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MrAlex94 13 hours ago [-]
Developer of Waterfox here - if anyone is looking for other options just know Waterfox will carry on allowing extensions to access the browsers own privileged JavaScript APIs, not just MV2 or MV3 APIs - so you’re free to do whatever you like within the browser
DarkUranium 8 hours ago [-]
My favorite browser by far, especially since Mozilla/Firefox pissed me off one time too many.
Keep up the good work!
_345 12 hours ago [-]
I moved to Firefox as soon as they began threatening uBlock Origin support and people started switching to Lite, I find it silly that people were tweaking their registries just to stay on a sinking ship for a few more months lol.
msm_ 7 hours ago [-]
uBlock Origin Lite is still working and will continue working (since this is a MV3 issue). It's worse than the original version, but it works.
(I use Firefox, but I've read your post before the linked post and I thought ublock Origin is the one being killed)
marssaxman 9 hours ago [-]
As far as I'm concerned, this means "Google is finally killing [...] Chrome for good". The web is intolerable without adblocking.
onemoresoop 14 hours ago [-]
What else can we expect from a browser made by an advertising company?
xpct 14 hours ago [-]
Google likely saw this path way back in 2008 when it started Chromium. Unfortunately, as an ad company, they also have more resources to create a good browser, and to also entrench themselves.
"The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine"
-> "Appendix A: Advertising and Mixed Motives"
-> "The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users."
Not browser specific, but they understood the problem well.
xpct 12 hours ago [-]
Thank you for sharing this. I imagine at first it wasn't clear that the browser will become our primary interface with the web. Microsoft hoped it would be the OS itself with Windows 98, if I'm not mistaken.
joe_mamba 12 hours ago [-]
Weird how no anti-monopoly regulator in the world went after Google for monopolizing the browse market and forcing their own standards in order to fine them and force them to backtrack on these moves.
They threw the book at Microsoft for the Windows and Office monopoly of the 90s and 2000s, but in comparison did absolutely nothing to Google over their search and browser monopoly of the 2010s -today, especially given how influential and important the web is today compared to desktop operating systems which just became launchers for the web browser.
thisislife2 14 hours ago [-]
It will be interesting to see how the Chromium clones like Vivaldi and Brave hold up. I know they have stated that they will continue to support MV2 ... but talk is easy. Many of these clones depends on Google search revenues, so it remains to be seen if they "walk the talk".
alyandon 14 hours ago [-]
Yeah, once Google has ripped all the MV2 code out of chromium it'll be very interesting to see how long the chromium reskins are able to maintain their private forks.
I also expect Google to be a bad actor and do everything in its power to pointlessly refactor the chromium codebase specifically to make keeping MV2 alive as painful as possible.
rasz 40 minutes ago [-]
> ripped all the MV2 code out of chromium
The thing is this code is just scaffolding. You cant rip out actual functionality because its needed by other parts of the browser.
Ai will help here, I maintain several forks for software I use to add a feature or two
zipityzi 15 hours ago [-]
It mentions Edge is also losing MV2: is it? Any source after the 2024 Neowin article that an Edge Canary build 16 months ago disabled UBO?
No issues with UBO on Edge 149 (stable) and it's still available on the Edge Add-ons (it was featured by Microsoft, funnily enough, a few months back):
Did I miss something? Microsoft's official statement is that "The Microsoft Edge team is currently in the process of updating this MV3 migration timeline". Now, they've been working on that timeline since at least May 2025, so maybe with Chromium 150 / 151, they'll make it more concrete?
Unless enterprise customers are screaming for MV2 compatibility I would expect Microsoft to make no effort at all to maintain a working MV2 implementation in Edge.
0xblinq 13 hours ago [-]
Just use Brave. For me internet is unusable without it.
rickstanley 12 hours ago [-]
I'd also recommend LibreWolf, for those who want a "strict by default" experience and tweak from there.
alok-g 5 hours ago [-]
I came across this about Brave. Am not sure if the free version is also changing as a result of this move.
Brave is charging $60 for a version of its browser that removes the features you probably never wanted
Of all the browsers, Brave has to be the sleaziest one there is. Don't fall into their trap, you will become their target as soon as they feel they've milked the "we're not Google" strat as much as they can. Privacy/security features should ALWAYS be extensions, managed by someone without gigantic conflicts of interests. You don't want it built in. Opera might technically be worse, but I don't see tech people pushing that one so much.
benabbott 11 hours ago [-]
i use brave on my iPhone because of the adblock, but i'm not loyal by any means.
i definitely felt the sleaze due to the fact that they sell ad space on new tabs. (_we_ can run ads). any recommendations for alternative ad-blocking mobile (iOS) browsers?
One of the reasons I'm back to Firefox as daily driver. On mobile too.
giloux314 12 hours ago [-]
Same for me!
Shorel 14 hours ago [-]
I block ads at the OS DNS level.
No browser can load these ads.
goodmythical 14 hours ago [-]
I've always wondered about all of the other stuff, though.
I've considered doing the pi-hole thing for family, but doesn't ublock etc do a lot of fixing to make sure pages aren't broken when ads are missing?
