Google gets its way, bakes a user-tracking ad platform directly into Chrome : technology

[-] the_q@lemmy.world 162 points 10 months ago

Firefox. Get it.

[-] tailiat@lemmy.ml 14 points 10 months ago

If I could upvote you twice, I would.

[-] Apollo2323@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 10 months ago

Firefox all the way!! I don't care all the hate people throw at it.

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[-] PuppyOSAndCoffee@lemmy.ml 69 points 10 months ago

I liked chrome because it was quick and had useful features. Past tense. C-ya.

[-] Jaximus@lemmy.ml 23 points 10 months ago

Firefox has been as fast as chrome on most websites for some years now. Chrome was quick a decade ago, not anymore...

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[-] belated_frog_pants@beehaw.org 66 points 10 months ago

Stop. Using. Chrome.

[-] Dreadrat@lemm.ee 4 points 10 months ago

As soon as adblock stops working the nerds will move.

Then after a while the non nerds will hear about it from the nerds...then suddenly everyone needs to support Firefox again..

[-] intrepid@lemmy.ca 4 points 10 months ago

Anyone still using chrome doesn't deserve the nerd tag. How many neurons does it take to understand the consequences of using it? 3?

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[-] beteljuice@lemmy.ml 3 points 10 months ago

That's called the halo effect, where a small but influential group of people make something popular.

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[-] wolfylow@lemmy.world 54 points 10 months ago

Man I wish we hadn’t all fallen for the “don’t be evil” motto all those years ago.

This move from Google is utter, utter bullshit.

[-] youCanCallMeDragon@lemmy.world 36 points 10 months ago

Well they did remove the don’t be evil motto… guess it didn’t fit their business model

[-] JoeCoT@kbin.social 18 points 10 months ago

Spoiler: it fits very few company's business models. Some companies can avoid it, if their owners/board want to. But once they take venture capital, or go public, they lose that choice. And that "don't be evil" promise, and most any other, is void.

[-] aeternum@kbin.social 7 points 10 months ago

once they go public, the only goal is MOAR MONEY! reddit will also fall into this trap when/if they go public.

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[-] intrepid@lemmy.ca 3 points 10 months ago

We all did. It's very much possible that they really meant it at the time. Most companies start with a lot of idealism. And then they become successful and consequently the target of cronies. They feel like they're entitled to everyone else's earnings and the dark pattern begins.

[-] IHeartBadCode@kbin.social 30 points 10 months ago

but this is Google, and they control Chrome, and this probably still won't make people switch to Firefox

Yeah. People just simply will not do things that are in their best interest. This is literally the biggest issue that was had with IE. Inertia.

[-] Spacemanspliff@midwest.social 10 points 10 months ago

All of my web interaction at this point happens through my Android phone, Google has me by the balls anyway.

[-] anguo@lemmy.ca 28 points 10 months ago

There is Firefox for Android. You're still on Android, but you can have some control left.

[-] qupada@kbin.social 11 points 10 months ago

Unfortunately Firefox doesn't have a replacement for the "Android System WebView" component, so any app that embeds a browser component (and oh boy is that a lot of them) will still be using Chrome.

There's a relevant ticket here: https://github.com/mozilla/geckoview/issues/167

It should be possible to have a shim that allows Mozilla's "GeckoView" component to implement the API, but - per that ticket, at least - most Android ROMs won't allow alternatives to the Google one.

The Firefox browser is genuinely great, but it's so far from possible to replace Chrome with it everywhere a browser is used.

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[-] codapine@lemm.ee 8 points 10 months ago

You can't uninstall Chrome most likely, but maybe your stock/rom will allow you to "disable" it.

[-] DacoTaco@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Good idea. Let me disable it and see what breaks! ( i have firefox and inbrowser installed on lineageos )

[-] floofloof@lemmy.ca 7 points 10 months ago

Also Firefox Focus, which forgets your browsing history when you close it or hit the trashcan button.

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[-] Cube6392@beehaw.org 12 points 10 months ago

Privacy and digital rights are not a binary "use strange hard to use tools or give everything to google." There are things you can do to improve your ability to own your own data. Giving up immediately is letting perfect be the enemy of good. Running Firefox on your google phone will still win you back something

[-] reflex@kbin.social 5 points 10 months ago

Google has me by the balls anyway.

GrapheneOS? Are you on a Pixel?

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[-] Skimmer@lemmy.zip 25 points 10 months ago

Is this the part where I act surprised?

