Agreed on hoping this is the inflection point, but only partial agreement that it's about adblock. For sure Google wants adblock to die, but I think it goes even deeper than that.

I think it's part of a much bigger trend in tech in general but also in Google: Removing user control. When you look at the "security" things they are doing, many of them have a common philosophy underpinning them that the user (aka device owner) is a security threat and must be protected against. Web integrity, Manifest v3, various DoH/DoT, bootloader locking, device integrity which conveniently makes root difficult/impossible, and more.

To all the engineers working on this stuff, I hope you're happy that your work is essentially destroying the world that you and I grew up in. The next generation won't have the wonderful and fertile computing environment that we enjoyed, and it's (partly) your fault.

Adblock doesn’t only make Google Chrome bearable, it makes the internet bearable. I recently uninstalled my Adblock for testing purposes. Most websites nowadays are just ads with a little bit of text in between

I'd like to think that's true, but I don't know, because people seem to have a very high tolerance for advertisements. Surprisingly so. I have a very low tolerance, and do what I can to get rid of them. But then, every once in a while I use someone else's computer and see how they live with them. I say "I can show you how to get rid of those ads," but they usually just don't care enough to do it. I bet the majority of people are like that—maybe the vast majority—and Google is probably making the same bet, but with even more information. My prediction is that if (God willing) Chrome loses significant market share, it'll be for some other reason than this.

> Hopefully this is the inflection point for Chrome.

Here is one empirical data point.

I switched over to Firefox this morning and will advocate for it.

I've considered it for a while, but I never felt motivated to make the switch. It took me a good half hour to set it up the way I like it.

The widespread adoption of Chrome was largely driven by word of mouth, people like you and I installing it on our friend's/relative's computers and telling them it was safer/faster/better.

Nothing stops us from doing the same thing again. I've been recommending Firefox to all my family/friends/colleagues for years (ever since I've seen the writing on the wall for Chrome). While Firefox isn't perfect, it's in a much better place than Chrome is, and meets the the needs of nearly 100% of people.

I'd argue it won't make a dent in Chrome market share.

People who really care about this (tech minded people) are not using Chrome anyway, others (regular people) will switch to less powerful Manifest V3 adblockers that would probably be good enough and won't switch from Chrome.

Manifest v3 changes are pretty reasonable. Declarative filtering that prevents untrustworthy software from getting access to data is objectively a good thing.

It's just that uBlock Origin is so important and trusted it should have access to everything. Truth be told it should be literally built into the browser itself and deeply integrated with it. Only conflicts of interest prevent that. Can't trust an ad company to maintain ad blockers after all.

I've been checking browser stat counters religiously, looking for evidence that this change is driving their numbers down. No luck so far.

Am I missing any? https://gs.statcounter.com https://analytics.usa.gov https://www.w3counter.com

The vast, vast, majority of normies I know use Google Chrome and use zero extensions.

> everyone knows this is solely about making adblock less effective

I thought I knew that.

Then I switched from uBlock Origin to uBlock Origin Lite in Chrome, which is compatible with Manifest v3. I was prepared for the horrible onslaught of ads, expecting at least a quarter would start getting through, ready to switch to Firefox...

...and didn't notice a single change. Not a single ad gets through.

And at the same time, loading pages feels a little faster, though I haven't measured it.

Which has now got me wondering -- what if Manifest v3 really was about security and performance all along?

Because if Google was using it to kill adblockers, they've made approximately 0% progress towards that goal as far as I can tell. If they really wanted to kill adblockers, they'd just, you know, kill adblockers. But they didn't at all.

What makes you say the security reasons are made up?

> making adblock less effective

adblocking still works just fine on Safari, which has been doing the same thing as Manifest V3 for years now.

So, are you going to leave chrome then?

Yeah, I don't browse the web without an ad blocker.