Brave Browser 1.58 launches with YouTube adblocking improvements
Brave Software has released a new version of Brave Browser Stable. Brave 1.58 is the latest stable version of the browser and it is available for all supported desktop operating systems already.
Since Brave Browser is based on Chromium, it is also changing the minimum macOS version to 10.15, just like Chromium and Google Chrome did.
Users of the web browser may select Menu > Help > About Brave to display the current version installed on the device. Opening the page runs a check for updates, and the latest version should be downloaded and installed at this point as well. Once installed, Brave Browser's "About" page should list the version 1.58.124.
Brave 1.58
The official release notes on the Brave website reveal that the underlying Chromium part has been upgraded to version 117.0.5938.62, which includes the fix for the critical security issue found in WebP image handling among other things. Google addressed the issue earlier this week in Chrome and also in the Chrome 117 release.
As far as noteworthy changes are concerned, there are a few. Brave users who watch videos on YouTube in the browser may benefit from the enforcement of aggressive cosmetic filtering on the site after the update. Another usability change enables the Easylist Cookie List for existing and new users alike in the browser. This list is designed to block cookie banners and other privacy notices that websites may display on visit.
Brave Browser is now also removing the tracking parameters “mtm_cid” and “pk_cid” from URLs automatically.
Brave's Speedreader feature, which improves the readability of articles, has new customize options that allow users to change the theme, font and text size right from the interface. It is a quick option to make quick changes to the mode, which users may enable manually or automatically.
Brave Browser ships with the "tune" icon now instead of the lock icon, which Google did also launch in Chrome and added to Chromium.
Brave Software lists improvements to vertical tab animations and sidebar slide animations as other improvements.
The browser's Web3 functionality has been updated as well, as usual. Web3 powers the browser's wallet, integration of crypto-assets and management options.
Brave Software continues to expand the browser's Web3 capabilities, but also usability features.
Now You: do you use Brave Browser?
ungoogled-chromium + unlock origin ftw.
They must have rushed that v158 out the door a little too quickly.
Today (sept 17) there is another Brave update (Version 1.58.127).
I ditched Firefox in favour of Brave aeons ago after getting sick of painstakingly editing the equivalent of a user.js file everytime there was an update – huge amount of time wasted trying to plug all the privacy leaks in what should be otherwise default settings out of the box. In fact, I am very frustrated with Mozilla’s attitude.
The only deep frustration I have with Brave is their attitude towards Android users everytime a zero day patch is timely released to the desktop users; the Android patches are always delayed by often up to a week! What gives?
@Derek Clements
Assuming you got Brave from the Google Play Store – whenever the developer publishes an update, it enters into a review process by Google, leading to a delay of a few days before you can download the update.
As you can see on Brave’s GitHub repo, the Android updates are ready many days before you see them on the Google Play Store. You can also download and update Brave from GitHub via Obtainium (availiable on F-Droid), that would be instant. Uninstall the Play Store version first. Alternatively, there is also an app called FFUpdater (despite the name, it not only covers Firefox, also Brave) which also fetches the updates directly from GitHub, FFUpdater is available on F-Droid as well.
Anyhow, notwithstanding my gripes, I find Brave on Android with its easy to access extended privacy controls makes for easy web browsing when compared to the headache inducing Chrome experience.
Here is what I am seeing as of September 18th, 2023:
Brave Browser (Play Store): version 1.57.62
Brave Browser (GitHub): version 1.58.125
source (Bravearm64Universal.apk): https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/releases/tag/v1.58.125
Version 1.58.125 was published three days ago on GitHub.
Thanks for the feedback IH.
Version 1.57.62 at Google Play is the vulnerable version (as you probably already know).
As I mentioned earlier, my frustration remains with the fact that for at least the last several zero day patches, the patched Android version via the Play Store has been delayed by many days.
Anyhow, your tips are always welcome – cheers.
Hi Iron Heart. Thanks for the pointers as alternatives for Google Play – such information is always very much appreciated.
Unfortunately, there are no closed issues at the Brave Browser GitHub repo for the Android versions in question, while such do exist for desktop systems. As at 0330 (UTC+0000), there was only one open issue for Android, and that was last updated 3 days ago.
Now this delay only seems to happen for zero day patches; other vulnerability classifications are usually released through Google Play on par with the desktop releases and such is often reflected at the GitHub repo. Often (except for zero day patches), via Google Play, Brave updates are available before Chrome updates.
