21 ms·

Google postpones MV2 shutoff in Chrome stable to June 2023

305 points by ghostwords 4y ago

ulfw 4y ago
Good. Gives people another nine months to finally ditch Chrome to any browser of their choice not owned by an ad company.
lapcat 4y ago
The postponement was practically inevitable. Manifest v3 is a slow moving train wreck. Extension developers know it isn't ready and won't be ready by January. Happy holidays to me, I can kick this can down the road too. Look at some of the known issues: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/mv3/known-issues/ https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/mv3/known-issue... Userscript managers support Estimated timeline: Canary support around October, 2022. Service workers are not started in response to webRequest events Estimated timeline: Targeting Canary support before October, 2022. No way they were going to be ready to disable v2 in January for the stable channel.
- alooPotato 4y ago
  Deadline is still January if you want the featured badge or if you want to work in all the channels of Chrome. Seems like for most developers the deadline is the same.
  - ghostwords 4y ago
    Does having the Featured badge actually change anything meaningfully for your extension?
    - alooPotato 4y ago
      I think its more about not having customers ask why we don't have the badge. We primarily have business users so trust is super important.
      - flatiron 4y ago
        Are you listed on the store? My company’s is unlisted and just part of the onboarding documentation. I think in my case nobody would give two craps about the badge.
  - metadat 4y ago
    What is "all the channels of Chrome"? What channels are there?
    - lapcat 4y ago
      https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/9027636 https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/9027636 "Chrome browser provides 5 channels: Stable, Extended stable, Beta, Dev, and Canary."
    - nightpool 4y ago
      They mean nightly and beta builds.
    - barkingcat 4y ago
      very easily googleable - https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/9027636?hl=en https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/9027636?hl=en
      - metadat 4y ago
        Thanks for the dv punishment check, @Barkingcat. You could've done a drive-by downvote, but you at least also left a comment, which I appreciate. I was about to hop in the car and didn't have time to Google it, and pre-cognitvely figured others might also like to know without needing to also actively search it 100x, collectively. Looking at my comment history, it's clear I frequently do research things myself and post a thorough comment in an effort to educate as well as inform others about terminology in HN discussions. Please strive to be generous in your interpretations of others.
        barkingcat 4y ago
        Please strive to be generous in your interpretation of my comment as well - likewise. There are 3 posters including me replying to your question re what channels are, 2 including the same link. Hopefully that answers your question! (and by that I mean that I hope you didn't interpret that to be me sending you to a mistaken answer? if that's what you were refering to?) That link is indeed genuinely from google. I did downvote, but people also downvoted my comment as well, so I don't treat downvotes or upvotes as that important, sorry if that made you feel any other way. The important thing is : did you get the answer to your question?
  - mrieck 4y ago
    Sounds similar to when Google said: As a news website you don't NEED to use AMP. You'll just never appear in Google's news carousel, and won't be at the top of the news search results anymore. Sorry :( Way too risky for devs to ignore the deadline and possibly get de-ranked from store search results.
  - cyrusmg 4y ago
    More importantly deadline is still January 2023: "Chrome Web Store stops accepting updates to existing Manifest V2 extensions"
    - lapcat 4y ago
      I think this has to change and may just be an outdated part of the timeline that hasn't been updated yet. After all, this item is still on the timeline too: "Enterprise policy can let Manifest V2 extensions run on Chrome deployments within an organization." But that doesn't make any sense anymore, because V2 will no longer be disabled on the stable channel in January, so there's not even a need for an enterprise policy to keep V2 extensions running. It wouldn't make any sense to let V2 extensions keep running until June but disallow updates. What about security issues? They have to allow security updates.
      - alooPotato 4y ago
        That was always the plan no? They would stop allowing updates before they officially removed the extensions from the store...
        lapcat 4y ago
        No, see the announcement from a year ago. https://developer.chrome.com/blog/mv2-transition/ https://developer.chrome.com/blog/mv2-transition/ > There are two key dates for the phase-out: > January 17, 2022: New Manifest V2 extensions will no longer be accepted by the Chrome Web Store. Developers may still push updates to existing Manifest V2 extensions, but no new Manifest V2 items may be submitted. > January 2023: The Chrome browser will no longer run Manifest V2 extensions. Developers may no longer push updates to existing Manifest V2 extensions. So V2 would be disabled in the stable channel simultaneously with the end of updates, in January 2023. Only a special enterprise policy could keep V2 extensions running for a while after that time.
      - ghostwords 4y ago
        Yep, they just updated when Chrome Web Store stops accepting MV2 updates to January 2024: https://github.com/GoogleChrome/developer.chrome.com/pull/3874 https://github.com/GoogleChrome/developer.chrome.com/pull/38...
pineconewarrior 4y ago
The 'switch to firefox' meme-storm and the still-horrible bugginess of mv3 made this inevitable.
- cogman10 4y ago
  I wonder what sort of hit to their userbase they'll experience when it finally happens for real. The internet is unbearable without ad blocking.
  - staticassertion 4y ago
    Virtually none, I expect. Especially since "without ad blocking" isn't on the table, there will continue to be ad blocking in Chrome.
    - zarzavat 4y ago
      But will the remnant adblocking in Chrome still work a few years down the line? Or will websites circumvent it? That’s the question.
      - staticassertion 4y ago
        Is it the question? No one's really asking it and it's obviously purely speculative.
        zarzavat 4y ago
        What’s not speculative is that adblockers have to be constantly maintained to remain effective. As websites find new circumventions, adblockers respond with fixes. Manifest v3 freezes the capabilities of adblockers in time (it regresses them). Perhaps it’s sufficient for today’s ads but over time websites will take advantage and the effectiveness of adblockers will wither: websites have a financial incentive to circumvent all those chrome users.
