this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2024

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Showerthoughts

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180

Google dropping ublock origin represents a flawless David vs Goliath victory for its developer (lemmy.ml)

submitted 3 months ago by octopus_ink@lemmy.ml to c/showerthoughts@lemmy.world

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[–] AtHeartEngineer@lemmy.world 107 points 3 months ago (5 children)

Switch to firefox

[–] octopus_ink@lemmy.ml 37 points 3 months ago

Never stopped using it in the first place. :)

[–] SirSamuel@lemmy.world 28 points 3 months ago (1 children)

[–] Caboose12000@lemmy.world 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

what's this from?

[–] zuch0698o@lemmy.world 9 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Watchmen

[–] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 5 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Y'know, it never stops being exciting when you get to watch someone become one of today's lucky 10,000.

@/u/caboose12000, I'll add that the author is Alan Moore. The book is a masterpiece and absolutely worth reading. He also wrote V For Vendetta and honestly too many other increxible works to try to list here.

[–] ThrowawayPermanente@sh.itjust.works 7 points 3 months ago

These guys are the real winners in all this

[+] Auli@lemmy.ca -76 points 3 months ago (6 children)

Which we’ll soon be a paid browser if the US breaks up Google and they can’t send any money to Firefox anymore.

[–] jasep@lemmy.world 76 points 3 months ago (1 children)

You may want to educate yourself before spreading unnecessary FUD. Firefox is free and open source, and always has been. There's no danger in Firefox becoming a paid browser because even if they tried, it would just be forked and maintained by another community or group.

Mozilla does have a for-profit arm called the Mozilla Corporation, and they manage the money received from Google and others. But that doesn't mean Firefox is going to become paid even if Google gets broken up by the antitrust efforts of the US government.

[–] AnyOldName3@lemmy.world 16 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Maintaining a web browser in the 2020s is an expensive thing to do. You need full time employees who specialise in all the systems that make up a browser, and can't leave security-critical parts like ensuring the integrity of the JavaScript sandbox to volunteer hobbyists. It's far from the only thing Mozilla spend money on, so if they need to mage cost savings, it won't necessarily stop them being able to maintain Firefox, but another organisation picking it up if they do stop isn't likely.

[–] SkyNTP@lemmy.ml 12 points 3 months ago (1 children)

You are not totally wrong, but I think if you were totally right, the internet as a world-changing technology would have never come to be in the first place. An internet operated by a single company is basically just a cable service. I think right now there certainly is apathy in the public consciousness towards the value add of keeping the internet decentralized, because it is taken for granted. But I think this is temporary, human society has always been reactionary in that way, we let things back slide, until it gets bad, and we only do something about it when we feel the pain.

[–] AnyOldName3@lemmy.world 7 points 3 months ago

When the internet was becoming a world-changing technology, there weren't thirty years of websites to keep working and malware to protect from, web standards were far simpler, and a much higher proportion of users were enthusiasts who were excited by anything they could get and didn't mind if things were rough around the edges. Similarly, two brothers could make the world's first aircraft that flew under its own power, and yet with the combined might of everyone working for Boeing, people are worried about airliner doors falling off and an eight-day space trip has become an eight-month one. Mature technologies need a lot more effort to build and maintain than emerging ones.

[–] jasep@lemmy.world 6 points 3 months ago (2 children)

There are already other open source forks of Firefox that are community driven and maintained without employees or a for profit organization behind them. The obvious example is LibreWolf which describes itself as "a custom and independent version of Firefox, with the primary goals of privacy, security and user freedom". There's no argument that maintaining a web browser is currently complex and needs to make security first decisions, but LibreWolf as an example shows us that it is not only possible but I argue proves it will continue even if Firefox as we know it goes away.

[–] AnyOldName3@lemmy.world 7 points 3 months ago

Those forks aren't maintaining Firefox itself, just their own modifications. If a bug is found in Firefox, the LibreWolf team don't have to fix it themselves, they can wait for Mozilla to do it, and incorporate the fix once it materialises. There are forks that diverge further, but they either get quickly abandoned after their creator realises how much of a headache maintenance will be, or they're left with gaping security holes.

[–] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I'm a Librewolf fan too, but the majority of the hard work is done by Mozilla developers. Their work is very important too, but what they are doing is preconfiguring prefs, adding patches, and writing the patches sometimes. Much easier to be done as a team of volunteers.

[–] beefbot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 3 months ago

Makes sense that Librewolf work is done by Firefox devs - a recent LW notification recommended installing FF

[–] sxan@midwest.social 3 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I appreciate what you're saying, and you're not wrong about the level of effort. But I take exception to the implication that, somehow, paid developers are better developers than OSS or hobbyist ones.

Getting paid for something doesn't make you good, or diligent. It doesn't even make you competent.

[–] AnyOldName3@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago

But it does mean you can spend forty hours a week or thereabouts putting effort into a particular goal and maintaining the knowledge, skills and experience to keep doing it to a high standard without having to sink time and effort into something else in order to get paid enough to live on.

[–] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 months ago

Because they have dedicated time. A contributor has his free time, and will contribute with work they are interested in, while still having to work at a job to be able to afford living.

