’ve seen only offers left-side vertical tabs at best, which is terrible if you want 3 monitors in a left-to-right layout with your browser on the left.
High switching cost compared to finding another extension (e.g. uBO Lite), even if the resulting experience is worse.
You’re not wrong about the high switching cost.
Switching from Chrome to Vivaldi (because of Chrome’s whole FLoC thing) to Brave (because I didn’t like Vivaldi’s layout) to Firefox (because of Brave’s whole thing) was a pain.
And I don’t mean as a whole. Taking the time each time to change from one browser to another was always a pain. Transferring bookmarks and passwords was easy (Chrome and Firefox are at least compatible in that regard), but transferring extension settings was a whole different beast.
Some extensions had cloud sync support. Others had local export support. Some didn’t have either kind, and I’d have to manually copy the settings from one browser over to the other. And that’s not even getting into finding replacements for the Chrome-exclusive extensions (of which there were only a few, thankfully).
Not to mention all the people who don’t even have an adblocker and for some reason don’t seem to care that their web browsing is infested with ads.
A lot of people don’t even know it’s an option, or have grown to believe that’s just how the web is. When was the last time you saw adblockers in mainstream media or news?
This is why I think it’s so important to keep raising awareness. If you have people in your life who you believe would be better off using uBlock, consider bringing it up when you have the opportunity.
1 year ago I had basically free Spotify Premium because Safari was unable to play ads. That’s a kind of ad blocking.
I think probably the single most important thing that nobody is saying is that Google have ALL the numbers on this decision and they are not stupid, so it would be silly to assume this will work against their interests. Not only do they know how many people use chrome, their ad network gives them insight into ALL browsers.
I agree folks are overestimating how many will switch. but also maybe you’re underestimating too - a lot of browser installations are managed by the “family tech guy”. the father, mother, brother, sister, aunt or uncle who sets up everyone’s new laptops on Christmas and has the suggestions when you look for a new phone. we all know the type. a lot of us are the type.
setting up granny’s laptop? I’ll install whatever browser lets me automatically block the most “1000th visitor!” banner ads and change the desktop icon to the old AOL icon because that’s all she knows the internet as. she doesn’t know of care about the browser options so it’s up to me. Chrome used to be fast and simple so it was the right choice. Firefox has caught up a fair bit on UX simplicity and speed and now offers better blocking and general security, so it just stole the crown for these installations imo. I trust it more to not let her mess the computer up, so even if I’m not using it as my main personal browser, it gets use here.
- Just as some Firefox users like Firefox, many Chrome users enjoy what they have too. They don’t want to lose that.
Do you have some source for that? IIUC, you mean that more Chrome users like Chrome than Firefox users like Firefox, right?
“Some firefox users like firefox” vs “many chrome users enjoy what they have” sounds to me like something that could have a source. Many sound to me more than some, so this is a comparison, which can be given a better foundation by supplying some numbers.
Meh. They had plenty of time to move to Firefox but they ignored all the warnings.
It’s not like they contracted some sort of terminal illness. Anyone can migrate whenever. It’s not hard.
I believe that some organizations restrict what applications can be installed on work computers, so that might not necessarily be true, at least for work machines.
My organization has blocked all browsers other than Edge and Chrome - and has also blocked all plugins except for UBlock. For security reasons, of course.
And I mean, there’s still time now. Switching browsers isn’t that bad. Export+import some bookmarks and adjust some settings, good to go.
I think FF has been a good option for a while. But the second best time is now. I can totally get it if people didn’t want to switch until they had more of a concrete problem.
FF still hasn’t brought back a tab group API for extensions or native tab groups. Extensions can only do so much given what they have to work with. I still use FF on the side, but it simply isn’t a practical as a primary browser for me currently.
But for casual users, many probably have never even touched their browser settings.
For all the firefox fans out there it might be good to note there have consistently been more Safari users than Firefox users since 2014. Hell Safari has been the number two browser by market share since 2015.
Browsers have to get very SHITTY or a new browser has to have a killer app to unseat a dominate one.
https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share#monthly-200901-202408
I don’t think safari is even remotely comparable given that it’s a default browser on macs.
Also, I’m pretty sure it’s not possible to install any other browser on iPhones unless you get root.
Edit: It looks like you can with iOS 15.0
How so ? The default browser on Windows is Edge, people keep installing Chrome? Chrome is available on MacOS, yet people stick with Safari?
“The browser built to be yours”
Hahaha sure thing Google
In case anyone here needs this
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/switching-chrome-firefox
