Google Chrome ad blockers live on after API changes postponed
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Google Chrome extensions will receive support for business use for another year following the company’s decision to delay removal from the Chrome Web Store until January 2024.
The Announcement (opens in new tab) on the Google Chrome Developers blog offers a deferral for major changes to the Chromium engine that: privacy proponents say will castrate web browser extensions designed to block ads.
But no such deferment is being offered to personal Chrome users, who, according to Google, will be subject to extensions built on the existing Manifest V2 (MV2) API that will be temporarily phased out next year in a series of “experiments.”
Google Chrome Phased API Changes
While the new corporate policy will give businesses more time with extensions that are essential to their workflow, Google Chrome extension developers will have less time to adapt to browser adoption of the Manifest V3 (MV3) API.
As of January 2023, Google says it will no longer mark MV2 extensions on the Chrome Web Store, as it appears to “raise the security bar” on the platform.
As of June 2023, MV2 extensions can no longer be published with their visibility set to public. Extensions that are already public in the store will be ‘Hidden’. This is a particularly glaring change, as it means they are untraceable to new users, while still being functional for enterprises.
Google also warns developers that their MV2 extensions could still stop working at “any time” after the release of new Chrome versions next year.
In January 2022, Chrome 112 will also allow a phase-out of Manifest V2 in Canary, Dev, and Beta versions of the browser. In June, Chrome 115 will allow this phase-out of MV2 in stable versions of Chrome – the version with the largest consumer user base.
At the center of the controversy is WebRequest, an API essential for blocking web content such as ads, which will be removed by Chrome’s implementation of MV3.
In the wake of the changes, the developers behind Mozilla Firefox to have announced their intention (opens in new tab) to keep WebRequest in their implementation of MV3.
“Blocking content is one of the top use cases for extensions, and we’re committed to making sure Firefox users have access to the best privacy tools available,” Mozilla said.