Google is Killing uBlock Origin. No Chromium Browser is Safe.
www.quippd.com
We’ve been anticipating it for years,1 and it’s finally happening. Google is finally killing uBlock Origin – with a note on their web store stating that the extension will soon no longer be available because it “doesn’t follow the best practices for Chrome extensions”.2 Daly Barnett. “Chrome Users Beware: Manifest V3 is Deceitful and Threatening.” EFF, December 9, 2021. ↩ Lawrence Abrams. “Google warns uBlock Origin and other extensions may be disabled soon.” Bleeping Computer, October 13, 2024. ↩

Google is weakening ad blockers as part of their MV3 extension standard and this will trickle down into all Chromium browsers. Built in ad blockers lack features compared to uBlock Origin as well.

    • mm_maybe@sh.itjust.works
      1·
      5 months ago

      Honest question: why is it not safe after then? They developed their own adblocker if I’m not mistaken? What am I missing?

      • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
        1·
        5 months ago

        I’m using the word “safe” here to mean “dependable”. As in, you can depend on Vivaldi to support v2 manifest addons (of which uBlock is one). If you use any addons you like that require v2 manifest in a Chromium based browser, you can Vivaldi (or Brave, I believe) to continue to support your desired addons until July 2025. After July 2025, the code in the browser that allows v2 manifest addons will be removed from all supported Chromium browsers (that I’m aware of).

        • mm_maybe@sh.itjust.works
          1·
          5 months ago

          Ok, thanks for clarifying. FWIW, I find the built-in adblocker in Vivaldi extremely dependable, without the performance cost of loading an add-on (especially on top of a base browser that is significantly slower to begin with).

  • echo@lemmings.world
    0·
    5 months ago

    I switched to Firefox about a month ago for personal use. It’s nearly impossible for me to quit using Chrome, though, due to work.

    I don’t hate Firefox, but it does absolutely do some stupid shit that I don’t like.

      • kautau@lemmy.world
        1·
        5 months ago

        As someone who uses Vivaldi, which has a significant number of power user and customization features, the fact this is no longer a thing is fucking bonkers to me

        https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/compact-mode-workaround-firefox#%3A~%3Atext=Firefox+Last+updated%3A+6%2F6%2Chttps%3A%2F%2Fmzl.la%2F3JM0ViX

        I can turn on an unsupported flag to make the UI a little cleaner for me

        To me, it’s wild that the browser for the user decided to deprecate an option like that. Since they dropped XUL support I have very few options on customizing my browser outside of a theme or just writing my own CSS

        From there, I’d just point to:

        https://vivaldi.com/features/

        Firefox pulls in like 500 million dollars a year from Google. Barely any of those features exist in Firefox

        I started with Firefox. I used it from day one, when it was an experiment coming out of the Mozilla suite.

        I want to use it day to day so bad

        But it’s become “how do we chase chrome”

        And occasionally they get wins like this. And it no longer feels like

        “How can we be best?”