looks like rendering adblockers extensions obsolete with manifest-v3 was not enough so now they try to implement DRM into the browser giving the ability to any website to refuse traffic to you if you don’t run a complaint browser ( cough…firefox )
here is an article in hacker news since i’m sure they can explain this to you better than i.
and also some github docs
This would include YouTube, mail, drive, maps, search which I use daily. And it will be baked into android, and possibly Mac os so it supports the latest standard.
My guess is that sooner or later google chrome will show scary warnings “this site does not support dem, here is a link why this is bad!!!” In the browsers address bar to get users and webmaster to adopt the DRM.
I rarely use Youtube, but this would help boost free/libre alternatives. I use Gmail web, which means Thunderbird-only or switching back to my own mailserver. Drive, there is Nextcloud. Maps, I mostly use Osmand. Search, I use ddg but here’s good point to use p2p and speciality search engines. Android, guess why I’m using Lineage OS. OS X, guess why I’m using Linux, or could switch to *BSD.
Google can continue to devolve into a shittier version of a walled garden that is Apple.
Front ends might not be classified as approved environments, though…
Other poster is right, those aren’t the only applications around that do those things. If you know its wrong why do it?