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There’s only 34 million uBlock Origin users on Chrome? So, billions are using Chrome without any ad-blockers? That’s crazy and unsafe
Most users are fucking idiots and will continue to raw-dog the internet while visiting the most malicious sites possible.
I feel like you’ve worked helpdesk at some point.
Worked IT. Can confirm.
Yes. Unfortunately. “a virus? How did I get that? What’s an anti-virus? You must be wrong, I just do a little bit of web browsing and downloading music.” (this was in the windows xp days that I’m specifically flashing back to)
Lemmy has a really biased idea of what the average computer user can do. Imagine Janet in accounting, who calls help desk to reset her password every morning, and takes 30 minutes to remember how to check her email. Or the late GenZ just entering the workforce, who was surprised that their desktop wasn’t a touchscreen, and doesn’t know how a file structure works, because literally every device they’ve used growing up has been either a tablet or a Chromebook. That’s the average user.
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A lot of them don’t know the difference between ab, abp ublock and ublock origin
There are also loads of people using Edge.
There are billions of people on earth who don’t have access to a computer.
My boss once asked me to take a look at her computer that was super slow and barely functional, and the thing that surprised me the most was that she had been running Chrome without any adblock since ever, and when I asked her about adblock, she answered: “adwhat?”. Mind you that she’s still a millennial, and only a few years older than me.
I had to use my parents desktop a when I flew home for a bit.
Surfing the internet is fucking stressful if you don’t have adblocks. So overstimulating!!
I’m also on windows and for some reason I had to use Edge.
The Edge home screen is the VERY REASON google killed it back in the 90s. Clean clear search screen. Allows you to think what you are doing with out getting bombarded with ads and posts and ads and markets. Reminded me how terrible the search experience was back in Alta Vista and Yahoo days
I’m in the process of switching to firefox on all my devices.
I’ve had enough of Google pushing features like this.
I switched from Chrome to Firefox in 2019 because that’s when Google adopted Manifest V3 and I never looked back. There were already articles then describing how it’d break ad blockers, and Firefox had at the time just recently released their “Quantum” overhaul which drastically improved responsiveness.
I’m a bit surprised it took five years for Google to drop support for Manifest V2, but the threat has long been there.
I remember the Quantum release. They remade how the browser handled tabs, and with the new release you could handle (almost) unlimited number of tabs. I tried this buy opening as many tabs as I could, it worked flawlessly. I can’t even remember how it was before that, except that it was RAM intensive.
I use Firefox as my main on my home pc. I keep running into things that don’t work on Firefox. Not by saying they don’t, just by throwing errors that make it sound like I put the wrong data in a field. Is there some magic extension to fix that?
Having ublock on mobile is such a breath of fresh air. I wish I had made the transition sooner. I knew this was coming and completed my transition a few weeks back so I could abandon Chrome on my own time table and not on Google’s. Other than a little headache trying to find extension replacements for pc, I’m LOVING it.
Meh. They had plenty of time to move to Firefox but they ignored all the warnings.
And I mean, there’s still time now. Switching browsers isn’t that bad. Export+import some bookmarks and adjust some settings, good to go.
I think FF has been a good option for a while. But the second best time is now. I can totally get it if people didn’t want to switch until they had more of a concrete problem.
FF still hasn’t brought back a tab group API for extensions or native tab groups. Extensions can only do so much given what they have to work with. I still use FF on the side, but it simply isn’t a practical as a primary browser for me currently.
But for casual users, many probably have never even touched their browser settings.
Understandable, I’m really looking forward to FF getting tab groups too. I don’t know why such a nice feature was left unimplemented for so long. 🫤
Tab groups are coming but in the mean time containers work well enough for me with the added benefit that they’ll also block tracking from the sites that are within them.
For all the firefox fans out there it might be good to note there have consistently been more Safari users than Firefox users since 2014. Hell Safari has been the number two browser by market share since 2015.
Browsers have to get very SHITTY or a new browser has to have a killer app to unseat a dominate one.
https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share#monthly-200901-202408
Almost like being the default gives you an unfair advantage or something.
