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> By releasing an extension built with Manifest V3 today — first among developers of ad blockers – we can say that we've met the challenge that Google posed to

by bambax 4y ago

> By releasing an extension built with Manifest V3 today — first among developers of ad blockers – we can say that we've met the challenge that Google posed to us. They shouldn't do this IMHO. Manifest V3 is a horrible attempt to kill adblocking (under the banner of "security", as always). But, the web is completely unusable without adblocking. If there are no more (effective) adblockers for Chrome, users will frantically begin to search for an alternative; there are many: Firefox and Brave to mention just two. Giving a boost to alternative browsers can only be a good thing; and it may also, eventually, make Google rethink this policy.

brightball 4y ago
It’s got me thinking about selling my Google stock. A move like this feels a little bit desperate.
Longhanks 4y ago
I think you overestimate the role adblockers play for regular users. Most people not affiliated with IT in any way I've met actually don't use an adblocker or have forgotten that they in fact do and would not notice the change to Manifest v3. Also, most people care much more about "it simply works", and that is Chrome. Firefox is neither preinstalled nor as compatible as Chrome (nor as fast or user friendly). There's already a lot of popups like "this site works best in Chrome".
- Multicomp 4y ago
  > nor as compatible as Chrome (nor as fast or user friendly). There's already a lot of popups like "this site works best in Chrome". User-agent sniffing[1] and it is a webdev smell. I acknowledge that this is true, but I admit being bummed that we didn't win the war to use web standards. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_sniffing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_sniffing
- kurupt213 4y ago
  Firefox is faster than chrome and only doesn’t work on badly built pages and webapps (like intelex)
- soraminazuki 4y ago
  > Firefox is neither preinstalled nor as compatible as Chrome (nor as fast or user friendly) Compatible against what? The web standards or Google Chrome?
  - edflsafoiewq 4y ago
    Compatibility against real world websites is the thing that actually matters. Firefox does fine for me though.
    - hgsgm 4y ago
    - prmoustache 4y ago
      and regardless of their respective performance differences, a firefox with an ad blocker is faster than a chrome without one.
    - nottorp 4y ago
      I tend to skip sites that don't work in Firefox + Ublock Origin. Unless someone pays me to open them (read: I need them to do work), then I do keep an instance of Chrome around. But only if there is no other choice.
- thejosh 4y ago
  It's actually ridiculous to surf the web without an adblocker. Let's say you have a brand new computer, and want to download nVidia drivers. Fire up your brand new computer, search for "nvidia drivers" using Bing.... and the first results are all ads for extremely scummy adware. (It's also hilarious when you search for "chrome download" when Edge begs you not to, and including when you click through, but that's a story for another time :)).
  - teh_klev 4y ago
    > It's actually ridiculous to surf the web without an adblocker. Obviously for this audience. But two of my buddies didn't even know such things existed and were truly grateful when I introduced uBO/Privacy Badger to them.
- doliveira 4y ago
  Yeah, I went to use my Mom's phone and I was appalled with all the ads and notifications. We can disable notifications, block intrusive ads or at least figure out which app is sending them to uninstall it, but for regular users the whole thing is an awful experience. I don't refrain from calling it "evil" anymore, because that's what it is. No wonder we're collectively going insane.
- unethical_ban 4y ago
  I helped my mom try out a smartphone for the first time this weekend, and she won't really use the web much on it except maybe weather. So I go to weather.com or something to show her how she can get to it. I got a full screen cookie consent popup, a location permission popup, and ads were everywhere on the screen. Must have been 50% of screen space for the top part of the page. It's absurd!
Multicomp 4y ago
Firefox is building MV3 and while they are coy with deprecating MV2, we all know, c'mon, they won't keep MV2 even a day after their minimum year promised. Their track record speaks against them. XPCOM extensions? Killed, but don't worry, we will re-implement all the needed APIs as WebExtensions (didn't happen). Fennec to Fenix mobile extensions? Killed, you get these 10 blessed ones, don't worry, we will eventually re-enable all of the webextensions on mobile, any day now, (didn't happen, you have to do hacky hacks involving nightly version to do un-blessed extensions). This will likely be their third strike. UPDATE: Or it's not nearly as bad as I expected. Per [1], while Firefox will be eventually deprecating MV2, the Firefox MV3 is much less 'evil' than the Chrome MV3, in that Firefox will continue to enable the WebRequest API without all the lock-down restrictions. This makes a competitive advantage for Firefox in terms of adblocking power, if anything. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32648925 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32648925
- soulofmischief 4y ago
  Now that uMatrix development is inactive, this third strike could be their last for me.
  - Dwedit 4y ago
    UMatrix is not only out of development, it is also broken on current Firefox. Sometimes you randomly lose session cookies, which is not acceptable.
- syrgian 4y ago
  Thanks for the summary. I had perceived the betrayal but I had never organized the thoughts nor verified the claims. What do you think is the future (+2 years) for people with hatred for ads? For now I am using Firefox on computer + Kiwi in Android, but I also expect those two to go awry in the mid term. * I see that after the edit, it doesn't look as bleak for Firefox PC. But what about Android?
  - groovybits 4y ago
    > What do you think is the future (+2 years) for people with hatred for ads? DNS-based blocking
thrdbndndn 4y ago
> Manifest V3 is a horrible attempt to kill adblocking I really don't understand the push of MV3. I don't believe they're just for security as Google claimed but at the same time I feel thinking it's "just" to ruin ad blocking is equally baffling. Could someone who is more involved elaborate the nuance of (intent of) MV3?
