It's tempting to fall into the trap of feeling smug that you've made the right decision so no action should be taken against a company abusing their market position in a manner that's harmful to the public. Try to resist that temptation, like I have. I too have been using Firefox this entire time, but I don't let that tempt me into apathy towards the state of the industry.
You may as well question the purpose of the FDA regulating slaughterhouses since vegetarians have been found a way to avoid doing business with them. That's a nonsense position. A vegetarian should demand that the FDA regulate the meat industry, and a firefox user should demand regulation for corporations they've avoided.
>abusing their market position in a manner that's harmful to the public.
Why is it abuse? No one is being forced to use chromium. Are you abusing your market position when you buy the cheapest toothbrush in a manner that's harmful to other toothbrush companies?
However, due to marketshare, the other browsers do tend to be forced to implement the same features as Chromium/Chrome.
Google can easily force the other browsers to lose the Web Request API, because maintaining it when they're the only ones using it is a net loss of productivity, which will probably be needed elsewhere.
Relying on Internet ads for their livelihood is a tenuous position to start with, and always has been.
The (bad actors within the) advertising industry are the enemy of people whose livelihoods depend on Internet advertising because they're the ones making ads either bandwidth-hogging, epilepsy-inducing, website-avoidingly annoying, privacy-invasive, or an actual virus/malware vector.
This is, directly, what has caused the popularity of ad blockers to skyrocket. Tech-savvy folks protecting their family from these dangers by installing ad-blocking software so they don't get regular family-tech-support calls about the various issues potentially arising from "bad" advertising.
Follow-up questions:
How many user ad clicks / views does it take for the revenue to be critical to one's livelihood?
Could you consider donations through any of the various options like Patreon?
Then you should aim regulators at the advertising industry.
Chrome has a responsibility not just to the end user but also to the website. The cost of the getting the web page's info was viewing the ads. Why should the browser help the user to commit virtual theft?
Simply blanket dismissing ads as "tenuous position" is nonsense. Lots of people make a living via web ads. Google makes billions on ads. It's a real source of real money. Alternatives could, and should!, be considered. But simply cutting off a revenue stream while arguing that the ability to cut off that revenue stream should be protected by regulators is weak at best.
> Chrome has a responsibility not just to the end user but also to the website.
Chrome is the user agent. It acts purely on behalf of the user. Browsers aren't trojans built to exploit my eyeballs. This "virtual theft" talk is as silly as claiming that spam filters should be illegal - your server sent me some markup, and I'm free to preprocess it in any way I want.
> Simply blanket dismissing ads as "tenuous position" is nonsense.
Not really. Advertising has always been about manipulating people into doing things they otherwise wouldn't do - if all ads were purely informative it'd hardly be a multibillion dollar industry.
Then you should aim regulators at the advertising industry
Yes, yes, yes, and more yes. That's the cause that needs treating. Apologies if I wasn't clear, that's definitely where I think the regulation should be looking towards.
Aaah, the Homer Simpson position: Can't win, don't try.
Regulate what's within your jurisdiction. That's all any government can do in any circumstance. If regulation results in more friendly advertising that's less likely to have users reaching for the blockers, then those advertisers are going to be more successful, and so even those in unregulated countries will need to conform in order to compete.
That's assuming that the number of users that have already reached for the blockers are of a significant enough percentage to make a difference to website ad revenue.
Correct me if I'm misrepresenting your position, but I vaguely recall a discussion some time ago in which you compared adblocking to theft. If I'm remembering that correctly, you and I have no common ground upon which to have a civil discussion.
His primary website is still online. Me might not be allowed on YouTube anymore, but his primary platform still exists.
Additionally, I thought his removal from YouTube was as a result of pressure from the Government on hate speech and fake news etc. All the stuff Facebook is also attempting to crack down on.
Comparing using Chrome to eating meat is stupid. You can avoid Chrome by a 2 minute process of changing browsers. You can’t avoid the meat industry without vastly changing your dietary lifestyle and traditions.
You may as well question the purpose of the FDA regulating slaughterhouses since vegetarians have been found a way to avoid doing business with them. That's a nonsense position. A vegetarian should demand that the FDA regulate the meat industry, and a firefox user should demand regulation for corporations they've avoided.