Google Will Disable Classic Extensions in Chrome in the Coming Months (ghacks.net) 86
Google has published an update on the deprecation timeline of so-called Manifest V2 extensions in the Chrome web browser. Starting this June, Chrome will inform users with classic extensions about the deprecation. From a report: Manifests are rulesets for extensions. They define the capabilities of extensions. When Google published the initial Manifest V3 draft, it was criticized heavily for it. This initial draft had significant impact on content blockers, privacy extensions, and many other extension types. Many called it the end of adblockers in Chrome because of that. In the years that followed, Google postponed the introduction and updated the draft several times to address some of these concerns.
Despite all the changes, Manifest V3 is still limiting certain capabilities. The developer of uBlock Origin listed some of these on GitHub. According to the information, current uBlock Origin capabilities such as dynamic filtering, certain per-site switches, or regex-based filters are not supported by Manifest V3. The release of uBlock Origin Minus highlights this. It is a Manifest V3 extension, but limited in comparison to the Manifest V2-based uBlock Origin.
Despite all the changes, Manifest V3 is still limiting certain capabilities. The developer of uBlock Origin listed some of these on GitHub. According to the information, current uBlock Origin capabilities such as dynamic filtering, certain per-site switches, or regex-based filters are not supported by Manifest V3. The release of uBlock Origin Minus highlights this. It is a Manifest V3 extension, but limited in comparison to the Manifest V2-based uBlock Origin.
time to exit Chrome and go back to firefox! (Score:5, Insightful)
time to exit Chrome and go back to firefox!
Re:time to exit Chrome and go back to firefox! (Score:5, Interesting)
I already did, the day google decided to show nagware on youtube about ad-blockers. I also switched to duckduckgo on the same day, which although powered by bing, I haven't felt the need to ever visit google again. It's already been more than 6 months now. #DitchEvilGoogle
yeah and as a bonus (Score:5, Informative)
Re:yeah and as a bonus (Score:4, Informative)
WEBP is two different formats stapled together.
There's a Lossless format in there which is absolutely excellent, and absolutely trounces PNG, and decodes very quickly. Lossless WEBP is still competitive with lossless JXL and AVIF, as it decompresses much more quickly.
There's also a Lossy format in there based on the obsolete VP8 codec. It loves to blur the images a lot, but usually does produce less artifact-noise than JPEG. But WEBP does not support YUV 4:4:4 high chroma resolution like JPEG does.
On a related note, JXL is also two different formats stapled together. Modular Mode and VarDCT are two completely different formats as well.
There's also the new "JPEGLI" standard, which is great because it's a completely normal JPEG file, just encoded and decoded with higher precision during the DCT blocks->YCbCr->RGB conversion steps. JPEG itself already has 16-bit precision in the DCT blocks, so keeping high precision when going between RGB, YCbCr, and DCT blocks isn't a brand new idea, it just wasn't standardized before.
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If they try that, the EU will come down on them like a mother hawk over someone trying to get close to her nest.
The EU is basically waiting for them to try a move like that. Right now they can't do much concerning antitrust as long as Firefox is at least a nominal competitor. As soon as it becomes obvious that they're trying to pull the plug on it, they get slapped with the same shit that hit MS back in the IE days.
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We still have the option to have Ukraine fight that war for us. They seem pretty good at it, provided we keep sending more weapons their way.
But you know, the EU is actually versatile enough that they can handle two things at once.
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A new president? You mean the crook that just got convicted?
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Let's not open that can of worms.
Re:time to exit Chrome and go back to firefox! (Score:5, Insightful)
Been there since Firefox quantum released. Never looked back.
Only reason I even used Chrome on the desktop was because it was faster and it integrated well with my android phone but lacked in the ad blocking dept. Once Firefox caught up on mobile and supported Ublock Origin I never looked back and has been my mobile browser of choice as well.
As I have said before, The second that Chrome blocks ad blockers is the day Chrome dies. other Chromium based browsers would be smart to do what Firefox did and support Manifest v3 + v2 and gain market share instead of dying on the manifest v3 pole like Google seems to be determined to do to itself.