I remain frustrated.
@Iron Heart Just let them go, if I may say so. You have helped others and me a great deal how to set up Brave properly, that’s what counts. Can you give your thoughts about the interesting post of KaxMarl, especially this: “There is a feature that was added long time ago to Brave but it got fixed, nobody knows about it, but it is adblocker working for Extensions,”?
@Sebas
Thank you for your kind words, but as far as the following is concerned, I can’t help you:
> “There is a feature that was added long time ago to Brave but it got fixed, nobody knows about it, but it is adblocker working for Extensions,”?
I don’t get what that sentence means to say.
The Brave browser has been the only browser I have used for many years. The number 1 reason is that I can watch hours and hours on YouTube and NEVER have to watch or skip an ad. I refuse to watch YouTube any other way. Other than that, it is a solid browser that does what it should do. But mainly it’s the ad-blocking feature that I truly love about it.
…and I was so looking forward to having the comment system working again. Oh well…
lol how many Brave fanboys triggered in the comments. Bravo to the troll.
Yeah, @Anonymous, rascals need to be together to feel strong. Or it could be one guy/gal posting with multiple identities in order to fake brotherhood.
@Tom Hawack
Yeah man all these people are my sock puppets, I’ll write several walls of text just to prove your invalid point invalid. Just take the L and go home.
I gave brave a chance, liked it at first, even recommended it, but I hate it now. They seem to have the same authoritative dominating stance as the others. Instead of adding features the users want it becomes a game of dark tech manipulation either for data collection or service pimping. I’m so sick of this bs. I would pay good money for a browser that would step up to the plate, protect my privacy, rich in user useful features (addons) and an easy to use UI that doesn’t change with every release. Even their search engine is becoming propagandized. What a shame, they’re blowing their chance to rise above the filth.
@Anonymous “I would pay good money for a browser that would step up to the plate, protect my privacy, rich in user useful features (addons) and an easy to use UI that doesn’t change with every release.”
You just described Pale Moon and don’t have to pay either, although the occasional donation always helps smaller projects.
Having said that, I currently prefer Brave to the highly unreliable Mozilla Firefox, even though the whole Rewards/Wallet etc. thing is the opposite of enticing.
You don’t have to use any of the Brave services, and can be easily toggled off. So if you just want a web browser with great privacy, thats still an option.
This software is an oxymoron.
It claims to be privacy focused but you must have a google account and access to the google store, at which point any privacy you thought you had is gone.
You don’t need a Google account for anything in Brave.
Every connection to Google goes through a Brave’s own proxy server so Google wouldn’t see your IP.
That ain’t the case with Firefox.
That’s the issue with proxies: now Google might not know the requester’s IP anymore, but now Brave does. In principle you just exchanged A for B, so there is no gain in privacy at all.
Yes, you might (understandably) prefer Brave being able to profile you over Google, but the general principle is, that data that can be abused will be abused, so in principle terms, there is no difference in privacy by using a Brave proxy to use Google Search than contacting it directly.
Subjectively, people will of course feel better with Brave than with Google as harvester of their data, but objectively, both is equally problematic. This will become more obvious,. the first time the data from the Brave logs is abused. And that’s not an IF but just a WHEN.
@Anonymous, to extend your reasoning, is there any privacy — strictly speaking — with proxies, with VPN? At the end (or rather: from the start) there’s always a server which knows your IP, from there on it’s a matter of confidence. Perhaps Tor as well as ‘Anonymized DNS’, used for instance with DNSProxy such as described at [https://github.com/DNSCrypt/dnscrypt-proxy/wiki/Anonymized-DNS], are the only coherent way to go?
@Tom
That’s a nearly philosophical question. In security there is always the trust issue. What ever the protection, if you communicate you always have to trust someone else. That’s unavoidable. And security can in the end always be traced back to cryptography and physical security as the base layer.
Can there be absolute security ? No.
Can there be absolute privacy ? No.
Also the complete certificate system is largely broken, as nation states are able to forge certificates (and not only those using weak ciphers) having undermined the trust in the system.
But one can do things that make communication more secure and more private.
Let’s say VPN: your ISP is in the same legal jurisdiction than you are, so you possible know quite well what they are allowed to do, what they can do and what not. Your VPN provider might be an obscure mailbox company registered in the Cayman Island, Panama or Tuvalu and being owned by an unknown strawman.
