But privacy
First they came for browser plugins (NPAPI), then the browser extension system in Firefox (XUL), then WebExtensions v1, and now it seems that v2 will be taken behind the barn for its final earth-bound performance.
What irks me the most about these developments is how much it assumes that browser users are either morons or sheep (or both). While it's definitely true that by making APIs more powerful they also comes with more responsibility, there are in fact a lot of endusers who are not complete morons.
Most of us survived the days with NPAPI-based plugins and even ActiveX-based plugins without as much as a scratch. And then there were those who managed to install every useless plugin that came with a CD in the mail. These same people will happily find other ways to have their system used in botnets and their personal data exploited. Often by filling in phishing forms and other forms of social engineering.
Fact of the matter is that none of this is about protecting user privacy, or protecting them. This is only about restricting what a user (slash sheep slash victim) is allowed to do, and with it developers.
If Google truly gave a damn about security and privacy, they'd take a good hard look at the security flaws in their JavaScript engine that allows for such fun things like snooping on other browser tabs or even outright escape the JS 'sandbox' (more of a sieve these days). Who even trusts running random JS from the Web on their system these days? You'd have to be an idiot or blissfully ignorant to allow that.
Part of me is happy that there are NPAPI & XUL-enabled alternatives to Chrome (and modern Firefox), in the form of browsers like Pale Moon, Basilisk and kin. If I'm going to be shooting myself in the foot, I want to be the one who chose to do it through my own idiocy and not because of someone else's poor judgement.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
