Submitted 1 year ago by teft@startrek.website to technology@lemmy.world
Please, everyone, stop using Chrome. This is an easy vote with your wallet that doesn’t even require your wallet.
Complacency means the internet gets worse, ads get worse, nickel and diming gets worse. It’s the easiest chance to take a stand you’ll ever have.
Serious question: let’s say I continue using Chrome and Privacy Sandbox becomes the norm. How does my internet experience get worse?
One key change in the short term is the Topics API. This is the replacement for 3rd-party cookies in Privacy Sandbox. Basically, it allows sites to query your browser directly about what topics you enjoy, and Chrome will respond with topics based on analysis of your browsing history to allow for targeted ads. If it seems strange that a new “privacy” feature is still serving up data about you for targeted ads – it is. And in fact, a lot of the proposed changes potentially just give Google more sway to act as a middleman, which ultimately gives them more data.
Will your experience change immediately? Likely not, but as with many things in this space, it’s about the dangers of the path and its longer term implications, specifically here about corporate controls and softening the definition of “privacy”.
Here’s a decent overview with more far more details.
Firefox is the way to go.
Give it time. Greed is greed, just a matter of time. Personally I’m back to use the old carrier pigeon. Kinda slow but probably still better than dialup
And soon, the carrier pigeon breeders will start tagging them with tracking chips…
Carrier pidgeons are still faster than the internet, tested again this year to prove it
Or they just didn’t think it was funny…
What’s Opera based on? My friends mostly use Mac, so they all use Opera and Chrome, but I have gotten them to stop using Chrome.
Nearly every browser is Chromium-based. Additionally, Opera is Chinese-owned.
Opera was bought by a Chinese data analytics company, and once that happened, they scrapped their engine and used chromium to save money.
They have questionable CCP ties too.
Opera has unfortunately given up and switched to Chromium as its backend.
At least its not chrome
Firefox gets like 90% of its revenue from Google.
Keep Firefox independent and donate: donate.mozilla.org/en-US/?form=donate
But donating your money can not make firefox independent.It will only make firefox more revenue.
Google wants to keep mozilla afloat to stay out of anti-competitive allegations.
If mozilla gets msrket share, google will defund them. That mozilla have a money will help.
Also mozilla’s other projects are also good ;)
And the money won’t go to Firefox, but Mozilla’s other projects.
The site you’ve linked to literally uses Facebook and Google browser trackers. Pretty hypocritical of them if you ask me.
It’s always funny/sad to see that “we care about your privacy” doublespeak on an article about digital privacy
Firefox has been my go-to, but I’ve left Chrome installed just to have on hand incase some website fuckiness could be solved with a browser change.
Naw. It’s not worthy of staying around even for that. Time to completely scrub my devices of google.
Feeling the same, it’s surprising how many companies are just leaning towards screwing users for a few more pennies on the dollar. Eventually, Google with be the next AOL.
Just need their Time-Warner to put the last nail in the coffin
Eventually, Google with be the next AOL.
I am anti-google all day, but that’s ridiculous.
I've been doing similar; been using Firefox, but Chrome is installed for its browser-wide automatic captioning. Not something I need often, but I rely on it for the occasional remote meeting here and there. I'm sure free automatic captioning applications exist for my operating system, but I'd have to actually test each one to see if they actually work, and it's just been so convenient keeping Google's around.
(Speaking of which, if anybody happens to have recommendations for free automatic captioning software that works on Ubuntu, I seem to be in the market...)
Use chromium. All the compatibility but no telemetry.
But why use chromium or any chromium based browser since google disabled ad blocking plug-ins?
Nah, I use Edge for that. Chrome is only for work for me, but I think I'm going to migrate to another Chromium-based browser for that.
So my takeaway from this is to never use Chrome again? Gotcha.
If everyone who said they were going to do this actually did this, Chrome wouldn’t do this, if that makes sense.
Or, idk, regulators could like, do their jobs.
It’s really irritating but some websites only work on Chrome for me. They range from work related to Google Meet instances. I only use it then but yeah.
