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Google pulls the plug on uBlock Origin, leaving over 30 million Chrome users susceptible to intrusive ads (www.windowscentral.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 186 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (14 children)

I think some people overestimate 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 many Firefox users like Firefox, lots of 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 pushing them to try out alternatives to big tech, it's also way too optimistic, I feel.

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  • [–] 88 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 30 points 2 years ago

    "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.

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  • [–] 40 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    The uBlock Origin chrome extension has had 34 million users. Chrome has 3.45 billion users.

    Even if every uBlock user switched, it’s less than 1% of chrome users.

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  • [–] 24 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    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.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    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:

    1. 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.
    2. A lot of workplaces mandate the browser, which is often Chrome. This also gets counted.
    3. 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.

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  • [–] 27 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I’ve been on Firefox since manifest v3 was announced. Firefox has its own shortcomings but no dealbreakers.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    What are some shortcomings in your view?

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    I don't like the lack of customisability. I've been using Vivaldi for a long time now and nothing comes close to how customisable and feature-packed it is. Everything can be set up and tweaked exactly how I want. My version of Vivaldi would look, feel, and act entirely different to someone else's, because it does what I want, not the other way around.

    Unfortunately, it's Chromium-based. But the developers have been working on its native ad blocker in case extensions are impacted. They're quite a brilliant bunch, so I'm hoping it all goes smooth. I really don't want to have to go back to Firefox if I can help it. I can't stand UX for the masses and these guys get it.

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  • [–] 18 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    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).

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  • [–] 14 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    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

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago* (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

    Leaving Vivaldi was a sad moment for me. That UI, that sidebar, the settings, those features...! Goodness. I'm an avid enjoyer of bells and whistles, and Vivaldi's got all of them and then some. I miss that a bit.

    The folks working on it seem great, check their blog for their decision track record 1 2 3. 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.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    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

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago*

    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.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    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).

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

    (because of Brave's whole thing)

    Ha.

    I'm sorry to hear that, been there (Chrome, Opera, Vivaldi, Firefox in my case). Hopefully we can stick around for a while.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    And then there are Safari users who are watching from the sidelines.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    1 year ago I had basically free Spotify Premium because Safari was unable to play ads. That's a kind of ad blocking.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    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.

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  • [–] -4 points 2 years ago (2 children)
    • 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?

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    "Some people like things."

    SOURCE?!

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago* (1 child)

    "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.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago*

    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.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago

    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.

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