Google seems much too sure of itself making this change. I hope their arrogance pays off just the same as Microsoft's did with IE.
I thought I knew that.
Then I switched from uBlock Origin to uBlock Origin Lite in Chrome, which is compatible with Manifest v3. I was prepared for the horrible onslaught of ads, expecting at least a quarter would start getting through, ready to switch to Firefox...
...and didn't notice a single change. Not a single ad gets through.
And at the same time, loading pages feels a little faster, though I haven't measured it.
Which has now got me wondering -- what if Manifest v3 really was about security and performance all along?
Because if Google was using it to kill adblockers, they've made approximately 0% progress towards that goal as far as I can tell. If they really wanted to kill adblockers, they'd just, you know, kill adblockers. But they didn't at all.
Adblockers do multiple things:
1. Visibly block ads from the user
2. Block the user tracking that's attached to those ads
3. Protect the user from malware
4. Save bandwidth and cpu cycles by not loading all that junk
5. Allow control to users over how a webpage is displayed to them
Arguably uBlock Origin Lite can only accomplish some of #1 and a sprinkle of #2 now. And even those abilities are compromised by artificially low limits imposed by chrome in v3 that will eventually allow ad networks to overwhelm those limits and get ads through to users.
Google is 100% boiling the frog here and you/the average user is left in the pot unaware.
Manifest v3 blocks user tracking -- if the request is blocked, any tracking attached to it is blocked. I'm sure it's not 100% perfect, but it's certainly working well enough in practice.
And what malware are you talking about? If a request is blocked, it's blocked. It doesn't matter if it's an ad or malware.
Manifest v3 is better at #4, because the junk isn't loaded, and the blocking is more efficient in terms of CPU.
And then #5 I don't know what you're talking about. I use Stylus and Tampermonkey to customize webpages and they continue to work great.
So I just don't see the evidence that "Google is 100% boiling the frog here". That's what everyone was saying, but now that Manifest v3 has come out, I just see adblocking that continues to work and uses less CPU to do it.
I see a lot of fearmongering around Google, but now that the results are in with Manifest v3... they just don't seem true. You're making all these claims, but I just don't see the evidence now that we're seeing how it works in practice.
These limits are easy targets for ad networks to overwhelm or outmaneuver.
That's what everyone was saying
No one was saying that adblockers would literally stop working, so it's beyond disingenuous to dismiss people's issues with these changes by just saying 'works for me'.
What evidence would you actually accept anyway? Do you need a leaked internal document from Google saying literally 'devs, go neuter adblockers' before you believe Google might have bad intentions surrounding people's ability to block ads and tracking?
If security and performance were the actual driving forces of DeclarativeNetRequest, then they would have simply added it in addition to the existing webRequest block functionality. uBlock Origin and most extensions would have happily moved the majority of their rules to the static list if it meant better performance and privacy while keeping around the webRequest blocks for the things that actually need it.
Google has gone from having only one nuclear-level option for influencing adblockers (aka delisting) to now having its boot softly pressed against their necks and plenty of levers to pull. And you want me to look at that and go, 'There's no direct evidence of malicious intention there... so perfectly normal and/or acceptable behavior by the world's biggest ad company'?
I don't know and I don't have to. All I know is uBlock Origin Lite is still blocking everything. So it seems like 30K rules is plenty? Like it's not a meaningful difference for end users if it's blocking 99.99% vs 99.9999% of ads?
> No one was saying that adblockers would literally stop working
That's sure what it sounded like. That it would literally be so bad you'd have to switch browsers because of how degraded the experience would be.
> What evidence would you actually accept anyway?
The fact that the adblocking experience was significantly degraded for the average user -- e.g. that now 10% or 25% of ads were getting through.
> And you want me to look at that and go, 'There's no direct evidence of malicious intention there... so perfectly normal and/or acceptable behavior...
Yeah, pretty much. As far as I can tell, security and performance seem to justify the Manifest v3 changes. Occam's Razor says you don't need anything else. If you think there's malicious intention, then the onus of proof is on you.
I was told, time and time again, than Manifest v3 would result in an adblocking experience so bad that people would start switching browsers because of it, that Google was cracking down on adblockers to neuter them. Now that it's here and my adblocking works just as well, maybe even better (if it's sped up page loading times) -- then sorry, as far as I can tell the malicious intention was made-up.
> I was told, time and time again, than Manifest v3 would result in an adblocking experience so bad that people would start switching browsers because of it
Once enough ads catch up with the new limitations. Right or wrong, we're still too early for that.