If, for some reason, you’re still using Chrome or one of the browsers that put a little hat on Chrome and call it a different browser, the time you’re going to want to consider switching to the only real alternative – Firefox – is getting closer and closer. Yesterday, Google has announced that the end of Manifest V2 is now truly here.
Starting on June 3 on the Chrome Beta, Dev and Canary channels, if users still have Manifest V2 extensions installed, some will start to see a warning banner when visiting their extension management page – chrome://extensions – informing them that some (Manifest V2) extensions they have installed will soon no longer be supported. At the same time, extensions with the Featured badge that are still using Manifest V2 will lose their badge.
This will be followed gradually in the coming months by the disabling of those extensions. Users will be directed to the Chrome Web Store, where they will be recommended Manifest V3 alternatives for their disabled extension. For a short time after the extensions are disabled, users will still be able to turn their Manifest V2 extensions back on, but over time, this toggle will go away as well.
↫ David Li on the Chromium blog
In case you’ve been asleep at the wheel – and if you’re still using Chrome, you most likely are – Manifest V3 will heavily limit what content blockers can do, making them less effective at things like blocking ads. In a move that surprises absolutely nobody, it’s not entirely coincidental that Manifest V3 is being pushed hard by Google, the world’s largest online advertising company. While Google claims all the major content blockers have Manifest V3 versions available, the company fails to mention that they carry monikers such as “uBlock Origin Lite”, to indicate they are, well, shittier at their job than their Manifest V2 counterparts.
I can’t make this any more clear: switch to Firefox. Now. While Firefox and Mozilla sure aren’t perfect, they have absolutely zero plans to phase out Manifest V2, and the proper, full versions of content blockers will continue to work. As the recent leaks have made very clear, Chrome is even more of a vehicle for user tracking and ad targeting than we already knew, and with the deprecation of Manifest V2 from Chrome, Google is limiting yet another avenue for blocking ads.
OSNews has ads, and they are beyond my control, since our ads are managed by OSNews’ owner, and not by me. My position has always been clear: your computer, your rules. Nobody has any right to display ads on your computer, using your bandwidth, using your processor cycles, using your pixels. Sure, it’d be great if we could earn some income through ads, but we’d greatly prefer you become a Patreon (which removes ads) or make an individual donation to support OSNews and keep us alive that way instead.
Happy Firefox user here, I am surprised by how fast and fluid it is. Wouldn’t be surprised if people’s perception of Firefox is affected from the times it was single-threaded (pre-Quantum). Also, another issue is that some people want their bookmarks, passwords, and history to sync with the Chrome for Android they already have on their phones.
I really hope Chrome’s Manifest V3 fiasco pushes more people to Firefox.
Another happy Firefox user here.
Been dedicated since Mozilla took its first steps. It wasn’t pretty then but now we have the best browser available.
Using it with Windows and Linux. And Bitwarden. Couldn’t ask for more.
I’m a not totally happy Firefox users, but the alternatives are a lot worse.
I hope Firefox for Android would someday be a lot better. Digital certificate support, more adding compatibility, a lot faster having a zillion open tabs, etc. But their CEO and such waste money.
They should support a lot Servo and progressively improve Firefox with it.
I use Pale Moon mostly, which still has the older XUL extension system like Firefox used to have before they adopted Google’s WebExtensions in 2017. Pale Moon will never add WebExtensions or Google’s Manifest v3 from what I can tell, so ad blocking should always work correctly.
I love Firefox. It’s been my browser since it’s inception. I use it on Linux, Android and Windows. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that history is repeating itself.
I’m seeing & greater number of e-commerce sites silently failing with Firefox. I’ve had occasions where I’ve tried to sign up with a service, have not been able to, contacted customer support only to be told I should use another browser (that’s happened twice, and both times I’ve opted not to subscribe to those companies services). However, I’m now seeing sites that explicitly state things like “This site does not work with the Firefox browser. Please use another browser”. Here’s an [example](https://www.kennards.com.au/).
At some point, we’re just not going to have a choice. Unlike the browser wars of the late 90s, Firefox does not have dominance (Netscape did). If the trend continues with websites starting to write explicitly for Chrome based browsers, Firefox will die. The only solution to that problem is a greater takeup of Firefox. If only more people rejected their freedoms online & understood the direction we’re headed. Perhaps what’s needed is a mass marketing campaign, but the main search providers aren’t likely to let that happen…
It only more people *respected* their freedoms…
dexterous,
+1
Many of us here are very concerned about google’s monopolistic control over the internet. The web DRM they were pushing for would have been catastrophic, fortunately it fell through this time. Those of us using firefox aren’t going to be directly affected by google’s adblocking restrictions for now. Long term though I’m not sure how long this will last. The reality is they could block browsers that continue to support the more powerful manifest v2 adblocking API. Remember not so long ago google were testing ways to interfere with firefox adblock users on youtube. If one day google considers firefox users totally expendable, their monopoly has the power to shut out browsers with strong adblocking support, one way or another.