[–] haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com 25 points 3 months ago

Although thats probably not whats going to happen if google gets broken up but I‘ll still happily pay for firefox just for the sake of breaking up google.

Death to megacorporations.

[–] JonnyRobbie@lemmy.world 20 points 3 months ago

honestly? Id pay for it

[–] rickdg@lemmy.world 7 points 3 months ago

This might be a best case scenario. It won’t happen, Mozilla has been turned into a corporate funds receiver for years. That CEO compensation doesn’t pay for itself. Imagine paying for actual software engineering work.

[–] BobGnarley@lemm.ee 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Eh, I would think that if they're under fire for being a monopoly any non monopolistic actions like funding their rivals will be pretty well received.

[–] odium@programming.dev 16 points 3 months ago (1 children)

They're paying Firefox to make google search default. That is a monopolistic practice.

[–] The_Cunt_of_Monte_Cristo@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago (3 children)

How is that monopolistic if we are able to change our default search engine?

[–] Maven@lemmy.zip 13 points 3 months ago

This isn't the first time that something being the default was considered part of a monopoly case. Most notably internet explorer in the Microsoft monopoly case.

The big thing is that even if there are other options... A lot of people won't ever bother to change it.

[–] Engywuck@lemm.ee 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The same way one is able to change the default browser on any OS? Because a lot of people claim that FF downfall is exclusively due "other browsers" being the default.

[–] The_Cunt_of_Monte_Cristo@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago

I've been using Firefox since 2018 and I wish I started to use it much earlier than that but sorry this sounds like a lame excuse. Edge came as a default browser but no one used it when it was built on EdgeHTML engine. People love it now because with Chromium it is a better browser now.

[–] RunningInRVA@lemmy.world 5 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

It’s anti-competitive to other search engines and advertisers.

[–] The_Cunt_of_Monte_Cristo@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

@RunningInRVA@lemmy.world @Maven@lemmy.zip IMO it would be monopolistic if Google forced Mozilla to remove the ability to change the default search engine. But if you want Mozilla to ask users which search engine they would like to set as default during initialization of the browser even after dealing with Google, that would definitely be nice.

[–] olicvb@lemmy.ca 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

worst case scenario, I download a pirated copy ¯\(ツ)/¯ (though before that i'll prob. just switch to LibreWolf)

[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 46 points 3 months ago (1 children)

You gotta explain this one, that parable doesn't fit the situation in the way it's typically used

[–] octopus_ink@lemmy.ml 33 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (4 children)

This is clearly about all the youtube advertisement changes lately. (though maybe with a dolllop of not being happy about their other ads being blocked either) I've not seen a single one on FF with Ublock, no slowdown, no nothing. He was (as I understand it) making changes as needed to stay ahead of or abreast of them. (I already wasn't using their browser long before this.)

He beat them. They didn't crush him with their technical prowess and all their genius engineers, they didn't find a way to legally challenge him (I'm sure they had their lawyers working on it), they didn't find a way to outmaneuver him, the only thing they could do is ban his extension from being used on their browser. Because they literally could not force their shit down our throats as long as we were using it.

So I guess, maybe not a beat for beat fit for the parable, but he's very much the little guy, and they very much are the gigantic IT megacorp, so I think it was a glorious victory.

[–] BearGun@ttrpg.network 27 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I'd call it a pyrrhic victory at best. It's like if Ukraine got Russia to use their nukes on them and there was no response from the rest of the world. Sure, you got them to use their strongest weapon, but you still got nuked and they'll continue as usual.

[–] octopus_ink@lemmy.ml 10 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I do see your point, but OTOH Chrome ain't the only browser. Ublock getting kicked off Chrome is just going to be one more factor that will tip some people away from it. I don't strongly disagree, but I see it as a net positive. Maybe that does undo my shower thought a little, but hey, it was literally a shower thought. 🙂

[–] null@slrpnk.net 20 points 3 months ago

Chrome ain't the only browser

It almost is, though. That's why it's important to support FF/Gecko

[–] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 months ago

But it's not a nuke. The addon still lives and thrives, on browsers not controlled by google, and Firefox is not like a complicated browser that the average user couldn't drive.
I think the nuke would be if
a) google would find a way to effectively break all sites where uBO is detected, and uBO couldn't defend against it, or not in time while there's mass breakage
b) uBO and such would be legally outlawed in a large country or more

[–] pop@lemmy.ml 14 points 3 months ago

Manifest V3 was well on its way to being implemented before the aggressive youtube advertisement push. It was well known (to people who cared) it would kill uBlock back in 2019.

Here's an article:

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/google-begins-testing-extension-manifest-v3-in-chrome-canary/

Discussion on the uBlock subreddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/dunod2/google_begins_testing_extension_manifest_v3_which/

[–] fine_sandy_bottom@lemmy.federate.cc 8 points 3 months ago

You're kind of assuming people will stop using Chrome as a consequence, but i just don't think that's the case.

David didn't slay Goliath, Goliath just walked away and took command of David's army, leaving David to play with his rocks.

[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Fair enough :)

Thanks for your perspective and time in the response

[–] octopus_ink@lemmy.ml 3 points 3 months ago

Thanks for your perspective and time in the response

Any time! :)