I don’t think I’ve used Google Chrome itself for over 3 years now (excluding on other people’s devices). I don’t plan to ever use it again either.
At one point I was switching back and forth, because I’d see a general decline in Firefox for some reason. I don’t know if it was just getting overloaded with extensions that were hitting its performance or if my machine itself was having problems or if Firefox’s performance was shit for awhile, but I’d switch from Firefox to Chrome, try going back to Firefox, then back to Chrome, but I’ve been with Firefox for a good few years now without issue. The browser “market” is even crowded now, there’s no reason to go back to Chrome, since there’s so many other choices out there (though avoiding Chromium might be a little bit trickier).
You guys are way to late to quit chrome, and you probably won’t at this point. This is what happens when you don’t swap, you enable this anti-consumer monopoly behavior.
All the people saying to just use Firefox have zero fucking clue how screwed we are with google implenting the forced attestation for the removal of ad blockers too. Chrome will be the internet. Its already been initially deployed in chromium.
Please don’t confuse Internet with WWW, it’s making discussion like this even harder, thanks.
Okay, still use Firefox
We have firefox, iceweasel, fennec (android). Anything else not firefox based is chrome based. Don’t get tricked by opera and similars.
You can still change browser.
There is an issue with monoculture of rendering engines. Developers assume every browser have the same things implemented and start to build around this assumption. Also Google can dictate how the web looks like.
Using chromium based browsers keeps power over web standards and such in google’s hands, i.e enforces their ever growing monopoly. So if you want a competitive/fair environment on the web, it’s best to avoid them altogether and stick to firefox or safari.
Unless the developers of other browsers take specific steps, the ad engine will get pulled on the next update of their Chromium engine, that’s the problem.
Safari isn’t Chromium based! But I’m not a fan of it on Desktop, just iOS.
Firefox for all my other devices.
For people who roll their eyes when someone mentions Linux and all of the free and open source projects adjacent to it (including Firefox!), this is exactly why many people value those things. We actually can have freedom in computing and it’s worth pushing for. We don’t have to roll over simply accept what Google, Microsoft and Apple want.
But there are a few specific hardware configurations and specialized jobs that Linux doesn’t work for, therefore nobody should use it!
Any of thousands of people can say this but i don’t see it in the comments below so: I’ve been using a Linux Mint / Windows dual boot system for over 10 years and love it. I think a lot of people see Linux as highly technical, but versions like Mint and Ubuntu are more carefree than Windows nowadays.
Sure but Google also uses tons of open source - android is built on the linux kernel, and even chrome is or is based on open source:
I change from Chrome to Firefox recently on all devices and it was a pretty easy transition.
Doing same thing right now… only two things I will miss are chromecast and page translation.
Use Ublock if you haven’t (Firefox extension)
The only issue is I have to keep a chromium browser because there are a few sites that Firefox has issues with. But the vast majority work fine.
I’ve only had issues with Nordpass crashing occasionally when auto-filling, but it’s otherwise pretty seamless
the main thing holding me back is the password manager in Chrome and having to basically use 2 browsers as passwords are slowly saved to a new system
That’s clever meme template usage if I’ve ever seen one
does this happen on Linux too?
i have to keep chrome around for sites that breaks with ff / ublock, but i only open it when i need it.
Back in the old days when a software contains these crap, considered as adware/malware and people get their pitchforks.
Now: its normal.
Modern software: Please insert anal probe.
User: OK 😀
It’s sickening.
there’s a whole class of users born with smartphone, those were not techie or concerned, then you have the other class who don’t know really anything about these things which only use smartphones.
even discussing with family about privacy is difficult. “but everyone use it”… gosh. then you have some of my IT colleagues - there for the good money job - which don’t care with the motto: I have nothing to hide.
anyway, stay true to your principles no matter what.
Every single thing about Google sucks nowadays. Great job Sundar, you successfully turned one of the former most exciting companies on the planet into one of the absolute lamest.