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I don't think it dies anytime soon. Most people don't run an ad blocker.
But it does mean others can much more safely fork Chromium because the people who DO run adblockers are the trend setters. It'll be like how Chrome ruined IE because Microsoft got it to a near 100% market share and then just looked the other way for more than a decade.
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The problem is that Firefox's Android version is crap. Murders your battery, UI is clunky and they don't seem interested in fixing it.
This is bad. While some Chromium based browsers say they will keep v2 around, it's only a matter of time before they realize it's too much work once Google has abandoned it.
Re: time to exit Chrome and go back to firefox! (Score:1)
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It seems to come and go. For a while Firefox was okay-ish on battery, not terrible but not as good as Chrome. Then it went terrible again.
The only tiny glimmer of hope is that Manifest V3 may enable extensions in mobile Chrome. Looking at the parts that are changing, they are all stuff that hammers the battery, like using Javascript to do extensive pattern matching.
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Really? I'm on Android11, FF has used 0.3% according to System > Battery.
The UI? Well it certainly is better on my PCs but I can live with it.
Noscript & UBlock work just fine - that's what I care about!
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I'll give it another try this week, but when I last tested it a month ago Firefox Nightly was back to being a battery killer.
Maybe I should move to the mainline release. It used to be that you had to be on nightly to get full extension support.
By the way, why use both uBlock and Noscript? Isn't the "disable Javascript" functionality in uBlock, with a per-site toggle, as good as Noscript?
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This sounds like complete bullshit to me. I've used Firefox on Android as my only web browser for 10+ years and it's great. No battery issues.
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Not until they implement tab groups.
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Isn't this fun? If only government cared, and regulated software too.
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And FreeTube
Shut up and buy! (Score:2)
Did Edison ever try to say you could only use "his electricity" on his inventions? That's where we are, today.
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google = hubris, avarice
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"Did Edison ever try to say you could only use "his electricity" on his inventions?"
Kind of, yeah, though of course he didn't frame it in those terms. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org].
Re:Shut up and buy! (Score:5, Insightful)
No, he killed an elephant with AC to prove his point. The original asshole tech CEO.
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Sure, but I don't recall him doing anything crazy like killing an elephant. Falling in love with a bird though, yeah, that was quite odd. Tesla got royally screwed by Edison and Westinghouse.
Google knows best (Score:5, Funny)
I trust them fully. They've never been wrong before. Going to do whatever their new AI tells me to do without question.
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Flash sale, today only - special digestive rocks are 25% off!
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ChatGPT says "Do not eat rocks." So, which AI overlord are you going to obey?
OTOH, Are We Giving Robots Too Much Power? [youtube.com]
Re:Google knows best (Score:5, Funny)
I dunno, all this talk of eating rocks kinda has me thinking, why not try some rocks?
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If geese can do it, why not you?
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You were warned. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Ironically both the Ladybird and Netsurf sites are extremely slow, which usually means that their anti-bot defences are slowing things down for VPN users. I'm using Chrome so it's not Firefox being falsely flagged as a bot.
The whole web is kind of screwed up at the moment with anti-bot defences and captchas that screw actual humans while doing seemingly little to block malicious actors.
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Yeesh, is that why I keep getting capchas just trying to do searches, log into sites on Firefox??
Re: You were warned. (Score:1)
Also, some video sites won't serve resolutions above 1080p to Firefox, because it doesn't include some of the studio-mandated malware.
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"Bonzi Buddy and Gator"
Remember those days. Sweet memories, Bonzi was kinda cute. Gator was not.
Brave + YouTube (Score:2)
No doubt the main goal here is to use their new near 100% browser leverage to disable ad blockers in YouTube.
Brave is Chromium based, with 100% compatibility with V2 and V3 extensions. Ad blockers will never be crippled.
And it loads pages very noticeably quicker, to my surprise. Don't know WTH Chrome is doing.
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I'm not seeing that at all.
