Google has stated it plans to address developers’ concerns by “making web publishers promise not to abuse the API”.
Google’s new browser-based tracking functionality available via their “Topics API” has sparked numerous concerns recently, including fear that the heightened communication of web browser history could lead to “fingerprinting attacks” which could be used to track users across devices by profiling recent web history.
When prompted with this issue, Google started their short-term solution is to have web developers who enroll in the new Topics API platform take pledge that they will not abuse the new tool, whatever that means.
…because pledges have always worked so well in the past.
Didn’t you hear them? They made them promise.
Pinky swear, even!
Don’t worry, they checked for crossed fingers
Please stop using Chrome
Between that and the online DRM of Integrity API, it’s time everyone moves to Firefox.
I’ve never understood the logic of people who switched to Chrome from Firefox.
Mozilla has an overpaid CEO, so let’s switch to a browser that’s run by one of the richest companies on the planet. Firefox broke some extension, so let’s switch to a browser that has an even worse extension model. Firefox shows client side ads that are easily disabled, so let’s switch to a browser actually run by an ad tech company. Firefox changed the UI to look like Chrome (and they hate the design), so I guess switch to Chrome?
It makes no sense…
I suspect the list of people who switched to Chrome from Firefox, especially within the last decade, is vanishingly small.
In the early days of Chrome, it was svelt and lightweight compared to Opera or Firefox, but IE had the vast, vast, vast market share. Chrome handled tabs in a really cool way (the way ALL browsers now do it, putting them right in the application title bar in place of menus). The light touch and nice tabs made it worthwhile to switch at the time. And frankly, Blink was better than Gecko. But even then, the goal of all of the browser wars was to get people off of IE. IE didn’t respect web standards and made it flat-out hard to build websites. Switching someone to Chrome from IE was super easy so many people were encouraged to do so.
For most of its life, people were switching from IE (and Safari) to Chrome. Not Firefox to Chrome.
Nowadays, Chrome is just everywhere. People know it, and it still has a fairly-undeserved reputation as being better than the default browser (Edge/Safari).
So the reason this feels so illogical to you is because that scenario just… wasn’t happening.
Clearly you’ve never read Hacker News. :)
Every point I’ve made has several threads on pretty much every Hacker News post about Mozilla or Firefox.
I was using Firefox when it was still called Phoenix, and I switched to Chrome briefly about 10 years ago when it was actually a bit better than Firefox. At the time, most people I knew in the tech sector were using Firefox. It’s Firebug extension was a major boost for development. Chrome was a bit better and their dev tools were even better than Firebug at the time.
I switched back to Firefox when I saw the direction Google was taking it, and I know a lot of other people did as well. Still, many people stayed with Chrome. There’s no shortage of comments on Hacker News about “I dropped Firefox because X” or “I tried to switch to Firefox but X”, where X is one of the things I mentioned.
Chrome got to where it was in no small part to us “computer people” saying it was good. And now not enough of us are saying Firefox is good. It breaks my heart to see so many young and smart developers choosing Chrome.
We’re heading back to the bad old days of IE dominance, with proprietary extensions, playing fast and loose with standards, and market dominance pushing for things that only benefit one company. ActiveX still gives me nightmares.
Heading back? We’re already there! The default troubleshooting procedure when there’s webpage issues is “Try in Chrome, preferably without adblockers”, they all assume Chrome
Back when Chrome was the new kid on the block and people were switching to it from Firefox, Chrome gapped Firefox super hard performance-wise pre-Quantum/e10s. Firefox was still a single-threaded browser that would lock up if a tab had particularly nasty JS. The extensions also broke all the time because while XUL extensions could do anything, even tie into the actual browser frame, that was a maintenance nightmare that made it difficult to change anything and even harder to parallelize.
In the post-Quantum era here in 2023, you’re definitely right that there’s no real reason to switch from Firefox to Chrome. The practical performance gap has been closed, the extension system has stabilized and offers more functionality than Chrome’s implementation, it’s not actively trying to sabotage adblockers and anti-tracking measures, and is just all around better about privacy. It’s time to call the powerusers and techies home.
Why would I ever use Chrome? At no point in time was it ever a smart decision to use Chrome.
I know you’re just being hyperbolic, but there was a time when using Chrome was a smart choice.
Just like google promised to not be evil?
They made sure to change it to “do the right thing” first, where “right thing” is probably “become synonymous with the internet”.
