We were still dealing with legacy IE6 (and IE 7/8 by that point also) in 2013! Almost a decade since we got Firefox and the first version of Chrome.

The web has empirically suffered through homogeneity and the lack of strong competitors in the browser space, not helped by the underlying HTML/JS spec becoming exponentially more convoluted to the point where building your own renderer is nigh impossible.

And since everyone is standardising on a Google, their decisions on ad blocking and supporting APIs are automatically going to flow down into every dependent product.

It’s frustrating that MS copped out and went Chromium. Like we never learned this lesson the first time.

We still have WebKit and Firefox and (sooner or later), more of Servo at least. These need to be protected if we don’t want Google and the ad network to totally control the browsing experience.

Although, controversially, we as a web dev collective have learned nothing if we continue to only develop for a single browser. Not for the web itself, but for one particular rendering engine. “Only works in Chrome,” is poor engineering for anything more than a prototype or proof of concept.

This makes me wonder if there's any way we can give gorhill a bunch of money in donations. He's in a much more important position than I previously realized, and despite the statement in the uBlock readme ("Free. Open source. For users by users. No donations sought.") I think it would be an excellent idea to make sure he has permanent financial stability for as long as he continues to work on uBlock.

If he wants a multi-million dollar corporate buyer to come along, I'm sure he can get it. But as long as he's incentivized to continue building a truly pro-user ad blocker, we should at least make sure he's not in a situation where he could be forced to sell out.

Currently, we can go use Firefox or Joe's homemade browser to to back the features that Chrome removes, such as the ability for an ad-blocker to access and remove content. But we've already seen just last month [1] that Google actively prevents Firefox from using some features of Google products (need to find the HN link). Thus Google as a content provider can easily steep people into using the Google web browser.

This is really starting to smell similar to the Microsoft - IE debacle all over again.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19669586

This naming is a catastrophe. I just tried to find out which is which and it isn't easy, even if you know what you're looking for.

I'd think that uBlock Origin should consider changing the name. Yes, "it means giving up", but it's a battle they can't win anyway, and at least users will be able to tell which one is owned by eyeo.

EDIT: AdBlock and AdBlock Plus are similarly confusing.

> I recently had a look at another system of someone who uses ABP I noticed that the blocking really is only visual, theres still a profile that is being sold to data brokers

It's quite shocking, anti-intuitive, and really shows what the web advertising business is really all about.

eyeo is a pure scam and they make 99% profit because they have no costs

If that is the case, it seems very short sighted.

While this change is obviously not in the interest of any user, there are multiple ways around it.. the alternative solutions are not so easy right now, but they will become more user friendly as they rise to the surface as the new way to block ads. The affect on Google's revenue will be short term (if any), but I suspect the affect on Google's public image will be significant and lasting. It doesn't seem worth the risk to Google for such a short term gain.

That's ... well, so much for the internet ... :-(

It's really against what I imagine to be some of the core principles of the internet.