Is it reasonable to use such a VPN instead of your ISP ?
Yes, of course not all ISPs are trustworthy, but also the majority of all VPN providers are not trustworthy. Some are, most aren’t.
It depends on what you are doing. If you are a investigative political journalist, using foreign protection might sensible, or deadly.
You could eg use Proton (swiss) which most will consider one of the most trustworthy providers and certainly a lot more than any ISP, but are they more trustworthy ? Likely, or maybe not (eg looking at the infamous Crypto AG case)
If using a proxy or VPN is reasonable decision or not depends on the individual, what he does and who is after him. So it might be or not.
One word about Tor: the 3 layers of 3 are insufficient to provide proper anonymity. A vast number of in and outbound servers (ca 40%) are provided by the same entity. This means there is a good chance that at least that entity can identify roughly 25% of the traffic running through it traffic.
An realistic option to increase privacy is to use a self-hosted proxy, located in some location at the end of nowhere that writes all logs to /dev/null. That’s still no guarantee, because someone else will still have physical access to the system but it’s at least some increase in privacy. On the other hand, that’s a lot of effort. So if you (or the person in question) is not a political activist or something like that, the cost/effort – benefit value makes it likely not worthwhile.
@Anonymous (September 20, 2023 at 12:21 am),
I most appreciate and agree with your comment, its lack of assertions, its description of the fact that situations are various, that users’ requirements are various, that it’s all in the equation situation-user. And, yes, I agree as well that the scenario is similar to the real-life environment and that the reasoning participates to a philosophical approach : beyond the technical details you describe indeed trust is a major component of life and indeed there is no total, absolute privacy and security environment (I dislike proselytism but I’ll nevertheless add : except in one’s faith in God).
I’d add that doubt (not skepticism which is closer to a counter-certitude) is essential, but also that, when applied to trust and confidence, doubt is a major component of stress. Love, beyond — or together with — its spiritual dimension, is also emphasized for its psychological dimension as it is a major contribution to trust and confidence. This said, trust does not, IMO, require love.
We can improve our privacy and security, never be naive to believe we’ve achieved or even are able to achieve it fully. This implies a balance between doing our best without overdoing our best : excess of caution may prevent discovering hidden gems, lack of caution may get us eaten by the beast hideing the gem, so to say :) ; risk, calculated, is essential.
At the end, should we have to choose (but we don’t have to choose if we accept the effort of doubting) would we prefer excess or lack of confidence ? I guess it’s up to each of us to decide. Personally I’d choose excess whatever the risks, given missing the best is IMO worse than avoiding the worst.
Your reference to philosophy triggered this side-note :)
@Anonymous
Brave removes all non-essential connections to Google from the browser, they keep essential stuff like certificate updates and SafeBrowing, but proxy it. Here is the complete list for anyone interested:
https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations-from-Chromium-(features-we-disable-or-remove)
Not sure if you are referring to the connections the browser itself establishes in all cases, or if you refer to using Google Search. If you mean Google Search, the privacy policy of it is much worse than the privacy policy of Brave Search – Brave Search also doesn’t use the Google search index (like e.g. StartPage), but rather its own index. What matters is that you can use a search engine of your own choice – including the fully open source SearXNG, which is what I recommend:
https://searx.space/
This can be made your standard search engine in Brave’s settings (similar to all other browsers)
@ Iron Heart
I) If you use Browser A to connect to service (eg search engine) B, then the owner of B owns the meta data of Browser A having made a connection to B and having searched for whatever
II) If you use Browser A to connect to service B (eg a search engine) using an interim proxy provided by provider C, then B does indeed not know who made the query, only that someone did, but now C does know what query was made and who made it (browser A).
This means the knowledge that in case I) B had is now knowledge of C and no longer B.
Generally speaking this is not more private,. but just who has knowledge has changed.
In deatail it’s even less private, because now C knows what query was made and B knows what query was made and who made it, so the information spread into the public has even increase in this case (if the information is abused is another question)
That’s in principle the same situatoin, when using a VPN because you don’t trust ISP. In that case your ISP doesn’t know anything about your connections anymore (at least in case the VPN is not web-VPN, but uses IPSec), but now you VPN Provider does.
These shifts are an increase in privacy, but just a shift who has the information.
