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Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

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Re: Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

#11

Post by input_sh »

dobladov wrote: post #5
erklik wrote: post #2

It's time for mass-migration to Firefox. Only losing users is going to tell Google that this is a horrible solution to enforce.

Is v3 an horrible solution or the deprecation of v2 in 2023? I ported one of my extensions to v3 and while the process was not completely trivial it did not took more than a few hours, in my opinion the change is worth it this makes extensions more secure. As far as I know Firefox is also moving to v3, maybe not enforcing it for now, but they will probably deprecate v2 at some point.

While they're interested in maintaining compatibility with Chrome's v3, there's no standard that forces them to make every single v3 change Chrome does.

v2 also already differs in some ways in which Firefox thinks it makes sense. I'm not scared at all that they're gonna deprecate webRequest.BlockingResponse in favour of declarativeNetRequest, which is the specific API function that adblockers rely on. After all, that function has nothing to do with security, best you could argue is that it's related to performance due to filter lists becoming absurdly long.

Re: Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

#12

Post by selcuka »

dobladov wrote: post #5
erklik wrote: post #2

It's time for mass-migration to Firefox. Only losing users is going to tell Google that this is a horrible solution to enforce.

Is v3 an horrible solution or the deprecation of v2 in 2023? I ported one of my extensions to v3 and while the process was not completely trivial it did not took more than a few hours, in my opinion the change is worth it this makes extensions more secure. As far as I know Firefox is also moving to v3, maybe not enforcing it for now, but they will probably deprecate v2 at some point.

It's not only a simple Manifest version change. They have also deprecated the webRequest API, which is essential to implement any type of content filter or an ad blocker.

Re: Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

#13

Post by wow00 »

axegon_ wrote: post #6

Many years ago I published a small extension for common functions I use on daily basis(hashing, url encoding and decoding) for quick access as opposed to either opening a random site or some scripting language. If my memory is correct, I can kiss it goodbye(no idea where or even if I have a copy of the source code). Oh well... As for ad-blockers, funny enough I used to be firmly against them until not that long ago -…

Totally agree on that, I used the web without an ad blocker for years before going back due to having too many ads on YouTube, Google is slowly closing their walls and I may end up on Firefox at this rate

Re: Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

#14

Post by hdjjhhvvhga »

This is great news for Firefox. I switched a year ago and was forced to use Chrome once or twice (lack of call support in Teams web app; I'm unwilling to install the native (?) app).

The main difference between Chrome and Firefox is that Chrome feels passively (and sometimes actively) user-hostile with things like not-so-intuitive Chrome-vs-Google login and many other things that may seem trifle details but are in fact well-thought-out features with very specific purposes. In Firefox it's the opposite: I can start with containers right away, for example. Some extensions like Ad Nauseam (and many others) are simply removed from Chrome Store and if you insist on using them with Chrome, you need to re-enable them with the developer mode each time you start the browser. Why torture yourself if you can simply use Firefox?

Re: Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

#15

Post by quonn »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #9
erklik wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla annoys me. Truly it does. However, it's the organisation. Firefox as a browser, especially dev tools, seems better in every day use than Chrome does. I am really not sure why they keep losing users. I do remember being massive performance issues in the past, but that's really not the case today (at least in my experience)

>I am really not sure why they keep losing users. Because, number one, they keep constantly making radical UI/UX changes that frustrate and alienate their long term users who would rather they keep the "older look" which they got used to and works just fine for them, and number two, most websites are lazy so their devs only optimize for Chrome, even going the extra mile to explicitly state that "For best experience u…

I think the UI is finally good on macOS. The only thing I find strange now is the button-like tab style. Which seems like a minor issue.

Re: Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

#16

Post by matheusmoreira »

vadfa wrote: post #3
erklik wrote: post #2

It's time for mass-migration to Firefox. Only losing users is going to tell Google that this is a horrible solution to enforce.

The only browser that's been losing users for years is Firefox. That already tells Google all they need to know. (It also tells Mozilla what they need to know; pity they are deaf.)

I wonder why. It's not like Firefox is a bad browser.

Re: Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

#17

Post by feketegy »

vadfa wrote: post #3
erklik wrote: post #2

It's time for mass-migration to Firefox. Only losing users is going to tell Google that this is a horrible solution to enforce.

The only browser that's been losing users for years is Firefox. That already tells Google all they need to know. (It also tells Mozilla what they need to know; pity they are deaf.)

They don't have any coherent marketing strategy, most people still think that Firefox is this sluggish browser that don't support anything.

Also, most non-technical people use the default browser that's installed on the OS whether that's Safari or Edge.

When manifest v3 kicks in and we'll see the true ad horror that's the Internet today without ad blockers, maybe then we'll jump to a more privacy first browser. Until then nothing will happen.

Re: Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

#18

Post by matheusmoreira »

dobladov wrote: post #5
erklik wrote: post #2

It's time for mass-migration to Firefox. Only losing users is going to tell Google that this is a horrible solution to enforce.

Is v3 an horrible solution or the deprecation of v2 in 2023? I ported one of my extensions to v3 and while the process was not completely trivial it did not took more than a few hours, in my opinion the change is worth it this makes extensions more secure. As far as I know Firefox is also moving to v3, maybe not enforcing it for now, but they will probably deprecate v2 at some point.

The new declarative APIs are great. They will protect user data from potentially malicious extensions.

The thing is uBlock Origin is just so important and trusted that these restrictions shouldn't apply to it. The functionality of uBlock Origin is just so fundamental and unambiguously pro-user it should be integrated into the browsers themselves. Conflicts of interest prevent that unfortunately but the fact remains that browsers without uBlock Origin installed cannot call themselves user agents.

uBlock Origin should just get access to everything so it can do its job as well as it possibly can. For everyone else, there's the standard APIs.

Re: Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

#19

Post by smaddock »

As someone who is intimately familiar with the Chrome extensions internals and is not employed by a big tech company, I believe most of the changes seem like a step in the right direction.*

I've been working towards implementing greater support for Chrome extensions in Electron which has involved reading and interacting with Chromium code [0].

- Using service workers instead of a hidden background webpage is more idiomatic for web developers.

- Forced non-persistent extensions guides developers to a better implementation which relies on less resources.

*The deprecation of webRequest's blocking behavior is what's most concerning. The implementation in Manifest V2 requires sending a message back and forth between processes with JS processing for each network request which seems to be in part why they redesigned it.

However, that optimization costs so much for innovative ad blocking technologies as gorhill of uBlock Origin has mentioned. When ad blocking begins requiring new methods of detection or filtering, it'll now be up to Chromium maintainers to implement support for it in the new declarativeNetRequest API. This is a tradeoff of performance for reduced flexibility where it is absolutely needed.

[0] https://github.com/samuelmaddock/electron-browser-shell

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