Chrome's API changes will hurt a substantial part of the extension ecosystem. Google could have dissected the webRequest API by introducing new granular APIs th

Chrome's API changes will hurt a substantial part of the extension ecosystem. Google could have dissected the webRequest API by introducing new granular APIs that together would have offered feature parity with the deprecated API functions. But they didn't because it would hurt their bottom line. Granular APIs would have allowed developers to migrate their extensions in a meaningful way, while users would have been able to allow only the permissions they truly need. Reviewers could have scrutinized extensions which request unrelated permissions. This is a feature reduction from Google's part with the aim to keep ad blockers in check, while the rest of the many extensions and future use cases that they'll make impossible are casualties that they are willing to accept to protect their profits.