Web Browsers and You

You probably use Google Chrome. If you don't, you are one of only 30% of users who have chosen something else, according to statcounter. The next-closest is Apple's Safari, and that is by a wide margin. The fact that most of user web traffic is served by Google Chrome grants Google a powerful monopoly over how you use the web.

In 2024, Google introduced something called Manifest V3. Without going into too much detail, this change to how extensions work has hamstrung many ad-blockers. See Ublock Origin's statement on it:

uBlock Origin relies heavily on the webRequest API to block unwanted content before it loads. Under MV3, the webRequest API is limited, and extensions are encouraged to use the new declarativeNetRequest API instead. This new API allows for predefined rules but lacks some of the dynamic capabilities that uBlock Origin utilizes for advanced content blocking.

In other words, Google has decided for you that you are not allowed to block advertisements and malicious content through the web browser that you run on your own hardware. If they are willing to exert this kind of control to force ads to your eyes, what else are they willing to do?

Well...

Why is this bad?

I will go into further detail in a later article, but as a primer:

Google is double-dipping. They collect data from you, and sell it to data brokers. This data is then used in Google Ads to advertise to you. Why would you care about that? Because advertisements work on you. You may think you are "immune to ads" - I used to think that too. However, this stems from a misconception as to how ads are supposed to work. It may seem counterintuitive, but the goal of an ad in 2025 is not to get you to click on the ad and buy the product. The goal of an ad is to lodge the company's name in your memory so that the next time you are looking for a new product in their field, you will recognize them. This recognition is then converted to trust in your brain, making you more likely to buy their product. I have noticed this in myself, and the same is probably happening to you too. Once you notice it, it's hard to un-notice.

On their Economic Impact website, Google proudly declares that businesses using Google Ads make $2 for every $1 spent on advertising.

Our first chief economist, Hal Varian, based his estimate of the economic value provided by Google Ads on observed cost-per-click activity across a large sample of our advertisers. Assuming advertisers are maximizing profits, Hal estimated the value enjoyed by advertisers is between 2 and 2.3 times their total expenditure on Google Ads. We use the lower end of the estimate to be conservative. To learn more, we recommend taking a look at Hal’s study.

Now, this may be in itself advertising language to get businesses to use Google Ads. The rest of the site certainly seems to be. However, the notion that more money spent on ads = more profit seems to be corroborated by the spending of the US's industries.

The fact that advertisement spending directly correlates to revenue pushes these companies to target their advertisement to be ever more specific to you. To this end, they purchase data about you from data vendors. These data vendors in turn collect their data from companies like Google. Google forces you to agree to lengthy, legalese terms and conditions in order to use their services. They profit off of this data that you sign away to sell to these data brokers.

In 2022, John Oliver did a segment on these data brokers. They know where you live. They know your purchases. They know who your kids are, and even how old they are.

You might think that this is relatively benign if all they are doing is trying to sell you toilet paper. But these data brokers will sell to anyone! Including ICE.

What to do?

Switching browsers and installing an adblocker won't save you by itself, but it's a good start.

Explore different web browser options. I recommend Waterfox. Waterfox is based on the classic you may remember, Firefox. However, Firefox has been adding more and more AI features lately, hence why i recommend Waterfox instead. Waterfox strips these unwanted AI features, and improves performance as a result. It also has an Andriod app!

Any Firefox-based browser will let you install the best ad-blocking extension out there: ✨ Ublock Origin ✨, on both your computer and your phone.

This extension is what singlehandedly makes most of the internet usable to me. It blocks YouTube ads, malicious trackers, and declutters all websites. I refuse to use the internet without it.

Switching web browsers is easy

Many of these smaller browser companies are hungry for users. Because of this, they have done everything they can to make it easy to switch. They will let you automatically migrate all your passwords and bookmarks seconds after installing. After that, the only minor inconvenience is that you will have to log in to a lot of your accounts again. But, just do it as you need them - it doesn't take too long, and I promise it's worth the effort.

What I mean when I say "Firefox-based"

Remember how I said above that Waterfox is "based on" Firefox? Well, without going into too much detail (as this website is not for techies), certain browsers can be "children" of other browsers, inheriting a lot of their traits. Waterfox is a child of Firefox - it is "its own person", so to speak, but it works in a lot of similar ways. Some browsers are Chromium-based. This means that they are children of Chromium, which is the broswer that Google made to build Google Chrome.

A small note about switching to a Firefox-based browser

Because of Google's aforementioned monopoly on web traffic, some web developers only focus on supporting Chrome. As such, on rare instances, websites will refuse to work on Firefox or Waterfox. I have to emphasize - this is very rare. However, for the rare cases in which this does happen, I keep around a Chromium-based browser as well. I have been using the very full-featured Vivaldi for this, but any browser based on Chromium will do.