>That's my cynical, entirely pessimistic outlook of it all anyway.

Yes. I read the announcement totally different. They're keeping blocking webRequest because there's no other way to make good adblockers, and it will stay that way until there's a way to get them working in a new API.

This is good news. Great news, even.

>I'd like to read Raymond Hill's thoughts on this.

Would not be surprised if he was one of the developers mentioned in the article...