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I never understand the intent behind introducing this move - is it greed for more ad money through lockdown ? The company is literally a monopoly and still it w

I never understand the intent behind introducing this move - is it greed for more ad money through lockdown ? The company is literally a monopoly and still it wants more. This seems like the company is bowing down for shareholder supremacy.

saagarjha 8y ago
> I never understand the intent behind introducing this move I think the reasons provided are valid (namely, faster blocking with less data flowing through extensions), whether or not you think they are good enough to outweigh their disadvantages.
- the8472 8y ago
  That justifies adding the new API, it does not explain removing the old capabilities. They could nudge extension developers to try the new API by adding some "extension X may slow down page loads" warnings somewhere if they don't use it.
  - rajeshmr 8y ago
    > It does not explain removing the old capabilities Very true! Especially if the network impact is of the order of sub-milliseconds.
    - tyingq 8y ago
      It's also likely that the net gain in performance by blocking resources with heuristics (that wouldn't be blocked by a simple pattern) outweighs any loss. At least for many websites.
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    I'm fine with that.
    - rajeshmr 8y ago
      Good for you. :) To each his own.
- rajeshmr 8y ago
  I think you should read this part of the article too : "Their study --which analyzed the network performance of ad blockers such as uBlock Origin, Adblock Plus, Brave, DuckDuckGo and Cliqz'z Ghostery-- found sub-millisecond median decision times per request, showing quite the opposite of what the Chrome team claimed." What are they really optimizing for ? The sub-millisecond times per request is barely noticeable, and on any given day its much preferable to ads tracking you everywhere on the internet!
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    I read the article the quote was pulled from, as well as participated in the discussion and responded to the author when it was posted here. Just FYI, Safari (which already has this feature in the form of content blockers) is able to block ads just fine, and anecdotally the performance is slightly, but noticeably better.
    - feanaro 8y ago
      The question still remains: what are they optimizing for if we already have sub-millisecond response times? The only evidence you offer is anecdotal. I'm having a hard time imagining perceptible differences in sub-millisecond response times so either you or the study are in error. And just to reiterate other comments: yes, Safari is probably able to block ads just fine now, because they modeled the engine according to capabilities needed right now. However, it comes at a huge cost to innovation and creates yet another barrier of entry guarded by a large corporation. Taking all of that in account, it seems unnecessary. The looming threat of ulterior motives from Google remains ever-present.
      - saagarjha 8y ago
        To be honest, I'm much more in favor of this API because of its privacy features than performance. I think it's a little bit faster, but it has a much bigger benefit on the trust side because extensions no longer run arbitrary JavaScript in every page I visit.
Tsubasachan 8y ago
In my opinion its not really a conspiracy. People at Google are so far up their own ass that they don't understand the importance of content blockers. Personally I just can't deal with websites without ublock modifying them.
- rajeshmr 8y ago
  Exactly, the experience on the web is much better with ad blockers! EDIT : I think my first comment triggered a bit of discussion. I also don't think there is any conspiracy (conspiracy is a big word :) ) - because I didn't intend to portray it that way. What I did want to convey, from the vantage point of a user, is that the priorities didn't seem to align.
- feanaro 8y ago
  Depends on what you consider a "conspiracy". The word "conspiracy" sounds unnecessarily controversial and mysterious. It seems plausible and probable to me that there are economic motivating factors at play.
  - rajeshmr 8y ago
    Indeed. It seems plausible!
  - ardy42 8y ago
    A conspiracy is just more than one person getting together to plan to do something wrong or illegal.
- tyingq 8y ago
  The initial proposal was for a static list of blocked uris, and no api to add an item to the list. That really speaks to a conspiracy to me. What plausible reason would there be for that? You would have had to push a new version of an extension to change the list. There's no way that omission was an "oopsie". They did back off on that.
- ganeshkrishnan 8y ago
  I don't think they are far up their ass. They don't give two shits on a popsicle what tech users think. They have an absolute monopoly on almost everything on the internet. Apps, ads, search, phones, browser. Where we gonna go if they kick us out?
magicalhippo 8y ago
The only argument that made sense to me was the one that the current APIs makes it quite difficult to reason about what the extension actually does once installed and running. By dynamically installing rules downloaded from the web a nefarious ad blocker could, for example, not just block ads but also hide certain political content from search results. By requiring the list of rules to be hard-coded in the extension, it's easier to see what exactly the extension will do once installed. For me though, this benefit does not outweigh the cost.
- tyingq 8y ago
  That's an interesting thought, but extensions can still hide, inject, or replace content. They just can't avoid downloading the original by any criteria other than uri patterns.
  - magicalhippo 8y ago
    Sure, but the idea, as I understood it, was that by locking down the APIs such that they can't change behavior post-install, any such patters would be visible on inspection. For example, extensions are already rejected if they contain minified scripts as that also obfuscates what happens. This could be seen as going one step further. Again, not endorsing this move.
    - tyingq 8y ago
      Ah, yes. The separate set of manifest v3 proposals that disallow external and/or obfuscated code. Probably a good idea at a high level, but it does break good stuff like TamperMonkey (10 million users...ouch).

