No. "Countermeasure" denotes a counteracting effect (eg antivirus is a countermeasure against malware); it does not mean blocking or restricting. If you're going to be a word-Nazi, at least get it right.
Countermeasure is a fairly general concept. It simply means taking one measure to deal with another. There needn't be a direct, linear relation between them, nor does it specify the domain of action. If you regard Google's action in the financial domain, to deal with freeloaders imposing a cost on Youtube without providing any revenue, then blocking users of ad blockers from viewing videos (i.e. the main activity imposing costs on Google) would certainly be considered a direct and compensatory action.
Moreover, whatever definition you hold, there's no way you can argue in good faith that the article wouldn't have been clearer by embracing the term. The article was a word salad and stepped all over itself, trying to get its (fairly simple) point across, and only succeeds for those who already know enough to figure out what it must be trying to say.
Yes, the piece is awkwardly worded.
It's not just
awkward, it literally says the opposite of what it means, in several places -
including the headline!
That's par with most every filler pieces here, along with prominent typos that aren't corrected even when pointed out, and just basically low-quality, low-effort overall. That, and the increasingly annoying advertorial pop-ups. But nobody complained about it because of "free." Same for YouTube.
Not on par. I read most of the news articles published on this site, and this is probably the most clumsily worded-I've seen in recent memory.
I don't complain as long as I feel the meaning is sufficiently clear, which is nearly always.
>Google's whole approach to this issue violates the basic principle that a browser is supposed to act as an agent for the user, not the website owner.
The basic principle is that you get what you pay for. Google is entirely within its right to block adblockers. And it knows very well when adblockers are used, because adblock use is not hidden.
Whether there's a case against what Google is doing is really for lawyers to argue, or at least requires knowledge of the relevant laws. If you're trying to make a moral argument, you could say that a retail store could deploy face recognition and require all of its customers to agree to its use. You might feel the store has the right to do so, but there are certain jurisdictions where the use of face recognition is banned. So, that would be considered an illegal condition for service. Without knowing the laws they were alleged to have broken, you cannot say what they did wasn't in violation.