Firefox and Chrome are squaring off over ad-blocker extensions | Hacker News Reader

Firefox and Chrome are squaring off over ad-blocker extensions

theverge.com

57 pointsTomte6 comments

Someday I'd like to hear the inside story of how third-party ad-blocking discussions go inside Google. Do managers take new hires out to a one-on-one lunch and quietly tell them, "It's come from on high that we want to gradually shut down third-party ad-blocking. If you know what's good for your career, find reasons to interfere with ad-blocking and always nod along to the PR excuses."?

Why would it be hush-hush? Google engineers are generally smart people. They understand decisions that align with the company's bottom line. The engineers can easily tie their performance and promotion evaluation to a revenue metric by interfering with ad-blocking. There is plenty of incentive on the individual level to interfere with ad-blocking without needing shadowy decisions from the top.

It might be uncomfortable for the team to have a naive developer constantly bring up well-intentioned strategies to improve support for third-party ad-blocking in meetings.

I'd kill to hear some of this.

Same for the people who do search ranking finagling and massaging of trends.

It's genuinely impressive that the secret policies don't leak.

This is a massive differentiator for Firefox and they should use that to their advantage. As of now I still find their Android browser not felling as smooth as chromium ( I use kiwi browser) for some reason.

There's always some annoying bug that forces me back. I go back every once in a while just to see if it's better.

I've been hearing about this for years now, but have been unable to find a technical explanation as to how exactly the new declarativeNetRequest will actually affect the ad blockers. It is "less powerful", but in which ways? What exactly is changing? What will continue to work, and what will not?

Found this uBlock Origin thread, but still not sure what the deal is... https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338

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