It is directly supported and maintained from Google, which then bases Chrome on that project adding some proprietary code. So I think yes, it is doomed
this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2023
103 points (97.2% liked)
Technology
59021 readers
2976 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Adblockers will still be allowed, they will just be crippled a lot. It will probably be the same as the adblocking situation on Safari.
If any 3rd party browser vendor wants to maintain a Chromium fork with Manifest V2, they can do so, but with the risk of code maintenance hell. They would also need an extension store for Manifest V2 extensions. Otherwise V2 extensions needs to be installed manually.
Browser vendors can also create their own separate ad blockers that aren't affected by the changes. For example Brave Shields, Vivaldi adblock, Opera adblock, etc.
At that point, move to Firefox based browsers
No reason to wait, firefox is great
The hero of rhyme.
I saw the writing on the wall when Google banned Adnauseam (adblocker that hides and clicks on ads) from their store with no viable reason.
They just did it, saw if there would be backlash (there wasn't), then went on about their business. Lol. Scumbags.
Integrating the ad blocker into the browser is probably a much easier solution that trying to maintain manifest V2 support.
There are a few more layers to this problem that no one seems to acknowledge.
What if someone DID come out of the woods and provided a Chromium fork that put Mv2 support back in. Then what? How do you install those extensions? Google won't be allowing Mv2 extensions in their store anymore. Supposedly you'd need to download it directly from the developer and install it manually. That's not great UX.
Maybe if the dev community came up with an alternative web store implementation that allowed Mv2 extensions, but that comes with a lot of other problems, to name a few: dev effort, costs for hosting the web app for the store and hosting the extensions themselves (which wouldn't necessarily be expensive, but wouldn't be free either), approval workflows for the extensions, etc. Thing is, though, all of that would require from devs a clear roadmap and a level of coordination that from my seat here, I don't see a hint of it happening.
All of the above: either having a Chromium fork that allows installing Mv2 extensions manually, or implementing an alternative web store, is not a trivial effort, and then how many people will actually benefit from it? Those really concerned with effective adblocking, like us, are a tiny minority of the user base. Would the effort of maintaining a Chromium fork and/or a free(dom) webstore be worth it if very few people will actually use it?
I hate to say it, but yeah, Mv2 is doomed. I didn't want to go back to Firefox, but I guess I'll have to.
Firefox already runs a web store that supports v2 extensions and is open source. But... You'd just be chasing your tail forever trying to keep your fork of chromium updated until you gave up and forked it. We've seen this happen too often.
Idk why people even try to use chromium garbage when Firefox exists. So many problems suddenly disappear
In my case mainly because Firefox doesn't have per site isolation , the same level of security as Chromium and a webview implementation.
Many chromium browsera already have inbuilt adblockers that aren't extensions, so they won't be affected by MV3.
OTOH, MV3 versions of uBO and AdGuard are already more than enough for 99.9% of people.
So no, nothing will change, despite Mozilla's undeserved fans' hopes.
have inbuilt adblockers that aren't extensions
yeah but they are way less powerful than uBlock Origin. I tried Brave, just out of curiosity, and shields is a crippled uBO.
There are plenty of chromium browsers like brave that will keep the feature alive. I suspect it'll just become a compile time option. I'd be surprised if there weren't enterprise customers on Chrome that will need v2 manifests for years.
The real question is what webstore will host the extensions...