user812

But that's essentially was Google is doing: dictating things unilaterally.

And that's also how the web was founded. No one agreed to anything. People just started to build.

If there isn't a law against it, they are allowed to do it.

Everyone who uploads free content on the web without a paywall essentially says "take it and display it however you like".

Besides that, Brave is essentially building a sustainable model in favor of publishers. They will be very thankful.

It is ad-blocker without an alternative model that is problematic for publishers, not Brave. So I don't see why anyone besides Ad-Tech has a problem with Brave.

You conveniently ignore that most publishers desparately want to see a new model succeed, because Google and Facebook take too much of a share of the publishers. Brave takes less then Google et al., so publishers get more. That's why publishers like the Guardian are already on board.

Brave isn't free of problems, but arguing from a moral perspective isn't legitimate. So where does your hostility come from? Do you work for some big ad-tech company?

No they filter out ads.

Then they give everyone the opportunity to use a Patreon-Style support or view Ads, optionally.

Why isn't it ethical to target big Ad-Tech middle men like Google and Facebook and increase efficiency and privacy at the same time?

I heard they still ping Google because they also have google ads on their site.

Recently I deactivated Javascript on Startpage (with uBO) and surprisingly it suddenly loads fast.

Believe it or not they are injecting all kinds of ad related JS.

I am even questioning their sincerity, since the page is badly optimized for usage.

Can someone explain to me why it isn't possible to simply give users the option to influence whether an extension can make a request to a remote server?

This way one could simply disallow extensions to do anything that isn't happeninging locally.

They really should. The time to do this is now.

I don't really know why this did not happen already. The only answer I can think of is lack of people with a vision in the management.

Mozilla could leverage a user base of 100 million people. But it's an enourmous challenge to build the bridge between readers and publishers. When you start with the publishers, no one will want to participate because there are no users. When you start with the users, no one will pay because there is no content. So you have to slowly create a momentum.

Another problem is that people will probably never pay as much as ads are worth - people don't see that they pay for ads when they buy new shoes for 200 $, but paying only 40$ directly feels like a loss. But the system is extremely inefficient, so middlemen siphon off most of the value (Google, Facebook). Firefox is also in the unique position of being a potential middle man. I think there are enough people who would be happy to support it with a small amount in the beginning, if it feels promising and rewarding.

So especially at the beginning users need to get something in return that motivates them. Mozilla could start with creating a welcoming interface which motivates readers to pay small amounts of money. Obviously people are reluctant to pay for something they get for free. So give them something in return directly, even if most publishers are not already on board. Badges and other rewards are possible. It's simply a question of great UI, making it default for everyone, and creating a community vibe around it.

What prevents Mozilla from giving paying users some additional features like in-browser Ad-Blocking? It's as simple as forking uBO and letting it run in the background. Then advertize monthly payments with full-fledged privacy, security and browsing improvements thanks to blocking ads. (We are talking about defaults here. So after a new install every new user is greeted with something like "Pay x$ per month and get a completely ad-free web and support your favourite creators and create a new ecosystem for journalism")

Then over time when publishers are on board Mozilla could provide the interface that makes communication between both parties possible, similar to what Patreon does.

This could for example be done as an experiment in Germany first, where Firefox has 30% market share on Desktop. Reaching 1 Million active users could send a strong signal to publishers to honor paying Firefox users.

The selection isn't happening on the publisher's side, but on the ad-tech side.

Every publisher can enjoy the tech provided by Google, and participate in gaining money from this system, relative to it's popularity.

So what we see is that small players within the ad-tech business are dying, while bigger players (Google, Facebook) can not only adapt to the law, but also help writing the law.

So a hypothetical switch to first-party/server side ads won't have a negative effect on small blogs, because they can simply chose Google as their ad partner, which will create the necessary solutions.

The only advantage big publishers have over small publishers is that it's easier to scale the extraction of money from 10 million visitors, compared to 10,000 visitors.

English isn't my first language, so I made a translation mistake there.

The web has become a three-class system:

- Creators and tech-savvy people are able to cut out the bloat and enjoy a fast and secure web because they live in rich countries with good infrastructure

- The average user. Ironically the first group creates the bloated web to extract money from the average user. The average user in rich countries can count on the infrastructure to have at least an acceptable browsing experience.

