Google Chrome is killing all uBlock Origin bypasses, Edge, Opera to follow

Just remember that Google is essentially an advertising company and that they were always going to squeeze this opening closed as soon as they could get away with it.

I do fear for a future were even Firefox ends up caving in. Ladybird browser might be our only hope until something legal comes along to block functionality.

Good! Give everyone the push they need to break the web homogeny of Chrome everywhere.

I'm tired of all the (mostly technical) people whining that they need Chrome, and only Chrome can browse the internet. Then you ask them for a site that doesn't work and conveniently "it was some time back and I don't remember the details".

I've been using FF since before it was called Firefox. In the last 10 years I've not come across any site that doesn't work with Firefox - online shopping, social media, banking, custom line-of-business internal apps, ERP apps... you name it.

And, TBH, if I did, I'd just visit that one site with Chrome, and still use FF daily.

Surprised they still have this page on their site:

> https://about.google/company-info/philosophy/

> 1. Focus on the user and all else will follow.

> 6. You can make money without doing evil.

Look, we're having a good time on Firefox since November 9, 2004. Come join us!

uBo is the only reason I find browsing the web at all tolerable anymore. As a test I turned it off to view this article and almost crashed my browser with a dozen auto play video ads This would mean I would find the energy to get over anything that is holding me on chrome, like saved passwords etc.

I hope Firefox never drops MV2. I have a lot of other extensions that use it other than uBlock. Can't believe Google really went through with it. We are truly in the end times of "personal" computing, very sad to see :/

Why are people on HN still using Chrome? (or Edge, or Opera…)

I wonder what will Vivaldi do. They say that their built-in content blocker is "good enough" that you supposedly don't need uBO (I very much disagree) but they also keep MV2 extensions working to this day.

So, what's next? Will Chrome ship with hard coded DNS, so that DNS based adblockers will stop working as well? Where (and when) does my rights what to display on my devices end?

AdGuard MV3 works fine. Still switch to FF if you can, more diversity in the ecosystem benefits everyone.

It looks like crunch time is here. Personaly I have never watched add's on the net, by useing alternative browsers for 99% of my time, doing things like downloading a browser to do online banking, and then uninstalling it. Even as a child I didn't like advertisements, and have never owned a TV, for the simple reason that NO advertisement has ever shown me something I wanted, and could have. I have learned to let the net do it's thing, and provide me with work making things that people want, or show a lead to a product if I search (think~tractor part) but the rest is alien and very unpleasant for me to encounter.

Here is the guy who builds the browser I use https://www.stoutner.com/about/

git https://gitweb.stoutner.com/?p=PrivacyBrowserAndroid.git;a=s...

download https://www.stoutner.com/privacy-browser-android/changelog/

Finally Firefox will get a 30% usage share!

>from our experience, uBO Lite does not seem to be as good as the original non-Lite version

In what way? I've never noticed a difference.

Moved to Firefox. Thank you Firefox.

Opera was a strong contender to become my main browser (luckily firefox copied the most useful feature, it's vpn), if ublock is deactivated, I will let it go without a second look.

Chrome: uBlock Origin is dead.

Any other browser with uBlock Origin: Chrome is dead.

The solution then is to run the equivalent of a PiHole on your private network and then configure your portable devices to always use that PiHole as their DNS service via self hosted VPN

Does Brave track or does Brave fork on this?

The only reason I use Chrome is because its dev tools are better, and for whatever reason, webgl wigs out on Ubuntu 26.04 in Firefox. It's mostly the lag issue though...

I have been using UBlock Origin Lite on Chrome for a while, and while it's not perfect and needs a bit of manual tweaking here and there, it's been mostly good for me

Being the maintainer of such a big open-source application as Chrome used to grant dictatorial power: maintaining a fork represented too much work. It only happened in the most awful situations, such as Oracle acquiring OpenOffice.

But that was before LLM-driven development, I think that now the game has changed, and maybe Google hasn't got the leverage it thinks it has.

IMHO it's quite brave that a Google employee working in that area would let his real name be published, and an illuminating view of how they (don't) think.

