µBlock Origin is conveniently missing from the benchmark table... we know you benchmarked it... so what's the outcome? Faster or slower? :)
> It's faster than any traditional ad blocking
https://www.raymond.cc/blog/10-ad-blocking-extensions-tested...
We didn’t benchmark uBlock [Origin], but I just ”ran” the filesize benchmark :-):
* uBlock Origin: 1.41 MB
* uBlock: 3.54 MB
* Adblock Fast: 96.59 KB
The size of the package is not a factor to performance -- removing EasyList, EasyPrivacy, etc. from the package would not make uBlock Origin faster or slower.
* uBlock Origin: 92,9 MB
* Adblock Fast: 54,7 MB
Considering uBlock Origin packs a lot of functionality (and lists) which your extension lacks, you don't really have much advantage (if any).
Also, consuming a "lower percentage of CPU" is counterproductive. Adblockers should peak the CPU for the smallest amount of time possible, not use a little percentage of CPU time during a longer period of time as you advertise. That's just ridiculous.
There are a whole lot of pitfalls to take care before comparing memory figures between two extensions, and in all my benchmarks I take care to avoid these pitfalls in order to not fool myself, as I use these benchmarks to drive development.
Simply bringing up the popup UI of an extension will cause temporary memory usage increase. Auxiliary extension pages will also cause temporary memory usage increase -- for example when uBlock Origin's logger is open. The process of updating filter lists also will cause temporary increase in memory usage. Garbage collection may take a while to kick in. Also, if one opens the developer console of an extension, memory usage for the extension may increase permanently despite the extension not having allocated any memory (I noticed this with the Element inspector).
How long an extension has been running also influence memory usage (memory fragmentation). What feature has been used will also cause jump in memory usage -- for example if a whole page has been blocked by uBlock, the look-up of the filter lists which contain the filter which caused the block will cause a Worker instance to come alive and linger in memory for over 10 minutes. Etc. etc.
Now using your TechCrunch example I get:
Adblock Fast: 20.8 MB + TechCrunch page itself: 75,4 MB = 96.2
uBlock Origin: 48,3 MB + TechCrunch page itself: 68,0 MB = 116.3
Adblock Plus: 77,7 MB + TechCrunch page itself: 85,5 MB = 163.2
I did not look at page load speed, but common sense is that the more resources are blocked, the faster page loads. ABP is probably also handicaped because it injects 14,000+ CSS rules before the DOM content is fully loaded (something not affecting uBlock Origin or Adblock Fast).
Methodology:
- Chrome 45 64-bit: only one tab open, "chrome://extensions" (click-to-play on. i.e. no Flash applet will run).
- Bring up the browser's Task Manager (Shift-Esc).
- Activate target extension (all other extensions are disabled).
- Wait 1 minute.
- Open new tab, paste "http://techcrunch.com/" in address bar.
- Wait 1 minute.
- Write down memory figures from Task Manager.
- Deactivate the target extension.
Details specific to each extension:
- Adblock Fast: default settings (there are no settings).
- uBlock Origin: default settings = EasyList, EasyPrivacy, Peter Lowe's, Malware lists (this is a "mature" install, i.e. uBlock loaded its resources from a "selfie").
- Adblock Plus: EasyList, EasyPrivacy, Malware list, "Acceptable ads" turned off.
> In contrast, adblockers like Adblock Plus rely on javascript’s built in regular expression parser
This is not accurate for uBlock Origin. A majority of network filters in EasyList, EasyPrivacy, etc. do not need to be implemented as regular expressions, and for these uBlock Origin does not use a regular expression, it's simply a straightforward string comparison.
Also, there are further optimizations when a filter is just a hostname (these are common too, especially in HOSTS files which can be parsed by uBlock).