13 ms·

Pausing Manifest V2 phase-out changes

211 points by tech234a 4y ago

skullone 4y ago
Is Google sure of what they're doing at all anymore?
vlovich123 4y ago
Ultimately the biggest risk here I think is adblockers. It’s the universal extension
lewisjoe 4y ago
Great news. One thing that I'm sure about V3 is that it isn't well thought-out at all. For example, imagine your extension has to cache data for a browser session (across tabs but with a single cache), it's impossible as of now. The only workaround to do that has a 1MB storage limit, essentially forcing you to have a server-side cache mechanism (redis or whatever) for this trivial use-case. And worse, Google developers essentially refuse to understand the problem - https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1185226&q=chrome.storage&can=2 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=118522...
- blibble 4y ago
  > One thing that I'm sure about V3 is that it isn't well thought-out at all. that's because it's been invented for the sole purpose of making "breaking effective ad-blocking" look legitimate
  - nonbirithm 4y ago
    And similarly, FLoC was invented for the sole purpose of making targeted advertising look legitimate.
    - pornel 4y ago
      There was also a lot of futile searching for use-cases for Signed Exchange spec, which was just AMP letting Google host and monitor other pages' traffic.
  - charcircuit 4y ago
    From what I've seen the main purpose is to increase secruity, privacy, and performance of the extension ecosystem. I have seen no sign of mv3 being for breaking ad blocking. MV3 and other parts of chromium have added features that help ad blockers.
    - akomtu 4y ago
      That's lie pushed by Google. MV3 removes the ability to block requests, but keeps the ability to observe requests. Great for ads-related spying.
      - charcircuit 4y ago
        MV3 is more than declarativeNetRequest and the reason why declarativeNetRequest improves privacy is that users are not giving out as overly broad permission. A user may want to block ads, but may also want to not give the ad blocker the ability to observe the requests. Even if the user trusts the developer of the adblocker, there is always the chance they get hacked. The average user should not be giving out the webRequest enabled for every website to an extension. It makes sense for the chromium team to periodically evaluate the use cases of extensions and see if there are better APIs that it could offer to move the ecosystem forward.
        akomtu 4y ago
        If that was the case, mv3 would let extensions block arbitrary requests on a subdomain, e.g. "uBO wants to block requests on *.com, Yes/No".
        charcircuit 4y ago
        Trying to keep webRequestBlocking around would mean that the performance benefits of declareNetRequest wouldn't propogate an well as it could. The worst offendors of being slow to block requests are likely to be the same extentions who wouldn't migrate to declareNetRequest.
- brucethemoose2 4y ago
  This seems to be a pattern among Google employees, as least as I'm seeing from the outside. They have their own company reality bubble, and clashes or inconsistencies with the outside world are met with disbelief.
  - djbusby 4y ago
    The customer is always right - except when I think I'm smarter than their stated needs.
    - kivle 4y ago
      The customer, eg. the advertising industry.
  - freedomben 4y ago
    Indeed, but it's a problem in engineering society-wide, not just Google. The more I think of it actually, it's just a human problem. Even kids default to this. I wish Socratic Ignorance were taught widely and often in school.
  - Kye 4y ago
    I remember getting into it with a Google person in a forum once. They kept insisting they couldn't do real, portable files in Google Drive for Docs because that would break collaboration. They didn't seem able to understand I didn't want collaboration. I wanted to be able to open my word processor/spreadsheet/etc files in other tools without needing to connect to the internet (predates offline mode). I wanted to be able to back them up somewhere (3-2-1 strategy). I wanted to be able to do automated analysis across all my writing. In short, I wanted to own my files. They simply could not conceive of a use case that was offline or didn't trust Google to be reliable. I honestly don't think they ever used a real desktop office suite. They had no model in their head to understand it.
    - malermeister 4y ago
      It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
- whstl 4y ago
  It is hubris. Google thinks it can get away with anything, since they're the market leader. The reality is that a certain number of people will migrate to Firefox over AdBlockers not working well anymore, and will give FF a second life. And those are the people who helped get Chrome off the ground by installing on the computers of relatives and recommending to friends.
  - bornfreddy 4y ago
