We’ve been anticipating it for years,1 and it’s finally happening. Google is finally killing uBlock Origin – with a note on their web store stating that the …
Vivaldi is including its own adblock outside of the manifest system that uses many of the same blocklists that uBlock does (although at this point you have to add them manually) and hopes to get near the same functionality by the time it is pulled and Mv3 is implemented. They originally had plans to offer a Mv2 compliant area but after seeing how Mv3 was going to be implemented, they changed there plans to many users dismay.
In my personal experience, and with great regret, I must say that Brave does a better job with its built-in ad blocking than Vivaldi has. Even after I did my damnedest to tweak the ad blocker settings (adding more lists from more sources, removing the “allow some ads” list, etc).
Brave itself is filled with ads. Crypto wallets, BAT, VPNs. I just want a browser.
I’m very aware of its built-in bloat, but the ad blocking still seems to perform more like an MV2 ad blocker than an MV3 one (more is blocked even when using the same lists), and it allows you to natively select individual elements to block yourself.
I hope they end up killing Chrome.
I think you’re being optimistic about the number of people who both use adblockers and who care enough to switch browsers.
Based on every browser statistic page I can find, about 2/3 of mobile traffic is through Google Chrome. There’s no ad blocker on that.
And mobile traffic is significant nowadays - it comprises around half of all traffic anywhere, despite requiring the viewer to be hunched over a phone or tablet.
Not that many people use real computers any more. At work, you may need to use a computer, but you probably can’t change the browser. At home, you have the PCMR folks who use a computer and probably also care about browsers. Everyone else just uses a tablet or a phone for browsing the web.
Speaking of the web, most people interact with specific websites through an app and an API, so they don’t even launch the mobile browser until they have to visit a site that doesn’t have an app. The world has changed and browsers aren’t as relevant as they used to be.
Are there raw numbers on how many people use web browsers in general? Firefox releases a report, and it’s definitely been dipping, but that dip might be accounted for by a switch to other browsers (based on its percent of market share).
I’d be curious if you had any good sources for this, because my searches are mostly yielding crappy listicle blogs.
