Clearly, Google is serious about trying to oust ad blockers from its browser, or at least those extensions with fuller (V2) levels of functionality. One of the crucial twists with V3 is that it prevents the use of remotely hosted code – as a security measure – but this also means ad blockers can’t update their filter lists without going through Google’s review process. What does that mean? Way slower updates for said filters, which hampers the ability of the ad-blocking extension to keep up with the necessary changes to stay effective.
(This isn’t just about browsers, either, as the war on advert dodgers extends to YouTube, too, as we’ve seen in recent months).
At any rate, Google is playing with fire here somewhat – or Firefox, perhaps we should say – as this may be the shove some folks need to get them considering another of the best web browsers out there aside from Chrome. Mozilla, the maker of Firefox, has vowed to maintain support for V2 extensions, while introducing support for V3 alongside to give folks a choice (now there’s a radical idea).
I use Opera for myself, but I have to use Chrome for work reasons (user profiles for different work areas based on whatever email is being used at the company computer). Thing is, Firefox also lacks the feature that makes me use Opera: speed dial. My Opera starting page is my speed dials, and speed dials are 10x better than just bookmarks, and I wouldn’t want to go through all the trouble of transfering literally hundreds of saved pages to standard bookmarks. But, if ublock fully stops working, guess I’ll have no choice.
I don’t know what exactly speed dialsare in opera, but firefox’s homepage can show website tiles in multiple rows