[-] cassetti@kbin.social 11 points 10 months ago

I avoided chrome for a long time. Finally I made the switch because FF was getting too slow on old computers back in the day. Lasted for maybe five or six years before I started getting some bad vibes. Why am I letting google run the web browsing software I'm using? This can't/won't be good in the future.

At least five years ago I made the switch back to Firefox, and haven't looked back. I love having adblocking that works (I use a router level ad block and ublock origin just in case to ensure I block almost every ad on the internet lol).

I'm honestly surprised it took people this long to decide to move away from Chrome.

[-] Honytawk@lemmy.zip 7 points 10 months ago

Firefox really became awesome after the quantum update. It really is the best browser to date imo.

[-] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Agreed.

My personal browser history:

IE - came with Windows, before I didn't really know what a browser was; we also had Mozilla, but only my dad used it
Firefox - as a teenager, I think I started at 1.5 and used until 3.5 or so
Chrome - it was faster than Firefox, so I used and recommended it to a lot of people; this is also when I started to care about web standards (tried to get IE users to use Chrome)
Opera - used for a couple years until they announced 15, which was going to be Chrome based
Firefox - I used Firefox off and on throughout, and remember the switch to rapid releases, and I've used it nearly exclusively (aside from Web Dev testing) since 2013 or so

Once Opera switched to Chrome-based, I started heavily recommending Firefox. So I saw the writing on the wall about 10 years ago, and now I'm stubborn about avoiding Chrome where possible. I hope others choose to switch too.

[+] TheKarion@lemmy.world 18 points 10 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

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[-] InisSieferI@kbin.social 10 points 10 months ago

It used to be the fastest, but nowadays I find its performance doesn't surpass Firefox and Edge that much. Actually, I haven't used Chrome much at all recently, so maybe it doesn't at all nowadays. I definitely haven't noticed it's absence now that I've been slowly returning to Firefox thanks to Google and Microsoft's constant privacy snafoos.

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[-] autotldr@lemmings.world 16 points 10 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Unlike the glitzy front-page Google blog post that the redesign got, the big ad platform launch announcement is tucked away on the privacysandbox.com page.

The blog post says the ad platform is hitting "general availability" today, meaning it has rolled out to most Chrome users.

This has been a long time coming, with the APIs rolling out about a month ago and a million incremental steps in the beta and dev builds, but now the deed is finally done.

Users should see a pop-up when they start up Chrome soon, informing them that an "ad privacy" feature has been rolled out to them and enabled.

That's actually what started this whole process: Apple dealt a giant blow to Google's core revenue stream when it blocked third-party cookies in Safari in 2020.

Google says it will block third-party cookies in the second half of 2024—presumably after it makes sure the "Privacy Sandbox" will allow it to keep its profits up.

The original article contains 588 words, the summary contains 159 words. Saved 73%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[-] TacoButtPlug@sh.itjust.works 16 points 10 months ago

So they're baking user behavior tracking into the browser but calling it "privacy"? What's the difference between this and colors cookie tracking?

[-] mwalimu@baraza.africa 11 points 10 months ago

The Federated Learning of Cohorts and now the Topics API are part of a plan to pitch an "alternative" tracking platform, and Google argues that there has to be a tracking alternative—you can't just not be spied on.

[-] kakes@sh.itjust.works 11 points 10 months ago

They say this is meant to be an eventual replacement for tracking via cookies, but there is literally no way this won't become supplemental to current tracking methods. And I think they know that.

[-] bluefirex@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago

While I don't agree with what Google does, they want to remove third-party cookies entirely next year. So it's indeed a replacement, not supplemental.

[-] azron@lemmy.ml 9 points 10 months ago

Librewolf!!!!!

[-] signor@lemmy.world 9 points 10 months ago

Gonna be hilarious when we hear about it lowering productivity at work.

[-] Kbin_space_program@kbin.social 14 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Gonna be hilarious when hackers figure out how to hijack where this reports back to. Particularly since Google recently got rid of most of their senior devs you know, the ones who can actually make secure code.

[-] TravisLF@artemis.camp 8 points 10 months ago

Any news on when this hits chromium?

[-] aeternum@kbin.social 9 points 10 months ago

probably already has. They put things into chromium first, then move them to chrome usually.

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[-] codapine@lemm.ee 5 points 10 months ago

And then hoodwink people into upgrading with the promise of Material You themes 🙄

I hope Chromium-based Vivaldi is still okay. I'm pretty invested in some of its features (though I have to admit it is getting more bloaty).

[-] ulkesh@beehaw.org 5 points 10 months ago

Aww good for Google. Meanwhile I’ll keep using a FOSS browser that doesn’t screw its users with every new feature.

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