I don’t think safari is even remotely comparable given that it’s a default browser on macs.
Also, I’m pretty sure it’s not possible to install any other browser on iPhones unless you get root.
Edit: It looks like you can with iOS 15.0
As I understand it, any browser on iPhone has to be built on WebKit, so even if you install fire fox or chrome, it’s running on a totally different web engine than the desktop version. Making them more safari re-skins in the same way that stuff like brave or opera are just chrome reskins.
Those are all just skins on safari. Until like 6 months ago you couldn’t install any web browser with a renderer other than safari. And that’s only in the EU.
I’ve had iPhone for years and I can’t remember the last time I didn’t use chrome with it
Never rooted my phones either. It’s definitely not blocked
How so ? The default browser on Windows is Edge, people keep installing Chrome? Chrome is available on MacOS, yet people stick with Safari?
some people stick with safari, but no one is replacing chrome, fire fox, or edge with safari. People choose to replace edge because it is obtrusive and annoying to use, safari isn’t.
In that context, safari is not a competitor for Firefox in the same way chrome is. It’s comparing apples to oranges.
It’s not like they contracted some sort of terminal illness. Anyone can migrate whenever. It’s not hard.
My organization has blocked all browsers other than Edge and Chrome - and has also blocked all plugins except for UBlock. For security reasons, of course.
Everyone knows seeing a bunch of uncontrolled JavaScript-powered ads from who knows what server is good for security.
I believe that some organizations restrict what applications can be installed on work computers, so that might not necessarily be true, at least for work machines.
if they’re restricting apps to that degree you probably can’t install extensions anyway.
One more vector of malware for these corporate systems. Sucks for them I suppose.
Used Chrome forever, switched to Firefox back when this stuff first started going down. No ragerts.
No Rugrats!
I just listened to a rugrats song yesterday though.
Which one?
You’re a friend to me.
Firefox downloads a spike by 30 million. Will be the next headline.
Although searches for Firefox only ticked up slightly.
Followed by shocked pikachu face.
One would hope but nothing much will change in reality.
This headline is premature. They haven’t pulled the plug yet. I still have Chrome installed, fully updated, and all the extensions are still there.
and also ublock origin lite is still in the app store and works fine.
I glanced at it and from a quick look I didn’t see any way of adding custom blocklists.
uBlock Origin Lite is a Manifest v3 compatible extension and was intended to be the successor of uBlock Origin on Chromium based browsers.
However, it is not at feature parity(and will likely never be due to restrictions in Manifest v3). One restriction is no element picking on websites and then adding them to custom filters.
but for 90% of people, it’ll be fine
Which is pretty crazy because I believe that’s about to be a built-in feature of a new Safari update.
I’m using brave so who cares…
Wasn’t it revealed a while ago that Brave was just a big crypto scam?
Also, it’s chromium so… You’re getting V3 eventually.
Wasn’t it revealed a while ago that Brave was just a big crypto scam?
Revealed by who? Where? Brave definitely has some unsavoury connections to cryptocurrency but calling the entire project “just a big crypto scam” sounds like a massive exaggeration of the problem.
Brave was found to be injecting their affiliate links for crypto.
https://blog.drhack.net/brave-browser-injecting-crypto-referrals/
https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/8/21283769/brave-browser-affiliate-links-crypto-privacy-ceo-apology
Yes, that’s what I was referring to. A very far cry from “just a big crypto scam”.
IDK why you waste time explaining these kind of things to these kind of people mate, I mean someone who define that as a “big crypto scam” doesn’t even know what’s a big crypto scam.
-
pushing crypto on users
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injecting crypto affiliate links
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installing other Brave software without permission on your PC when you install their browser
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an obscenely high marketing budget that misled people about data collection on Brave
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a CEO that was fired from Mozilla for being openly homophobic and donating money to a campaign that wanted to undo the legalisation of same-sex marriage (although some users may view this as a good thing)
-
I have years using it and I have never been crypto scammed for it, about the V3 I truly don’t know apparently you will still be able to turn on some V2 extensions like ublock origin but I didn’t see the point of it if the browser include a good adblocker anyway.