It was shit even before Sundar Pichai became the CEO
Switched back to Firefox. Easy transition. Fuck Google.
Time to uninstall chrome. Can I move my passwords, bookmarks and saved data there? How do I do it?
getfirefox.com
So as far as i know, firefox is the only mayor browser not based on chromium. Also, firefox is dependent on google’s funding because of a search engine exclisivity deal. So my understanding is that, if google decides to kill firefox, they could easily do that. Well, what then? Is there any other browser left wich similar features that would be untouchable by google?
I tried to preach why Google sharing your browsing history with ad partners is bad, but most of my friends don’t seem to care. :(
Honestly, I was already using FF for my home. Made the switch on Mobile after seeing this on the news yesterday. I’m just one person though.
Not used anything but Firefox for the last 10 years or so. Can’t remember how long I’ve used DDG for. Fuck Google and all who fail in her.
Now that Firefox is getting in-page translation capability, Chrome does not offer any features I am missing anymore. As long as they don’t start performance wars, like the shit that happened with Youtube a while ago, I’ll be fine
I’m more concerned by the update my android just did. Got a notification that they are now enabling more ad tracking. I use Firefox on my phone but looks like that doesn’t matter
It’s lucky I haven’t used Chrome in years. Firefox is much appreciated these days.
Who could have possibly have forseen that a company that makes nearly all of its revenue from data mining and advertising would one day use a popular software tool as a means of data mining and advertising. This is like wheels-within-wherls thinking right here.
user-tracking ad platform directly into Chrome
eh, was chrome ever meant to be anything else?
i dont think so … ref. contrachrome.com
That was completely expected. You give any company monopoly over anything and they will abuse it. This was Chrome dominating browser market. Microsoft did it with IE back in the day. Now Google is doing it again.
Does disabling this as described in the article truly disable it, meaning if you do, after Chrome blocks 3rd party cookies late next year (assuming they follow through on that), you won’t be tracked by either?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
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.
The original article contains 588 words, the summary contains 159 words. Saved 73%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
ieightpi@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Yay for Firefox
danielton@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz 1 year ago
Sounds like they really want people to use Firefox!
kautau@lemmy.world 1 year ago
They fund Mozilla a ton on purpose. They want a small subset of people to use Firefox. It keeps them from the monopoly investigations
bloomberg.com/…/why-google-keeps-paying-mozilla-s…
Resonosity@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
I made the switch a few weeks ago. While the transition was a little inconvenient, I got everything set up in maybe an hour or two. Performance was wacky for a few hours after that, but it’s settled now for my purposes.
You definitely have to finagle the browser with add-ons and other about:config things to make it work for you, but after that yeah I can say I prefer Firefox over Chrome!
Now I just need to deGoogle everything else…
facts@kbin.social 1 year ago
Riiiight, because Google wasn't doing sneaky tracking shit leading up to this. This time, they'll surely switch, all dozens of them, and a couple might even use Firefox. woohoo
Reality: https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share
Someone reply to me saying they just switched to make this a perfect internet circlejerk.
Ottomateeverything@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Unironically, yeah, this is the nail in the coffin for me.
TheOSINTguy@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
I honestly don’t get why people think chromium browsers are good, for example Firefox in my use case is far faster than chrome… by a long shot. Also if you want to argue…
treeherder.mozilla.org/perfherder/graphs?highligh…
LifeInOregon@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Sometimes there is a proverbial straw to break a camel’s back.
I mean, for some percentage of users this will be it. Will it be a significant share of Chrome users? Probably not, but it just means those of us who got people to switch to Firefox in the 00’s and Chrome in the early 10’s need to be as vigorous with getting people off Chrome now.
SandmanXC@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I used chrome since it was launched and this summer I switched to Firefox on all devices.
Franzia@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 year ago
I just switched my internet off!
itsJoelle@lemmy.world 1 year ago
What’s your thoughts on Orion? It’s weirdly niche, but has been killer for me.
Swim@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
downvoted for stating facts.