I hope firefox is able to find more users somehow, otherwise it will become more marginalized in the same ways that netscape was. We can’t let that happen, but at the same time those of us who know this are already using FF. When it comes to mainstream users, they rarely switch from bundled browsers. I don’t know how to turn things around for FF.
Happy Firefox user here as well, since version 0.4b IIRC. On a G3 iBook, circa 2o years ago. No regrets. Firefox isn’t perfect, this is my own opinion, not propaganda. But waaay better than all the other alternatives – and if you remove name/icon/label you’s still be using Edge or Safari – both of them based on WebKit and provided by the 2 most privacy-concerned companies on Earth, M$ and Apple. Oh sorry, forgot to mention Google (do no Evil, remember that?).
> they have absolutely zero plans to phase out Manifest V2
Gee, thanks for the heads-up Thom! I bet Firefox won’t decimate its plugin ecosystem because it’s the greatest browser in the world, right?
Also, did you even look at this Chrome-alike Vivaldi browser? They are nearly indistinguishable so it can be challenging to find. But they also say they won’t implement V3. Are they lying?
> Also, did you even look at this Chrome-alike Vivaldi browser? They are nearly indistinguishable so it can be challenging to find. But they also say they won’t implement V3. Are they lying?
Vivaldi is chromium based. They never promised not to implement v3. They will keep their own blocker running, and try to keep enabling other ad-blocking extensions. However, they explicitly do not promise being able to do the latter.
Source: https://vivaldi.com/blog/manifest-v3-webrequest-and-ad-blockers/#comment-613888
This is just FUD, I have been using uBlock Origin Lite for months, there is no noticeable difference from the MV2 version. Much the same with the Adguard MV3 version. There could be other good reasons for moving to Firefox but don’t invent stuff
The difference is that you also get Privacy Sandbox. It really is about trying to keep tracking you while suggesting it’s all good.
It isn’t.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/12/googles-manifest-v3-still-hurts-privacy-security-innovation
Shoot, I didn’t see your post before posting the same link 🙂
Great minds think alike but fools seldom differ 🙂
You don’t need containers in Chrome, because unlike Firefox the sandbox actually works,
https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.html#sandboxing
gunfleet,
It’s an interesting link, but the whole thing reeks of bias, even being critical in areas where firefox wins, such as with rust. Some points may have merit but it was clearly written with an agenda and IMHO it’s quite distracting to an impartial comparison.
madaidan wrote the original version of that blog post 10 years ago.
madaidan is a renowned security researcher who is a lead developer for the super-secure “whonix” project.
whonix has used a Firefox-based browser for the past 10 years (Tor Browser), not a Chrome-based browser. Maybe you should ask madaidan why his super-secure whonix project uses Firefox instead of Chrome? Is this a case of, “Do what I say, not what I do”?
Also, Chrome/chromium have had about 20 to 30 different zero-day exploits over the last two years since madaidan last updated that blog post. Would madaidan’s opinion of Chrome/chromium be the same today? Doesn’t seem terribly secure based on its own recent track record of record breaking insecurity.
Neither TOR or whonix are for the average user, you cannot login for your email, or do ecommerce, and you will be locked out of many sites or be stuck with endless captchas.
As for CVE’s, I would be concerned if Google Chrome were not patched frequently given the size of the user base. It is something to consider with other chrome based browsers who are usually 2 or 3 days behind with security patches.
>”Neither TOR or whonix are for the average user…”
Interesting perspective, but still leaves the question of what is the reason madaidan chose a Firefox based browser over a Tor based browser? Brave has had Tor built-in for several years now, and madaidan hasn’t moved to using it with whonix. You and I could give our opinions all day long based on personal experience, but we aren’t world renowned security researchers working on a super secure project.
