maybe just dont use google
this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2024
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Privacy
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Yeah but it's more complicated than that. Do you think the average user that for some reason uses Firefox will try to find out why his Google page isn't working? Last year Google was fined €2.5b due to unfair competition. This is not the first time, Google probably makes a lot of people switch doing these things. The top post of Lemmy is about Google turning itself into spyware and this just shows just how thats accurate.
I honestly think more people are willing to switch than you think
I think the average Firefox user won't be using anything Google (other than YouTube, but even then it'll probably be through alternative frontends).
Google is literally the default firefox search engine.
I think the average Firefox user is smart enough to change the search engine... And disable Mozilla's telemetry... And just not use stock Firefox...
That is wildly optimistic
All of the people I convinced to make the switch would agree with you
Why would I disable Mozilla's telemetry though?
Because it is a privacy issue. Turning it off won't turn off all telemetry though. You need to get into the weeds or use librewolf.
Also make sure you turn off "experiments", enable scrict mode, I stall ublock origin, and change the search engine.
How is it a privacy issue? Reading their information page on telemetry data, they don't collect personal data except for temporary collection of the IP address, which gets deleted every 14 days. Do they collect more than they claim?
There information page will just tell you what you want to here. Look at Firefoxs network access and you should see it still try to reach out.
While your statement is true, I install Firefox on any computer I support (family & friends) because I understand it better, can talk them through stuff on the phone and so I can install an ad blocker and not.have to deal with all of that. So now I need to explain to family and friends that Google is to blame, but they don't care and ask me to install "the normal browser". Ugh.
Also, I now have to deal with the Google-heads at work using this as an example of how chrome is the superior browser. Double ugh.
Completely, if op really needs to maybe use whoogle or startpage (there is some debate on if they are private or not since they were bought by system1, more info about it https://restoreprivacy.com/startpage-system1-privacy-one-group/ )
I use startpage and according to privacy guides its private
wouldnt really trust them tbh. There are lots of better alternatives
I don't wanna use duckduck go and don't trust random searx instances, so I feel stuck with startpage
Is this still true? I just tested and it works for me on LibreWolf, both for google.com and google.com.br.
Honestly, Google doing this as a deliberate anti-Firefox measure seems so wildly stupid and counterproductive on their part that I'd assume it was some failure (serving a slightly different version of the page to Chrome as for other browsers, and the non-Chrome side breaks for some reason) before thinking it was malicious.
oops, you discovered a bug that only effects Firefox because we only test in Chrome. It's fixed now :P
Yep, with Mull 121.0.0 i got a blank page.
Confirming: me too
What's the user-agent? I'm curious now.
Nothing special, Mozilla/5.0 (Android 10; Mobile; rv:121.0) Gecko/121.0 Firefox/121.0.
I checked the network tab, they literally return nothing.
Mozilla/5.0 (Android 10; Mobile; rv:121.0) Gecko/121.0 Firefox/121.0.
I just did a bunch of testing. The issue is that final version number, "Firefox/121.0". Google returns very different versions of the page based on what browser you claim to be, and if you're on mobile Firefox, it gives you different mobile versions depending on your version:
% wget -O - -nv -U 'Mozilla/5.0 (Android 10; Mobile; rv:62.0) Gecko/121.0 Firefox/41.0' https://www.google.com/ | wc -c
2024-01-08 15:54:29 URL:https://www.google.com/ [1985] -> "-" [1]
1985
% wget -O - -nv -U 'Mozilla/5.0 (Android 10; Mobile; rv:62.0) Gecko/121.0 Firefox/62.0' https://www.google.com/ | wc -c
2024-01-08 15:54:36 URL:https://www.google.com/ [211455] -> "-" [1]
211455
% wget -O - -nv -U 'Mozilla/5.0 (Android 10; Mobile; rv:62.0) Gecko/121.0 Firefox/80.0' https://www.google.com/ | wc -c
2024-01-08 15:52:24 URL:https://www.google.com/ [15] -> "-" [1]
15
% wget -O - -nv -U 'Mozilla/5.0 (Android 10; Mobile; rv:62.0) Gecko/121.0 Firefox/121.0' https://www.google.com/ | wc -c
2024-01-08 15:52:04 URL:https://www.google.com/ [15] -> "-" [1]
15
If you're an early version of Firefox, it gives you a simple page. If you're a later version of Firefox, it gives you a lot more complete version of the page. If you're claiming to be a specific version of mobile Firefox, but the version you're claiming (edit: oopsie ~~doesn't exist or even really make sense~~ didn't exist when they set this logic up or something), it gets confused and gives you nothing. You could argue that it should default to some sensible mobile version in this case, and they should definitely fix it, but it seems to me like it's clearly not malicious.
Edit: Wait, I am wrong. I didn't realize Firefox's version numbers went up so high. It looks like the cutoff for where the blank pages start coming is at version 65, which is like 2012 era, so not real old at all. I still maintain that it's probably accidental but it looks like it affects basically all modern mobile Firefoxes, yes.
Given that it's like third accidental bug in google services that affects only Firefox in the last month I hear about, I'm starting to get suspicious.
Thanks for the tests. They make the information more reliable since I had extensions turned on.
LibreWolf is a desktop browser, Mull is a mobile browser. Firefox for Android has the same issue while desktop Firefox does not, so I assume that's where the problem is.
Something something anti-trust?
Unlikely
Heh. I was skeptical this was true fired up mull and sure enough still displaying nothing.
It loads googles consent page for me. I got a blank page at first but I had to temporarily allow google connections in ublock origin to get it to load
Huh, interesting, I'd initially assume it's an issue with the extra privacy stuff mull adds, but that wouldn't be resolved by switching user agents
Duck.com
Much better results and faster
Since a few months ago I get so many AI generated blog articles as top results with ddg (a lot with google as well, but less so)
DDG is just a Bing frontend. Using SearXNG is mostly better since you can get results from multiple sources.
I think they use some yahoo data too and some of their own crawlers.
Results are not always the same in bing and DDG especia
I have a really hard time getting good local/region specific results for products, I mostly get US or UK results which are utterly useless to me since I'm not located either places. I've tried all sorts of shenanigans to limit the search to my area/country but it's not really effective.
Nice feature
And so it begins.
I noticed this today, too. I didnft know how long it'd been going on, since I haven't tried to visit a Google page in a couple of weeks.
Thank goodness for SearX. This will also absolutely drive up the amount I visit Bing.
Yeah, that is sus...I just use !bang in duckduckgo though, and I get results even with Noscript and Ublock on...
!g some search
Works in Mull...but yeah google.com shows blank even with extensions turned off. Meh, I haven't been on Google in a long while now. Too many decent altermatives to care.
yep, it straight up doesn't load, what a shitshow
I was wondering why I was getting a blank screen earlier
Fennec still works without, even with privacy settings maxed out.