Comment by crazygringo
6 days ago
uBlock Origin Lite works perfectly fine for me on Chrome.
Maybe there's some 0.01% of ads that would get blocked in the Firefox version that aren't in Chrome. But I don't see any regular users switching because they're noticing ads not getting blocked now.
One difference between lite and the full version is CNAME cloaking protection. The enforcement of Manifest V3 in Chrome opens up a gap in the ecosystem where analytics and advertising providers will increasingly use CNAME cloaking, since it can't be blocked from the world's most popular browser. And this is the world in which using Firefox with its support for Manifest V2 suddenly becomes quite a bit more attractive.
If CNAME cloaking takes off in a big way, then yes at that point I agree I could see people moving to Firefox. But for now that's not happening.
Also, if that actually led significant numbers of people to leave Chrome, isn't that where we'd see "Manifest V3.1" or whatever that allows matching against CNAMEs?
Chrome is pretty central to Google's strategy. If we assume that people who want to block ads will (by switching to Firefox when necessary), then it's in Google's interests for Chrome to support ad blocking. If they're not going to get ad revenue anyways, they'd still rather it be happening on Chrome.
Also see a recent comment by a member of the Chrome team on why Manifest V3 was for performance reasons, not to cripple adblocking (I don't know if it's true, but it seems worth considering): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41815861
CNAME uncloaking was a difference between Firefox and all other browsers even before Manifest V3.
Thanks for pointing this out! I had mistakenly conflated it with the manifest V3 switch.
It works fine for now. As soon as Manifest V2 is officially gone you will certainly see an increase in ads. What ad company wouldn't take advantage of more limited ad blocking capabilities in the most popular web browser?
That's just Google boiling the frog slowly.