Yeah - that website keeps on spamming me down with useless stuff.
I was able to block most of this via ublock origin but Google disabled this - can not download it from here anymore:
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublock-origin/cjpal...
Funniest nonsense "explanation":
"This extension is no longer available because it doesn't follow best practices for Chrome extensions."
In reality Google killed it because it threatens their greed income. Ads, ads and more ads.
Use Firefox.
Use one of the forks. librewolf, waterfox, zen. Firefox itself lost trust when Mozilla tried to push the new Terms of Use earlier this year. That was so aggressively user-hostile that nobody should trust Mozilla ever again. Using a fork puts an insulation layer between you and Mozilla.
Librewolf is just a directly de-mozillaed and privacy-enhanced Firefox, similar to Ungoogled Chromium. I've been trying to get in the habit of using Zen Browser, which has a bunch of UI changes.
> Firefox itself lost trust when Mozilla tried to push the new Terms of Use earlier this year.
Those terms of use aren't in place any longer. I'm surprised that listening to the users is viewed as something bad.
This. Their devs and reactivity to their user base kept my trust.
Their marketing and legal departments lost it long before the terms of service debacle.
Rolling back a change that causes loss of user trust does not automatically restore that trust. It takes time and ongoing public commitment to regain that trust.
Allowing that ToS change is what put them on the spyware list, not rolling it back.
The problem is that all those forks are beholden to Mozilla's corporate interests the same way the chromium derivatives are beholden to Google's corporate interests. What we need is one of the newer independent engines to mature - libweb, servo or blitz.
How are they beholden? In the sense that it's hard to provide engine updates without the funding of goog?
edit: also, by "libweb", did you mean "ladybird"?
You can read this as, "I want Mozilla to spend millions developing a competitive Chrome alternative, but I want it for free and aligned with all my personal nitpicks".
Typical freeloader behaviour, moans about free software politics but won't contribute anything themselves.
No they're not. They can pull what they like and not pull what they don't.
Librewolf is trying to be de-Mozillaed, privacy-enhanced Firefox, so it'll probably take whatever not-overtly-spyware patches Mozilla adds. Some others, like Waterfox and Pale Moon, are more selective.
Apparently the "best practise" is using Manifest V3 versus V2.
Reading a bit online (not having any personal/deep knowledge) it seems the original extension also downloaded updates from a private (the developers) server, while that is no longer allowed - they now need to update via the chrome extension, which also means waiting for code review/approval from google.
I can see the security angle there, it is just awkward how much of an vested interest google has in the whole topic. ad-blocking is already a grey area (legally), and there is a cat-and-mouse between blockers and advertisers; it's hard to believe there is only security best-practise going on here.
You know what? I don't even mind them killing it, because of course there are a whole pile of items under the anti-trust label that google is doing so why not one more. But what I do take issue with is the gaslighting, their attempt to make the users believe that this is in the users interests, rather than in google's interests.
If we had functional anti-trust laws then this company would have been broken up long ago, Alphabet or not. But they keep doing these things because we - collectively - let them.
Why would a monopoly care about users interests?
I know they won't. But we have all the tools to force them to care. We just don't use the tools effectively, and between that and lobbying they get a free pass to pretty much do as they please.
DNS level blockers like NextDNS are much easier to use and works for the entire device.