Daily reminder that Firefox is customizable to the point of removing Mozilla’s telemetry and making it look and feel almost like Chromium. And no, de-Googled Chromium probably isn’t enough because preliminary code for implementing WEI has been pushed upstream (basically they added the code which makes it possible for WEI to be implemented, strongly suggesting they’re intending to actually implement it upstream and not in Chrome)
Another vote for Firefox. Just switched over from chromium based, and i could easily port over all my info and bookmarks and shit, and it feels great to not support a monopoly
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The key search term is “userChrome” (userChrome.css and userChrome.js) and XUL, which is the HTML-like language FF uses to define its chrome. “Chrome” is a term that predates Google’s browser, referring to the interface surrounding the displayed web content and Firefox still uses that internally.
Right now mine is pretty minimal, but there’s a lot you can change. Essentially, the interface is a kind of HTML page which can use the same features as normal HTML and can even run custom JavaScript. Also look into BetterFox for how to remove Mozilla’s own telemetry and bloat.
My userChrome.css for reference;
spoiler
/* Move findbar to the top */ .browserContainer > findbar { -moz-box-ordinal-group:0 !important; /* for 112 and older */ order: -1 !important; /* for 113 and newer */ border-top: none !important; border-bottom: 1px solid ThreeDShadow !important; } /* Remove "Open All In Tabs" button in bookmarks folders */ #PlacesToolbarItems .openintabs-menuitem, #placesContext>menuitem[id="placesContext_openContainer:tabs"], #placesContext>menuitem[id="placesContext_openContainer:tabs"]:not([hidden])+menuitem+#placesContext_openSeparator { visibility: collapse !important; } /* Tabs are attached on the bottom */ .tab-background { border-radius: var(--tab-border-radius) var(--tab-border-radius) 0 0 !important; margin-top: 1px !important; margin-bottom: 0 !important; padding-bottom: 31px !important; } .tabbrowser-tab[multiselected=true]:not([selected=true]) .tab-background { border-radius: var(--tab-border-radius) !important; margin-top: 2px !important; margin-bottom: 1px !important; padding-bottom: 29px !important; } .tabbrowser-tab[selected=true] .tab-background , .tabbrowser-tab[multiselected=true] .tab-background { background-color: var(--toolbar-bgcolor) !important; background-image: var(--toolbar-bgimage) !important; }I found this repo which is supposed to apply Chromium styles in line with Google’s Material Design guidelines.
Here’s an article I found with some simple tweaks.
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And has been far less polished than Firefox in my experience
So, working as designed.
Google is also about to force on Enhanced Safe Browsing which will report every URL you visit to them with no opt out.
It’s finally really time to change browsers.
Wow, that’s so safe. Nothing more safer than the world’s biggest advertising company having full access to my internet history.
It’s just so dystopian almost, that these things that are objectively bad are named things that sound good, like Enhanced Safe Browsing, Topics API, Web Environment Integrity, etc
Google is likely asking them to not abuse it just to cover its own arse, to create that plausible denial that the API was not “supposed” to be used for fingerprinting. It smells bullshit from a distance.
I mean it’s a tracker, after all… naming it “Privacy Sandbox” doesn’t change what it is. It’s as much use as a privacy tool as a wrench is for sewing.
They’ve almost destroyed search.
Its like they want to just kill the internet altogether.
Sigh I remember when they weren’t evil.
Google made the internet usable and now they’re destroying it. Thanks Google?
I’m shocked. Shocked I tell you.
How could Google allow such blatant incompetence in their products?
https://vivaldi.com/blog/news/alert-no-google-topics-in-vivaldi/
For what it’s worth, no Google Topics in Vivaldi.
Vivaldi is the best!
I’m not happy with Vivaldi coming from Chrome. Are there any other good options out there?
Firefox?
If it’s otherwise Chrome or bust, I’d honestly suggest considering Edge. It’s not like internet explorer used to be. It’s also not anywhere near as good for privacy as vivaldi or firefox, but it might be better than chrome - I don’t really know. But some people really like it now.
If you’re some who’s tried firefox in the past already, I’ll note it’s change quite a bit over the years. I used to dislike it but I like it now (on desktop).
Edge has some genuinely nice features, like vertical tabs and split window browsing.
But I wouldn’t suggest either personally, especially in the context of all the crap going on with Chrome. I imagine anything Chrome implements will be immediately back ported to Edge, such as WEI etc. I can’t see why MS wouldn’t.
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