If people feel more private with Brave and Google, that’s understandable but there’s no guarantee that Brave might not sooner or later also monetize the data.
Same with ISP vs VPN
I am always reading articles here and elsewhere about Brave making their browsers more secure and/or promoting privacy protections.
Mozilla, google, not so much.
It seems like google chrome is always on the defense updating because of zero-day vulnerabilities. How many this year so far – 4 or 5? LOL I’ve lost count.
@yosemite sam
“Brave making their browsers more secure and/or promoting privacy protections. It seems like google chrome is always on the defense updating because of zero-day vulnerabilities.”
You know that any zero-day vulnerabilities that applies to Chrome also applies to Brave right? They are both built on Chromium.
That’s all nice and dandy, but why did they switch back to Google being the default search engine?
Brave only uses Google in regions were Brave Search is not too great or where language is not going to be great with Brave Search, it has always been that way, and it is not hard to change it.
I mean, in the end it doesn’t matter which big tech search engine you use, it goes back to either Bing or Google, because all other search engines will run Bing API like DuckDuckGo or Qwant or Swisscows, and then Startpage will do Google Search API.
That means since they pay for the usage of the API, when people search with DDG or others, they are actually giving money to Microsoft/Bing, same with Startpage using Google API, you use SP, you give money to Google… that’s the funny fact! actually giving money to Microsoft and Google, where you are not doing that if you directly use Bing or Google search.
So, what are the alternatives? well Yandex which is good depending on your search, mojeek which I never liked and also it is focused for EU, Gigablast which has cool features but has never evolved much in 20 years of existence, so I guess Google makes sense, but someday Brave Search will replace it completely.
> mojeek which I never liked
are you able to give us any more info, understand you’re not into the engine but any feedback is great
> also it is focused for EU
we aren’t, we provide search results across the globe
Also sad to see Giga disappear when it did :(
This release was pretty much to give Chromium 117 to stable, but that’s it.
There are so many things in Nightly that aren’t making it to Stable.
Commander on the Omnibox instead of a separate bar or Shared pinned tabs across windows, which are old features still Nightly, with no indication of going Stable.
Now the biggest features being worked on are:
Playlist which works better and gets videos from the most important video services, not only youtube, also, they are looking to add playlists support from Youtube, they are fixing UI and drag and drop and all that, but it is looking nice, should be really good in Android when done.
One of the biggest features added is Widevine support for Android, so you can finally use it for all those websites that need DRM in Android, like spotify! so no more reason to use Spotify app, if you can use browser that blocks… things.
Leo, which is okay for what it is, but it is useless because it will always give you a lot of BS talk if it disagrees with you and about how “that’s not nice” and writes like 300 million paragraphs about how you are wrong, even if it is just a manipulated piece of technology, doesn’t know the world, doesn’t see the world, even says “that might be hurtful’ like if it knew how ‘hurt’ is. It is like a videogame, only because it is added animations to simulate pain and happiness, it is fake.
But they are adding it to Android, doesn’t work yet, you only get the button and the UI, but doesn’t work yet.
The UI is receiving changes too, yesterday sidebar was updated, now the menu has icons, they are also putting ‘in progress’ to update the the Tab’s UI, and make it it look like a mix of Edge and Firefox or something, no PRs about this though.
There is also improvements to Adblocker to catch with a lot of uBlock useless features, that might break and crash Brave.
In fact, if Brave didn’t depend on uBlock for its default list, it would be perfect, but those are the problems of depending on ‘powerful’ lists, you have to match their syntaxes and features.
For example, Brave needs to support the “trusted scriptlets’ yet, and they are changing the lists format for that, but they also have to support single quoted syntaxes from uBlock, so a lot of things, just to avoid web compatibility issues and all that.
uBlock has been added so many useless things that just complicate things more for Brave, but little by little Brave adblocker is decent.
Most clueless people will say “PrOceDural CoSmEtiC”, but they are not important, first, procedural cosmetics are just cosmetics, useless for privacy. Second, Procedural Cosmetics are selectors made with JS, slower, really slower than what a Browser needs, especially as a native adblocker.
In fact, most rules should be converted to Chromium native :has(), because even if the rule is longer and uses attributes, it will always be faster than any Procedural Cosmetic will ever be.
Just compare native has to procedural cosmetic has… the difference is like night and day.
