Web browsers don’t make money. It’s why only chrome basically exists and that’s a cost center to support Google’s Internet ad hegemony and they spend billions a year on it.
Yep. Well, I don’t necessarily agree it started exclusively for the ads, but they definitely wanted to create something that they control. Microsoft Edge and Opera switching to Chromium just means Google has more soft control on how the web operates. (Even saying “soft” there is pretty generous.) A majority of browsers are Chromium forms. Google can control how the web operates because of it.
But to your point though, thwarting ad blocking is a huge part of it now. The manifest V3 changes (which severely limited what sorts of ad blocking extensions could do) came the same year they listed ad blocking as a significant risk to their revenue in their shareholder statement. Which, I just wanna mention for folks who might not be keeping up with this as much, isn’t some sort of conspiratorial statement. It’s a public document because they’re a publicly traded company.
Yep. Well, I don’t necessarily agree it started exclusively for the ads, but they definitely wanted to create something that they control. Microsoft Edge and Opera switching to Chromium just means Google has more soft control on how the web operates. (Even saying “soft” there is pretty generous.) A majority of browsers are Chromium forms. Google can control how the web operates because of it.
But to your point though, thwarting ad blocking is a huge part of it now. The manifest V3 changes (which severely limited what sorts of ad blocking extensions could do) came the same year they listed ad blocking as a significant risk to their revenue in their shareholder statement. Which, I just wanna mention for folks who might not be keeping up with this as much, isn’t some sort of conspiratorial statement. It’s a public document because they’re a publicly traded company.