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Google Chrome’s plan to limit ad blocking extensions kicks off next week
(arstechnica.com)
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this post was submitted on 01 Jun 2024
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I wonder what would happen if µBlockOrigin was just pulled from the Chrome Webstore. Would that drive people to other browsers?
Anti Commercial-AI license
Some would switch, some would install another ad blocker extension, and some wouldn't know any better and do nothing.
Unfortunately, most people don't care all that much.
but there are some people who do care.
There's uBO Lite, which is an MV3 version so one step towards making adblockers less useful as Google planned.
Many people have said they have switched already and have said it works without issues (as far as they know). I'm sure there is a huge amount of sites and configs that didn't make it into the lite version, I guess we'll find out when a huge userbase refuses to migrate from chrome and installs the uBo-lite
37 million Chrome users have downloaded Ublock Origin (if that isn't including duplicate downloads/multiple accounts on one user).
5.3 billion people use the internet. 307 million in the U.S. as of 2022... what is that, 10% of Americans using Chrome using adblock? Less?
So max 37M users possibly willing to switch away from Chrome should it not be available anymore. Not nothing.
Anti Commercial-AI license
8.2% isn't nothing but I also wonder if it's worth anything to Google. That would bring Firefox from ~3.3% to 11.5% of the browser market share if everyone switched to non-chromium browsers.
I just wonder if that's enough for anything. It's better than nothing of course, and for those users that switch there's almost nothing but benefits, It's more just that I have doubts about the willingness of the general public caring enough, and if 10% of people will have an effect for Firefox or against Google
IMO ~+10%pt just provide Google with a thicker armor against antitrust lawsuits. "Hey hey hey, can't sue us! We have a competitor with ~15% of the market! And we helped them get there! Look at the 500 million we give them per year!".
If Mozilla wanted to be a threat to Google, IMO they could, but they'd rather pay their CEO 5M, fire a few hundred engineers, and spend a fraction of their Google money on Firefox.
Anti Commercial-AI license