    This, 1000 times. There is only one thing a monopoly holder is afraid of - losing the monopoly.
    - hyperman1 4y ago
      Im not sure Google understands they have and profit from a monopoly. When the EU sued Microsoft, the reaction inside and outside differed wildly. Outside, there was a 'finally' feeling. Inside, Microsoftees went from denial straight to shock. They just could not understand they had become the bad guys. They still lived in the 80s, where Microsoft was hailed as the saviour from the IBM monopoly. They might admit some individual trouble spots, but did not see these as connected to a bigger problem or core company culture. Microsoft believed their detractors were a small deluded noisy minority, but surely not the common opinion. Google is in for a rude awakening.
  - ethbr0 4y ago
    I don't think that's the underlying cause. The Google product teams I've interacted with didn't seem like they cared they were a market leader. Aside from "In the making a good product" sense. They literally just didn't understand what people not-them were doing and refused to consider it. I remember I ditched Chrome ~2014 because I had an issue with the default download handling. Maybe auto-saving/non-standard location? I dug around and found a bug report on it, that had been open for multiple years, with multiple Google engineers looking and commenting on it, and arguing that users would never need a config option to do... what multiple users for multiple years were asking for.
- lozenge 4y ago
  Just raised to 10 MB?
- tracyhenry 4y ago
  Are you talking about local storage? If so the limit is 5 MB: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/reference/storage/#storage-areas https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/reference/stora...
- charcircuit 4y ago
  >has a 1MB storage limit They changed this a couple days ago to be 10 MB with Chrome 112.
  - p1mrx 4y ago
    The 1MB limit was ridiculous. My MV3 extension uses storage.local (on disk) for session data, only because the quota is 5X bigger than storage.session (in ram). I'm waiting for 112 to hit stable so I can migrate to storage.session only. MV3 also has this bug where extensions just stop receiving events at random. Search `lostEventsWatchdog` for a workaround.
m_a_g 4y ago
Anything that breaks uBlock Origin is a deal breaker. With the chrome team making so many alterations to their plans, I guess we'll have to wait and see.
- Operative0198 4y ago
  Mv3 broke uBlock Lite for me (used uBlock to control js mostly). But that wasn't a deal breaker because I got to discover NoScript (still stuck on mv2 but I like the approach vastly better than original uBlock's implementation). Just waiting to see how this functionality will be handled in mv2 sunset since Noscript has no plans to migrate atm and uBlock lite should be "guttered" for the foreseeable future.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- poolopolopolo 4y ago
  Pretty much, there will never be a "smooth" transition from V2 to V3 when you are purposely trying to kill the most used plugins.
- pkulak 4y ago
  Why wait? Move to Firefox now.
  - ithrow 4y ago
    Feels slow in old computers with 4GB and Chrome has a better built-in for freeing up memory from inactive tabs.
    - voytec 4y ago
      But will likely be plagued with performance degrading ads.
      - 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
shmde 4y ago
I love it when advertisment companies who make money handcrafting the perfect ad for you, analysing your search history, talk about Privacy. Yes, this V3 manifest will break adblockers but think about your pRiVaCy gUys!!!
- freedomben 4y ago
  I don't disagree with you (always follow the money), but on the other hand, who better to understand the privacy concerns than the people who work around them for a living? I would definitely want to listen to them. That doesn't mean we just take what they say uncritically, but their perspective is very important.
  - tyingq 4y ago
    onBeforeRequest(), though, is just one of several ways to run arbitrary JS on a 3rd party page within an extension. There's a reason it's "first to be hobbled", and that reason isn't privacy. Nobody can prove intent, of course, but I'm predicting the pace of "privacy improvements" slows considerably after the smart heuristic-based ad blockers are out of the way.
  - RobotToaster 4y ago
    We absolutely should listen to them, and then do the exact opposite of what they want.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
tyingq 4y ago
Just fine tuning how slowly to boil the frogs. At some point, they will pull the trigger. My hypothesis is that the various entities that want to work around ad-blockers hold back for now, because they don't want to push people from the more basic blockers to the more advanced ones. Once this is in place, pretty much all adblockers of note are dns based, or semi-static list based...."basic". I wonder if there's a renewed push fighting ad blockers then.
