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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 sessi

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.
        blibble 4y ago
        you know what's even slower? pulling down 15mb of bullshit ads on every single page
        akomtu 4y ago
        There are no performance benefits of declareNetRequest. One regex is faster than matching against tens of thousands of urls.
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.

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.
        blibble 4y ago
        you know what's even slower? pulling down 15mb of bullshit ads on every single page
        akomtu 4y ago
        There are no performance benefits of declareNetRequest. One regex is faster than matching against tens of thousands of urls.

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.