This Basic Chrome Extension Is Making $44,000,000/Year

About this video

Sam and Shaan explore the surprisingly lucrative business of ad-blocking browser extensions, focusing on Adblock, a Chrome extension created by a solo developer in Georgia that claims around 20 million users, and its competitor Adblock Plus, which Sam claims generated $44 million in revenue and $26 million in profit in 2017. They discuss the creator’s background working on Google Ads before building Adblock, the extension’s reported sale in 2015, and the security risks chrome extensions pose to users.

Key takeaways

• Sam highlights that Adblock’s sole creator, Michael Gundlach, likely earned tens of millions in annual profit from the extension before reportedly selling it in 2015, despite maintaining an extremely low public profile and declining job opportunities on LinkedIn
• Sam notes that Adblock Plus, a competitor with 20-30 employees, claimed $44 million in revenue and $26 million in profit in 2017 according to publicly filed European corporate documents, suggesting this business model can scale significantly
• Both hosts emphasize that chrome extensions represent a major security risk because they can read, write, and modify all data users encounter while browsing, making them potential vectors for malicious data harvesting if ownership changes hands

Episode details: published December 11, 2021 · 43K views · 4:43 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. The business ideas, figures and results discussed are the hosts’ and guests’ own claims, shared as brainstorming and entertainment — not verified facts and not investment advice.

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