Firefox downloads a spike by 30 million. Will be the next headline.
One would hope but nothing much will change in reality.
Followed by shocked pikachu face.
Although searches for Firefox only ticked up slightly.
So … can we like finally dismiss Google Chrome as the obviously awful idea it is and which should never have made it this far and remind all of the web devs married to it that they’re doing bad things and are the reason why we can’t have nice things?
Hmmm … a web browser owned by a monopolistic advertising company … how could that possibly go wrong!!!
Do you remember the Internet Explorer days? This, unfortunately, it’s still much better.
Pretty good reason to switch the Firefox, now. Nearly everything will work, unlike the Internet Explorer days.
- Firefox User
I think lots of people are overestimating how many will migrate to Firefox in the near future over this.
- High switching cost compared to finding another extension (e.g. uBO Lite), even if the resulting experience is worse.
- Just as some Firefox users like Firefox, many Chrome users enjoy what they have too. They don’t want to lose that.
- The kind of tech-aware person who’d switch over this is much more likely to have seen the news months ago and taken action already.
As fun as it is to imagine an Adpocalypse shocking the masses and getting them to try out alternatives to big tech, it’s also way too optimistic, I feel.
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Not to mention all the people who don’t even have an adblocker and for some reason don’t seem to care that their web browsing is infested with ads.
A lot of people don’t even know it’s an option, or have grown to believe that’s just how the web is. When was the last time you saw adblockers in mainstream media or news?
This is why I think it’s so important to keep raising awareness. If you have people in your life who you believe would be better off using uBlock, consider bringing it up when you have the opportunity.
My friends will stick to chrome, I switched to Firefox months ago. You’re right
Yeah, same with people here declaring the death of reddit, or Twitter, or any of these massive, mainstream services. People in bubbles (and Lemmy is definitely a bubble) always seem to underestimate how little everyone else cares or even knows about the things that are important to them. The service needs to be extremely bad in a user experience way, not an ethical way, for an extended period of time and there needs to be a big social movement where lots of people migrate to a direct and equivalent competitor within a short space of time. Most people will not do it on their own, they will wait until they see their peers doing it and only then can a migration start to snowball.
“Netflix will die when they ban account sharing!!” - Reddit/Lemmy/Techtubers
Netflix actually went on to have a massive jump in revenue, because most normal people can’t be arsed to set up a Plex/Emby/Jellyfin server and buy a shitload of storage.
High switching cost compared to finding another extension (e.g. uBO Lite), even if the resulting experience is worse.
You’re not wrong about the high switching cost.
Switching from Chrome to Vivaldi (because of Chrome’s whole FLoC thing) to Brave (because I didn’t like Vivaldi’s layout) to Firefox (because of Brave’s whole thing) was a pain.
And I don’t mean as a whole. Taking the time each time to change from one browser to another was always a pain. Transferring bookmarks and passwords was easy (Chrome and Firefox are at least compatible in that regard), but transferring extension settings was a whole different beast.
Some extensions had cloud sync support. Others had local export support. Some didn’t have either kind, and I’d have to manually copy the settings from one browser over to the other. And that’s not even getting into finding replacements for the Chrome-exclusive extensions (of which there were only a few, thankfully).
(because of Brave’s whole thing)
lol
I’m sorry to hear that, been there (Chrome, Opera, Vivaldi, Firefox in my case). Hopefully we can stick around for a while.
Hopefully it will give Firefox a bit of a boost anyway. Firefox needs a boost.
I agree folks are overestimating how many will switch. but also maybe you’re underestimating too - a lot of browser installations are managed by the “family tech guy”. the father, mother, brother, sister, aunt or uncle who sets up everyone’s new laptops on Christmas and has the suggestions when you look for a new phone. we all know the type. a lot of us are the type.
setting up granny’s laptop? I’ll install whatever browser lets me automatically block the most “1000th visitor!” banner ads and change the desktop icon to the old AOL icon because that’s all she knows the internet as. she doesn’t know of care about the browser options so it’s up to me. Chrome used to be fast and simple so it was the right choice. Firefox has caught up a fair bit on UX simplicity and speed and now offers better blocking and general security, so it just stole the crown for these installations imo. I trust it more to not let her mess the computer up, so even if I’m not using it as my main personal browser, it gets use here.
