It's still pretty fresh, so it's possible my opinion softens later, but right now I'm thinking it's appropriate to consider Chrome and Firefox pretty much equivalent on 'ethical' (or whatever you want to call it) grounds.

Google is far more of a concern than Mozilla, but at this point it feels like Chrome is out to get you less than Firefox is.

I nearly acted on my impulse to start switching everything over to Chrome. The only thing that saved Firefox here is the memory of some concerns about adblocking on Chrome in the future. I haven't looked into it much, so I don't know how significant of a concern that is. But functionally no adblock is worse than being forced to turn off user-hostile options, so, here I remain. I guess. For now.

But... Chrome does do this. They're just not labeled as ads.

Type the letter "K" (or any other single letter) into your Chrome search bar on a fresh profile and tell me what you see. Because I see an awful lot of "contextual suggestions" that are not really any different from ads.

https://imgur.com/a/baXZDrN

There's no way that's a decent no-history guess for what is intended.

But I do get the feeling that "Kahoot", a mobile game I've literally never heard of, isn't an organic result.

https://i.imgur.com/2uREs6u.png

I think it may be your own history popping up there.

Also, not really related, but from my experience, Kahoot is really popular in education. I bet at least 80% of my classmates in college have used it at least once. I am a bit surprised you never heard about it.

Mozilla is still dependent on Google for funding, so the situation is already bad.

There isn't.

I believe ads can exist if I consent to being shown them BEFOREHAND and alternatives, such as paying to opt-out completely are offered. The world is vast and changing with increasing velocity. I cannot keep up with all the possible tech products and services coming out even if I had a theoretically perfect RSS feed combined with other follows/subscriptions to content feeds. If a product is commercially successful to the point where they can afford to throw dollars at a probability of acquiring a new user, there's no fundamental reason why that behavior is necessarily bad/unwelcome. If I visit a news website, I want to be presented (before assaulted with ads) with a notice that provides me the option of paying for the content or seeing ads. Off the top of my head, spiegel.de follows this paradigm. A level further, and within reason for a downloaded/heavily-used/customizable software such as web browser is the opportunity to see ads that are relevant to my interests by affording me the option of indicating my interests to the platform before ads are shown and the ability to easily discriminate arbitrarily against a specific ad or categories related to any ad I don't like for any reason. If I don't like the ads a company shows me, even on the free version, they should not be repeated. If I don't want any category of ads that must be fine, but they company may opt to place a generic request for support of their corporation a-la-wikipedia funding request-- I am using their software for free, after all...

But to say there isn't exploring the full range of UX that can be afforded by modern software systems.

I say this as someone who is deeply disturbed by this latest update and will stop recommending FF as an alternative to chrome with superior privacy settings. Your reply just struck me as horribly defeatist. Ads are not leaving the web, but they _can_ be served with far better motives than they are currently.

I think you are right in saying that YouTubers make more money, but YouTube themselves might lose more by not showing ads.

At the very least, they should have made it opt-in rather than opt-out. I don't like them quietly sneaking a pre-enabled advertising option into the configuration options.

And they know it's a potential privacy issue, since all the address bar suggestion options are already under the "Privacy & Security" settings.