[kuschku]

> They could just as well deploy their own custom name resolvers and talk to them via IP from applications like YouTube for Android.

The Chromecast has 8.8.8.8 hardcoded, but recently an ISP started integrating ad-blocking via DNS filtering (with 8.8.8.8 MitM) in their ISP routers. That case actually went to court.

It'll always be possible to do the filtering as prosumer, but the current state of the art of "it just works" ad blockers is something Google is fighting against (also see Manifest v3)

[judge2020]

Your response to the first scenario didn’t invalidate it - Google could have made a https://dns.google.com endpoint in 2013 before DOH and only allowed the Chromecast to work if it could get dns responses from there.

[kuschku]

Yeah but that would require developers intentionally building an anti-adblock solution, while funding a solution like DoH allows Google to save face