They say that now, but what about a year from now? Look at the scandal around the original Adblock extension. Everyone wants to maintain their own whitelist. I suppose this is the new monetization strategy? Pay us to whitelist you?
It was built in the browser's engine core, had some UI elements to help add or remove things quickly, but at the end of the day was just a text file in your profile.
I remember it because it's what Opera 12 has, which is still my main browser to this day.
Edit:
!!!
As https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11397230 points out, this new ad blocker is even worse than anyone could think: It has literally no user interaction, except from adding websites to a whitelist. Other than the whitelist it has exactly two settings: On / Off
If it's blocking something on a website where you don't want it to block, but also want to block ads? Tough luck. If you're on a website where it's failing to block something you want blocked? Tough luck. If you want to block something that's not an ad? Tough luck.
It's depressing how far Opera ASA has fallen.
Edit: had to install Opera to find out, this is the list:
[*.]baidu.com
[*.]facebook.com
[*.]google.com
[*.]yandex.com