Comment by badsectoracula
5 years ago
I'm not because without extensions that now you think they should be standard browser features actually existing you may not even have imagined about those features in the first place.
Or to put it in another way: browser developers cannot imagine every possible use case that may come out of browsers nor are always the best judges of what is important and what not. It is just a matter of limited human imagination. The combined imagination of all potential extension authors is much greater than the combined imagination of whoever makes decisions about the features in a single browser - and extension authors do not have to convince anyone about adding those features in the browser, they can just throw them at the wall (users) and see what sticks.
For a similar see X11 vs Wayland and how the latter has to make application-specific extensions for functionality provided by programs written using functionality the former provided since practically forever.
> I'm not because without extensions that now you think they should be standard browser features actually existing you may not even have imagined about those features in the first place.
I agree. I'm not saying we shouldn't have extensions. The entire ecosystem should be healthy, varied and with a low barrier to entry. I'm saying some extensions turned out to be so incredibly important that they really ought to be installed by default for every user. The only thing that stops uBlock Origin from being a browser feature is the fact it is an extension.
I installed uBlock Origin not only in my own browsers but also in the browsers of every single computer I have ever used. Sometimes people even comment on how much nicer the whole web browsing experience has become and they can't explain why when I ask them. People also seem to magically become immune to malware since malicious ads are no longer being shown and malware domains are being blocked.
When an extension has such an immensely positive impact on your users, browser developers need to recognize that fact and integrate it into the browser. At the very least they should ship the extension with the default browser package.