- gostsamo 4y ago
  Google sells ads. They totally want to kill adblocking with all means necessary. The moment they can no longer show increasing revenue, the stock will fall down to the levels expected from utilities from the levels that tech companies are valued at.
- somehnacct3757 4y ago
  MV2 extensions have a lot of API power and it was a common malware vector in the browser since the APIs let you sidestep a ton of regular web security. If you run a popular extension you will get offers to buy the extension which is a nice payday. The buyers would then stuff it full of malware to infect the existing users. Google makes no money off the Chrome Web Store and their initial attempts to restrict MV2 failed. The goal was for automated approval to suffice. Still, there was certain APIs that required human review. Google could have continued restricting MV2 until they didn't need human review but they must have got the idea for MV3 at that point. They could also hamstring ad blockers and get some promo packet material.
- JoshTriplett 4y ago
  I've talked to a number of real engineers within Google. The folks building the browser have no desire to kill adblocking; they're never going to include first-party adblocking (not least of which because antitrust), but they're not out to break third-party adblockers. It really is the case that the same mechanisms that enable adblockers ("this extension may affect your traffic on every website") are also the mechanisms that enable malware in extensions, which are not at all rare.
  - ocdtrekkie 4y ago
therealmarv 4y ago
Switch to Brave, you will still maintain 99% of the bell and whistles of Chrome (because it's a Chrome fork) and you will have an Adblock engine directly in the browser core written in Rust. How cool is that... Especially on mobile Brave is a game changer. https://github.com/brave/adblock-rust https://github.com/brave/adblock-rust
- sascha_sl 4y ago
  But also, a whole lot of other things I didn't ask for that are hard to entirely opt out of.
  - Karunamon 4y ago
    Other things such as?
- ryannevius 4y ago
  Does Brave have the memory / slowdown issues attributed to Chrome on Apple silicone MacBooks?
  - jefftk 4y ago
    I would be surprised if they differed here, since it's the same core browser.
  - therealmarv 4y ago
    It's not reengineered for most parts. Core is Chromium with all its upsides and downsides.
  - BrendanEich 4y ago
    Works great on my 14" 2021 MBP. Anyone else? Pointer to details of slowdown welcome. Thanks.
- alexb_ 4y ago
  I despise anything that has touched cryptocurrency, which is why I don't like Brave.
lapcat 4y ago
> They shouldn't do this IMHO. AdGuard is a business, and Chrome is the world's most popular web browser. They don't have much of a choice. uBlock Origin can pass because it's not a business.
- tgv 4y ago
  Of course they can do this. They don't want to do it. How else would they push ads through their ad blocker?
  - hgsgm 4y ago
  - Terretta 4y ago
    Unlike some ad blockers, AdGuard’s business model, while for profit, doesn’t include taking money to let ads through, contrary to, say, AdBlock Plus or Ghostery. AdGuard does have an option for users to allow inline search results ads and sites’ “self promotion” ads. More here: https://kb.adguard.com/en/general/search-ads-and-self-promotion https://kb.adguard.com/en/general/search-ads-and-self-promot...
    - philippclassen 4y ago
      Ghostery doesn't take money to unblock ads like AdBlock Plus. The decision what to block on a site depends on the community lists (e.g. EasyList, FanBoy). If you want to get unblocked in Ghostery, you need to convince the maintainers of the community lists.
Dalewyn 4y ago
>there are many: Firefox and Brave to mention just two. So just Firefox and then all the Chromes? There really aren't "many" alternatives, there isn't even /an/ alternative because Firefox suffers from Mozilla Misguidance(tm). Presumably the same people who bitched about the IE6 monopoly brought on and fully embraced the Chrome monopoly. We now all get to sleep in the Chrome bed.
- ThunderSizzle 4y ago
  I was all for Firefox until Mozilla decided cancel culture was the way to go back when they canceled their CEO. It became even worse since - calling for the de-platforming of half the country. I know Google hates the same user group, but Google also likes their money (or their money-value). Go woke, go broke. If your trying to compete uphill, shooting yourself in the foot isn't going to make it any easier.
monkeynotes 4y ago
Being that Brave and numerous other browsers are built on Chrome, does that mean they will also have this limitation?
- judge2020 4y ago
  Brave has their own built-in adblocker so I don't see them putting any effort into keeping Mv3 around after it's actually removed from Chromium.
  - BrendanEich 4y ago
    You mean MV2. I've said we'll keep support uBO and uMatrix uses of it, at least. This means we'd have support from the maintainers for their builds to produce extensions we can add to our component updater as optional for our users. We are discussing this now with uBO/uM maintainers.
- spiffytech 4y ago
  Brave's CEO has said they'll add back any functionality that ad blocker extensions need to keep working under Manifest v3. https://twitter.com/joshmanders/status/1134139586836344832 https://twitter.com/joshmanders/status/1134139586836344832
kevin_b_er 4y ago
I recall they also claimed performance benefits at one point.
freediver 4y ago
> If there are no more (effective) adblockers for Chrome, users will frantically begin to search for an alternative More likelier scenario: Most Chrome users do not even know what an ad-blocker is, let alone difference between Manifest v3 and v2. The franatical run, if one was ever a thing, already happened when Google announced V3, long time ago. The few people (relatively speaking) that cared about it already switched browsers.
staticassertion 4y ago
Isn't it very clearly not killing adblocking given that... this adblocker just released a version using it.
- e2le 4y ago
  Yet reduced in it's ability to perform it's intended function.
  - tssva 4y ago
    Yet not reduced enough that the maker of the extension thinks users will notice any difference in the ability to block ads.
babypuncher 4y ago
Are there any reliable stats on what percentage of internet users use an ad blocker? I've always felt that we are mostly a vocal minority, and as such I don't see this move making a huge dent in Chrome's market share.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

