It’s common for corporations to take actions that ultimately are to the detriment of most consumers and Google is one of the world’s biggest. The tech giant is making changes to its Chrome Web Store, specifically an end to supporting Manifest v2 (Mv2) extensions, which will make it more difficult for adblockers to operate.
Currently, Mv2 supports all extensions on the Chrome Web Store, including ad-blocker extensions such as uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, etc. Ad-blockers are extremely popular features of the Chrome Web Store with millions of currently active users due to their functionality in blocking ads and maintaining privacy. However, starting in January 2023, Google will shift from Mv2 to Mv3, making most of these popular features obsolete.
The shift wouldn’t make it entirely impossible to adapt existing extensions; however, Mv3 would certainly reduce the functionality of ad-blockers and limit innovation in the ad blocking space.
Google, however, argues that Mv3 will continue supporting developers and will go further to protect sensitive consumer data while maintaining the same level of efficiency for extensions....
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