Comment on Chrome’s next weapon in the War on Ad Blockers: Slower extension updates
onlinepersona@programming.dev 11 months agoThe thing is, firefox is the only other browser out there that doesn’t use the same browser engine. They know it too. They have absolutely no incentive to change, unless some other browser engine and a corresponding browser were to pop up that competed with them. If a group decided “we’re going to make a browser that is really private and doesn’t do what Mozilla does”, and they got a footing, only then would Mozilla consider competing, but only to be better than that other browser, not Chrome.
For Mozilla to want to be better than Chrome, Google would have to do some incredibly dumb shit, Mozilla would need an enormous cash injection from another party, or the current stewards of Mozilla would need to be replaced with people who actually care. IMO, those are all unlikely.
TangledHyphae@lemmy.world 11 months ago
In this specific context we are talking about Manifest V3 artificially limiting the number of rules in an extension. That’s it, it’s artificial, there is no reason for it to exist other than Google purposely degrading the capability. What does Mozilla have to gain by also degrading themselves?
onlinepersona@programming.dev 11 months ago
Compatibility. You want to have enough users to be considered for being paid off, but not too little that you can be ignored. It’s similar to the linux gaming move: on linux you can’t just add a windows compatible interface to the kernel, so you have to translate it. Game developers thus focus on windows and ignore linux since there build process is completely different. As a browser, you sure as hell can introduce a common interface --> extension devs write their extension once and it run on firefox too. Users who care enough can thus switch without much hassle.
It’s a numbers game.
TangledHyphae@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It will still be compatible, Firefox just doesn’t need to add a limiter, meaning the same extension will run better on Firefox than Chrome in the end. That’s how I see this all unfolding.