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

Yay for Firefox

- They fund Mozilla a ton on purpose. They want a small subset of people to use Firefox. It keeps them from the monopoly investigations
  https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-05-05/why-google-keeps-paying-mozilla-s-firefox-even-as-chrome-dominates
- I made the switch a few weeks ago. While the transition was a little inconvenient, I got everything set up in maybe an hour or two. Performance was wacky for a few hours after that, but it's settled now for my purposes.
  You definitely have to finagle the browser with add-ons and other about:config things to make it work for you, but after that yeah I can say I prefer Firefox over Chrome!
  Now I just need to deGoogle everything else...
Riiiight, because Google wasn't doing sneaky tracking shit leading up to this. This time, they'll surely switch, all dozens of them, and a couple might even use Firefox. woohoo
Reality: https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share
Someone reply to me saying they just switched to make this a perfect internet circlejerk.
- Unironically, yeah, this is the nail in the coffin for me.
- I honestly don’t get why people think chromium browsers are good, for example Firefox in my use case is far faster than chrome… by a long shot. Also if you want to argue…
  https://treeherder.mozilla.org/perfherder/graphs?highlightAlerts=1&highlightChangelogData=1&highlightCommonAlerts=0&series=mozilla-central,3735773,1,13&series=mozilla-central,3412459,1,13&timerange=86400
- Sometimes there is a proverbial straw to break a camel’s back.
  I mean, for some percentage of users this will be it. Will it be a significant share of Chrome users? Probably not, but it just means those of us who got people to switch to Firefox in the 00’s and Chrome in the early 10’s need to be as vigorous with getting people off Chrome now.
- I used chrome since it was launched and this summer I switched to Firefox on all devices.
- I just switched my internet off!
- What's your thoughts on Orion? It's weirdly niche, but has been killer for me.

Please, everyone, stop using Chrome. This is an easy vote with your wallet that doesn't even require your wallet.

Complacency means the internet gets worse, ads get worse, nickel and diming gets worse. It's the easiest chance to take a stand you'll ever have.

Serious question: let's say I continue using Chrome and Privacy Sandbox becomes the norm. How does my internet experience get worse?
- One key change in the short term is the Topics API. This is the replacement for 3rd-party cookies in Privacy Sandbox. Basically, it allows sites to query your browser directly about what topics you enjoy, and Chrome will respond with topics based on analysis of your browsing history to allow for targeted ads. If it seems strange that a new "privacy" feature is still serving up data about you for targeted ads -- it is. And in fact, a lot of the proposed changes potentially just give Google more sway to act as a middleman, which ultimately gives them more data.
  Will your experience change immediately? Likely not, but as with many things in this space, it's about the dangers of the path and its longer term implications, specifically here about corporate controls and softening the definition of "privacy".
  Here's a decent overview with more far more details.

Firefox is the way to go.

Give it time. Greed is greed, just a matter of time. Personally I’m back to use the old carrier pigeon. Kinda slow but probably still better than dialup
Edit: Either y’all don’t get this was a joke, or haven’t been alive long enough to watch your hero’s die.
Either way, fuck Google, sorry to rain on the parade
- And soon, the carrier pigeon breeders will start tagging them with tracking chips..
- Or they just didn't think it was funny...
- Carrier pigeons are still faster than the internet, tested again this year to prove it
What's Opera based on? My friends mostly use Mac, so they all use Opera and Chrome, but I have gotten them to stop using Chrome.
- Nearly every browser is Chromium-based. Additionally, Opera is Chinese-owned.
- Opera has unfortunately given up and switched to Chromium as its backend.
- At least its not chrome

Firefox gets like 90% of its revenue from Google.

Keep Firefox independent and donate: https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/?form=donate

But donating your money can not make firefox independent.It will only make firefox more revenue.
Google wants to keep mozilla afloat to stay out of anti-competitive allegations.
- If mozilla gets market share, google will defund them. That mozilla have a money will help.
  Also mozilla's other projects are also good ;)
- And the money won't go to Firefox, but Mozilla's other projects.

Firefox has been my go-to, but I've left Chrome installed just to have on hand incase some website fuckiness could be solved with a browser change.

Naw. It's not worthy of staying around even for that. Time to completely scrub my devices of google.