Same. The adblocker in Brave is great, its been ages since I ditched uBo and I’ve still to see a single ad. Built-in adblockers are good, because Google has no power there. Firefox, instead, its still a thing exclusively because of uBO i.e., the work of an external, unpaid developer. The say uBO disappears, is the day FF dies. Mozilla is so busy wasting time and money on unrelated stuff and huge CEO paychechs that they have had no the time to add and inbuilt advlocker to FF, which instead has useless crap such as Pockets and an opt-out ad-measurement tool which nobody asked for.
I’ve used Librewolf since the first time Google announced these kinda plans I’m thinking it must be at least 3 years now.
Theres tons of options Librewolf is overkill to be honest Firefox would be fine.
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“intrusive ads” are the least of the problems, an adblocker is a critical part of any computer’s security suite.
The internet advertisement companies wont police their ads from maleware, and untill they accept criminal and financial responsibillity when their ads cause harm to the users being served compromised ads from their networks, I won’t even consider disabling my adblocker
as long as data caps exist anywhere on the planet all internet advertisement is theft.
I see your point but disagree with your hard take.
In case anyone here needs this
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/switching-chrome-firefox
Is ublock origin still operable for YouTube? Could this be related?
So … can we like finally dismiss Google Chrome as the obviously awful idea it is and which should never have made it this far and remind all of the web devs married to it that they’re doing bad things and are the reason why we can’t have nice things?
Hmmm … a web browser owned by a monopolistic advertising company … how could that possibly go wrong!!!
Do you remember the Internet Explorer days? This, unfortunately, is still much better.
Pretty good reason to switch the Firefox, now. Nearly everything will work, unlike the Internet Explorer days.
- Firefox User
Stallman was right.
I can’t listen or look at this man anymore after seeing him scrape shit off his feet and eat it in front of a bunch of people. 🤢
He has went on record multiple times saying having sex with children (even within the family) or family pets is fine. Eating his foot gunk is the least of my issues with him.
That said, when it comes to warning about software, he was pretty bang-on.
How is it that you’re so well-versed in all of Stallman’s negative quotes (from over a decade ago), yet conveniently omitted the fact that he later retracted those statements?
On September 16, 2019, Stallman announced his resignation from both MIT and FSF, “due to pressure on MIT and me over a series of misunderstandings and mischaracterizations”.[124] In a post on his website, Stallman asserted that his posts to the email lists were not to defend Epstein, stating "Nothing could be further from the truth. I’ve called him a ‘serial rapist’, and said he deserved to be imprisoned. But many people now believe I defended him—and other inaccurate claims—and feel a real hurt because of what they believe I said.
The FSF board on April 12 made a statement re-affirming its decision to bring back Richard Stallman.[133] Following this, Stallman issued a statement explaining his poor social skills and apologizing.[134]
You mean when he had an epiphany and changed his mind 2 days after his job became under fire?
Gee, I dunno. Maybe because it was a clear last-ditch effort to save his job, rather than because he genuinely went from his decades-held (and publicly-championed) view that sex with children is ok to sex with children is rape, by sheer coincidence, 2 days after people started requesting he step down over Epstein comments?
It was about as convincing a statement from Stallman as when Zuckerberg says he cares about privacy.
Do you genuinely believe him when he says he changed his mind? It’s an awfully convenient timing, even you would have to admit.
And can I also ask - are you only looking favourably at him because you like him? If Andrew Tate, just before his court case, came out and said that his views on women are wrong and he doesn’t believe that stuff anymore, would you believe him? It seems to me that you’re likely sweeping Stallman being pro-childrape under the rug, because he happens to have cool ideals when it comes to software.
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Those issues are ones that it’s hard to just walk back with a mea culpa, especially when the apology comes precisely when it starts to impact your career.
Stallman spends decades publicly-championing adult-child sexual relations on his personal blog and using his work email address.
Stallman later comes under fire for strange comments about Epstein’s underage girls/clients. Some people say he should step down, as his poor image jeopardises the effectiveness of the FSF.
2 days later, Stallman has a sudden change of heart. Child/adult sexual relations are wrong. Children can’t consent.
