Thanks for the graph, that's quite interesting. Do you have any insight as to why it's risen so sharply during the past three years? I'm thinking maybe it's just connected to the increase in overall (especially smartphone) users of the internet? Even people who have been using desktops for years, use the internet more thanks to smartphones and thus ads become more pervasive in their life, thus perhaps prompting an increase as well?
Maybe you can share your thoughts on why you think it would be any indication that the overall percentage of internet users using ad blockers has gone up?
I have a hard time seeing the majority of iOS users installing one, this is the same as with most things, if it's not the default, 95% of users won't make use of it.
Is even the majority of users of desktop web browsers actually using adblockers yet?
Adblock Plus on Firefox shows a bit short of 20 million users, while Adblock on Chrome says 'over 200 million downloads', whatever that means in number of users. These numbers don't suggest a majority. (I don't think assuming over 500 million desktop users is crazy.)
Given that iOS is about 20% of total mobile users, this feature will probably make little to no difference, it might be a couple of % of those 20% of users, at the very best.
Using the developer preview now there is no difference when installing new apps, so do developers all have to make manual changes in their apps for it to work, or will Google flip a switch at some point?
Currently you can change app permissions once an app is installed, but they gain all the permissions they ask for when installed.
If each app has to be updated by the developer for the changes to take place, it might take a while for this to have any large effect on the ecosystem.