uBlock Origin Was Removed from Chrome... Not!

This morning, I was greeted with a message that uBlock Origin has been disabled on Google Chrome. It is "no longer supported." My very first thought was: "Over my cold dead body!"

uBlock Origin is my go-to extension. The same way I used to install Chrome for those pesky users still on Internet Explorer, I install uBlock on any browser I touch. I used to care that it breaks some websites, but not anymore. If uBlock breaks your website, it's probably for a good reason.

uBlock blocks ads. But why would I want to block ads in the first place?

Ads are invasive in more ways than one. They hijack the browsing experience, they track your every move, and they degrade performance. If you want to make a living from ads, that's fine, but count me out. If you want to block me from using your website because of this, that's fine too.

Google, being an ad company, has been threatening to get rid of uBlock for a long time. But they never said so directly. Instead, it's veiled behind "security measures," Manifest V3, and whatnot. The reality is, if ads weren't so bad, we wouldn't be using tools to block them in the first place.

My argument is simple: I will block ads. If you remove the tools I use to do so, as long as the computer belongs to me, I'll find other ways to block ads. It doesn't have to be rational—it's just what I'm going to do.

And no, it doesn't matter that Google doesn't "support" uBlock anymore. You can just re-enable it for now. If that fails in the future, you can always download it directly from the source and manually install it. If that fails, switch browsers.

We know what a web without ads looks like, and we are not going back.