- Just as some Firefox users like Firefox, many Chrome users enjoy what they have too. They don’t want to lose that.
Do you have some source for that? IIUC, you mean that more Chrome users like Chrome than Firefox users like Firefox, right?
No. I simply meant that there exist Chrome users who appreciate what it provides them (features, UI, etc), so for these users to leave they’d have to give up those things. That’s always a hard ask.
“Some people like things.”
SOURCE?!
“Some firefox users like firefox” vs “many chrome users enjoy what they have” sounds to me like something that could have a source. Many sound to me more than some, so this is a comparison, which can be given a better foundation by supplying some numbers.
I thought that might’ve been the source of your misunderstanding. Sorry, that’s just how I write sometimes, no deeper meaning intended. As far as I know there’s no public data on what percentage of Firefox and Chrome users like their browsers’ features.
And then there are Safari users who are watching from the sidelines.
1 year ago I had basically free Spotify Premium because Safari was unable to play ads. That’s a kind of ad blocking.
And you ran zero ad blockers in Safari and on your network?
No ad blocker. This bug started to break song playback on Safari (according to Spotify’s forums, I faced no such problem) and then it was fixed so I got ads.
There’s also other chromium browsers with built-in ad-blocking that still work AFAIK. If all extensions and forked brower’s ad-blockers stopped working, I think there would probably be a surge in firefox usage (even if there’s not that much change in chromium usage).
Yeah I use Vivaldi as my daily driver and love it. There’s built in ad blocking but it’s not as good as the extension. If the extension stops working there I’ll switch to Firefox in a heartbeat though
As a supporter of Firefox and FOSS, the closed-source, Chromium-based Vivaldi is my guilty pleasure. It has the best UI experience I’ve found on a browser, and the company behind it doesn’t seem to be very evil.
Leaving Vivaldi was a sad moment for me. That UI, the settings, those features…! Goodness. I’m an enjoyer of bells and whistles, and Vivaldi’s got all of them and then some.
The folks working on it seem straight up great. Did you know they also host a mastodon instance? Literally my only issue with it is the engine, and that just so unluckily happens to be a deal breaker.
Yeah the founders are ex-Opera devs who left after the company was acquired by Qihoo 360, and the power user UI features are leagues ahead of other browsers I’ve tried. I wish Firefox developer edition would embrace of a philosophy of a more customizable UI centered around power users
Is there any other browser that does a right-side vertical tab bar with compact tabs?
There’s an extension for Firefox to do it, but it’s a bit clunkier than Vivaldi’s - definitely something I’d only switch to if I really had to… but every other browser I’ve seen only offers left-side vertical tabs at best, which is terrible if you want 3 monitors in a left-to-right layout with your browser on the left.
I think what you want is in Firefox nightly right now: https://blog.nightly.mozilla.org/2024/08/07/firefox-sidebar-and-vertical-tabs-try-them-out-in-nightly-firefox-labs-131/
That expands and compacts based on the sidebar state and can be flipped to the right side of the window in the ‘customise sidebar’ settings.
Vivaldi is cool. I installed it (for those who wanted a chromium browser) and FF on all the work computers where I work. Eventually uninstalled it because people started playing Vivaldia. Disabled Edge, so now they are FF only.
The uBlock Origin chrome extension
hashad 34 million users. Chrome has 3.45 billion users.Even if every uBlock user switched, it’s less than 1% of chrome users.
Depends on their methodology. Sure, a huge proportion of those are users who haven’t heard of uBO, but we’re forgetting a lot of caveats:
- Electron exists and lots of apps are built on top of it and identify as “Chrome”. Judging by the numbers most have been weeded out, but some edge cases do visit more sites so they end up in the count.