>”As for CVE’s, I would be concerned if Google Chrome were not patched frequently given the size of the user base”
Once again, interesting comment and I appreciate your perspective, but what’s madaidan’s perspective after two years of record-breaking numbers of zero day exploits for Chrome/chromium? If he updated his blog post today, what would be different? The fact that he hasn’t updated it since 2022 gives me pause to consider that his current opinion may be radically different. Keep in mind, Firefox also gets fuzzed millions of times per month, gets hacked on with equal ferocity by the blackhats, and gets attacked at all the same pwn2own gatherings. It isn’t like Chrome/chromium are getting more attention because they have more users – they all get constantly attacked. The huge number of recent failures of Chrome/chromium may point to a deeper set of issues, and probably does since Firefox has a different javascript engine and most exploits are related to the js engine.
gunfleet,
There are real differences and limitation with v3 that tie the hands (or rather code) of the adblockers.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/12/googles-manifest-v3-still-hurts-privacy-security-innovation
Unfortunately,, once v3 becomes the norm, advertisers will be able to exploit the v3 limits and it’s likely to become less effective as advertisers exploit them. Unlike with v2 adblock devs will not be able to adapt. Google absolutely knows this, but of course that’s their motive for doing it.
Well yes it is the case we don’t know what changes Google will make to MV3 in the future , as it stands at the moment there is no degradation with the MV3 blockers. I can remember similar scare stories when Firefox ditched XUL, which is probably when I moved to Chrome. If all else fails there is DNS level blocking, although admittedly that’s not as good.
I stick with Chrome for RSS support which Firefox ditched along with XUL, and I know there are extensions that fix it, but every extra extension is a potential security hole, more so if it’s an MV2 version.
gunfleet,
The “lite” adblock versions built for manifest v3 are already less capable. That already sucks, but it wasn’t my point. Even within the reduced adblocking capability of v3, google’s hardcoded limits means that advertisers can just spam their way past them; there’s nothing adblockers will be able to do about it. Meanwhile, google are the ones who have the whole place bugged and leaking data home to google. It’s a hypocritical sham.
Unfortunately, even if Google bans all add blockers in Chrome, that won’t change much in regards to people switching to lets say Firefox.
People are becoming more dumb, to the point of having issues wirh the addons concept.
To be honest i don’t know what exactly happened to people. What i do know is that regardless of what Microsoft does, negligible amount of Windows user base will migrate to GNU/Linux. And regardless of what Google does, negligible amount of Chrome users will migrate to Firefox. As for Apple users, that is not even worth to comment. So yeah, go ahead Google, ban all ad blockers, nobody will do anything meaningful about it if you do.
Geck,
I think people have always behaved like this. Maybe they haven’t changed as much as your perception of them has. I remember couple years ago when you were more of an optimist and always eager to say how FOSS would take over and win as though it were inevitable. And now I’d say maybe you’ve become more of a realist. I suspect similar shifts are common as we age. In youth we think “the world would be so much better if only X, Y, Z…” And we weren’t necessarily wrong, it probably would be better, but we were ignorant of the social structures and power dynamics responsible for why things are stuck the way they are. As we mature, the bright eyed optimism gives way to the realities of our world. I don’t think this is a philosophy that anyone particularly wants or likes, but many end up converging on nevertheless. People who don’t think about it are probably happier, as the saying goes “ignorance is bliss”.
Actually my observation is not that much related to things like being optimistic or pessimistic or being idealistic or realistic or being young or old … It’s more of a description of current state of affairs. As some people still seem to believe that if Windows or Chrome will do something “bad”, then GNU/Linux and Firefox will surely see an influx of converts. For Apple users here likely we all agree that cause is lost and can’t be ever won. Anyway, from time to time i feel somebody needs to say it out loud, no, it simply won’t happen. Microsoft can do whatever they want with Windows and Google can do whatever they want with Chrome. Their user base won’t resent them in such way that they would migrate to GNU/Linux or Firefox in some meaningful way. The reason i am saying this is to recognize this is hence not the right strategy, believing it will ever happen in such way. Just like it didn’t happen on when games became a thing on GNU/Linux. Years prior it was claimed this is one of the main reasons, games, just like some still seem to believe the strategy could be for Microsoft or Google to misbehave and for people to somehow realize that and to the right thing. One thing to say here is just look at an avarage Apple user, the level of abuse involved is way above anything Microsoft or Google are capable of doing and Apple user base will defend Apple. All in all i feel it’s time to try different things compared to the ones mentioned. For example if some useful software will only be made available for GNU/Linux, then the user base of this software will be forced to use GNU/Linux. I believe this is something worth exploring next, to start forcing people on switching to GNU/Linux on desktop. Instead of making it easy for them, to use quality FOSS on Windows and Apple devices.