Feeling the same, it’s surprising how many companies are just leaning towards screwing users for a few more pennies on the dollar. Eventually, Google with be the next AOL.
- Just need their Time-Warner to put the last nail in the coffin
I suggest to use chromium as the backup "in case a webpage doesn't work on Firefox" browser. All the compatibility but no telemetry.
- But why use chromium or any chromium based browser since google disabled ad blocking plug-ins?
I've been doing similar; been using Firefox, but Chrome is installed for its browser-wide automatic captioning. Not something I need often, but I rely on it for the occasional remote meeting here and there. I'm sure free automatic captioning applications exist for my operating system, but I'd have to actually test each one to see if they actually work, and it's just been so convenient keeping Google's around.
(Speaking of which, if anybody happens to have recommendations for free automatic captioning software that works on Ubuntu, I seem to be in the market...)
Nah, I use Edge for that. Chrome is only for work for me, but I think I'm going to migrate to another Chromium-based browser for that.

The site you've linked to literally uses Facebook and Google browser trackers. Pretty hypocritical of them if you ask me.

It's always funny/sad to see that "we care about your privacy" doublespeak on an article about digital privacy

You guys are way to late to quit chrome, and you probably won't at this point. This is what happens when you don't swap, you enable this anti-consumer monopoly behavior.

- Please don't confuse Internet with WWW, it's making discussion like this even harder, thanks.
- Okay, still use Firefox

We have firefox, iceweasel, fennec (android). Anything else not firefox based is chrome based. Don't get tricked by opera and similars.

You can still change browser.

Safari isn’t Chromium based! But I’m not a fan of it on Desktop, just iOS.
Firefox for all my other devices.
- Been using it exclusively for a few years now, I'm pretty happy with it
- It's the only search engine i use.

For people who roll their eyes when someone mentions Linux and all of the free and open source projects adjacent to it (including Firefox!), this is exactly why many people value those things. We actually can have freedom in computing and it's worth pushing for. We don't have to roll over simply accept what Google, Microsoft and Apple want.

But there are a few specific hardware configurations and specialized jobs that Linux doesn't work for, therefore nobody should use it!
- Why not be happy both OS options exist? Both have a place and a use and in various ways an ease of use
Any of thousands of people can say this but i don't see it in the comments below so: I've been using a Linux Mint / Windows dual boot system for over 10 years and love it. I think a lot of people see Linux as highly technical, but versions like Mint and Ubuntu are more carefree than Windows nowadays.
Sure but Google also uses tons of open source - android is built on the linux kernel, and even chrome is or is based on open source:
https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src
- I'm aware, but ultimately they're still an ad company that uses technology to sell more ads. Any minor aspects of altruism (if it can be called that) can't wash that away.

Doing same thing right now... only two things I will miss are chromecast and page translation.
- For translation you can use this. Since you can use Google translation service as the backend(?), it works as good as Google translate atleast in my experience
- For the time being I'm using TWP for translation. Seems to work flawlessly
- I think libretranslate has a extension but I could be wrong
- I'm using 2 extensions from the Firefox store, Simple Translate and Translate This Page. If one goes down, I use the other. Sometimes I use translate.yandex.ru as well.
- only two things I will miss are chromecast and page translation.
  You can use your phone to start the chromecasting, and translate.google.com lets you also put in a weblink to translate a whole page at once.
Use Ublock if you haven't (Firefox extension)
- Ublock Origin, not Ublock
The only issue is I have to keep a chromium browser because there are a few sites that Firefox has issues with. But the vast majority work fine.
- Can you not use those sites? The reason they don't work is because there userbase uses chrome.
- Use Edge.
the main thing holding me back is the password manager in Chrome and having to basically use 2 browsers as passwords are slowly saved to a new system
- Do yourself a favour and get Bitwarden or similar. Browser password managers are way too vulnerable.
I've only had issues with Nordpass crashing occasionally when auto-filling, but it's otherwise pretty seamless

Lol nice. People using chrome be like

That's clever meme template usage if I've ever seen one
does this happen on Linux too?
i have to keep chrome around for sites that breaks with ff / ublock, but i only open it when i need it.
- Use brave

Back in the old days when a software contains these crap, considered as adware/malware and people get their pitchforks.

Now: its normal.

Modern software: Please insert anal probe.
Average user: OK 😀
It's sickening.

Every single thing about Google sucks nowadays. Great job Sundar, you successfully turned one of the former most exciting companies on the planet into one of the absolute lamest.

It was shit even before Sundar Pichai became the CEO
- He did a great job shitting it up further, also.

Switched back to Firefox. Easy transition. Fuck Google.

