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Google is Killing uBlock Origin. No Chromium Browser is Safe. (www.quippd.com)

submitted 2 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

257 comments fedilink hide all child comments

We’ve been anticipating it for years, 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”.

Now that it is finally happening, many seem to be oddly resigned to the idea that Google is taking away the best and most powerful ad content blocker available on any web browser today, with one article recommending people set up a DNS based content blocker on their network 😒 – instead of more obvious solutions.

I may not have blogged about this but I recently read an article from 1999 about why Gopher lost out to the Web, where Christopher Lee discusses the importance of the then-novel term “mind share” and how it played an important part in dictating why the web won out. In my last post, I touched on the importance of good information to democracies – the same applies to markets (including the browser market) – and it seems to me that we aren’t getting good information about this topic.

This post is me trying to give you that information, to help increase the mind share of an actual alternative. Enjoy!

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Honest question here, since chromium (vs chrome) is open source, can someone not fork an older version, or remove the new code blocking ublock?

I mean i assume it cant be done, but i dont know why

[–] [email protected] 50 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

It can be done, but then whoever forks that will need to stay on top of keeping that fork up to date with other changes in the original chromium, and that gets harder and harder to do as time goes on and more changes are made to the same or related parts of the codebase.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

And you have to know that if anyone actually tried, they would dedicate their infinite resources to making that as difficult as humanly possible.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 weeks ago

Google: We changed a color

Fork Developer: they changed a color and it caused 50,000 breaking changes that a diff tool can't handle automatically wtf.

Google: sorry wrong color here's a new one

Fork developer: another 100,000 breaking changes that a diff can't handle?!?!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

Also all the ad blocking extensions would have to continue maintaining forks of their own projects for increasingly obscure manifest V2 Chromium browsers.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago

I don't know why either. What I do know is that most Chromium browsers that are not Chrome have ad-blocking built into the browser itself using the same strategies as uBo but not reliant on Mv2 or Mv3 because they're not extensions.