Browsing the internet is free, but in return, we have to deal with plenty of advertising and ads. This is because the vast majority of websites survive on the revenue generated by advertisements. With the arrival of AdBlock a few years ago, it was possible to browse without the presence of these annoying ads, but at the same time, advertising revenue decreased significantly. Google Chrome wants to put an end to ad blockers and, for this reason, announces that it will limit extensions.
Google is one of the most important companies in the world, and of course, its search engine is the most widely used. Additionally, we cannot forget that it has an absolute dominance of internet advertising with Google Ads. In fact, at the beginning of this year, we saw the United States sue Google for precisely its dominance in the online advertising sector. On the other hand, Google and its subsidiary Alphabet received a $25 billion lawsuit from the EU for anti-competitive practices.
Google Manifest V3 will end advertising extensions and blockers
Precisely because of Google’s dominance on the internet, it has felt the most significant drop in advertising revenue due to the extensive use of adblocks. Over the years, ad blockers have become increasingly popular, and some browsers even include them by default. Google wants to put an end to this, and in fact, last year, the company announced that it would update its Google Chrome browser to prevent the use of adblocks in 2023.
Here we are more than a year since that announcement, and indeed we have news from Google Chrome, which will limit ad blockers in June 2024. Google has taken things calmly and has had a year without too many changes, but next year things will change as it will deactivate Manifest V2, the current format of Chrome extensions. Once Manifest V2 is out, it will be time to implement Manifest V3. From that moment, Manifest V2 extensions can no longer be installed from the Chrome Web Store.
From 2024, Google Chrome will have limited adblock and extensions
The exact date may vary depending on various factors, but we would be talking about these changes arriving with Google Chrome version 127. As a detail, users who work in a company with the “ExtensionManifestV2Availability” policy activated will have an additional year with extensions compatible with the old Manifest V2.
The rest of the people will have to adapt to the changes of Manifest V3. Google justifies the decision to limit extensions by claiming that the browser will use fewer resources and improve privacy protection by not installing extensions. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) labeled Manifest V3 as a misleading and threatening proposal, doubting that it really does anything regarding security. Furthermore, they also doubt that it really consumes fewer resources, as Google Chrome is known for its enormous amount of RAM consumption. For comparison, an adblocker like uBlock Origin spends about 80 MB across all tabs.
Firefox also disagrees that this is a wise decision when it comes to protecting users. Manifest V3 ultimately aims to end ad blockers, forcing them to comply with a series of limited rules in number. Google initially imposed only 5,000 rules, but considering that uBlock includes more than 300,000, the difference was huge. Later, they indicated that with Manifest V3, there would be a limit of 30,000 rules. If we want to continue using adblocks without limitations, we will have to switch to Firefox or other unaffected browsers.
The post Google is determined to put an end to ad blockers on Chrome from 2024 with Manifest V3 first appeared on El Chapuzas Informático.
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