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Chrome API Update Will Kill a Bunch of Other Extensions, Not Just Ad Blockers (zdnet.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A planned update to one of the Google Chrome extensions APIs would kill much more than a few ad blockers, ZDNet has learned, including browser extensions for antivirus products, parental control enforcement, phishing detection, and various privacy-enhancing services. Developers for extensions published by F-Secure, NoScript, Amnesty International, and Ermes Cyber Security, among others, made their concerns public today after news broke this week that Google was considering the API change. Furthermore, efforts to port NoScript from Firefox to Chrome are also impacted, according to the plugin's author, who says the new API update all but cripples the NoScript for Chrome port.
It has an update that says you did not need to see this page. Try our home page instead whenever you get a page not found error.
If they do this then goodbye all Chromium based browsers that implement this and hello Firefox - and any browsers that fork from that...
Sorry (not sorry) but my ability to block evil crud that pollutes my browsing and can potentially infect my devices is more important to me.
You’ve got to be kidding me. I’ve been further even more decided to use even go need to do look more as anyone can. Can you really be far even as decided half as much to use go wish for that? My guess is that when one really been far even as decided once to use even go want, it is then that he has really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like.
It’s just common sense.
Well, if that's not a shining example of why monopolies are bad... Glad I moved to Firefox where my ad blocking software works flawlessly and the company behind my browser doesn't earn money through ads so I doubt they'll introduce ad blocker breaking changes anytime soon.
Why do people think one corporate monopoly is going to be different from the last corporate monopoly?
The internet will be Cable TV 2.0 in less than ten years.
if its so important to you that i go back to firefox i'll do it already... jeez
--you couldve just asked.
The internet was Cable TV 2.0 10 years ago, it's now Cable TV 3.0
Google promised they would add APIs for NoScript, they never did. Google wants to take control of third party browsers and direct more hits at their advertising and spyware systems.
Although, on my home machines I never left. Firefox isn't perfect, but at least it lets me run NoScript.
Just as well. A browser monoculture, whether the old IE or the new Chrome, is and was never a good thing, however much web developers might think so.
-- Alastair
Take what's good and keep going without Google. I wanted to get away from Chrome awhile back, so I spent a few weeks with each of the major browsers before eventually settling on Opera, in large part because I found the extensions for Safari, Firefox, and others to be lacking in comparison (Opera can natively run nearly all Chrome extensions). If Google is breaking what sets Chromium apart, it sounds like it's time to take Chromium out of their hands.
Once again Google attepts to make resistance futile.
Why Use a browser the takes away feature that I use? Besides blocking annoying "HEY LOOK AT ME" ads, they also make it harder for google to harvest my data.
All the hand-wringing about Firefox having an extension apocalypse seems a bit hypocritical now, don't it.. whatever. It brings me amusement.
And FWIW, there is a network layer ad blocker out there already.. AdGuard. Yes it's payware. And it works great. It doesn't care about what browser you use.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
It's not exactly news that Google is an evil ad agency.
Got a friend who runs this, it blocks ads on all his devices, even mobile apps and "smart" TV when he is on his home network.
Anyone who used the internet around 2003 knew it was almost all IE at 95%. We are getting close to that again with Chrome and chrome derivatives. Once we cross the threshold again developers wll stop supporting Firefox based browsers and HTML will be CML (chrome mark up language. We can stop Chrome but only if we act now.
...this demonstrates that just like it's a bad idea to allow content providers to also be copyright holders, it's a bad idea to have a browser maker live off of advertising.
Google is not ran by engineers anymore but mindless market droids.
I've been a Mozilla user since 300baud, Mosaic, and Netscrape Navigator. Given how much I trust Google, I wouldn't have Chrome on my PC. Mozilla/Firefox has always served me well, and Mozilla, the org, doesn't present nearly so many reasons for mistrust and loathing, unlike the rest, of which Google tops the list. They can/will do whatever they want with Chrome and other Googly("Don't be evil!") sh...tuff. I trust Firefox/Moe-zilla more than I do the vast majority of Intertoobs-related software makers.
Enjoy yer gleaming new Chrome, folks! (Watch out for config.sys, autoexec.bat, and good ol' ATH0.)
Personally I don't care. I distrust Google so much I've switched to Firefox.
So shortly after Microsoft adopted the Chromium project along side with Opera...Google is deciding to resurrect their cash cow of ads. Why not, most competitors were driven out of business so this is the next step.
pi hole blocks access to loading some content, particularly CDN based ones that phone/tablet apps use. It lasted three days before I said fuck it and got rid of it.
That was super useful. Almost makes you think it could be placed in the story summary ... but, nah, that might lead to useful discussion.
Yes, Google is listening with one ear, but the overall tone (so far as I scanned) ran the gamut from hostile to cynical to mind boggled.
Interestingly, it remained civilized as these things go, and there were few posts in the hallowed mushroom-cloud apocalypse tradition of the fight/fulminate/flight triangle of charred human remains, whose mortal moral fuses went outright Code Magnesium. While it's orbiting around that general quadrant, it's not yet an ad-blocker black hole of no return.
Nice that Google still dips their big toe into evil before jumping straight in, nigh irrevocably.
And yet, somewhere deep down, you know they want to.
Does google not understand? Just like Netflix, IF YOU FORCE US TO WATCH ADS WE WILL LEAVE.
All the minority browser vendors who use chromium as their core need to just get together and hard-fork, permanently. F-em. With a big enough group they can keep whatever APIs they want and maintain a better version without Google throwing their weight around. Sheesh.
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Yields more security/speed/reliability/anonymity vs. any 1 solution (99% of threats use hostnames vs. IP address most firewalls use) more efficiently/FASTER + NATIVELY 4 less!
Vs. "Bolt on 'MoAr' illogic-logic" slowing u hosts speed u up 2 ways: Adblocks + Hardcode fav. sites u spend most time @ vs. competition w/ security bugs (DNS/AntiVir) + overheads slowing u (messagepass 'souled-out' to advertisers easily detected & blocked addons + firewall filtering drivers) & their complexity leads to exploit!
* ONLY 1 of its kind in GUI 4 Linux/BSD (soon 4 MacOS)!
APK
P.S.=> Protects vs. scripts/trackers (kernelmode faster vs. usermode slower NoScript vs. 3rd party script)/ads/DNS request tracking + redirect poisoned or downed DNS/botnets/malware download/malcript/email malicious payload
since a lot of the ads blocked are doubleclick and other google owned marketing properties, then, imo, this is more about google's bottomline than about security.
Yeah, let's all use the browser built and delivered by a company who's sole purpose is advertising and marketing and then try to make it block ads... I'm sure they won't mind.
Sounds like it's about to go the way of the dodo.
Rollback this change - it's as easy as applying it
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