Ask HN: Why does Chrome Android not support extensions/plugins? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why does Chrome Android not support extensions/plugins?

11 pointsggm14 comments

Chrome on Android certainly has its own code paths but it's also got shared DNA with Chrome for windows/osx both of which support plugins.

So, I see this as a logistical decision more than a true technical barrier although that said, Firefox plugins on Android kind of suck: some kind of UI api policing makes them pretty awful.

What am I missing here? For all the ones I want and google doesn't, like adguard and archive.is there are ones which would be perfectly cromulent including ones authored by google.

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> Firefox plugins on Android kind of suck

The one that truly matters works flawlessly on mobile, and I couldn't live without it: uBlock Origin.

I just use adguard as my DNS on my phone, blocks out most, not all ads!

Functionality is not limited to the browser, ads are also blocked in freemium type apps.

I also use the same DNS on my router so that I dont have to configure each device on the network.

https://adguard-dns.io/en/public-dns.html

Google probably realized their mistake on the desktop with ad blockers, and didn't want to limit their income on mobile browsers.

Chromium based Kiwi browser supports extensions on Android, and has for many years. Some of them are a bit janky fue to UIs not being built for small screens, but they pretty much all work (in particular, uBlock Origin works).

So we can deduce that it's a business decision by Google to prevent ad blockers.

UX design is hard when it comes to this kind of stuff. You can pick between an imperfect solution (see Firefox) or not implementing a solution at all.

Chrome's market share sure doesn't seem to suffer from them blocking extensions such as ad blockers on desktop either. Most users don't care about the feature and those that do rarely consider alternatives. There's no pressure frkm consumers to implement features like these and a lot of risk if they get the UX wrong.

If you want addons, you can always stick with Firefox. The entire addon store has been opened up, unlike before where you had to hack together addon lists to install addons Mozilla didn't whitelist. The ones I use all work fine these days, including the more complex ones such as consent-o-matic.

There's also Kiwi, which is Chromium based I believe. Even comes with dev tools if that's what you want. Probably a great deal for people who use tablets with keyboards as portable dev environments.

I definitely don't have authoritative answers, but a plugin would likely be able to effectively block ads. While Google never made a direct move against ad blockers, the v3 Manifest push was rumored to have been partially intended to upset the adblocker ecosystem [1]. A hypothetical decision to add extensions to Chrome Android would likely face internal scrutiny based on the same concern.

[1] https://www.pcworld.com/article/2423294/google-is-killing-on...

Alphabet's (part of many) social control using money as an excuse is my answer

Chrome on Android doesn't have any significant competition. There's no need for Google to spend a lot of time and money implementing a feature that won't benefit them corporately.

Notably, they could not really compete with Firefox at launch without implementing browser extensions of some kind.

That was Firefox's killer feature at the time.

The same could be asked about browser devtools - on desktop they're now standard but as far as I know only one mobile browser has it (kiwi).

You can remotely connect a desktop version of chrome to a copy running on android to use dev tools.

Orion browser on iOS supports chrome extensions.

I think you already know the reason why, to defeat adblocker extensions on the mobile web.

Why you use a bowser made and operated by the biggest advertising company in the world is my question.

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