How do adblocking extensions are still happily surviving on the Chrome webstore when they could hurt profits of Google themselves?

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By adblocking extensions I mean browser extensions that block ads from loading/showing up, and also, to certain extents, tracking analytics, which should be a large part of Google’s business model.

And companies like those have the reputation to restrict third-party options that affect their profits.

Are attracting/keeping the Chrome’s userbase more important ?

Are there “rules” preventing such behaviors ?

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13 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

[By coming up with new API rules for extensions that limit the usefulness of such extensions](https://www.wired.com/story/google-chrome-ad-blockers-extensions-api/).

The “old” way was that extensions could filter all requests as they went through. With the proposed changes they’ll be limited to some ~~30,000~~ 150k more-or-less static entries each.

And the only option to avoid this is switching to Firefox or Safari, since any other browser is just Chromium (the “Open Source” base for Chrome) re-skinned.

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