- tjpnz 4y ago
  I don't understand this mentality. What do ad-tech companies like Google gain from showing an ad to an unwilling participant? Click through rates are going to crater and people are just going to stop using Chrome.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - tyingq 4y ago
    I thought similarly about AMP. They continued the forced march, and well...
- colordrops 4y ago
  Their goal is probably to slowly ween a tiny group of power users onto other browsers that allow ad blocking while acclimating everyone else to the full ad experience.
- bornfreddy 4y ago
  Or working on pressuring Firefox to implement MV3.
  - johnny22 4y ago
    firefox already implements mv3 as much as they can, but without removing what mv2 offered don't they?
Tempest1981 4y ago
So the phase-out won't begin until 2024 at the earliest? Did I read that right? What was it previously, June 2023? > We will provide sufficient migration time for developers - at least 6 months of heads-up - before beginning any experiments to turn off MV2 in the browser next year So "next year" is 2023 or 2024?
- ollien 4y ago
  Given this was posted 3 days ago, I'd say 2024 :)
  - Tempest1981 4y ago
    Yeah, "in the next year" vs "over the next year". English has many nuances.
- illiarian 4y ago
  Or will be when they think they can get away with it. Every time they try the backlash is weaker and weaker because people get tired, or have other things to worry about.
  - jareklupinski 4y ago
    or they install higher-order ad-blockers, like pihole / diversion
    - ziml77 4y ago
      Blocking ads at the DNS level is very limited. All that has to happen to bypass it is the site you're visiting serves the ad data directly or really just from any domain that also serves up info you don't want to block. It also can't do anything to counter anti-adblock mechanisms or to clean up the layout which might have space already reserved for the ads. Using a MITM to alter the responses is an option, but you're likely to run into issues with sofware and devices not being able to handle a custom CA.
politician 4y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if this is related to ChatGPT or LLM. Google is aware of the impact LLMs are having and that Manifest V3 is facing widespread disapproval. Previously, Google's strategy was "take it or leave it", so their decision to reconsider could indicate apprehension about the potential acceleration of the ad-based search business's decline.
Diggsey 4y ago
Manifest V3 is a perfect example of "great idea but terrible execution". The ability to have extension pages be suspended when not in use is great. Improving (and having finer grained) permissions is great. It should have stopped there: introduce a new "persistent" permission that extensions can request to stay around permanently, and when not requested, introduce lifecycle events so extensions can properly handle suspension/resumption. Make some tweaks to how permissions as a whole are handled. Instead we have this abomination which is worse for everyone involved. It doesn't improve performance because it forces extension authors to hack around the broken API, and in doing so waste CPU and memory. Firefox FTW
- joisig 4y ago
  MV2 background pages were already by default in a mode where they are suspended when not in use. MV3 doesn't improve on that except to make it impossible to have persistent background pages.
- kgwxd 4y ago
  The primary idea is terrible, the good ideas are only there to cover up the primary purpose, kill tracker blocking. Terrible idea, terrible execution.
- tomjen3 4y ago
  The problem with being able to request permissions is that the extensions will then not work without it. So in reality you often don't have a choice. Ultimately of course, it is folly to assume you can have privacy with a browser made by an ad company.
paulryanrogers 4y ago
Doesn't appear to open up MV2 for new extensions, so if your favorite extension gets sold / goes rogue then alternatives may be crippled by MV3 as it exists today.
lapcat 4y ago
Google is not even close to finishing MV3: "On the userScripts API, the proposal has been merged into the WECG but the engineering work has not started yet." https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/blob/f8f430f1904c2a6fa8fada50fad0a18dd542eedf/_minutes/2023-03-30-wecg.md https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/blob/f8f430f1904c2a6fa8... MV2 is sticking around until at least 2024.
John23832 4y ago
As someone who has made an extension for an actual product, this whole rollout/situation has been an absolute shitshow. This is, what, the third pause of the rollout? Google stopped accepting V2 extensions sometime last year, pushing V3 but totally ignoring MANY of the current use cases of extensions that V3 just doesn't work for. Firebase auth, a Google freaking product, doesn't work in V3 (you can make it work with a bunch of "I read it on a forum somewhere" work arounds). The ONLY reason they're pushing this is to shore up their ads business by breaking add blockers.
