First it’s “sign in” with obtuse ways to turn it off. Then block Adblocking, once again with obtuse ways to disable... the end goal is pretty obvious, get the majority of Chrome users to turn on ads and tie their real names to their Chrome browser.
Of course let “power users” (who’ll turn that crap off anyways) have their switches to do so. It gives Google plausible deniability.
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To those who say just fork Chrome adfm had a good article explaining why that doesn’t work:
> And while you can use or adapt Chromium to your heart's content, your new browser won't work with most internet video unless you license a proprietary DRM component called Widevine from Google. The API that connects to Widevine was standardized in 2017 by the World Wide Web Consortium, whose members narrowly voted down a proposal to change the membership rules for the W3C to require members not to abuse the DMCA to prevent DRM from becoming a tool to undermine competition.
https://boingboing.net/2019/05/29/hoarding-software-freedom....