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Google Chrome pushes ahead with targeted ads based on your browser history
(www.theregister.com)
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this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2023
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I had to read the whole article to get to this info: Depending on what Chrome version you're using, and whether you've been selected to start using Topics API, you can switch this functionality off and on by visiting chrome://settings/adPrivacy and/or chrome://settings/privacySandbox – cut'n'paste these URLs into your address bar to jump straight to the controls.
Or don’t use chrome at all.
Easier said than done sometimes. Google is already doing what Microsoft used to do. They’re locking G suite features to Chrome, and if your company uses G suite, you made find yourselves in Chrome just so a damn thing works.
My company uses G Suite extensively, and I exclusively use Firefox. I haven't found a single thing that doesn't work in Firefox thus far.
Some lawyer somewhere will wind up with a fat payday if some important feature of Gmail/Sheets/Docs gets locked to Chrome exclusively, as soon as anyone notices.
FF is my daily driver (tho I do have to use other browsers for testing and such). G Suite works great for me in FF as well.
Unrelated to G Suite, Google search on mobile should work perfectly fine on Firefox, but Google has decided anyone not using chrome will get a "mobile" version of the site. There's an addon that fixes that by just changing the user-agent string.
I just tested it. Yes, it is still needed.
Latest thing I encountered, virtual backgrounds in Google Meet.
They work great for me in chromium based browsers like Arc or Brave
And those are basically Chrome.
WebKit, Gecko, and other rendering engines don’t always get full compatibility, even if they’re super standards compliant.
They use the chrome rendering engine but they are not chrome. You get the best of both worlds. Compatibility with your corporate g suite whatever with a security/privacy-first mindset (at least with Brave)
Especially with some webapps too. My nas's only allows you to upload folders through chrome, completely unsupported on Firefox. They do however another service on a different site that does support folder upload on Firefox for some reason though. I don't get the disconnect.
You could ask them when they are going to support uploading through a modern browser like Firefox.
There are a lot of webapps only supported by chromium based browsers. A lot of development focuses on popular modern browsers. Firefox market share is under 5%. I use it because google has become more awful every year. I wish everything was supported on Firefox. It uses a different engine which provides challenges for some js and js libraries.
The amount of dev hours involved has to be justified by the user base that desires the feature. This is the case even for just adding new features. It’s annoying, because I can only test using chrome, and chrome dev tools is way worse than Firefox.
If we keep having to justify any development for other browsers, well end up with Chrome having all the market share!
I agree. I don’t choose what goes on the board though. And Firefox is less than 5% of the browser market share (likely less than 1% of our customer market share). The money folks are the ones who ultimately decide what gets put in the pipeline. Why would a company care about reducing chromes market share? If we had a bunch or a large customer asking for it, then we’d likely do something to fix the Firefox issues.
Being a modern browser doesn’t really matter. What matters to companies is their user base and the needs there in. Increasing profits and (if they’re a good company) user satisfaction. Majority will always outweigh the few in these cases.
Its going to get more and more difficult to be flexible as this company locks in their entire development pipeline into a single browser.
It will probably be more expensive to move away from Chrome if you DONT develop for other browsers now. All it will take is the company that owns Chrome deciding to exercise their Terms of Service and Privacy Policies to the best of their abilities. If you sprinkle in support for other browsers now, it wont take as much work when the huge overhaul is needed later.
The money guys are blinded by the dollar signs though.
I encounter a site that will only work in Chrome based browsers (or at least won't work in Firefox) about once a month. I've yet to encounter one that will only work in Chrome proper.