- A lot of workplaces mandate the browser, which is often Chrome. This also gets counted.
- A not insignificant amount of Firefox users change their useragent to Chrome.
All of these skew the numbers towards Chrome. Some Chrome users use a different adblocker which lowers the uBO statistic.
Yeah, I thought about mentioning that. But the comparison goes both ways. Less than 1% of Chrome users switching to Firefox could still mean an increase in Firefox users of over 10%, if I remember my numbers correctly. That’d be a sweet boost for most products.
Ya, it’d still be huge for Firefox, but what I’m really getting at is that even with this change, Chrome is going nowhere. They’re the big fish, they can afford to make these kinds of changes, because the people who care are a very small minority.
To be fair, nerds will tell their tech-illiterate friends about this change and probably influence them enough to consider it. Especially when it’s something as easy as downloading an application.
It’s much easier to switch a browser then it is to stop using Google, Facebook, etc.
I think probably the single most important thing that nobody is saying is that Google have ALL the numbers on this decision and they are not stupid, so it would be silly to assume this will work against their interests. Not only do they know how many people use chrome, their ad network gives them insight into ALL browsers.
If large numbers of people were going to switch browsers over an ad-blocking extension, the whole advertising industry would be significantly less successful than it is.
I’ve been on Firefox since manifest v3 was announced. Firefox has its own shortcomings but no dealbreakers.
What are some shortcomings in your view?
With Google providing 80% of Mozilla’s finding, I think we can all see whats going to happen next.
The Google payments were never guaranteed for Mozilla. If they didn’t have a backup plan in place to reduce spending, that’s on them. Let Mozilla return to its garage opensource roots.
I feel like this isn’t talked about enough. Sure
just use Firefox
But for how long is it gonna work that way until they too deprecate v2
I’m more worried that sites will start to demand it for “security purposes”.
It will be either of those two. The effort required to circumvent the restrictions will get increasingly higher. As someone fittingly said a few days ago. Let the 1984 commence.
They’re the only alternative for now.
Don’t worry. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
Personally I feel like I’m too addicted to Youtube (and Reddit, which is what brought me back here), so if I can’t block ads, perhaps I’ll be able to quit. To be honest though, even just disabling watch history and reducing subscriptions makes a massive difference to how addictive it is.
How long until YouTube blocks Firefox?
They can try. It won’t work.
Anti-trust lawyers are rubbing their hands in anticipation.
Considering they were already declared an illegal monopoly? I’d love to see them do that
As long as chromium keeps it I’m fine. I use edge, why should I bother with downloading another browser when the one it comes with is identical?
The reason you’re utilizing edge is valid, but why not use Firefox?
Meh. They had plenty of time to move to Firefox but they ignored all the warnings.
It’s not like they contracted some sort of terminal illness. Anyone can migrate whenever. It’s not hard.
I believe that some organizations restrict what applications can be installed on work computers, so that might not necessarily be true, at least for work machines.
if they’re restricting apps to that degree you probably can’t install extensions anyway.
One more vector of malware for these corporate systems. Sucks for them I suppose.
My organization has blocked all browsers other than Edge and Chrome - and has also blocked all plugins except for UBlock. For security reasons, of course.
Everyone knows seeing a bunch of uncontrolled JavaScript-powrered ads from who knows what server is good for security.
And I mean, there’s still time now. Switching browsers isn’t that bad. Export+import some bookmarks and adjust some settings, good to go.
I think FF has been a good option for a while. But the second best time is now. I can totally get it if people didn’t want to switch until they had more of a concrete problem.
FF still hasn’t brought back a tab group API for extensions or native tab groups. Extensions can only do so much given what they have to work with. I still use FF on the side, but it simply isn’t a practical as a primary browser for me currently.
But for casual users, many probably have never even touched their browser settings.
