For a while now the transition away from Manifest V2 (MV2) to MV3 has been on-going and it looks like it is entering its final phase of deprecation, at least, in the case of Google Chrome. A recent discussion thread in the w3c WebExtensions Community Group GitHub repo has highlighted how the latest and upcoming versions of the most popular browser are expected to be its final releases with support for MV2 extensions.
What this essentially means is that the tricks and bypasses that were used to keep MV2 extensions like uBlock Origin and others alive will not work any more on Chrome, or at least not for very long. For example the Windows Registry mod that could extend MV2 availability will cease to function after Chromium version 151.
uBlock dragged its feet supporting MV3 but AdGuard works fine.
uBlock created an entirely different implementation of their extension to work around as much of the bullshit lockdown that MV3 implements.
Adguard (and ublock origin "lite") work exactly as much(or little) as google thinks it can get away with right now.
MV2 VS MV3 is much more of a change than just the stuff relating to ad blockers, but that doesn't detract from the fact that a company that makes a large proportion of their revenue through advertising was in full control of the specifications for the "new" MV.
I know how MV3 works, thanks. The point remains that from the moment it was announced people have been claiming, usually with much hyperbole, that Chrome was trying to kill adblockers, and yet here we are with adblockers still blocking ads. In terms of software engineering, I actually find it interesting that they managed to achieve the stated goal of preventing a certain class of malware extensions while letting adblockers still work (though I know it's not a widely shared sentiment).
Mind you, I still preferred living in an MV2 world, and I still encourage people to switch to Firefox. It's better for everyone if the ecosystem is more diverse.
That's my bad, i genuinely didn't consider that someone who knew what happened would frame it as ublock dragging their heels and not mention the context at all.
Along with a lot of people who rightly pointed out that a largely ad based company being in charge of the specification of a system that can limit the ability for their ads to be blocked is a massive conflict of interest.
Luckily for all of us, google is known for it's history of forgoing ad revenue and corporate interests in favour of end-user happiness...so we shouldn't worry about it.
....
It's not a widely shared sentiment for a reason.
fair enough.
Agreed as a general principle, especially in the mid to long term.
But if the diversity aspect introduced to 70% of a population is actively hostile (with historical indications that future aspects will also be hostile) then dismissing concerns about it as hyperbole is face-eating leopard territory.