It’s incredibly easy to see these changes as Google clamping down on ad blockers to protect its monopoly in online advertising. I don’t think that’s necessarily the case: Google knows as well as I do that a total crackdown would give governments like the European Union and United States more ammo for antitrust lawsuits. It would also be a motivator for more people to switch browsers, which would weaken Google’s browser monopoly. The stated claims about security benefits also make sense…

If Google wanted to crack down on adblockers without risking an antitrust lawsuit in the EU, they might look to introduce features that make adblockers less viable as a plausibly unintended side effect of some other stated goal. Without access to internal communications no one can prove that they intended the effect on adblockers, but it’s certainly convenient for them, while plausibly deniable.

What is the point of your comment? Everybody and their grandmother (including the bycicles and the EU) understands the point of Google’s changes. There’s no need to prove shit. Chrome is a choice, doesn’t come on any platforms as default (that support extensions). Personally I changed back to FF when they first announced these changes a few years back.

Also FF will be affected by V3 and require some changes to avoid V3, at least if Mozilla can leave the contract, as intended, with Google as the main sponsor until 2024, otherwise it will have to abide by its conditions. The only which can’t avoid it, is the user of Chrome itself. The devs of most other companies are already working to show the middlefinger to Google, in the EU anyway.

Implemeting support for v3 is not the same as dropping web request blocking API from v2… Google pays to Mozilla for service they provide having them as default search engine - it’s not a sponsorship…

Yes, Google can limit the sources which use adblocker extensions, eg uBO, but not the sources itself used by others.

To be clear Google has no direct way to force FF to do shit. The reason Google is implementing v3 is to disrupt adblocking (by dropping v2 APIs) the reason Mozilla is supporting v3 is to make life easier for extension Devs. They don’t have to comply with same restrictions