Except websites that will tell you "Use a modern browser, switch to Chrome to view this page".
This sort of thing is becoming more and more pervasive. I'm genuinely worried that between this and web DRM, there will be no where to hide from corporate America ducking everyone over with their greed.
- I've been using Firefox for over 5 years now and I don't think I've ever seen this message?
  There has been a handful of times when a page just won't work correctly and I have to switch to edge, but that is super rare and has probably been less than 10 occasions
- 99% of the time you can just tell the website that firefox is actually chrome using the User Agent Switcher plugin and it will work perfectly. Unfortunately that 1% exists because chrome likes to add features that aren't web standards that irresponsible devs then use and break compatibility with other browsers
I never switched from Firefox. Why anyone used Chrome in the first place is beyond me.
- It was much faster, and firefox was slow as shit for a long time. It's much better now

Time to uninstall chrome. Can I move my passwords, bookmarks and saved data there? How do I do it?

When you install any browser (Firefox recommend) it ask you if you want to transfer browser data. It will guide you through (its pretty much automatic)
- just adding that granted FF already has a decent password manager there are also reliable, free and open source and audited independent password manager like as
  Bitwarden (remote service as basic or premium plan, optionally self hosted, user friendly service, very likely has some account migration wizard tool to help importing data from browsers) and
  KeepassXC (local, user managed, a bit techy)
  which both can plug in any browser through their respective extension.
  Being both an independent option from the browser they help the user not making him vendor locked to his browser through his saved data.
- to manage passwords, use bitwarden
  is not tied to any browser, it sync between devices and it's free.
  there are clients for Android and desktop, most likely ios too.

getfirefox.com

Now that Firefox is getting in-page translation capability, Chrome does not offer any features I am missing anymore. As long as they don't start performance wars, like the shit that happened with Youtube a while ago, I'll be fine

Wait really? Is it on the stable version or do I need to install beta/nightly?
- You can read up on it here https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/features/translate/

So as far as i know, firefox is the only mayor browser not based on chromium. Also, firefox is dependent on google's funding because of a search engine exclisivity deal. So my understanding is that, if google decides to kill firefox, they could easily do that. Well, what then? Is there any other browser left wich similar features that would be untouchable by google?

Fun fact, Firefox used to be called.... Netscape.. Yeah... Let's see how many miklenials are in here!
- Sort of. Netscape released the program's source code and Firefox used that as a base, but it wasn't like they took Netscape and just changed the name to Firefox like your comment implies. They were competing browsers for a while.
- And remember what happened when Microsoft tried to kill Netscape? That needs to happen again, but against Google.
- I've just browsed with Netscape. But did not know this fact.
They couldn't kill Firefox without having the US government come down on them for monopoly. Which the government is already looking at https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/24/tech/doj-google-lawsuit/index.html , so it's not likely Google will risk it even further by shitting down funding to Firefox. Pretty sure they'll point at Firefox to claim they're not a monopoly.
- So the lawsuit appears to be looking at Google as a search engine monopoly, not web browser, right? And if I'm understanding this right, assuming this lawsuit goes anywhere, it would actually incentivize Google to pull funding from Firefox to no longer support that search engine exclusivity deal.
- This is pretty much the same situation as when Apple faced bankruptcy a while back and Microsoft essentially bailed them out.
  Having an effective monopoly is better than a literal one for legal reasons
- Honestly, I'll give credit to Apple for pushing forward JXL on webkit and pushing back against Chromium team's dominance and Mozilla team's apathetic stance in the browser space. While I appreciate Mozilla's stance on Manifest V3 and several other issues, I can't help but hope for more development from the Servo project.
This should be the top comment, and I'm going to come back to view the replies. I can't personally think of any realistic alternatives. Someone further down posted a link to an article about the US investigating Google for a search engine monopoly, but I'm not sure how large a role that would factor into web browsers.
You have to decide for yourself if those browsers have the features you need, but just for your interest, other non-chromium browsers are Ladybird, NetSurf, Flow, Pale Moon, Basilisk and K-Meleon.
We will have to maintain a Chromium fork with their trackers removed, if it comes to that.
Likely Google won't do anything until or unless the bulk of the public moves off of Chrome over this.
- Like Vivaldi or Brave?
- Edge switched to chromium in 2020...

I tried to preach why Google sharing your browsing history with ad partners is bad, but most of my friends don't seem to care. :(

It's frustrating, I get it too. Nobody cares until the leopard bites their face. Then it's too late, and we're all affected by their indifference/laziness/ignorance.
- I'm probably going to get downvotes for this, but I seriously don't understand why you care whether other people care. If you don't like Chrome and it's approach to privacy, don't use it. But man am I sick of people being so preachy about it. Just make your own choices and stop forcing your choices on others yeesh.
- Thank you.
I think people care, but there is a lot of inertia. i.e. it takes a lot of little nudges for people to change their habits.
The whole point of the Privacy Sandbox is that Google is NOT sharing your browsing history with advertising partners. All that's shared is information about whether or not your usage of Chrome suggests an interest in specific topics. The current list of topics is here: https://github.com/patcg-individual-drafts/topics/blob/main/taxonomy_v1.md
- Ah, I see. Thanks for the heads up!