Android version for example got the Adblocker custom lists and regional in the settings finally and not a separated page. The problem is they still need to add custom filters, so it looks nice now and it is integrated in settings, but they decided to do the porting incomplete.
There is a feature that was added long time ago to Brave but it got fixed, nobody knows about it, but it is adblocker working for Extensions, you know, Extensions API can’t do that, if you add uBlock to Edge or Vivaldi or Opera, they will not block sidebar items and all that.
Well, Brave adblocker can do it, they block sidebar extensions like sidebar gpt, and normal extensions.
It doesn’t have any control, like it will block any element from filtering list but no way to exclude extensions and all that, but you can easily block extension’s analytics and telemetry and all that.
Well, that got fixed, it is a feature nobody knows about, but shows why native adblockers are better than Extension API.
On VPN, there are fixing so many stuff, Wireguard is what they are adding, because OS APIs, especially Windows are, ruining Brave’s VPN, so they have been working to give VPN Wireguard and be able to add it to Linux and all that, but ton’s of improvements about it.
So, tons of stuff being worked on, fixes and all that, to improve everything and make it better, plus removing dumb Chromium stuff and all the stuff they always do.
But this release was not that great, just fixing adblocker mostly, and few other things, but next major Stable with Chromium 118, should be better.
@KaxMarl “There is a feature that was added long time ago to Brave but it got fixed, nobody knows about it, but it is adblocker working for Extensions,” . Thank you for this useful info, I never knew about it.
Meanwhile Firefox is still better.
firefox users with the double dose of copium! fascinating!
but no, firefox is not better. of course you can think the way you want and you can cope harder all you want, then keep spamming about how Firefox is better than any other browser in the world, in any non-Firefox article, that’s you and a ghacks problem for allowing you to do that… maybe firefox will magically get better and fix their code and actually develop faster and be fast and efficient and stop being so politically lame and fix all their problems magically by wishful thinking and repeating the lie “Firefox is better”.
In what way is Firefox better than Brave, and why are people mentioning Firefox in a Brave release? attention or a way to cope for how most people have stopped caring about Firefox and Mozilla?
But someone of you can say how Firefox is better without using “ChRomIuM”? or how you can customize the UI more, like if that fixed web compatibility issues?
For example, Firefox doesn’t even have native adblocker, and no, extension API like uBlock is NOT going to ever be good as a native solution, because extension API can not see other extensions or do anything but only see content in pages.
And just like that, it shows Firefox in so many years and controlling Gecko and Firefox development, they haven’t cared to add something important for users to use.
No vertical tabs, no tab groups, no quick development when it comes to latest implementations and standards which many developers might use.
Plus, Firefox gets money from Google for a fishy search deal, but not just that, have you Firefox people thought about all the Google standards that are in Firefox?
Web Extensions, Widevine, Safe Browsing and some more, so… what’s so independent and good about Firefox when they not only are getting money from Google but also implementing anything Google throws as as web standard.
So Firefox depends on Google for many things, even if they are Gecko and aren’t Chromium… that’s really lame to say “how great it is”.
So, without using “Chromium” as a way to say Brave is inferior, what are the positives about Firefox? web uncompability? lack of features? not even an adblocker?…. well, I would rather use inferior Brave than superior Firefox… yes, Firefox with terrible performance and resource usage, less features, using “privacy” as a bait even if nothing about them reflect that, I hope you are all happy with your ‘better deal’ Firefox, because there is a reason why they keep losing more and more users, and I doubt it is because it is better.
@Anonymous
“Web Extensions, Widevine, Safe Browsing and some more”
In all fairness brother Anonymous, Brave also supports these things, but that’s not important because these are all good things made by the same people that made Chromium, Google.
What is important? Every Linux distro includes Brave or Chrome as their default Browser, not Firefox. This is because Linux distros understand the importance of FOSS, which Brave and Google both support, unlike Firefox.
It certainly is, Johnny. Most people are like kids, they get marveled by everything that shines, they want what other kids have, don’t think too much, if other kids wear craps they want to wear craps. Most importantly people don’t care about their privacy, worship Google super-star and think that because it leads the market it must have to be the best and that’s how sheep follow sheep. This said, once you avoid Google Chrome and Microsoft edge (and all their services) you find alternatives, Firefox, Brave and perhaps not many more in the browser area.
