If only everyone used uBlock instead of the countless other scammy adblockers with millions of active users, which do not take privacy nearly as seriously. OP also never mentioned uBlock specifically, so I wouldn't be so quick to call it FUD.

Whether or not this is a sufficient solution is one thing, but there are some legitimate problems with the current state of adblocking. Being able to provide a similar solution in a far more limited fashion would be a good thing for users.

Nah, uBO is fantastic. The problem is nearly all other purported adblockers. Some of them are ok/mediocre; most (like most browser extensions) are just outright crap or malware.

The moral dilemma here seems to be that Google is unwilling to privilege a good-citizen adblocker like uBO over other extensions; they're an ad company and any explicit step towards promoting an adblocker probably is hard to explain at shareholder meetings, even if the engineers want to.

They never suggested anything of the sort. That being said, for every uBO that doesn't send that data back home, there are 1000s of "ad-blockers" that do exactly that.