Understandable, I’m really looking forward to FF getting tab groups too. I don’t know why such a nice feature was left unimplemented for so long. 🫤
Tab groups are coming but in the mean time containers work well enough for me with the added benefit that they’ll also block tracking from the sites that are within them.
For all the firefox fans out there it might be good to note there have consistently been more Safari users than Firefox users since 2014. Hell Safari has been the number two browser by market share since 2015.
Browsers have to get very SHITTY or a new browser has to have a killer app to unseat a dominate one.
https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share#monthly-200901-202408
Almost like being the default gives you an unfair advantage or something.
I don’t think safari is even remotely comparable given that it’s a default browser on macs.
Also, I’m pretty sure it’s not possible to install any other browser on iPhones unless you get root.
Edit: It looks like you can with iOS 15.0
As I understand it, any browser on iPhone has to be built on WebKit, so even if you install fire fox or chrome, it’s running on a totally different web engine than the desktop version. Making them more safari re-skins in the same way that stuff like brave or opera are just chrome reskins.
I’ve had iPhone for years and I can’t remember the last time I didn’t use chrome with it
Never rooted my phones either. It’s definitely not blocked
Those are all just skins on safari. Until like 6 months ago you couldn’t install any web browser with a renderer other than safari. And that’s only in the EU.
How so ? The default browser on Windows is Edge, people keep installing Chrome? Chrome is available on MacOS, yet people stick with Safari?
Sensationalist and inaccurate title
I wonder if the DoJ actually does split up Google if separating Chrome would make any difference with behavior like this?
Chrome on its own does not bring revenue. It would then require donations
Chrome is used to get a tighter grip on the www and form it to Google’s vision (one that is very anti consumer). If Chrome dies, it would be a net benefit for all.
The headline is a bit overdramatic. Google hasn’t pulled uBlock Origin off its extension webstore. Rather, it’s switching from Manifest v2 to Manifest v3, which won’t support features the current version of uBlock Origin needs to work. We’ve known this was in the process of happening for months. It’s a good reminder of what’s coming eventually (namely, the fact v2 extensions will be entirely disabled by Chrome soon), but this is nothing new.
Do you know if this is at the chrome or chromium level?
Chromium. However other chromium browser’s have said they’ll either patch it to keep manifest V2 compatibility, or they won’t but you can still use their inbuilt ad-blocking.
I wonder if we trained an AI on the entire corpus of articles about how Google is gonna kill adblocking, if we could keep these articles going after most people switch uneventfully over to Lite.
I’ve used Librewolf since the first time Google announced these kinda plans I’m thinking it must be at least 3 years now.
Theres tons of options Librewolf is overkill to be honest Firefox would be fine.
LibreWolf.
“The browser built to be yours”
Hahaha sure thing Google
“The browser built to be piping your data into our hands”
There, fixed.
I’m in the process of switching to firefox on all my devices.
I’ve had enough of Google pushing features like this.
Having ublock on mobile is such a breath of fresh air. I wish I had made the transition sooner. I knew this was coming and completed my transition a few weeks back so I could abandon Chrome on my own time table and not on Google’s. Other than a little headache trying to find extension replacements for pc, I’m LOVING it.
I switched from Chrome to Firefox in 2019 because that’s when Google adopted Manifest V3 and I never looked back. There were already articles then describing how it’d break ad blockers, and Firefox had at the time just recently released their “Quantum” overhaul which drastically improved responsiveness.
I’m a bit surprised it took five years for Google to drop support for Manifest V2, but the threat has long been there.
I use Firefox as my main on my home pc. I keep running into things that don’t work on Firefox. Not by saying they don’t, just by throwing errors that make it sound like I put the wrong data in a field. Is there some magic extension to fix that?
I remember the Quantum release. They remade how the browser handled tabs, and with the new release you could handle (almost) unlimited number of tabs. I tried this buy opening as many tabs as I could, it worked flawlessly. I can’t even remember how it was before that, except that it was RAM intensive.
