> Are they not up in arms internally because of how awful the web is without ad blocker?
Chrome still has many ad blockers. While I use chrome/chromium fairly little, ublock origin lite has worked well for me when I do. I'm aware older manifest V2 extensions are theoretically superior at blocking a wide variety of undesired content but if your main concern is not seeing ads, that is absolutely doable.
The core issue is that those ad blockers are easy to defeat. The only reason ad companies haven't invested energy in defeating them (yet) is because they're not popular enough.
Once they are the only option in Chrome, it's just a matter of time until Chrome becomes largely useless at blocking ads.
Chrome still has many ad blockers. While I use chrome/chromium fairly little, ublock origin lite has worked well for me when I do. I'm aware older manifest V2 extensions are theoretically superior at blocking a wide variety of undesired content but if your main concern is not seeing ads, that is absolutely doable.