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> Instead they're just slightly tipping the scales in favour of site developers. Ad-blockers wouldn't be made impossible with this change, they'd just be made l

> Instead they're just slightly tipping the scales in favour of site developers. Ad-blockers wouldn't be made impossible with this change, they'd just be made less accurate and reliable. This doesn't make a lot of sense to me. It's the camel's nose under the tent (or the boiling frog). Abolishing all ad-blocking extensions would cause many folks to migrate away from Chrome, so they probably see a more effective strategy in incrementally neutering these extensions at a rate that reduces peak outrage. "What is something we can take away that ad blocking tech relies on?" Today it's an API change, in a few months it'll be some other measure.

xg15 7y ago
Yeah, you could imagine some strategy where they modify the API to make adblockers appear progressively more annoying and unreliable to end users, so that eventually, the public perception of them changes. However, this seems a bit like a Xanathos Gambit to me. There are a lot of things that could make this plan fail. It starts with the current backlash of the adblocker devs themselves: They could simply choose to boycott Chrome instead of damaging their reputation. Even if they don't, so far you still have competition to Chrome so differences can be observed: If adblockers perform significantly worse on Chrome than they do on Firefox, it's apparent even for non-technical users that the browser is somehow a factor in this. I agree though, just making a change to web store policy (e.g. disallowing all adblockers) probably wouldn't have cut it - that would risk triggering a Streisand effect where everyone tries to smuggle adblockers back into the store using all kinds of rule-bending. So a technical restriction would probably be needed from their point of view. To be honest (warning, tinfoil hats ahead), I wouldn't be surprised if a long-term goal for Google is to abolish browser extensions altogether. Philosophy-wise, extensions seem completely at odds with Google's vision how the web should behave and how user experiences are designed. Most of their work in the space seems to be about restricting extensions, too - while work that extends capabilities (e.g. support for inspecting WebSocket connections or bringing extensions to mobile Chrome) is postponed.

xg15 7y ago

Yeah, you could imagine some strategy where they modify the API to make adblockers appear progressively more annoying and unreliable to end users, so that eventually, the public perception of them changes. However, this seems a bit like a Xanathos Gambit to me. There are a lot of things that could make this plan fail. It starts with the current backlash of the adblocker devs themselves: They could simply choose to boycott Chrome instead of damaging their reputation. Even if they don't, so far you still have competition to Chrome so differences can be observed: If adblockers perform significantly worse on Chrome than they do on Firefox, it's apparent even for non-technical users that the browser is somehow a factor in this. I agree though, just making a change to web store policy (e.g. disallowing all adblockers) probably wouldn't have cut it - that would risk triggering a Streisand effect where everyone tries to smuggle adblockers back into the store using all kinds of rule-bending. So a technical restriction would probably be needed from their point of view. To be honest (warning, tinfoil hats ahead), I wouldn't be surprised if a long-term goal for Google is to abolish browser extensions altogether. Philosophy-wise, extensions seem completely at odds with Google's vision how the web should behave and how user experiences are designed. Most of their work in the space seems to be about restricting extensions, too - while work that extends capabilities (e.g. support for inspecting WebSocket connections or bringing extensions to mobile Chrome) is postponed.