TECH NEWS – AdBlock Plus and uBlock Origin better prepare: the clock is ticking for extensions built on the Manifest V2 specification.

“Years in the making, Manifest V3 is more secure, performant, and privacy-preserving than its predecessor. It is an evolution of the extension platform that takes into consideration both the changing web landscape and the future of browser extensions,” David Li, Google’s Chrome extensions and web store product manager, wrote in a blog post. Manifest V2 extensions won’t be accepted from January 17, and from January 2023, all Manifest V2 extensions will be disabled.

TechRadar explains how losing Manifest V2 might be a painful move for many Chrome users, as they are using ad blockers built on this technology… and Manifest V3 deprecates a particular API that current ad blockers use to do their thing. We have yet to see if the new versions can or will be built on this new specification or not.

In a 2019 Chromium blog post, Google wrote that disabling ad blockers is “absolutely not the goal” of the new spec. “This change is meant to give developers a way to create safer and more performant ad blockers.” That doesn’t explain Alphabet’s (Google’s parent company) SEC filing from 2018, claiming that ad blocking technology has the potential to harm its business: “Technologies have been developed to make customizable ads more difficult or to block the display of ads altogether, and some providers of online services have integrated technologies that could potentially impair the core functionality of third-party digital advertising. Most of our Google revenues are derived from fees paid to us in connection with the display of ads online. As a result, such technologies and tools could adversely affect our operating results.”

In 2019, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) also had issues with Google’s claims. In a statement, they claimed that the new spec could hurt devs of ad blockers: “For developers of ad- and tracker-blocking extensions, flexible APIs aren’t just nice to have, they are a requirement. When certain privacy protections gain popularity, ads and trackers evolve to evade them. As a result, the blocking extensions need to evolve too, or risk becoming irrelevant … If Google decides that privacy extensions can only work in one specific way, it will be permanently tipping the scales in favour of ads and trackers.” Alexei Miagkov, the co-author of this post, confirmed to The Register that the EFF’s stance hasn’t changed: “Our criticism still stands. The reasons they have stated publicly [for this transition] don’t fully make sense.”

Google claims that they will reveal more details shortly about the Manifest V3 move, and they say they will continue adding new capabilities to it “based on the needs and voices of our developer community.” A detailed timeline on the Manifest V2/V3 changeover is available on the Chrome Developers page. Perhaps investing in a Pi-hole to have a Raspberry Pi specifically blocking advertisements isn’t a bad idea…

Source: PCGamer