Honestly, I was already using FF for my home. Made the switch on Mobile after seeing this on the news yesterday. I'm just one person though.

I've also switched to FF on both desktop and mobile because of this. So there's two of us!
- Moi makes trois!
I've been using Firefox Mobile for years. It's never let me down and having mobile adblock is great
- Yeah, I made the switch on Mobile when YouTube's ads started getting super annoying. Ad block is a killer app in my book.
I switched my whole family several years back. Nobody has any issues with it.

Not used anything but Firefox for the last 10 years or so. Can't remember how long I've used DDG for. Fuck Google and all who fail in her.

Custom rom exists
- Yes they do, but that shouldn't be necessary to use an everyday consumer device safely.
- Where can I learn more about that?
Which phone ? I am on latest android 13/and never saw an notification for ad tracking

It's lucky I haven't used Chrome in years. Firefox is much appreciated these days.

I should have never left Firefox when chrome came out. Its good to be back. Especially before any of this happened.

Librewolf

Finally un-installed chrome on Windows.

Is this enough to remove traces?

Go to this location: C:\Users\YOUNAME\AppData\Local\Google
\ C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\
And delete that "Chrome" folder (for both location, if there is a Chrome folder)

https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/29816481/how-do-i-fully-uninstall-chrome?hl=en

A friend of mind in IT suggested revouninstaller. I have never used it in practice but he says it might be helpful in this case.
- I use that everytime I go to uninstall something. You can configure it to scan your system registry and local files for residual files that the software's uninstaller won't remove.

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!

good bot, keep it up!

Does disabling this as described in the article truly disable it, meaning if you do, after Chrome blocks 3rd party cookies late next year (assuming they follow through on that), you won't be tracked by either?

Wjy bother asking? Just use different browser. Google is big fucking red flag and now it's waving right in front of everybody's face.
Unless it explicitly says so, I'd assume the worst option, i.e. that you'll be tracked one way or another.

Who could have possibly have forseen that a company that makes nearly all of its revenue from data mining and advertising would one day use a popular software tool as a means of data mining and advertising. This is like wheels-within-wherls thinking right here.

As much as Micro$oft sucks they at least have a revenue stream independent of data mining. Still won't use Edge, mostly because it isn't great but partially because the verb form of it is edging.
- Microsoft Edge is based on the Chrome codebase, so it will get the baked in ad mechanism.

nuked that shit from my machine.

only going to use it inside a VM now for testing purposes

Do no evil

Chrome is for the surveillance state

I hate how rage baity article headlines have become. This isn't even true. The new "ad platform" integrated into Chrome is better for your privacy than what existed before. It's a revision of the previous system. If you think Google didn't track anything in Chrome before, you're wrong.

I can assure you nobody thought Google was not spying the fuck outta you with Chrome.
this is discussed in the article
- Doesn't change much about the headline being totally wrong

this probably still won't make people switch to Firefox.

As a seamonkey user - aka mozilla, the flagship product that Mozilla deemed was too hard to maintain - I'm just surprised Firefox is still going. We joked at the time that Mozilla would find a browser too hard, then a rendering suite, then a library, then an algorithm, and finally a line of code.

(tribalists - I'm not picking on Firefox, so calm your knickers. I'm still just picking on Mozilla)

You can just disable it when it pops up. I hope it continues to warn new users when first setting it up.

Yes, it seems to be trendy to use this as a reason to switch to Firefox, but surely you can just totally disable this new feature in Chrome? The article even tells you how to do this. I guess people are switching as a protest?
- It's a new feature in the testing phase. Once it's proven to work correctly (for Google), the option to disable it will be taken away.

- If you don’t mind triggering Tab Overview, it enables Tabs searching as well. You just need to remap shift+command+\ to command+a, or pinch with two fingers if you use trackpad.

In regards to the argument that google pays firefox and could easily kill it off I doubt it. Even if they were so bold as to cut funding completely (which they are not) you will find that Mozilla will have at some point have to cut loose their CEO or cut their huge pays down and make some changes there followed by some clever moves to find another source of income. If worse comes to worse the community will come to its aid and it will go back into the hands of the community which is likely a very good thing but Google has another approach to all of this and are incrementally trying to lock firefox or any non compliant browser or competitor out of the internet. Google has been doing it for years now. They hijacked web standards also along the way.

