Wonder why they havenāt nuked them on desktop Chrome then, where extensions are a plenty?
Extensions are so popular on PC browsers, that Google could really jeopardize their dominant market share, if they were to completely remove extension support. The press would be on it for weeks and there could be a real hit on user numbers.
I think that Google rather tolerates the small number of users who use extensions and doesn't want bad PR for Chrome on PC.
But I wouldn't be surprised, when Google tries this in the future, when their browser market share is over 90%.
The game is different for mobile though ā here we have a much bigger majority of unexperienced users who likely have never heard of browser extensions or such possibilities as easy-one-click-installation of ad-blockers.
But what I don't get is why doesn't Microsoft or someone large like that bundle extensions into their browser. I know Samsung has app based ones but I wish it could be built in and have ublock origin etc
I find it strange that you're having this issue. I haven't had this issue on my OnePlus 3T, Note9, or Pixel 7 Pro using Fennec F-Droid or Mull (FOSS forks of Firefox)
Outside Chrome, the answer is that the extension support is a very big and fragile (hard to maintain) patch for Chromium.
Here's a list of browsers with extensions:
Kiwi and Yandex browser support most Chrome extensions
Firefox, Mozilla's Reference Browser and Firefox forks support most Firefox extensions, but you need to make a "collection" if you want more variety than the default list
Samsung Internet supports some content blockers as app-based extensions
SmartCookieWeb, Berry Browser, Sleipnir support userscripts
Many other browsers also have some form of tracker and/or ad blocking
Extensions were a thing well before Chromium and I'm sure even the developers wanted them, so we got extensions.
There's never been a precedent for extensions on mobile and Google knows they can get away without, because if they do they'll have a hard time taking it back. And they really don't want everyone to have ad blockers on mobile because they know mobile ads is what brings in the cash, and they know mobile is one of the places where ad blockers would be the most useful and effective because the ads are so intrusive and annoying.