[redwards510]

  Google is essentially saying that Chrome will still have the   
  capability to block unwanted content, but this will be 
  restricted to only paid, enterprise users of Chrome.

Never heard of a paid version of Chrome before! Can anyone elaborate on this?

I gotta say I'm kind of glad Google is doing this. It will force me to finally abandon Chrome, something I should have done awhile ago.

[jchw]

Googler here, but I do not work on Chrome and I’m speaking on a personal capacity.

I believe this is a misnomer. The enterprise deployment stuff I’m aware of in Chrome/Chromium is accessible by any user, as far as I know, and in the past I’ve used it to force private browsing on always for my own personal usage.

That said, I switched to Firefox when Quantum came out and haven’t looked back. Mozilla has done some annoying stuff over time, but imo the browser itself is really solid, and with some tweaks is very good.

[AaronFriel]

I don't believe it's accurate to say it's "accessible by any user", the net effect of the policy will be (over a time span of months or years) to limit ad blocking only to the most technically capable users who understand how to do what you describe.

Moreover, extensions that continue to use this behavior are required to adhere to manifest v2, and support for that manifest will likely eventually be deprecated. Chrome blocked the store from serving and updating manifest v1 extensions after a deprecation period.

Google rapidly deprecated version 1, from Chrome 18's release adding version 2 in March 2012 to blocking updating in March 2013, to removal of all extensions that had not updated from the Chrome Web Store in September 2013.

If Manifest v3 follows a similar trajectory, Chrome is on a path to remove uBlock Origin from its web store in 2 years.

[jchw]

Just to clarify, what I am referring to is the claim that it’s limited to paying enterprise customers. I could be wrong but I believe that the enterprise policy bits are what matter, and as far as I know all of those are available in Chrome/Chromium today, via group policy systems. When I say “accessible” I am specifically referring to that bit, definitely not suggesting ordinary users should do that.

[milkytron]

One of my favorite things with Firefox is the ability to “edit and resend” requests in the browser devtools. I’m sure there are plugins that do something similar on chrome/chromium. But I use it all the time and my colleagues are always blown away when I show them this.

[joshschreuder]

Whoa, never knew that was a thing. I found FF's dev tools quite bulky and clunky in the past, but I might have to give it another go.

[King-Aaron]

That's the only reason I keep falling back to Chrome, the dev tools are just so much more refined.

[jchw]

The one thing I always liked about Chrome dev tools was the ability to introspect WebSocket frames. Last I checked this couldn’t be done in Firefox :(

Otherwise, I have found Firefox dev tools to be fairly competitive. I liked the CSS Grid stuff they had around the launch of Quantum; it made it easier for me to jump into Grid.

[shoeboxam]

I use Firefox personally, but develop with Chrome. I have a hard time getting stack traces from Firefox reliably. Oftentimes one of the following occurs on Firefox:

There is no error, but the page won't load. There is an error, but the error message is generic. There is an error message, but no stack trace.

When I switch to chrome, I always get the error and stack trace without any further code modifications.

I make sure to clean up for Firefox in releases. But it's just impossible to develop without error messages and traces. I'm on Ubuntu using the latest stable releases.

[bscphil]

Ugh. Is this really still broken? I'm not a web dev but I remember having to switch to Chromium 6-8 months ago when I needed to debug a websockets issue.

[collyw]

Chromium and Opera have the same dev tools and doesn't tie you to chrome.

[jchw]

Ah yeah, on occasion I will boot Firefox at work for this capability.

Truth be told I know of nothing similar in Chrome/Chromium, but you can do something similar using the healthy number of “Copy Request As” context options. I like to copy as fetch and manipulate it in the console. It’s not perfect but it’s useful.

[junar]

Is it this?

https://cloud.google.com/chrome-enterprise/browser/download

[Jaruzel]

Key point (for Windows) on that page is:

  ADM/ADMX templates with 300+ user and device policies

ADM/ADMXs are a list of settable policies (rules) that Chrome will read from the Windows Registry on startup[1]. I'm going to make a huge assumption that the Chrome.exe for Enterprise users is no different to the Chrome.exe that everyone else uses, and it switches into 'Enterprise' mode if it sees certain key policy entries in the Registry[2].

