Whoever keeps full-strength ad blocking working is going to be my browser provider. I don't mind paying. Heck, maybe we can just crowdfund someone to operate a minimal fork of Chromium that just keeps Manifest V2 running.
I can't emphasize enough how little brand loyalty I have for any browser that breaks ad blocking. They may as well be removing the back button, it's that boneheaded of a feature removal.
But they have built-in crypto ads too that so far you can disable.
If you want to go back to the "original Opera", that is now Vivaldi.
Vivaldi already has a built-in adblocker in place, so Vivaldi ad-blocking doesn't depend on V2 being available.
This said, V2 shouldn't be removed at all because this will stifle the extension ecosystem. I predict that extensions will stagnate. Just because some ad-obsessed company killed V2 to stop an extension threatening their revenue.
I think the problem is. What if Chromium won't have code supporting V2 anymore? This means, it is just impossible to run V2 extensions because V2 is not only turned off but completely removed.
Vivaldi seems to have decided that they will provide a built-in feature for advanced ad blocking and Edge seems to be undecided yet.
[0]: https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/98631/manifest-v3-update-viv...
[1]: https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/edge-developer/blob/main/mi...
This said, I see three more ways for free (like gratis) services (at least free for users):
1. Government-funded services. If some online services are deemed to be very important for public wellbeing, the government might decide to pay for a service or to run it themselves. One example is public databases like a list of medication covered by health insurance.
2. Non-profits. They can live off voluntary donations from users, governments, and companies.
3. Hobbyist-supported services. People work pro bono to support a service and some hobbyists even pay for third-party services (like hosting).
These are not sharply discerned categories. A service might nominally be run by a non-profit, but the non-profit is staffed by hobbyists and the government might pay for hosting and other costs. Such a service would be a government-funded hobbyist service run by a non-profit.
further in my humble poor opinion; If the only way to secure funding/guarantee your product/job/life is by having completely irrelevant, predatory ads hosted in your space, maybe you should go int oa different field, or not expect to make money off of a niche hobby application.
Hosting a website, app, service, (if not a paid service), should be "cost of doing business". Or "cost of maintaining a hobby which I'm broadcasting." It is a great disservice to our children that the "default" in life is "you will pay for this ,and you will watch brain rot ads"
In theory Chrome users should be able to just keep using old versions or edit the source to remove the offending changes and re-compile. In practice, Google's version of "open source" offers little control to end users. The program is far too large and complex.
It seems likely the remedy sought for Google's antitrust violations will affect Chrome in some way, not to mention affecting Google's continued support of Mozilla. It is unclear what the future of web browsers may look like.