Re: Brave + YouTube (Score:1)
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sure - Third parties are totally going to be able to patch v2 extension support into their chromium based projects as that massive code base migrates away from that..
Not going to happen. Google won't stop with just Chrome, I am sure the internal mantra will quickly become 'chromium aint done til v2 extensions don't run' at Google.
maybe initially projects like Brave will be able to cherry pick commits to Chromium and but my prediction is very quickly everyone else using it will be forced to either stay on ou
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That may be. But there are options, including pragmas and forking. The amount of effort people will put in will correspond to the amount of evil Google puts in.
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Which of the forks still supports win 7 after google nuked the support?
I'll start. Steam client, though support is unofficial at this point. Anyone else?
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If adblock is important (and in Brave it's everything), that functionality will be pulled out and implemented separately. Extensions will need to adjust once, then Google's meddling won't matter anymore.
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So the answer is "you get Brave's own adblock only, and it's totally not going to run into the same problem google is running with extensions, because it's not like Brave is paid for ads..."
Wait, it is!
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Brave was just an example. In any case, Brave has adblock built in. It's its whole identity.
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Brave's identity is cryptobrowser. It tries to strong arm web page owners into paying into its ad program that is white listed in their blocker via a crypto mechanism.
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And that requires an ad blocker.
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No. It requires a selective adblocker that only blocks some ads.
Selective as a defining feature all but nullifies the "adblocker" part. Because you're not getting an adblocker that blocks ads. You get an adblocker that modifies what ads you see, showing you some and hiding others from you.
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And a "selective adblocker" requires the same APIs as any adblocker.
And as I said, Brave is just one many open source Chromium based browsers, so I don't get the laser focus on it.
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"But this thing that does a bad thing uses the same API that does a good thing. Also I don't understand why you're talking about a specific browser that I myself brought up as a point".
Errr.... ok?
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OK you get last laugh. ;)
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Right now, there are no browsers that aren't anti-addons and pro user choice. I'd get a laugh if there was one.
But there aren't.
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Of course it might be easier, instead of directly supporting V2, just include the old features in pragmas and add a feature flag for them.
Or if running on Brave or whatever browser, have dynamically loadable endpoints that provide ad block functions.
Don't be such a negative Nancy.
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Brave is Chromium based, with 100% compatibility with V2 and V3 extensions.
Hold up. While true today, that's an overstatement of what the case will be soon.
They can more or less re-add v2 support when it's removed, but the technical cost to keep doing so will increase over time as Google no doubt allows the Chromium code to diverge in ways that make it more and more difficult to support manifest v2. Brave leadership has already acknowledged that fact and at least implicitly suggested it wouldn't be tenable forever. The easier thing to do—and the only thing I've seen firm con
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Don't support manifest V2, just support the adblock functionality through another, perhaps dynamically loaded endpoint. Easy peasy.
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That's what I'm getting at. It isn't going to remain "100% compatibility with V2 and V3 extensions" for long. It'll soon likely be "compatibility with a handful of specific ones that work specific ways". Will uBlock Origin keep working? Sure. But what about all the rest of our v2 extensions?
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If people can agree to an alternative API for the functionality Google is removing (or just an alternative way to get at that API), then that's not an issue. Extensions will of course have to adjust, but if they're interested in continue to exist, they'll do that.
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Except that we've seen Brave drop win 7 support as soon as Google made it hard to keep it in.
So expect same thing here. It will be kept as long as Google makes it reasonably easy to keep it in, and drop it the moment it's not.
And with Google almost certainly killing old manifest v2 versions of addons in its store after manifest v2 is officially deleted, and with how annoying it already is to install extensions from outside of the chrome web store, you can expect v2 addons to become gone from all but the mos
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Except that we've seen Brave drop win 7 support as soon as Google made it hard to keep it in.
Windows 7 support is completely unimportant. Ad Block support is super duper fucking crucial, to the point it's built in to some Chromium browsers.