by bambax 4y ago

brightball 4y ago

It’s got me thinking about selling my Google stock. A move like this feels a little bit desperate.

Longhanks 4y ago

I think you overestimate the role adblockers play for regular users. Most people not affiliated with IT in any way I've met actually don't use an adblocker or have forgotten that they in fact do and would not notice the change to Manifest v3. Also, most people care much more about "it simply works", and that is Chrome. Firefox is neither preinstalled nor as compatible as Chrome (nor as fast or user friendly). There's already a lot of popups like "this site works best in Chrome".

Multicomp 4y ago
> nor as compatible as Chrome (nor as fast or user friendly). There's already a lot of popups like "this site works best in Chrome". User-agent sniffing[1] and it is a webdev smell. I acknowledge that this is true, but I admit being bummed that we didn't win the war to use web standards. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_sniffing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_sniffing
kurupt213 4y ago
Firefox is faster than chrome and only doesn’t work on badly built pages and webapps (like intelex)
soraminazuki 4y ago
> Firefox is neither preinstalled nor as compatible as Chrome (nor as fast or user friendly) Compatible against what? The web standards or Google Chrome?
- edflsafoiewq 4y ago
  Compatibility against real world websites is the thing that actually matters. Firefox does fine for me though.
  - hgsgm 4y ago
  - prmoustache 4y ago
    and regardless of their respective performance differences, a firefox with an ad blocker is faster than a chrome without one.
  - nottorp 4y ago
    I tend to skip sites that don't work in Firefox + Ublock Origin. Unless someone pays me to open them (read: I need them to do work), then I do keep an instance of Chrome around. But only if there is no other choice.
thejosh 4y ago
It's actually ridiculous to surf the web without an adblocker. Let's say you have a brand new computer, and want to download nVidia drivers. Fire up your brand new computer, search for "nvidia drivers" using Bing.... and the first results are all ads for extremely scummy adware. (It's also hilarious when you search for "chrome download" when Edge begs you not to, and including when you click through, but that's a story for another time :)).
- teh_klev 4y ago
  > It's actually ridiculous to surf the web without an adblocker. Obviously for this audience. But two of my buddies didn't even know such things existed and were truly grateful when I introduced uBO/Privacy Badger to them.
doliveira 4y ago
Yeah, I went to use my Mom's phone and I was appalled with all the ads and notifications. We can disable notifications, block intrusive ads or at least figure out which app is sending them to uninstall it, but for regular users the whole thing is an awful experience. I don't refrain from calling it "evil" anymore, because that's what it is. No wonder we're collectively going insane.
unethical_ban 4y ago
I helped my mom try out a smartphone for the first time this weekend, and she won't really use the web much on it except maybe weather. So I go to weather.com or something to show her how she can get to it. I got a full screen cookie consent popup, a location permission popup, and ads were everywhere on the screen. Must have been 50% of screen space for the top part of the page. It's absurd!

