[hzia]

I think you are drastically overestimating the revenue gain from ad blockers

But I agree that default search with being Google must have heavily blocked competition.

Comparing how much they pay Mozilla and Apple to maintain search, it would be reasonable to estimate Chrome’s implementation to save them $1b a year

But I highly doubt they make any back given > 1k people work on it

[thayne]

Possibly a greater benefit to Google is the influence it gives them over web standards.

For example, if google didn't control the most popular browser, they probably would have had to say goodbye to third party cookies a long time ago, but since they do they've been able to delay it for quite a while, at least for a considerable portion of users.

[SR2Z]

Google is the group pushing hardest for the removal of third party cookies; they don't need them because they get your data from other sources.

It's everyone else who wants to keep them around.

[thayne]

Firefox and Safari have disabled third party cookies years ago, but chromium based browsers still have them on.

And then look at Google's "privacy sandbox proposals, that aim to replace third party cookie functionality. They have largely been rejected by Mozilla and Apple, over privacy concerns.

[paulryanrogers]

Firefox still accepts 3rd party cookies by default. They've made some moves to reduce reliance on them. Sadly privacy zealous prefer the perfect over the good, so won't get either.

[Kbelicius]

> I think you are drastically overestimating the revenue gain from ad blockers

I think you are underestimating it. There must be a reason why google is trying to work around ad blockers on their platforms.

> But I highly doubt they make any back given > 1k people work on it

Where did you find that number? I highly doubt it. Maybe if you are counting contributors to chromium.