Google starts deprecating older, more capable Chrome extensions next week

Chrome's Manifest V3 transition is here. First up are warnings for any V2 extensions.

See full article...

 

[BananaWarrior]

As I've understood it, this (i.e., the V3 and not V2 manifest compatibility) affects Chrome, and Chrome only. It does not affect Chromium and other browsers based on it, such as Edge.

Is this correct?

This is not correct. It will affect all Chromium based browsers.

Brave's built in ad block will purportedly "be unaffected" but that remains to be seen.

uBlock will be borked across the board, except on Firefox.

 

[BananaWarrior]

Duplicate post

 

[RickyP784]

Glad I've mostly transitioned to Firefox at this point...

I just made the switch at work because of this article. Chrome was my daily driver and Firefox and Edge were used for different things, but I created a second FF profile and made it my main so things still function pretty much the same.

I'll keep Chrome as a backup, but I imagine most of what I did will switch to Edge. (Yes, I know it's Chromium-based and will change to Manifest V3, too). This way, though, Google gets none of my web surfing data anymore.

FAFO, Google. Deuces.

 

[plugh]

Here's to hoping that will help Firefox regain some user base.

 

[Jeff S]

pi-hole, and I block IPV6

Why block IPv6? If you have IPv6, you should use it. Block IPv4 (oops, can't connect to Ars. . . )

But really, why would you block IPv6? It's no more of a risk than IPv4, and it's really important that statistics about IPv6 show that people are increasing adoption, so that more sites will deploy it.

BTW, Ars, it's really, really bad that in the year 2024 you still can't be accessed by IPv6.

You've only been reporting on it since what, 1999?

Meanwhile, Google shows global IPv6 traffic at about 45%, US at about 46.7%, UK at 45.37, France and Germany both over 70%, Japan 49.57, India 70.59%.

Cloudflare estimates global IPv6 traffic a bit lower, at 35.9%, but that's still pretty significant.

 

[michaelbfried]

I wonder if we can just fork Chromium and turn off this nonsense.

 

[Kommet]

This is not correct. It will affect all Chromium based browsers.

Brave's built in ad block will purportedly "be unaffected" but that remains to be seen.

uBlock will be borked across the board, except on Firefox.

Google will be removing Manifest v2 code. Microsoft is the only other Blink/v8 user with the resources to maintain a significant fork, and they've already said they will be following Google's lead on this. Other Chromium clones will not have a choice in the matter.

As I understand it, Brave's built-in blocker doesn't use the WebExtensions API to hook into the browser engine so it should still work.

Still, there's 2 big things to keep in mind:

1. You're stuck with Brave's ad blocker (or neutered Mv3 ad blockers), which isn't as good as uBlock Origin
2. Brave, like Google, is an ad company, and trusting them to have your best interests at heart is like trusting Google to do so

Stick with Firefox and uBO.

 

[xWidget]

This is not correct. It will affect all Chromium based browsers.

Brave's built in ad block will purportedly "be unaffected" but that remains to be seen.

uBlock will be borked across the board, except on Firefox.

Will it? Microsoft's manifest V3 page shows it as "TBD" still.

 

[Dark Pumpkin]

Meh, we've already gone through 2 major browser shifts, from Navigator to IE and from IE to Chrome, I'm sure if enough people get a terrible experience with Chrome we'll move onto something else.

The thing I think a lot of ad-block users fail to realize is that ad-block users are the minority. People who think Manifest V3 is going to have even the slightest chance of causing a mass exodus are massively overestimating what percentage of people use ad blockers or other privacy extensions that will be hampered by V3.

In my case, everyone around me uses an ad blocker, which has the risk of causing me to live in a little bubble where I assume everyone everywhere uses an ad blocker. But I avoid being tricked by that because I know that all these people wouldn't have an adblocker if it wasn't for me being around to recommend a way for them to make the internet be less insufferable to use.

People who are used to the terrible experience of the internet without an ad blocker are the majority by a long shot, and won't see their experience get worse when the ad blocker they weren't using becomes less effective.

It would be great if it turns out I'm wrong in my attempts to not fall for any sort of biases, but I doubt that will happen.

 

[Jeff S]

The thing I think a lot of ad-block users fail to realize is that ad-block users are the minority. People who think Manifest V3 is going to have even the slightest chance of causing a mass exodus are massively overestimating what percentage of people use ad blockers or other privacy extensions that will be hampered by V3.