olso 4y ago
Great! Proxy extensions live to see another day https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32899846 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32899846
- mccorrinall 4y ago
  I never liked chrome because it required me to set a proxy via command line arguments or system wide. Never understood why they don’t give me an option like firefox within the settings to set a proxy, but at the same time chrome allowed *extensions* to set proxies.
  - kevingadd 4y ago
    The extension support is because Google relies on an extension to do a lot of their zero trust stuff https://cloud.google.com/beyondcorp https://cloud.google.com/beyondcorp though I don't think they use proxies anymore.
davidgerard 4y ago
> This change will give Chrome users increased ads
- jrockway 4y ago
  MV3 comes from a legitimate concern for user security. Every time I visit my Mom she has some Chrome extension that steals all her traffic and reads every page and reports back to some shady company. It's a huge problem for ordinary users, it's just that ad blockers legitimately do the same thing as far as the browser is concerned, so it's a hard balance to strike. If you do nothing, random people lose key personal information. If you do something, HN complains about how it's a conspiracy to make them see more ads. As always, it's probably a little from column A and a little from column B, but mostly column A with the "unfortunate" side effect of column B. Google has had years to remove ad blockers from the extension marketplace, for example, and they'd need to write a lot less code relative to MV3. Not building uBlock Origin into Chrome was the mistake they made here. Once there is a known-good ad-blocker built in, nobody cares about extensions anymore. (Except for the steal-your-data extensions, whose authors are definitely amongst us on HN.)
  - Siira 4y ago
    We can’t pay the price of your old relative X’s laziness. They don’t care about their privacy, their data gets stolen. Their choice, their tradeoff.
  - linkgoron 4y ago
    Google could disable extensions completely and your claim would still be true. It's clear that MV3 does not come from a legitimate concern for user security, because Google could solve security issues without destroying a large part of the extension ecosystem. It might also solve issues with security, but Google's complete refusal to work with the community to find common ground shows what they're really after.
  - x0x0 4y ago
    It's likely not a sincere concern for user security, or eg google could grant ublock origin and a handful of others permanent mv2 access. And nobody else. Or require stringent whitelisting. etc. There's no rules here except the ones google chooses to impose.
xtacy 4y ago
While this is in part a good news, they are still not accepting MV2 extensions to the Chrome Web Store, even as unlisted/private extensions. There is no change to that policy: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/mv3/mv2-sunset/#:~:text=Public%22%20or%20%22Unlisted%E2%80%9D-,no%20change,-January%C2%A02023 https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/mv3/mv2-sunset/...
- freediver 4y ago
  Hmm.. we submitted our new extension about a month ago? and it had to be MV3.
- gnicholas 4y ago
  True, but you can issue updates to existing extensions with MV2. As someone who has two MV2 extensions, this transition is a much bigger deal for existing extensions than new ones.
- cyrusmg 4y ago
  They also disallow updates to MV2 extensions in January, which effectively kills them off: "Chrome Web Store stops accepting updates to existing Manifest V2 extensions"
  - lapcat 4y ago
    That date has now been changed to 2024: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/mv3/mv2-sunset/ https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/mv3/mv2-sunset/
    - cyrusmg 4y ago
      Awesome! Thanks for the update
jupp0r 4y ago
So I was actually trying out uBlock Origin Lite [1] (the MV3 compatible version) as my daily driver for the past week and I must say it's not that bad. I had to manually enable content access for a handful of sites but doing so on an opt-in basis and getting more performant experience on 98% of other sites is actually something I'm going to use going forward even if MV2 compatibility gets pushed further into the future. I wonder how long things will stay that way though, when sites will tailor their tracking/ad annoyances to exploit the MV3 limitations. I really wouldn't want to opt into every single site I visit. [1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/releases/tag/uBOLite_0.1.22.9285 https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/releases/tag/uBOLite_0.1.2...
- LordDragonfang 4y ago
  It's really validating to see someone post their actual experience with MV3 adblocking, because the constant stream of misleading headlines saying "Google is banning adblocking" on low-expertise places like reddit has become a pet peeve of mine. Almost no one involved in those discussions actually know how adblockers work, and are just copying and pasting sub-par reporting, which itself is just poorly-informed fluff around attempts to rephrase comments from gorhill. MV3 adblockers are still going to, broadly, work fine, if slightly worse than before. There's slightly more concern over privacy blockers, but as usual it gets more clicks to mislead users about something they care about (adblocking) rather than get them to really care about privacy.
  - MarkusWandel 4y ago
    I tried the "lite" Ublock on my work laptop, on the relatively uninformed opinion that MV3 really is safer than MV2 in terms of a rogue extension being able to reach in and steal your secrets (am I wrong?) An immediate test with Youtube gave pre-roll ads. Oh well. But a later Youtube visit, and all since, have been like Ublock Origin - ads gone, preroll, superimposed and in-video ad breaks. I have no idea how all this works and frankly am glad I don't have to. But yes, of course, Youtube may change in the future to precisely sidestep the MV3 limitations of ad blockers.
  - AaronFriel 4y ago
panny 4y ago
I made my first foray into web extensions with mv3 on chromium recently. I thought, maybe it's fine since I have nothing to unlearn. Nope. mv3 is terrible and nothing works. Every example of something I want to do is in mv2 and doesn't work at all in mv3. The attempt has killed any desire I have to write a webextension at all.
twhb 4y ago
Don’t mistake this for victory. Google’s standard playbook when forcing things people don’t like is to spread the action out over a longer timeframe, exhausting the media and keeping the final blow mostly out of the news, and exhausting our individual outrage and will to keep fighting. It works every time, and it’ll work again if we become complacent again. Until and unless Google meaningfully commits to never neuter ad blockers, it’s still critical and urgent that we switch to Firefox.
