If I recall, I think the same thing is going to happen to the Microsoft Edge browser, which is built on chromium, which is a real shame because this could've been a point of differentiation for them. Windows has always asked me to switch from Chrome to Edge without giving me a compelling reason. This would have been a compelling reason.
I've been a Firefox user for years—it's more than a suitable replacement for Chrome. You can also use adblocking extensions on both mobile and desktop.
Here are some reasons:
1. Firefox is supported by Google because otherwise there will be a monopoly and Google doesn't want to be called a monopoly.
2. You can't donate to Firefox development. You can donate to Mozilla Foundation who owns Firefox. But there are no guarantees that your money will go to Firefox development. Mozilla spends money left and right, including luxury life of management, and only a fraction goes into Firefox development. Mozilla could allow direct donations like they did with Thunderbird but they woldn't.
3. Mozilla Foundation acquired an ads company in 2024 and afterwards released "privacy preserving ads measurement" feature which is turned ON by default. There was a great discussion here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40966312
4. Firefox is also switching to manifest v3 and thus crippling ad blockers.
For these reasons I'd prefer to avoid Firefox, it's no better. I can only hope that https://ladybird.org/ or some other will get enough funding and talent to make a real alternative. Sending prayers and donations to ladybird for now.
> Firefox, however, has no plans to deprecate MV2 and will continue to support MV2 extensions for the foreseeable future. And even if we re-evaluate this decision at some point down the road, we anticipate providing a notice of at least 12 months for developers to adjust accordingly and not feel rushed.
Easy for the Brave CEO to say they keep ManifestV2 support while these enterprise flags in the Chromium codebase are still present. Once these flags are removed, and the code is removed, and then the internal APIs to support the ManifestV2 code is removed it becomes a whole other thing.
You can try to keep the code, but every upstream code change becomes more painful to integrate. It is going to cost more and more, requiring more and more expertise with the Chromium codebase, like it is some kind of technical debt. Not even counting the potential security issues you can introduce by keeping the code alive, with Brave being a target that is large enough to matter for hackers but perhaps too small for security researchers.
The Brave ads cryptocurrency stuff was/is a turn-off for many. That'd be my guess regarding the downvotes, anyways. As well as the Brave redirection to affiliate links left a sour taste.
For me, at least, it's not so much the crypto ads in of themselves that puts me off Brave. The issue is that they are a manifestation of Brave's fundamental problem: It's a for-profit endeavor based around offering a free product.
The money has to come from somewhere.
All other browsers have some kind of reasonable story behind the investment made into their existence (yes, even Chrome). Brave doesn't have any, and if the crypto ads stopped paying the bills, there must be something else that comes around to do so. Frankly, I wouldn't trust anyone who's put in that sort of situation with a piece of software I use to access anything important. Doubly so if crypto is a load-bearing component of the current status quo.
AFAICT there is no way to set this on a Chromebook though - and since Chrome is embedded into the OS using Firefox is really painful in comparison. I guess I will have to use uBO Lite.
edit: There is apparently a way to set it by enabling Developer Mode, but Developer Mode is itself really annoying - it shows a popup screen every boot.
I haven't tried this, but you should also be able to apply enterprise policies with Chrome Enterprise Core[1]. As if you are centrally managing a bunch of Clients, but it's only your one Chromebook of course.
When you open/run a .reg file, it updates your registry, usually preceeded by a warning.
Adding the text below to a text file, saving and running it as a .reg will create and add a value of 2 to "ExtensionManifestV2Availability" in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Chrome key
Alternatively, you could do this manually by pressing the Windows key, type "run" (without the quotes) and enter, type "regedit" (without the quotes) and enter, then navigate as far as you can to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Chrome key
You may find there is no "Chrome" key and will need to create it, as well as creating ExtensionManifestV2Availability
You need a Google Workspace account - personal doesn't work. Which is admittedly only $6/month on the starter plan, but signing up just to get uBO working seems a bit much.
I've been running ad blockers for 15 years now at least, but I seem to recall really annoying pop-ups being a part of Internet advertising too, and they happen more than once per boot.
It's true that in normal use you don't reboot a Chromebook that often, and developer mode offers other advantages as well. And apparently it is possible to "neuter" the screen https://web.archive.org/web/20170711043202/https://johnlewis.... Probably the only real solution long-term...
If any new fork of chromium support manifest 2 forever, while maintaining the other upstream updates, that will be my go to browser. May be Opera can resurrect.
I salute you for your bravery, I can't even make myself comfortable with the idea of switching from Firefox to Librewolf, never mind "any new fork" of a browser. The security implications are just too severe - malicious code, lingering vulnerabilities, project abandonment, etc.
As a longtime Chrome user, I just switched to Firefox because of this. Everything seems fine so far. I just wish Mozilla would invest some time to polish the UI a little – it feels a bit dated and rough.
Mostly that FF has ~36k extensions (January 2024) [1] and Chrome has ~112k (June 2024) [2].
[No doubt, total count of extensions isn't the most important number and there's a long tail in both counts of very small user bases, but this paints the ~3x picture in a broad stroke.]
Of course, since FF migrated to WebExtensions in 2017, theoretically most Chrome extensions can be ported to FF with minimal changes [3] — practically speaking though, not all of the big ones actually have, or the FF equivalents to some of the most useful Chrome extensions are far less polished.
And also, if you're developing front end web apps for normal end users, most are still on Chrome... over the years, I've experienced an unfortunate number of sites that should work across Chrome/FF/Safari actually break because of things like the developers not even testing in browsers besides Chrome given its dominance. I'm not encouraging that by any means, but the reality is that it still happens.
Visually Chrome now look more like Firefox, really, thin tabs with declining borders have been substituted by thicker one with vertical border. Practically if feel faster on the same iron, and it's more rigid in user UI change, for instance you can't have Tab Center reborn and hide the tab-bar because you are on a large screen and you like to been able to read comfy all tabs...
For the rest... They are essentially equivalent even if under the hood there are many differences.
