[781]

This is truly one of the best long-cons in the tech industry history. Invest 10 years into creating a browser and get the whole industry and it's developers to love it, push it and develop solely for it, so that you can reap the benefits now. They learned from the best - Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. Even as recently as last year, saying that Google would eventually abuse Chrome market dominance would got heavy downvotes here.

[panpanna]

More likely Google bean counters went to chrome team and demanded they start generating money or at least stop loosing other divisions money.

The good news is that Firefox and soon Edge are on all (important) platforms and support ublock origin

[breakingcups]

How long will Edge support uBlock if their upstream makes architectural changes to prevent it and its kind?

[a_imho]

Or Google is actually scared. We have been hearing for years how adblocking is not an issue to be addressed, yet they are desperate to put the adblocking genie back into to bottle.

[endorphone]

If that was their intention it was poorly achieved given that most users can switch to alternatives such as Firefox or Safari with close to no downside. Chrome has very close to zero lock-in.

I'm just an outsider but I do think Google's intentions with Chrome were of course self-serving, but overlapping user interests: They knew they are dependant on the web, so they worked to make a browser that made the web experience better, faster, stronger, etc. Blocking the most aggressive exploitations while trying to make the outcome one where their business could survive and still grow.

Most knew there would come a day when they would start to turn the screws, though (in the same way that Microsoft apologists would talk about that company only using patents defensively...until they started suing everyone), and that day has come. Ah well, to Firefox we all go.