Some Linux nerds: “see, he’s changed his mind, he’s a different man!”
Maybe I’m overly pessimistic, but to me the timing of his epiphany seems rather convenient.
How ready people are to treat celebrities as deity-like figures is scary to me. Just because Stallman has some great FOSS credentials doesn’t mean he can’t be a total POS in other areas. People bend over backwards to defend him as some saint who can do no wrong, even to the extent of trivialising child rape. It’s scary what a bit of celebrity worship can get people to do.
Post the link to him saying that having sex with children is okay
It’s pretty well-known at this point, I thought? Regardless:
“The nominee is quoted as saying that if the choice of a sexual partner were protected by the Constitution, ‘prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia’ also would be. He is probably mistaken, legally–but that is unfortunate. All of these acts should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness.”
RMS on June 28th, 2003
"I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren’t voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing. "
RMS on June 5th, 2006
"There is little evidence to justify the widespread assumption that willing participation in pedophilia hurts children.
RMS on Jan 4th, 2013
You can find these on Stallman’s blog, which I believe is Stallman.org iirc. Just go to the dates I provided.
Yeah, necrophilia is fine as long as both parties are consenting.
When one of the parties objects, that is when the fun starts :D
I cannot find any of this on his blog, why didn’t you just link to his blog?
I did link to his blog… It’s stallman.org
I said from there you can go to the dates I provided.
I don’t wish to be rude, but do you really need this hand-holding? It took me less than 10 seconds to find a specific link to the first quote, for example:
https://stallman.org/archives/2003-mar-jun.html
Did you really look?
Stallman being pro-paedophila is not new information.
You pasted the domain not an actual blog post link. And you’re the one making these claims about him on a forum, does it really surprise you when someone asks for the source? Sorry you had to google something.
Too bad he spent all his energy getting Linux users to say GNU/Linux instead of talking about the real issues
Just because that’s all you ever listened to doesn’t mean that’s all he ever said.
It’s pronounced GNU Stallman.
who
It’s a very searchable name
We should all probably start donating to Firefox. Isn’t Google their main source of income?
There might come a time when they prefer to gut Firefox, forcing Mozilla to either reject uBlock Origin or die (or they could simply pull the plug on funding knowing they’ll earn more when people go back to Chrome-based browsers)
If they can pay 5-8 milion the CEO while laying off employees, they do not need donations.
Screw the mozilla foundation. My only hope at this point is that Ladybird or one of the other projects produces something viable one of these days.
Mozilla still does pretty good without any donations, and your donations will most definitely not be spent on Firefox.
Mozilla still does pretty good without any donations
because Google pays them so that they keep offering Google as the default search engine. now that Google has been declared a monopoly, they might not be allowed to do that anymore, which means Mozilla loses its funding.
Mozilla’s funding did mostly consist of the Google partnership (86%), but as you can see, it’s not their only source of income. And you really don’t need half a fucking billion just to develop a web browser, which is open source, which also gets community contributions. This is made pretty obvious by their current revenue (>$1,000,000,000) and their CEO’s whopping $5.6 million salary.
Don’t donate to a shitty for-profit that masks itself with their non-profit company. Instead donate to something like Ladybird, whom are currently in early development but have no plans on adding features that actively spy on you (FakeSpot, Pocket), and they don’t need $500 fucking million to develop a web browser.
And if you’re going to talk about Mozilla’s social work, just don’t. I’ve already seen it.
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You have zero idea how much engineering it takes to create a standards compliant engine and then maintain it. “And you don’t need half a fucking billion just to develop a web browser”. Technically this is true if you are willing to use someone else’s web engine. Firefox aren’t doing that, and it requires huge investment to maintain their own engine. There is a reason only large companies these days (Apple, Google, Mozilla) have their own engines. The actual browser part is tiny compared to the engine. We are talking about something the size of the Linux kernel or bigger, that gets far less contributions from outside sources. It actually makes perfect sense they are looking at starting other projects when you think that all other companies that do this kind of work need those other projects to remain profitable. Web engine development from my understanding does not pay. You get almost the same amount of money using somebody else’s engine as you do developing your own, yet one costs way more.