saagarjha 8y ago

> I never understand the intent behind introducing this move I think the reasons provided are valid (namely, faster blocking with less data flowing through extensions), whether or not you think they are good enough to outweigh their disadvantages.

the8472 8y ago
That justifies adding the new API, it does not explain removing the old capabilities. They could nudge extension developers to try the new API by adding some "extension X may slow down page loads" warnings somewhere if they don't use it.
- rajeshmr 8y ago
  > It does not explain removing the old capabilities Very true! Especially if the network impact is of the order of sub-milliseconds.
  - tyingq 8y ago
    It's also likely that the net gain in performance by blocking resources with heuristics (that wouldn't be blocked by a simple pattern) outweighs any loss. At least for many websites.
- saagarjha 8y ago
  I'm fine with that.
  - rajeshmr 8y ago
    Good for you. :) To each his own.
rajeshmr 8y ago
I think you should read this part of the article too : "Their study --which analyzed the network performance of ad blockers such as uBlock Origin, Adblock Plus, Brave, DuckDuckGo and Cliqz'z Ghostery-- found sub-millisecond median decision times per request, showing quite the opposite of what the Chrome team claimed." What are they really optimizing for ? The sub-millisecond times per request is barely noticeable, and on any given day its much preferable to ads tracking you everywhere on the internet!
- saagarjha 8y ago
  I read the article the quote was pulled from, as well as participated in the discussion and responded to the author when it was posted here. Just FYI, Safari (which already has this feature in the form of content blockers) is able to block ads just fine, and anecdotally the performance is slightly, but noticeably better.
  - feanaro 8y ago
    The question still remains: what are they optimizing for if we already have sub-millisecond response times? The only evidence you offer is anecdotal. I'm having a hard time imagining perceptible differences in sub-millisecond response times so either you or the study are in error. And just to reiterate other comments: yes, Safari is probably able to block ads just fine now, because they modeled the engine according to capabilities needed right now. However, it comes at a huge cost to innovation and creates yet another barrier of entry guarded by a large corporation. Taking all of that in account, it seems unnecessary. The looming threat of ulterior motives from Google remains ever-present.
    - saagarjha 8y ago
      To be honest, I'm much more in favor of this API because of its privacy features than performance. I think it's a little bit faster, but it has a much bigger benefit on the trust side because extensions no longer run arbitrary JavaScript in every page I visit.

Tsubasachan 8y ago

In my opinion its not really a conspiracy. People at Google are so far up their own ass that they don't understand the importance of content blockers. Personally I just can't deal with websites without ublock modifying them.

rajeshmr 8y ago
Exactly, the experience on the web is much better with ad blockers! EDIT : I think my first comment triggered a bit of discussion. I also don't think there is any conspiracy (conspiracy is a big word :) ) - because I didn't intend to portray it that way. What I did want to convey, from the vantage point of a user, is that the priorities didn't seem to align.
feanaro 8y ago
Depends on what you consider a "conspiracy". The word "conspiracy" sounds unnecessarily controversial and mysterious. It seems plausible and probable to me that there are economic motivating factors at play.
- rajeshmr 8y ago
  Indeed. It seems plausible!
- ardy42 8y ago
  A conspiracy is just more than one person getting together to plan to do something wrong or illegal.
tyingq 8y ago
The initial proposal was for a static list of blocked uris, and no api to add an item to the list. That really speaks to a conspiracy to me. What plausible reason would there be for that? You would have had to push a new version of an extension to change the list. There's no way that omission was an "oopsie". They did back off on that.
ganeshkrishnan 8y ago
I don't think they are far up their ass. They don't give two shits on a popsicle what tech users think. They have an absolute monopoly on almost everything on the internet. Apps, ads, search, phones, browser. Where we gonna go if they kick us out?

magicalhippo 8y ago

The only argument that made sense to me was the one that the current APIs makes it quite difficult to reason about what the extension actually does once installed and running. By dynamically installing rules downloaded from the web a nefarious ad blocker could, for example, not just block ads but also hide certain political content from search results. By requiring the list of rules to be hard-coded in the extension, it's easier to see what exactly the extension will do once installed. For me though, this benefit does not outweigh the cost.

tyingq 8y ago
That's an interesting thought, but extensions can still hide, inject, or replace content. They just can't avoid downloading the original by any criteria other than uri patterns.
- magicalhippo 8y ago
  Sure, but the idea, as I understood it, was that by locking down the APIs such that they can't change behavior post-install, any such patters would be visible on inspection. For example, extensions are already rejected if they contain minified scripts as that also obfuscates what happens. This could be seen as going one step further. Again, not endorsing this move.
  - tyingq 8y ago
    Ah, yes. The separate set of manifest v3 proposals that disallow external and/or obfuscated code. Probably a good idea at a high level, but it does break good stuff like TamperMonkey (10 million users...ouch).