Those APIs can be moved out of Chrome(ium)'s extension architecture, where Google can't affect other browsers. If Brave can do it, others can copy that approach and provide those APIs to extensions in a way Google can't break.
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This is the classic "they came for X and I didn't care because it didn't matter to me. Then they came for thing that was important to me and not enough people cared in the end either" answer.
You're going to be so shocked at the outcome in a year or two. Or more likely you'll just be a ublock origin minus user.
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OK, you get the last comment. :)
What about Chromium? (Score:2)
I have Chromium installed but don't use it much and don't know a lot about it. Is there any chance that at this point they'll break away from full Chrome compatibility in the name of freedom and privacy?
This won't affect me much - I'm a die-hard user of Firefox and its variants. I never liked Chromium, and I don't think I've ever even installed Chrome, because it's a Google product.
Somebody else here mentioned that they'd switched to DDG to get away from Google. I've pretty much done the same - DDG's search
Re:What about Chromium? (Score:4, Informative)
Re: What about Chromium? (Score:1)
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Correction: they will keep it as long as google makes it easy to keep it. We've seen this in the past, when Vivaldi, just like pretty much everyone else dropped win 7 support the moment google made it hard to keep it in.
You can expect the exact same thing to happen here.
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Thanks for the insight - I never realized that Chromium needed to be or even could be "unGoogled".
Do you think a project like Linux Mint might have, or acquire, the bandwidth to take on Chromium? I'm reluctant to see more competition for Firefox, given its shrinking market share. On the other hand, it might prompt Mozilla to get their head out of their ass and start listening to users who have been loyal to them since the Phoenix days.
Well, I guess that means (Score:2)
We'll have to freeze updating a certain version of Chrome-based browsers to ensure UBlock continues to work.
Or we just dump the crap and move over to Firefox.
FireFox (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been using nothing but Firefox since version 1.0 and have never had any issues with it. I simply don't understand all the complaints and supposedly reported issues with it. Mozilla made a few bone-head decisions along the way but the browser just keeps on ticking. Stop using Google's and Microsoft's spyware and use a browser that just works.Send a message that you're tired of Google's over-reach.
manifest V2.9 or manifest V3.1 (Score:2)
Firefox and some other browsers are NOT implementing manifest V2 + manifest V3.
what they are doing is implementing manifest V3 and ADDING BACK select manifest V2 functions. So, in a sens2, you can think of it as manifest v3 with regresions (I.e. manifest v2.9) or manifest V3 with extra functionality (I.e. manifest v3.1)
so, extension makers will need to redo their extensions anyway. Even in firefox. The good thing is that firefox's adblockers will be better than chrome's, but that is it.
Google's claims tha
I wonder how Mulvad's browser is going to do... (Score:1)
It ignores YouTube ads out-of-the-box currently.
Will there be a switch? (Score:2)
I'm hoping that you can simply re-enable it in settings... I have a couple of plugins I wrote for my own use that probably won't work any more and I really don't want to learn the differences and remediate.
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Firefox already demonstrated through actions they took for many years that they are prioritizing copying google over add on functionality. For example, the unceremonious nuking of XUL in favor of google's far more limited webextensions.
They're the original "screw the blockers" crew. Google is actually following in their footsteps on this one in screwing ad blocks.
There are no actual alternatives here. Everyone has already demonstrated themselves to be utterly awful when it comes to maintaining capable add o
its time for alternative android devices (Score:2)
Disable automatic updates (Score:2)
If you are on Windows, use group policy.
Google got Steve Ballmered (Score:2)
Is Steve Ballmer the new mgmt consultant at google? Or is Sundar Pichai trying to ace Ballmer? Don't be evil.
I'm letting my chrome extensions die... (Score:2)
The conversion to manifest v3 is pretty incompatible with the firefox standard. I'd have to do 2x the work to maintain both versions. And that's on top of the new changes the article mentions. And there's also the fact that their manifest v2 to v3 upgrade guide is a mess. I've since switched to Librewolf and have had a better time on the web (and exported my chrome extensions to firefox. Which was easier than upgrading them to manifest v3).