- tssva 4y ago
  This isn't a new pause of the rollout. It is a message giving a general update on changes made to the APIs since the pause announced months ago began.
  - gnicholas 4y ago
    My reading is that this announcement indicates a new quasi-indefinite pause, beyond what was previously announced. They will probably still phase out v2, but every additional message about this pushes the timeline back further (even if it’s not explicitly mentioned). BTW, does anyone know how to subscribe to these Chrome updates? I’m kinda surprised not to get them via email, considering I manage multiple Chrome extensions.
    - tssva 4y ago
      The December pause announcement stated it was until at least January 2024. This update still mentions a timeline of next year for v3. I find it hard to read as anything beyond the update of progress which was promised for March when the pause was announced in December.
- hsbauauvhabzb 4y ago
  A few months back a HN user suggested it may be wise to continually delay an unpopular change, im no PR expert but I thought that was an interesting perspective.
bobse 4y ago
Microsoft Teams is still broken on Firefox? Linux app was also killed by Microsoft liars.
- 20after4 4y ago
  That's a feature not a bug.
- cpeterso 4y ago
  Mozilla had been working with Microsoft to resolve Teams compatibility issues. Teams users using teams.microsoft.com (primarily Business and Enterprise customers on a paid plan, but also some free/personal legacy accounts) should be able to use Teams without issues now. However, there is a second Microsoft Teams instance running on teams.live.com. Most Personal/Consumer/Free users of Teams are on that version, and there, Teams is currently showing a "browser unsupported" banner. https://github.com/webcompat/web-bugs/issues/25070#issuecomment-1424688835 https://github.com/webcompat/web-bugs/issues/25070#issuecomm...
qwertox 4y ago
> As we head towards Manifest V3 migration, we are intently monitoring comments from the developer community to help inform our timelines. Here's some feedback: If uBlock Origin loses full control over what gets loaded and what not, I will immediately uninstall Chrome from all my and my family's devices and switch back to Firefox, after a decade of using Chrome as the main browser. I will then also recommend the exclusive use of Firefox. Why not offer MV2 and MV3 in parallel, where MV2 is a per-extension opt-in with a prominent security warning during opt-in?
- kej 4y ago
  You can just do this anyway, you know. Firefox is pretty great these days.
  - judge2020 4y ago
    Especially on macs
    - darreninthenet 4y ago
      I found it's lack of support for native functionality in MacOS too irritating (eg doesn't support system wide autocomplete - so my @@ shortcut that puts my email address in doesn't work in FF - I know I could put it in again in FF but it's annoying it just doesn't work) so I went back to Chrome in the end. I was using Edge for a while but the absolute car crash their UI has become - and can't be configured - sent me running screaming for the hills. Edit - and don't get me started on the massive slowdowns once I have more than a handful of tabs open.
      - nozzlegear 4y ago
        My biggest complaint with Firefox on macOS is the lack of support for native picture-in-picture. They implement their own version that doesn’t stay visible when you swap between the virtual desktops; won’t overlay on top of full screen applications; and can’t be moved across monitors (iirc) either.
preinheimer 4y ago
People who want to release a new, cross browser, extension are left in a crappy position. Chrome won’t accept a new manifest v2 extension. MV3 extensions have lots of problems in chrome, and are even worse supported everywhere else. Google needs to reopen mv2 to new submissions until they’ve got things figured out, and the other browsers are on board.
i386 4y ago
“Comments are locked” is always a slap in the face
nailer 4y ago
If anyone is working on extensions, the documentation for manifest v3 is no longer being maintained. Check out stack overflow: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/chrome-extension-manifest-v3 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/chrome-extension-... There’s one guy (wOxxOm, who isn’t a google employee) holding all of Manifest V3 on his shoulders, including pointing out places where the docs are missing information or simply inaccurate, while Google do very little to support Chrome developers.
reitanqild 4y ago
For those who, like me, refuses to use Chrome but also doesn't want to support Mozilla Foundation (if I knew money would stay with the engineers I would actively support it), please look at LibreWolf. Unlike certain other Firefox clones LibreWolf is a running fork of the latest Firefox sources.