The fact Mozilla manages to maintain a better web engine than Apple’s WebKit only from Google’s advertising money is actually incredible. Did I mention Apple didn’t even start that engine themselves? It’s based on KHTML. Chrome is in turn a WebKit derivative. Firefox on the other hand actually comes from Netscape, and was first developed under the name Mozilla based on Netscape’s code. So Mozilla has put in more work than Google in modernising their engine.
Thank you. Yes, they are also developing their own web engine, which is a very complicated piece of software because of the current sad state of the web. But it doesn’t excuse any of the things I mentioned, and web engine development still doesn’t suckle up that much money as we can see from their current revenue and other efforts to make an independent web engine such as Ladybird.
I do not mind Mozilla starting other projects, but if you’re talking about FakeSpot or Pocket which are getting integrated into the “more private alternative to browsers like Internet Explorer, and now Chrome” by the “non-profit” whom “prioritize people and their privacy over profits”, I think you need to take a look at those privacy policies I linked in my previous comment.
I agree with you on your last paragraph, but there are some things I’m bothered with. Mozilla is (or was) a company that focused on one thing, their web browser. Apple and Google are (and were) different, in that they have a vast range of products to maintain. And Gecko is most definitely inferior to Blink in terms of speed, although I’m not familiar with any of their “modernity”.
I’ve read the one for fakespot. Given what it’s designed to do then having your purchase history makes perfect sense. How else are they meant to make recommendations? If you really have a problem just don’t use that service. The only real criticism here is the name doesn’t imply they also make product recommendations. Nevertheless they explain that on the website.
I have skimmed the pocket one, and as far as I can tell they aren’t doing anything dodgy. Keeping information only to provide the service, and some anonymised analytics to see how it’s actually being used. The later is needed to direct development effort.
In summary: Not everyone is out to get you. Some information is needed to provide services.
Edit: sorry for there different comments, wanted to come back and do more research before I finished making a statement.
Yeah, no problem at all. This is a lot better than people downvoting and not actually talking about what they disagree on. Felt like r/apple.
Reading it again, Pocket’s privacy policy is actually not that bad. Thankfully it was not one of those 100 page ones that are made to confuse the shit out of consumers, but I have a slight problem with it.
“Personalized Advertising: Some Pocket web pages have ads. With your consent, Pocket’s ad partners will place advertising cookies on your device to personalize the ads you see here and on other websites.”
How does this consent exactly work? Is it just a simple check you have to tick in your account settings, or is it one of those cookie banners that require you to untick 800 advertising partners to “not give consent”? I’m not exactly a Pocket user so I’m a bit ignorant about it.
Though there doesn’t seem to be another privacy concern with Pocket. It seems I had misconceptions about their practices.
The one other problem I have with Pocket though is, it’s not a feature that should be in a browser, it should be an extension. They have already made a lot of extensions for features that not all of the userbase might need, even FakeSpot is currently an extension (approximately 40,000 users). I guess this is a whole another argument though.
I will write my thoughts about FakeSpot in another reply.
Okay, what does a sweepstake or a contest have to do with a browser extension, made to spot fake reviews. Trade shows? What?
I did take a look at this privacy policy before to check if the extension was worth installing, but holy fuck I didn’t see that.
And they collect a lot of things, supposedly “automatically”. I have never developed a browser extension, but does the browser force this information on the extension? Do they just look at their data collection and find the geolocation of their users, how they accessed the extension download page, browser specifics etc.?
They also sell your “automatically collected” geolocation data, “internet or other electronic network activity”, “inferences drawn from other personal information to create a profile about a consumer”, and “commercial information”. I’ve quoted the three data selling points I really don’t understand, since their “descriptions” aren’t very descriptive. But if we are to fully trust the lawful descriptions they provided, I hope the extension stays at 40,000 users really.
other efforts to make an independent web engine such as Ladybird.
Notice the word efforts here. No one has actually succeeded yet despite multiple attempts, some even by Mozilla themselves like Servo. Ladybird is not a fully functioning browser yet. Are they anywhere even close yet? Even if they are close it also has to be fast. Google and Mozilla have spent quite a bit of time, money, and effort making their JavaScript engines as fast as possible.