Multicomp 4y ago

Firefox is building MV3 and while they are coy with deprecating MV2, we all know, c'mon, they won't keep MV2 even a day after their minimum year promised. Their track record speaks against them. XPCOM extensions? Killed, but don't worry, we will re-implement all the needed APIs as WebExtensions (didn't happen). Fennec to Fenix mobile extensions? Killed, you get these 10 blessed ones, don't worry, we will eventually re-enable all of the webextensions on mobile, any day now, (didn't happen, you have to do hacky hacks involving nightly version to do un-blessed extensions). This will likely be their third strike. UPDATE: Or it's not nearly as bad as I expected. Per [1], while Firefox will be eventually deprecating MV2, the Firefox MV3 is much less 'evil' than the Chrome MV3, in that Firefox will continue to enable the WebRequest API without all the lock-down restrictions. This makes a competitive advantage for Firefox in terms of adblocking power, if anything. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32648925 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32648925

soulofmischief 4y ago
Now that uMatrix development is inactive, this third strike could be their last for me.
- Dwedit 4y ago
  UMatrix is not only out of development, it is also broken on current Firefox. Sometimes you randomly lose session cookies, which is not acceptable.
syrgian 4y ago
Thanks for the summary. I had perceived the betrayal but I had never organized the thoughts nor verified the claims. What do you think is the future (+2 years) for people with hatred for ads? For now I am using Firefox on computer + Kiwi in Android, but I also expect those two to go awry in the mid term. * I see that after the edit, it doesn't look as bleak for Firefox PC. But what about Android?
- groovybits 4y ago
  > What do you think is the future (+2 years) for people with hatred for ads? DNS-based blocking

thrdbndndn 4y ago

> Manifest V3 is a horrible attempt to kill adblocking I really don't understand the push of MV3. I don't believe they're just for security as Google claimed but at the same time I feel thinking it's "just" to ruin ad blocking is equally baffling. Could someone who is more involved elaborate the nuance of (intent of) MV3?

gostsamo 4y ago
Google sells ads. They totally want to kill adblocking with all means necessary. The moment they can no longer show increasing revenue, the stock will fall down to the levels expected from utilities from the levels that tech companies are valued at.
somehnacct3757 4y ago
MV2 extensions have a lot of API power and it was a common malware vector in the browser since the APIs let you sidestep a ton of regular web security. If you run a popular extension you will get offers to buy the extension which is a nice payday. The buyers would then stuff it full of malware to infect the existing users. Google makes no money off the Chrome Web Store and their initial attempts to restrict MV2 failed. The goal was for automated approval to suffice. Still, there was certain APIs that required human review. Google could have continued restricting MV2 until they didn't need human review but they must have got the idea for MV3 at that point. They could also hamstring ad blockers and get some promo packet material.
JoshTriplett 4y ago
I've talked to a number of real engineers within Google. The folks building the browser have no desire to kill adblocking; they're never going to include first-party adblocking (not least of which because antitrust), but they're not out to break third-party adblockers. It really is the case that the same mechanisms that enable adblockers ("this extension may affect your traffic on every website") are also the mechanisms that enable malware in extensions, which are not at all rare.
- ocdtrekkie 4y ago