211 points by tech234a 4y ago

skullone 4y ago

Is Google sure of what they're doing at all anymore?

vlovich123 4y ago

Ultimately the biggest risk here I think is adblockers. It’s the universal extension

lewisjoe 4y ago

Great news. One thing that I'm sure about V3 is that it isn't well thought-out at all. For example, imagine your extension has to cache data for a browser session (across tabs but with a single cache), it's impossible as of now. The only workaround to do that has a 1MB storage limit, essentially forcing you to have a server-side cache mechanism (redis or whatever) for this trivial use-case. And worse, Google developers essentially refuse to understand the problem - https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1185226&q=chrome.storage&can=2 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=118522...

blibble 4y ago
> One thing that I'm sure about V3 is that it isn't well thought-out at all. that's because it's been invented for the sole purpose of making "breaking effective ad-blocking" look legitimate
- nonbirithm 4y ago
  And similarly, FLoC was invented for the sole purpose of making targeted advertising look legitimate.
  - pornel 4y ago
    There was also a lot of futile searching for use-cases for Signed Exchange spec, which was just AMP letting Google host and monitor other pages' traffic.
- charcircuit 4y ago
  From what I've seen the main purpose is to increase secruity, privacy, and performance of the extension ecosystem. I have seen no sign of mv3 being for breaking ad blocking. MV3 and other parts of chromium have added features that help ad blockers.
  - akomtu 4y ago
    That's lie pushed by Google. MV3 removes the ability to block requests, but keeps the ability to observe requests. Great for ads-related spying.
    - charcircuit 4y ago
      MV3 is more than declarativeNetRequest and the reason why declarativeNetRequest improves privacy is that users are not giving out as overly broad permission. A user may want to block ads, but may also want to not give the ad blocker the ability to observe the requests. Even if the user trusts the developer of the adblocker, there is always the chance they get hacked. The average user should not be giving out the webRequest enabled for every website to an extension. It makes sense for the chromium team to periodically evaluate the use cases of extensions and see if there are better APIs that it could offer to move the ecosystem forward.
      - akomtu 4y ago
        If that was the case, mv3 would let extensions block arbitrary requests on a subdomain, e.g. "uBO wants to block requests on *.com, Yes/No".
        charcircuit 4y ago
        Trying to keep webRequestBlocking around would mean that the performance benefits of declareNetRequest wouldn't propogate an well as it could. The worst offendors of being slow to block requests are likely to be the same extentions who wouldn't migrate to declareNetRequest.
brucethemoose2 4y ago
This seems to be a pattern among Google employees, as least as I'm seeing from the outside. They have their own company reality bubble, and clashes or inconsistencies with the outside world are met with disbelief.
- djbusby 4y ago
  The customer is always right - except when I think I'm smarter than their stated needs.
  - kivle 4y ago
    The customer, eg. the advertising industry.
- freedomben 4y ago
  Indeed, but it's a problem in engineering society-wide, not just Google. The more I think of it actually, it's just a human problem. Even kids default to this. I wish Socratic Ignorance were taught widely and often in school.
- Kye 4y ago
  I remember getting into it with a Google person in a forum once. They kept insisting they couldn't do real, portable files in Google Drive for Docs because that would break collaboration. They didn't seem able to understand I didn't want collaboration. I wanted to be able to open my word processor/spreadsheet/etc files in other tools without needing to connect to the internet (predates offline mode). I wanted to be able to back them up somewhere (3-2-1 strategy). I wanted to be able to do automated analysis across all my writing. In short, I wanted to own my files. They simply could not conceive of a use case that was offline or didn't trust Google to be reliable. I honestly don't think they ever used a real desktop office suite. They had no model in their head to understand it.
  - malermeister 4y ago
    It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
whstl 4y ago
It is hubris. Google thinks it can get away with anything, since they're the market leader. The reality is that a certain number of people will migrate to Firefox over AdBlockers not working well anymore, and will give FF a second life. And those are the people who helped get Chrome off the ground by installing on the computers of relatives and recommending to friends.
- bornfreddy 4y ago
  This, 1000 times. There is only one thing a monopoly holder is afraid of - losing the monopoly.
  - hyperman1 4y ago
    Im not sure Google understands they have and profit from a monopoly. When the EU sued Microsoft, the reaction inside and outside differed wildly. Outside, there was a 'finally' feeling. Inside, Microsoftees went from denial straight to shock. They just could not understand they had become the bad guys. They still lived in the 80s, where Microsoft was hailed as the saviour from the IBM monopoly. They might admit some individual trouble spots, but did not see these as connected to a bigger problem or core company culture. Microsoft believed their detractors were a small deluded noisy minority, but surely not the common opinion. Google is in for a rude awakening.
- ethbr0 4y ago
  I don't think that's the underlying cause. The Google product teams I've interacted with didn't seem like they cared they were a market leader. Aside from "In the making a good product" sense. They literally just didn't understand what people not-them were doing and refused to consider it. I remember I ditched Chrome ~2014 because I had an issue with the default download handling. Maybe auto-saving/non-standard location? I dug around and found a bug report on it, that had been open for multiple years, with multiple Google engineers looking and commenting on it, and arguing that users would never need a config option to do... what multiple users for multiple years were asking for.
lozenge 4y ago
Just raised to 10 MB?
tracyhenry 4y ago
Are you talking about local storage? If so the limit is 5 MB: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/reference/storage/#storage-areas https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/reference/stora...
charcircuit 4y ago
>has a 1MB storage limit They changed this a couple days ago to be 10 MB with Chrome 112.
- p1mrx 4y ago
  The 1MB limit was ridiculous. My MV3 extension uses storage.local (on disk) for session data, only because the quota is 5X bigger than storage.session (in ram). I'm waiting for 112 to hit stable so I can migrate to storage.session only. MV3 also has this bug where extensions just stop receiving events at random. Search `lostEventsWatchdog` for a workaround.

