Google postpones Chrome adjustments that might have huge affect on advert blocking extensions

My former colleague Corin Faife wrote a superb explainer on the controversy earlier this 12 months. But the TL;DR is that MV3 swaps out a strong API utilized by ad-blocking extensions referred to as Web Request, for one more referred to as Declarative Net Request. The latter offers much less energy to ad-blocking extensions in an try to attenuate safety dangers, however critics argue it restricts actions professional extensions would possibly take to guard person privateness. Corin’s piece is properly value studying for a extra thorough rationalization.

As of late September, Google had deliberate to experiment with turning off MV2 in Chrome’s Canary, Dev, and Beta channels beginning in January 2023, broaden the experiments to incorporate the browser’s secure releases in June 2023, and cease operating MV2 extensions completely in January 2024. But as of December ninth it’s suspending the January experiments, and putting future milestones “under review.”

In his put up, Vincent says the timeline has been pushed again to handle suggestions from builders. “We’ve heard your feedback on common challenges posed by the migration, specifically the service worker’s inability to use DOM capabilities and the current hard limit on extension service worker lifetimes,” he writes. “We’re mitigating the former with the Offscreen Documents API (added in Chrome 109) and are actively pursuing a solution to the latter.”

While rival privacy-focused extension Ghostery has opposed the MV3 adjustments, it’s value noting they’ve the assist of Adblock Plus. But ad-blocking is a delicate matter with regards to Google, given promoting nonetheless offers a lot of the corporate’s revenue. And for the reason that adjustments are being made to the Chromium challenge and never simply Chrome particularly, they’re prone to affect different browsers like Edge, Brave, and Opera.

Despite the delays, it feels like Google doesn’t have any plans to ditch its migration to MV3 completely. Vincent says that Google will announce an “updated phase-out plan and schedule” in March subsequent 12 months.