1999
Google engineers want to make ad-blocking (near) impossible
(stackdiary.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Yes, the Pixel is a very good piece of hardware once you remove the crap software. If not the Pixel, there are plenty of other phone manufacturers around the world. Purism is another interesting option. Android is an open source project and Google cannot shut it down. There will always be ways. The majority are actually pretty smart and capable, just afraid of change. They wake up at some point though.