I mean…. you sound like a fanboy saying that, maybe if you were unbiased and understood that Firefox is not the best, and the only way it is ‘pro privacy’ is by hardening yourself, which doesn’t fix web compatibility issues and doesn’t make features appear like proper profiles support or tab groups, well, then maybe your post wouldn’t be taken as just another nonsense from a fanboy.
There is a reason why Brendan Eich started Brave as a gecko and switched to blink with electron muon version until it became a pure chromium fork after a while. Brendan Eich, the founder and CTO for many years of your beloved Firefox, is not regretting the decision at all, in fact, he has said that Firefox is dying.
And let’s be honest, the only reason it still exists is Google’s money.
Iron Heart is right about the markershare, why is it declining if it is ‘better’? for example, https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity shows that in 4 years the Monthly Active Users been declined 70 million.
Now, MAU is like the worst statistics, since anyone in 30 days could have launched Firefox and it will count as a monthly user, and yet, they have still lost 70 million people, people who were using it frequently, not really new users, although they aren’t filling the gap.
So, why? why if it is the ‘best’, it has been losing so many MAU?
Plus, web compatibility, the reason why some websites don’t work properly in Firefox is because they don’t support CSS and other stuff that Chromium has added and devs want to take advantage of. like :has() selector, it is still in ‘experimental’, Chromium 118 added ‘scrollbar css’ property to easily modify it, but then, I doubt Firefox will add it any time soon, especially if it is still not in the Firefox Nightly already.
And the problem is they are always playing catch up or late in features like CSS that affect how websites are rendered.
Maybe you can stop being a fanboy and understand, also, Blink is better than Gecko, and Chromium with all its negatives will always be better than Firefox.
Firefox makes public it’s funding sources. Brave does not. It’s strange Firefox gets attacked for that, when it is very likely Brave also has a search engine deal with Google. But again, we don’t really know.
We know based on the ads displayed in the browser Brave took money from Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX and other sketchy crypto companies. We know they made money from adding affiliate links to cryptocurrency URLs. They also got some Big Tech venture capital money from Facebook execs, but other than that we can only speculate.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/8/21283769/brave-browser-affiliate-links-crypto-privacy-ceo-apology
https://community.brave.com/t/what-is-ftx-and-why-did-it-suddenly-show-up-on-my-browser-window/263542
“Brendan Eich started Brave as a gecko and switched to blink with electron muon version until it became a pure chromium fork after a while. Brendan Eich, the founder and CTO for many years”
In other words, Brendan Eich develops Gecko, gets butt hurt because he got fired, then says Gecko sucks, hoping nobody notices he was responsible for Gecko sucking.
Way to take personal responsibility.
Agreed brother StalinHat. The Firefox fanboys simply lack the ability to see the truth, Blink is better than Gecko, and Chromium will always be better than Firefox.
The Tor project uses Chromium over Gecko because Google’s Chromium is built from the ground up with privacy and security in mind. Google is known worldwide for their unquestionable commitment to privacy. Chromium has far less zero day exploits than Gecko, which is why you hardly see any articles on ghacks about Chromium vulnerabilities.
Gorhill, the developer of uBlock Origin has repeatedly praised Chromium as being superior in every way. That is why he recommends using his extension with Chromium based browsers. In fact he has stated the Brave ad blocker is better than uBlock, calling his own efforts limited in comparison.
As we all know, Google Chrome has by far the highest market share, which by anyone who has any sense of logic makes it the best browser.
@Brotherhood, just to argue one of your hazardous assertions:
> “Google is known worldwide for their unquestionable commitment to privacy.”
Is it? One of the latest Google’s “commitment to privacy” :
“Google Pays California $93 Million to Settle Privacy Lawsuit”
[https://uk.pcmag.com/security/148677/google-pays-california-93-million-to-settle-privacy-lawsuit]
“According to The California Department of Justice, Google was collecting, storing, and using location data for California customers for its advertising pursuits without the consent of the customers.
According to the complaint, Google was also collecting information about a customer’s location even when they had the location settings on the device turned off.
Google previously settled similar lawsuits in both Washington and Arizona.”
Quite a commitment. Let’s not forget Google Watchdog [https://www.googlewatchdog.com/] which reminds us that Google’s privacy deliberate intrusions is not recent news, it’s in the very core of the ad business company.
Don’t carry on with such nonsense :)
@Brotherhood, don’t carry on with such nonsense unless it was sarcastic which, given the amount of imagination in your comment, is likely. Never know nowadays.