Adtech company insists on ramming more unwanted ads down your throat

uBlock Origin Lite works just as well. I don't see any ads anywhere. My experience has not changed one yota.

People just like to rage against Google.

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublock-origin-lite/...

It's even available on iOS, I have it running in Safari

uBlock Origin Lite gives an identical browsing experience, ad-free. What is all the fuss about?

Just about obligatory mention of Pale Moon here. Have had a relatively clean internet experience for years with the old Firefox uBlock extension in combination with eMatrix. *Includes a disclaimer because I don't use Youtube and other assorted "social" media websites.

Only need Firefox ESR for a handful of websites giving me no option when specifying a Linux/Mozilla user agent instead of the native one for those doesn't work.

AdGuard works fine for me, on YouTube as well.

Boycott evil companies.

I hope not, I switched from chrome to edge so I can continue using ublock origin.

So, consider this a layman explanation of why this change is bad from someone who spends their time securing end-users.

This change is good for the majority of users, but is actually bad for large enterprise customers and highly-regulated customers. It puts more control and onus of responsibility on to Google, rather than the end-user. So, we will expect to see better enforcement of controls from Google for the lowest-hanging-fruit that some aspects of MV2 exposed.

What's that, you say? MV2 changes? Well there's 3 things.

1. Remote code execution. The ability for someone to just yeet commands into your browser. A little harder to do directly.. Still very possible, just with extra steps.

2. Removing the ability for extensions to access network requests directly, which is what adblockers often relied on. It also means malicious extensions could snoop on your requests. They still can, just with extra steps.

3. Background persistence, an extension could stay alive, maintain state, run timers, keep connections open, and coordinate across tabs. So this shuts off the "background persistence" piece -- but helps with ensuring better isolation. Still possible, but now requires yeeting your data to an external provider instead of keeping the state contained locally.

Those 3 changes are incredibly powerful, and will impact many, many Enterprise security tools. Tools that now instead will result in products like "Island Browser", and "Enterprise Chrome" being rolled out to supplement the functionality that MV2 gave us.

This change goes against the US and Australian government's hardening advice, and reduces the overall efficacy of security controls we're able to implement within our web browsers natively.

CISA's own guidance on this is pretty straightforward (aptly named Securing Web Browsers and Defending Against Malvertising for Federal Agencies): https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/2023-09/CISA%20CEG%...

Here's the Australian Government's control relating to it:

> Control: ISM-1485; Revision: 1; Updated: Sep-21; Applicable: NC, OS, P, S, TS; Essential 8: ML1, ML2, ML3 > Web browsers do not process web advertisements from the internet.

And if you're wondering about what incentives there are that led to this change, you can read this letter written to the Chairman of the FTC by a US Senator back in 2020. This letter is linked to from the same CISA document I shared earlier.

You should read it in full, and consider what incentives the Senator was referring to -- and how they also apply in this scenario.

https://www.wyden.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/011420%20Wyden%20...

Those Enterprise Chrome products I mentioned earlier? Chrome's change has now put some of this functionality which was previously possible with an extension, behind the Enterprise Chrome Premium SKU: https://chromeenterprise.google/products/chrome-enterprise-p...

"removing Effectively-dead code" nice euphemism for directly killing a feature people desperately want ...

People still using that POS? :)

> Cronin further explained why MV2 extensions are no longer allowed in supported Chrome versions as maintaining the associated functionality indefinitely is no longer possible. He cited growing technical difficulties and implementation complexities as well as security concerns.

You know what else is a security concern? Ads. The amount of mental gymnastics is insane. It's honestly insulting.

Yet another reason to also perform ad blocking at the network level (e.g. DNS). I’ve found AdGuard Home very easy to maintain. Using Firefox and Orion browsers too.

Google : "You will own nothing and like manifest v3"

smiling smugly from planet firefox

Totally not a monopoly on the browser space /s

uBlock Origin lite exists. And in couple years usage I see no difference from non lite version.

This feels more like a gradual tightening of extension APIs under Manifest V3 than a sudden “kill switch.” uBlock isn’t going away, but its capabilities are definitely being reshaped...