- hparadiz 4y ago
  Imagine working at Google on this nonsense and thinking you're actually doing something good for the world.
  - refulgentis 4y ago
    - hailwren 4y ago
      One of these companies profits by the proliferation of ads and the other does not.
      - endisneigh 4y ago
        Which one doesn't have any ads?
        hailwren 4y ago
        I was factually incorrect Apple generates about 1% of their annual revenue from ads [1]. Google generates 81% of their annual revenue from ads [2]. 1 - https://www.statista.com/statistics/1330127/apple-ad-revenue-worldwide/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1330127/apple-ad-revenue... 2 - https://www.oberlo.com/statistics/google-ad-revenue https://www.oberlo.com/statistics/google-ad-revenue
MikeYasnev007 4y ago
bagels 4y ago
I really tried to give Firefox a go last week because of the threat of losing UBlock Origin. I almost committed, but there is a many-years-old bug in Firefox that they haven't fixed which won't let you use alternate audio devices for webrtc, which made it so I couldn't use google meet with my headphones.
- loxias 4y ago
  Can you link to the bug? I'm down to using Chrome _only_ for google meet at work, now that all my streaming services work just fine in FF. Isn't it curious how audio works fine when it's from Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, etc but when using a Google property (Google Meet) suddenly it doesn't work under Firefox... curious indeed.
  - bagels 4y ago
    You may not run in to this. I have three audio devices. Bug says fixed, but my experience says otherwise. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1473070 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1473070 and https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=934425 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=934425
    - swores 4y ago
      Perhaps you've already tried this, but if not then I'm optimistic this will fix it for you: - go to about:config page in Firefox (load it like you would a website with URL 'about:config', and accept the warning to proceed with caution) - paste 'media.setsinkid.enabled' into the search bar at the top - default setting is false, click the button on the right to toggle it to true - reload google meet, hopefully you'll now be able to choose non-default audio output (I think non-default microphone can be chosen even without this toggle?) That's a relic of the way in which the bug you linked to was fixed, and there is a (still open) ticket requesting that the default by changed from false to true here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1498512 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1498512 (edit: there's one comment in that bug I linked saying that audio worked with Google Meet's pre-call test noise, but not on an actual call itself. I can't test myself right now, but if I've raised hopes falsely then apologies!)
zac23or 4y ago
I have Edge, Firefox and Chrome installed. Firefox, on my machine is slow as hell. Edge freezes or is super slow on some sites like Youtube. For a few years, I will need to use Chrome.
- gnarbarian 4y ago
  https://brave.com/ https://brave.com/
bullen 4y ago
I just renamed update.exe (chrome complains about that when you boot it once), simple if you can live without the eternal update cycle they (FMAANG) are pushing down our throats since hardware does not improve anymore.
- gnarbarian 4y ago
  You need updates because web standards are continuously evolving
  - mdaniel 4y ago
    True, but that's not the most important reason: Chrome connects an unholy amount of C++ to the Internet and hilarity ensues: https://chromereleases.googleblog.com/search/label/Stable%20updates https://chromereleases.googleblog.com/search/label/Stable%20... and then control-f "critical"
  - bullen 4y ago
    Devolving you mean, I'm still using HTTP/1.1 from 1997 just fine.
    - SquareWheel 4y ago
      Oof. Today's websites must be extremely slow to load without multiplexing.
      - bullen 4y ago
        Todays websites are overengineered, but they load fine over multiple sockets (without HTTP/2.0 TCP head-of-line bottleneck), also I have 1GB/s symmetric.
lxe 4y ago
It's too late, I switched back to Firefox and it's been good so far. Performance-wise, I think Chrome still has advantages though.
- vdfs 4y ago
  Firefox is switching to V3 and deprecating V2, they are keeping request blocking tho
  - Spivak 4y ago
    Which is all everyone really wanted.
zgreen 4y ago
This one has been a show-stopper for many folks trying to upgrade to MV3: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1271154 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=127115... It's been marked as fixed, though only "for the moment". There's a somewhat similar MV2 issue: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1316588 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=131658.... Both have been active for a while.
CuriouslyC 4y ago
Too late, already switched to brave...
- gnicholas 4y ago
  Has Brave announced how they're dealing with this change? I've been using it for years and am generally happy, though I've been trying Orion recently to get vertical tab support.
  - frankjr 4y ago
    MV2 should be supported even after the shutoff. As far as ad blocking is concerned, the built-in ad blocker doesn't depend on MV2. https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/20059 https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/20059 https://github.com/brave/adblock-rust https://github.com/brave/adblock-rust
    - pseudalopex 4y ago
      > MV2 should be supported even after the shutoff. You meant the non enterprise shut off? Brave committed to MV2 as long as it's in Chromium.
      - gnicholas 4y ago
        They also apparently will stand up their own MV2 store after Google's deprecation is complete. > During the deprecation period, we can keep this functionality via patch (since it's there for Enterprise). After V2 is pulled from store, we'll need to stand up our own extension store for manifest v2
        pseudalopex 4y ago
        > They also apparently will stand up their own MV2 store after Google's deprecation is complete. Complete deprecation means shut off for enterprise. MV2 items will be unlisted before.
  - 4y ago
rektide 4y ago