Geck,
That’s kind of the point though, the current state of affairs is a continuation of what it’s always been: consumers are dumb, naive, and support products and companies that harm their own interests…but this really is nothing new. The year and the specifics will change, but overall this perception is a timeless tradition between generations. The last generation had the same thoughts you are thinking as did the one before them, and so will the next, etc. Most of your complaints have happened before, you just the latest generation to feel it. I am there too.
I understand why you feel that way but things like that don’t just happen because we’d like it to. As determined as I am to find and use linux & FOSS alternatives, it can still be a struggle sometimes…even for things I want to pay money for, there isn’t always a linux option because so many companies don’t bother to support it. Windows users generally take support for granted, which is one of the benefits of going with the monopoly. Until linux can gain more critical mass, support will remain spotty. It’s a classic catch-22.
You could argue that it was always like that, still some things succeeded and then failed and some never succeeded, historically speaking. So belief, presented on the internet in the form of a meme, that’s it, last straw, i am switching to Linux/Firefox. No. This will never work. That doesn’t mean something else wouldn’t work, though. As for available options in regards to GNU/Linux. Maybe a decade or two back, that was still a thing. A belief things are lacking and that is holding the adoption of GNU/Linux on desktop back. No. That turned out to be a dead end too, it wasn’t it. On the pros side it just works now, for the one percent and that i guess is still something. FOSS in the sense of usually an unpaid job and a mission behind it, here likely a strategy of exclusiveness is starting to make more and more sense. As otherwise the motivation will simply dry out. Realization you are investing an effort in helping to protect a monopoly due to spoon feeding the monopoly user base with quality FOSS. In a way you are contributing to sustaining the very system you are fighting against and on the long term you will stop doing that. This is already noticeable, as a lot of software is not even being made today any more, as what woudl be the point. Just use some cloud based version with subscription instead. And everything cloud based is usually too hard to set up and maintain for end users anyway, so that further reduces the logic and chances in doing it in the first place. For who? Anyway, best to move to some model that will actually produce results or FOSS will slowly die out due to becoming pointless, monopolies FOSS once wanted to address still to thrive.
I know pretty much what happened. Public schooling. For example homework was invented by an Italianteacher as a punishment and it has only detrimental effects on kids development.
Kids should usually only need 9-10 hours per week at home to learn the same basic knowledge that k-12 gives. It is all mostly a waste of time and money.
Now the state is free to propagandize the kids to any degree possible.
As long as the kids know who is deemed “good” by the state and who is “not good” it is all that matters.
Another one here quite happily running Firefox on my ElementaryOS (GNU/linux).
The other strategy is to bin the legacy web and its cruft altogether. I am a new user of Gemini web and see potential for mirroring the content of good independent sites like this. Sadly OS news has stopped using its own Gemini feed, last time I checked.
I am going to move FF soon. Ad blocking is only one thing, another is account sharing
Yet another reason to start using and recommending Pi-Hole or other DNS sinks. And maybe couple that with a proxy-based solution as well to do some filtering.
moriarty99779,
I’m seeing more devices that bypass local DNS by default. For now this remains configurable, but there is a possibility that end user control over DNS may be going away in the future. DNS over HTTPS to an officially designated server could become mandatory and if so the pi-hole as a means of blocking DNS requests becomes obsolete. Hopefully it doesn’t happen, but it would be easy for the tech giants to do if they don’t like what users are doing.
The way I handle this is by forcing the devices that have hard coded DNS addresses to get their requests redirected to my Pi-Hole using firewall rules. The Pi-Hole then uses my local DNS server (unbound) for resolution, with non-cached items being sent upstream. Only the DNS server itsself is allowed to go outside of my network. Works really well.
moriarty99779,
Works now, but what about when devices start enforcing their own policy and you can’t change it? In the same way that google’s policy has been to deliberately handicap network admins from deploying DHCPv6 on their own networks, they could interfere with local DNS. In a battle of wills, you might declare that you won’t be support those devices until they fix it, which would be your right. But realistically networks like yours make up 0% of the market and google can afford to disregard you indefinitely. I’m not saying this would be defensible, quite the contrary actually. But if it does happen google won’t be shedding any tears, meanwhile you could find yourself having to make exceptions to support users running the latest chrome browsers (and play store, etc). or sticking to your guns and banning google’s latest software.
This is all hypothetical for now, but it is conceivable for google to take on pihole adblocking as a future battle. Heck, I could see microsoft doing this too. Both have a strong incentive to lock things down in consumer operating systems and most users wouldn’t fight them on it.
Chrome? Never heard of it.