It’s amazing how little leverage they have when you stop using their products.
More than you think. They are also actively seeking ways to make that leverage effect more people.
They are defining web standards. They control chrome and chromium. So all of the alternative browsers that aren’t safari and Firefox are using Google’s web engine. Even Firefox and safari are beholden to Google as they fund both these web browsers through their default search deals.
Google after many failed messaging apps has taken on RCS messaging. They provide most of the supporting infrastructure through their Jibe servers. They don’t allow anyone but themselves and Samsung to make an RCS app on android. They also had a campaign to pressure apple to use RCS. It’s likely apple’s RCS will be following Google’s Jibe service closely, as they’ve already said their will work with Google on this. Google successfully got most RCS messages going through their servers, with apple on board with RCS itll see most SMS messages defaulting to RCS and most of those going through Google.
They also have deep hooks into education market with their OneDrive/Google docs products and Chromebooks.
Most privacy focused android alternatives recommend Google hardware.
I use Safari, Firefox, and DuckDuckGo.
I haven’t used sms for half a decade if not more…
It’s the most common way to contact people in the US
I see. In Europe, everyone’s on Whatsapp, Telegram or even Signal, nobody uses sms :)
I’ll call that an incorrect and generalizing statement. The adaptation of these apps differs a lot from country to country, and SMS is definitely not dead yet. Beside people still texting, it’s also being used for verification codes, order confirmations, postal tracking notices, scamming, phishing and so much more!
Most of my personal communication goes through Signal, but I still get a ton of SMS messages.
- 25% spam
- 40% scams
- 30% one time passwords for shitty sites/apps that don’t support better 2FA options
- 5% iPhone users who refuse to install Signal
Real useful stuff…
I wish I could.
I’ve tried for years to get people over to things like XMPP, which is cross platform since, well, forever.
No dice.
They are defining web standards. They control chrome and chromium. So all of the alternative browsers that aren’t safari and Firefox are using Google’s web engine. Even Firefox and safari are beholden to Google as they fund both these web browsers through their default search deals.
Agreed we need to quickly move away from this
Don’t worry. They will find ways to force you using their products.
Meh I think they might be overestimating their market position if that’s the strategy
I think they’re in a better position than Microsoft when they tried to make ActiveX and Silverlight a thing. They own the two most visited websites. On top of that, they own the most used web browser and the most used operating system (judged by web use).
Firefox is loving every week of this as they head towards launch. Market share is guaranteed to improve.
You have more faith in people’s giveashit than I do.
Nah, I’ve seen people who were hard chrome users start to change their tune about it. A few even changed over to Firefox. Now I understand that my sample size is people I know, but even my wife asked me “how can I stop the youtube ads stuff” after noticing that I don’t have to deal with that bullshit… and she’s not tech literate at all.
The issue is that most people will just end at “well I guess I can’t block ads anymore”.
Yep. Just like everyone that was going to leave Netflix when they axed account sharing, but then just made their own accounts and went on with life. I’d see a similar thing playing out here for all but the more technical users who may start switching.
Hey, if it makes you feel any better, Netflix started blocking me from sharing an account with my parents, and we cancelled the account and didn’t make any new ones.
Although, if they still had disc deliveries, my parents would probably have kept the account.
That’s encouraging.
It’s not really about giving a shit, but when you’re used to no ads, then seeing ads is an inconvenience. And that’s usually even more potent than people giving a shit or not
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I switched to FF on mobile a few months back and I finally switched to FF on desktop earlier today.
I had been a chrome user for maybe 15 or 20 years? I don’t actually remember when chrome came out but I started using it shortly after.
The problem is Firefox is not really an independant organisation; (it’s not independant from Google).
If you are talking about Mozilla gets money from Google for default search engine deal, Apple also gets money from Google. That doesn’t make Firefox depended on Google.
Firefox and Apple are different kinds of companies though.
When it comes to browsers they are same kind of companies.
My 5 years old decided to switch to Firefox after I told him google chrome will not block ads on YouTube anymore.
That’s the iq it takes yeah. :)
Not saying anything bad about your son, hopefully you understand what I mean.
Don’t talk to my son ever again! /s Yeah most adults are just very tall 4 year olds.
Proof: Elon and his Crayola-designed truck
Escaping the musk-spam is truly impossible in this platform, no wonder people are leaving.
He still topical. Leave if you feel the need to.
Meh, it gets old.
Yea the truck is trash… That’s news from two yeas ago.
It’ll die, I’d rather stop wasting time on such a banal subject.
Bread and circuses.
People won’t stop talking about current affairs!
invite 5 year old to fediverse when older
Kids are more open to change than adults.
I’ll never understand why so many people seem to be afraid of change. To me change is exciting, something new to explore, a chance to learn something new.
It will happen as you get older. You might not even realize it, and it will start with disliking changes that are objectively bad. But soon it will be changes that are neutral, and eventually changes that are positive but not very positive.
