Bypassing Google's big anti-adblock update

IE was far less user-hostile than Chrome.

Only because Microsoft got slapped on the wrist way back when.

Google should get slapped too, and they might be headed that way...

https://www.npr.org/2025/04/20/nx-s1-5367750/google-breakup-...

Safari is also pretty user-hostile, which is why Apple is getting sued by the DOJ for purposely hobbling Safari while forbidding any other browser engine on IOS. They did this so that developers are forced to write native apps, which allows Apple to skim 30% off any purchase made through an app.

There's a huge difference between antitrust concerns, and mass surveillance and anti-user hostility. MS' business back then was to sell software, not monetise users.

You don't think Microsoft is doing mass surveillance? They own Outlook and Teams, and Windows 11 is quickly turning into a platform for training AI on your data. I doubt Edge is going to be much different. It's the reason I'm switching to Linux.

They started going down that route many years ago now (Windows 10 "telemetry" being a critical inflection point), but the Microsoft of the 80s and 90s and even early 2000s was not about mass surveillance but selling software.

Perhaps you’re right, but by the time Microsoft acquired Hotmail in 1997, MSN was already two years old and had its own dialup service. Microsoft knew what they were doing.

Yes but like the post above says MS didn’t start to “monetize” their users until the 2000s and it was mainly because Google set up that beautiful business model… on top of Microsoft’s platform (Windows) which makes the whole thing really funny

The irony may be much stronger than that; I'd go as far as suggesting that Microsoft went for that business model because of the antitrust case.

> Apple is getting sued by the DOJ for purposely hobbling Safari

I don’t believe the lawsuit claims this, does it?

> which allows Apple to skim 30% off any purchase made through an app.

This is untrue.

- Most developers pay 15% for in-app purchases. Only the tiny proportion of developers earning more than a million dollars a year pay 30% and even then, it’s 15% for subscriptions after the first year.

- This is not any purchase made through an app. This only applies to digital goods and services.

> IE was far less user-hostile than Chrome.

What exactly do you mean by this?

IE was horrible to use which is why so many people switched to Firefox. It wasn't because of web standards.

IE didn't have tabs when every other browser moved to that.

IE didn't block pop ups when every other browser would do that.

It seems like a modern truism:

There is no such thing as an anti-war movie, because anti-war imagery is the same imagery that pro-war films use, it’s just the interpretation and meanings are reversed.

Might it also be true, that there is no such thing as effective antitrust enforcement, because the one doing the investigating and enforcement is unwilling or unable to kill the goose that lays golden eggs, because their own employer’s budget and state apparatus directly and indirectly relies upon taxing golden eggs. Perhaps we’re all just carrying water for giants and giant-collaborators, whether or not giants even exist.

I didn't imply foul play. I never studied the details and I actually like a bit of vertical integration in tech (but not like Apple does it), so I don't have strong views about that case - but even assuming Microsoft really was in the wrong here and were justly told to stop, what I'm much more sure of is, advertising-based business models are worse, but also this was not obvious at the time. Still isn't to many. And so when Microsoft could not make money doing a bad thing, that became illegal, they turned to an even worse thing that wasn't (and still isn't) illegal.

Advertising is so integrated into the American way of life, I don't know if that will ever happen. The powers-that-be won't give up their toys. This one guy single-handedly did more by running ads than anyone else until probably Google, then Facebook.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays

> His best-known campaigns include a 1929 effort to promote female smoking by branding cigarettes as feminist "Torches of Freedom", and his work for the United Fruit Company in the 1950s, connected with the CIA-orchestrated overthrow of the democratically elected Guatemalan government in 1954. Critics argue that his involvement in Guatemala facilitated US imperialism and contributed to decades of civil unrest and repression, raising ethical concerns about his role in undermining democratic governance.

> He worked for dozens of major American corporations, including Procter & Gamble and General Electric, and for government agencies, politicians, and nonprofit organizations. His uncle was psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self

> The Century of the Self is a 2002 British television documentary series by filmmaker Adam Curtis. It focuses on the work of psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Anna Freud, and PR consultant Edward Bernays. In episode one, Curtis says, "This series is about how those in power have used Freud's theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04&list=PLktPdpPFKH...