I don't see how getting rid of ad blocking would help Google. The people that know tech enough to always install Adblock first thing when installing a browser will just jump to the next browser.
And the people that don't know tech enough to do that wouldn't have used Adblock either way.
They're losing out on a much larger userbase (People that know tech) in the hopes of keeping the subset of that userbase that knows their way around tech but doesn't care if adblock is installed or not and making them 'pay' by watching ads.
That would at least be my opinion if that's what's actually happening, because I personally didn't gaf about these news until now and I only read the text from the meme. And quite honestly, I'll continue not giving af in the future.
And in comes Google's 'DRM for websites' plan to force you to use a chrome based browser. Sure, the websites still would need to opt in to integrity API, but how many will turn down guaranteed ads and tracking.
My question is will Google/YouTube be able to block all ad blockers no matter what browser is used? Or will using an alternative browser circumvent it all as everyone seems to be saying it will?
I haven't migrated away from Chrome yet, but will do so if that is the easy of a solution.
It's a question that only time will probably tell. But I'm 100% sure that, as long as alternative browsers exist that allow adblockers, they'll find a way to block ads on e.g. Youtube.
Unless they start injecting the ads into the video directly (kind of like some apps do that display ads even when your device is offline), even then though, Sponsorblock theoretically exists.
In its current form, it would only work if each video had the ads injected at the same timestamp and with the same duration everytime, which I find unlikely.
It would have to implement some dynamic behavior. It is however in at least some countries required to visibly and clearly mark ads, so a check for that marking could possibly be implemented. But that's more of a thing I'd expect uBO to do instead of Sponsorblock.
Going by recent internet history, every anti-adblock measure will have its according anti-anti-adblock measure within at most a few weeks by now. That's the beauty of community-driven open source projects.
The manifest v3 situation does mean other browsers will continue to be able to block ads on YouTube; however, the new drm that Google is proposing for websites would effectively allow YouTube to block any browser they didn't like from viewing the site at all.