There's so many bad awful downgrades to life in MV3. The amount of issues & unsolved cases grows significantly month after month, but the only commits to the webextensions spec are meeting notes, where problems & horrors are abundant & vicious. Nothing is improving, nothing is getting better, no visible progress to heal or help is apparent visible or coming. This is a deathmarch project and it will never ever emerge from this valley of death, will never restore a fraction of what it in it's total ignorance took away. This isn't an evil move, it's just a dumb one. The kerfuffle over adblockers is obvious & huge, but ultimately MV3 will definitely do something to make adblocking acceptable. Google is not going to make themselves look like a monster; this is perhaps the only "good" (one giant neutral nothingburger on both sides) news. But my god, the other people being hit with various degredations are in such a hell-grade nightmare pickle. Userscript extensions are still fully hosed (ed: recent movement in issues spotted[1]!). Running dynamic code via Function (a common speed optimization for performance critical JS systems) or eval is still outlawed. Extensions lifecycle is far less clear & persistent than it used to be, and there's thousands of people who simply don't have an extension runtime to hold state for them anymore. Extensions used to be able to use a wide variety of "page" style APIs which are all now suddenly missing and "limited event pages"[2] and "offscreen pages"[3] arent making visible progress. Meanwhile there's seemingly no visible advantages to users here. This 24th hour rewrite of what a webextension is (right before it's specified (rather than a tacit slowly evolved semi-agreement)) seems to serve a primarily abstract/rarely-experienced security concerns, while reducing extension power enormously. There's been no one to negotiate this trade-off. Extension developers have gotten nothing, users have gotten nothing, and extension capabilities have shrunk enormously. Personally I'd like to see the proprietary closed extension-store maintainers do a more active job of weeding out, helping us see good from bad, or giving us tools to peer-moderate, rather than simply shutting the door on the most critical user-agency boosting system, at the most critical 24th hour. There's endless web spec discussions that go on, but this is the most enormous & massive re-negotiation of power the web has ever seen. So far, it's going poorly for everyone except the extensions-store operators, who seem chiefly to be concerned about making their jobs easier in the future, by making extensions far less capable. I can feel real & good intent underneath that: this isn't being done because of bad will. But the visible effects, the impact, is cruel: how could short lifecycle service workers with far less api & far less capability[4] be seen as anything less than a boldfaced theft of user-agency? To be honest: it's unclear how such a deeply impotent position as this was ever proposed or considered. Change is super hard, change management is hard, but this was not a good footing to start on. Adblocking will be ok. This isn't evil. But this is for sure a much deeper, far more complicated fiasco of the highest & most critical importance to the web. [1] https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/issues/279 https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/issues/279 [2] https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/issues/134 https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/issues/134 [3] https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/issues/170 https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/issues/170 [4] https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/issues/72 https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/issues/72
gnicholas 4y ago
Interesting they're saying "may": > Starting in June in Chrome 115, Chrome may run experiments to turn off support for Manifest V2 extensions in all channels, including stable channel. They're giving themselves wiggle room on this instead of saying they're just straight up going to turn it off (or even committing themselves to starting to phase it out at that point). Also, they're showing support for MV2 extensions through Jan 2024, as long as they're marked Private. That's huge — I'm considering scrapping our update for now and just waiting to see how this all unfolds until then. Most of our users come from our website, and I can just link them to Private instances of our extension in the Store. (Also, our extensions are fairly mature, and we can go a year without submitting an update.) I have no need to be Google's guinea pig as they sort out this mess!
- 2Gkashmiri 4y ago
  firefox has a real good chance to make it back once again. all the chrome derivates wont be able to manage a fork on their own so they should jump ship and build on firefox. I have read about how firefox is PITA to build but we have stuff like waterfox that are a homebrew type setup so if they can do it, surely opera or brave with their VC funding and ad dollars can surely change the look and feel of firefox for their use. I also feel bad because the management of firefox has long since sold out to google so they WILL find a way to fuck this opportunity up. I am certain of it.
  - gnicholas 4y ago
    This definitely feels like an opportunity for Orion, which manages to support Chrome extensions despite being built on Safari. I wonder if they can switch over to supporting installs from the Firefox addon store instead/in addition?
    - 2Gkashmiri 4y ago
      that would be great for them imo.
    - 2Gkashmiri 4y ago
xyzal 4y ago
Sometimes I wonder where are we headed. My bet is digitally signed pages that chrome refuses to render in case of failed integrity check.
- encryptluks2 4y ago
  You mean SSL? Probably not the best example.
- stjo 4y ago
  Sounds a lot like https to me.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
waynesonfire 4y ago
This seems like exactly why Google built a browser. Pay off took many years. What will Brave do?
- jacooper 4y ago
  Braves adblocker isn't an extension, its built in the browser, and coded in rust. So this won't change anything for brave users.
lemoncookiechip 4y ago
Does anyone know if MV3 will affect add-ons such as Greasemonkey/Violentmonkey, Stylus. It'll be pretty hard to live without those on the web as it is now. Obviously uBO and noScript would be bigger losses, but those seem to be taken care of on Firefox and some other Chromium browsers.
- rasz 4y ago
  Yes, they will stop working completely. https://github.com/Tampermonkey/tampermonkey/issues/644 https://github.com/Tampermonkey/tampermonkey/issues/644
danpalmer 4y ago
Is there a good (more objective? less emotional?) breakdown of the issues with, and I assume also the benefits of, Manifest V3? So far all I've heard is that it'll destroy ad-blocking, except that it sounds to me like the ad-blocking abilities it has are fairly close to Apple's content blocking abilities, and while ad-blocking on iOS isn't perfect, it's still a thriving ecosystem.
- rasz 4y ago
  There are no User benefits. This sums up most facts nicely https://www.ghostery.com/blog/manifest-v3-the-ghostery-perspective https://www.ghostery.com/blog/manifest-v3-the-ghostery-persp...