Firefox isn’t an “alternative browser.”
I didn’t think Google would play the evil card, but don’t trust the ad blocking abilities of software made by an advertising company, I guess.
What do you mean by not an alternative browser?
Are you trying to say something about the word choice or…?
Chrome is an alternative browser to Firefox too.yes, i think he is speaking about the word itself. it is terrible that it is gaining negative connotation… like when people say bullshit like “alternative facts” or “alternative medicine” and the word itself slowly starts to look slightly suspicious just because it is used by morons.
Jesus, I didn’t even think of that being a reality now…
This bloke just realised we’re living in the darkest timeline…
It’s not an alternative, it’s the browser you should use
Of course it’s the alternative. Has always been, even before it was called Firefox: Netscape Navigator is the alternative to Mosaic. Fun fact: Internet Explorer was a fork of Mosaic. All of Chrome, Edge and Safari are descendants of KHTML.
This website talking trash about Google ads 🤣
Holy fuck, 3 ads for the same thing that take up half the page?
Thank developers for ad blockers, I don’t even see those anymore.
How is this even legal? So now suddenly every chromium extension has to go through a play store style review? How is Google entitled to do this on their competitor’s browsers?
They can do it if a competitor has forked Chromium but not bothered to provide their own addon store. For example, Edge supports its own store plus Google, Vivaldi only supports Google
Not hard to believe these rumors of super low morale within the industry are true.
What rumours are those?
From what Bay Area friends told me, just a new really tense non-collaborative or innovative walk on eggshell environment since switching back from WFH to hybrid/in-office.
Oh cool thanks I’ll take a look 🧐
I switched to FireFox slightly before all this Adblock-Drama came up. Simply because i realised Chrome was getting ridiculously slow ._.
How is it still a problem for anyone? I haven’t used Google in years and I am unexpectedly still alive
We have prescribed terminals in our classrooms that are wiped between classes and only have chrome included. It’s a fuckin’ pain to have to load uBlock in each class in each section every day, because for some reason, our uni’s IT department only supports chrome.
Are you able to access anything like USB drives? There are portable versions of Firefox you can carry around with you.
Yeah, I have ‘em, but links still default to fuckin’ chrome, which makes “impromptu” PowerPoint supplements awkward.
There are also portable Version of libre office for Windows, which you can configure to open in Firefox.
only supports chrome
Nothing auspicious here! /s
Nah, they went with the route of least resistence. Gotta remember, they’re dealing with thousands of students (college aged kids now just don’t use computers the same way and don’t want to learn how to, at large) and faculty (people who may be doing this job for decades and refuse to learn computers beyond the minimal requirement).
This reminds me of years ago when I was trying to get my grandma off of Internet Explorer.
The only thing that worked in the end was adding a shortcut to the desktop and changing its icon to IE’s. For a lot of younger people, or older folk who resisted computers until the 2010s, Chrome is the internet, the same way my grandma thought IE was the internet.
Most people use Google
Well let’s say they shouldn’t for many reasons, the most obvious being Google’s systematic push at harvesting every last data about your life. In my country, many schools ban chrome from their devices for this very reason
What happened to the ad blocker detection thing a month ago. Did Google remove it or does uBlock Origin have a permanent workaround now rather than needing to clear cache and reload?
It’s still an ongoing war, but with Manifest V3, Google will have an advantage over adblockers because they will be in full control over the frequency of extension updates, how many ad blocking rulesets they’ll allow, and perhaps when no one is looking, prevents those rulesets from targeting their own domains. The latter is the nuclear option that’ll instantly piss off the whole tech world if implemented now, but perhaps slow boiled frogs won’t notice it once the heat is high enough.
Setting up a huge privacy lawsuit by trying to force us to allow these horrendous advertising tracking scripts.
I’d like to think so, but it’ll never happen.
They regularly try to add things to break it, and uBlock’s devs update it as fast as possible. They’ll probably slow down on these breaking changes as it falls out of the spotlight and people slowly forget about it.
I had to clear cache and reload yesterday.
yea lucky enough i switched to firefox a year ago
“Wow! The future conditional pluperfect subjunctive.”
Any article summary?
Google is disallowing “remote code” in extensions and classifying blocklists (the lists of urls that ad blockers use to know what to block, which are just text files hosted on remote servers like github) as remote code. As a result, any blocklist updates will need to go through the extension review process, which typically takes anywhere from a few hours to a few weeks.
Google often updates YouTube’s ad delivery on a daily basis. Blocklists must also update as frequently to keep ads blocked on YT. If Google requires that blocklists go through the review process, they can drag their feet and essentially render the ad blockers useless even if they have to allow them to stay in the extension store.
It’s a short article…
It’s going to open a tab in the browser while closing the app. That’s more trouble than I wanted.
Sounds like you need to look into new client if opening any link closes client.
Sounds like a lot of work
Removed by mod
LMAOOOO IMAGINE NOT USING FF/TOR/SAFARI (/S)