Or does pi-hole/your implementation do the same?
OJFord 14 hours ago [-]
Yes, uBlock can and does do more than DNS blocking.
Consider the simplest possible case: I run ojford.com and take money from Acme Inc in exchange for displaying their advert. They send me acme-banner.jpg, and I serve it at /static/current-ad.jpg with an <img id="banner-ad" src="/static/current-ad.jpg"> in my header or whatever.
A DNS block covering the ad would block my whole site. Effective, but useless. (Unless you actually intend to boycott anyone who advertises.)
uBlock however can block the #banner-ad element. (Whether community-curated or by you specifying it yourself.)
More realistically this might be say YouTube or googleusercontent subdomains that serve both ads and 'real' content.
Melatonic 13 hours ago [-]
Your site probably wouldn't get added to a block list though right ? For DNS based blocking I mean
OJFord 1 hours ago [-]
I'm not aware of a 'boycott sites that advertise' list, but possibly that exists – it wouldn't be added to a 'normal' ad blocking list though no, because they'd prioritise a functional site.
pirates 12 hours ago [-]
If the site is low volume then you’re probably right. But if I wanted to add the domain to my own list manually I couldn’t since it would break the site.
philipov 13 hours ago [-]
yeah, the useful thing about ublock isn't just that it stops ads from loading, but that it lets you remove unwanted divs. There are lots of unwanted divs that have nothing to do with ads, such as removing annoying Use Our AI buttons, or the Shorts section of youtube.
ForHackernews 13 hours ago [-]
Except the ads served on the same domain as the sites you want to visit.
kgwxd 11 hours ago [-]
The third-party part of it is the major security risk. If you just want hide elements on a page, there's simpler tools just for that. If you want to protect yourself, and maybe discourage the rest of the world from thinking it's fine to include arbitrary third-party code in their products, use something better.
ForHackernews 10 hours ago [-]
I don't think this follows the way you imagine it does. There's nothing stopping me from serving arbitrary third-party code directly from my own domain. If blocking ad domains becomes commonplace, they will just proxy it through first-party domains.
The only way out of this nightmare is legislation: stiff penalties for intrusive adtech and breaking up large tech monopolies so google isn't both seller and auctioneer.
tim333 9 hours ago [-]
I'm using uBlock lite. Works fine.
inigyou 14 hours ago [-]
Didn't they do this years ago? What happened to that?
sunaookami 14 hours ago [-]
You could still enable it with workarounds like an enterprise policy and loading them manually. They are now removing every bit of it.
Keep up the good work!
(I use Firefox, but I've read your post before the linked post and I thought ublock Origin is the one being killed)
http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html
"The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine"
-> "Appendix A: Advertising and Mixed Motives"
-> "The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users."
Not browser specific, but they understood the problem well.
They threw the book at Microsoft for the Windows and Office monopoly of the 90s and 2000s, but in comparison did absolutely nothing to Google over their search and browser monopoly of the 2010s -today, especially given how influential and important the web is today compared to desktop operating systems which just became launchers for the web browser.
I also expect Google to be a bad actor and do everything in its power to pointlessly refactor the chromium codebase specifically to make keeping MV2 alive as painful as possible.
The thing is this code is just scaffolding. You cant rip out actual functionality because its needed by other parts of the browser.
https://derineryilmaz.com/blog/web-request-blocking/
No issues with UBO on Edge 149 (stable) and it's still available on the Edge Add-ons (it was featured by Microsoft, funnily enough, a few months back):
https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/detail/ublock-ori...
Did I miss something? Microsoft's official statement is that "The Microsoft Edge team is currently in the process of updating this MV3 migration timeline". Now, they've been working on that timeline since at least May 2025, so maybe with Chromium 150 / 151, they'll make it more concrete?
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/extensions/...
Brave is charging $60 for a version of its browser that removes the features you probably never wanted
https://www.techspot.com/news/112671-brave-charging-60-versi...
i definitely felt the sleaze due to the fact that they sell ad space on new tabs. (_we_ can run ads). any recommendations for alternative ad-blocking mobile (iOS) browsers?
No browser can load these ads.
I've considered doing the pi-hole thing for family, but doesn't ublock etc do a lot of fixing to make sure pages aren't broken when ads are missing?
Or does pi-hole/your implementation do the same?
Consider the simplest possible case: I run ojford.com and take money from Acme Inc in exchange for displaying their advert. They send me acme-banner.jpg, and I serve it at /static/current-ad.jpg with an <img id="banner-ad" src="/static/current-ad.jpg"> in my header or whatever.
A DNS block covering the ad would block my whole site. Effective, but useless. (Unless you actually intend to boycott anyone who advertises.)
uBlock however can block the #banner-ad element. (Whether community-curated or by you specifying it yourself.)
More realistically this might be say YouTube or googleusercontent subdomains that serve both ads and 'real' content.
The only way out of this nightmare is legislation: stiff penalties for intrusive adtech and breaking up large tech monopolies so google isn't both seller and auctioneer.