Comment by CrossVR
6 hours ago
> I consider this betrayal - naturally by Google
You're using a web browser built by a company whose primary income is advertising. What did you think would happen instead?
A lot of people have this weird idea that companies are their friends and would defend their interests despite large financial incentives to betray that trust.
Financial incentives, while a large motivator for companies, are frequently not the exclusive one.
Google for quite a few years was seen as a good steward of the free and open Internet.
To assert people shouldn't feel betrayed because "it's a company" fundamentally ignores why people had different expectations for Google to begin with.
I’m sure they’d love to include a blocker in Chrome that blocks all the competitive ad networks.
Why waste effort on something that's a rounding error at best?
It is because of such effort that they are rounding errors: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/04/google-loses-ad-...
But then they'd be one antitrust investigation away from losing it all.
If they'd ever allow such a thing to exist.
"That's just how they make their money," is a common and terrible excuse.
It's not making an excuse on the part of Google, it's pointing out the naivety of expecting otherwise from Google.
Firefox still allows uBlock origin, and even on mobile.
Firefox has had poor stewardship for quite a few years now with an uncertain future.
Even moreso - uBlock Origin doesn't block the modern equivalent of pop-up ads unless you manually block elements. Even then - half the time the block isn't even saved and needs to be redone every page visit.
One's expectations aren't in any way relevant in considering wether something is an asshole move or not.
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Explanations are not excuses.