Google has been slowly but surely moving towards a new extension platform called Manifest V3 for Chrome. The latter should undermine the effectiveness of ad-blockers.
Google has delayed the transition of its enterprise browser extension platform, giving those using managed versions of Chrome with the deprecated Manifest v2 (MV2) extensions an additional six months of support. Although the new company policy gives companies more time to take advantage of extensions essential to their workflow, Google Chrome extension developers now have less time to adapt to the browser’s adoption of the Manifest V3 (MV3) API.
Google had announced Manifest V3 in 2019 as a new permissions and capabilities framework for Chrome extensions that would introduce stricter rules to improve the security and confidentiality of user data. Google claims that Manifest V3 is “ one of the biggest changes to the extensions platform since its launch a decade ago and had started adding this new API on Chrome 99. However, this update is controversial because it makes ad blockers less effective under the guise of privacy and security protections.
Google gives ad-blockers a break
Many ad blockers today rely on Chrome’s “webRequest” API to prevent entire categories of HTTP requests from being issued. However, this method can cause significant delays in loading and rendering sitesand so the search giant wants to avoid that with its new update.
Manifest V3 will force developers to use a “declarativeNetRequest”, a block list of specific URLs limited to 30,000 entries. The problem is that most ad blocking lists exceed this number.
Developers of popular content blocking extensions are obviously working tirelessly to ensure that they will be able to offer the same benefits after the upgrade to Manifest V3. The famous expansion AdGuard, for example, recently released its first experimental version based on Manifest V3.
Although significantly limited compared to the current version, the new extension proves that ad blockers will survive the migration to Manifest V3, or at least partially. As Google turns the screw on ad-blockers, other browser developers are taking a more aggressive stance and promising not to implement similar rules in future updates.
Also Read – Chrome: Google wants to block video ads that are too intrusive
When will the Manifest V3 update be deployed?
According to the revised schedule, Google will remove extensions that still use Manifest V2 from the Chrome Web Store in January 2024. Along with the new timeline, Google described how it plans to take a phased, experimental approach to disabling Manifest V2 to “ensure a smooth end-user experience.” This approach involves two steps:
- In January 2023, Chrome 112 will have new “flags” to disable Manifest V2 in Canary, Dev and Beta
- In June 2023, Chrome 115 will receive the same “flags” in the stable channel
Google advises developers to migrate to Manifest V3 “ long before these versions of Chrome are released, as these extensions may stop working anytime after the aforementioned dates “.
Anyway, the arrival of Manifest V3 next year should allow Google to limit the access of extensions to users’ network requests, to force developers to include all functionality in the extension, thus ending the practice of hosting code remotely. The giant will also be able to move changes to network requests from extensions to the browser and even improve browser performance by optimizing background pages.
When it comes to privacy-enhancing claims, privacy groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) dispute that description. Indeed, the latter claims that if Google really cared about the security of the extension store, it could simply control the store more actively by using humans instead of limiting the capabilities of all expansions.
