Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google Begins Testing Extension Manifest V3 in Chrome Canary

bleepingcomputer.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 448 posts

Re: Google Begins Testing Extension Manifest V3 in Chrome Canary

#41

Post by bigiain »

onion2k wrote: post #16
reagent_finder wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In current form, yes. The article pretty clearly states: >Instead Google wants developers to use the declarativeNetRequest API, which has the browser, not the extension, strip content or resources from a visited web sites. This API, though, has a limit of 30,000 rules that can be created. >Unfortunately, this change will break popular ad blockers such as uBlock Origin, which rely on the original functionality of the…

The way ad-blockers work at the moment is that the authors of ad-blockers work hard to not break the websites they block adverts on. This is good for users. This change means ad-blockers will need a different, simpler approach that probably will break far more websites. For example, you could write a very simple ad-blocking script that just denied requests to load JS from any third-party domain. That would break a lo…

Hmmm, I wonder if you could globally block 3rd party javascript, then use the 30,000 rule limit for your whitelist of places to allow js from?

I seriously doubt I'd be left with any "broken sites" I care much about by the time I've whitelisted 30k 3rd party javascript domain/paths?

Re: Google Begins Testing Extension Manifest V3 in Chrome Canary

#42

Post by rozab »

mantap wrote: post #32
jruz wrote: post #19

Classic cat and mouse moves. Adblockers will move to OS level so google cant do anything about it. Pi-hole and Network level blockers should also see a rise.

Pi-hole can't filter out ads that are embedded into the page though. I think adblockers have to be a browser extension to work conprehensively.

I generally don't mind ads that are embedded into the page (at the moment). It would solve a lot of the big problems people have with ads right now. Anyway, this change only prevents extensions from blanket blocking web requests, and will make no difference to adblockers which manipulate DOM content.

I think the same thing that happened with popup blockers will happen again. Advertisers will be forced to listen to the consumers and the internet will be better for it.

Have you turned off your popup blocker recently? You can surf around even to fairly sketchy sites, and I bet you won't see a pop up. The consumer won. With tracking, we'll win again.

Re: Google Begins Testing Extension Manifest V3 in Chrome Canary

#43

Post by celdon25 »

sqrt17 wrote: post #22
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.

> they get an IE6-sized kick in the teeth. as in: people will continue to suffer for about a decade while good alternatives readily spring up but suffer slow adoption?

Why does an alternative have to be widely adopted to be seen as good? Tech has an obsession with "popular or bust" and that's the ultimate cause of the lack of choices IMO.

Re: Google Begins Testing Extension Manifest V3 in Chrome Canary

#44

Post by jillesvangurp »

I find it interesting that Google thinks they are going to get away with this. I'm afraid they might be right.

I've been on Firefox since they launched their quantum version a few years ago after a few years of using Chrome. I like Firefox but I notice a lot of people around me seem to default to Chrome. Things work well enough on Firefox that I don't consider compatibility a problem. But I do get a lot of raised eyebrows from people who consider this an extreme thing to do. Just like back in the day where I was doing most of my browsing with alpha builds of Mozilla Phoenix instead of just using IE like world + dog.

But what matters is that the market has changed. 15 years ago when MS made their anti competitive moves with IE and in the process helped Mozilla survive their Netscape implosion through reinventing themselves through their Phoenix -> Firebird -> Firefox reinvention (I used all of those). However since then, the market has consolidated around just 3 browser engines: Chromium, Webkit/Safari, and Firefox. Of those Chromium essentially powers all of the Chrome alternatives that aren't Firefox or Safari (Edge, Brave, Opera, etc.). Another change is that the web has imploded to just a handful of websites gobbling up most of the traffic. Yes there are a lot of websites but mostly the way to them leads via Google, Facebook, Apple, or MS owned properties.

Finally the ad market has changed. GDPR and related efforts in other markets (including the US) are pushing the market towards more responsible behavior with respect to getting users to opt in and to ad experiences that are increasing harder to block because they don't necessarily come via separate websites and domains.

Re: Google Begins Testing Extension Manifest V3 in Chrome Canary

#45

Post by kretor »

reagent_finder wrote: post #11
mda wrote: post #7

Does it really kill adblockers though?

In current form, yes. The article pretty clearly states: >Instead Google wants developers to use the declarativeNetRequest API, which has the browser, not the extension, strip content or resources from a visited web sites. This API, though, has a limit of 30,000 rules that can be created. >Unfortunately, this change will break popular ad blockers such as uBlock Origin, which rely on the original functionality of the…

> 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...)

Re: Google Begins Testing Extension Manifest V3 in Chrome Canary

#46

Post by pjc50 »

firefoxd wrote: post #39

On mobile i use brave, and when things break I switch to chrome. I tried Firefox multiple times, but I can't help but miss the swipe the address bar to go from tab to tab. I always revert back to chrome. So it's more of a convenience for me. But if I had to choose between adblock or swipe to switch tab, then they made the decision for me. There is no way I can ever browse the web without an adblocker

> swipe the address bar to go from tab to tab

I never knew you could do that! How did you discover this feature?

Re: Google Begins Testing Extension Manifest V3 in Chrome Canary

#47

Post by buboard »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #44

I find it interesting that Google thinks they are going to get away with this. I'm afraid they might be right. I've been on Firefox since they launched their quantum version a few years ago after a few years of using Chrome. I like Firefox but I notice a lot of people around me seem to default to Chrome. Things work well enough on Firefox that I don't consider compatibility a problem. But I do get a lot of raised eye…

There's also the giant shift to mobile. Google and apple would like you to use phones and tablets to the expense of desktops because they can control those platforms better. So they are building their platforms with those in mind, unintentionally-or-not crippling desktops

Re: Google Begins Testing Extension Manifest V3 in Chrome Canary

#48

Post by vkizl »

pjc50 wrote: post #46
firefoxd wrote: post #39

On mobile i use brave, and when things break I switch to chrome. I tried Firefox multiple times, but I can't help but miss the swipe the address bar to go from tab to tab. I always revert back to chrome. So it's more of a convenience for me. But if I had to choose between adblock or swipe to switch tab, then they made the decision for me. There is no way I can ever browse the web without an adblocker

> swipe the address bar to go from tab to tab I never knew you could do that! How did you discover this feature?

In my case, by accident...

Re: Google Begins Testing Extension Manifest V3 in Chrome Canary

#49

Post by kretor »

me_me_me wrote: post #35
cromwellian wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple/Safari adopted pretty much the same architecture on Ad Blockers. Maybe just maybe the conspiracy theories are all wrong, and there was actually a legitimate, technical reason for choosing a restricted API.

Google is an advertisement company there is nothing conspiratorial about them using their market share to force ads on people. After all whats the point of supporting chrome if it sells no adds.

With Google's new API, all ads can still be blocked. There will be a limit for network request blocking rules, but it's very high so that normal users don't reach it. And for those that reach it, only network requests are affected, so adblockers can still use other APIs to hide the ads.

Re: Google Begins Testing Extension Manifest V3 in Chrome Canary

#50

Post by bambax »

> 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

Post reply on HN