305 points by ghostwords 4y ago

ulfw 4y ago

Good. Gives people another nine months to finally ditch Chrome to any browser of their choice not owned by an ad company.

lapcat 4y ago

The postponement was practically inevitable. Manifest v3 is a slow moving train wreck. Extension developers know it isn't ready and won't be ready by January. Happy holidays to me, I can kick this can down the road too. Look at some of the known issues: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/mv3/known-issues/ https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/mv3/known-issue... Userscript managers support Estimated timeline: Canary support around October, 2022. Service workers are not started in response to webRequest events Estimated timeline: Targeting Canary support before October, 2022. No way they were going to be ready to disable v2 in January for the stable channel.

alooPotato 4y ago
Deadline is still January if you want the featured badge or if you want to work in all the channels of Chrome. Seems like for most developers the deadline is the same.
- ghostwords 4y ago
  Does having the Featured badge actually change anything meaningfully for your extension?
  - alooPotato 4y ago
    I think its more about not having customers ask why we don't have the badge. We primarily have business users so trust is super important.
    - flatiron 4y ago
      Are you listed on the store? My company’s is unlisted and just part of the onboarding documentation. I think in my case nobody would give two craps about the badge.
- metadat 4y ago
  What is "all the channels of Chrome"? What channels are there?
  - lapcat 4y ago
    https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/9027636 https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/9027636 "Chrome browser provides 5 channels: Stable, Extended stable, Beta, Dev, and Canary."
  - nightpool 4y ago
    They mean nightly and beta builds.
  - barkingcat 4y ago
    very easily googleable - https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/9027636?hl=en https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/9027636?hl=en
    - metadat 4y ago
      Thanks for the dv punishment check, @Barkingcat. You could've done a drive-by downvote, but you at least also left a comment, which I appreciate. I was about to hop in the car and didn't have time to Google it, and pre-cognitvely figured others might also like to know without needing to also actively search it 100x, collectively. Looking at my comment history, it's clear I frequently do research things myself and post a thorough comment in an effort to educate as well as inform others about terminology in HN discussions. Please strive to be generous in your interpretations of others.
      - barkingcat 4y ago
        Please strive to be generous in your interpretation of my comment as well - likewise. There are 3 posters including me replying to your question re what channels are, 2 including the same link. Hopefully that answers your question! (and by that I mean that I hope you didn't interpret that to be me sending you to a mistaken answer? if that's what you were refering to?) That link is indeed genuinely from google. I did downvote, but people also downvoted my comment as well, so I don't treat downvotes or upvotes as that important, sorry if that made you feel any other way. The important thing is : did you get the answer to your question?
- mrieck 4y ago
  Sounds similar to when Google said: As a news website you don't NEED to use AMP. You'll just never appear in Google's news carousel, and won't be at the top of the news search results anymore. Sorry :( Way too risky for devs to ignore the deadline and possibly get de-ranked from store search results.
- cyrusmg 4y ago
  More importantly deadline is still January 2023: "Chrome Web Store stops accepting updates to existing Manifest V2 extensions"
  - lapcat 4y ago
    I think this has to change and may just be an outdated part of the timeline that hasn't been updated yet. After all, this item is still on the timeline too: "Enterprise policy can let Manifest V2 extensions run on Chrome deployments within an organization." But that doesn't make any sense anymore, because V2 will no longer be disabled on the stable channel in January, so there's not even a need for an enterprise policy to keep V2 extensions running. It wouldn't make any sense to let V2 extensions keep running until June but disallow updates. What about security issues? They have to allow security updates.
    - alooPotato 4y ago
      That was always the plan no? They would stop allowing updates before they officially removed the extensions from the store...
      - lapcat 4y ago
        No, see the announcement from a year ago. https://developer.chrome.com/blog/mv2-transition/ https://developer.chrome.com/blog/mv2-transition/ > There are two key dates for the phase-out: > January 17, 2022: New Manifest V2 extensions will no longer be accepted by the Chrome Web Store. Developers may still push updates to existing Manifest V2 extensions, but no new Manifest V2 items may be submitted. > January 2023: The Chrome browser will no longer run Manifest V2 extensions. Developers may no longer push updates to existing Manifest V2 extensions. So V2 would be disabled in the stable channel simultaneously with the end of updates, in January 2023. Only a special enterprise policy could keep V2 extensions running for a while after that time.
    - ghostwords 4y ago
      Yep, they just updated when Chrome Web Store stops accepting MV2 updates to January 2024: https://github.com/GoogleChrome/developer.chrome.com/pull/3874 https://github.com/GoogleChrome/developer.chrome.com/pull/38...

pineconewarrior 4y ago

The 'switch to firefox' meme-storm and the still-horrible bugginess of mv3 made this inevitable.

cogman10 4y ago
I wonder what sort of hit to their userbase they'll experience when it finally happens for real. The internet is unbearable without ad blocking.
- staticassertion 4y ago
  Virtually none, I expect. Especially since "without ad blocking" isn't on the table, there will continue to be ad blocking in Chrome.
  - zarzavat 4y ago
    But will the remnant adblocking in Chrome still work a few years down the line? Or will websites circumvent it? That’s the question.
    - staticassertion 4y ago
      Is it the question? No one's really asking it and it's obviously purely speculative.
      - zarzavat 4y ago
        What’s not speculative is that adblockers have to be constantly maintained to remain effective. As websites find new circumventions, adblockers respond with fixes. Manifest v3 freezes the capabilities of adblockers in time (it regresses them). Perhaps it’s sufficient for today’s ads but over time websites will take advantage and the effectiveness of adblockers will wither: websites have a financial incentive to circumvent all those chrome users.

