Google Chrome "upgrade" planned for January 2023 will disable most ad-block software

Next January, Google is planning to turn off the "manifest v2" API in Chrome and Chrome-based browsers such as Opera. This will have the effect of disabling most ad-block software.

According to this video, it may be time to switch your web browser to Firefox.

My experience with Firefox

Firefox recently went through a major upgrade that solves most of the compatibility issues that plagued it not too long ago. Firefox was always compatible with WWW and HTML standards. The problem was that Firefox did not support all of the non-standard extensions used by Chrome. Firefox now supports the vast majority of them.

Three years ago, there were websites that gave me trouble with Firefox. Those same websites now work fine when I visit them with Firefox.

Here's the caveat: I am not a browser expert, and even though there is reason to be optimistic, YMMV.

Edge

Not really, Edge is now built on Chromium, which is what Chrome is built on.

Firefox

Firefox

Chrome can burn. Along with all of its derivatives that remove my menu bar. Long live firefox.

What is chrome? 15 years with Firefox.

Brave

The change has been delayed until June, and there is a chance that it can be further delayed in my opinion. All browsers using the Chromium engine including Edge and Brave are affected.

The most popular adblocker extension developers have already confirmed that they will migrate to Manifest V3, so the average user will not notice anything.

It is also unlikely that Firefox will maintain Manifest V2 support in the long term, it would not make much sense with 90%+ of the extensions ecosystem migrating to V3.

General question, What’s wrong with Chrome?

Never tried anything else but I want to see the variation between the other browsers.

Firefox + Duck Duck Go extensions. A lot of websites hate that combo. It kills their snoopware.

Good to hear!

I use Opera, which is very similar to Chrome, and I'm thinking this thread is a non-issue.

I’ve always used Firefox. Even aside from the privacy advantages I find it to be far superior to Edge and Chrome. Haven’t used Opera in ages but I remember liking it a lot back in the day

Do people still use Chrome these days? Its some of the worst spyware of any browser, even when using incognito mode. Ditch that abomination, along with everything “google” if possible. Hundreds of articles online tell you how and why.

Thanks for the info. It caused me to look for Google's announcement, and find this updated timeline. It was posted on the official Chrome Developers website on 2022-Sep-28. With certain exceptions, it confirms the delay until June.

More details on the transition to Manifest V3
https://developer.chrome.com/blog/more-mv2-transition/

  • Starting in January in Chrome 112, Chrome may run experiments to turn off support for Manifest V2 extensions in Canary, Dev, and Beta channels.
  • Starting in June in Chrome 115, Chrome may run experiments to turn off support for Manifest V2 extensions in all channels, including stable channel.

As well, the video I posted in my OP states, "Brave might start using the Enterprise policy on their fork of Chromium which is also going to delay the death of Manifest V2 until June of 2023."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18VM1xZQdXc&t=260s

One would hope!

But will developers be able to provide the same level of protection they give now? The video I linked in my original post discusses how well ad-blockers might work under Manifest V3.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18VM1xZQdXc&t=362s

In particular, it cites the new "uBlock Origin Lite" extension for Chrome (formerly called "uBlock Origin Minus"), which uses Manifest V3 exclusively. The video concludes, "As the name implies... it has less ad and tracker blocking capability than the original "uBlock Origin"... It's just not as good."

Is this going to be a wait-and-see thing, or do you have any guidance you can give us about the strength of upcoming V3 ad-blockers?

LibreWolf is a fork of Firefox worth considering.

This. I dont see why everyone is bashing chrome here. I like the multidevice integration and cloud backups. Oh and I also use their phones and password manager extensively.

My understanding is there is no such thing as privacy once you are connected to internet, if not google, someone else will invade your so called privacy. I would rather prefer google doing that, instead of some other smaller companies.

Even if we ignore privacy concerns it seems as if implementing Manifest V3 will result in ad-blockers no longer working or at best less effectively than before.

There is many ways to block shit.
Who use chrome or chromium based browsers anyway?

Oh, only around 75% (± 10%) of the browser traffic (Chrome + Edge + Opera) depending on where you look.