We’ve been anticipating it for years, and it’s finally happening. Google is finally killing uBlock Origin – with a note on their web store stating that the extension will soon no longer be available because it “doesn’t follow the best practices for Chrome extensions”.
Now that it is finally happening, many seem to be oddly resigned to the idea that Google is taking away the best and most powerful ad content blocker available on any web browser today, with one article recommending people set up a DNS based content blocker on their network 😒 – instead of more obvious solutions.
I may not have blogged about this but I recently read an article from 1999 about why Gopher lost out to the Web, where Christopher Lee discusses the importance of the then-novel term “mind share” and how it played an important part in dictating why the web won out. In my last post, I touched on the importance of good information to democracies – the same applies to markets (including the browser market) – and it seems to me that we aren’t getting good information about this topic.
This post is me trying to give you that information, to help increase the mind share of an actual alternative. Enjoy!
didn’t firefox remove ublock origin too?
I read that they temporarily (and apparently accidentally) removed the uBlock Origin Lite extension but they’re not getting rid of Manifest v2 that allows normal uBlock Origin to work.
The developer released the lite version on Firefox because it might be better for Android Firefox users. I guess there was some confusion.
i suspect that they will remove manifest v2 support
They said they have no plans to deprecate v2 and if they ever do, will provide 12 months notice before doing so. So, I think there will be time to prepare for that switch.