- People in poor countries like Africa, which need to count on browsers like Opera to compress the web, to make it usable at all. Even with compression techniques everything is still a struggle, because the average size of web pages seems to increase more and more.

The quoted link leads to the following study:

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0143624415603281...

"Temperature and velocity profiles indicate an induced, cooler air breeze in the courtyard; outside air is cooled from 46℃ to 34–38℃"

And Hacker News is essentially just a bit of HTML, CSS and lots of words.

Well, it was kind of humourous, based on the idea that ad-tech will switch to first-party proxies when too many people use Pi-Hole.

But on a more serious note, it is simple products like AdGuard DNS which will probably make Ad-Tech sweat more, because it's so easy to use for average users.

Adblock was compromised due to lack of integrity imho.

I see pi-hole as the first line of defense.

With Pi-hole you can disable an adblocker when something doesn't work and still enjoy a fast web.

But Pi-Hole still blocks the majority of ads, so it is possible to use it exclusively if you just want to make the web usable again.

It's also great at home for family members who just want to surf faster and more private and secure but don't mind a couple of ads here and there. Especially when it comes to mobile Apps.

I also want to highlight that most domains that are blocked are usually tracking services which makes Apps and Websites incredibly slow and increase traffic to a large extent. I think blocking those "services" is the true beauty of Pi-Hole. Ad-Tech is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to commercialised tracking.

Pi-Hole is beautiful and open-source. As long as it doesn't get too popular, tech savvy people can continue to enjoy network wide content blocking.

Consider supporting them (but not too much ;): https://www.patreon.com/pihole

I wrote elsewhere that Chrome 69 marks a big change for the browser world.

Chrome 69 is simply the best. Not for me, but for the average user. The reading and work flow is incredible for casual browsing.

The negative reaction on HN is understandable, but it's not relevant for most people.

The goal of Google is merging the user experience of Android, Chrome, Google search and personal Google accounts into one, and it will get increasingly difficult for users to get out of this ecosystem.

when I compile it on mac, it throws some errors. As a noob, I can't use ungoogled chromium apparently.

Ironically if Google will indeed switch to Fuchsia or another in-house OS, Android may survive in some form as their biggest competitor.

It looks like growth started to stagnate somewhere during 2017

- https://pagefair.com/downloads/2016/05/Adblocking-Goes-Mobil...

- https://pagefair.com/downloads/2017/01/PageFair-2017-Adblock...

I am only talking about marketshare.

"With a smarter Chrome, you will be able to do more than just look at a webpage. Imagine searching on Chrome for a singer you just heard, and having Chrome show you not just their bio, but also their upcoming concert near you and where to purchase tickets. With AI, Chrome will also better understand what you’re trying to get done, and help you do so faster. Vacation planning typically requires juggling multiple tabs and open documents. But as Chrome evolves to better understand what tasks you’re trying to get done, it can help manage all this complexity for you as you switch back and forth between hotel research and booking flights.

When we first launched Chrome, Sundar said: “We think of the browser as the window to the web.” A decade later, it’s still the tool people use to access all of the websites and applications that help them do what they want to do. As Chrome heads into the next 10 years, we want to expand that window—so you can see more and do more."

- https://www.blog.google/perspectives/rahul-roy-chowdhury/hap...

When I think about it, no.

People make the decision between different ecosystems, and Apple and Google are the biggest. Apple has a tight control over Safari on iOS. Safari has been defeated on Desktop though.

The new Google Chrome design with version 69 marked the beginning of a new era – Google wants to portray Chrome as something that is way more than a browser. They want you to see it as the primary interface of the web.

This is what the average user wants. All complex functionality has been put in the background. Cross-platform integration has been perfected.

Give it a year and users around the world will no longer think of Chrome as a browser, but simply as the interface to the (Google-)Web.

With Chrome Google has succesfully defeated Apple, MS and Mozilla.

And Google will continue to do everything to make people stop thinking of Chrome as a browser. They want you to think of it like a window into your online life, a window that is the same no matter where you are or what device you use.

Allowing third-party cookies wasn't a neutral decision to begin with, even though the implications only became clear later.