m_a_g 4y ago

Anything that breaks uBlock Origin is a deal breaker. With the chrome team making so many alterations to their plans, I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Operative0198 4y ago
Mv3 broke uBlock Lite for me (used uBlock to control js mostly). But that wasn't a deal breaker because I got to discover NoScript (still stuck on mv2 but I like the approach vastly better than original uBlock's implementation). Just waiting to see how this functionality will be handled in mv2 sunset since Noscript has no plans to migrate atm and uBlock lite should be "guttered" for the foreseeable future.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
poolopolopolo 4y ago
Pretty much, there will never be a "smooth" transition from V2 to V3 when you are purposely trying to kill the most used plugins.
pkulak 4y ago
Why wait? Move to Firefox now.
- ithrow 4y ago
  Feels slow in old computers with 4GB and Chrome has a better built-in for freeing up memory from inactive tabs.
  - voytec 4y ago
    But will likely be plagued with performance degrading ads.
    - 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

shmde 4y ago

I love it when advertisment companies who make money handcrafting the perfect ad for you, analysing your search history, talk about Privacy. Yes, this V3 manifest will break adblockers but think about your pRiVaCy gUys!!!

freedomben 4y ago
I don't disagree with you (always follow the money), but on the other hand, who better to understand the privacy concerns than the people who work around them for a living? I would definitely want to listen to them. That doesn't mean we just take what they say uncritically, but their perspective is very important.
- tyingq 4y ago
  onBeforeRequest(), though, is just one of several ways to run arbitrary JS on a 3rd party page within an extension. There's a reason it's "first to be hobbled", and that reason isn't privacy. Nobody can prove intent, of course, but I'm predicting the pace of "privacy improvements" slows considerably after the smart heuristic-based ad blockers are out of the way.
- RobotToaster 4y ago
  We absolutely should listen to them, and then do the exact opposite of what they want.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

tyingq 4y ago

Just fine tuning how slowly to boil the frogs. At some point, they will pull the trigger. My hypothesis is that the various entities that want to work around ad-blockers hold back for now, because they don't want to push people from the more basic blockers to the more advanced ones. Once this is in place, pretty much all adblockers of note are dns based, or semi-static list based...."basic". I wonder if there's a renewed push fighting ad blockers then.

tjpnz 4y ago
I don't understand this mentality. What do ad-tech companies like Google gain from showing an ad to an unwilling participant? Click through rates are going to crater and people are just going to stop using Chrome.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- tyingq 4y ago
  I thought similarly about AMP. They continued the forced march, and well...
colordrops 4y ago
Their goal is probably to slowly ween a tiny group of power users onto other browsers that allow ad blocking while acclimating everyone else to the full ad experience.
bornfreddy 4y ago
Or working on pressuring Firefox to implement MV3.
- johnny22 4y ago
  firefox already implements mv3 as much as they can, but without removing what mv2 offered don't they?

