🤖 I’m a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:
Click here to see the summary
Unlike the glitzy front-page Google blog post that the redesign got, the big ad platform launch announcement is tucked away on the privacysandbox.com page.
The blog post says the ad platform is hitting “general availability” today, meaning it has rolled out to most Chrome users.
This has been a long time coming, with the APIs rolling out about a month ago and a million incremental steps in the beta and dev builds, but now the deed is finally done.
Users should see a pop-up when they start up Chrome soon, informing them that an “ad privacy” feature has been rolled out to them and enabled.
That’s actually what started this whole process: Apple dealt a giant blow to Google’s core revenue stream when it blocked third-party cookies in Safari in 2020.
Google says it will block third-party cookies in the second half of 2024—presumably after it makes sure the “Privacy Sandbox” will allow it to keep its profits up.
Saved 73% of original text.
And people keep asking why I prefer Firefox
This is just another reason to add to the pile
This is the thing about Chrome. Why on earth would anyone use a browser from an Ad company.
By the way. They are planning on putting it in Android apps too. So there one gets little choice. A non-starter like Apple where you cannot even load your own apps and app stores or Android from an Ad company where you can with effort at least choose your own software and even image your own OS.
@Gormadt They say Firefox is slow. Because in the past it used to, especially with the old engine and when Chrome was new, that’s true. But nowadays it does not matter anymore and the speed differences are negligible. If that is the only reason to not use Firefox, then people should reevaluate their decision.
Then there is the argument that people do not like Mozilla. But they like Google more? Even if you use a Chromium based browser by a different company, you give more power to Google this way, as the engine becomes a bigger part of the web. Am I crazy for thinking that?
I use Firefox since version 1 as my default. Occasionally I switched to a different browser, but always came back to good ol’ Firefox.
I’ve been using Firefox since just before the launch of 2.0, it’s never let me down except for a once after Google Play Music went away and I had to use YouTube Music.
For a little while after the switch Firefox wouldn’t play a few albums but Google Chrome would. But that was quickly fixed.
Personally it’s not that it’s slow, it just holds on to weird patterns for way too long, kinda like how new outlook just feels like old outlook with a new skin. Whenever I open edge, it loads. Whenever I open firefox, it’s the “Firefox is installing updates” window that’s probably been there since the 90s. Refusing to honor the ‘close multiple tabs’ etc. It’s minor stuff but when there’s an objectively better way to do things, it’s just annoying.
Well this is sort of a non issue, I can say I feel the same way when I have to open Chrome. Weird ui, doesn’t do what I want it to do, no middle click to open new tab, it’s so annoying because the firefox way is objectively better. So I’m saying the only objective thing about UI is giving people choice
Firefox has been slower to startup for a long time. Maybe a few seconds slower compared to Chrome. But it has always made up for it in it’s memory usage. The more tabs you open, the worse Chrome gets.
@NaoPb Firefox starts in 2 seconds total for me on my 10 years old CPU, even with many plugins installed. While there are constantly 6 or more tabs open, most are not loaded in when starting Firefox, unless I click the tab itself. And opening a new private window is almost instant. I even use Firefox for reading PDFs, instead installing a dedicated application, because it is fast loading and does the job. All in all, it’s probably not far away from Chrome in starting up Firefox. And it probably isn’t that important, because the browser is open all the time for me.
As for the memory usage, I always thought Firefox is being bad here. Can’t imagine Chrome being worse. Are people happy with that?
Nothing wrong with Firefox. The problem though is that too many people have been convinced that some how Google is better. I personally do not think that it is about details people argue about. It more about using what they know, what their friends know, or what their friends will think is cool. In the end you either care about having an open web and user focused browser or you do not. Most people do not it seems.
The challenge for Firefox is that if user base is too small, developers will no longer test their sites against it. The other issue is that it is not clear if Firefox can keep pace with Google. For example Firefox desktop does not support WPA, and mobile versions it is not complete. It will be interesting how things will evolve. Maybe Google will even take steps to actually keep Mozilla and Firefox around and viable just to keep the Monopoly busters away. Who knows.
For me I do care, and will use Firefox until it is not feasible to do so if that day comes. At the moment it is just fine. Who knows the future.
Does anyone know if this affect Brave? I’m pretty sure it’s based off of Chrome
Man, this sucks for anyone dumb enough to use Chrome.