therealmarv 4y ago

Switch to Brave, you will still maintain 99% of the bell and whistles of Chrome (because it's a Chrome fork) and you will have an Adblock engine directly in the browser core written in Rust. How cool is that... Especially on mobile Brave is a game changer. https://github.com/brave/adblock-rust https://github.com/brave/adblock-rust

sascha_sl 4y ago
But also, a whole lot of other things I didn't ask for that are hard to entirely opt out of.
- Karunamon 4y ago
  Other things such as?
ryannevius 4y ago
Does Brave have the memory / slowdown issues attributed to Chrome on Apple silicone MacBooks?
- jefftk 4y ago
  I would be surprised if they differed here, since it's the same core browser.
- therealmarv 4y ago
  It's not reengineered for most parts. Core is Chromium with all its upsides and downsides.
- BrendanEich 4y ago
  Works great on my 14" 2021 MBP. Anyone else? Pointer to details of slowdown welcome. Thanks.
alexb_ 4y ago
I despise anything that has touched cryptocurrency, which is why I don't like Brave.

lapcat 4y ago

> They shouldn't do this IMHO. AdGuard is a business, and Chrome is the world's most popular web browser. They don't have much of a choice. uBlock Origin can pass because it's not a business.

tgv 4y ago
Of course they can do this. They don't want to do it. How else would they push ads through their ad blocker?
- hgsgm 4y ago
- Terretta 4y ago
  Unlike some ad blockers, AdGuard’s business model, while for profit, doesn’t include taking money to let ads through, contrary to, say, AdBlock Plus or Ghostery. AdGuard does have an option for users to allow inline search results ads and sites’ “self promotion” ads. More here: https://kb.adguard.com/en/general/search-ads-and-self-promotion https://kb.adguard.com/en/general/search-ads-and-self-promot...
  - philippclassen 4y ago
    Ghostery doesn't take money to unblock ads like AdBlock Plus. The decision what to block on a site depends on the community lists (e.g. EasyList, FanBoy). If you want to get unblocked in Ghostery, you need to convince the maintainers of the community lists.

Dalewyn 4y ago

>there are many: Firefox and Brave to mention just two. So just Firefox and then all the Chromes? There really aren't "many" alternatives, there isn't even /an/ alternative because Firefox suffers from Mozilla Misguidance(tm). Presumably the same people who bitched about the IE6 monopoly brought on and fully embraced the Chrome monopoly. We now all get to sleep in the Chrome bed.

ThunderSizzle 4y ago
I was all for Firefox until Mozilla decided cancel culture was the way to go back when they canceled their CEO. It became even worse since - calling for the de-platforming of half the country. I know Google hates the same user group, but Google also likes their money (or their money-value). Go woke, go broke. If your trying to compete uphill, shooting yourself in the foot isn't going to make it any easier.

monkeynotes 4y ago

Being that Brave and numerous other browsers are built on Chrome, does that mean they will also have this limitation?

judge2020 4y ago
Brave has their own built-in adblocker so I don't see them putting any effort into keeping Mv3 around after it's actually removed from Chromium.
- BrendanEich 4y ago
  You mean MV2. I've said we'll keep support uBO and uMatrix uses of it, at least. This means we'd have support from the maintainers for their builds to produce extensions we can add to our component updater as optional for our users. We are discussing this now with uBO/uM maintainers.
spiffytech 4y ago
Brave's CEO has said they'll add back any functionality that ad blocker extensions need to keep working under Manifest v3. https://twitter.com/joshmanders/status/1134139586836344832 https://twitter.com/joshmanders/status/1134139586836344832

kevin_b_er 4y ago

I recall they also claimed performance benefits at one point.

freediver 4y ago

> If there are no more (effective) adblockers for Chrome, users will frantically begin to search for an alternative More likelier scenario: Most Chrome users do not even know what an ad-blocker is, let alone difference between Manifest v3 and v2. The franatical run, if one was ever a thing, already happened when Google announced V3, long time ago. The few people (relatively speaking) that cared about it already switched browsers.

staticassertion 4y ago

Isn't it very clearly not killing adblocking given that... this adblocker just released a version using it.

e2le 4y ago
Yet reduced in it's ability to perform it's intended function.
- tssva 4y ago
  Yet not reduced enough that the maker of the extension thinks users will notice any difference in the ability to block ads.

babypuncher 4y ago

Are there any reliable stats on what percentage of internet users use an ad blocker? I've always felt that we are mostly a vocal minority, and as such I don't see this move making a huge dent in Chrome's market share.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]