In my case, everyone around me uses an ad blocker, which has the risk of causing me to live in a little bubble where I assume everyone everywhere uses an ad blocker. But I avoid being tricked by that because I know that all these people wouldn't have an adblocker if it wasn't for me being around to recommend a way for them to make the internet be less insufferable to use.

People who are used to the terrible experience of the internet without an ad blocker are the majority by a long shot, and won't see their experience get worse when the ad blocker they weren't using becomes less effective.

Well, my hope is mainly that it will bring a lot of the power users back to Firefox - they largely had switched to Chrome about 5 years ago, and took their friends and relatives with them. The power users largely determine what their less techy friends and relatives use, either through recommendation, or the friend or relative asks them to "setup their new computer for them" or "fix my computer" and that user then installs something for them and instructs them on using it.

Where the power users go, so to a significant portion of other users, in a sort of 'coat-tails' effect.

 

[xWidget]

And then it seems like Vivaldi is letting Manifest V2 die, but also updating their built-in adblocking to keep working despite the changes. I'm taking their lack of any other updates since two years ago to mean that they aren't going out of their way otherwise.

https://vivaldi.com/blog/manifest-v3-webrequest-and-ad-blockers/
In 2020, Vivaldi’s Ad Blocker was built as a response to the deprecations announced in Manifest V3, with the intention that it would keep working when existing ad-blocking extensions would become inoperant. The goal is to keep it working regardless of what happens regarding the extension code.

 

[unequivocal]

This is why it's so important to use and support Firefox - because every other browser out there except Safari is just a chromium re-skin, meaning they're eventually going to be subject to whatever limitations and restrictions Google implements upstream if they want to stay up to day with features/security.

Firefox on the other hand is the last truly independent rendering engine - without them, there's no longer web "standards" as chromium will simply get to dictate the future of the web.

It's not a cross-platform answer, but I have some hope that Microsoft will actually be motivated to do the engineering work needed to keep V2 alive in Edge.. Time will tell, but I'd guess they are going to notice that a lot of engineering types are going to be very annoyed with this, and it would be an opportunity to make a statement of "we don't suck as hard as Google anymore." They've been looking for many places to say this over the last decade, so maybe they'll draw a line here too.

 

[lewax00]

The thing I think a lot of ad-block users fail to realize is that ad-block users are the minority. People who think Manifest V3 is going to have even the slightest chance of causing a mass exodus are massively overestimating what percentage of people use ad blockers or other privacy extensions that will be hampered by V3.

According to this report, around 52% of Americans use ad blockers. Globally, I'm seeing a few different numbers come up, mostly in the range of 30-37%.

Not a minority in at least one major market, and a large minority globally. It's not some tiny group that Chrome wouldn't notice leaving.

 

[Kerry56]

I've been using Vivaldi for approximately five years, with Firefox in a backup role. I'm switching those around today.

 

[JCarnage]

I have Chrome but rarely use it. I have edge (which is based on Chromium) which I used for limited sites. Safari and Firefox are my most used browsers. I have virtually no presence (intentional) in the Google ecosystem and I’m perfectly fine with that.

 

[pjcamp]

Which makes me glad I've never used Chrome, except for those few bullshit sites "designed for Chrome" that I have to use.

 

[Zaitu]

I wonder if Firefox will eventually have to give in to the power of Google in few years time regarding this. Firefox can still support v2 today, but in 3 years, will they still be able to?

 

[PCLoving]

beyond me why people use chrome as their primary browser. you have to have it, for sure, for those chrome-only interfaces, but as a daily driver? do not get it, but i think there is some sort of compulsion to deliver data to google involved.

This post came from a compulsion to sound like a jackass

 

[BananaWarrior]

Will it? Microsoft's manifest V3 page shows it as "TBD" still.

There is no chance, that Microsoft doesn't implement this, absolute zero, unfortunately.

 

[lurknomore]

The IT guys turned off all our extensions last week, in a CYA read of security requirements.
Ads and scripts are so disruptive these days, they were quickly told to reverse the change.

 

[chronoss2022]

bye bye chrome
only for gmail now

edge is chromium does this affect it cause that will be edges death too

 

[M.Z.]

