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Google Begins Testing Extension Manifest V3 in Chrome Canary

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Re: Google Begins Testing Extension Manifest V3 in Chrome Canary

#171

Post by malvosenior »

cletus wrote: post #157

Did anyone actually read the submission? The title is clickbait that doesn't reflect the content. The change here moves modifying content of the webRequest to the browser from the extension. This is fundamentally more secure. Allowing third-party extensions to inspect and _modify_ arbitrary HTTP requests is nothing short of dangerous. The new declarative API (from the article) limits such extensions to 30,000 rules.…

> So rather than be alarmist and use this to feed into the tired narrative that "Google is killing ad blockers because it's an advertising company"

That’s not alarmist, it’s the obvious truth. As a user I should have complete control over what runs on my machine. I don’t need Google “protecting” me (by breaking ad blockers). Google is the single most destructive force in the tech industry today. Very much like Microsoft in the 90s. We should resist their attempts to embrace, extend, extinguish and we should be insulted that they couch these changes in marketing speak that pretends to be pro-user when it’s the exact opposite.

Re: Google Begins Testing Extension Manifest V3 in Chrome Canary

#172

Post by LoSboccacc »

9dl wrote: post #116
johnpowell wrote: post #86

Back in the IE 6 days I was in charge of fixing my families computers, and my family's friends computers. I was dealing with a few things a week, some requiring a full re-install. This was back in the early 2000's. Eventually I snapped and started charging hourly unless people switched to Gmail and Firefox. I started getting a lot less calls since Gmail was pretty good about filtering out malicious attachments and IE…

I did it like this Install FF Set it as default Change path on desktop shortcut for "Internet" to FF And ofc do not forget to say that is new IE version

yeah back then there was a theme for firefox 3 that mimiked explorer icon and ux, all my relatives had that, very few questioned the different download menu.

Re: Google Begins Testing Extension Manifest V3 in Chrome Canary

#173

Post by malvosenior »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #85
bambax wrote: post #50

> Simeon Vincent, a Google Developer Advocate for Chrome Extensions One has to love and admire the use of Newspeak by big companies... How is this Mr Vincent an "advocate"? He's in charge of destroying extensions! On his Twitter bio [1] he also says he likes "helping people" and "the open web". The cognitive dissonance must be hard to bear. [1] https://twitter.com/dotproto

Even if you don't share their opinion, you have to accept that some people honestly believe that advertising is necessary for funding the open Web and keep it open for people who either can't afford tons of subscriptions or hate them for privacy reasons. Realistically, Mr Vincent is not in charge of being an advocate for anything other than Google's corporate interests. But he is not in charge of destroying extension…

I don’t accept that these people think they are helping create an open web. I think they’re trying to make their stock options worth more and appease their bosses.

Re: Google Begins Testing Extension Manifest V3 in Chrome Canary

#174

Post by TeMPOraL »

claudeganon wrote: post #124
pnako wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They still need to keep Firefox alive, because it allows them to control market concentration and avoid the antitrust issues that MS had to fight.

Google is already deeply in bed with the Democratic Party and has been buying up some just lovely Republicans at a good clip: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/google-miles-ta... While I tend to agree with you about them keeping Firefox alive, my guess is that they’re becoming less concerned with a legitimate antitrust complaint and that this “alive” will end up being “just barely.”

Betting protection from antitrust issues on getting cozy with a political party is a risky strategy; political landscape shifts on quite regular basis. It's safer to keep a competitor alive so that if and when the power goes to people who don't like you, it won't be easy for them to go after you.

Re: Google Begins Testing Extension Manifest V3 in Chrome Canary

#175

Post by mcv »

rusk wrote: post #143
moomin wrote: post #15

This is the point in the dominance cycle where the dominant player decides they no longer need to be the fastest or the most secure and that their dominance will allow them to coast along doing their thing. There’s nothing particularly inevitable about what happens next, but let’s hope they get an IE6-sized kick in the teeth.

has anyone else noticed a marked decline in the quality of Google search results over the last 12 months? I swear, around about 2011 I thought Google was going to become self aware but it's declined from that high-point to a point where duckduckgo has become a viable alternative for more than just reasons of privacy. Which is a great thing! Turns out "Don't be Evil" was more than just a feel-good marketing slogan. It…

I've noticed that for far longer than 12 months. Google search results are frequently crap. DuckDuckGo is often better.

