For a long time, content blocker Adblock Plus held the popularity crown over at the Mozilla Firefox add-ons repository. It was trailed by uBlock Origin, another content blocker, which gained rapidly in terms of user numbers.
Now, uBlock Origin has surpassed Adblock Plus on the Firefox add-ons store, making it the number one Firefox extension in regards to user numbers.
Mozilla reports that uBlock Origin crossed the 5.5 million users mark while Adblock Plus is sitting at 5.47 million users at the time of writing. If the trend continues, the gap between the two ad blockers will widen in the coming months and years.
UBlock Origin beats Adblock Plus in other metrics as well. The average rating is 4.8 out of 5 on the Mozilla add-ons store, while Adblock Plus has a rating of 4.5 out of 5. As far as the number of reviews is concerned: uBlock Origin received more than 13200 reviews, thousands more than Adblock Plus' 8500 reviews at the time of writing.
The uBlock Origin extension was first published on Mozilla's extensions store in April 2015 by its creator Raymond Hill, known as gorhill online. The extension was created after Hill left the uBlock project that he created.
Hill improved the extension over the years, adding features and improvements to it on a regular basis. To name a few improvements: blocking WebRTC from leaking IP addresses, removing elements permanently from webpages, blocking JavaScript by default, and addressing new tracking methods, such as CNAME tracking,
The Firefox version of uBlock Origin is considered the version that offers the best protection, as it supports protection against CNAME tracking, which the Chrome versions do not offer.
Hill calls uBlock Origin a "wide-spectrum content blocker" instead of an ad blocker. The extension blocks more advertisement but also trackers, miners, popups, malicious URLs and more by default. Users may add more lists, for instance to deal with annoyances on the Internet.
Many users hold uBlock Origin in high regard because of its memory and CPU effectiveness. Hill, who never accepted donations or compensation for his development work, is another core reason why the extension is as popular as it is right now.
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