I will have a look at some of the links you have given, but honestly I think most criticism thrown at Mozilla isn’t anything close to what the alternatives are guilty of, and is mostly done by conspiracy nuts. The kind of people were Mastodon and Lemmy is their only social media, and refuse to own a modern smartphone that isn’t running custom firmware.
Ladybird is fairly new. Just like how Mozilla didn’t get Gecko to this point in 1 year, Ladybird will take years of development to become a reliable browser and browser engine.
I pretty much agree with you. The alternatives are far worse. Seeing Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge being literal spyware, other Chromium-based browsers cutting out support for content-blocking extensions Firefox is vastly superior to them in terms of privacy. Although that still doesn’t mean Firefox is good, at least if we’re past talking about web browser engines etc., using another Firefox-based browser which is less bloated (Firefox Sync off by default, no Pocket, no recommendations in Addons tab), more privacy-friendly (all telemetry off by default, uBlock Origin installed by default, some hardening options from about:config enabled by default) seems to be the best choice currently, since other options like GNOME’s Epiphany and KDE’s Falkon sucks, if we’re being honest.
And I do kind of fit your description, if we exclude being a conspiracy-theorist.
Oh also the devs behind Ladybrid are apparently against anyone who isn’t male using their technology. People tried to change masculine pronouns in the documentation to neutral pronouns just to be more grammatically accurate, and it started a whole chain of GitHub arguments arguing the change is “political”. Apparently it’s political not to imply that every computer user is a man.
There are many software from bigots and shitheads that still get used, being seperated from their creator (e.g. Hyprland, I guess you can put here some social media platforms like Xitter if we’re not only talking about open-source software). Although I prefer not using or supporting such software, I’ve not been able to find what you’re talking about. I’ve tried searching “ladybird pronoun controversy (forgive my search engine skills)” and other similar sentences but nothing really related pops up, so it would be great if you told me your source. Thank you!
This is what drives me mad about Mozilla. Let me donate to Firefox! I don’t want to donate to another hairbrained idea to “diversify your revenue streams” - I want to donate to Firefox.
As I’ve said many times before, Firefox would be better off as an opencollective-driven, smaller (50-ish) team, with code on Codeberg, than driven by a 600 strong org who needs to compete with SF salaries and fancy offices. They have become Google by another name and it ain’t healthy.
Your money is honestly better spent donating to new efforts like Ladybird or Servo.
Is Servo independent of Mozilla now? It’s instructive how much they swayed when Mozilla cut them away, but seems they’ve found a new team to steward it.
Ladybird I hadn’t heard of so thank you for the suggestion. I’ll check them out.
I really couldn’t agree more.
I actually think it’s a good thing they are seeking other income sources. After all Google is both their competitor and main income source while being under investigation by the government. Firefox barely manages to keep up with Chrome as-is. Nevermind if they had a team a fraction of its current size. It’s just not really practical for a project this size and scope to have a small plucky team. It needs a big organisation of some kind behind it. Ideally one like Google or Microsoft who can pull income from more profitable projects to pay for better browser engineering. It’s also needed so they can have a say in web standards. An organisation like that also has more ways to make money from their browser like with ChromeOS and Android. Firefox actually tried to make their own smartphone OS, to be honest I am annoyed they didn’t succeed. It would have given us a real alternative to Android while giving them needed income.
I like LibreWolf! But while they may be the natural successor to a folded Firefox, they would need to beef up dramatically to actually be the stewards of the codebase. Right now they do a good job at removing stuff, but setting a direction for a browser that zings with users requires a fully fledged product org.
Firefox is caught between those two worlds.
Fair take. I agree 👍
Possibly when the US government decides to break Google up next week.
You’re absolutely right, ~80% of Mozilla’s revenue is from Google’s paying to be the default search engine in Firefox - and the US is going after Google for it’s anticompetitive behaviors as we speak. Ad blocking aside, Mozilla is going to need help pretty soon anyways if Google gets their monopoly broken up.
