We’ve been anticipating it for years, and it’s finally happening. Google is finally killing uBlock Origin – with a note on their web store stating that the extension will soon no longer be available because it “doesn’t follow the best practices for Chrome extensions”.
Now that it is finally happening, many seem to be oddly resigned to the idea that Google is taking away the best and most powerful ad content blocker available on any web browser today, with one article recommending people set up a DNS based content blocker on their network 😒 – instead of more obvious solutions.
I may not have blogged about this but I recently read an article from 1999 about why Gopher lost out to the Web, where Christopher Lee discusses the importance of the then-novel term “mind share” and how it played an important part in dictating why the web won out. In my last post, I touched on the importance of good information to democracies – the same applies to markets (including the browser market) – and it seems to me that we aren’t getting good information about this topic.
This post is me trying to give you that information, to help increase the mind share of an actual alternative. Enjoy!
Hate to break it to you, but you are not Google’s customer. Don’t believe me? How much did you pay for Chrome?
This move is in fact being made with their actual customers in mind.
Sooo… those that buy ads you mean.
Google is an advertising company. Vertical integration ftw?
You’re correct, but your argument is bad. I also paid $0 for Linux.
And look how many Linux distro producing companies there are that are the size of Google or that earn even a significant fraction of what Google earns.
Linux is a totally different ballgame. It started out with open source and free access in mind. Linux distros are often made by volunteer developers who do it for the love of the game, non-profit companies, or companies that have found some way to monitize it like RHEL. And companies certainly pay for support, standardization, and exhaustive stability validation. There’s also the commercial use of Red Hat’s customizations, and arguably faster responses to patching vulnerabilities.