A list of recent hostile moves by #Google’s #Chrome team;
handy for sharing with your entourage, to explain why they should stop using #Chromium / #GoogleChrome and use #Firefox or #Epiphany as their main #web #browser :
- The “Manifest v3” sabotage of content blocking extensions: https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/10/23131029/mozilla-ad-blocking-firefox-google-chrome-privacy-manifest-v3-web-request
- The attempted sabotage of #JPEGXL: https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/chrome-banishes-jpeg-xl-photo-format-that-could-save-phone-space/
- #WebEnvironmentIntegrity a.k.a. #DRM for whole websites would hurt the web, #opensource browsers and OSes:
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/googles-web-integrity-api-sounds-like-drm-for-the-web/
Also as a long running Firefox user, I don’t get these incompatibilities at all. And if you start using Firefox and increase the usage numbers the incompatible sites would need to reconsider their stance.
The problem is just we have to use the sites. There’s no real choice ( we have some of this for work too). I’m not losing my job or impacting my medical care for a browser war. If I can fool the site with an extension or something, then if I know that I’ll do it. But this idea that you can just avoid browsers when you need a website is not really true. I will say - I very rarely see these problems compared to back in the day. But I have contacted tech support and they just say use the working browser. I can’t report a bug, they don’t even understand why I’m being a PITA.
I just use Firefox until it definitely doesn’t work, then I use a chromium browser because of course I can’t not have access to a crucial website for my life.
That’s really unfortunate and a bad service provider for you. If there is nothing that can be done for that service, you don’t need to use that browser as a daily driver, but can just use for the services that you mention. And you need to keep nagging the service provider for support.
This is not just a browser war. It’s a war over your rights, your control over your choices, your privacy, what software and hardware you can use. You are already feeling how that affects your life daily, consider this in a mass attack on you.
WEI will enable service providers to decide what firewall you can use, what addons you can have, what version of the browser you can reach their websites, what antivirus software that you need to have, what cpu architecture, which tablet … This list can go on.
sure this won’t start in this manner right away. But I can assure you it will evolve towards more control service providers have on you.