It isn't Microsoft that has entered the extinguish phase for ad blocking browser add-ons. I also don't remember Microsoft doing anything as anti-user as trying to keep pop-up blockers from working back in the bad old days.
Pop-ups were universally reviled, but also explorer aggressively pushed lots of random half features to support their products - the only difference is that they didn't publish a "spec" as google uses to create a veneer of not being anti-user.
MS's anti-user was in the form of ensuring that necessary sites would not work in other browsers (including the Mac IE engine, whose name I have forgotten, and therefore IE mobile). They didn't block ad blockers, etc because they didn't support any kind of extensions :D