I never really got why anyone trusted Google as their main web browser to begin with. I think things like this were going to be inevitable, it is a giant ad company after all. Firefox has worked well for me for a very long time & if it weren't for the companies I work for defaulting to chrome I would never use it.

 

[Made in Hurry]

I moved to Firefox when this was announced. UngoogledChrome is also a nice backup.

https://ungoogled-software.github.io/ungoogled-chromium-binaries/
I moved from Windows to Linux Mint at the same time, and it seemed to have been the smart thing to do.

 

[Kasoroth]

A lot of people switched to Chrome during the Dark Days of Firefox's rapid release. It's hard to overstate how bad it was. Minutes-long "UPDATING FIREFOX" blocking modals every week or so, constant extension compatibility breaks, the browser was slow . . . it was awful. Somehow I stuck through it, mainly out of laziness and because I was working 90 hour weeks at the time and hardly used my personal computer anyway.

Firefox went from awesome to terrible and back to awesome, but there was never a compelling reason to switch back to it after the meltdown. I steered all of my non-techy friends and family towards Chrome, as did a lot of other nerds.

Yes, Firefox is fantastic now. I don't even have Chrome and just use Edge for the (very tiny) handful of sites that need it (hell, it's already installed and is effectively just a Chromium reskin anyway). The question is now how to get all of those people back to FF. As long as we can keep FF at something meaningful---say at least 5% penetration---sites will need to continue to support it. But if it keeps dropping (it's now down to 3%), it'll be easy enough for devs to just ignore it, which is the really dark future.

IDK---maybe Google is doing us all a favor, since some fraction of the 40% of people who use adblockers likely will move to FF, which keeps web standards separate from "Chromium standards."

Interesting. I've been on Firefox since the beginning, and never really had any problems with it, but I would have missed out on those issues with the updater due to being on Linux, so it was always just updated through the standard OS package manager rather than Firefox's updater.

My PCs have also always been reasonably high end (though not top tier) gaming PCs, so general browser performance issues might have been mitigated by PC performance being "overkill" for web browsing.

Also, the only extensions I use are ad blockers (I was on Ad Block Plus for quite a while, but at some point in the past switched to uBlock Origin) and Privacy Badger, and those seemed to make the necessary changes to get through the extension architecture shift.

It sounds like Windows users, people with lower end PCs, and those who used lots of extensions had a much worse time of it.

 

[lancemartini]

Just want to put in a plug for Orion from Kagi. It's a browser not based on Chromium (it's based on WebKit) that supports uBlock Origin and other extensions on both iOS and macOS.

 

[chronoss2022]

I wonder how long it'll be before Google ad services/analytics, which are embedded in virtually the entire internet for site metrics, will require this? Imagine, all of your webpages you go to that use Google analytics will suddenly throw some unlockable overlay that your browser is unsupported because it still supports manifest v2 (even if it supports v3 too).

dnt care if a few hundred million people ditch them thats there loss and if they screw service we still aint coming back
you change you evil f#$%ing ways we come back

 

[meisanerd]

Besides moving to firefox, it looks like I need to look more closely into how I can make my router block ads (like PiHole but I'm running OpnSense so it should have it's own equivalent solution).

Things are getting bad on mobile too (which is why I need to look into router level blocking). There are a number of links that are just plain unusable because of bad ad placement and behavior.

As this escelates, I wonder if we will have to turn to VPNs and high powered servers to be key parts of blocking ads. Even 'legit' ads are becoming malicious with them being set up to steal focus, placed to cause accidental clicks, or other bad behavior that makes consuming the content they are placed near impossible. As companies are increasingly offering to trade ad free use for subscriptions, it makes a hell of a financial case for the VPN subscription instead.

1. Services -> Unbound -> General. Enable (I think it might be by default).

2. Services -> Unbound -> Blocklist. Enable. Either pick a list from the drop-down, or turn on advanced mode and add Hosts entries to the "URLs of Blocklists" option. I primarily use Steven Black hosts (https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts), so pick one of those. Find the one that blocks the stuff you want blocked, and copy the "raw hosts" link into the URLs of Blocklists field.

