Google is big, wealthy, and tech-savvy enough to, at the very least, make ad blockers unreliable and annoying most of the time for most of the users.
This is not good news, and it's probably not going to be a lesson in humility for the company.
This is not good news, and it's probably not going to be a lesson in humility for the company.
Firefox's user base has shrunk to the point where it's barely relevant. (And I say this as a user myself.) Beyond that, Mozilla currently needs to follow Google's lead just to stay alive. They rely on Google financially, and need to keep up with Chrome's features to maintain what market share they have left.
Brave and the like could be easily killed off by taking Chrome closed-source. Microsoft would probably strike a deal to keep Edge alive. I doubt Safari supports extensions, and Apple wouldn't have any qualms about pulling a few to keep the peace with Google.
Getting us out of this will be difficult. Barring Google returning to their old slogan, the only option I can see is a move to a new set of standards. Hopefully things will move back towards decentralization as peoples' technical literacy increases.
it would come back for sure.
A YouTube user with an AdBlock is highly unlikely to click on any ads making them pretty much useless. So why keep bothering them?