Tempest1981 4y ago

So the phase-out won't begin until 2024 at the earliest? Did I read that right? What was it previously, June 2023? > We will provide sufficient migration time for developers - at least 6 months of heads-up - before beginning any experiments to turn off MV2 in the browser next year So "next year" is 2023 or 2024?

ollien 4y ago
Given this was posted 3 days ago, I'd say 2024 :)
- Tempest1981 4y ago
  Yeah, "in the next year" vs "over the next year". English has many nuances.
illiarian 4y ago
Or will be when they think they can get away with it. Every time they try the backlash is weaker and weaker because people get tired, or have other things to worry about.
- jareklupinski 4y ago
  or they install higher-order ad-blockers, like pihole / diversion
  - ziml77 4y ago
    Blocking ads at the DNS level is very limited. All that has to happen to bypass it is the site you're visiting serves the ad data directly or really just from any domain that also serves up info you don't want to block. It also can't do anything to counter anti-adblock mechanisms or to clean up the layout which might have space already reserved for the ads. Using a MITM to alter the responses is an option, but you're likely to run into issues with sofware and devices not being able to handle a custom CA.

politician 4y ago

I wouldn't be surprised if this is related to ChatGPT or LLM. Google is aware of the impact LLMs are having and that Manifest V3 is facing widespread disapproval. Previously, Google's strategy was "take it or leave it", so their decision to reconsider could indicate apprehension about the potential acceleration of the ad-based search business's decline.

Diggsey 4y ago

Manifest V3 is a perfect example of "great idea but terrible execution". The ability to have extension pages be suspended when not in use is great. Improving (and having finer grained) permissions is great. It should have stopped there: introduce a new "persistent" permission that extensions can request to stay around permanently, and when not requested, introduce lifecycle events so extensions can properly handle suspension/resumption. Make some tweaks to how permissions as a whole are handled. Instead we have this abomination which is worse for everyone involved. It doesn't improve performance because it forces extension authors to hack around the broken API, and in doing so waste CPU and memory. Firefox FTW

joisig 4y ago
MV2 background pages were already by default in a mode where they are suspended when not in use. MV3 doesn't improve on that except to make it impossible to have persistent background pages.
kgwxd 4y ago
The primary idea is terrible, the good ideas are only there to cover up the primary purpose, kill tracker blocking. Terrible idea, terrible execution.
tomjen3 4y ago
The problem with being able to request permissions is that the extensions will then not work without it. So in reality you often don't have a choice. Ultimately of course, it is folly to assume you can have privacy with a browser made by an ad company.

paulryanrogers 4y ago

Doesn't appear to open up MV2 for new extensions, so if your favorite extension gets sold / goes rogue then alternatives may be crippled by MV3 as it exists today.

lapcat 4y ago

Google is not even close to finishing MV3: "On the userScripts API, the proposal has been merged into the WECG but the engineering work has not started yet." https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/blob/f8f430f1904c2a6fa8fada50fad0a18dd542eedf/_minutes/2023-03-30-wecg.md https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/blob/f8f430f1904c2a6fa8... MV2 is sticking around until at least 2024.

