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The story
On 5ch’s Newsspeed VIP board, a thread about choosing a browser took off. Posters noted that where people once stayed up all night arguing over the distinct merits of browsers like Opera and Firefox, nowadays extensions and other core features come standard in every browser, leaving little reason to bother switching. The conversation soon turned to frustration over Google Chrome tightening its restrictions on ad-blocking extensions, and eventually spiraled into a debate over the very definition of “freedom” on Google’s services.
What people said
Seems like there'd be more convenient options out there.
No real upside.
Back in the day you could add all kinds of functionality with add-ons, but now every browser already comes with that stuff built in.
It only had an edge back before Edge and Chrome even supported extensions — ancient history at this point.
Nope.
That's why the default Edge is fine.
The origin and the pinnacle, all in one.
You seem like the type who can't get anything done at work 😔
Isn't that just a hardware spec issue?
Not trying to troll, I genuinely don't see the benefit.
Is there something I'm missing?
There isn't.
That's why sticking with Edge is fine.
If something goes wrong, there's no use crying about it after the fact.
We used to stay up all night talking about Opera, Firefox, and Runa-tan (the mascot of the Lunascape browser), remember?
It's the world that changed.
We haven't.
That's because the internet has become "basically" nothing but a money-making space.
Well, doing anything takes money.
You wouldn't want to work for free either, would you?
Apple just stopped updating it without any warning.
Just switch to a Mac then.
Classic Google move — hard to imagine sticking with it much longer.
Well, of course.
They run on ad revenue.
And if you told people to pay up instead of seeing ads, you wouldn't pay either.
Re: #34
Anything that's stopped getting updates is dangerous.
If a new security hole turns up, there's nobody left to patch it.
Just have an AI build your extensions for you.
Some of the ones floating around out there aren't exactly trustworthy.
That's how bad ads have gotten online these days — both eyesores and genuinely dangerous.
Nah, don't worry, everyone's still using Chrome.
Re: #58
You're the one who brought up Re: #32.
The point is: the kind of freedom you're asking for doesn't exist.
Though I guess if "doing whatever the terms of service allow" counts as freedom, sure, it's freedom.
Is the Windows version of Safari actually dangerous?
Installing an ad blocker is the user's own choice, isn't it?
The point is Google's whole stance is about blocking and restricting that choice.
Don't get the wrong idea about "freedom."
Nobody said anything about freedom.
You're operating on top of Google's platform.
If you don't like it, just don't use Google.
Apple abandoned the Windows version back in 2012.
So what?
Re: #45
Right, so use something else.
As a basic principle, humans have freedom.
Google's cloud storage has its contents monitored, after all.
And there's also the option to use GPT instead of Gemini.
We're not stuck in an environment where you're forced to use only Google.
Then that means there is freedom of choice, doesn't it?
Your line — "don't get the wrong idea about freedom, nobody said anything about freedom" — doesn't hold up.
Sure, there's freedom the moment you step away from Chrome.
But whatever you pick next isn't guaranteed to offer that same freedom.
Background and Key Points
Google has shifted Chrome’s extension framework to “Manifest V3,” and starting in mid-2024 it began progressively disabling extensions built on the old spec (Manifest V2). This change has restricted how ad-blocking extensions like uBlock Origin behave, so the complaint in the thread that “ad-blocking has gotten harder” reflects something that’s genuinely happening. Meanwhile, Apple ended support for the Windows version of Safari back in 2012, and no updates have been released since the final version, 5.1.7. As posters point out, there are real risks to sticking with a browser that’s stopped receiving updates. The latter half of the thread spiraled into an abstract debate over “whether there’s freedom on Google’s platform,” but this reads less like a factual dispute and more like a circular argument stemming from posters using the word “freedom” differently — so this article omits the more meandering back-and-forth from the tail end of the thread.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Newsspeed VIP) thread “The Age of Chrome’s Total Dominance Is Over Too.”
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