olso 4y ago

Great! Proxy extensions live to see another day https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32899846 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32899846

mccorrinall 4y ago
I never liked chrome because it required me to set a proxy via command line arguments or system wide. Never understood why they don’t give me an option like firefox within the settings to set a proxy, but at the same time chrome allowed *extensions* to set proxies.
- kevingadd 4y ago
  The extension support is because Google relies on an extension to do a lot of their zero trust stuff https://cloud.google.com/beyondcorp https://cloud.google.com/beyondcorp though I don't think they use proxies anymore.

davidgerard 4y ago

> This change will give Chrome users increased ads

jrockway 4y ago
MV3 comes from a legitimate concern for user security. Every time I visit my Mom she has some Chrome extension that steals all her traffic and reads every page and reports back to some shady company. It's a huge problem for ordinary users, it's just that ad blockers legitimately do the same thing as far as the browser is concerned, so it's a hard balance to strike. If you do nothing, random people lose key personal information. If you do something, HN complains about how it's a conspiracy to make them see more ads. As always, it's probably a little from column A and a little from column B, but mostly column A with the "unfortunate" side effect of column B. Google has had years to remove ad blockers from the extension marketplace, for example, and they'd need to write a lot less code relative to MV3. Not building uBlock Origin into Chrome was the mistake they made here. Once there is a known-good ad-blocker built in, nobody cares about extensions anymore. (Except for the steal-your-data extensions, whose authors are definitely amongst us on HN.)
- Siira 4y ago
  We can’t pay the price of your old relative X’s laziness. They don’t care about their privacy, their data gets stolen. Their choice, their tradeoff.
- linkgoron 4y ago
  Google could disable extensions completely and your claim would still be true. It's clear that MV3 does not come from a legitimate concern for user security, because Google could solve security issues without destroying a large part of the extension ecosystem. It might also solve issues with security, but Google's complete refusal to work with the community to find common ground shows what they're really after.
- x0x0 4y ago
  It's likely not a sincere concern for user security, or eg google could grant ublock origin and a handful of others permanent mv2 access. And nobody else. Or require stringent whitelisting. etc. There's no rules here except the ones google chooses to impose.

xtacy 4y ago

While this is in part a good news, they are still not accepting MV2 extensions to the Chrome Web Store, even as unlisted/private extensions. There is no change to that policy: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/mv3/mv2-sunset/#:~:text=Public%22%20or%20%22Unlisted%E2%80%9D-,no%20change,-January%C2%A02023 https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/mv3/mv2-sunset/...

freediver 4y ago
Hmm.. we submitted our new extension about a month ago? and it had to be MV3.
gnicholas 4y ago
True, but you can issue updates to existing extensions with MV2. As someone who has two MV2 extensions, this transition is a much bigger deal for existing extensions than new ones.
cyrusmg 4y ago
They also disallow updates to MV2 extensions in January, which effectively kills them off: "Chrome Web Store stops accepting updates to existing Manifest V2 extensions"
- lapcat 4y ago
  That date has now been changed to 2024: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/mv3/mv2-sunset/ https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/mv3/mv2-sunset/
  - cyrusmg 4y ago
    Awesome! Thanks for the update

jupp0r 4y ago

So I was actually trying out uBlock Origin Lite [1] (the MV3 compatible version) as my daily driver for the past week and I must say it's not that bad. I had to manually enable content access for a handful of sites but doing so on an opt-in basis and getting more performant experience on 98% of other sites is actually something I'm going to use going forward even if MV2 compatibility gets pushed further into the future. I wonder how long things will stay that way though, when sites will tailor their tracking/ad annoyances to exploit the MV3 limitations. I really wouldn't want to opt into every single site I visit. [1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/releases/tag/uBOLite_0.1.22.9285 https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/releases/tag/uBOLite_0.1.2...

LordDragonfang 4y ago
It's really validating to see someone post their actual experience with MV3 adblocking, because the constant stream of misleading headlines saying "Google is banning adblocking" on low-expertise places like reddit has become a pet peeve of mine. Almost no one involved in those discussions actually know how adblockers work, and are just copying and pasting sub-par reporting, which itself is just poorly-informed fluff around attempts to rephrase comments from gorhill. MV3 adblockers are still going to, broadly, work fine, if slightly worse than before. There's slightly more concern over privacy blockers, but as usual it gets more clicks to mislead users about something they care about (adblocking) rather than get them to really care about privacy.
- MarkusWandel 4y ago
  I tried the "lite" Ublock on my work laptop, on the relatively uninformed opinion that MV3 really is safer than MV2 in terms of a rogue extension being able to reach in and steal your secrets (am I wrong?) An immediate test with Youtube gave pre-roll ads. Oh well. But a later Youtube visit, and all since, have been like Ublock Origin - ads gone, preroll, superimposed and in-video ad breaks. I have no idea how all this works and frankly am glad I don't have to. But yes, of course, Youtube may change in the future to precisely sidestep the MV3 limitations of ad blockers.
- AaronFriel 4y ago

panny 4y ago

I made my first foray into web extensions with mv3 on chromium recently. I thought, maybe it's fine since I have nothing to unlearn. Nope. mv3 is terrible and nothing works. Every example of something I want to do is in mv2 and doesn't work at all in mv3. The attempt has killed any desire I have to write a webextension at all.