These polices are typically set on a Windows Domain Controller and are pushed to Domain member machines (and users) on the network on a regular basis.

However end-users can simulate the policies by setting these Registry entries manually (There are about 4 places in the Registry where they live). Depending on where Chrome looks, the user may need local admin privileges to do this.

So, what we really need is a 'Chrome Enterprise Enabler' tool, that does this automatically for non-technical users. They would run this tool, the required Registry keys would be enabled, and WebRequest API based Ad-blocking would continue to work.

Unfortunately, none of this helps Linux users as I don't see a Linux Enterprise Chrome package.

---

[1] I've got 25+ years of Windows domain administration under my belt, this stuff used to be my bread-and-butter.

[2] Even if not, extracting just the Chrome MSI installer from the Enterprise bundle is trivial.

[discreditable]

Chrome MSI and chrome EXE installers work a little differently. The MSI installer by default installs to the program files directory. I've seen the EXE installer often installed to the local user profile. to convert a regular install to Enterprise you would probably have to uninstall the local version and then install the MSI.

ADM templates are something Firefox is sorely lacking at the moment. I remember reading that it is on the road map but that does not help out much. Nevertheless, I installed both chrome and Firefox and my organization. I like Firefox and use it myself, but sadly it's just not as easy to administer as chrome.

[amaccuish]

So two things. The MSI installer will convert a local (EXE) installation to a global install (updating shortcuts and removing the local profile install whilst preserving the chrome profile).

Second, Firefox does have ADMX policies (ADMX being used primarily after Vista): https://github.com/mozilla/policy-templates. I believe it took them so long because they were initially reluctant, user freedom etc. But I guess Chrome's success in enterprise made them reconsider. Honestly I never considered Firefox for our Windows Domain because of the lack of Group Policy support. Now I deploy both and users have options :)

[jchw]

FWIW it Is supported under Linux I believe, but unfortunately the documentation is lacking. If I recall correctly, you have to drop JSON files in the right places.

[rando444]

These are just features and settings, there's no requirement to use them.

The main point isn't listed on the page.

The Enterprise installer installs Chrome to the operating system.

Regular chrome installs in your user profile.

[Jaruzel]

> These are just features and settings, there's no requirement to use them.

I think you missed my point. Google say that the Enterprise version will continue to support WebRequest API. If the Enterprise version is the same codebase as the normal version, then it's a good educated guess that the Policy keys are whats controlling that.

[jchw]

Looks like some useful stuff for deploying to Enterprise, but actually as far as I know the enterprise functionality exists in normal installations. Like for example, this stuff:

http://dev.chromium.org/administrators/policy-list-3

To be honest, I am not the most knowledgeable here; I just know I used the enterprise policy system on my personal laptop without issue.

[Jaruzel]

See my sibling comment.

[swah]

What platform are you on? I tried Firefox quantum yesterday and could not stand the text rendering. Gmail looks awful. But I don't have a 4k monitor yet...

[tacosx]

People were predicting this as the Chrome endgame years ago. It's playing out exactly as everyone cynically expected.

It's time to eliminate Google from your life as much as possible if you haven't already. Too many wake up calls. They are not a tech company, they are data monopolists. Stop giving them your data.

[estranhosidade]

Funny how sometimes what everybody was waiting to happen just.... happens

[marktangotango]

Particularly satisfying for those of us who never left Firefox for this very reason!

[mehrdadn]

> People were predicting this as the Chrome endgame years ago. It's playing out exactly as everyone cynically expected.

Would you happen to have any links to previous discussions anticipating this exact endgame?

[Tepix]

Here‘s a german article from 2008 https://heise.de/-202799

[mehrdadn]

I see hardly anything even about advertising in there? Let alone anything about ad blockers. It's just generic statements/quotes about monopoly, privacy, browser wars, etc... and a few notes about how promoting the web helps promote Google's products/services indirectly too, which helps their bottom line... which Google itself has been saying openly since forever. There's nothing there particularly predictive of this particular chain of events.

[zerocrates]

> Never heard of a paid version of Chrome before!

Is there such a thing? The "paid" part comes from the article's gloss, not from Google. I could see it instead being "this is a switch you can turn on in Group Policy."

