Doesn't Safari have the same restriction, also ostensibly for "security/privacy" reasons? The only difference is that Apple doesn't have a web advertising presence, so you can't make the accusation that they're "abuse its market position to their own benefit".
Imagine what it would cost Google's bottom line if Apple was truly user-focused and enabled ad-blocking on desktop, mobile and embedded safari views by default. Someone do the napkin math please!
Defaults is exactly how Microsoft has been getting away with everything they did for forever. Anti-trust investigations? Irrelevant if you can just make it configurable but the default is Microsoft.
Most people don't change default settings unless prompted and guided. And adding a setting shuts up most of "us" coz we'll just change it.
The only reason they're remove the ability to configure something would've been if too many of us change the settings for too many of our friends and relatives for it to register negatively on their end and they'd try to get away with not allowing it to be configured / hiding it as much as possible until they actually get anti-trust investigated // convicted (Re: requiring Windows to ask if you want to install other browsers than Internet Explorer).
In other words, Google pays Apple ~$20B per year to be default search engine because they make ~$53B in revenue from those searches. This is profitable for both Apple and Google -- no "wildly illegal under-the-table measures" required.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/14/apple-gets-36percent-of-goog...
It's not that weird that people are a bit suspicious that it's really worth Google $20B/year.
even when an outsider tries to think of the nastiest scam, an insider shows up to explain the boring day to day is already worse.
I understand that nerfing adblocking is definitely a big draw for Google, but Apple went the ManifestV3 route many years before, specifically to increase extension performance and privacy.
Back then there was a big uproar too, but mostly because Safari extension developers charged for a new version because they had to rewrite the entire thing.
But you're right. When I'm using Safari with 1Blocker, I don't even notice that I'm not using Chrome with uBlock Origin. And it accomplishes that with static rules instead of with an API that reads every request.
Very much a lesser of all evils situation.
Firefox is also the only open alternative to Chromium at the moment, so I prefer to endorse it instead.
There's no need to do it, their built-in adblocker supports the same rule lists.
In the last five years or so Firefox has increasingly introduced controversial changes that make it (IMHO) less good, primarily around interface design. And, from what I understand, Mozilla employs full-time UX designers who've been driving much of that. Of course, with Firefox it's still possible to modify, fix and restore all these recent interface "improvements" with user CSS but it's a constant annoyance to need to keep fixing it. Fortunately, there's an active community effort around restoring the Firefox interface and usability, exemplified by the brilliant Lepton project https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix/releases.
My perception just watching the evolution of Firefox from the outside, is that it used to be a browser that celebrated the ethos of "Have it Your Way." However, Mozilla the company gets money to pay its executives and employees (millions in the case of more than one recent CEO) by actively driving users and eyeballs for Google, Pocket and other advertisers. So the company is highly incentivized to try myriad changes and redesigns to increase appeal to "the masses" of browser users. Thus, the UX keeps getting 'simplified' and 'de-cluttered' with advanced functionality 'de-prioritized' and add-on support demoted to second-class afterthought - instead of the shining key feature advanced users value most. Basically, in recent years the Firefox UX and end-user features have been pushed by the substantial payroll needs of the Mozilla company to become more like Chrome and Safari instead of embracing its unique position as a tool for power users who value advanced features, customization and extension. And it was all for naught because Firefox has continued to lose market share while ignoring (and even actively alienating) its niche community of fanatically devoted power users.
They've gone well beyond what Microsoft did in the 2000s.
Google owns so many panes of glass and funnels them all through its search and advertising funnel. They've distorted how the web (and mobile) work to accomplish this massive market distortion.
Search, Ads, and Android should be broken up into separate units. Chrome shouldn't be placed with any of those units.
While we're cutting, YouTube should be its own entity and stand on its own legs too.
Apple, Amazon, and Meta need the same scrutiny. Grocery stores and primary care doctors should not be movie studios and core internet infrastructure. Especially when those units are wholly subsidized by other unrelated business units, and their under pricing the market is used to strangle out the incumbents and buy them up on the cheap.
That one is already being pursued.
Do they also get outraged when Costco “abuses its monopoly” as soon as they stop providing free samples or cheap hotdogs?
I currently use Adguard as a content blocker for Safari on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. Does this mean that Safari will also start restricting access to these ad blockers?
I hate these arguments where people point to some other shitty thing a company is doing as some sort of gotcha.
Windows is split off from Lenovo/Dell. How's that working out for the Windows OS, or the Edge browser?
Edge is a perfectly good browser now? Probably should be its own company too if we are splitting Chrome off from Google.
I will tell you that we should split these companies into 100 parts if thats what you are asking.
Imagine if Apple licensed its chips out in competition with Qualcomm...
No, content blockers are specific to Safari. Third party apps can show ads just fine.
Google is an ad company restriction use of the primary ad-blocker on its browser, it's blatant.
I haven't tried others like Ad Blocker etc...
Have you missed the part of my comment of my comment where I specifically mentioned "web advertising presence"? That's relevant, because ublock would only work on web ads. It can't block ads in the app store, or any other app (eg. spotify).
https://github.com/search?q=repo%3AuBlockOrigin%2FuAssets+ap...
Thus they also clearly have an incentive to sabotage uBO. It may be a much smaller piece of their revenue than at Google, but it is a huge proportion of their revenue growth. Don't believe Apple's marketing about their caring for privacy, belied by their actions.
Sure, it doesn't rule out google was secretly intending on doing it, only internal memos or whatever can prove that definitively. But at the same time, to immediately conclude that google was "abusing its market position", you would have to be maximally uncharitable to google. That's a sad way to see the world. Take for instance, the flak that google got for banning third party cookies. If this is done by anyone else (eg. Firefox), this would be seen as a good thing. However, cynics have opposed this on the basis that such change would disadvantage third party ad networks more than google, thus google was "abusing its market position to their own benefit" and therefore the change was bad.
The reasoning is obvious, and "plausible deniability" is not enough to give Google charity. The more difficult you make it to block ads, the more impressions, and the more money made. Yet you believe people should be "charitable" to the same company that can't hire the manpower to defend their own users against bad faith DCMA takedown notices. Because they ran the analysis, and it wasn't worth the cost.
Best case scenario, Chromium loses market share, implements the parts removed from V2, Google likely kicks the can down the road to Manifest V4.
There's no reason to believe companies deserve charitability. Companies are systems designed to extract maximum value, and when the world around that system changes, the system adjusts itself. It's not the systems fault for trying to get more value, it's our fault for letting them.
