8 ms·

I wonder how much of this is actually about Adblockers... vs Googlers just wanting to make some performance numbers go up in aggregate to make their own interna

I wonder how much of this is actually about Adblockers... vs Googlers just wanting to make some performance numbers go up in aggregate to make their own internal company stats better. Cos sure as hell no user is waiting for this.

rootlocus 7y ago
> Cos sure as hell no user is waiting for this. Why do you assume Google implements features that users want? They implement features that their clients want: the ones paying for ads.
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  As someone who's used digital advertising in the past I wouldn't really care about forcing my content upon all customers. It's a self selected opt-out for someone who won't ever click anyway. The real problem is news websites don't show restraint and shovel (so, many) ads to customers, making impressions go up and clicks go down. IMO ads won't go away and adblockers won't kill them completely as too many market forces (privacy, performance, revenue) is making the industry adapt. Disclaimer: Personal opinion, Googler, not in ads or Chrome.
  - chungus_khan 7y ago
    This is absolutely the real thing hurting online advertising right now. Nobody wants their eyes molested by that many ads, and it makes the user's eyes glaze over. Fewer, better quality, better placed, and less obnoxious ads have consistently worked out better for my clients in terms of clicks.
Freak_NL 7y ago
It makes sense to me that a company that is heavily invested in an ad-driven internet economy would limit the use of ad-blockers in their very popular browser. They surely weighed the risks of losing some users to better browsers, and probably found that they were by now acceptable.
dewey 7y ago
As the browser is made by an ad company I'd probably go with "actually about adblockers" and not performance metrics.
ignoramous 7y ago
> Cos sure as hell no user is waiting for this. Most of the web browsing happens on mobile devices where Chrome has a staggering 5B+ installs (though possibly not all active) vs Firefox's 100M+. Chrome on mobile never did support extensions let alone content blockers. The manifest v3 offensive is meek compared to their hegemony already on display in the Android world which has 2B+ active users that almost exclusively use Chrome. I see an anti-trust case in here somewhere or for Mozilla to simply buckle up and sign deals with OEMs that makes them the default browser and webview on Android.
cromwellian 7y ago
Apple/Safari adopted pretty much the same architecture on Ad Blockers. Maybe just maybe the conspiracy theories are all wrong, and there was actually a legitimate, technical reason for choosing a restricted API.
- pilif 7y ago
  Safari has a much larger limit for blocking list entries though.
  - my123 7y ago
    + the limit there is per-extension, not global
    - rmsaksida 7y ago
      And the limit is easily circumvented by having multiple extensions. I've seen Safari extensions that split themselves up to one extension per block list.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    It’s not all that much larger; the limit is a combination of a hard cap of 50,000 rules and what Jetsam will let you get away with.
    - hombre_fatal 7y ago
      You can bundle many rule lists inside one extension. It's how 1Blocker works, and I did it myself for my own adblocking extension. I'm not sure if this is possible in Chrome's proposal though. Maybe this change will finally get people to prune Easylist which had 30% outdated cosmetic-filter cruft when I last sampled it along with hobby horse websites <0.00001% people would ever visit. Right now it's basically like an append-only legacy CSS file.
- sha666sum 7y ago
  If there was, they could've communicated it clearly already a year ago. There is no reason to give Google the benefit of the doubt, since it's clear they're not trying to get it. If this rolls out, I'm going to very loudly tell my friends to use Fox, and not stop.
onion2k 7y ago
Google's internal motivation doesn't really matter.
contravariant 7y ago
Given that they added an arbitrary limit to the number of rules that is high but not quite high enough for modern adblockers I'm gonna assume this was intentional.
kjaer 7y ago
I don't know if this actually helps Google show more ads. With a 30k rule limit, I'm imagining most adblockers will prioritize the most common ad domains, and I'm pretty sure Google would be at the top of that list. This may really be a win for the long tail of smaller ad networks rather than the bigger players.

rootlocus 7y ago

> Cos sure as hell no user is waiting for this. Why do you assume Google implements features that users want? They implement features that their clients want: the ones paying for ads.

cameronbrown 7y ago
As someone who's used digital advertising in the past I wouldn't really care about forcing my content upon all customers. It's a self selected opt-out for someone who won't ever click anyway. The real problem is news websites don't show restraint and shovel (so, many) ads to customers, making impressions go up and clicks go down. IMO ads won't go away and adblockers won't kill them completely as too many market forces (privacy, performance, revenue) is making the industry adapt. Disclaimer: Personal opinion, Googler, not in ads or Chrome.
- chungus_khan 7y ago
  This is absolutely the real thing hurting online advertising right now. Nobody wants their eyes molested by that many ads, and it makes the user's eyes glaze over. Fewer, better quality, better placed, and less obnoxious ads have consistently worked out better for my clients in terms of clicks.

Freak_NL 7y ago

It makes sense to me that a company that is heavily invested in an ad-driven internet economy would limit the use of ad-blockers in their very popular browser. They surely weighed the risks of losing some users to better browsers, and probably found that they were by now acceptable.

dewey 7y ago

As the browser is made by an ad company I'd probably go with "actually about adblockers" and not performance metrics.

ignoramous 7y ago

> Cos sure as hell no user is waiting for this. Most of the web browsing happens on mobile devices where Chrome has a staggering 5B+ installs (though possibly not all active) vs Firefox's 100M+. Chrome on mobile never did support extensions let alone content blockers. The manifest v3 offensive is meek compared to their hegemony already on display in the Android world which has 2B+ active users that almost exclusively use Chrome. I see an anti-trust case in here somewhere or for Mozilla to simply buckle up and sign deals with OEMs that makes them the default browser and webview on Android.

cromwellian 7y ago

Apple/Safari adopted pretty much the same architecture on Ad Blockers. Maybe just maybe the conspiracy theories are all wrong, and there was actually a legitimate, technical reason for choosing a restricted API.

pilif 7y ago
Safari has a much larger limit for blocking list entries though.
- my123 7y ago
  + the limit there is per-extension, not global
  - rmsaksida 7y ago
    And the limit is easily circumvented by having multiple extensions. I've seen Safari extensions that split themselves up to one extension per block list.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  It’s not all that much larger; the limit is a combination of a hard cap of 50,000 rules and what Jetsam will let you get away with.
  - hombre_fatal 7y ago
    You can bundle many rule lists inside one extension. It's how 1Blocker works, and I did it myself for my own adblocking extension. I'm not sure if this is possible in Chrome's proposal though. Maybe this change will finally get people to prune Easylist which had 30% outdated cosmetic-filter cruft when I last sampled it along with hobby horse websites <0.00001% people would ever visit. Right now it's basically like an append-only legacy CSS file.
sha666sum 7y ago
If there was, they could've communicated it clearly already a year ago. There is no reason to give Google the benefit of the doubt, since it's clear they're not trying to get it. If this rolls out, I'm going to very loudly tell my friends to use Fox, and not stop.

onion2k 7y ago

Google's internal motivation doesn't really matter.

contravariant 7y ago

Given that they added an arbitrary limit to the number of rules that is high but not quite high enough for modern adblockers I'm gonna assume this was intentional.

kjaer 7y ago

I don't know if this actually helps Google show more ads. With a 30k rule limit, I'm imagining most adblockers will prioritize the most common ad domains, and I'm pretty sure Google would be at the top of that list. This may really be a win for the long tail of smaller ad networks rather than the bigger players.