I think people are either forgetting the roots of chrome or how it came about as being PUP and foistware bundled along with popular freeware software or anyone they could pay to bundle their software with but earlier than that it was a toolbar that piggybacked onto IE (for its marketshare) and than I believe even Firefox too. People also seem to have this belief that when Chrome came out it was absolutely revolutionary and brilliant but the truth is that it was garbage but people fell for it like a shark to a bucket of chum. To me Chrome was pretty much your Bonzi Buddy of browsers. And google a complete scourge on the internet.

As for webkit that old chestnut. The only reason why that is popular at all is because Apple makes sure that you cannot use any other browser or makes it as difficult as possible not to mention the largest part of their user base comes from their iphone without that they're pretty much scraping the bottom of the barrel. IMO Yes, Google is just as bad if not worse in many cases as they leverage their android phone market, run ads on TV specifically designed to push chrome and also built an entire laptop (all be it a terrible one) and called it a chromebook to make sure they keep their dominance but lets not also forget they bought youtube also to stack the odds in their favor. Same ol' Google really.

The browser wars are dead! We just settle for the lesser evil these days.

Saying that this is better for your privacy is like saying I only get punched in the face every second day rather than every day now.

Taking all of the above away and if there is one reason fewer people should be using chrome or chromium based browsers and using something else such as Firefox or a fork is to maintain a balance and take away some of the power and influence they (Google) do have over the web so they will not be able to force things such as WEI and take away many of the freedoms from the net in which we grew up on as too did the internet. The Freedom of exchange of information was never meant to be conditional or the internet held to ransom by one company but this is where we are at so its time for a change of hands or a the balance of power to be restored. Bringing balance will also force sloppy and lazy web developers to stop build dirt poor websites and deliberately blocking out other browsers. Web standards need to be restored and be completely independent from one entity or another, be it google, Mozilla, Apple or any one else in between.

I already use Firefox for everything that's not literally for my D&D stuff. Because some relevant fan sites don't display properly on Firefox for some stupid reason. That's it. So even if they manage to get past my blockers, they literally are telling me nothing I will ever care about because I already have/know where to get any relevant thing those ads might be shilling, and the rest is all irrelevant noise.

Same, though those D&D websites work in Brave with the usual blockers turned on (uBlock + Brave's blockers), so maybe its an engine thing?

I cant get Google drive links to stream in Firefox, thus I still keep Google Chrome around. Am I doing something wrong or is there a work around?

Usually an issue like that is due to me having something blocked in uBlockOrigin or some other extension.
I think they worked for me without issue or me doing anything special (a month or so ago though) so there's likely something you can do to get it to work.
I can check later today if they still work with whatever firefox setup I have
- I appreciate that, yeah let me know if there's anything that stands out to ya

Is this just for chrome,or is it on all chromium browsers? Im running bromite,but considering going back to Firefox.

Chromium contains it. Up to the browser bundling it how they configure/patch it.
- Well damn. Any recommendations for a ff mobile app?
No, it’s not in Vivaldi

I use brave which is a chromium browser with all the tracking stuff turned off and a few ad blockers baked in. It also has some vpn and crypto wallet stuff built in but it’s not in your face so you can just ignore it.

This ad platform shouldn’t affect brave right? Should just be another thing the brave team are able to automatically switch off when the browser updates?

Firefox is the only web browser you should be using. Firefox.
Brave, Edge, Opera, only contribute to the Google monopoly, even though you are not using directly Chrome.

Is Mullvad chromium based?

No, Mullvad browser is built from and in conjunction with Tor browser, which is built from Firefox. It works really well if you leave it stock, which is the whole purpose. Blending in with all users.
- Thank you!
  I am pretty new to the privacy concerns. All the browsers and forks and stuff seems pretty confusing.
  Is Mullvad better than Firefox? I have not found out how to tell.

As long as the tracking is purely local, this seems like a good solution to me.

I agree. Right now, websites maintain tracking infrastructure to build a profile of individual people as they move across the web. All of that comes down to one thing: targeted advertising. If companies had some way to know what types of ads to show users without tracking them, it would be way easier and cheaper. It would also be better for users since they wouldn't be invasively tracked all over the web. Privacy Sandbox seems to meet those goals. It does all the tracking locally and sends the end result (advertising topics of interest for this user) so the website knows what kinds of ads to show you without actually doing the tracking. This is a more privacy-focused way of doing targeted advertising for both websites and users. From what I can tell, it's a win-win. Most of the people I see complaining seem to hate it just because it's an advertising feature implemented by Google, but to me it seems unambiguously better than the current standard.

Anyone know a good Google Chrome replacement on Android that is chromium based? Wanna a basic browser that I'll use when Firefox does not work correctly