If you start a war, you should be prepared to fight for a long time. That's why most browser makers don't even start.

Safari did and had to make multiple changes to ITP because criteo was fighting back.

It is always necessary to stay vigilant.

It solves the problem that the majority of firefox users is not blocking trackers, so enabling this at the end of January 2019 in Firefox 65 will protect all Firefox users, which make up around 10-15% of all Desktop web traffic in western countries.

With this step it follow Safari, which is already protecting users against third party tracking.

I think those are good points, and #2 is important.

It's not a coincidence that tracking protection will only come with the first build in 2019. They probably had to rewrite their contract with google.

I've read somehwere that it is about two questions:

- Is Yahoo obliged to pay anything at all? If Yahoo is succesfull, Mozilla will not get anything.

- Is Yahoo obliged to pay the full $375 million per year or only the difference between the new Google contract and the old Yahoo contract? In the latter case Yahoo would only have to pay Mozilla $375 million minus the Google money if they won.

Unfortunately I don't know more.

Actually I am not bitter. I don't really use extensions with Firefox.

I only try to give an account of general user sentiment. Of course it's very difficult to get an accurate measure of this sentiment, but I see lots of negative comments online, and lots of valid arguments.

Only Mozilla can come up with ways to spend that money.

I think I made it quite clear that it is first and foremost about innovation, and money is only a tool. But usually what you can do in such situation is hiring top people from the industry as leaders.

Google is a good example what can happen with lots of money productively.

But Google, in contrast to Mozilla, has to work hard to innovate and their income is always a reflection of how good they are and they have a management with a long-term vision.

Due to the fixed contract Mozilla will not feel the consequences of their actions for a very long time.

You see this kind of laziness everywhere when money doesn't matter anymore. It is more or less human nature.

To answer your question: It is not about marketshare. Mozilla has always said it is about values and open source, and so on. They could do something great even with 1% marketshare.

Mozilla is basically doing nothing that makes power users say "Wow, I really want to use this browser and will recommend it to my friends and family". Instead for some reason those users are increasingly frustrated with Firefox on multiple levels.

I think there is a slight possibility that the end of 2019 or the beginning of 2020 will be when you see some subtle changes to how Firefox works. Maybe they get their humility back.

"...market share has dropped from 14% in 2014 to today's woeful 5%. [...] Meanwhile, Mozilla has flourished financially. The most recent "State of Mozilla" report says that in 2016 various deals with search engines brought in an astonishing $520 million."

Just a reminder that Mozilla was able to pull of an unbelievably good deal with Yahoo thanks to Marissa Mayer in November 2014, which made Mozilla winning the lottery in case Yahoo was sold afterwards before 2019.

Yahoo was sold to Verizon shortly after the deal which made it possible for Mozilla to pull out of the deal unilaterally, and still getting a yearly payment until 2019 ($375 Million fixed annually, to be exact).

Please tell me: Who makes a 4 year fixed deal with a browser maker that is losing 10-15% of its users annually? It does not make any sense for Mayer to do this, except if she was completely on the side of Mozilla.

My personal theory is that this free money until the end of 2019 has created a culture of passivity and laziness inside the Mozilla management.

It is hard to overstate the deal with Yahoo. It makes Mozilla basically immune to drops in market share until 2020. The deal with switching to the Yahoo search engine (starting in 2016) was already too good to be true, as Yahoo gave Mozilla way more money than Google had done before, and Google was already paying well.

The result is that for around 3 or more years now Mozilla is living inside a bubble, where basically nothing what they do has financial consequences.

Not only that, they are building up enourmous amounts of financial reserves, so I think we will actually never again see Firefox innovating.

When the finances finally will reflect the state of Firefox, that is when they have used up their reserves somewhere in 2021 or 2022, Firefox won't play an active role anymore. Most of the 1000+ employees will have to leave during the next 5 years.

Mozilla switched back to Google with the aim of getting both the Yahoo money and additional Google money.

- vanityfair.com/news/2017/12/the-ghost-of-marissa-mayer-is-still-haunting-yahoo

- techcrunch.com/2017/12/06/oath-and-mozilla-are-suing-each-other-after-firefox-switches-back-to-google-search/