John23832 4y ago

As someone who has made an extension for an actual product, this whole rollout/situation has been an absolute shitshow. This is, what, the third pause of the rollout? Google stopped accepting V2 extensions sometime last year, pushing V3 but totally ignoring MANY of the current use cases of extensions that V3 just doesn't work for. Firebase auth, a Google freaking product, doesn't work in V3 (you can make it work with a bunch of "I read it on a forum somewhere" work arounds). The ONLY reason they're pushing this is to shore up their ads business by breaking add blockers.

tssva 4y ago
This isn't a new pause of the rollout. It is a message giving a general update on changes made to the APIs since the pause announced months ago began.
- gnicholas 4y ago
  My reading is that this announcement indicates a new quasi-indefinite pause, beyond what was previously announced. They will probably still phase out v2, but every additional message about this pushes the timeline back further (even if it’s not explicitly mentioned). BTW, does anyone know how to subscribe to these Chrome updates? I’m kinda surprised not to get them via email, considering I manage multiple Chrome extensions.
  - tssva 4y ago
    The December pause announcement stated it was until at least January 2024. This update still mentions a timeline of next year for v3. I find it hard to read as anything beyond the update of progress which was promised for March when the pause was announced in December.
hsbauauvhabzb 4y ago
A few months back a HN user suggested it may be wise to continually delay an unpopular change, im no PR expert but I thought that was an interesting perspective.

bobse 4y ago

Microsoft Teams is still broken on Firefox? Linux app was also killed by Microsoft liars.

20after4 4y ago
That's a feature not a bug.
cpeterso 4y ago
Mozilla had been working with Microsoft to resolve Teams compatibility issues. Teams users using teams.microsoft.com (primarily Business and Enterprise customers on a paid plan, but also some free/personal legacy accounts) should be able to use Teams without issues now. However, there is a second Microsoft Teams instance running on teams.live.com. Most Personal/Consumer/Free users of Teams are on that version, and there, Teams is currently showing a "browser unsupported" banner. https://github.com/webcompat/web-bugs/issues/25070#issuecomment-1424688835 https://github.com/webcompat/web-bugs/issues/25070#issuecomm...

qwertox 4y ago

> As we head towards Manifest V3 migration, we are intently monitoring comments from the developer community to help inform our timelines. Here's some feedback: If uBlock Origin loses full control over what gets loaded and what not, I will immediately uninstall Chrome from all my and my family's devices and switch back to Firefox, after a decade of using Chrome as the main browser. I will then also recommend the exclusive use of Firefox. Why not offer MV2 and MV3 in parallel, where MV2 is a per-extension opt-in with a prominent security warning during opt-in?

kej 4y ago
You can just do this anyway, you know. Firefox is pretty great these days.
- judge2020 4y ago
  Especially on macs
  - darreninthenet 4y ago
    I found it's lack of support for native functionality in MacOS too irritating (eg doesn't support system wide autocomplete - so my @@ shortcut that puts my email address in doesn't work in FF - I know I could put it in again in FF but it's annoying it just doesn't work) so I went back to Chrome in the end. I was using Edge for a while but the absolute car crash their UI has become - and can't be configured - sent me running screaming for the hills. Edit - and don't get me started on the massive slowdowns once I have more than a handful of tabs open.
    - nozzlegear 4y ago
      My biggest complaint with Firefox on macOS is the lack of support for native picture-in-picture. They implement their own version that doesn’t stay visible when you swap between the virtual desktops; won’t overlay on top of full screen applications; and can’t be moved across monitors (iirc) either.

preinheimer 4y ago

People who want to release a new, cross browser, extension are left in a crappy position. Chrome won’t accept a new manifest v2 extension. MV3 extensions have lots of problems in chrome, and are even worse supported everywhere else. Google needs to reopen mv2 to new submissions until they’ve got things figured out, and the other browsers are on board.

i386 4y ago

“Comments are locked” is always a slap in the face

nailer 4y ago

If anyone is working on extensions, the documentation for manifest v3 is no longer being maintained. Check out stack overflow: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/chrome-extension-manifest-v3 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/chrome-extension-... There’s one guy (wOxxOm, who isn’t a google employee) holding all of Manifest V3 on his shoulders, including pointing out places where the docs are missing information or simply inaccurate, while Google do very little to support Chrome developers.

reitanqild 4y ago

For those who, like me, refuses to use Chrome but also doesn't want to support Mozilla Foundation (if I knew money would stay with the engineers I would actively support it), please look at LibreWolf. Unlike certain other Firefox clones LibreWolf is a running fork of the latest Firefox sources.