But sometimes I dream about building my own search engine. It would avoid the big ad-driven sites as much as possible, and give preferential treatment to obscure blog posts about topics nobody else has written about. I want a search result to show the many different ways it could be interpreted, rather than assume one of them based on whatever heuristic, and show me tons of identical results that aren't what I want.

Re: Google Begins Testing Extension Manifest V3 in Chrome Canary

#177

Post by GraemeL »

kretor wrote: post #56
EsssM7QVMehFPAs wrote: post #18

Couldn't some kind of graph compression algorithm preprocess the subscribed rulesets into what fits 30k rules? I have no idea about the domain but 30k rules seems more than sufficient to map from a 150k set of uncompressed wildcard patterns.

The 30k rules limit is not final. > we are currently planning to change the rule limit from maximum of 30k rules per extension to a global maximum of 150k rules. ( https://blog.chromium.org/2019/06/web-request-and-declarativ... )

I currently have 135k network rules active in uBlock Origin without having all of their lists active. Your 150k proposal is nowhere near enough.

Re: Google Begins Testing Extension Manifest V3 in Chrome Canary

#178

Post by sigwinch28 »

cletus wrote: post #157

Did anyone actually read the submission? The title is clickbait that doesn't reflect the content. The change here moves modifying content of the webRequest to the browser from the extension. This is fundamentally more secure. Allowing third-party extensions to inspect and _modify_ arbitrary HTTP requests is nothing short of dangerous. The new declarative API (from the article) limits such extensions to 30,000 rules.…

> Allowing third-party extensions to inspect and _modify_ arbitrary HTTP requests is nothing short of dangerous.

On the contrary, I think google removing this ability actively removes user choice. A choice that I think users should be able to make.

Slippery slope argument: I run a PiHole on my network. Perhaps Google should also absolutely require DNS over HTTPS in Chrome, too, because it's nothing short of dangerous to allow third-party DNS servers to inspect and modify arbitrary DNS requests.

> Extensions can be compromised.

It's also Google's decision to make extensions auto-update by default.

Re: Google Begins Testing Extension Manifest V3 in Chrome Canary

#179

Post by johnpowell »

apexalpha wrote: post #162
johnpowell wrote: post #86

Back in the IE 6 days I was in charge of fixing my families computers, and my family's friends computers. I was dealing with a few things a week, some requiring a full re-install. This was back in the early 2000's. Eventually I snapped and started charging hourly unless people switched to Gmail and Firefox. I started getting a lot less calls since Gmail was pretty good about filtering out malicious attachments and IE…

Nowaways I put a pihole in every home of my family members. Together with unchecky (windows) my calls dropped by 95% or so.

I use a pihole at home too. It is funny since I have gotten a few texts from my roommates about their phones being infected when they aren't connected to the wifi here. They think it is a virus and I have to tell them that is what the internet normally looks like.

Re: Google Begins Testing Extension Manifest V3 in Chrome Canary

#180

Post by cletus »

malvosenior wrote: post #171
cletus wrote: post #157

Did anyone actually read the submission? The title is clickbait that doesn't reflect the content. The change here moves modifying content of the webRequest to the browser from the extension. This is fundamentally more secure. Allowing third-party extensions to inspect and _modify_ arbitrary HTTP requests is nothing short of dangerous. The new declarative API (from the article) limits such extensions to 30,000 rules.…

> So rather than be alarmist and use this to feed into the tired narrative that "Google is killing ad blockers because it's an advertising company" That’s not alarmist, it’s the obvious truth. As a user I should have complete control over what runs on my machine. I don’t need Google “protecting” me (by breaking ad blockers). Google is the single most destructive force in the tech industry today. Very much like Micros…

> As a user I should have complete control over what runs on my machine.

You do. By running Firefox. This level of control might be useful to you but it's not to most users. As much as power users chafe against things like the App Store, for example, this is clearly a win for most users. Limiting what a malicious extension could do is very much the same because I can guarantee you there are scams to get users to install malicious extensions.

How Firefox should respond here is to make ad-blocking a first party solution. In that Firefox itself is responsible for the blocking and all extension writers are responsible for are the rules.

At that point you will have a solid story that FF is putting the user first.

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