That worked back then. Ten years ago, browsers were, compared to today, ridiculously simple and thus could easily be replaced. I wouldn't be surprised if today's Chrome had more LoC than Linux in 2010.

Also, the mobile platform might be a good indicator of what ordinary people are willing to put up with. Chrome doesn't support extensions there, so everybody and their uncle is browsing the web with the full ad experience. I've never seen a non-tech savvy person use Firefox, or just anything but chrome (or the system browser), on an Android device, which easily allows to install uBO. Yet on the desktop somehow even those people somehow learned to install uBO or ABP. It appears that "apparently you cannot do this on your phone" is an acceptable answer to most people.