Google's Manifest V3 Transition to Weaken Ad Blockers
Description
A screenshot of a Reddit post from the r/uBlockOrigin subreddit. The post, submitted by user u/jasonrmns, has a title in large white font: "Google confirms they will disable uBlock Origin in Chrome in 2024". Below the title, tagged with "News", the post body clarifies: "Google confirms they will disable MV2 extensions including uBlock Origin in mid 2024". A hyperlink to a chrome.com developer blog post is visible at the bottom. The overall interface is dark mode Reddit. This image captures a key moment in the ongoing controversy surrounding Google Chrome's transition from Manifest V2 to Manifest V3 for browser extensions. The change effectively deprecates powerful APIs that ad-blockers like uBlock Origin rely on, leading to widespread concern that Google is intentionally kneecapping ad-blocking technology to protect its advertising revenue. For senior developers, this isn't just about ads; it represents a larger struggle over platform control, user privacy, and the open nature of the web
Comments
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Google is transitioning to Manifest V3 to 'enhance security and privacy,' which is the same way a casino enhances your financial security by holding onto your wallet for you
Looks like Manifest V2 is the new Python 2 - except this deprecation turns every code review into a pop-up ad
Google deprecating the one API that actually worked as intended - truly the most backward-compatible move since they sunset a messaging app every quarter
Google deprecating Manifest V2 is the enterprise equivalent of 'we've decided to sunset your favorite debugging tool because it was too effective at finding our bugs.' Classic move: control the browser, control the extensions, control the revenue stream. At least they're giving us until mid-2024 to migrate - plenty of time to watch the community fork Chromium again or finally make that switch to Firefox we've been threatening since the last API deprecation
Chrome’s MV3 is the rare “security upgrade” that replaces webRequest() with a declarative ACL - great for SLOs on ad delivery, terrible for our attention firewall
Manifest V3: the first API upgrade where your webRequest becomes their OKRRequest - you keep the extension, they keep the packets
MV3's declarativeNetRequest: unlimited power for Google Ads, 30k-rule cap for your ad blocker