![]() ![]() Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy advocacy group, in a blog post dated December 2021, said that “Manifest V3 is another example of the inherent conflict of interest that comes from Google controlling both the dominant web browser and one of the largest internet advertising networks.” The privacy group believes that the move to Manifest V3 will will restrict the capabilities of web extensions - “especially those that are designed to monitor, modify, and compute alongside the conversation your browser has with the websites you visit.” Many privacy groups have been up in arms against Google’s move to Manifest V3. Ad-blockers to work effectively come with a list of over 300,000 entries. Essentially, Google will create a list of blocked URLs and that list is restricted to just 30,000 entries. With Manifest V3, developers will have no choice but to use an API called declarativeNetRequest, which as per the report, will “force them to use a blocklist of specific URLs”. The report says that a lot of ad blockers end up relying on an API called webRequest, which is present in Chrome. Firefox is still out there, along with an endless number of Chromium forks.Why is this a problem for ad blockers? According to a report by Ars Technica, ad blockers will become useless once this version is rolled out. Several extension developers are working on solutions within the Manifest V3 sandbox. There's no way of knowing the end-user impact until these solutions are developed and Google kills the existing extension platform, but loudly rolling out user-hostile changes seems like one of the few things that could hurt Chrome's market share. The company refuses to block tracking cookies until it can first build a tracking and advertising system directly into Chrome. Whether it's explicitly or implicitly, Google's ad division seems to have an increasing influence on the design of Chrome. The report says performance also isn't a valid excuse, citing a study showing that ad downloading and rendering degrades browser performance. The EFF poked holes in most of Google's justifications for Manifest V3 changes, saying that malicious extensions are mostly interested in stealing data and that Manifest V3 only stops extensions from blocking data, not inspecting it, so Google isn't doing much to stop bad actors. Under the new specifications, extensions like these-like some privacy-protective tracker blockers-will have greatly reduced capabilities." A few months ago, the EFF called Manifest V3 "deceitful and threatening." The privacy advocacy group said Manifest V3 "will restrict the capabilities of web extensions-especially those that are designed to monitor, modify, and compute alongside the conversation your browser has with the websites you visit. Advertisementįurther Reading Google delays death of tracking cookies again, wants more time for “testing”There's considerable concern that Google is using its position as the world's largest browser vendor to protect Google's business model by hamstringing ad blockers and privacy-protection extensions. ![]() Google says Manifest V3 is "one of the most significant shifts in the extensions platform since it launched a decade ago." The company claims that the more limited platform is meant to bring "enhancements in security, privacy, and performance." Privacy groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) dispute this description and say that if Google really cared about the security of the extension store, it could just police the store more actively using actual humans instead of limiting the capabilities of all extensions. In January 2024, Manifest V2 extensions will be removed from the store entirely. Starting in January 2023 with Chrome version 112, Google "may run experiments to turn off support for Manifest V2 extensions in Canary, Dev, and Beta channels." Starting in June 2023 and Chrome 115, Google "may run experiments to turn off support for Manifest V2 extensions in all channels, including stable channel." Also starting in June, the Chrome Web Store will stop accepting Manifest V2 extensions, and they'll be hidden from view. Google's latest blog post details the new timeline for the transition to Manifest V3, which involves ending support for older extensions running on Manifest V2 and forcing everyone onto the new platform. The update is controversial because it makes ad blockers less effective under the guise of protecting privacy and security, and Google just so happens to be the world's largest advertising company. ![]() "Manifest V3" is the rather unintuitive name for the next version of Chrome's extension platform. ![]() Google's journey toward Chrome's "Manifest V3" has been happening for four years now, and if the company's new timeline holds up, we'll all be forced to switch to it in year 5. Isaac Bowen / Flickr reader comments 264 with ![]()
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