@StalinHat “Blink is better than Gecko” no it’s not. stop being a delusional Google fanboy and Iron Shatter worshipper.
That’s why it’s market share is declining instead of increasing.
Quote from Iron Heart in 1997:
“Netscape had the last laugh in the prank, though. Company employees put their 12-foot
mascot — a green Godzilla-like foam creature dubbed “Mozilla” — on top of the “e”. Mozilla held a placard that read, Netscape 72, Microsoft 18,” referring to recent market share data.”
http://home.snafu.de/tilman/mozilla/stomps.html
People tend to flock to popular solutions, not the highest quality.
If everyone uses VHS -> they don’t use the superior Betamax
If everyone uses IE -> they use IE (instead of Netscape)
If everyone uses Chrome -> they use Chrome (instead of Firefox)
If everyone uses Windows -> they use Windows (instead of a Unixoid system)
Firefox is imho the generally far superior Browser, but it might not be so for less tech savvy users,who probably don’t even know how TLS or certificates work.
And of course: Chrome is in principle not a bad product at all. So if one doesn’t know what one is doing, it’s a quite good choice (at obviously far better than eg Edge (before it moved onto the Chrome platform)
The major problem of Mozilla is not the quality of their product, but that it’s primarily targeted at competent people (If one doesn’t know what one is doing, why the heck should one deviate from what the mass is doing ? That would be a risk). No wonder their market share declines. Another one is Brave, which targets a similar audience as Firefox, but uses Chrome as basis.
So does junk food compared to fine cuisine.
as long as they supply toothpicks I’m happy
@Tom Hawack
Junk food and fine cuisine aren’t the same price.
Firefox can be downloaded for free, so can Chrome, Edge, Brave, Vivaldi… any other browser. If it was so great, it at least wouldn’t decline.
@Iron Heart,
The idea is that it’s not because more people eat junk food than fine cuisine that the former is better than the latter.
The reason is another problem. Popularity has nothing to do with quality.
@Tom Hawack
Tom, I have just told you why the comparison doesn’t work. Firefox is not a luxury good, it’s available for free. If it was that good, its market share would at least not decline.
@Iron Heart, the teacher has spoken …
Facts : objective, i.e. Firefox’s market share is declining.
Causes : may be quality, may be price, may be fashion, trends, sheep attitude.
Quality : independent of Facts and Causes. Seems more than obvious.
> “If it was that good, its market share would at least not decline.”.
I disagree. Once again, a market share is relevant of the market, hence of people’s choices (in the best scenario). You may have an excellent product with no market share, and that’s what advertisement basically is meant for. You may as well have a product which has been so extensively marketed that it is legitimate to consider as plausible the hypothesis that people MAY go for it because of that.
I think we have to agree on what majority and minority mean, be it in marketing, be it in democracy : it means basically, in my view, that, given truth is not a science, people’s choice leads to a country’s political orientation and to a product’s success. This does not mean, has never meant that people have made the right choice (concerning the best for themselves, for the country where applicable), only that it is better, in a democratic approach, than dictatorship or, on the markets, to a lack of choice (imagine one and only one browser).
Perhaps may we recall Gandhi’s words in his “Letters to (the) Ashram” : “Truth waits for no votes” (approximately translated). Wat is truth? No idea, but I do know what it is not : that which would be because chosen by a majority.
Extending my comment [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/15/brave-browser-1-58-launches-with-aggressive-adblocking-on-youtube/#comment-4573804] …
I could have quoted Winston Churchill’s “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”
I could have emphasized that we do not vote according to the polls, do we? Maybe some do, change their minds fearing that if he/she they vote for loses (according to the polls) they’d consider having lost as well : vote for he/she the polls describe as the most likely to win an election? Maybe some do, in the same way some (many) of us choose a product, abandon another one, because that’s what others do. Snowball effect, again. It’s the story of marketing’s lives, bound to become if not already the story of political choices. OK : let’s stop asserting “this is the best” and replace it with “this is my choice” (myself included, ennthusiasm slipping but incoherent with what I truly believe).
“Freedom of thought (also called freedom of conscience) is the freedom of an individual to hold or consider a fact, viewpoint, or thought, independent of others’ viewpoints.” — [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_thought]
Gosh. Start a topic which carries you out … but either say nothing or develop to an acceptable extent, I guess.