twhb 4y ago

Don’t mistake this for victory. Google’s standard playbook when forcing things people don’t like is to spread the action out over a longer timeframe, exhausting the media and keeping the final blow mostly out of the news, and exhausting our individual outrage and will to keep fighting. It works every time, and it’ll work again if we become complacent again. Until and unless Google meaningfully commits to never neuter ad blockers, it’s still critical and urgent that we switch to Firefox.

hparadiz 4y ago
Imagine working at Google on this nonsense and thinking you're actually doing something good for the world.
- refulgentis 4y ago
  - hailwren 4y ago
    One of these companies profits by the proliferation of ads and the other does not.
    - endisneigh 4y ago
      Which one doesn't have any ads?
      - hailwren 4y ago
        I was factually incorrect Apple generates about 1% of their annual revenue from ads [1]. Google generates 81% of their annual revenue from ads [2]. 1 - https://www.statista.com/statistics/1330127/apple-ad-revenue-worldwide/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1330127/apple-ad-revenue... 2 - https://www.oberlo.com/statistics/google-ad-revenue https://www.oberlo.com/statistics/google-ad-revenue

MikeYasnev007 4y ago

bagels 4y ago

I really tried to give Firefox a go last week because of the threat of losing UBlock Origin. I almost committed, but there is a many-years-old bug in Firefox that they haven't fixed which won't let you use alternate audio devices for webrtc, which made it so I couldn't use google meet with my headphones.

loxias 4y ago
Can you link to the bug? I'm down to using Chrome _only_ for google meet at work, now that all my streaming services work just fine in FF. Isn't it curious how audio works fine when it's from Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, etc but when using a Google property (Google Meet) suddenly it doesn't work under Firefox... curious indeed.
- bagels 4y ago
  You may not run in to this. I have three audio devices. Bug says fixed, but my experience says otherwise. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1473070 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1473070 and https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=934425 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=934425
  - swores 4y ago
    Perhaps you've already tried this, but if not then I'm optimistic this will fix it for you: - go to about:config page in Firefox (load it like you would a website with URL 'about:config', and accept the warning to proceed with caution) - paste 'media.setsinkid.enabled' into the search bar at the top - default setting is false, click the button on the right to toggle it to true - reload google meet, hopefully you'll now be able to choose non-default audio output (I think non-default microphone can be chosen even without this toggle?) That's a relic of the way in which the bug you linked to was fixed, and there is a (still open) ticket requesting that the default by changed from false to true here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1498512 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1498512 (edit: there's one comment in that bug I linked saying that audio worked with Google Meet's pre-call test noise, but not on an actual call itself. I can't test myself right now, but if I've raised hopes falsely then apologies!)

zac23or 4y ago

I have Edge, Firefox and Chrome installed. Firefox, on my machine is slow as hell. Edge freezes or is super slow on some sites like Youtube. For a few years, I will need to use Chrome.

gnarbarian 4y ago
https://brave.com/ https://brave.com/

bullen 4y ago

I just renamed update.exe (chrome complains about that when you boot it once), simple if you can live without the eternal update cycle they (FMAANG) are pushing down our throats since hardware does not improve anymore.

gnarbarian 4y ago
You need updates because web standards are continuously evolving
- mdaniel 4y ago
  True, but that's not the most important reason: Chrome connects an unholy amount of C++ to the Internet and hilarity ensues: https://chromereleases.googleblog.com/search/label/Stable%20updates https://chromereleases.googleblog.com/search/label/Stable%20... and then control-f "critical"
- bullen 4y ago
  Devolving you mean, I'm still using HTTP/1.1 from 1997 just fine.
  - SquareWheel 4y ago
    Oof. Today's websites must be extremely slow to load without multiplexing.
    - bullen 4y ago
      Todays websites are overengineered, but they load fine over multiple sockets (without HTTP/2.0 TCP head-of-line bottleneck), also I have 1GB/s symmetric.

lxe 4y ago

It's too late, I switched back to Firefox and it's been good so far. Performance-wise, I think Chrome still has advantages though.

vdfs 4y ago
Firefox is switching to V3 and deprecating V2, they are keeping request blocking tho
- Spivak 4y ago
  Which is all everyone really wanted.

zgreen 4y ago

This one has been a show-stopper for many folks trying to upgrade to MV3: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1271154 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=127115... It's been marked as fixed, though only "for the moment". There's a somewhat similar MV2 issue: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1316588 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=131658.... Both have been active for a while.

CuriouslyC 4y ago

Too late, already switched to brave...

gnicholas 4y ago
Has Brave announced how they're dealing with this change? I've been using it for years and am generally happy, though I've been trying Orion recently to get vertical tab support.
- frankjr 4y ago
  MV2 should be supported even after the shutoff. As far as ad blocking is concerned, the built-in ad blocker doesn't depend on MV2. https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/20059 https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/20059 https://github.com/brave/adblock-rust https://github.com/brave/adblock-rust
  - pseudalopex 4y ago
    > MV2 should be supported even after the shutoff. You meant the non enterprise shut off? Brave committed to MV2 as long as it's in Chromium.
    - gnicholas 4y ago
      They also apparently will stand up their own MV2 store after Google's deprecation is complete. > During the deprecation period, we can keep this functionality via patch (since it's there for Enterprise). After V2 is pulled from store, we'll need to stand up our own extension store for manifest v2
      - pseudalopex 4y ago
        > They also apparently will stand up their own MV2 store after Google's deprecation is complete. Complete deprecation means shut off for enterprise. MV2 items will be unlisted before.
- 4y ago

