"Begin disabling installed extensions still using Manifest V2 in Chrome stable"

Notably, Firefox is not removing v2 support (at least for now as of March 2024)

> Firefox, however, has no plans to deprecate MV2 and will continue to support MV2 extensions for the foreseeable future. And even if we re-evaluate this decision at some point down the road, we anticipate providing a notice of at least 12 months for developers to adjust accordingly and not feel rushed.[1]

[1]: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2024/03/13/manifest-v3-manif...

To my knowledge the “big” chrome engine alternatives aren’t either. I know that Vivaldi and Brave plan on keeping around v2 as long as it is economically feasible

Are you certain? The last I heard about it from Vivaldi[0], they were only going to keep the MV2 code around so long as it's in the upstream codebase:

> We will keep Manifest v2 for as long as it’s still available in Chromium. We expect to drop support in June 2025, but we may maintain it longer or be forced to drop support for it sooner, depending on the precise nature of the changes to the code.

Note that June 2025 is the same date Google plans to drop support completely[1].

[0] https://vivaldi.com/blog/manifest-v3-update-vivaldi-is-futur...

[1] https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/develop/migrate...

But... what could possibly be the point of using a chromium based browser that is not Chrome, if not for MV2 support?

MS Edge, Arc, and Sidekick have features Chrome doesn't such as split screen, side panels, and vertical tabs. Likewise for Firefox forks such as Zen.

None of those things are anything close to killer features much less reasons to switch. Verticle tabs, seriously?

> Verticle tabs, seriously

Yes, I use Edge due to its vertical tabs