Actually, initially it was only 5,000 I think. But after backlash and when AdGuard showed a detailed report on why at least 30,000 rules would be essential they opted to follow AdGuard's advice. They also changed many things to comply with many changes suggested by adblock developers and filter maintainers (especially AdGuard) which is surprising but impressive from Google's part.
Technically you are correct about paywall. I just used that paywall bypassing filter list as an example, it can be any filter list, or custom rules created by the users. So no, that's not the reason why gorhill is refusing. He didn't even want to create an extension for MV3 until AdGuard released their experimental MV3 extension.
DIdn't Gorhill discuss this stuff multiple times? Perhaps you are correct and what I thought he discussed are echoes - dust bunnies of the mind - so to speak. In any case, after uMatrix and uBlock Origin, it would make sense that he doesn't really want to do another browser extension.
Everyone has to realize that Gorhill is a single point of failure. Once something happens and he is no longer developing, uBO is dead. Even if another developer or a group of developers takes over the extension will never be the same.
Once Adguard gets its problems with its Mv3 extension sorted out, I will transition to it. As long as they categorize it as "Experimental" and do not figure out how to fix issues I will not use it.
I am willing to bet a lot of money that at some point - whether it is 5 or 10 years - 30,000 rules will not be enough. Google and the entire advertisement ecosystem have a financial interest in undermining any ad blocking. One with a 30,000 rule limit is low-hanging fruit. Can you imagine an ad revolver that randomly utilizes 10, 20, 50 or 100 different methods to display ads? For the advertising ecosystem the costs for doing so keep coming down, way down. Have enough advertisers using this sort of tactic and eventually the ad blockers of today will not be enough.
All the complaints about Firefox... are people that stupid? If Firefox provides a virtually ad free experience then why would anybody not use it? If there is any single piece of software that is "geek" and widely adopted, then it is Firefox. Will there be a mass migration to Firefox? Probably not. But I would not be surprised if 10% or 20% of Chrome or Chromium based browsers get hammered so hard by ads that they'll do just about anything to get out of the fishbowl.
Who knows. Such trends are difficult to predict with any certainty, but they are possible. All those years ago nobody would ever have though Firefox had a chance. I'd rather be in bed with FIrefox than Chrome.