rektide 4y ago

There's so many bad awful downgrades to life in MV3. The amount of issues & unsolved cases grows significantly month after month, but the only commits to the webextensions spec are meeting notes, where problems & horrors are abundant & vicious. Nothing is improving, nothing is getting better, no visible progress to heal or help is apparent visible or coming. This is a deathmarch project and it will never ever emerge from this valley of death, will never restore a fraction of what it in it's total ignorance took away. This isn't an evil move, it's just a dumb one. The kerfuffle over adblockers is obvious & huge, but ultimately MV3 will definitely do something to make adblocking acceptable. Google is not going to make themselves look like a monster; this is perhaps the only "good" (one giant neutral nothingburger on both sides) news. But my god, the other people being hit with various degredations are in such a hell-grade nightmare pickle. Userscript extensions are still fully hosed (ed: recent movement in issues spotted[1]!). Running dynamic code via Function (a common speed optimization for performance critical JS systems) or eval is still outlawed. Extensions lifecycle is far less clear & persistent than it used to be, and there's thousands of people who simply don't have an extension runtime to hold state for them anymore. Extensions used to be able to use a wide variety of "page" style APIs which are all now suddenly missing and "limited event pages"[2] and "offscreen pages"[3] arent making visible progress. Meanwhile there's seemingly no visible advantages to users here. This 24th hour rewrite of what a webextension is (right before it's specified (rather than a tacit slowly evolved semi-agreement)) seems to serve a primarily abstract/rarely-experienced security concerns, while reducing extension power enormously. There's been no one to negotiate this trade-off. Extension developers have gotten nothing, users have gotten nothing, and extension capabilities have shrunk enormously. Personally I'd like to see the proprietary closed extension-store maintainers do a more active job of weeding out, helping us see good from bad, or giving us tools to peer-moderate, rather than simply shutting the door on the most critical user-agency boosting system, at the most critical 24th hour. There's endless web spec discussions that go on, but this is the most enormous & massive re-negotiation of power the web has ever seen. So far, it's going poorly for everyone except the extensions-store operators, who seem chiefly to be concerned about making their jobs easier in the future, by making extensions far less capable. I can feel real & good intent underneath that: this isn't being done because of bad will. But the visible effects, the impact, is cruel: how could short lifecycle service workers with far less api & far less capability[4] be seen as anything less than a boldfaced theft of user-agency? To be honest: it's unclear how such a deeply impotent position as this was ever proposed or considered. Change is super hard, change management is hard, but this was not a good footing to start on. Adblocking will be ok. This isn't evil. But this is for sure a much deeper, far more complicated fiasco of the highest & most critical importance to the web. [1] https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/issues/279 https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/issues/279 [2] https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/issues/134 https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/issues/134 [3] https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/issues/170 https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/issues/170 [4] https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/issues/72 https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/issues/72

gnicholas 4y ago

Interesting they're saying "may": > Starting in June in Chrome 115, Chrome may run experiments to turn off support for Manifest V2 extensions in all channels, including stable channel. They're giving themselves wiggle room on this instead of saying they're just straight up going to turn it off (or even committing themselves to starting to phase it out at that point). Also, they're showing support for MV2 extensions through Jan 2024, as long as they're marked Private. That's huge — I'm considering scrapping our update for now and just waiting to see how this all unfolds until then. Most of our users come from our website, and I can just link them to Private instances of our extension in the Store. (Also, our extensions are fairly mature, and we can go a year without submitting an update.) I have no need to be Google's guinea pig as they sort out this mess!

2Gkashmiri 4y ago
firefox has a real good chance to make it back once again. all the chrome derivates wont be able to manage a fork on their own so they should jump ship and build on firefox. I have read about how firefox is PITA to build but we have stuff like waterfox that are a homebrew type setup so if they can do it, surely opera or brave with their VC funding and ad dollars can surely change the look and feel of firefox for their use. I also feel bad because the management of firefox has long since sold out to google so they WILL find a way to fuck this opportunity up. I am certain of it.
- gnicholas 4y ago
  This definitely feels like an opportunity for Orion, which manages to support Chrome extensions despite being built on Safari. I wonder if they can switch over to supporting installs from the Firefox addon store instead/in addition?
  - 2Gkashmiri 4y ago
    that would be great for them imo.
  - 2Gkashmiri 4y ago

xyzal 4y ago

Sometimes I wonder where are we headed. My bet is digitally signed pages that chrome refuses to render in case of failed integrity check.

encryptluks2 4y ago
You mean SSL? Probably not the best example.
stjo 4y ago
Sounds a lot like https to me.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

waynesonfire 4y ago

This seems like exactly why Google built a browser. Pay off took many years. What will Brave do?

jacooper 4y ago
Braves adblocker isn't an extension, its built in the browser, and coded in rust. So this won't change anything for brave users.

lemoncookiechip 4y ago

Does anyone know if MV3 will affect add-ons such as Greasemonkey/Violentmonkey, Stylus. It'll be pretty hard to live without those on the web as it is now. Obviously uBO and noScript would be bigger losses, but those seem to be taken care of on Firefox and some other Chromium browsers.

rasz 4y ago
Yes, they will stop working completely. https://github.com/Tampermonkey/tampermonkey/issues/644 https://github.com/Tampermonkey/tampermonkey/issues/644

danpalmer 4y ago

Is there a good (more objective? less emotional?) breakdown of the issues with, and I assume also the benefits of, Manifest V3? So far all I've heard is that it'll destroy ad-blocking, except that it sounds to me like the ad-blocking abilities it has are fairly close to Apple's content blocking abilities, and while ad-blocking on iOS isn't perfect, it's still a thriving ecosystem.

rasz 4y ago
There are no User benefits. This sums up most facts nicely https://www.ghostery.com/blog/manifest-v3-the-ghostery-perspective https://www.ghostery.com/blog/manifest-v3-the-ghostery-persp...