[jaimex2]

They mean Chrome extensions installed via gsuite - Google's enterprise management system. Ie - you can have managed Chromebooks and force install extensions. A lot of school's use it for web filtering.

[panarky]

This is essentially not true.

Content can still be blocked with extensions, but it will be more difficult to handle large block lists.

See this comment from the author of uBlock Origin and uMatrix.

https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338#iss...

[tyingq]

"Content can still be blocked with extensions"

Well, without live heuristics. Chrome ad blocking is basically now limited to a dumb, limited list of URI patterns. Better than nothing, but much less capable than before.

[scarface74]

And without privacy invasion implications. Apple introduced content blocking 4 versions ago implemented nearly the same way. No one would accuse Apple of trying to help Google make more money.

[tyingq]

Google didn't remove any of the observational capabilities of the API.

[tedivm]

Every application has privacy implications, and it isn't difficult to manage this one. Having a giant warning around installing extensions with this level of access would be a good way to protect people while also allowing them to make their own decisions.

[scarface74]

Because warning people has historically worked well with PCs not to mention Android.

See Also Vista UAC.

It’s kind of amazing for people to say that they care about their privacy and then they install extensions that can record their entire browsing history and install VPN software on their phones that intercept all of their internet communications.

[userbinator]

There's a mountain of difference between "can" and "will", and it's called "trust".

For decades, people have been using software on their PCs which can essentially delete all their data or worse, yet what are the chances of that actually happening? Of course malware would exist, but at the same time, the unrestricted nature lead to a seamless exchange of data and creativity unhindered by any bureaucratic permission-maze.

A world of "perfect" security in which malware and cybercrime cannot exist is basically a dystopian police state.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

... That's how computers work, yes. If you have a way to make a VPN that doesn't see its own traffic, I'm all ears. In the meantime, I trust a VPN more than my ISP.

[cortesoft]

You don't see any hazard to showing a giant warning to people when they install something that almost everyone should use? If people see a big warning when they install a legitimate ad blocker, people will start ignoring the warnings.

[andrewprock]

Google pays Apple for access to their browser.

[scarface74]

Google pays Apple for access to the search bar.

[Dragory]

The 30,000 rule limit is a pretty big deal breaker for me, but what sort of live heuristics are you referring to here? Aren't e.g. uBlock Origin's filters entirely rule based (not unlike most other ad blocker extensions)?

[tyingq]

This article has some examples: https://www.ghacks.net/2019/01/22/chrome-extension-manifest-...

The quote from the article is here: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=896897...

[Dragory]

Thanks!

[kretor]

The rule limit will be increased:

"We are planning to raise these values but we won't have updated numbers until we can run performance tests to find a good upper bound that will work across all supported devices."

https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/m/#!msg/chrom...

[voldacar]

Check out Ungoogled Chromium, it's pretty great.

[throwaway2048]

Chromium will still contain this change, in fact its where it will appear first.

[AlexCoventry]

I wonder how they're going to make it hard to maintain the current webRequest API capabilities.

[marktangotango]

Can you elaborate on what this is and why you think it’s so great?

[voldacar]

Ungoogled Chromium is Chromium with all google domains and google-specific code removed. It keeps the nice things about Chrome/Chromium like the dev tools and is compatible with Chrome extentions, though you do have to download and install them manually. Unlike Chrome, it is also 100% open source.

[A2017U1]

How timely are updates? Would be my main concern here.

[bscphil]

I was under the impression that Chromium had some Google integrations but was pretty harmless from a privacy standpoint unless you sign in to Google. Is that wrong? Do I need to use Ungoogled Chromium instead?

[lioeters]

It's a fork of Chromium, the core layer of Chrome, with Google integrations removed (and other privacy-conscious feature removals/additions).

https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium

[yesforwhat]

How is this different than Brave?

[fulafel]

Brave is based on cryptocurrencies and selling eyeballs, with users getting a share. It's a for-profit startup.

[jimmaswell]

Perhaps the elusive Google Ultron.

[yesforwhat]

Brave user here, 1/10 the CPU and memory usage and built on the same tech. Welcome!

[arbol]

Are brave in control of the web request API within their build? I know it's a fork of Chromium, just not sure how much is available for them to change.

I have been using brave for months and intend to continue if uBo keeps working. Braves internal ad blocking doesn't stop everything.