3. Point your devices at OpnSense for DNS.

4. Profit???

 

[DaveDaring]

I have been a Firefox user pretty much since its release in 2004 and while I have other browsers installed just in case, Firefox is my day-to-day browser. I use and have tried most other browsers, they just have too many restrictions on what net crap I can filter out, at this point on Firefox I have 99% of the junk removed with U-Block, Privacy Badger and Facebook Purity extensions with fadblock dealing with Youtube crud. I am not surprised Chrome they feel their position is so strong that us poor dumb sheep will take it without a bleat, me I think it just hastens the antitrust breakup reckoning.

 

[Peevester]

As I've understood it, this (i.e., the V3 and not V2 manifest compatibility) affects Chrome, and Chrome only. It does not affect Chromium and other browsers based on it, such as Edge.

Is this correct?



/Signed, Firefox user with currently extension-less Edge at work

It means that the manifest v2 api will no longer be maintained as part of chrome, so any project following the chrome source will have to maintain It themselves, as well as do whatever has to be done to allow both versions to coexist.

Is this a big deal? Probably not, and some browsers like Brave have committed to keeping it going which is going to make the work easier for everyone, but it's definitely some extra work and possible sources for bugs and nonstandard rendering.

The best solution is to simply stop using chrome. a company that gets the vast majority of its income from ads is never going to be privacy focused. Plus the browser is a bloated mess.

 

[BRF1795]

Edge, Brave and Opera should cooperate on a fork where they preserve the abilities of V2 while enhancing the privacy, a V3 lite instead of a uBlock Origin Lite. If possible, they’d probably increase their market shares and perhaps even establish a new standard. People care about privacy and ads are a karma nuisance.

 

[tumblrfan69]

crazy coincidence that my migration away from chrome also starts next week

 

[GooseGoesHonk]

Firefox works great, I missed it honestly, thanks Google for giving me that nice big push to switch back to Firefox.

 

[Deleted member 1061767]

I've been telling myself for over a year that I need to switch back to Firefox. Now is definitely the time. Thanks to whoever mentioned that Firefox could sync across platforms; I didn't know that.

My only remaining issue is training my 81 year-old mother on something new. I try to keep us in sync, so I can be her tech support from 500 miles away. That part will be fun, but I think it's past time to do the switch. We survived the Windows 11 transition, so this should be a piece of cake, right? RIGHT?!?

 

[rharris]

If browser ads were STATIC, like a magazine or newspaper, I probably wouldn't use a blocker, but!
Pop ups, pop under, auto start videos, redirects and on and on...screw that!
Using just Adguard, the data savings tells you how much garbage it toss to us on each browser window or page you open.

 

[psko]

Chrome is like IE back in the day.... Stick to Firefox people (or any other browser than Chrome)

 

[BRF1795]

Meh, we've already gone through 2 major browser shifts, from Navigator to IE and from IE to Chrome, I'm sure if enough people get a terrible experience with Chrome we'll move onto something else.

In 1997 my bank forced me to switch from Netscape to IE. Remember I called the customer service and complained, which is completely out of character for me. Don’t remember why I switched from IE to Chrome. I attribute this obliviousness to skilled marketing.

Uninstalled Opera when they lost all my open tabs after an update. Uninstalled Firefox because updating the browser didn’t update the updater, which was a separate installation – why?

On Edge now, cos no pestering.

 

[stevenjklein]

Once iDevices get open up by EU,

That already happened, back in March 5. Nobody cares, and Safari still has overwhelmingly market share.

Chrome will either annihilate Safari, or Apple will switch to a Chromium code base.

macOS has been open to third-party browsers for over 3 decades. And Chrome hasn’t annihilated Safari there.

Plus, Apple gets $18 billion for making Google the default search engine on Safari.

Apple will never outsource such a critical piece of their OS to Google. They learned their lesson when Microsoft threatened to pull their AppleSoft BASIC license if Apple didn’t abandon MacBasic.

Plus there’s no way generic browser code like chromium will ever get the kind of power/performance of bespoke code tuned to fly on Apple silicon.

 

[hizonner]

One big problem is schools were Chromebooks are used. There is no manageable way to provision the Chromebooks with Firefox instead.
I (and many of our students) will sorely miss uBlock Origin.

So, class, what have we learned about choosing platforms?

 

[stormcrash]

And the beast shall come forth surrounded by a roiling cloud of vengeance. The house of the unbelievers shall be razed and they shall be scorched to the earth. Their tags shall blink until the end of days.
— from The Book of Mozilla, 12:10