You are probably right, although a low number of rules will also affect them as their acceptable ads program is based on the fact that they block everything else. I still wonder if they can continue to offer that program with 30,000 rules only. My idea that they target ABP came from their arbitrary 30,000 rules limit.
As I have written elsewhere I consider ABP and AdBlock as "infiltrated" by Google, so they definitely want to see the rigorous blockers disappear first. Should have made that clearer in the comment.
The Safari version supports "Acceptable Ads". I counted ~17,000 rules[1] which includes exception rules. Also, keep in mind cosmetic exception filters are not implemented through the declarativeNetRequest API.
It's been my assumption that with a little bit of scripting, EasyList could be pruned to land within the 30K without too much trouble. As you have more experience in this fields though, do you have any thoughts on how viable this approach would be, and if the 30K limit will be a problem in the end?
Doesn't any finite length list that is only able to be updated when the addon is updated mean ad networks can use a random string with more combinations than the size of list to defeat all ad blocking?
As I have written elsewhere I consider ABP and AdBlock as "infiltrated" by Google, so they definitely want to see the rigorous blockers disappear first. Should have made that clearer in the comment.