<story><title>Google Just Gave 2B Chrome Users a Reason to Switch to Firefox</title><url>https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2019/05/30/google-just-gave-2-billion-chrome-users-a-reason-to-switch-to-firefox/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>_bxg1</author><text>It is worth noting that revamping the browser extension permissions model is something that should definitely be done. Browser extensions up until this point have been a massive security hole: they basically get read&amp;#x2F;write permissions on every web page you visit.&lt;p&gt;Of course, content blocking could&amp;#x27;ve been part of that new security model.&lt;p&gt;As Google tightens its grip, I wouldn&amp;#x27;t be surprised if someone starts a genuine fork of Chromium. Not just Chromium plus some extra stuff like Brave and Vivaldi, but a real, doesn&amp;#x27;t-rely-on-upstream-changes-fork. Microsoft seems like the most likely candidate for doing so.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ballenf</author><text>&amp;gt; Browser extensions up until this point have been a massive security hole&lt;p&gt;No, that&amp;#x27;s a very misleading use of the term &amp;quot;security hole&amp;quot;. By that definition, every piece of software on your computer is a &amp;quot;massive security&amp;quot; risk. Heck, even Chrome itself is a massive security hole since it can see the content of every page you visit.&lt;p&gt;I think it&amp;#x27;s worth reacting strongly to this argument because it&amp;#x27;s exactly the kind of statement that muddies the waters to convincing people that they shouldn&amp;#x27;t have the option of having full control of their own devices.&lt;p&gt;And I&amp;#x27;m not saying there haven&amp;#x27;t been huge security issues with extensions. Just as there have been massive issues with any manner of software downloaded and installed. But requiring them to be open source and needing explicit user approval before install (unlike in older IE versions) addressed those issues pretty well, imo.&lt;p&gt;Edit: I would like to see changes that make it easier to observe when an extension is active and&amp;#x2F;or communicating with third party servers and&amp;#x2F;or writing to local storage for later transmittal (if that&amp;#x27;s possible).</text></comment>
<story><title>Google Just Gave 2B Chrome Users a Reason to Switch to Firefox</title><url>https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2019/05/30/google-just-gave-2-billion-chrome-users-a-reason-to-switch-to-firefox/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>_bxg1</author><text>It is worth noting that revamping the browser extension permissions model is something that should definitely be done. Browser extensions up until this point have been a massive security hole: they basically get read&amp;#x2F;write permissions on every web page you visit.&lt;p&gt;Of course, content blocking could&amp;#x27;ve been part of that new security model.&lt;p&gt;As Google tightens its grip, I wouldn&amp;#x27;t be surprised if someone starts a genuine fork of Chromium. Not just Chromium plus some extra stuff like Brave and Vivaldi, but a real, doesn&amp;#x27;t-rely-on-upstream-changes-fork. Microsoft seems like the most likely candidate for doing so.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>SpicyLemonZest</author><text>Content blocking is definitely part of the new security model; they wrote a &amp;quot;declarativeNetRequest&amp;quot; API designed to enable content blocking. The debate is just over whether that API is sufficiently expressive.</text></comment>