Google's Chrome Browser Starts Disabling uBlock Origin

There’s no argument to use chrome either. Hopefully they will lose users.

“it’s the Google ball on the taskbar and when you click it, the internet comes up” — is the argument to use Chrome that many people will go with.

I’m not making fun of tech illiterate people either. We are all more vulnerable in some parts of our lives than others. Maybe a giant internet tech company won’t abuse you like it abuses people who don’t know much about computers, but big chemical industry may abuse you and kill you early through environmental pollution.

We must recognise that there are many people vulnerable to different kinds of abuse through destructive business practices in pursuit of growth (“rot capitalism”). And if we don’t have a culture of protecting the most vulnerable, someone won’t protect you in areas of your vulnerability.

>“it’s the Google ball on the taskbar and when you click it, the internet comes up” — is the argument to use Chrome that many people will go with. >I’m not making fun of tech illiterate people either.

The problem here is that when Joe Sixpack buys a Windows PC and starts it up, there is no "Google ball" on the taskbar: there's an icon for Edge, Microsoft's own browser that's included in Windows. Chrome is nowhere to be found. Joe only sees Chrome when he goes to a Google site like YouTube and gets prompted to install it, and goes through the steps of doing so. Joe could just as easily install Firefox, but he doesn't, perhaps because no huge website like YouTube is encouraging him to.

Amusingly Edge recommends installing an ad blocker.

But then Microsoft isn't in the advertising business.

And also, the majority of people in tech still use chrome out of convenience, because they don't give enough of a shit about Google being an evil monopoly.

How can we the expect Joe to "do the right thing" when his tech-friend uses Chrome too?

"but that one website I need to use once a month doesn't work in Firefox" - fine, from a techie it seems too much to ask to just use a different browser once a month.

Edge is Chrome reskined.

.. as a parasitic face-hugger that takes acid and flamethrowers to kill.

With a twin process that attaches to search and background cross references your every action with the web "just in case" it comes up later.

All these things are likely. It is also often the case that Joe's friend who's "good with computers" will install Chrome for him. Chrome is massively popular and overall a very functional browser.

As another commenter mentioned, too, Edge is Chromium-derived. The manifest v2 will soon (2025) be deprecated in Chromium, which is not that different from the Chrome deprecation. In Chrome, v2 is still technically supported until further notice, even in the newest Canary builds. It's just that plugins using v2 will require manual installation. All in all, it looks to me like 2025 is when v2 will be properly dropped on Chrome and Chromium.

It is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xandr

I quite like Chrome. Still if ads pop up all over it's off to Firefox I guess.

I see the desktop usage percentages are 65% chrome, 6.5% firefox so I guess others do too. I think it's mostly a lack of hassle thing. Chrome usually just works and lets you read your website without moving the interface around or crashing etc.