Chrome to remove support for adblockers

[Labster]

I didn't seem to get much notice in the other thread, so let me start with a more explicit title.  Unless you are paying for Chrome Enterprise Edition, Google Chrome browser will be removing the ability for ad blockers to block more than 30,000 ads.  If you use uBlock Origin, it will stop working in a future update.  If you use the EasyList with any ad blocker, you will have to choose which half of the list gets blocked.  AdBlock Plus by eyeo, a trusted partner of Google, will not be affected.

One day soon, your copy of Chrome will be automatically updated, and the ad blocker will stop working.  This is not something Google is going to back off of.  Developers have asked technical questions, and gotten responses in marketing-speak.  They claim that they are not removing the extension API -- but not answering any questions about how they're removing the specific part of that API used to block advertising.  It's almost as if a massive advertising company doesn't want you to be able to block advertising and tracking.

This is enough to make me want to sever my ties with Google.  It's one thing to advertise, but it's another to use your market dominance to prevent people from opting out of advertising and tracking.  I've started a Fastmail account on a trial basis.  (If you're freaked about the Australian internet backdoor law, you can consider ProtonMail instead, but I'm honestly not that worried.)

The developer community is like, well, the top ranked story on Hacker News is this page: Switch from Chrome to Firefox -- and a good 1500 votes ahead of its nearest rival story.

[hazard]

It'd be interesting to see how Europe's trust busting agencies will consider this move.

[classicdrogn]

I use mail.com, which does have a US server farm but as far as I can tell is based in the UK or Germany. Their advertising is pretty lightweight and you can opt-out of the "personalized special offers" in your inbox, the domain name makes it easy to remember, and even if your desired username is taken on the main domain they've got a bunch of other ones it may be available on, and you can have a bunch of others that are accessible in the same mailbox for use as disposables or to separate what one ebusiness knows you as from others, etc.

[Black Aeronaut]

I'm slowly transitioning back into Apple for my email and calendars. Dunno if I'm going to give up on Google Maps since they gobbled Wayz and now use the same user reported data to guide people around the worst traffic snarls. (Given that San Antonio actually has pretty decently timed and synchronized traffic lights, it's not so terrible to take the thoroughfares instead of the freeway.)

Youtube Premium is hard to pass up. Ad-free Youtube (all platforms - PC, mobile, PS4, Xbox...) , unlimited access to Youtube originals, plus Youtube Music and Google Play Music.

[Labster]

Propositions where you're the customer, not the product, are different. I'm not throwing away YouTube or anything, but yeah, see the RWBY thread earlier this year for problems there. It's just time to not have them read all of my email in order to market to me. The most secure metadata is metadata never collected.

Apple Maps is passable. It's not as terrible as it once was. But then, it's hard for me to tell, because I'll often just ignore the routing and do my own thing. Most people are not as good at navigating as I am. Google Maps is very good. But then, something like one-third of search revenue comes from the Maps division.

Mail.com is probably okay... they do mention advertisements and tracking beacons and sharing information for marketing, but it looks like you can opt out of almost all of it. I was just looking for something a bit more restrictive than that. And also to be able to use my own domain, too.

[robkelk]

The way things are going, I suspect that if you want to use your own domain, you're going to have to set up your own mail server.

[Epsilon]

Jokes on them, my computer is so old it refuses to update Chrome!